Encouraging useless gameplay

I never blamed the players, only the game. I get why people play bombers.

I have been heavily advocating for improvements to current gamemodes.

U can get 1 or 2 bases in the F4E and then go on to shoot down a bunch of players :). This task shouldn’t take you more than 3 matches.

On the other hand, players will bomb bases and engage in “useless behavior” regardless of tasks.

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This task or the players want to fullfill it isn’t the only problem, the problem is bombing a base especially in higher tiers has no effect to the battle (tickets).

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Doens’t matter which plane you are using, carrying bombs on a plane capable of fighting, will get you in a weaker position.

This is obvious, but people don’t care. It’s much easier to drop bombs than to fight players

Imho you are either trolling or this is just a misunderstanding. If you read my thread again you might realize that players and gaijin have different understandings about usefulness.

  • And you repeatedly mixed up actual bomber aircraft with fighter aircraft which perform tasks like base bombing or ground pounding. I explained earlier why this happens, so it makes no sense to allocate attributes like “useless” or “useful” to certain tasks or playstyles as long they come purely from a player perspective.

  • This base bombing nonsense (when bases respawn and you can’t win by killing the enemy airfield) since May 2020 is a direct result of gaijin’s attempts to create a rookie friendly game play.

  • Lowering the necessary skill level to participate with this is the same like introducing 16 vs 16 or bad weather/fog/heavy clouds etc - it is aimed to make actual skill less decisive and to allow players to score or progress without the need to invest time to learn.

  • So you can’t blame players if they follow this path. Everybody is free to play what and he wants to play.

Have a good one!

Edit: Grammar…

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There is a work around and I hate to mention this, because with Gaijin commons sense, they will see and might make negative changes in (near) future patches and claim that they’re “BaLaNcInG” the game. After the introduction of severe damage, like everyone else, I had the same issue with assists and crits. Especially since they delayed the spawn of those AI planes, as I was relying on them to get some crits or tags in for assist, before engaging the enemy team. Now they’re useless.
So here goes. What I do is, I queue until I find a map with SPAA ground targets and just shoot at them to get my crits, and/or just tag them with a few hits and let them for someone else to kill and get assist. I do not just forfeit the match if I don’t land a specific map, but I do go in berserker mode and claim several kills for my team so at least I don’t let them down completely to move onto the next queue. So yeah, it’s annoying, but at least doable.

IMO, they could just make all (or most) ground targets take crit damage and award assist if not killed by one player, on all maps. Howitzers are killed one shot most of the time, we could still crit them, but light pillboxes and other targets and vehicles with more hit points could and should give assist.

I’d definitely take the tasks over score. I just reroll till I get one I can get done fast enough to save me some sleep for next day at work. =) … for now.

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A real one to make sure of, is knowing when that rollover will happen, and roll it over as soon as you can.

Then hit that first task real heavy to bring on the second, then you’ve got however many hours to finish off that harder one.

Also if you don’t know, using the test drive to roll over the expired task is a thing, I fire up test drive, then back out to hangar, and bam, updated without the relog or requeue.

That’s honestly another thing I find very frustrating. I know this is an RB thread, but - a number of tasks when done in air sim only complete when the match ends. The matches average 90 minutes, can take longer if it’s a low population lobby or lower BRs.

I’ve actually submitted a suggestion to let us work on both medium and hard tasks concurrently in air sim for this reason, or to make it possible to finish medium task mid match and roll hard one without leaving. It’s sitting in pending hell though.

And like, sure you can do it in other modes but I’ve found doing that just made me annoyed at wasting 20 minutes in modes/vehicles I don’t feel like that day when I have limited time as is.

That should be mentioned. Maybe with that ‘every 30 minutes’ booster time, that it should go through and process the tasks at that same point.

That could be an angle to put forward on that front.

I do quite a bit of sim as well, my main gripe with sim is the length of battles, and honestly at 13.0+ there is a reason why the blue force has a 75% win rate. That imbalance is hard to overcome.

As i was a part of the force of people against this action in 2020, and openly waged a forum war over it, i distinctly recall gaijins reason for removing that feature was actually to encourage longer gameplay, and remove easy wins from RB matches since heavy bombers were able to end matches while denying most PVP action. A group i used to play with would fly formations and kill half of the enemy team that stalled trying to climb to us and end the match by the time the initial furball began.

hence why i said to add 20 bases per RB match, because as it is right now the “rookies” are actually just team killing each other to get to bases, suiciding when people get on their 6 and there are no more bases, or all of them drop on the same base and start berating each other in chat (which i find funny so im not complaining about that last point)

This is exactly correct, and unfortunately gaijin has no mechanic to balance this, hence the huge imbalance we see in teams. Ive seen today alone 3 games where a team failed to launch half of their aircraft to the battlefield before they either crashed or teamkilled each other. I have also had 1 match today where the enemy team received 0 kills and my teams only death was a crash.

Which is a source of extreme frustration and why many people take breaks from this game, review bomb, etc… I dont believe it is healthy game play, and certainly american top rank ground RB players are infuriated over it as the most extreme example. (35% win rate, up from mid 20s a few months ago)

Im sure youve figured out ive been here a long time, in fact i played this game with my father when he received closed beta access to the game :) Point is, i am very aware of all these points and just fundamentally disagree with the way it is being encouraged. As stated above i used to be a bomber guy back when they single handedly decided game outcomes, now only fighters in Air RB decide the game outcome (when i want to bomb i go play sim, because they actually help the team win)
If gaijin wants rookies to play allow them to have an impact. Stop point decay, add more bases, create ground and air objectives in air RB similar to Air SB, add about 10,000 points to the game, and watch people actually enjoy protecting attackers and bombers while simultaneously playing the objectives i.e: protect their own bases from enemy attackers and bombers. Heck, maybe even up the lobby size to 30 or 40 and give each person 2 respawns: 1 in an attacker/bomber and 1 in a fighter, i really do not know, those are just things i would enjoy personally.

And i fundamentally disagree with this, but you are correct, that is their purpose.

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Well, it used to however it wasn’t enough, and Gaijin’s in-ability to change how Airstrip AA works to something that isn’t hitscan but rather projectile. Is not bound to ever happen.

Whilst your overall comment was extremely refreshing to read as we have a similar views on most things - imho the May 2020 (=respawning bases for all medium / high tiers) was the direct response of gaijin’s inability to balance bombers correctly as they were simply not smart enough to find the right balance between bomblad and base health.

And the heavy bombers were not the reason - with the Starfighter update in March 2020 the F-4E (with an insane bomb load) was introduced - those pilots ended matches way quicker than top tier matches today.

Have a good one!

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Well if this isn’t an awesome discussion.

I appreciate the back and forth on the utility of bombers but also the insight into battle pass objectives. Its self evident that the tasks are designed to encourage different vehicle usage but I never considered the “encouragement to play recklessly” @Uncle_J_Wick which is quite insightful. I’m very intrigued by the idea of encouraging reckless play, I discovered far too late (better than never) that war thunder is a much easier game when you calmy and patiently allow the battle to unfold and respond to what happens in the match as opposed to trying to force an outcome by your actions as an individual. So the idea that the developers are encouraging reckless play has given me an extra perspective to consider when getting into a good frame of mind while playing.

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If you have an airfield domination, it is often a very good idea to eliminate the red ground troops, as they will otherwise cap the field. Many games are lost and won not by air to air skill, but by the remainings troops of one side capping the field.

Generally, in air arcade, killing ground is the winning move.

There is a saying that in politics nothing happens by accident. Imho the same rule applies to any game which relies on in-game purchases. Video games are just a business like any other way to make money.

Go to yt and look for design goals of video games and the percentage share of expenses regarding the game itself compared to game mechanics and steering mechanisms and other stuff like advertising etc. which shall players to encourage to play, stay attached and (most important) to encourage them to spend money.

The challenge is and was always to find niches which allows you to have fun and a challenge at the same time - whilst being fully aware of the obstacles and setbacks you might face.

These discussions (like here “useless game play”) were dominating the old forum as long as i can remember - nothing will change as long as the majority of playing (and paying) players are in the flow zone:

Don’t get me wrong: WT is very good in keeping you attached and able to create positive and negative emotions but most of the forum participants are way too experienced and ask for changes which gaijin can’t deliver.

Either because they would endanger their business with main target group (=less experienced players) or because the number of highly experienced players is too small to invest money for “special modes” behind a paywall.

Have a good one!

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