Competitive Game Mode

Suggestions Maps/Missions/Events
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[Would you like to see dedicated competitive mode in-game?]
  • Yes
  • No
0 voters

Yes, there is a competitive mode in War Thunder already and it’s called squadron battles. However, this mode has one major limitation – it’s only for the squads. Individual players or just squads that don’t regularly have 8 active players who are also interested in playing squadron battles just can’t play it. The regular battles are played in a „self-interested“ way where everyone wants to score the most points themselves to get RP, which is perfectly fine as grinding is a significant part of the game. This however can result in some of these:

  1. one-death leavers who don’t care about the outcome of the game, but just earn some kills, die, leave, join another game and repeat.

  2. sacrificing teammates, kill-stealing and other practices

This is already enough to ruin the whole battle if there are a lot of players like this in one team, sometimes it is so bad not even playing in playing in group of 4 can help. The results are often short, one-sided battles which ruin the experience of the game.

The solution is competitive mode where the focus is on fighting till the end and winning the battle rather than gaining RP or SL. Only squadron battles provide such a possibility yet. I play it and enjoy it much but as I said earlier not everyone can play it often or play at all. The dedicated competitive mode could solve this issue. I will briefly explain how I imagine this mode to look like and also prepared some kind of „presentation“ on how the possible battle could potentially look like. (Keep in mind this is all just my suggestion and together we know better and the final implemented mode would be professionally made)

Suggested mode description:

  1. Active BR – I believe the current BR rotation in Squadron battles is efficient enough to ensure both enough players for quick queue time and a variety of BRs played, so it could stay the same for this mode as well. This means starting at 12.7 and dropping one BR every week till the 4.7. The next season would go from 12.3 to 4.3 and then from 12.0 to 5.0, this would repeat then.
  2. Mode – 8v8 as in Squadron battles but full GroundRB settings – meaning visible nametags on friendly planes as well to avoid team killing. A maximum of 4 planes in one team can be spawned and all planes are starting from the airfield (even bombers to avoid bomber spams and bombing right at the start of the battle). Only one spawn is allowed - no respawns.
  3. Matchmaking – players are assigned into teams according to their personal rating and the opposing teams should have a similar average rating. There is also the possibility to play in a group of 2,3,4 or a full stack group of 8 players to avoid situations where 5,6 or 7 friends play and communicate together on third-party voice chat and the remaining random players are left on game voice chat alone.
  4. Team voice chat – to ensure discussion about the strategy, team communication and collaboration on the battlefield.
  5. Ranks – could look like this (well-known format :) with ranks from Bronze to Diamond) At the beginning of each of the seasons, every player plays a 5-10 „placement“ game to determine their rank. After each battle winning team members receive rank points and the other lose rank points. The number of points received and lost is determined by the performance in the battle. I would suggest that there is also a feature that allows players to vote for the valuable player and the one with the most votes will receive some bonus points ( to reward actions that don’t bring battle exp like drone spotting, or some important clutches and so on)
  6. Rewards – to motivate players, after the season they receive rewards (XP/SL boosters, battle trophy boxes, Golden Eagles, Premium account, keys for boxes, etc.) based on the rank they end in.

Consequences of introducing this mode:

Pros:

  1. Tactical-based mode with a focus on communication and cooperation for those who want to play it.
  2. Players who want to play ratings would be motivated to grind through all BRs to be able to play every week → more people buying premium vehicles and accounts = income for developers, there could also be some premium season rewards, only accessible to players with bought battle pass → more players buying BP.
  3. Players would be filtered by ranks = playing against similarly skilled players.

Cons:

  1. Possible increase in cheating which would need to be addressed.
  2. I’m probably biased but I can’t find any more, you can help me with that in the comments :).

Now I would like to illustrate to you what a possible battle could look like. (Keep in mind these are all just examples and also excuse my graphic skills)
EXAMPLE OF A BATTLE
I qued in battle (the current BR is 5.7) as a group of 2 (with one friend) after the game is found the map is shown and then we are presented with a screen like this:
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There is shown a lineup of each player of our team, the map (Sinai) and the map layout we are going to play on. Now the team has 1 minute to communicate using the text and team voice chat the strategy and decide which vehicles they are going to pick. Each player has to have at least one eligible tank in their lineup.
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After all players from both teams pick their vehicle (a maximum of 4 aircraft are allowed but the team doesn’t have to pick an aircraft at all and can play 8 tanks) the battle begins as a usual Squadron battle + the in-game voice chat is still active during the whole game.
Our team wins the first battle and the second round follows where the teams switch sides on the map and play again with the same vehicles. Now the enemy team wins and so the final round comes next (If one team win both rounds on the first map there is no 3rd battle).
For the final round another map is chosen (should be some symmetric map that doesn’t give an advantage based on the side, in this example Advance to Rhine). Before the start of the last round, the teams are again given time in the lobby to discuss strategy and can pick different vehicles now.
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Our team decided to use the same vehicles again. We managed to win the last round and therefore win the whole battle. After the battle, there is shown a final scoreboard with all players from both teams with their scores, kills, assists, captured points, deaths and their ranks. We can vote for one player as most valuable. Most of the votes go to Player 1 as he was spotting enemies with his EBR.
Below is shown the scoreboard after the battle.

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Most of it is the same as we are familiar with (I am yellow and my squadmate is green). Apart from the usual scoreboards, there is an added MVP vote column and rating column where the current rating of each player, the team average rating and how many rating points each player received or lost, the amount is based on their performance and current (Notice how the player 1 in Team A received more points and the player 3 didn’t lose any as they were voted for MVP, There is also player 4 in Team B who is still playing placement games and does not have a rating yet) The player 1 on team B lost 100 points because of poor performance caused by being AFK (left after first lost round). The player also receives a warning that if abandoning matches repeats it can result in a temporary ban.

I hope I didn’t forget to mention anything, but let me know your opinions and suggestions in the comments.