Gaijin will continue to favor small maps because the Russian tanks are garbage on large maps.
The T-models were designed like condoms, use them once and then throw them in the bin, because they were built for close combat and in real life they aren’t even good at that.
If there were also large maps with a size of, for example, 5Km x 5Km, these tanks would perhaps hit a barn door, while they would simply be knocked out by modern Western tanks.
That’s why there are so many small maps.
I don’t think that’s the case. It’s just in alignment with what most players prefer.
Also, bringing up real life is useless. Trust me, precisely because I’m familiar with the history of the Third Reich’s industry and its armoured vehicles, I can assure you that in-game they are just as flattered as the Soviet tanks.
I mean the modern tanks from BR 9.0
Not the vehicles from WWII
I think that’s heavily dependend on the map rotation (which is awful to begin with), since I have few days where I get alot of Rhine and then don’t see it for a week or two. Mozdok I get exactly once per day I play, which is kinda weird. I played the large version of Volokolamsk alot lately, sadly.
Seversk is probably one of the better mixed maps, so I don’t mind getting that quite alot.
you can hold down the leftmost and rightmost paths, use the bridges, look from the buildings left of B towards the right side or snipe from the green area on the right towards C or B. its more medium range sniping but I’d still call it that.
oh, same here. but I also came to accept that tanks like the Dicker Max or Sturer Emil aren’t really made for tank combat (as ingame) but for holding down a path/area, which isn’t fun to play against if the area they can hold down is too large. Jagdtiger I just use as second row heavy tanks, it’s really fun.
Honestly, a big portion of my fun is making suboptimal vehicles work. I’ve played a bunch of AuF1 at 9.3 lately, laughing at T-series and Abrams I kill with that chonker. it’s hilarious. I probably would’ve quit the game half my game time ago if I’d just play meta vehicles on maps designed around them.
that’s because the northern sniping spot could shoot into the tanks coming out of spawn in the south eastern spawn, while the north western spawn is completely shielded by a wall of rocks. You could kill tanks leaving through the only path available on the left side of the map merely 20s into the match, and from behind cover. South sniping spot oversees less problematic areas. being less far away also makes it easier to spot you and shoot back at you.
In my late experience the hills around A are great to play hull down and are wide enough to play against few people, while for flanking you can either go through B or play the C side. it’s not optimal but before A was pretty much castled in on a hill with an additional ridgeline you could neither flank nor contest frontally. now at least neither side has a height advantage.
They aren’t nearly as high though, most are about a tank and a half high and can barely shoot level into B. They’re also easy to shoot at from all sides, while the very elevated northern position was a bit pot-like with elevations all around the “main plateau” that protected you from different sides.
Though the big problem child here was the mountain between C and B, that was alot more easy to access from the north, had tons of cover and vegetation, and was abusing traction issues.
If they are highly elevated and well protected against most sides, they are problematic. especially if the incline is shallow enough that you only have to expose your gun, which on some later TDs can make them almost unkillable. You get to shoot down into tanks, negating some of their armour, making their reaction time alot worse since alot of tanks have terrible vertical targeting speed, and making them hard to flank without crossing the entire map (and the rest of your team) to pick them out of there.
The dunes of El Alamein are a good example, most dunes are steep enough that you have to expose your entire tank to get the gun down and need a couple seconds to reverse below the ridgeline again. The north eastern rocky area got blocked off entire since you can peek out from between rocks, reversing into cover is alot quicker, you come in at an almost 90° angle from the main battle so it takes a while to react to you, and when people dedicate themselves to holding down, you can just peek from a different rock they can’t get you from.
large Mozdok is problematic because neither A nor C are accessible to any team if the enemy has a good sniper, and B is only accessible from the southern side if your team prevents the northern side from reaching the hill near C, because that’s the only position to shoot into the river. Rivals the Novo version with the open B cap for worst map in the game for me. if I get that Mozdok version I know I’ll be staring down an open field from behind a hill for like, 20 minutes. because pushing out is a certain death against ANY aware enemies.
I mean, sure, you can nuke if you just sit there and enough people come out or keep taking shots at you and exposing themselves, but I wouldn’t call that playable imo. Do you think they had any real chance to flank you there?
Spawns are problematic, yes. CAS is a problem for any tank anywhere, yes. Unless Gaijin starts letting us play through areas covered from above, like empty factories or something, that will never change. (the concrete slabs over the A cap on that one desert map don’t count because they don’t even protect from 250kg bombs).
I think 900m is okay for long range sniping, at ww2 tiers that’s already alot of gun sight correction, and at high tier most people just LRF then shoot anyway. (I would even like the rocks on those two hills overlooking A to go away, so you can get shot in the turret side from the city while shooting towards A instead of being protected towards the city, but eh)
C has a couple of sniping spots though, each covering differnt parts of the map half. I think it’s well playable with tank destroyers.
Most caps are close quarters anyway, or you get Fire Arc where two caps are unaccessible if there is a non-blind enemy on your side of the map, because it’s a roughly 1.5km unprotected drive through open fields to get to an entirely open unprotected cap, such an awful map design
Gaijin adds alot of vehicles that aren’t made for tank on tank combat in general, but here we are because they want all combat vehicles added at some point.
I think ambushing is fine but sniping from a position you can’t realistically get taken out of is awful for the enemy.
well, it’s not excluded because they choose to, but because they’re not fun for the majority of the player base, and Gaijin needs paying customers. If half the matches were sniping fests where noone can move much without dying, I’d guess alot more people would quit the game than they do for not getting enough sniping fests.
As to why they even add sniper tanks? Because people like you and me still make the Dicker Max work on Rhine just because we can, and having access to more than just PzIVs and Tigers for variety makes us stay.
Homeboy is re-writing War and Peace.
Yes, it’s one of the key issues.
The beach is roughly 700 metres long, and usually not home to meaningful prolonged engagements. I find it preferable to immediately drive to the entryway of the alley just west of C: even something like the Jagdtiger can lock that down quite competently, and it then gives you further options to move left or right and push accordingly.
That’s a game limitation, because both the mission types and the maps have been far outgrown by the game itself. Nothing inherently unchangeable.
It’s my favourite in game. Though every time I don’t play it for a while and get back to it, like I did today, I usually have a pretty bad streak… then I get in the groove again. :D
I got a god mode in a Dicker Max and frequently play it at every BR imaginable, that’s way more fun than it has any right to be. I think I accidentally discovered the only pixel of the M103 that the Dicker Max can frontally pen, on Kuban one time xD
So, yes. I play what I want, not what is meta.
But it still doesn’t feel good to know that it’s an inherently less competitive way to play.
You can be engaged from the southern sniping spot. I always went there when on the south spawn, precisely so that I could counter that spot, which I used myself from the other side. It was 900m between them, so quite manageable.
But the marginal utility of that spot rapidly went down after those initial 20 seconds. It ended up being a trap for players who stayed there too long.
If I’m on the eastern spawn, that’s where I always go, especially since the lake is much less useful now. But before the change, there were much better places to go hull down from an eastern approach. It was a great location for frontally armoured tank destroyers. Now, there is much less cover, and you can still very much be shot at by enemies taking cover behind the buildings up the hill, even without having to get to the windmill. I still do it, but it’s more difficult now.
Exactly. The southern hill right next to B was quite comparable to the northern ones, and not that hard to counter, especially against open tops.
It was sniping fights in this case. It was very intense, because I was the only guy that chose to go left from the south spawn, and I feared complete disaster. I kept a bunch of people on the northern hill quite busy that evening. In particular a 2S3M got my gun barrel four times in a row, we laughed in chat about it in a rare moment of WT wholesomeness. The other snipers up there were ASU-85s, a T-44 100, a Ratel 20, and something else I don’t remember right now.
Now, that map has been removed from rotation. I’m framing this in a selfish way, but I think it helps to drive home the point: that was one of my best games, and a special one to get my first nuke in. I tied up multiple people playing lonesome, patiently and deliberately timed my exists and shots, and got enough kills to climb to 2500 spawn points without capping anything (it was a Battle mission, so). In short, I suppose, it feels like an achievement.
If I were starting out in the game today, I would not get to play that match on that map.
I’ve gotten other nukes since, one with a Dicker Max and two more with the Jagdtiger, the last was at Iberian Castle with a JT/Tiger II Sla match that went down to the wire. But I obviously have fond memories of that one on Mozdok.
We are continually told by Gaijin that one of the major reasons why CAS is essential to combined battles, is that it’s a detrenchment mechanism. Well, what’s there to detrench then? I don’t think anyone ever had any trouble bombing my sorry ass when I was sniping from the rocks south of C in the old Jungle, for example (and that position could also be flanked, especially if you played something turretless and slow). Counters exist.
Hell, the open tops in particular are ridiculously vulnerable to aircraft, and artillery as well.
I understand the business case in not catering to me, and catering to others. Doesn’t mean I have to be happy about it. I find that very disheartening.
And? Nothing wrong with that. Better a reasoned discussion like this than the Nth thread on “X bias” and “omg uptiers” or “omg downtiers”.
to be fair, armoured TDs can play like heavy tanks with usually better firepower and/or better armor scheme than same BR heavy tanks, while sacrificing the turret. it’s not their favourite role, but they’re still very competent at it, especially with support/as support. The problem children are the unarmored ones with bad mobility.
I think even with these maps just having a defensive mission type would benefit alot of tanks greatly, though of course maps specifically designed for that purpose would be even better. could even severely limit where the defenders can go on the ground so it doesn’t turn into the usual team deathmatch and defenders spawn camping the defenders. (could limit the attackers too by not letting them push up to the spawn, just to the objective, and giving the objective some cover in return)
I think it’s great to know I’m being inherently way less competitive in a vehicle choice, but thats preference.
the problem is, they get into position first, since the northern sniping spot was closer to their spawn. Especially with unstabilized tanks, they would have their guns on you before you even come around the rocks. I remember usually having 2-3 tanks in the northern sniping spot, so they could easily hold down both the south-west route and the southern sniping spot.
before they changed the map, it got so bad that they’d just kill 3-4 tanks on their path down the hill, sometimes more if the wrecks blocked the bridge, which then would leave the match on the spot enraged by that stupid map design, then most of the northern snipers would move on towards C or B. It really wasn’t fun being a couple people down 20-30s into the match. you shouldn’t ever be able to shoot people leaving their spawn that early in a match.
I’d rather not have hopping into a 600+ SP spawn just to get someone out of a problematic spot be the only good counter. Firstly, people need to have enough SP to spawn a plane. Secondly, those that do need to be aware of that spot. Thirdly, for alot of problematic spots it wasn’t hard to just go there again, preferably after the plane got shot down (or it kamikaze killed you in the first place). And lastly, even if you fly out and get them, not only did that tank kill you (and probably a few others), it also handily drained your SP by a good 2-3 tanks worth.
Let’s face it, CAS in ground battles is for less capable people to get kills, for people that play the game for Air to get some more interesting ground targets, and for CAS prems to sell well. Yes, it is a tinfoil hat theory, but it would explain why it’s so easy to get a plane if that’s all you want (1 cap, 1 assist/scout → plane → no more SP if you don’t kill a bunch of targets/don’t wanna spawn on ground anymore anyway → leave match).
Yes, I said you have to have enough SP for planes to begin with to remove problem spot campers, but with that I meant when you’re playing ground properly and are already multiple tanks deep into the match, and not just do everything to hop into a plane as quickly as possible.
Same. I was just stating what I think to be the explanation. I have no problem with mainstream, I’m just sad that niche audiences rarely get catered to.
Yes, although they are more sensitive to the lolpen power creep of recent years, and in the case of the JT in particular the real issue is the 18s reload, which is an eternity in this game, and requires to plan ahead and most importantly, not waste a shot.
If you’ve played the last season of World War, you might remember they had a game type in there in which one team had to assault the cap of the opposite team within 15 minutes. That was very adrenaline-pumping to play on both sides. The clock puts pressure on you, if you’re defending you can use tank destroyers to great effect, and the match is still very dynamic and fast-paced. I wish they made that a regular Ground RB/SB mode (maybe with a longer timer in simulator for the larger maps).
I’m not sure I get what you mean.
I got many many first strikes against that position when playing from the south. I know it’s anecdotal, but it’s my experience with it.
Not saying that’s how it should be, but at least nominally, Gaijin has balanced GRB like rock paper scissors. They just don’t really like one of these three, I guess.
And sadly, vehicular combat games have a small enough audience that getting more than one good game on the subject is basically utopia.
Honestly, in WW2 tiers that is not entirely true. A bunch of enemies that you fight in CQC areas will have quite long reloads too (IS-2/3/4/6s, T29/34s, Super Pershings, …), and if you play with support, they can cover your reload. Plus you have a workable reverse, so you can fall back while reloading.
touched it only once and found it to be very repulsive and unbalanced as we were 6 UK players vs 10 Germany ones, so it was an utter steamroll. never went back since then.
Sounds good as a game mode though, they could make version of most maps from that and include it in the map rotation.
Like I already said earlier, I kinda like playing a vehicle that’s just bad/less competitive for the game mode and try to still do great in it. that way I know I really earned my kills, versus a vehicle that works well by design.
Since SPAA is on equal footing with planes at best and at a severe disadvantage at worst, I wouldn’t dare to call it rock paper scissors. Planes shit on everyone, half the SPAAs are better TDs than SPAAs, a couple light tanks are better SPAAs than the SPAAs at their BR, a select few SPAA are proper counters to planes, except when they get outranged… and don’t get me started about 10.0/10.3 Helis with hellfires being toptier and dominating the entire battle because there are no counters below their BR.
Technically we have 2, WoT is good for what it wants to be and having its own niche seperate from WT. AW on the other hand trying to be WoT with more modern vehicles is already struggling hard.
Both sides would have artillery spawns so they are not so called invulnerable and it would make a shoot and scoot type of gameplay viable
Example match starts, several lights deploy their drones to find targets
Drones find and lase the targets which will give range details etc, this information would only be viewable by spg gunners
Gunners target and fire, rounds will take a few secs to impact the zone much like when u call for arty in a normal round
If a kill is achieved the scouting drone will share the same rewards as the spg operator
The above scenario will make gameplay more mobile and you won’t have people always camping a location because they will get hit eventually
Anyway what you said in point 1 can be said for helicopters and jets so it’s pretty much moot
Name me one modern MTB that doesn’t have laser rangefinder :)
Ah, I see ‘CAS IS THERE TO KILL CAMPERS’ argument is coming back in full force.
the difference is artillery rounds do not home in or can be guided to their targets
Then my earlier point stands even more. I don’t think anyone wants to play maps where it takes 20 minutes of driving to reach the middle
You are conflating two different things. 2nd Battle Of El Alamein is a sniping map where 900m engagements are very common, and you can sometimes have over-1200m engagements even with WW2 tanks, but you also have plenty of CQC and flanking options if you want them. And it’s a map where you can start engaging the enemy virtually as soon as you climb over a dune, one minute and change into the match.
Fields Of Poland is a map where you drive for 20 minutes to then have engagements at 400m distance tops anyway, giving you the worst of both worlds.
I’m not saying it can’t be done, I mean, I do it myself. Just that against the many fast, light targets you meet at this BR, the extra armour is not always worth it compared to the much quicker response time you’ll have in one of the actual heavies (Tiger II has more than twice the RoF, godlike gun handling and fast turret rotation).
The workable reverse is absolutely one of the assets that make it viable, yes, and there are other ways to survive while reloading as well if you really can’t fall back, or have no backup (tbh a common occurrence for me, usually I tend to go towards the flanks that I know most players ignore/where I think thin player density might cost us the win). For example, if you wiggle irregularly, especially if you manage to time it to the enemy reload times, you can sometimes survive truly improbable amounts of punishment while reloading.
As for the reload speed, I’m always happy to meet the opponents you cited when I’m playing at that BR. Sometimes, they kick my ass, sometimes, I kick theirs, but it’s a similar formula, reload takes time, aiming for weak spots is crucial, etc etc. But you also meet many many many things with fast reload and good pen (usually bad postpen tho).
With the JT I think a lot about “do I really want to take this shot now, or should I take my time and do this right?”. That kind of caution when playing CQC has sometimes screwed me over - happened yesterday vs an IS-3 for example - but other times, it’s allowed me to hold a cap while outnumbered even in CQC.
I think you missed out tbh. Don’t get me wrong, it was a mess with bizarre queue times and players getting into matches well after they started and stuff, mostly because the lineups were made in such a way that many more players wanted to queue for Germany than the Allies. But I played that every day, enjoying the wider variety of mission types, and I think to this day it’s still the best fun I’ve had in RB since I started playing this game.
Sim is the best of all though, imho. I just play it rarely because the queue times are daunting, the daily rotation is not a system I’m fond of, and I unironically don’t always have the mental energy for how stressful sim games can get 😂
That’s why I said nominally. I don’t believe for a second they’re succeeding at it, or trying too hard for that matter, just that it’s their intention.
Funnily enough, a moderator (Pacifica) in this thread yesterday also said that this is Gaijin’s thinking about CAS:
Oh I know ^^
ive lost count my self… But, it is not going anywhere, the ones that complain just want to camp and snipe in peace… but the developers have pretty much said this is not a sniping game, and the developers want players slugging it out
My observation isn’t about whether I agree or not with this rock-paper-scissors format, or whether it’s being done right, it’s about internal consistency. CAS can’t exactly be a detrenchment mechanic if there’s nothing to detrench.
I never got into it. I thought about it to scratch my itch with regards to the speculative designs you won’t find in WT, which are interesting to me, but honestly I find their approach to said speculative designs too whimsical at times, and I’ve read rather discouraging things about the game - and I’m not sure I would mentally be able to switch over to a health points system and still feel immersed after WT, if that makes sense.
Yet. We’re getting early models of howitzers, who’s to say that more accurate ones won’t be added in future? If they’re planning to go indirect fire mode.
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You must not have read through the whole thread. The person I was responding to wants maps to be a minimum of 10x10km (post 127)
I would love to see more indirect fire, but on poststamp-sized maps it would be pretty useless…
oh hell no. We’ve already got to deal with CAS and the current artillery system, let’s not add the broken WoT style aiming in the game.
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it already sorta exists with the rocket trucks and sturmtiger. If they made shells deviate to a higher degree the longer they are in the air or when they change directions, then it could be balanced in a way that makes them useless. Then the only issue would be you having people on your team in spawn doing nothing all match