Yeah ,where did all the critical hits and assists go? Doing battle pass for the first time in a long time and the assists /critical task used to be a no brainer even for me now its so hard I change the task voluntarily. Is it fixed?
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Not that I can tell, and with a plane(jet) event coming up . . . I do not think it is likely that it will be corrected anytime soon. I would not even be surprised to see this new “Severe Damage” mechanic put in during the event either . . . I mean it could help, but that status quo is new mechanics don’t usually benefit the players or scoring . . . time will tell. It is kinda nice they have a “testing platform” for it before it was implemented tho . . that’s a nice change I think
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Its a shame it all changed. I had a plane ram me yesterday and killed himself but not me and I got nothing for it like I would have done previously. They can’t stop messing about. Will the game ever be finished? :)
They are trying hard to “finish” it. 😉
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May potentially contain sarcasm …
Spoiler
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If you are correct about this, then critical hits should work correctly on the event server. Because the new system is partially implemented in random battles, but it’s already fully implemented on the event server.
So I played a few battles on the event server, trying to figure out critical hits (you can always check critical hits on the scoreboard in the score details).
From my tests:
- severe damage sometimes also give you a critical hit, but not always (which is weird). The severe damage with a critical hit example (the enemy was at the same BR, so no score reduction):
Please note that “damage to the enemy” can be misleading here, because it will often take different number of hits to severe damage a plane. In this case I had 3 normal hits that did some damage, so I received 3 x 10 score. But it could be just 10 damage with 1 hit and so on. It makes more sense to assume, I gained here 60 score from a critical hit and 144 from severe damage (80% of 180 kill score), so 204 score in total.
I didn’t have any on-screen information about the critical hit, but there is a possibility that the critical hit happened before severe damage, and one of these 3 hits actually caused a severe damage. It would require a lot of testing and luck to get severe damage with just 1 hit and nothing more. If someone have a lot of free time, they can try to test this. I don’t like this new severe damage mechanics, so for me it’s a pain to play on the event server.
- instant kill never give you critical hits, at least I never got one (which is even weirder, because score-wise it’s actually better to severe damage the enemy than to kill it directly with this new system). The direct kill (the pilot was sniped) at the beginning of the battle (the enemy was at the same BR):
I have to admit, that’s a very poor score considering the enemy was at the same BR. But this makes more sense, when you realise the score from critical hit (60) is missing here. With the hit score (10) increased to a critical hit score (60), it would be 240 score per kill, which is “normal”, this is how the system worked a few weeks ago.
- finishing off the enemy don’t give you critical hits (the enemy had 2 steps lower BR, so the score multiplier was 0.944, which made it 170 score, and 40% of that is 68):
Again no critical hit, but I had 3 hits that did some damage to this enemy (the last hit was obviously fatal).
This is all very messy in my opinion, and it definitely won’t be easy to understand. But if this system stays, then it will make more sense to severe damage the enemy than to kill it directly or finish it off.
I really don’t think this new system was designed on purpose like this, because it just doesn’t make sense.
Before these tests, I though that maybe the devs didn’t want to allow different players to get plenty of critical hits from one plane that can’t die (because it’s “severely damaged”). But then it should be a reversed situation (instant kill and finishing off would give a critical hit, but severe damage and every damage caused later, apart from finishing off, wouldn’t).
It’s a very strange situation, completely illogical to me. And I can’t imagine this change could be intentional. Every time I think about this, it just looks like a bug.
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This is the “bad” aiming being better rewarded again.
With the old system (before the “bug”), it’s not that big deal in my opinion. Because you can only get one critical hit on one enemy. All other hits are normal hits (10 score each).
So while it really rewards you more if you “aim badly”, it’s a relatively poor score. Keep in mind, to get that 10 score, you need to do a damage (e.g. target plane part “change” status color), so in reality the amount of damage is limited. And by “aiming badly” you are wasting time and ammo. It’s not a good trade, at least in my opinion.
The situation changes with critical hits involved. Because if you remove 60 score from a critical hit, it makes a huge difference to overall score (after all, 60 score is 1/3rd of the full 180 kill score). So with this new “bug”, if your aiming is correct, you lose that 60 score with every kill (50 score to be precise, because a hit is still worth 10 score). That’s just crazy, when you think about this. Imagine the game where you kill 10-15 enemies, how much score you lose from that. And lower score means lower activity and lower rewards, so it’s a huge overall nerf.
If you assume this is not a bug, and critical hits are now working as intended, then it will actually make more sense to first aim badly and critical hit the enemy and then kill him. And this is completely illogical. It still waste a bit of your time of course and a bit of ammo, but that 60 additional score is worth it (in my opinion again).
The controversial thing is, with how this change works right now, it’s actually a nerf for better players. It’s like a penalty for good aiming. It would be a different situation if they e.g. increased the hit score, but that’s not the case.
The biggest problem is, we have the ongoing Air event. So even from this perspective, they shouldn’t touch the current system. Why they didn’t wait for the Air event to finish, with Air scoring changes? And assuming it’s a bug, it should be a priority to fix it, because it decreases the score of players significantly, so it makes the event much harder.
To be honest, it’s annoying that the devs didn’t even clarify if that’s a bug or intended change. They just stay completely silent about this issue.
I don’t speak Russian, but I checked the Russian forum. I used Google Translator, so maybe it translated “critical” wrong, but I tried to search for “критический after:2024-02-01”. I see 38 results and from these results only 1 result seems to be relevant, and it is a topic created… 3 hours ago that has 0 replies so far.
So there is a chance the devs didn’t even notice this problem yet. Keep in mind, the devs don’t read this forum, but they sometimes read popular topics on the Russian forum. So maybe this is the reason why nothing is being done about this problem so far.
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Will this create a situation where not only severe damage but also getting a kill assist to be better rewarded than a instakill?
This is something that has been happening in Ground Battles for a long time, since you can crit and hit a tank several times until you destroy it you will get less score for properly aiming and killing it with one shot than to keep shooting randomly until you kill it. Same as taking damage and not taking any damage, the “bad” behaviour gets better rewarded.
It’s as if they are trying to even the game artificially, between better and worse players. I constanly look at scoreboards and see no proportionality between what I do and what others do most of the time, it’s as if the better I do the less I get in return.
Unfortunately I do not think this is a bug but an intended change. I say this from my experience of dealing with Gaijin in most events since I started playing the game. They would easily deny it or blame it on your end, before admitting anything.
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Yes, this is one of the reasons why I said in the other topic this new system will create many problems. It’s not just one thing, there will be many completely illogical situations that just don’t make any sense. But yes, you are correct, assist will still be 60%, but finishing only 40%. And finishing will be much harder and will require much more time and ammo (only 2 conditions to finish the target) than an assist.
It’s even funnier, because from my tests on the event server, if there is a severe damaged enemy (by someone else), you can still cause a critical hit on him. So it’s better to do that critical hit and leave the enemy how it is, because this guarantee you an assist (60%). If you continue to shoot him and finish him, your assist will be cancelled and you only receive finisher score (40%). It’s one of many situations that just doesn’t make sense with this new system.
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And you can get several assists on the same target. So much better to crit a target let it be killed by someone else and then crit it again, than to properly kill it, since you’ll get 2 kill assists and 2 critical hits.
Will the finish him remove the marker completely or it will just grey it out like old system? Is it still possible to get a kill assist after that finish him?
One player can only get one critical hit from one target. But different players can get more assists. Just keep in mind amount of critical hits is limited. I got my critical hit from destroying a second wing of the enemy that already lost one wing. But it would be harder to get the next critical hit, there will be less available critical hit conditions.
But don’t be too happy about this. I’m sure when the devs notice this “problem”, they will “fix” it by just blocking critical hits after severe damage was caused to the plane. To be honest, I don’t understand why this is even allowed currently, but it surely won’t stay this way.
This whole system is bugged currently, and I saw players praising the new system for providing them more score than before. I noticed that too during my tests (in Arcade I could get over 400 score from 1 plane). But these players missed the fact, currently you can severely damage the same plane a few times. I had a situation that from one plane I got 2 severe damages (one from my damage, one from the additional fire I caused) and it showed 0+2 on the scoreboard. Of course it won’t work this way in the final version of this system. So when you compare the old and new scores, you have to take into account that there are a lot of bugs with this new system that give you more score than you would get in the final version of this system.
If you snipe the pilot, it works the same way as before (the nameplate/the marker will disappear). When you destroy the tail, his nameplate will turn gray, like in the current system. So in this state, he will still be able to eg. drop bombs and kill someone (randomly, because without the tail you can’t control the drop area). I don’t know what will happen if you snipe a pilot in such situation (I assume it could still be counted as an assist).
PS. This topic is about critical hits problem, so it would make sense to stay on the topic here.
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Yeah, I don’t have time for the test server, but in regular AB battles on the main server I can confirm instakills are still getting the score points for both the crit and the kill.
What they’re not getting, as OP observed, is credit against a daily crit task.
Not critiquing what you’ve said, I’m sure your tests are right, just wanted to clarify that no one’s losing any score in this current Jaguar event as a result of this… at least, not yet. It is making battlepass dailies a little harder or requiring more changing up, at present, though.
It’s primarily just one person, but your point stands, the revisionist history strawman commeth.
I will test this later (it’s 5 a.m. here).
My battle from January this year:
Spoiler
My battle from yesterday:
Spoiler
So, are you saying even if the second battle doesn’t have any critical hit listed on the post-battle screen, I still received about 9 x 60 critical score added to my overall battle score?
That’s not how it was working yesterday. That critical hits score was missing from the overall score. I actually checked that in Air Arcade random battle yesterday, and I even saved a video of this test:
It clearly doesn’t include critical hits in the score:
Maybe the devs actually partially fixed this problem? The last time I played was more than 10 hours ago. I will have to check this later.
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I noticed a few critical hits yesterday, not sure if its back to what it used to be. I just set the BP tasks to straight kills mostly as its all I trust currently.
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I just tested this, and it’s still bugged for me.
I can only get critical hits if these hits won’t kill the plane instantly. The easiest way to test this is to destroy less than half of enemy wing. This is enough to get a critical hit, but not enough to get a kill. This still gives you a critical hit, and it’s still showed on the screen (as white “Critical hit” text). That critical hit is also included in your overall score in its own “Critical damage to the enemy” section (it’s worth 60 score, if your plane has the same BR as the target).
But a direct kill doesn’t give you critical hits anymore. For example, if I snipe the pilot, instead of a critical hit (60 score) and a kill (180 score), I only get a hit (10 score) and a kill (180 score). So it looks like for some reason a critical hit that instantly kills an enemy becomes just a regular hit.
I don’t think there is any sense to post here more screenshots, as you can see pretty much the same screenshots in my previous posts.
@Bruce_R1 If it’s working differently for you, could you please add your post-battle screenshot and a detailed score screenshot (just like I posted in my previous message)? It would be very strange if it worked differently for different players, but I guess everything is possible.
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I recall that for quite some time I did receive belated critical hits. Red plane gets away but I get a critical when it gets killed or crashes. Not all that much, but that happened.
I haven’t paid much attention during the last days, but I still see that happen iirc.
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I suspect the critical hits issue arrived about the same time that you lost any credit for being rammed by other aircraft or having a collision, it was about the same time they reworked Collison damage?
In Air battles it was much later than this for sure. I haven’t played Air Arcade for a while, but I tried to find the last battle on my channel where Critical hits were working correctly. And I found this one (you don’t have to watch it):
Spoiler
This battle is much older than I initially thought, it’s from 2023.12.21 (don’t look at the upload date, I don’t upload battles right after I play them, but they all have “inside” name with the date, so I always know when this battle was recorded).
I just analysed this battle and counted all the critical hits. Here is the full analysis of this battle:
- 1st critical hit (2:55): “Normal” critical hit for destroying the enemy engine. The enemy died a few second later, but you can’t get additional critical hits from the same enemy, so it was just +1 critical hit.
- 2nd (3:10): “Normal” critical hit for destroying the engine. The target lost its wing from a fire later, but it’s not counted as an additional critical hit (since there is a limit of 1 critical hit per enemy plane, all additional critical hits are counted as standard hits).
- 3rd (4:38): Directly killing an enemy by destroying its tail. This wouldn’t count as a critical hit today, but a normal hit instead.
- 4th (5:17): “Normal” critical hit, I’m not sure what caused it (it doesn’t really matter) and then a kill.
- 5th (6:20): “Normal” critical hit (it’s hard to notice this) and then a kill. It looks like a direct kill, but if you play this frame by frame, there is a critical hit right before a kill.
- 6th (6:22): Directly killing an enemy. At least I think so (because I still had a previous kill message, so a critical hit message could be hidden here).
- 7th (7:02): Directly killing an enemy. It’s interesting some direct kills don’t show you the reason of a kill in the ‘kill feed’ section of the screen.
- 8th (7:50): Directly killing an enemy by sniping its pilot.
- 9th (8:01): “Normal” critical hit and a kill a few seconds later.
- 10th (8:54): “Normal” critical hit and a kill a few seconds later.
- 11th (9:30): “Normal” critical hit and an assist a few seconds later.
- 12th (9:52): “Normal” critical hit and an assist a few seconds later.
- 13th (10:02): “Normal” critical hit and then a kill.
It’s interesting that looking at this battle, every enemy I hit gave me a Critical hit at some point. Only the first guy I attacked I missed completely (I’m such a noob!).
I don’t see that many “normal” critical hits anymore. On the video, very often I saw a critical hit right before the kill. I don’t see this in my current battles. So maybe they globally decreased the number of critical hit areas? Maybe it’s not only about instant kills, maybe it’s a deeper problem.
But it’s a night and day, when you compare how the critical hits system worked before and how it’s working now. It’s crazy that nowadays you can get 10 kills without a single critical hit, and previously you would pretty much get 10 critical hits from 10 kills.
BTW: This is why I like to have my battles archive on YT. I can always just check old battles and figure out how things used to work before the changes.
PS. I assume @Dodo_Dud is correct and the actual change happened somewhere around the February 15th. I just don’t have any Air Arcade battle on my channel that was recorded after the battle I analysed here and before February 15. And my next battles from February 16 have critical hits bugged.
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