[Development] Testing out the Severe Damage mechanic

Official News, Development Blogs and Updates
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Well, this system is explained pretty well, just most players don’t read or don’t understand what they read (I don’t know what’s worse).

It depends from the situation, but in many cases it’s a big nerf.

Even now, I just played a battle on the event server, and this new mechanics is simply hilarious.

For example, I destroyed the wing of the enemy (he would already be dead with the old system):

Spoiler

But with the new system he is still alive. And because there were 3 teammates behind me, guess what they all tried to do?

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This is ridiculous! They all are wasting their ammo, trying to finish this guy. But to finish him, they need to destroy his pilot or tear off his tail. Both these conditions are not that easy, especially at low BRs, where guns are pretty weak.
Believe it or not, but they continue to shoot this guy for the next 30 seconds! He is all on fire, his plane has more holes than metal parts left and they just can’t finish him.

How hilarious is this? Imagine the frustration of these guys, because they see red nameplate, want to kill the guy, keep shooting at him and nothing happens.

You know what’s even funnier? A bit later in this battle one of my teammates couldn’t finish the enemy, so he… collided with him. He didn’t even receive a kill (because collisions don’t give kills nowadays).

I only played a few battles on the event server, and I don’t even want to play there more. This new mechanics is absolutely crazy and I can already see it will cause so many problems.

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Well, this system is explained pretty well, just most players don’t read or don’t understand what they read.

A lot of people don’t speak English as a native language and Gaijin has a knack for copy pasting Russian text, throwing it in a translator and calling it a day and explaining things in a poor way, either out of laziness or intentionally.

This system also doesn’t explain what the old system was like, are all the former kill triggers moved down into ‘severe damage’ territory, are there new ones added.

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The phrasing could be worked on to be more simple. Overall i think this is a great mechanic, however i dont think its necessary to credit a kill to someone who only finished off an already severly damaged plane. An assist would suffice i think.

Other than that i would like to mention how muck more fun these battles are just because of the lower player count. (and no uptier if you play a plane with the max br of the event)

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Can mid tier be increased to 5.7 please. Would like to use the 5.7 Spits for testing this :P

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The interesting fact is, that with the current system (the one we have in the game right now), when you see a plane that is “destroyed” (or using the new system terminology, “severely damaged”), you can still get an assist by finishing this plane.

This is from the battle I played a few minutes ago. The enemy plane lost his wing, so he was spinning and going down:

Spoiler

I started shooting at him, when I reached him:

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And after a bit (only 7.5mm guns were ready, so it took a while) I managed to cause a kill condition, which gave me an assist:

Spoiler

I used this option often, especially when I had tasks, challenges and old events that required assists.

So whole this mechanics is already implemented in the game. The guy who “destroyed” that plane received 100% of the score and rewards, I received 60% of the the kill score and rewards for assist (finishing him). And all this is done with the old system, the system we currently have in the game.

The only difference with the new system will be that the nameplate of this plane will stay red (instead of gray, which you see on the screenshots), the guy who caused a severe damage will receive 80%, the guy who finished the target 40% and the kill will be counted for both players on the scoreboard, but only for one player (the finisher) on the battle summary screen. That’s why I see this new system as a “delayed kill” mechanics.

From my perspective, the old system is pretty clean and obvious (maybe the destroyed plane nameplate could have a different, brighter color, if gray nameplate is so huge problem for some players). The new system is just one big mess.

With the old (current) system a new player only need to learn that gray nameplate means the target is still dangerous and can still be shoot at.
With the new system, try to explain to a new player what is a severe damage, how it works, which plane is severely damaged and which isn’t, what means 2+3 on the scoreboard, why some planes seems indestructible, who will be credited for a kill in which situations, how much score/rewards they will gain in every scenario, and why they are dying at the end of the battle, even if they clearly see they are still alive.

That’s why I smile every time I read this:

Briefly, the severe damage mechanic simplifies the system for scoring an aircraft destruction and makes it more understandable and transparent

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It sucks gameplay wise. Especially because sometimes people get to run away just because their plane is 1.0 BR above you with way better acceleration and top speed, even when crit, nothing you can do about it.
and its not about the game ending before you reach the airfield, its about people just running off to the edges of the map, because if they land you’d have a chance to finish them off.

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I mean if they’re faster than you, it is what it is.
I liked to play the A6M5 but now that I cannot even keep up with bombers at my own BR and haven’t been able to keep up with any fighters, ever, as you’re slower than the average BR 2-3 plane but you’re at 5.3 now, you just let people go.

Air has ground targets to go after to rack up your score, that should easily compensate for the 20% loss of points.

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The difference is: grey nameplate → “oh that guy is dead I dont have to worry anymore” red nameplate: “oh shoot that Su27 is still a threat I should watch out for R73s”

but “severely damaged” doesn’t heavily imply “they’re not a threat anymore”, especially for players other than the one that shot the plane, because they don’t even get a UI based visual indicator for severe damage.
Also remember, alot of Gaijins paying customers are newbies getting hightier prem planes, so they probably want to keep misunderstandings like “oh he is dead he can’t kill me anymore” low for new players, so they buy prems for other nations too instead of quitting. it’s generally better to apply frustration after people made a game their habit.

I feel like people are overstating this a bit. A few of the conditions may have been kills on some planes, but alot of them aren’t. There were planes that were alive with one wing gone, no stabilizer and one engine dead, others died if just 1/4th of a wing snapped off in a maneuver.

I know I sound overly optimistic, but maybe the change is partially also to unify kill conditions across all planes?

engines: I had alot of situations with all engines out without being dead, that wasn’t really a kill condition
control elements: again, had a few situations where they were gone but I wasn’t considered dead yet, especially in smth like a Su25. you could still drift off into the horizon if you had a slight upward angle before getting crit.
wings: as stated above, there are at least a couple planes I flew that were not considered dead with a whole wing ripped off.
Horizontal stabs: I was never considered dead if just my stab was gone, iirc. and at least not the majority of the time.

alot of these crits can be landed and repaired depending on the plane. especially things like engines, you can still make it back to base without thrust depending on the distance. or horizontal stabs, you can use your wings’ control surfaces to counteract a missing stab, even the instructor does that. so idk what you’re talking about?

In ground battles, you’re only dead when your crew is dead, or can’t drive and shoot at the same time. Why would air battles make it so you’re dead when your controls are somewhat impeded? I think air players can be glad that a plane isn’t only considered dead when the pilot is knocked out.

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ah yes, “sucks to be you” is such a fun gameplay mechanic, lets reinforce it even more.

and then you crit someone so severely they cant make it back to base, but they don’t wanna give you that kill out of spite so they just fly off into the sunset for several minutes until the match ends, because they can barely keep their plane in a vague climb to not crash.
(they would be dead eventually in that state when their fuel runs out but in your logic they get teleported back to base at the end of a match so they dont have to pay repair costs)

because everybody is just in there for score and grind alone, and there is noone who wants to have proper fights and get awarded proper kills without people denying them out of spite

I mean seriously, there are already people that will fly away forever as soon as you get into an advantaged position to them. I am all for rules that punish bad behaviour even if it mildly inconveniences average players every couple dozen matches.

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ah yes, “sucks to be you” is such a fun gameplay mechanic, lets reinforce it even more.

I mean unless you want to make every plane equally fast or make damaged plane fly at 50% speed or something? I don’t really get the complaint when it’s obvious just reality that things will be faster.

and then you crit someone so severely they cant make it back to base, but they don’t wanna give you that kill out of spite so they just fly off into the sunset for several minutes until the match ends, because they can barely keep their plane in a vague climb to not crash.

You already got 80% of the kill, they fly off in to the sunset whilst you get more kills or go for ground targets, to get even more points.

because everybody is just in there for score and grind alone, and there is noone who wants to have proper fights and get awarded proper kills without people denying them out of spite.

People who are crippled and barely able to stay in the air don’t offer you a proper fight if they’re staying either, you’ve already won that fight.

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I support this system, but kill rewards should be increased a little to account for the changes.

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Exactly. This is a “problem” created by the mentality of players, who refuse to accept that gray nameplate means still a dangerous plane. This problem is only in players minds.

In the new system, players will die in exactly the same way as before, just the nameplates of planes that killed them will be still red, instead of gray.

Yes, and this will be a huge problem, how to recognize now who is severely damaged and who isn’t? How many times the players will “waste” missiles on targets that are “severely damaged” (pretty much already dead), and then will be surprised to only receive a 40% of the kill score?

You know what’s actually very funny? There are already players above, who suggested to… change the nameplate color of severely damaged planes. That’s a great idea! Let’s change their nameplate color to… gray… oh wait…!

This was actually explained by the devs themselves in one of the previous articles.

Shorter version (because no one will read full article anyway):

As of now, the death of an aircraft is counted under one of the following conditions: the pilot was knocked out; the aircraft crashed into an object and was completely destroyed; the aircraft had its tail torn off; the aircraft received damage that causes it to be counted as dead but it can still conduct further combat.

Relating to the last part, currently when an enemy aircraft gets destroyed (“Target destroyed”), they can sometimes still fly, shoot, land to repair and have no automatic bail out. The aim of this was to allow you to score a frag and at the same time prevent another player from finishing off the heavily damaged enemy aircraft and steal the frag.

(…)

Due to this, we’re proposing to remove this condition from the game mechanics and instead replace it with the “Severe damage” mechanic. How will this work? If an aircraft is damaged to the extent where it would have been counted as being destroyed previously, despite still being able to fly, shoot and land to repair, this new mechanic will count it as severely damaged. No destruction or death will be credited until the severely damaged aircraft is further finished off.

In this quote you see basically two things:

  • (the bold part) The new mechanics “delay” the death of planes. Planes that would previously be considered dead already, will still be alive. So it will be harder to get instant kills, with much less kill conditions. All kill conditions are actually listed in the newest article.
  • (the underlined part) The current system was designed to prevent kill steals. The new system will make this problem bigger, because planes staying alive for longer will allow your teammates to steal more kills than before.

I never considered gray nameplates as “dead” planes, they were always just a seriously damaged planes to me.

They could just tweak the current system and change “Aircraft destroyed” text to “Aircraft severely damaged” (with the current 100% rewards), change the severely damaged planes nameplate color from gray to e.g. orange or yellow (these colors look more dangerous than gray) and change the current assist text on a severely damaged planes to “Aircraft finished off” (with the current 60% rewards). Don’t you think such system would be much easier to understand and overall much better than what they proposed here?

Of course there is still a question how to count kills with such changes (and this is pretty much the only real problem here). I personally think that the player that caused a severe damage should be credited with a kill, as the person who finished the target had much easier task. But of course there will be plenty of players with different opinions on this matter.
And it’s not like the new system doesn’t have this issue as well. With this new system, the devs decided to show different results on the scoreboard (both players will receive a kill there) and on the after-battle screen (only the finisher will receive a kill there), which imo is not the most beautiful solution.

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you don’t need to? if they’re severely damaged, and they fly off towards their airfield, you can chase them and kill them on the airfield. if they fly off towards the sunset, you don’t need to chase them bc they’ll count as a kill at the end of the match. That’s why the new mechanic is a good thing.

If you don’t even severely damage them it’s fair that they get away.

yes, which is why severe damage and being dead at the end of the game is a good thing, you get it

since you already won the fight, then it should be fine to get the full reward for it. if someone else finishes them off to make sure they cant come back fighting, fair enough that they get a little part of the reward.

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The problem is in the communication. Labeling a target as destroyed when it in fact isn’t destroyed was a problem game-wise. You can’t fault the player for that.
Maybe instead of “target destroyed”, the message should’ve been “plane crippled so much that it will probably crash in the next few minutes, not sure though”. And instead of “kills”, the scoreboard should show “likely-fatal crits”.

That would send the wrong message again. Changing the nameplate to a different colour would be a good idea though. It would still differentiate between a plane that can still fight back and a plane that is no longer a threat (most important for sniped pilots).

nowhere in the bold part does it specify things like “one engine destroyed out of two, no other damage” and other things. “damage that causes it to be counted as dead but it can still conduct further combat” can mean a wing ripped off and a dead engine, depending on the plane.

No, it does not. You get awarded a kill if you are the first one to severely damage a plane. Did you not get that part? How can someone steal your kill if you are guaranteed to get it, with the only exception being the plane manages to land and repair? The whole underlined part doesn’t matter anymore because in the new system, people can’t steal your kills anymore, even on planes that weren’t considered a kill in the old system.

For example: you rip off the stabilizer on a Su25 and kill one of its engines, setting it on fire. Even in the old system, it would still be alive. Someone comes in and missiles it to death.
Old system: kill stolen, you get an assist.
New system: severe damage counts for both a ripped off stabilizer and a destroyed engine; you get a kill with 80% rewards, which is alot more than an assist would’ve given you. A mere 20% is missing because you didn’t finish them off.

For the other player, old system: They get a kill. Low risk, high reward. They will do it again.
New system: They get a kill, but only 40% of the rewards. Low risk, low reward. Less incentive to do it again, except all they care about is kill count on their stat card; still doesn’t incentivise them more to do it, as then it’s the same for them as in the old system. But the person they “stole” from gets much better rewards.

So please reiterate on how the new system is making kill stealing worse, when noone on your own team can take that kill away from you after you did severe damage to someone.

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You know what. You definitely didn’t read the articles, because almost everything you wrote here is simply wrong, including your example.

Just read these articles:

If you don’t understand them, read them again. Then again and again.

But because I know you won’t do that, I will give you a simple example of how wrong you are.

Now let’s quote the article you see above:

Severe damage to a plane is considered to be: destruction of all engines (or destroying one engine if there is only one left), destruction of all elements of the control system (or the remaining controls left), which makes impossible to control the ailerons, elevators and rudders, separation of more than half of at least one wing, and destruction of all horizontal stabilizers (or the remainder of the horizontal stab).

It works exactly the same way as previous kill conditions, and the devs even wrote this clearly:

If an aircraft is damaged to the extent where it would have been counted as being destroyed previously, despite still being able to fly, shoot and land to repair, this new mechanic will count it as severely damaged.

Do you really think you know better than the devs how the new mechanics will work? Based on what, your hopes?

You have all this clearly explained in articles. But who would read all this text, right?

EDIT: Considering your example, since you still might not get it. No, in this situation you will still receive an assist in the new system, because Su-25 has more than 1 engine and more than 1 horizontal stabilizer. To get a severe damage you must damage that Su-25 enough to be considered “destroyed” (gray nameplate) in the current system.

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This is most definitely coming with some form of shadow economic nerf. Rewards will most likely be reduced. Just no to the whole mechanic.

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Rewards are currently identical, so no. There’s no risk of reduced total rewards from kills.
There should be a slight increase though.

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Nice to see some sensible comments in here. :)

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Actually, there’s already a related issue like this in GRB. As enemy aircraft aren’t labelled, it’s possible to waste ammo on an already “dead” vehicle due to the time lapse between the kill and the vehicle disappearing. It’s realistic I guess, and can sometimes be avoided by paying attention to the game log. Still hurts when it happens though 😀

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