Should these aircraft be foldered?
There’s no reason for F6F-5 to be foldered with the Wildcats; it appears to have been done solely to reduce the number of lower BR rank 3 aircraft that can grind BPs and events.
And if you’re going to put both B-25s at rank 2, kindly folder them instead of forcing us to grind both.
They should at least move the Hellcat back to rank 3. Its stupid how the US and French ones are rank 2 but the British one is rank 3.
The British one is a premium, that’s why its rank didn’t dropped.
I’m aware. But there’s no reason for the non-premium ones to be rank 2. They are literally the same aircraft. Right now all it does is prevent people from using the F6F in events for no reason.
Ranks aside, the recent folder shuffle was some of the most nonsensical changes to happen to the game in years.
I’m pretty sure they had an AI do most of the work. Look at the F4F/F6F folder, it goes F4F-3, F4F-4, and F6F-5 foldered, I’ve come to the conclusion that an AI saw 3-4-5 and had them lumped together.
USA P-51C is the only Rank 2 P-51C in the game as well. Swedish, Japanese and French Premiums are all Rank 3.
The haphazard reorganization of tech trees decimated the amount of enjoyable Rank 2 WW2 aircraft across the board.
But hey, at least US still has the only F-84F in the game with an airspawn right?
Ranks and folders are nonsensically solely determined by BR which leads to all sorts of bs like this
Yep. If it was purely automated it wouldn’t be so bad, but it was redesigned by actual people, with the supposed justification that there has to be a certain max amount of rows per rank… despite that being something they themselves came up with…? “We have to do it this way because we decided that we have to do it this way.”
Foldering by BR instead of vehicle type only serves to make things worse; I have no idea where anything is anymore, because it’s designed to make sense for a spreadsheet, not a human.
Honestly so real, the new foldering changes will having good intentions are just wacky sometimes. Like seperating the Fw 190Ds by both rank and folder, putting the BMP-1 and Marder 1A1 (-) together because “they’re the same BR” when the Marder 1A3 is literally right there just folder the Marders together, seperating the early P-51s (the C and the cannonstang), foldering the F8F and F7F instead of the two F8Fs, etc etc. It really needs to be like reworked. I understand that its supposed to be for AB players because “that’s the larger playerbase” (surprisingly) but AB averages BRs in a lineup so its not a bad thing to have two different BR vehicles in a folder since they are inherently related; instead of ordering them based on BR that gets changed all the time
The whole foldering of vehicles was nonsensical anyways, they made sure to folder the older vehicles behind the newer ones so that it’s more likely you had not researched them, completely asinine combinations and rank increase and decrease to mess with lineups.
My game is full of situations like this now
Or trying to somehow do anything with the AB 205 for years, only to get some garbage shoved in the middle of it.
If they only spend half the amount of time on improving the game as they do on trying to deny us any sort of improvement the game would be amazing, can’t wait for the 0.05% changes when they finally give us those nation bonus things they delayed for like a year because imagine if we could research something in 90 hours instead of 95h.
Rank 1 and 2 should just be able to be used for whatever, limiting it to rank 3 and then constantly raising the bar for rank 3 and shoving things into rank ll based on literally nothing is obnoxious.
There are hundreds upon hundreds of vehicles we have to grind and spend SL on, event vehicles and premium vehicles and we don’t get to use them for anything.
Rank II being excluded from everything is easily one of the worst things in WT. Rank I get to a degree (though still dislike it), but Rank II is filled with some of the most popular, fun, and iconic vehicles in the game, it’s absurd.
Downranking undertiered / OP Rank III aircraft in order to make them less played is imho the last measure for gaijin to deal with flaws in their BR setting policy.
The popularity and iconic nature of some planes made them highly attractive for rookie players. The poor results of masses of untrained pilots dragged the BRs way too low and made them highly attractive for stat padders. Most prominent: P-51 C-10 & P-39 N-0.
So imho there is nothing wrong to drag those objectively overpowered / undertiered planes to Rank II in order to protect Rank III players of other nations.
Being at Rank II is not suited to stop stat padders from using them, but the average US player is forced to play Rank III planes to do dailies and/or BP tasks - in which he has way more realistic BR settings.
You saw the impact of average pilot skill on BRs recently the other way around:
Almost nobody played the J2M2 at Rank II with a BR of 4.3 (stable for years) - but after “upranking” it to Rank III, the BR increased extremely quick from 4.3 to 5.0.
you contradicted yourself
Downranking undertiered / OP Rank III aircraft in order to make them less played is imho the last measure for gaijin to deal with flaws in their BR setting policy.
and
You saw the impact of average pilot skill on BRs recently the other way around:
Almost nobody played the J2M2 at Rank II with a BR of 4.3 (stable for years) - but after “upranking” it to Rank III, the BR increased extremely quick from 4.3 to 5.0.
in other words if you increased the rank of these statpadding planes they’d go up in BR
It gets increasingly worse as they keep putting more and more things in it, with the latest ‘‘RP decreases and foldering’’ of vehicles they also downtiered a lot of the lowest BR vehicles, again whilst pretending it was some sort of improvement to the game as they tend to do.
The Panzer IVs getting shoved down into it, at this point you’re playing 5.3 before you finally have a decent lineup for Germany.
Rank I get to a degree
It would be an argument if Gaijin didn’t pimp out these new players to players with event vehicles for maximing abuse and minimal opposition as everyone else is playing rank lll and up.
I am not contradicting myself - and you missed a few, but decisive differences.
For a highly popular nation like US a few hundred (thousands?) stat padders have no statistical impact on the BR setting policy based on plain average if hordes of rookie pilots drag the decisive average artificially low just based on their inexperience.
That minor nations have on average more experienced players is no secret - best examples are highly overtiered Japanese and Italian props - most prominent A6M5 at BR 5.3 or Re 2005 at 6.0.
My J2M2 example showed that if the average player has more training, the BR will increase if the plane got “upranked” (and “usable” for daily/BP tasks) like here from rank II to rank III.
So the J2M2 was not attractive at Rank II - Rank III made it attractive and subsequently the BR increased.
Making the P-51 C-10 less attractive by downranking it to Rank II simply prevents a lot of players to use them (and take advantage of their too low BR), so it might happen that the BR will increase - at least in theory. But the fact that US is so attractive for new players might prevent this.
The flaw of BR setting by plain average is obvious if the popularity of the plane is making them highly attractive for hordes of rookies. In the past repair cost were an additional steering factor, but the riots in May/June last year eliminated this; that’s why i wrote to see “downranking” as “last measure” in case BR adjustments are not justified by statistical data.
Sounds like including Rank IIs in tasks/etc is the obvious solution then, as it would move this “split” outside of where it currently is in the middle of popular WWII BRs.
Then grinders would mercilessly club Tier II newbs. They make most events and specials Tier III and up to keep them out of low tier.
That’s the official line, yes. In practice it’s effectively irrelevant. Not only due to how quickly one progresses through early ranks, but also due to the significant amount of new players at all tiers, including top tier, due to premium/event vehicles.
It’s not a reason that holds enough water to justify cutting such a massive and enjoyable section out of the game.
This is an absurd argument, as the plane is rank 3 in three other nations. Any of these ‘stat padders’ (are the stat padders in the room with you now?) can simply play the Japanese, French or Swedish version(s) and still complete tasks while earning 2x the rewards.