That doesn’t make any sense. If connection is lost, you can just treat the vehicle as destroyed and charge repair cost without crew lock having anything to do with it. Crew lock didn’t do anything toward the goal you claim it is for, and would not be necessary for that. It is absolutely meant to stop 1 death leavers (which it fails at)
Crew lock is to limit progression, it was paired with the 10 minute timer that capped rewards meaning there was no way to play more than Gaijin wants you to play.
Either you play out the 10 minute match or you get crew locked for the duration of it, limiting your ability to progress.
Of course with the cap being removed at the expense of lower rewards the crew lock makes no sense , and only pushes people to ODL, an issue Gaijin cares not about since it directly relates to premium sales.
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That is not the case.
It was made to discurage leaving a match at all. 1death leaving was not even a known thing when it was introduced. Leaving the match without spawning was. And this is what it was designed to counter.
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It’s a shame, but some players are ready to ditch their teammates when they feel their team is inferior to the opponents. For instance, if one or two members of the team disconnect from the game or there are too few fighters and too many bombers on the map, these players will just quit the battle. Some of them bail in the ‘unlucky map’ or even when the blazing sun is in the wrong position. As a matter of practice when these players leave the game, because they don’t want to play in a weaker team, that team actually goes on to win the battle. In fact no one can predict the outcome within the first 5-7 minutes of the 5 on 5 match. In realistic and simulated aircraft are hidden, so nobody knows anything about the other team, fights there 3 minutes goes by before the first bursts of fire actually happen. Therefore one can understand the outcome no sooner than this point. Players, who quit the battle within the first 5-7 minutes, let their team down. However, we think that it’s too strict to lock the crew in the game until the match ends. That’s why in version 1.35 we introduced the temporary crew lock for the first 7 minutes of each battle or till its end - eg whichever happens sooner.
ODLs definitely need to be held into this mantra…
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Oh no doubt about that.
It was also adjusted to have ODLs in mind. But again it was not introduced to counter sth which did not even exist at the time.
Gameplay time dependant penality was one feature added to counter ODL and make the system better in general .
Well does not change the fact that it does not help at all, does increase ODLs because of how it works and a removal would probably also decrese the number of ODLs due to point 2 ceasing to exist. But that is just speculation.
Indeed, the system needs modifying to make them have to handle the crewlock for the choice of leaveing after queueing with one vehicle.
Technically they could spectate the match rather than bailing for 7 minutes and see how it goes, rather than assuming they know and bailing like they do if they had a full lineup.
So if they quit within the first minutes with an ODL lineup, they should be actually locked until that match finished.
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I would rather shut off my PC and restart than do that
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That could be your solution to the crewlock if you want to, could be shorter than the crewlock, but it could help your PC out…
And it would actively discurage playing the game leading to lower player numbers.
Like for real. You need to make people want to play your game. Crew lock fails to do that. Crew lock encourages not playing after a bad game.
Oh I had a bad game?
"Good luck now you wait 10minutes to try again… HEY hey where are you going, don`t leave, no keep playing and spend money…hello? " - Gajin
And you want to make people even more likely to just quit the game?
Crew lock is a bad system with 0 positive aspects to it and it actively harms the wellbeing and growth of the game.
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This weird obsession with punishing people for not responding in a way the game wants them to, sure does remind of a certain concept, beatings will continue until morale improves.
Maybe that works in certain places, but maybe just look as to why people leave and address the issues with the game so people won’t leave in the first place instead of just trying to increase the punishment.
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The weird ‘speculation’ that it’ll harm Gaijin to do anything about anything is a real problem.
This want, to remove things that players can’t handle or understand isn’t in the games best interest, just the shortlived player, who likely quits all the time because things are too hard, proclaims that the company is bad, dismisses any advice, or pointing out of reasons, just straight out has to be the game.
It’s a very common thing I’ve faced over the years, in particular when trying to explain things that are in the game, which people always question, but still don’t understand because it shouldn’t have been that way in thier mind…
Players can handle or understand it just fine, and they abuse it all day long and crew lock only catches those people who actually attempted to play with a lineup and not those who bought a top tier premium to ODL, which is a convenient exception from crew lock.
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It’s the age old “carrot or stick” metaphor in which Gaijin consistently chooses the stick. This has, for a long time, been detrimental to the growth of the game. It is also one of the many things that keep Warthunder from being a really good game. Despite my 1000+ hours in the game I still cannot recommend it to people. Conversely, developers like Square Enix often use the “Carrot” method to incentivize their players to have fun, get rewards and continue playing.
Gaijin has been quoted on some occasions taking the stance “If you don’t like it, then don’t play.” Which more often than not bites them back and they make changes but a developer should be proactive in making thier game better and growing their user base opposed to a reactive means of player backlash.
I think we can all agree that while Gaijin may have had reasonable intentions for crew lock it’s a small thing that does more harm that good and is about 10 years past it’s removal.
Time will tell.
That’s why they just focus on getting in new players to replace the old players, it’s a lot easier to get money out of new and naive players who haven’t yet realized the situation than it is to get it from old players who do annoying things like demand improvements and review bomb you for being bad at everything.
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The premium is nonsense as a person could ODL with a single tree vehicle.
The want to paint out the risk to gaijin is the nonsense part of this and the ‘excuse’ of ‘why it shouldn’t’.
Yeah, surely tech tree vehicles have the same reason to ODL as premium vehicles, surely.
The want to defend a soulless company for some reason.
I would be curious what those statistics actually are.
The people I play with have been playing since the beta. I personally have spent about $500 over the course of the last 10 years, most of which was on premium time, some in-game items like talismans, camo, etc, and lastly a few premium vehicles. Keep in mind that all of the premium vehicles and time I have purchased is usually during their 50% off sale (e.g. Ka-50 for $25) so I could have spent more but not a lot in the grans scheme of things. One friend has spent probably $2000 and the other has spent maybe $100.
I feel like veteran players who climb multiple trees would seem to spend more money than the person who bought that one vehicle and later quits.
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I spend most of my money early on when I felt like it was worthwhile, nowadays your money and your time is worth less and less and I haven’t spend anything in years and just use the marketplace to buy and sell for profit as I refuse to give them any of my money at least.
Plenty of people who are really bad with their money or don’t care about it, but the more people you attract the higher the chances you get the financial irresponsible or wealthy ones playing.
If I was looking to increase profits I think it would make the most sense to get new players than it would to convince veteran players.
I don’t see your logic because there are no refunds, and the ODLs aren’t paying anymore.
Everyone who plays the game gets to a point where the grind is too much and they look for a shortcut which leads you to the most effective way to progress and that is ODL with a premium.
Only reason to do it with a TT vehicle is if you want to spade it, which also promotes removing your lineup.