As it isn’t quite clear what exactly caused the problem in air, and it also happed at a different time, I don’t think we should lump issues here.
From many responses, air happened either on the 15th or only days before.
I also tested this, and you are correct. Basically, if you first destroy some important part of the enemy plane (but not important enough to get a kill credit), you can still get a critical hit. But if you kill an enemy directly, with a single critical hit, it’s not counted as a critical hit anymore.
The only sensible way to get critical hits right now for me is to destroy small part of enemy wings first:
Spoiler
And then finish the enemy:
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This is what you have to do to get a kill and a critical hit from the same target:
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I’m pretty sure this is a bug. I really can’t imagine the devs wanted critical hits to work this way. Because if you actually aim properly, you can end battles with plenty of kills, but without any critical hits! This just doesn’t make sense. Forcing players to aim “badly” just to get critical hits (e.g. for tasks and challenges) would be the stupidest idea ever in my opinion.
It’s also worth noting that critical hits give you score. With less critical hits, you gain less score. And low score from battles is already a huge problem mostly in Air Arcade.
It’s interesting that we have Air event starting tomorrow, so this “bug” will affect the speed of the event progress.
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I know this thread is about Air Arcade, but in Air RB the criticals against planes are very hard to get now too (criticals on the detailed ground AI aren’t affected, which is now the most reliable way to get a crit or assist if you have those tasks). Even though you’re shooting off tails and half wings off player planes, it often will just say hit, and then if you keep shooting (or they crash or something) it will be aircraft destroyed and a critical didn’t occur anywhere in all that.
In Air RB there was never a critcal given if you insta-destroy a plane, so it’s not just that factor.
I’m not too fussed if it were to stay this way, but they need to adjust the tasks accordingly if they are much harder to get now.
(There are too many tasks now to keep re-rolling… “win a battle…” and fighter/bomber rescue was always a reroll, and base destroys now they increased the number is more of a reroll, and now the crits and assists tasks might become rerolls… I’m running out of tasks xD )
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I’m pretty sure that this is what already happened in Ground Battles, if you kill the enemy tank with one shot by properly aiming you’ll get less score than if you kill it with several shots cause you’ll get less critical hits and hits. The game rewards better the “bad” aiming, as it also gives you score for every death or receiving damage but gives no score for surviving or avoiding getting hit. Some things in this game simply don’t make any sense.
Someone posted in the severe damage thread a screen of a kill in 2015 where you could clearly see the kill and the critical hit being awarderd:
https://img-forum-wt-com.cdn.gaijin.net/original/3X/0/1/014b2323bc463ae3474ef4ea56fd8293a13e75d4.jpeg
They are reducing any way of getting score since they made score based events while also increasing the required score. In Ground you used to get 300 score for every cap, now only the first tank to reach cap gets the 300, if it gets it cause I already saw times where I was the first one and didn’t get the 300 score. Even the severe damage mechanic seems a way they found to give less kill assists and a massive SL drainer if every damaged plane gets counted as dead at the end of the match and if you have to pay for repair costs.
I remember when we had task based events, where one of the tasks required getting kill assists and they changed the mechanic mid-event making it much harder to get an assist in Air Battles, so I wouldn’t be surprised if this is intentional for the event, Gaijin is not to be trusted, for many times they announced negative changes as if they were positive.
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It wasn’t. Crits is prorated by BR differential, same as kills, off a base of 60 (so you used to get 6 score points for a crit of something 2 BR below you) and was almost always included in an instakill result (unless the kill came a while after the crit). You see it is still there some of the time because you got a 6 point crit on the B-24.
It appears what’s missing here is a lot of the additional crit rewards for instakills you used to automatically get, so in most cases the kill reward is now 20% lower score than it used to be.
A more detailed reply review would allow you to identify which if any of those kills were instakills and would have given you a crit plus a kill before.
The net effect of this bug (and that has to be a bug) could be a removal of several hundred score per player per AB game, on average.
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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:
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My battle from yesterday:
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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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