Framework for Requesting BR Review and System for Feedback

Good Afternoon All,

I don’t know if this has been proposed and I’ve only performed a cursory forum search to see if it’s already been suggested.

Moderators,

Before flagging this for suggestions, this is aimed at the forum itself not War Thunder the game client.

I’m proposing a curated system of requesting BR reviews, where users request that a vehilce’s BR be reviewed by the developers, with a standard of evidence or reason as to why the vehicle is either over or under performing. However, players do not demand a specific BR change, for example:

“The T-50 is overperforming at BR 2.7 and is ruining rank 1 games, it should be moved up to BR 3.0 at minimum”

would instead be:

“The T-50 is overperforming as evidenced below please consider this vehicle for Battle Rating review”

To which ideally we’d get at the very least “this vehicle has been considered for re-evaluation” or “there is insufficent evidence to be considered for re-evaluation at this time”

I feel like the interval for reviews should be at least once per major update, once per vehicle addition plus or minus 1 BR of the added vehicle (premium, battlepass, event or TT inclusive) and once more per “Planned BR changes” from the developer.

The goal would at least be to eliminate or reduce the number of topics, that go nowhere, have no resolution but stir up negativity. Examples being:

  • BR x.x is compressed/requires decompression
  • Game is unbalanced please fix (with or without denigration of the developers)
  • Game is broken please fix (with or without denigration of the developers)
  • Vehicle is broken please fix (“”)

In the suggestions section of the forum there exists a established and understood format for the suggestion of new vehicles to be added to the game. The community generally recognised the criteria and positively engages with the system. Additionally, forum moderators carefully curate the suggestions to eliminate duplication.

I’m proposing a similar framework be put forward for the discussion of battle ratings. Typically a player will be either frustrated with a specific vehicle or class of vehicles at a certain bracket and unleash their vexations on the general discussion of machinery of war sections.

Contained within these calls to address vehicle battle ratings are:

  • Appeals to historical accuracy and immersion;
  • Complaints where vehicle A is unfairly matched against vehicles B, C and D;
  • Complaints that vehicle A is overpowered/underpowered, overtiered undertiered;
  • Vehicle is missing key feature, or requires a buff/debuff to remain competitive;

Among others.

Arguments to the contrary consist of:

  • Doubts expressed as to Complainant’s competence and understanding of game mechanics resulting in perceived struggle;
  • Denigrations of player statistics on the whole

Generally speaking, the discussions devolve into confrontations as users argue over elements of a vehicle that are difficult to quantify, and as frustrations mount, name calling and insults ensue.

18 Likes

I understand what the ‘Planned Battle Rating Changes’ update topics are for, this is suggested in addition

Edit @Morvran

Given that you stand out in the Planned BR changes discussion and engage with the suggestions politely and positively. Do you feel that the Planned BR changes topics adequately address player feedback, at least for players that engage with the system in good faith? (with regards to BR suggestions)

I’ll give my thoughts on this too.

No. I don’t believe that they address feedback, due to numerous obvious suggestions being ignored for multiple updates at a time. Even some that weren’t suggested still should’ve been done, such as fixing issues with planes having vastly different BRs while being extremely similar. (11.3/11.7 tornados, Ki-84s, VB.10s, and a few others come to mind)

However, I am glad that the balance isn’t totally player driven, because I saw some really terrible suggestions there.

2 Likes

From my pov the idea is quite tempting but even without having the ability to predict the future for actually useful things (like for playing lotto or for stock trading) the outcome of such a discussion is imho obvious:

  1. You will see the same fruitless discussion loops like in every BR round discussion thread. Players tend to behave like kids when it comes to BR settings - they are driven by their own goals and interests and are either not able, capable or willing to assess their requested changes in the broader picture with a more holistic pov.
  2. Imho just a fraction of the players active in this forum are actually motivated to make the game better for all players and vehicles as they are experienced enough to consider multiple angles on certain aspects and they successfully avoid pushing plain selfish agendas.

In other words:

Creating such a discussion framework won’t change anything - as the main player in in this game (gaijin itself) follows own goals with their BR setting policy which are usually not compatible with the goals of the playerbase.

In addition to that: The forum participants tend to be way more mature than the average player and are from my pov far away from being representative for the player base as a whole - that’s why most of the provided feedback in BR changing threads is ignored by gaijin.

2 Likes

I definitely would appreciate feedback even a null explanation like: “The following BR changes have been considered for review, all else were reviewed but not considered for review”

At least as a time saving feature.

I feel for BR suggestions to improve, Gaijin needs to accept datamine and host 1188 based tools’ data as evidence, maybe not of highest quality, but as premilary research warranting further investigation using their more precise and accurate tools.

You say suggestions should require evidence, but a lot of evidence we can succintly present without countless videos that may or may not be rigged are dismissed by Gaijin due to being recorded using something like WTRTI not because the data is wrong, but because we dared use WTRTI/WTAPC/Statshark to generate the graphs.

I recognize these tools aren’t precise implements and have bugs and limitations, but they should be treated sufficient for “hey, this needs attention!” starters. Think of them as cheap screening hardware and low-purity chemicals for mass testing samples in a laboratory so that you know what warrants expensive instrument time.

Nope, not even close. Some changes are certainly subjective, but others are just insane.where you have 2 identical vehicles at different BRs

1 Like

Different lineups support and the enemies you can face can determinate totally different BRs.

Lineups are irrelevant for aircraft in a gamemode like ARB and the enemies you face is also not relevant to these examples

Aircraft like the B-26B Vs B-26C or the Tornado IDSs or the AMXs

The BR change system asks for player feedback and analyses it AFAIK.

If the BR change is not considered i assume it is because the “data” does not justify it…in the devs opinion, of course…
TBH i dont have an opinion on many BR requests that i see…but i ASSUME that if a particular request is NOT considered sevaral updates in a row it is becuase devs don’t agree…

The typical argument is Vehicle A is similar to Vehicle B so should have same BR…but BRs are based on OVERALL data i guess…i can find one vehicle that is better/similar on almost any BR…one to one comparisons are not the best way to do this…

You usually get the “The following BR changes have been considered for review”…i always ASSUMED the second part :)

The giant amount of people wanting X and Y changes while gaijin doesn’t even acknowledge these issues exist as they say “we used your feedback!” is evident that they in fact don’t use any of our feedback. That forum post is a theatre show to make it seem like they care.

Whilst i fully agree to the line up part - the rest of your reply is rather misleading as especially in Air RB nation set ups play a massive role.

If you play enough matches at the BR range of the 2 B-26 models it is more than obvious that the French B-26 is much rarer whilst their pilots seems to have way more Air RB experience than their US counterparts. So the higher BR (4.7 France vs 4.3 US) makes sense when one user group is more successful.

The second topic is the high popularity of US aircraft and a imho more than obvious skill deficit of their players just based on their lack of experience. In other words: Playing US ensures usually high numbers of US players in your team which reduces your overall chances to win or just to be successful.

On the other side of the spectrum small nations like France, SWE and UK play often vs teams full of US players which increases their success on average.

One massive issue with the “data” is:

  1. It’s based on economic earning potential.

Now.

There’s this game mode where earnings are the same for barely getting 1 kill has barely any differences from entirely dominating a lobby (450 score for 75% of reward, 800 score for 90% of the reward, 1050 score for 92% of reward, 1950 score for 93% of the reward - can you see the issue here?). Furthermore, anti-player gameplay (get 1 kill, run away and hide the full 15 minutes and land to get 20% landing bonus) gives better economic outcomes than engaging gameplay that makes the match thrive (engage objectives, co-operate with teammates, fight enemy team).

So.

What data can you glean from silver lions earned in such a game mode?

image

  1. Toxic reward design that punishes you for maintaining map presence and engaging with objectives for as long as your aircraft has ammunition and fuel. By not landing after 15 minutes passed and instead loitering and earning score for 30 minutes, I have received 20% less economic rewards.

image

It should be more than self-evident that balancing some game modes, namely air simulator battles, based on “economic impact” of aircraft is nonsensical with the current reward system that nullifies income above ~2 kills in 15 minutes and punishes endurance and map-impact and encourages running away, hiding above airfield instead.

The ariete making all the f86a5 sabres and such leave the lobby (because they aren’t having fun against a plane that outaccelerates, out speeds, out turns them) isn’t going to earn anything more than the Mig-15bis ISh it outclasses severely (just to compare premium to premium).

And I think that there should be some sort of reasoning behind why they disagree, beyond saying “this vehicle has average efficiency.”

I haven’t seen any reason for the 11.3 and 11.7 tornados to be a different BR in air RB, yet they still remain at different BRs.

1 Like

Imho you overestimate the importance of overall data and you underestimate other issues which might have an impact on certain BR decisions.

Gaijin stated that certain BR decisions (same as rank which has an impact on SL/RP) have to be seen also in context of their status - like premium or not.

You see here 4 times the identical c+p vehicle; the P-51 C-10 at BR 3.7:

https://thunderskill.com/en/vehicle/p-51c-10_france
https://thunderskill.com/en/vehicle/p-51c-10-nt
https://thunderskill.com/en/vehicle/p-51c-11-nt_japan
https://thunderskill.com/en/vehicle/p-51c-11-nt_china

If you look at the number of matches played and their success you might agree that the French and JP version might need a BR increase as they are way more successful than the US version. And: The CHN version might need a decrease of their BR as their players suck like hell in this plane.

Even admitting that thunderskill data are not reliable it is obvious that this aircraft is way too good for its BR - even if CHN players can’t use it properly…

Man this highlighted a big blind spot for me. My tech trees are mostly unlocked excluding Israel and Sweden. The idea of some nations getting stuck on C&P vehicles lowering the BR of a vehicle wasn’t something I considered as for me I would always be playing c&p vehicles with a certain amount of experience.

Generally speaking my first nations are my worst as that’s were I made most of my mistakes.

Technically seen it is the other way around as other (with more experienced players on average) nations benefit the most from c+p versions of the “original” US TT aircraft :-)

So in my example the high rookie share of the US players dragged the P-51 C way too low in the BR. But gaijin created the JP premium and has released the plane as event plane for France, SWE & CHN.

Even as the earnings from JP premium sales are not that much as the plane is rather rare - gaijin get their share from each market place transaction. But gaijin is treating the US players rather poor as the US version was “down-ranked” to Rank II whilst all other nations can use it at Rank III (=premium & event aircraft bonus).

So keeping the low BR for all P-51 C-10s ensures smooth transactions and avoids rather complicated statements why the same aircraft has different BRs. You can see that also with other aircraft like P-47s or 109s.

The B-26B/C BR difference is imho based on the fact that they don’t care about bombers - and both are TT planes.

But again. Why? Why is nation specific skill used solely to balance a vehicle. The same vehicle should perform equally and thus be balanced based upon the data available from all nations. It is deeply unfair on the french one to face harder opponents just because they are more skilled. This often becomes an issue when you have someone actually skilled in the aircraft at a lower BR than it should and just wipes the floor with anyone and everyone. This can be seen often with the F-5C, most who play it, don’t know what they are doing, but when you encounter someone who does, they walk away with an easy ace quite often

But this does again not explain why 2 identical vehicles within 1 nation are at such different BRs. Looking at the tornados for this.

Maybe the German premium tornado has a much lower effeciency than the others due to the influx of bad players, but the 2 Italian ones If nothing else should be the same. It is especially annoying when the weakest of the 6 is the GR1 and is at the higher of the 2 BRs