There are billions of people on this planet which believe in religion based on zero hard evidence.
Even in physics a lot of things are based on assumptions which were tried to prove with math but rely on circumstantial evidence at best or pure wild guesses.
Best examples are things like dark matter or the flaws of certain laws (like gravity or motion, look up the famous dome example) which prove weaknessess in our understanding of certain things which can not be proven.
So whilst i agree that the claim:
looks at first glance rather strange - it makes no sense to dismiss any anecdotal observations or perceptions as nonsense just because your experience or perception deviates from it.
I would also think about the usage of the expression “conspiracy theory” and recommend to look up who invented this for what specific reason at which certain point in history.
Imho this fellow player might be on the right track:
simply based on the fact that Air AB has a way bigger issue with stat padder squads at lower BRs. As an example a player extract from a Squad with highly experienced players with obviously a 2nd account: Thunderskill link.
This is not necessarily helpful as server replays are based on data points which might deviate from your in-game perception.
If you have time to dig into that topic you might find examples in which near hits in-game miss you at far greater distances in replays. Imho the balance of ping / fps between opponents is way more decisive; you will find a lot of anecdotal evidence that player success increases when the connection gets worse.
Comment like this:
make no sense as the forum software does not allow a reformatting of posts for new members - and a hypothesis is based on assumptions & observations.
Around mid August to mid September last year, in AB air(at all BRs I believe) there was a very noticable change with hits not registering like the used to, became very poor and the size of the “hitboxes” was shrunken very noticeably . … this went on for 4 - 5 weeks I think and then suddenly . . . it was gone, everything back to normal, over night. Neither event was announced or mentioned by the game. I suspect it was a testing to see if players even noticed the difference. I for one noticed it immediately, but did not come to the Forum to make note of it . . . that was clearly a mistake on my part. A very short while after things got back to normal, they announced the testing of the Severe Damage mechanic, which we did. And BOOM! . . there it was again, the same abysmal hit detection and shrunken hitboxes, with the change in the scoring mechanics as well this time.
All this leads me to believe, the Severe Damage mechanic was coming into the game no matter what any of the players said, they did the “sekrit/ninja” testing ahead of time, again to see if the players even noticed. When there was no outcry from the players, that sealed the deal, the Severe Damage mechanic was already destined to go in to the game before we even tested it I suspect.
While the Severe Damage mechanic is not horrible idea in and of itself, the effort to give better kill credits where due is a good thing. However, the new RNG based engagements with very poor hit detection & smaller hitboxes has totally changed how Air Battles works and not in a good way at all. It is a “dumbing down” move (which is becoming more & more common in the entire game it seems) that in no way has enhanced game play, at least not in AB . . . I am sorry I cannot speak for RB or Sim air.
I literally have to “kill” enemy planes 3 - 4 times more to get the same 1 kill credit.
While it does end up giving you more kill credits overall, which can be handy for doing kill based tasks, it also diminishes your overall scoring, affecting mission score and RP earnings a great deal. Making these score based events even harder, couple that with the lack of bonus for those of us that like to play AB, and the penalties for not playing high tier . . . well you get the idea.
I’m just putting this out there because, to me anyway, it makes more sense than the level thing you are suggesting. I think newer players at very low levels may still get some kinda game play “break”, but once you reach a certain point, you’re thrown into the “deep end” with everybody else . . .
And yes, I know . . . everything I said is “theory”, but comes with well over 25,000 games played in AB, so . . . not just guessing completely, even tho I cannot “prove” much of what I said . . . it’s just from my game play experience
This is an interesting theory, I expect it does happen a lot, little tweaks or sometimes big tweaks, see if anybody notices and if they do how big is the outcry.
I expect only the coders and senior executives know what is going on in the game regarding things like this. We the players will never know as it is all corporate secrets we cannot possibly divulge as it will harm us and give the opposition an edge. Not that they are all doing the same thing though.
A far few conspiracy theories that were seen as totally crazy and they would never do that man, have unfortunately been proven to be true. But thankfully this is just a little time wasting computer game, it is not like they are injecting us with syphilis, telling us it is all ok and seeing how a lifetime of having the disease effects us.
Although it would be interesting if some sort of psychological experiment was being played out here.
From my perspective that seems good. Most real pilots had far more difficulty getting one kill in many missions. Yes, it is arcade but it shouldn’t be too easy.
But in regard to the topic, I find no obvious difficulty difference in killing low and high level players. Maybe the TS encounters a new spawn camper gang protection?
I am here for 9 years and I play arcade often on a daily base. I have seen hit detection go up and down with internet providers, location, updates. I have sometimes thought that this guy has a lucky charm, and sometimes the person indeed had a low level. But I observe this so rarely that I could attribute it to just about anything but a system.
So if they protect utter newbs from pros a little, that would not even be an issue for me. I just lack any systematic evidence of this.
I know that Gaijin had implemented smurfs on premium vehicles, because I tested it consistently. When we made it public, it was of course denied, deleted but… a few month later it was either gone or not blatantly obvious any longer. So yes, they would do that if it suits them.
Yeah, if it had always been that way, wouldn’t be an issue for me at all, buuuuut . . . making such drastic changes this late in the game is pretty “bush league” imho.
I have also been kind of adverse to the 5x - 10x “effective range” of most guns in Air Battles and the insanely laser sharp accuracy of guns that should drop off after a couple 100 meters max, but again, it has always been that way and the same for everyone so . . in that sense . . “fair”. If not very realistic and I understand liberties have to be taken for the sake of “game play”.
I have had to “re-learn” how to fly/play planes in this game several times over the years, and most of those changes were announced/explained to a degree.(The mouse aim testing and introduction of the WIP option . . “transparency”) But the last 3 - 4 years, with the focus of the development team literally 95% on top tier/jets & ground vehicles, the vast sweeping changes they have made have had huge and mostly adverse effects on the rest of the game. The last “speed up”(there have been 2 in recent years, both unannounced) made the lower tier/BR “lighter” planes crazy OP for maneuvering around . . . La-5’s fly circles around La-7’s. Bf 109 F-1 & F-2’s are far better than the old "OP’ F-4 & F-4 trop now . . the latter are still good and in the “tier III & higher” category for doing tasks and stuff, but . . . these “stroke of a hand/one size fits all” changes are not well thought out or checked out before being put in the game and then just left that way as it is . . . “good enough”.
They just don’t pay much attn to the 80% or so of the game that is not “top tier/meta”/carrot on the stick that generates the revenue now. And I get that . . the Dev team is prolly a lot smaller than most of us know/realize and prioritizing workload for the stuff that makes money is a smart business move. Even if it neglects parts of the game that have and still will make them money too.
Just hurts my fee fees, that the part of the game that hooked me some 11 years ago and is still the most fun aspect of the game to me is just . . . an afterthought anymore . . . if even that
One, such system exists. The server accounts for lower level players by offering them different calculations depending on player level.
Two, such system doesn’t exist and it can be chalked up to something like confirmation bias.
Between Gaijin making some sort of complex bias mechanic baked into the game’s calculations or a case of confirmation bias, well, Occam’s razor probably applies here: The explanation that makes the least number of assumptions is usually the correct one.
For instance, OP claims to have experienced “thousands” of incidents when they open the enemy’s profile to see their player level. If they are below level 50 it is likely he will assume it is because of bias, whereas if they’re above level 50 he won’t pay particular attention to it.
Sorry to say this, but physics is an observation based science. Theories will only be considered if they can explain observations. To quote R.P.Feynman: It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.
Physics doesn’t say that dark matter exists. Dark matter is just an idea among others to explain observations. But in this thread, we have someone who claims to have observed something. We are not even all in agreement on the observation he made.
This is basically your capitulation - if you ignore completely what i wrote and come with flat earth nonsense and repeat the wording “conspiracy theory” in a shortened version you are either just proving that you have either no clue what you are talking about or, way more likely, dismiss the possibility that something like the OP described could exist.
Even if the CEO of gaijin would publicly declare that something similar as claimed by the OP would not exist - either you believe it or not.
Basically this discussion is pointless until somebody would leak their code which would provide hard evidence to prove or disprove the claim.
im repeating the word conspiracy theory because it is a conspiracy theory. otherwise go and prove it. bring me 100 clips, 50 where you shoot high level players and 50 where you shoot low level players, every clip from the games none hidden or cherry picked. if noobs planes were reinforced to the point where someone can notice it then it would be visible.
otherwise its just bullshit yapping and “i feel” this and that conspiracy theory. i dont care about your fancy use of words. conspiracy is a conspiracy.
for a claim like that, producing evidence would be incredibly easy.
i like your way of thinking, but from my pov you underestimate the rather limited possibilities any game developer has to steer player behaviour - which has the ultimate goal to earn money by increasing player commitment as long as they are income relevant.
It is basically the same as with countless threads regarding bias - if something like it would exist it would be a result of multiple factors working together - with the sole purpose to deny the ability of players to identify clearly a single parameter.
A few percentages here or there (hit probability, spread, RNG for pen/not pen / shrapnel damage) are impossible to prove on their own, but might be suited to show desired effects.
If you read about highly complex psychological mechanisms implemented in video games you might chance your mind regarding actual probabilities.
Sorry to say this, but you describe just one aspect of physics - called experimental physics. Physics has way more aspects, the most known conflicts result in differences between experimental and theoretical physics (which tries exactly what i wrote: Try to explain things without physical evidence, or like with the dome example when experimental physics shows weaknesses).
Dark matter was used by me on purpose to describe the limits of physics as soon as experimental and theoretical physics have to work with too many unknown variables. Usually theoretical physics work with assumption when available technology is not advanced enough to prove them with experimental physics.
This is technically seen not correct - the main issue i see is that he made assumptions based on his observations - and these assumptions might be true or not; it actually doesn’t matter if others have deviating observations or come to other conclusions.
I criticised the instant rejection of such theories. Even if the probability seems rather low the whole concept of probabilities works with the fact that even rather unlikely events might happen.
the thing op argued for is easily proveable and obviously would show up in statistics too. if noob planes were reinforced and high level planes werent you could obviously track the hit, damage and death statistics effortlessly
or what next? gaijin secretly deletes hit data to hide their very secret discriminatory system from being exposed and no one can ever prove it and can only feel it in their bones!
like i said if there is something that can be noticed that the op argued about like the idea of low lever planes being more bullet resistant you could record each hit and obviously prove that low level planes can tank more without having the code
however if low level and high level planes actually tank the same amount of hits and die the same then that would also be visible which is why you dont like the idea of recording such data
no balls go get me 100 clips to try and support OP you wont
You are way to experienced to overlook the major flaw of any player attempts to prove or disprove any assumptions based on in-game footage and replays. They simply don’t show in every case what actually happened as technical limitations (lag, ping, PL, whatever) lead to calculated results which might not be visible.
You are fully aware of that in some matches you get hit by enemies even from impossible angles and you see in game enemy shots flying 3-5 meters below you whilst in the replay they either actually hit you or (in rare occasions) even pass you with greater distances but you still got hit.
yet if the thing op is claiming is true and it is visible to him it will be visible on footage. only way it couldnt be visible is if it didnt happen.
statistics will show. replay will show. after 100 clips if it actually exists to the point where it makes your experience worse it will be visible. your experience wasnt worse if 100 clips and everything worked out perfectly: planes actually took same amount of damage and died after same amount of hits. cry about it.
