Level really is only an indicator of how long someone has played the game. You could die to a level 100 grinding a new nation or you could die to a level 20 who just happens to know what he’s doing. You can always watch replays and videos from more experienced players to see what tactics they use.
Keep in mind that level 100 might be trying a new game mode, too. All their experience might be solely ground forces or air.
I just played a match with a 2.3 lineup. I would say that qualifies as low BR.
Blue team had one 2-squad.
Red team had a 4-squad, a 3-squad and two 2-squads. Most Squad members were high level players.
To believe that level 100 are rare in low tiers is a myth. But lack of balance has other causes, as is illustrated.
And how many times is the winner of a 6BR game level 20 ? It happens.
Stat pushers are indeed the bane of many fun games for lower level players. I mostly agree with the points you make. I was talking from my own most recent experience from flying lower BR’s with a friend who is new to the game, so my observations are in no way representative of the general experience of new players, or the lower BR brackets at large.
The idea of whole squads dunking on lower BR ranges for the sole purpose of having high stats on thunderskill, is extremely worrisome imo. I’d question their sense of accomplishment, but it’s online gaming and numbers means more I guess. I might just have been lucky not to have run into such a paintrain myself.
Fighting good players in op vehicles as a newbie is usually a guaranteed way to get clapped real fast. The only reliably long term solution to this would be a player ELO based matchmaker. With the current matchmaker already kinda struggling with making non-mixed games, especially at certain “dead” BR brackets, I’d think this would be a monumental challenge to implement.
We have this, but it is not working. You might want to check this post and the whole thread:
I fully agree. Imho we won’t see this soon.
Some kind of skill based MM is needed. But really before that happens you can’t force lvl100 players out of low tiers. Many players started WT because they like WW2 era vehicles and guess what? WW2 era vehicles start from 1.0 and end to around 7.0-7.7
I’m forced to club low levels if I want to play some of my favorite tanks of WW2 like M5A1, PzII or 75mm Sherman. I think MM was much better 2015-16 before later tiers were added. Yes there was more lvl 75-100 playing tier 1 and 2, but all nations had those players, not anymore. Nowadays good luck winning matches in France, Germany or Britain when you face US or Russian team full of T-35s,M8A1s and M8s that are driven by lvl 100 players.
Also the difference between two lineups at low tier can be massive. F2P new player can have 5 vehicles free in lineup and most likely its not full lineup, meanwhile somebody like me can have 7-8 vehicles that are all from events and prems that outclass most tier I free vehicles.
This is just it…there is NO REASON to “forbid” you to play in low tiers…it should just be necessary to have MORE players like you and ideally on both teams.
The tanks don’t have to be equal for all…the balance comes from BOTH TEAMS being relatively similar. Players have to accept that sometimes they have a good tank, others they have a bad one…but both teams would have good and bad…so everyone can find targets…
The difference can be fun. I personally dont think it would be fun if everyone plays on T34s for instance…it would be balanced, but less fun.
But this game has had skill-based MM for years, it simply works by balancing the entire team and not throwing only players with intellectual deficit into the match as a match rank.
and probably one day they will officially confirm it, and then everyone will pretend that it was obvious.
This system is probably much more advanced than I show, but for people like me it’s a real pain because the only guarantee I have is that my team will be full of intellectually disabled…
even more - look at this Ranked Matchmaking - War Thunder Wiki
It has been developed for a long time, so how can we be sure that it doesn’t work everywhere all the
time?
And I can guarantee you one thing, you won’t find a battle in which one team has a total sum of “skills” of 400 and the other has 800. Finding a battle in which the spread is around 100 is bordering on a miracle.
What “skill” are you talking about?
I have read your speculation with interest few times. You also talk about data occasionally. But have you ever checked if such an observation (delta “skill”>100) would not be very unlikely on a random base either?
Yeah equal number of good players for both team would be great. Sadly with current matchmaking I can’t see it happening. Clubbing also causes unbalance to increase over time. When few nations have clearly better optimal lineups and and those lineups are easier to get clubbers and certain people will move to play those lineups.
Tier I and II are probably biggest problems because these tiers have some insane lineups and of course clubbing lvl 1-15 players is easier then going against somewhat better players in tier 4-6. What I mean is that because some nations have insane clubbing lineups example 2.7 both Russia and US get really good lineups that are abused a lot. 1.3-1.7 again US and Russia have really good lineups, Germany also has decent, but you rarely see clubbers anymore in 1.7-2.0 GER.
This has been problem many years now and it has come to point where some nations are constantly thrown against these clubber lineups and nations. I can’t see that being healthy to game or to retention of new players.
Other clubbing lineup that I see frequently is 4.0 GER using T-34 and KV-1B that can be really nasty targets against new and even decent players. I’ve been helping friend who is new to WT grind different nations and he wanted Jagdpanther from Germany, well lets just say that grind ended to 7 loss streak.
Thank god he had somebody like me helping him and guiding what to do and that we can easily go get some other cool vehicle. We have now grinded 5.3 US and 4.7 USSR lineups for him. Well we didn’t have loss streaks in those nations he actually has around 70-90% winrate in almost all Soviet US vehicles now :/
Like I can’t imagine how frustrating and demoralizing it is to new player that might not have friend to help him to grind Germany, Japan, France … etc and realize that he keeps loosing like 90% his matches.
You can’t imagine because it doesn’t happen. Even if you dont play, you will win 40% of the matches at least…
It is bad when a new player fights someone much better…but players will find opponents with similar level quickly enough…unless they themselves climb too fast (by purchasing a top tier pack for instance)
I recall being new…some matches i would find other players that were obvious new also…other times i would die quickly to someone who knew much more.
In fact…i learned many map points by being killed from those :)
It DOES NOT take so long to become AVERAGE…it is much harder to become GOOD. But by definition…most players end up being average…i know i am. NEW players become AVERAGE well before they reach 5.0 matches…
That is all about skill, but right now Germany seems to have really bad winrate at tier I, like it is insane how many matches we lost in 3 days when we did the grind. It just might be anomaly, because I just checked win rates of 25th of November and 1.0-1.7 Germany should have above 50% winrate. Somehow USSR has worst win rates at tier I with Italy and Japan.
Of course losses don’t matter that much when you get good and in WT individual performance has huge impact to grind speed. I just see that if those big loss streaks do happen to new players when they start game and play tier I (Not tier 6-7 prem) it might discourage some players that is game worth to play.
Pfft such a foolish thread imho, OHH Nooo that players level 100 playing sub 4.0 THE HORROR!
Meanwhile some noob that’s sub level 5 playing a F-4S, MiG-23ML, J35XS, T-72AV, M1 KVT, Leopard 2A4 an so on premiums dragging down matches at high BR’s.
(It’s unfortunate for your relative but that’s how the game is).
There’s no winning to this argument since there’s no skill based MM & HELL even then you’ll find players that are level 100 but about as skilless as a level 1 player in certain modes which would make any system based on skill useless unless you had certain rooms based on certain levels but at what point is the level split & so there’ll be more arguments on which levels split which rooms.
Worst is for modes like NF (Naval Forces) where the blasted devs split the trees so one player who might be level 100 playing a Rank V BR 3.3 machine which is worse then most Rank I BR 3.3 machine being used by a level 5 player that’ll cry out at the sight of a players level or the machines rank when even then it’s worse all round then the newer player & so complain I shouldn’t be there but at higher BR battles yet where should I be? If I’m at the top rank (this scenario has happened four times with me since 2.01).
Heh iirc I made level 100 in just under two year mostly from eliting machines for two TT’s even then I berely learnt anything at the time (this was mid 2014 - mid 2016).
TLDR, Player level means jack 90% of the time no matter the BR they play.
Ohh an to leave on a comical note I was using a Ki-45 with schrãge musik a few weeks back when I ran into a squad of four players with two being level 100 & two sub level 10, One level 100 reach out an said it was unfair that I was there recking house with the upwards firing 20 mils meanwhile I was the only level 100 there an our team fell apart in under 5 minutes to the two level 100’s, So even the level 100’s at those BR’s cry when facing their own levels oppression so there’s no winning.
I played 5-6BR last night and some of the winners and high scorers were level 12 or around that mark. Not sure how that works but it’s happening. I’m presuming people are starting new accounts on occasion as well. Nothing to stop them doing that especially if great stats is what they want or they are returning to the game after a long time away.
Or their old account was… ah… “cancelled”.
You mean in a like “Their friend used their account and may have had a plug-in” kind of way?
They already do that. As a part time seal clubber myself (during events mainly), EVERY single time without exception, unless it’s like 4AM and the matchmaker had been running for minutes, there will be a guy on the other team who also gets like 12 kills and cancels me out more or less, unless one of us hunts the other one down.
One other exception is squads.
I can’t prove it, but it feels very obvious when it happens for like 100 matches in a row. And I can’t think of a reason why Gaijin WOULDN’T do that, either. They have zero incentive not to.
Still doesn’t solve seal clubbing, though, so not really an answer to the thread.
Actual solutions I can think of:
Separate out < Level 20 (or whatever ends up allowing a similar number of players on both sides of the cutoff) and also < BR 3.0 simultaneously, into their own pool. Splitting in 2 wouldn’t hurt queue times enough to not be worth it.
Or same as above, but make the cutoff higher, and supplement the smaller (higher level) pool by adding more bots to matches if queue times are too long. They can still dunk on them in between duelling each other and get 1337 sooper high KDs, but without turning away new players.
If everybody at 1BR is a level 100 seal clubber then who is there to seal club?
If even 50% at BR are vets, then what is the issue?
Nobody, that’s the whole point, it solves seal clubbing.
“But now you can’t seal club!!” is not a valid objection to a solution to seal clubbing, lol
