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

quite a long time ago if 2 planes collided both players got a kill. This resulted in a higher number of kills per match (in arcade). GJ changed this so collisions no longer were counted as kills for both which may be reasonable. But bp tasks based on kills were not changed.
Now we have the ridiculous situation that a insta kill (undamaged enemy plane) can be done w/o critical hit. So which kind of hit can cause a kill when not a critical one??
There is a still open bug report about this issue from which I hope thats really a bug.

It depends what you call reasonable. I remember, when Gaijin made this change, players quickly started saying it’s a good change, because it will result in less crashes (players will care more) and decrease number of suicidal head-ons. Yeah, right. Of course nothing changed in the game in this area, but what players missed, this collision change doesn’t only affect the head-on situations.

After this system was introduced, many times I hit the enemy plane, and then that plane collided with my teammate, and I received absolutely nothing, because of collision, where I did absolutely nothing wrong. Sometimes that enemy plane was damaged so much, they would die anyway seconds later. This will be even bigger problem when severe damage will be introduced to the game, and planes will stay alive for much longer. There will be much higher change of someone crashing into them and preventing you to get a frag and rewards.

BTW: At the beginning, when they introduced this system, I also has a situation, where I damaged the enemy so much, I broke part of his wing, he turned without a control and collided with his teammate. So I basically took 2 enemies out, but wasn’t credited for any (because of the collision). They could have fixed this already, I’m not sure - this situation is very rare, and it definitely shouldn’t work this way, at least in my opinion.

The problem is, there are no proper bug reports about this issue. And bug reports that are not proper (don’t include all the required data) are sometimes “open” for years in the bug reporting system without any action from bug moderators. But I guess it could be worse, at least they are not closed with “not a bug” status, right?

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I agree - collisions of former critical damaged planes should result in a kill count.
And yes - the not-instant closure of this bug report makes some kind of hope…

The Severe Damage mechanic has been implemented

I just played a battle, and critical hits are still “bugged”. Just saying, because there was a theory some time ago, that maybe critical hits will start working fine, when the new system will be fully implemented.
Unfortunately, critical hits are still not counted “correctly”.

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contains sarcasm

image

Works just as intended

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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.