Oh I do understand exactly what you’re looking for, I just know that the mode you’re wanting has been shot down by the devs more consistently than any other suggestion, and I want to know that there will be no more whine-induced nerfing of CAS weaponry that bleeds into and ruins “those other modes for planes” that you claim exist.
Because in case you aren’t aware, every single CAS nerf also gets applied to Air RB. Cannon CAS has been utterly shafted again and again. Bombs which once could reliably take out a (Light) Pillbox and all the Howitzers/AAA around them now only kill the Pillbox if you’re lucky enough to not have the bomb fall through the ground. On several occasions, rockets would fly through Pillboxes and explode on the dirt next to them, doing fuck all.
Several common maps feature AI ground targets which use player tank models, so in addition to all those, nerfs like “shell shattered” also apply to game modes which make no sense for them to exist in.
As I recognize it is impossible to change your mind directly, that is precisely why I arrived at “buff the counters’ availability and utility to the point where they become impossible to ignore” as the only real solution. It gives you an offer you cannot refuse, whether it’s to your “preferences” or not. And if you refuse, you forfeit your right to complain about about CAS any further without looking like an utter fool.
Oh dear god. To think there is a gaming company capable of making dumber decisions than even the most questionable ones snail has done…
I have a rather unorthodox opinion on “Ersatz TD” SPAAGs - I think they’re fine, and the perfect weapon for the city clusterfuck idiocy of most maps. I think the ability to do such should be enhanced, not nerfed - clearly people want to go full auto vs tanks with their AA, why not let them?
At least they’ll be using SPAAG and moving outside their own spawn zone, where then at least some of them will look up to swat planes of opportunity.
There is only so much you can do to try fixing stupid. Hence why with the big problems the best solution is “give them every possible tool to help themselves and explain how they work well, but if they still refuse to use said tools, now their mistakes are fully theirs, not the game’s, and therefore are ignorable from here onward.”
CAS in general is 50% a mechanical problem and 50% a player opinion one.
The mechanical failures stem from rage-inducing mechanics like the kill cam, idiotic spawn point system making CAS a “powerup,” the counters being often inadequate, and the total lack of all other relevant objectives for CAS to kill and be useful to their team by doing so.
The player opinion part, in my observation, stems from the idea of the counters being inadequate and/or unavailable, leading to a feeling of helplessness after dying to CAS repeatedly, then to rage and shouting on forums like this one. Some folk will never be interested in using either - they are beyond help, but they shouldn’t be considered for gameplay balancing changes either.
The recent Coelian situation proved to me that if SPAAG are made fun to play as War Thunder gameplay demands (TD first, AA second until you reach SAM tier), then the vast majority of people will in fact shut up about CAS and go use them to swat down the CAS. The longstanding complaints about how strong late prop CAS is around 6.0 greatly subsided due to all the Coelians roaming around. And the best part is that buffing a counter does not actually affect the functionality of the CAS planes nor their weapons themselves. Which means that many less potential nerfs bleeding over into and harming Air RB or Naval RB. THAT is why I see (restoratively) buffing the counters as the only long-term solution to much of what makes CAS so frustrating.
They should focus on them when there are no tanks nearby that aren’t already being dealt with. Part of why I have proposed giving all SPAAGs short-range lead markers based on Crew Rangefinding skill was to make shooting at planes less guesswork and therefore encourage people to do so more.
@QTip_44’s suggestion of SPAAGs having stealth belts would also help in addition to said lead assist.
On the contrary, Prop CAS doesn’t make any change for the win rate, even though the USSR got YAK9K with powerful APHE. The current SP system makes it even worse, most of the complaints of CAS is due to skill issues of players, which also becomes the primary driving force behind SP system change. More interesting thing is, as the Colian get powerful APHE with armor bugs, German winrate suddenly moves to an amazing level.
The main solution should not focus on how to nerf CAS or other vehicles, but only if they can make a huge impact for the current balance. Unfortunately, Colian is that one. Anti CAS shouldn’t only consider nerfing the SP or any other system, we need more good planes and LT to make sure all of nation get same level CAS or SPAA. CAS is also part of GRB, The worst situation is already show up at high BR 8.0-9.0, the CAS is almost extinct due to powerful radar SPAAs.
For example - where can I practice munition interception other than during battle? Learning how to do something during actual battle is a bit too late, don’t you think?
The entire “earn SP to use plane” concept is a whole can of worms, and one I personally think needs to be brought into line with how SP work in Simulator instead.
CAS’s best counter is another plane, and other planes are also blocked behind the same SP wall CAS is, albeit somewhat smaller of one.
Part of that is all the veteran players jumping in the Coelian after ignoring it for years. Myself included - I got my first nuke in it.
Even in cases of “huge impact” I think nerfs are an overall bad idea unless literally every other possible option has been tried and has failed miserably to bring the particular vehicle into line.
True, we do see what happens when we buff SPAAG up to how the game should properly model them, and then also fail to give CAS any other useful objective except fly straight into said SPAAG wall. No wonder people don’t use it as much there.
Indeed. There are so many new mechanics made well after the tutorials were, those tutorials are in bad need of an update.
to be fair, what you pretty much described is “CAS OP!!”.
CAS has one objective, and no counters. its a simple issue, and the only thing standing between us and the easy fix is gaijins greed for money.
conceptually there is nothing wrong with tank-only, and it still fits into the war thunder “combined arms” image, because this sort of image is only shown in far-fetched arcade commercials.
and regardless of image or “intended gameplay”, if the gameplay is objectively bad, something needs to be done about it (whether a massive buff to SPAA, nerf to CAS, or adding tank-only).
Allright so now that I had time to read upon the Meet Your Match update, this analogy isnt accurate.
Meet Your Match “saw the official release of Competitive Mode matchmaking and PASS Time, introduced Casual Mode matchmaking.” (source)
"For the longest time the way you played was just picking a server from a list and chilling there until you got a map you didn’t like or got bored. It’s a game where you can make your own servers and maps for people to play on using the same tools as the devs.
Quick play and the later casual matchmaking were both blamed for killing this vibe, creating a loss of the community pub atmosphere and making everyone simply leave and requeue after every game. On release, the latter wasn’t asked for and barely functioned: You were punished for leaving a “casual” game and couldn’t so much as choose what maps you wanted to play on.
But, maybe you’re talking about competitive matchmaking. This was Valve’s attempt at bridging their casual and competitive player base by making it so you can get 6v6 games on demand without having to resort to community made resources. The problem is, people who already played comp didn’t like it being watered down and having no class limits or item bans compared to what they could already play. Casual players didn’t feel catered to thanks to a mediocre ranking system putting them in battles with b4nny and other issues. It basically failed to appeal to anyone by being a bad middle ground." (source)
So, Meet Your Match replaced server browser with quickplay (Warthunder doesnt have server browser and has been essentially “quickplay” for as long as I remember, you just choose a game mode) and introduced poorly made competetive mode which is effectively ranked mode (which Warthunder doesnt have).
Introducing TO only mode would be akin to introducing payload game mode to the game that has both conquest and team deathmatch as its main game modes. It doesnt replace anything, and its not ranked. Joining “TO only” would ideally be no different to selecting to queue into Arcade Ground or Realistic Ground, less ideally like joining SIM game.
tl;dr your analogy does not really work, MyM affected matchmaker as a whole and changed how it works, TO only would be only additional game mode.
If only multi launcher SAMs weren’t subject to frontline combat, we really do need better spawns and new locations for them. Preferably spawns in random locations so that looking for them becomes more of challenge like SEAD.
allright but then you reach Warthunder specific limitations so “empowering” the counter isnt always viable option.
Two examples I was talking about was Kh-38MT and LMURs.
Lets take Kh-38MT for example for now.
Up until Leviathans, which saw addition of IRIS-T SLM, main complaint was tied to the fact that no SPAA in game could
prevent Su-34 from releasing its entire payload, because Kh-38MTs outranged any SPAA in game if launched from high enough alt;
intercept Su-34 after releasing its entire payload because all it had to do was to turn around right after last missile was launched and hug the deck, leaving both range and LoS of SACLOS AA
Complaitns in this case were entirely justified, moreso from Italy and Israel players, that did not even have proper top tier AA at that time.
So, how this couldve been solved?
A) Gaijin couldve simply buffed the SPAAs - but this would be problematic as they would become unrealistic. you cant make a 12km range missile suddenly have 20km range, or make SACLOS missile suddenly FnF (this is the warthunders specific problem ive talked about)
B) Gaijin couldve simply introduced better AA systems - this is what we eventually got, after at least a year and something (from Su-34 introduction) and year and a half since introduction of Kh-38MTs (on Su-25SM3). Clearly a year and something gap in capability is terrible for the health of the game (and playerbase sanity)
C) “Just spawn CAP” - perfectly viable solution, and it might look like the easiest one to do.
But, as with everything, theres lot of nuance. CAP vs CAS interaction goes a lot deeper, especially at top tier. Lets focus only on the Su-34/Kh-38MT example for now and ignore CAP vs CAS interaction at lower tiers.
Lets set up a theoretical scenario to demonstrate how things were back then before the addition of IRIS-T SLM. Take the following with bit of salt, english isnt my first language so i might have not put it in words properly and it might sound too autistic.
Spoiler
Lets take this video video as example of our theoretical scenario. Its year old, obviously meta changed a lot since then with both SP cost increase and new gen of SPAAs, but for my example it works perfectly.
Su-34 player is able to spawn fully loaded plane with only three assists, two of which were awarded through scouting (separate issue but figured id mention it). He spawns at 0:12, some 15km away from the battlefield (so outside of effective range of all then top tier AAs bar russian Pantsir, which it will see extremely rarely). While the footage is sped up between him spawning and launching first missile, its just 11 seconds before hes in position to start his attack at 0:23. At that point, hes within maximum range of VT1 but still outside its effective range.
To provide perfect counter to Su-34, I would need to actually prevent Su-34 from launching its payload. (Less ideally, I would need to simply shoot down the Su-34, with no regards to launch prevention, but such solution does not preserve up to six friendly tanks on the battlefield).
Lets say that part of the video from spawn to start of his attack was sped up two times, so thats 11*2= 22 seconds. Thus, 22 seconds is my interception window.
If I were to spawn in a CAP plane as soon as he did spawn his Su-34, and launched AMRAAM at him as soon as I spawned, my AMRAAM would have to travel twice the distance (assuming it would spawn me at same distance and alt but on the other side of the airspace), so 30km.
Test drive shows me that AMRAAM launched from Hornet at the same alt will reach 15km distant target in 26 seconds. So lets assume it will reach 30km distant target in 52 seconds.
Are you starting to see the problem?
Even if I spawned my CAP at the exact same moment as Su-34, I still wouldnt be able to intercept him in time. He would already finish his attack run before my missile would cross half of the distrance.
And even this entire theoretical situation hinges on the fact that Su-34 wont be defending but flying perfectly straight to the battlefield.
Even if the whole video from him spawning to start of his attack was sped up three times, thats 33 seconds, which is still less than what it takes my AMRAAM to cross the map.
So, in order to actually prevent Su-34 from releasing its payload, Id have to spawn much sooner, and actually get closer to his spawn.
If two players of equal skill level take the same amount of time to spawn in their respective CAS/CAP jet, CAS player still has massive advantage over CAP.
tl;dr CAP is viable solution, but its far from optimal in certain scenarios.
Youve been pretty reasonable so far in convos with me, but this sounds like its more emotional argument rather than logical.
Allright, but lets be realistic - implementing all of your listed points would shake the game quite a bit at its foundations, ie. it would be difficult, if not impossible, to implement.
Compare that to introduction of separate TO only mode, which would take much less changing and balancing, and as such, less resources and time on Gaijins part.
If the “whiners” move to the mode where they have no reason to whine about CAS (and therefore asking for further nerfs to it), while people that dont mind CAS remains in the general AGB/RGB doesnt that also achieve your goal of “I just want the whinning to stop” but with less time and resources spend?
I understand that (hence my Division/M14 analogy). But this only supports the point i made - that this is the resulting issue of having single set of balancing decisions for two entirely different game modes with different needs and metas.
Friend of mine here is constantly putting forth the idea of SEAD finally coming to game, as he wants to use his Tornado with ALARMs and other A2G ordnance to run complex sorties in sim. He would also love to have FnF Brimstones with mMW seeker.(you can probably guess who that is lol).
Do I understand his want for SEAD and FnF Brimstones in ARB and SIM? Absolutely. He also put forth very convincing argument, that currently AI SPAA is broken as f*** and tracks (as well lands hits) at ranges vastly exceeding their GRB player controled effective ranges as well as it perfectly tracks through terrain.
But at the same time, introduction of FnF Brimstones and SEAD would be end of GRB as we know it. Why would you even spawn in a tank or even AA if you could get countered by plane outside of your effective range that you were never able to see and thus react to? It would turn into another AAB/ARB, just with annoying extra step neccesary to hop into a plane. At that point straight up remove tanks, theyre just a speedbump.
it would be minimum 10 times easier (and less disruptive) to implement the tank-only gamemode, not to mention the number of reasons why gaijin would never do this in the first place
You seem to be missing the entire point. Meet You Match wasn’t just VALVe screwing up matchmaking. Meet Your Match was the first in a series of really bad choices by VALVe, and a shift in how VALVe treated TF2 that slowly killed the it.
Gajin already does a lot of the stuff that VALVe was doing after Meet Your Match. Everything that went wrong with Meet Your Match would apply to TO. The effects wouldn’t be as extreme, I’ll give you that, but it’s still just not a good idea.
Because if the point was that series of poor decisions lead to decline of TF2, fair, but thats highly highly vague analogy then. Ad absurdum, 9/11 was also just a series of poor decisions on behalf of lot of people (obviously it wasnt just a series of poor decisions, but you get the idea).
Since MyM was mostly related how matchamker works, while TO is only additional game mode, I believe this would be slippery slope fallacy if you dont want to give more specific example as how would TO only mode lead to decline of WT as a whole.
MvM is in a pretty poor state right now, and is only really played by a small cult following, and gambling addicts. So yeah, that’s a really good comparison to TO.
MvM is Man vs Machine, no? Isnt that different to Meet Your Match, which was the aforementioned matchmaker update, which we were talking about up until this point?
B) directly effects how Gajin would handle balancing.
Even if I am just jumping the gun on the slippery slope, there’s still the issue that Gajin gains absolutely nothing, even if TO somehow isn’t a complete flop.
While yes, additonal game mode does not change matchmaker as much as update solely focused on changing the matchmaker. Impact is thus smaller.
While yes, we already have different BRs for arcade, realistic and sim. TO only could simply have its own BR spread which would eliminate any balancing issues entirely.
There can be argument made that satisfied playerbase is more likely than not going to spend more money on the game.
having TO and standard combined arms mode side by side will leave Gaijin with two playermodes where two playerbases get what they want, and as such are more inclined to spend their money, as opposed to current state of things with one group being dissatisfied and thus less inclined to spend their money on Warthunder.
TO only would more likely than not spend more money on tanks they want, while the usual combined arms would continue buying tanks AND planes. In that sense, TO only players buying only tanks wouldnt be at all different to air only players buying only planes and never touching tanks whatsoever.
Further, this TO mode would be wholly optional, so if TO player wanted, he could still buy aircraft and then jump into comibined arms mode.
You mean the test with very limited available tanks and conditions ?
Or people flocking to TO would actually tell Gaijin that GRB has a CAS problem that needs fixing ?
Wouldn’t be hard from a player perspective but Gaijin is never giving out free jets/helicopters to everyone, as grind pretty much drives this game’s existence.
You can give people all the tools you want but nothing would change the fact that aircraft vs tank is an inherently unfair engagement.
This is an incredibly naive statement that only works when you have “CAS enjoyer” glasses on.
Why would a company intentionally bleed players to it’s competitors instead of attracting them to their own game ?
Using this logic, it’s safe to delete ARB as people enjoying aircraft have other games on the market that already cater to that need.
I’ll repeat his question as it’s quite interesting.
How would you feel if you were told to “just play another game”?