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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Maybe the ones I saw were just crits very close to kills then. Sometimes they come so close to destruction the crit hit text doesn’t display but you still get the points. I saw at least one I thought was an instakill with a crit bonus but that could have been it too.
Removing up to 25% of the available air to air kill score from a game mode just before a major grind event starts in that mode, making it that much harder for everybody, isn’t the worst thing that Gaijin has ever done, but it’s certainly up there on the list.
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The change absolutely happened on the 15th. I started a “Get 100 Crits” warbond task that day and immediately saw what was happening. It was annoying enough that I brought up the subject in the general chat in game to see if anyone else had noticed it. Had I not been doing that task I would not have noticed til much later.
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But did you do a crit task on the 14th aswell? Because if not, the 15th could be the “much later” you mentioned.
It is certain, the issue existed on the 15th. Question is, when did it start?
I imagine they wouldn’t fix or reverse this until the event is over now, even if it was a bug, in case they somehow make it even worse. Since it really seems to be intentional, the “fix” here is going to be the implementation of the new severe damage system too, so I guess this is gonna be the way it is from now on. We all just make less SL and RP and score than before in the air.
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I checked the Russian forum again, and globally they still haven’t noticed this problem. Some players noticed something “wrong” with critical hits, but other players said they just have to aim differently.
So far no one figured out this is a real problem. Most players that replied there think a few players that noticed something strange are just newbies and don’t know how critical hits work.
So we basically have to wait for Russian players to figure this out first, then post bug reports, and then the devs start working on a fix (assuming that’s a bug). This may take some time.
PS. It definitely wouldn’t hurt if someone from our forum made a proper, detailed bug report. So far there are only 2 reports, and they are not very detailed and incomplete (they don’t meet proper bug report requirements):
https://community.gaijin.net/issues/p/warthunder/i/mYplf6Sip5Qe
https://community.gaijin.net/issues/p/warthunder/i/xnwjomfTJOAV
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Oh I’m sure they know already. Like I said, since it’s likely an underlying effect of the new severe damage mechanic they only way they’d “fix” this now is accelerate that deployment and that’s not going to happen.
As usual I’m just disappointed by their lack of communication. If it’s made things harder for everyone I can hardly complain. But yeah, assuming air to air score is 50% of all score, it’s basically the equivalent of dropping everyone a multiplier level for this score-based event, as the reduction to net score currently has to be in the 10% area from previous events. So Rank I-III is effectively a 0.7 multiplier now, Rank IV is 0.8, etc.
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If they planned it, they need to rescale the task. Getting 10 crits boils down to 50 kills, which is hardly a t2 task. The corresponding t2 task requires 3 kills iirc.
Which leads me to not having seen a crit task (air arcade) for some time. Am I lucky or is it out of rotation?
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So its not just me
Earlier today i got 30 kills and only managed to get 9 crits for my special task
Im considering changing the task since crits seem very hit or miss if i actually get it
When did you get the special?
I received r2 10 critical hits today. Ratio of getting critical about 8-9kills:1 critical. Then I changed the belts from universal to default and the ratio improved to about 3-4kills:1critical :)
I also observed a variation between nations and their guns.
About a day ago
I received an update on the 15th when I started the game. That’s when the “bug” started for me. Three days previously I also did a “100 Critical hits” task. I’m pretty sure those three days aren’t much later. But no matter anymore. Gaijin has made the change and I have compensated to mitigate the damages of that change.
I did a Medium Daily Task today for 36 critical hits. I figured that number would not be that hard to make . … I have done 2 Special tasks so far and am sitting at 14/36 for that Medium task . . . sigh. I am beginning to think that it is not the critical hits themselves that were “nerfed” but the recent hit detection and/or shrinking of the hit boxes is the cause of this. Shooting planes now seems very RNG . . . . you either are not getting proper hit detection and making getting kills taking 3x - 4x longer(which also gets you killed a lot more) or you get the “lucky” RNG shot that just esplodes your target . . . and yeah, it works both ways. So the “One Hit Kill” that tanks have had for a very long time, seems to be part of air combat now, and those yield zero crits. And with the other end of it having hit detection being so far off, you are lucky to get hits when you should be getting hits AND Crits as well. So everything now makes even getting a critical hit that much harder and unlikely. This is the second time I have seen this hit detection nerf and both times, no mention of any change or patch notes explaining any of it, so . . . complete mystery to me . . we’ll see how it goes I guess.
Update, I just got 4 bomber kills my last game(13 total kills) and 3 crits . . . . 8 (
I’ve been playing a lot of Air Arcade lately and I’ve noticed that basically all of my critical hits come from hitting the end of the wings (destroying Aileron or destroying less than half of the wing).
Shooting the middle of the plane don’t seem to give me critical hits anymore. I don’t think it’s shrinking the hit boxes, because you can still damage the plane normally (and the damage is based on part condition, which is represented by different colors from no color to black).
For me, it looks like the only way to get critical hits now is to make any part positioned at the end of the wings black. But this is very hard to prove, as there is rarely a situation, where enemy just flies straight and allows you to test this. They usually start turning, and then you can’t be sure which part of his plane you hit, when you see a critical hit on your screen.
It’s easier to notice this, when you shoot bombers. They are huge, slow and sluggish, so it’s easier to predict where your hits land. If you shoot the middle of the bomber, you won’t see critical hits. But start shooting their wings end and you will surely see a critical hit very soon. Just keep in mind to not shoot the part of the wing near the middle of the plane. If you make that part black, the wing will be teared off and you won’t receive a critical hit.
To make a critical hit in the first place, you need to make some part black (at least that’s how I understand this damage system). That was always the difference between hit and a critical hit, regular hits change colors of parts to yellow, orange, red, critical hits to black. So basically the kill almost always guaranteed you a critical hit in the past. It’s not the case anymore, because it looks like the whole middle of the plane don’t give you critical hits anymore. At least that’s the theory.
All this is hard to test, when you play alone (I don’t see the exact damage I cause to the enemy). When you play games, try to pay attention when you see critical hit messages.
I’m sure you can still get critical hits from the green area:
The question is: can you get critical hits by shooting at the red area?
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