Critical hits are broken as of 15th of February or nearby

Personally it’s always felt like this

The score also hugely decreased with this new system (I knew the score would be lower, but I didn’t expect the difference to be so big):

Honestly, this is getting ridiculous. Especially since nowadays events depend on scores.

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The comparison with the Abraham Wald bomber study should be obvious, I think.

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Yeah … I’m so done here … this is not worth the anger.

And I have also noticed that that is the easiest(maybe the only)way to take out bombers since the hit detection nerf came about. It’s entirely possible that this “change” was made directly to make bombers last a little longer. But like so many things, the changes/adjustments are “extreme” and not done with a light touch or any finesse . . which has always been very common here. But yeah, hit detection, damage modelling, the size of the hitboxes . . all that has changed, and now today . . we get the “Severe Damage” change as well. Oh well, not the first time I have had to “re-learn” how to play . . . .lol.

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This basically means we are screwed and critical hits won’t return. But I’m glad players are happy tasks requirements were decreased.

I’m not so happy, because this solution doesn’t change much from my perspective. Lack of critical hits means less score, especially in Arcade battles, where the score is very low anyway. And low score means low activity, and low activity means lower rewards.

After they removed critical hits, it’s much harder to exp planes in Air Arcade. Unfortunately, it’s also a problem in Ground Arcade, when you want to exp SPAA.

Previously you could usually get as many critical hits as plane kills + assist. Right now you barely get any. And each critical hit is worth 60 score + 10% of kill rewards, regular hit only 10 score.

I lately played the new French SPAA and the RP is a joke with too low score for killing planes in Ground Arcade:

Spoiler

1.1k RP is really a joke with 5 kills (which is fine number after Ground Arcade planes changes) and 7 minutes of staying alive. But only 1 critical hit, I lost 200 score with the lack of 4 critical hits (they were replaced by regular hits). Notice my activity is only at 82% (which means my mission rewards are decreased by 18%). Additional 200 score would have increased my activity % by a few percentages, plus give me additional 40% of kill rewards. But that’s gone now after critical hits changes.

Well, what to do. We have to live with what we have now. I wouldn’t be surprised if they next removed critical hits from Ground instant kills as well.

It’s funny how they first increase SL hugely last year, and then keep nerfing everything in a way that most players don’t even notice these changes. After all, most players see critical hits as “only required for tasks” and nothing more. I see them differently, I care most about the RP to be honest.

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Both “critical” and “severe” damage imply significant harm, but the severity can vary depending on the context. In general:

  • “Critical” damage typically indicates the most severe level of harm, often implying that the damage is life-threatening or could result in significant loss or failure.
  • “Severe” damage suggests serious harm but may not always be as dire as critical damage. It could still be substantial and require immediate attention or intervention to prevent further deterioration or negative consequences.

So, my solution is:
“Severe damage” - here you would introduce damages after which the aircraft is still airworthy, but due to the incurred damages, it does not operate as a fully functional machine.

“Critical damage should replace the currently introduced severe damage.” - This should include wing detachment, tail detachment, and control surface damage."

This is exactly my hell right now. As someone with a dayjob and little time to play like mad, but still want to enjoy some WT, this company seems to make things worse and worse, unless you’re willing to put 4-8 hours a day in this game. I’ve sworn to myself never to buy anything, including BPs about 9 months ago or sometimes when they made some changes and also changed the AI planes spawn time (they served the same purpose for me, quick crit/assist daily task), and yet here I am grinding this BP thinking it’s gonna be okay. Now, added vicious base/ground targets AAA(again), removed small airstrip AAA protection, so if you manage to land a damaged plane, you get shot down while repairing, and of course, this crit hit issue which is one of the most annoying grinds lately. Can’t wait to finish this BP season then uninstall as I’ve had enough. Missing out on so many fun games because of focusing on this piece of sh*t. Used to be fun.
Edit: Also, since they added this “severe damage” mechanic, ALL airplanes seem to literally loose their wings like they’re crisps, then flatspin. It’s utterly stupid and annoying.

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To be precise, the bug moderator didn’t understand the issue. This is often the problem with the bug reporting system. You first have to get through bug moderators. These guys very often don’t even play the game much, and their knowledge is taken from the news and changelogs. And this change wasn’t listed in any changelog. I’m sure this bug moderator tried to find some info about it, but didn’t find any, which (from his perspective) means nothing was changed, and that’s why you see this reponse:

Severe Damage and critical hit are two separate mechanics.
What was critical damage remains critical damage. If the damage meets the criteria for both critical damage and severe damage, then both awards are issued.

Not confirmed. Nothing has been changed in the critical damage mechanics.

Basically what he wrote there is that nothing changed with critical hits. Which is obviously not true (but he obviously doesn’t know this). To be honest, his response doesn’t even make sense if you carefully read the latest update changelog. Why would the devs remove critical hits tasks from Air battles, if nothing has changed?

This is exactly why I tried to explain everything and involve our Community Managers in this issue. Because it’s a confusing situation.

BTW: If someone wants to use my old screenshots, which shows this problem, feel free to do that:

Post-battle screens before critical hits were removed from kills:

Spoiler



Post-battle screens after critical hits from kills were removed, but before severe damage was implemented in the game (these screenshots proves that this change happened earlier, which is actually an important fact):

Spoiler


The interesting part is, on the Russian forum you don’t see many posts about critical hits issue. I suspect that’s because players usually play jets there, so they think nothing (or not much) has changed. If you kill someone with a missile, you will usually get a critical hit anyway, because of the explosion that breaks many parts of the plane at once. But when you play propellers, the critical hits change is massive, because you don’t have huge explosives that will just completely break the enemy plane in one hit.

Our forum is actually a very good source of information about this problem. But it looks like no one cares about our English forum. It’s sad, but it’s just how it works here.

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That’s a good point! Maybe I’ll have someone translate a proper bug report on the issue into Russian so it can be posted on that end. Maybe we’ll see some traction on it? I’ll be sure to use those screenshots. It’s very fortuitous that you took them!

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The bug report would have to be very detailed and basically list everything we know about this issue.

The devs are obviously aware there is something wrong (that’s why they removed critical hits tasks from Air battles), but maybe they are not sure where the problem is?

There is a chance when they were preparing the code for the severe damage update, someone just deleted one line of code too many and this caused the issue.

Maybe the devs think this problem is related to severe damage mechanics, and maybe they even checked the changes that were done in the severe damage update, using the version control system. But they couldn’t find this problem there, because this change actually happened about 2 weeks before.

So it’s really important to let them know this change happened sooner. We know it happened probably on February 14-15, thanks to Dodo_Dud. And we can suspect this update was a sever-side update, because the change wasn’t mentioned in any changelog or datamine. All these information are very important.

That’s why I upload my battles to a YT channel. So I can just go back in time and check something. I keep my battles public, so everyone can check anything. You can make screenshots, feel free to do anything you want. You can also PM me if need a help with something.
The only bad thing is, I started adding post-battle screenshots at the end of videos in 2021. In previous battles you won’t see them, which is a big shame from the time perspective.

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Nope, trickster is a Gaijin employee and the answers he gives come directly from the devs.

Would be pointless, as the answer came from the dev’s.

All bug moderators on the bug tracker have “Employee” status, to distinguish them from regular users. This doesn’t mean anything, you read too much into it.

Anyway, I sent him a PM about this issue, we will see if he reads PMs.

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No, he was confirmed to be an actual employee by Smin. He’s a member of the devs Q&A team.

All I found is this, which has a completely different meaning:

I also tried to search on the Reddit, but reading a few topics about Trickzzter I don’t even want to waste more my time on this. It’s ridiculous what people write there. And I never judge any person based on other people opinions. I think people don’t understand bug moderators job is to actually close as many reports as they can. This of course doesn’t mean bug moderators are always right and don’t do mistakes.

Anyway, let’s wait, maybe Trickzzter will reply to my PM.

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It’s the hit detection nerf that is causing most of the issues. With hit detection(or perhaps a vast shrinking of the hitboxes?)being diminished a great deal, this in turn has a great affect on how all the other mechanics work and are registered. I don’t even use the lead indicator for aiming anymore(haven’t for a good while anyway) but it comes in useful for ranging, as I have my convergence set to 700 meters and the indicator pops up at 700 - 7500 meters I believe. But back to the hit detection, I have mentioned before that they put this exact same “hit detection model” in the game last year, back in late August or early September and it ran this way(without any Severe Damage thing to it) for 4 - 6 weeks maybe, and then it was removed and everything went back to “normal”. There was no announcement, it was not in the WIP version(that I know of) . . it came and it went. Some noticed, but I think most didn’t. I thought I was having system issues, until a few others mentioned the exact same thing, RNG hit or miss thing and aiming difficulties. Which is exactly what is going on now. You nerf hit detection and it has a “domino” effect . . less hits = less crits, less assists, less kills . . and so on. Basically a scoring nerf, and . . enter the “Severe Damage” mechanic to save the day . . . yay. You now actually have a better chance at getting kill credits overall, but . . you also are going to average less SL’s/RP I guess overall per kill as you will be “splitting” them now and more often. Again, all this is exasperated by the hit detection nerf. To me, as a native “English” speaker, “critical hit” & “Severe Damage” basically mean the same thing, any difference is just splitting hairs, BUT . . . technically they are different and have different sets of criteria to be fulfilled. And I think therein lies some of the confusion . . . it’s not an exact science and there are variables in the game that have made it where no actions have guaranteed results, no absolutes. Which is ok, kinda like real life & the chaos factor, but . . the degree they have it at now makes it far too RNG based and has taken a good deal of “skill” off the table. To me anyway.
I have almost 60,000 matches played, vast majority in Air AB. I have had to re-learn how to play several times over the past 10+ years of playing. I remember when they put in the WIP option so we could test mouse aim variants so they could get console & M/kb closer to being on the same page. I remember the various times they have simply just sped up the whole thing(one more time and we’ll be playing that gawd awful Tail Spin mechanic), the last two times were not even needed and did more harm than good in my opinion. But, its’ still pretty fun and I will still play . . doing my BP tasks in Air AB and events too. But it will be with a sadness and longing for when things actually worked better and it was more of a game. I don’t really “grind” for more vehicles so much anymore, so RP gains are not important to me personally(although I realize for most players, this IS a big deal) and SL’s are not an issue, easy enough to gather up. But I’d just enjoy things more if my shots went where I was aiming and when they got there actually registered as hits and did some reasonable damage.
I’m not a great player, never claimed to be, but I have had some moments. But now it feels like we had rifles that we could aim to going to having shotguns and we’re just blasting in the general direction of enemies and hoping for the best.
Until they fix/remove this hit detection nerf . . . none of this other stuff is really gonna matter . . it’s RNG. I can play darts pretty well . . hit what I aim at pretty regularly . . . but not with a blindfold on

It seems the comment regarding trickster by Smin was on a thread that got shut down. If I remember right it was a thread that was complaining about a report being rejected.

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Please do not post false and misleading information. This is entirely incorrect.

All moderators and staff working on the but report site are there to forward and resolve as many issues as possible and make sure issues reach the developers. There is no incentive or primary “job” of Moderators that involves “closing as many reports as they can”.

Our aim is always to be on top of as many reports as possible of course. But it is not correct in any way to say the role of Moderators is simply to close reports.

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OK, any information on the current topic?

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