Naval bot AA was buffed to a point where it broke the mode for anything but bluewater ships.
Naval already faces fundamental problems of questionable game design with e.g. destroyers and coastal boats being thrown into the same match but with one group completely outclassing the other.
Instead of letting destroyers spawn on the opposite side of the map and turning the middle capture point into a mixed territory destroyers can typically spawn shortly behind the coastal boats, often being able to shoot enemy boats directly from one spawn into the other.
It´s not without reason that most destroyer players immediately head into the coastal boat zone as it´s compareable to move a 8.0 tank into the zone where only Rank 1 tanks are fighting each other. Once you reach it you can start the clubbing.
The only real solution to this problem for coastal players was to rely on the rock paper scissor mechanic of destroyers beating coastal, coastal beating planes and planes beating destroyers.
This did end in situations where skilled bomber players could erase multiple destroyers with their bombs and was only balanced by the fact that the opponent could do the same. It also gave fighter planes a real purpose to also be played in this mode.
Yet now even early destroyers have super accurate AA guns on their decks that don´t require any active human participation and the only remaining factor was removed that prohibited destroyer players from deciding matches on their own.
The problem sort of changes the higher you go in bluewater ranks when AA becomes massively more prominent on ships. On one hand coastal boats only get played very rarely in higher BRs and the slow & larger boats completely disappear but as a pilot you´re lucky when you manage even a single approach to drop your bombs. It´s an entirely kamikaze move and experiencing AA in WT makes you question how planes like the Swordfish could ever land a hit on a Bismarck.
As mentioned before naval has fundamental game design problems that need to be solved but the solution to overpowered bot AA would be to lower the effectiveness of AI AA on ships against planes again. Either to the point where it mainly serves as an indicator for the player that a plane might attack him and he needs to switch to manual AA control in order to fight it off - so an actual skill factor becomes important - or to a point where they can sporadically hit, but not nearly as fool-proof, as they protect unaware players now. Possibly a mixture of both.
5 Likes
Average AI skr or something 1 tap pilot sniping planes at 16k+ft or higher with HE-VT a
2 Likes
I understand your dismay with the naval mode, over time it has been destroyed more, it is boring, monotonous, small boats vs armored barges, barges vs FG, FG vs DD, DD vs CL, CL vs CA, CA vs CC and CC vs BB, the only point they will hit will be in BB of rank 6 vs rank 7 and rank 8, but below they are all uneven, a light cruiser has nothing to do against a battle cruiser or a heavy cruiser, as well as a frigate against a destroyer., the armor and firepower are at the level of each BR. With small maps that at 8km the sec do more damage than the primaries and alone…
there are bots that do more damage than the players. :)
Both maps, AA and Automatic Sec are important problems in the game and the issue of automatic cannons, I asked years ago to deactivate it or reduce the range and precision by 60/70%, if you don’t have skill it can’t be that it automatically gives you points.
and the small maps with respawn points so close is illogical, as you say the DD and FG, in some maps they go to hunt boats and these have nothing to do.
GJ has to make many changes but he doesn’t want to. Like how poorly the rangefinder works, it gives erroneous values.
3 Likes
Even beginner DDs like the 3.3 Mutsuki with its 2 puny 7.7mm MGs have some absurd bot AA accuracy and thus can be deadly.
Just today I was flying a circle around a Musuki in about 1km distance max. Once you get into their cone of fire you can see the constant sparks on your plane as they keep hitting you no matter of your manoevering. It´s like heatseeker rounds. God beware you meet a USS Barker (also 3.3 beginner DD) with it´s 20mms.
It´s almost as if it was set intentionally high to be more protective of new bluewater line players - only with the problem that this very potent air defense screen it can be match deciding whenever you meet a destroyer player who actually knows how to play.
Considering the insane amount of RP asked for new boats and boat modules already at the BR around 2.3+ and constantly pressing those players into full uptiers with the first DDs it´s quite a burden for coastal players that their ships and planes arent even in a position to shape the outcome of a match. That´s up to bluewater players.
If your boats managed to get control of B + C in Golden Bay but your destroyer players didnt know what to do and were getting smashed around A you will meet enemy destroyer on B + C long before any timer runs down - and from that moment on the match is done for and there´s not much you can do.
Its just a stroke of irony that bluewater itself gets quite unfair as a mode once the bigger ships arrive that just outclass the smaller ones.
The mode has potential but Gaijin cant leave it basically abandoned and wonder why so few people play it.
There are many pressing problems in the game mode concept yet you feel 90% of Gaijin employees are tasked with adding new vehicles and bugfixing while an absolute minority is left with performing some badly needed balancing or game concept reworks, which leaves the overall impression of WT being outdated as even factors that are regarded very negative by the playerbase remain so for years.
2 Likes
the last change of decreasing the target acquisition time for bluewater and most frigates made coastal gameplay even more difficult - if this was to make it easier for new players it will cause the opposite… It means a giant nerf to small boats…
2 Likes
Naval has a huge power, but GJ is interested in money and it is logical for who doesn’t…
but to give access to new people who don’t want to learn, he does things to make it more arcade-like (when there is already an arggggcade mode) and breaks things that did work, like the rangefinder, before without so much garbage to aim, it worked well and you could play.
now the rangefinder is garbage, every time I go through an island or a ship crosses or whatever, it changes abruptly and then gives me another distance value, even if we are both stopped, up to 1 km difference, and today it happened to me several times in EC.
and the AA, they have always been absurd, and I find that it is good, because if not the same thing would happen as in land RB, which seems more like air RB. The only thing I would like GJ to change is to remove automatic AA and SEC and leave them in manual, or in auto but reduce the shooting distance to 50%, thus forcing the player to use target selection.
And most importantly, increase the BR, it cannot be that 4.3 frigates face 5.3 destroyers or 5.0 cruisers, less than 5.3 like for example the KMS Liepzig, which is like facing a T-90 or Leo A7 against a T-34 or a Sherman. As it also happens in light against heavy and battleships, there is a lot of difference in some, and it cannot be that the strategy is to stay hidden on an island shooting, as if the island was of any use when your bullets take away 1% of the crew and the enemy’s take away 50% of a round…
Being heavily dependent on destroyer players needlessly ruins so many matches for coastal boat players from 2.3 onwards to the very highest coastal BR (so exactly those with the most hard to bear grind already) and also ruins a lot of the (what could be) fairness of this mode - for absolutely no good reason. Just give destroyers a spawn at the other end of the map Gaijin and adjust the AA to bearable AI effectiveness.
To be honest I dont see why - if Gaijin intends to let destroyers and coastal boats fight side by side that can/should be combined in decks - they dont simply combine both tech trees into one and let people only play bluewater ships after reaching the required rank.
Not only to make things more intuitive for new players but also to require a learning curve before playing bluewater and relieving coastal boats from those constant uptiers until those players, which nowaday form the typically clueless bluewater beginners, reach 3.3 as well and everyone can create combined decks. Last but not least also in order to avoid bots having such an easy job playing bluewater where few people notice if people just do nothing productive as a symptom why this mode is struggling with
The way it is Gaijin now leaves the impression players have to decide on one tech tree first - naval or coastal. But if there´s such a gap of effectiveness and if the mode is meant to be played with both vehicles then such a distinction doesnt make sense.
1 Like