I think you’ll agree that Gaijin could have modified the old EC without destroying the PvP aspect. But apparently, creating new mechanics—or even just tweaking the SP system—seemed too costly for them.
Time will tell what kind of player counts we’ll see in EC, but even now I’m already seeing suggestions in the chat about “peaceful bot farming,” and I harbor no illusions that the situation will improve a month or a year from now.
In EC you always have a choice. Choice to resp in another spawn point or take B-29 and kill BB from 8 km altitude with 4000lb bomb. And if enemy team takes many BB, you can win this battle with fighter or attack aircraft, killing ground targets and enemy AI-bombers.
But in new EC with lobby, full of bots, it is no sense, I’m not interested in winning a session against a whole team of bots and players who are farming bots.
A choice isn’t a choice if you can’t choose what you want.
I’m a simple person; I generally favour and prefer BBs and they are 90% of the reason why I like and play Naval, just like many others.
Therefore, I dislike anything gatekeeping BBs.
“You can just spawn your Emden elsewhere 50km away from everything” really isn’t a “choice” and is hardly a solution.
As I said, it would be ideal if all ship classes had a significant role to play; but not being the case, and in either case not being allowed to spawn your preferred ship classes, is bad.
People should spawn CCs, PTs and DDs optionally because they had a role to play in the battle; NOT forcefully because they haven’t managed to get enough SP for the only functionally viable vehicles.
One flight on fighter, that costs 200+ SP and you can take any BB without playing Emden
I look forward to a rethink on these two choices made in the past which are now synonymous with easy farming for your fun… @Stona_WT @Smin1080p_WT
bro if you wanna you can give an a time and i join for the enemy team and destroy you with my meta.
for the fun of the game pvp.
so wanna do this i will join for 1 match until the player still up on enemy and i focus only us tell me When do you want to do it? so we can have farm and importantly active all your booster. :3
Or, if you like, we could set up an 8v8 match with the people here at whatever BR you prefer and play against other players to see if this format works without bots. Then we could try another one with a different playstyle, starting from the bottom (DDs) and progressing through the classes (light cruisers, heavy cruisers, battleships). We could use a kill-based system where you move up a tier every 10k damage to see which works best and we’d do it without bots, since there are 100 people who voted and I think they’d be willing to see which format performs better.
While, yes as it was before, torpedoes were the only option and danger to the capital ships once you as a player or team only had access to destroyers to keep them in check, torpedoes could be quite cancerous as well, given the volume and power some of them have, especially in arcade. It is a massive problem that some nations have only access to torpedoes that are 1 So slow that they take ages to reach a target, 2 are easy to spot and dodge, and 3 even if they reach and should they hit they deal 0 damage to a Battleship.
And other nations have access to, lets take the strongest example, the shimakaze: Japan has access to 22 destroyers with Type 93 Long lance torps with -depending on the model- 15 or 20 km range, that go 93 kph and everything that is not an iowa, sojuz and maybe a yamato has a chance to survive any kind of hit. And the shimakaze has 15 of them!!! It is a problem that mainly only one nation has access to torpedoes that are like 10 times better than the best ones any other nation has access to. Because its one of the main weaponries that work bottom down. One hit and your 600 Spawn point sojuz is gone. But would it really help if 300 of them are zooming across the map at any given time of the match? They need to be a a viable option for every nation to attack, sink and deplete the sp pool of the other team. If no one but 1, maybe 2 or 3 nations has acess to that tool in a viable efficiency it just favours part of a team, or because the teams itself can be so heavily unbalanced, one team.
I’m sure the torpedo nets had a reason to be introduced. And it wasnt to nerf torpedoes. Well actually it was, bear with me. Part of that thought process i bet was to make it impossible to spam torpedoes INTO the ports and INTO your spawn making it so whenever, wherever you spawn you will instantly die to a wall of torps. But with each and every mechanic, lots of them can and will work both ways. Torpedo nets, Spawn points (Yes, you can now spawn your best ship whenever, wherever you want. But the enemy team can do the same. Youre fully uptiered in your hood. The enemy team of 3 players are fully downtiered in their iowa and yamato. Good luck spawning your hood for free…) all or most of these mechanics can and will have multiple effects and work in both ways.
You know what? I wholeheartedly agree with a lot of that.
But it was in large parts the charme of the gamemode that lots of different ships could and had to be played. If you can chose to only play the strongest ship type, because, yes it is unbalanced for a destroyer, then who will spawn the offmeta ships? 100s of ships wont be played anymore because anyone that has it can just spawn the best ships, Iowa or Sojuz, whenever.
The counter was that, killing a 5.0 destroyer gave basically 0 Spawn points in a 8.7 ship and it could just be respawned with 0 SP point cost attached. Now, its a problem that it still cost SL to do so if you got killed by a ship youre completely outmatched against, but still that was rather cheap. Respawning an iowa cost 46000 SL…
And one hit with a long lance torp and hes gone, and with him his 600 SP. But that causes further problems that i explained in my post above.
If you could spawn your emden 50 km away from all the battleships, but there would be missions and enemies, be it bots or players, if there would be things to do for the ship you want to play in that moment, and these enemies where in the range of power you can handle that would be a different thing. But the snail never even started bothering improving the spawn point system. (Not SP required TO spawn but avalailable spawns on the map). There were no spawn points/ areas where only destroyers, or only cruisers could spawn. It was always: everyone has to spawn at one spot, and that spot is the only quick action, medium or close range fighting area. Except for coastals. That still could and where played. And even those could and have been viable, imagine that.
I get that people prefer playing battleships. I prefer that as well. But to, because of that, to reduce the pool of ships that will be spawned to a handfull of ships just aint the move. If you would want to reduce the pool of ships only to the ones that are fair fighting each other then we have lobbies where: Sojuz can only fight sojuz. Iowas are in a iowa-only lobby (at least for RB). And yamatos and musashis maybe with SoDak. Then Bismarcks fight only vanguards, Roma Italia, Richelieu, Jean Bart and Clemenceau etc etc. It is not ENTIRELY possible to make every 1v1 ship battle completely fair and everyone can only spawn this one ship because he wants to play this ship in this session. But the lineup of that nation, even combined with planes can alleviate that. 25% maybe even more of the matches were won by who had the better and more air players, did you know that?
Now, maybe it is not important or necessary to start with destroyers and cruisers that low as free spawn options. I think it could be possible to have Battleships as starting options for the top bracket.
The starting point for ships that cost SP (lets say for the top Bracket) could be increased to 7.0. Or 7.3 Or 7.7. People can spawn battleships for free. Rather good ones as well, that, in a team effort and with distraction of destroyers with torps and cruisers with good maneuverability could still bring down one of the top tier Behemoths.
But not the absolute top notch monsters. You would still need SP to spawn the ones 1.7 BR levels above the free entry margin. And that would still make lesser ships more viable, since, when anyone decides “today is sojuz day” not even any 8.0 ship on its own will be viable facing, defending from or attacking that thing. And if he gets swarmed, bombed or some nameless hero manages to torp and sink him, he cant go straight back into it. He will need to gain sp again if he didnt manage to bully half the lobby. But thats still better than making sinking him completely pointless-because same as you, he can just respawn for free.
Please read what I wrote. That is not at all what I said, and what I said remained within what the original posts have established. Thank you.
Go deal with a pair of shimakazes in open water, I’ll wait.
Could you post a good translation here? I dont know which translator works well for russian-english translations. Just so that stuff doesnt get misunderstood or interpreted wrong because of a bad ai translation.
As far as i can tell from the bad translation of my browser i agree to most stuff.
But i am actually not too unhappy about the bots. If that means you can get in a match in a somewhat shorter time that is actually perfect. But the limit for match entry with 2 players already is way too low. Also that it basically never fills up entirely but just starts enless new matches with barely any players in them.
The bots, while ofc, still being bots and not doing anything tactically meaningful offer players an opportunity to farm and do something until the server fills up. And they are more or less enemies that have to be taken seriously. They do serious damage if you let them hit you. But it feels like their hits just are doing way more and way more consistent damage than you can do to them even if you hit. And most importantly they fire and hit from way too far way too accurately. ITs almost impossible for you as a player in a 5.0 destroyer to hit another destroyer at 17 km due to the high arc of the shells at impact. While they do hit you, engage from across half the map and sometimes every hit of them takes out bridge, engines and turrets.
There needs to be some in between. Start matches only with at least 6 or maybe even 8 players. Depending on how quickly people are joining the queues ofc possibly even more. If every 10 minutes 20 players are queuing, start matches with 20. Minimal wait time from first player queueing for new match till start…idk…lets say 3 minutes or something. Theres no need to start the matches instantly. If everyone can just leave every match where theres something he might not like like the map, being uptiered and can rejoin the next one instantly theres just endless rows of players leaving, no one staying and finishing a match and matches will never fill up. Naval EC doesnt need to cater for the shortest attention span people there are. Its naval EC. Matches are 3 hours long and the maps are big. Ships are slow and yes, Shells travel far. Theres other modes for people that need every engagement to start instantly and be over in 30 seconds. Possibly even in arcade.
and fill the rest with bots. So you start at least with 6 maybe even 8 players. Then maybe in the next 10 minutes 6 more players will join. Maybe some will leave but there will be new players joining through 3/4 of the match. The ones joining very late could even get a bonus to their rewards should they stay and finish the match especially if they end up in the already losing team.
Just so you dont have to wait in queue for 45 minutes anymore, watch the waiting players numbers slowly creep to 10, then 12, then 15. Then a match starts on a another regions server like south america and the numbers are suddenly 4 again…Thats just annoying and then id rather play with 6 players after waiting 15 minutes.
Recent changes were introduced to EC. They did not benefit the mode; battles now feature only three players per side instead of full teams as before.
The developers need to realize that for a certain segment of the player base, EC was the last remaining incentive to play naval battles. I have no desire to farm bots in random battles just so I can farm bots in EC. The English-speaking community has also weighed in on this issue. While some changes—such as the introduction of a respawn timer and adjustments to the Arcade mode—were well-received, they did not outweigh the downsides of the new additions.
Here is a list of problems and proposed solutions to rectify the situation:
We need to revert to the old system, even if it means longer wait times.
The solution: revert to the way it was.
With the introduction of top-tier battleships and the expansion of the BR range to 8.7, the disparity in ship capabilities no longer aligns with the SP costs. These costs need to be increased significantly—a change that would curb the trend of battleships appearing too early and dominating the match completely. For instance, a 6.0–6.3 ship should cost 600 SP, while an 8.7 ship would cost around 1,200–1,800 points. This would make every SP expenditure meaningful and greatly increase the variety of targets encountered in battle.
To achieve this, a separate “convoy” event for destroyers and cruisers needs to be created on the map, away from the battleship spawn points. Additionally, players should be able to farm SP using aircraft: fighters without external ordnance, as well as any aircraft carrying a total bomb load of up to 500 kg or a single torpedo, should be free to spawn, while a progressive SP cost scale based on the specific loadout should be introduced for other aircraft.
Bots in Naval are not a proper game mechanic; in essence, they are a stopgap measure. They cannot select spawn points or carry out any objectives. In the new EC mode, most of them just sail in random directions—tens of kilometers away from the convoy—because the convoy’s spawn points are inaccessible to them.
IMHO any kind of model that uses SP as a way to balance out difference between battleships just won’t ever work. It works fine with limiting a degree of functionality on given BR that’s still belong to said rating. in ground sim, you can have either 2 respawns in heavy tank or 3 in medium/light/SPAA. Similarly in GRB, but it also determines which types of suspended weapons and in which quantity aircraft would use - (usually) vehicle is balanced against its possible enemies already, and SP only determines the way you would fight them. In Nuclear Thunder SP determines only how hard your nuke would damage enemy airfield, while keeping its bomber the same
However, in naval EC spawn points works not as functionality, but power limiter, thus turning dynamic from “I’ll be able to take out X targets with Y weapon in Z time with strategy A while still being competitive no matter the choice” to “I have to grind SP to be able to do anything at all”. Unless your ship have something special like Long Lance on Shimakaze, 283mm on Graf Spee, ASW rocket launchers and favorable position on frigates, etc. you have little to do against the next SP power level, and a single top tier battleship makes useless everything but another top tier battleship in 15km radius.
“But if there’s no spawn points, then everyone would immediately pick their best battleship on start, thus killing variety even more!” Exactly! So limit it in other, more complex way than fixed SP costs:
The hard way. Limit the amount of ships of each type/BR bracket (preferably dynamically based on player count). For example, in team of 6 there will be 1 battleship, 2 cruisers and 3 destroyers. Each time you die, there’s a 15 seconds cooldown on spawning in the same class of ships (except destroyers and boats), so someone else in the team would be able to pick it. Optionally, combine with existing SP costs so only worthy players can use more powerful ships. That way every class is in use, everyone can eventually play their battleship and late join is no longer an issue, fleets will be moee historically accurate ™, but now there’s a race for battleship inside team
The light way. Instead of hard limiting ship count as per first variant, enforce them by floating SP costs, based on enemy team composition. In “1 BB, 5 DD vs 5 BB and others” make price of battleship lower for the first team and higher for the second. Same as first, but without race, keeping late join problem in more relaxed state and a pain for developer to calculate exact system
The best way. Add new mechanics or tasks for other classes. Add submarines, so there’s self balancing rock-paper-scissors dynamic between subs, frigates/corvettes/destroyers and battleship. Limit battleships to one spawnpoint, while moving convoys closer to others, add lobby system from air sim, rework EC completely as OP suggested, whatever. Just keep bots out of EC
This should be the main slogan for naval players now.
Thats true. But if those bots would also spawn at the convoy that would help if the match starts with very small numbers of players. Then you, if you would spawn at the convoy would have something to do until the server fills up.
But only if the ai then wouldnt mass focus you as the only player spawning there. If you attack a bot or a bot comes, lets say 10 km or closer to you, that bot but only one, is firing back. If only the bot you are attacking is firing back that would be a nice feature to fill the time where there are no players or no players in your area. You dont have to attack them, you can still try to find the players and find out where they are heading and whether they are plannign to attack one of your harbors or your carrier. But if there arent any you can just duel with some bots. Those should have some better wayfinding of course, like staying close and around the convoy or something.
Of course, these measures are good and necessary, but they are far more complex and labor-intensive. However, this specific topic arose not for the sake of gradual improvement, but to immediately save the game mode; that is why simple, urgent measures are being proposed here.
I see and yes, i stand with urgent measures and your and others ideas to quickly improve it in the best and most reasonable ways.
But i dont think enabling bots to spawn at the convoys, carriers and the other spawns is that complicated. Also to only make the one you are attacking to shoot back or if he gets really close to you. That shouldnt overwhelm gaijins capabilites considering all the stuff they manage to implement in this game…
I have myself put some thoughts into what could be done, but obviously im not a developer so i dont know which ideas in general would be the best and easiest to implement. Also maybe theres lots of things i didnt think of where my ideas might be faulty, thats why we are discussing everything here.
Your ideas are also very good, so it will be interesting what all the masterminds here think of the different ideas proposed, and which would help the quickest in the best way to not turn ec into a shoot-bots-for-3-hours-straight without any players and be happy about quick grinding fiesta. Once most players finished their grind, most of them will abandon the boring and eventless mode. And the long time players wont play it to begin with.
No one plays Heli EC for the fun of it in his spaded top tier heli. Well, maybe some do, to unwind, good for them. But they take everything from the players that want to grind while the rewards there are absolutely abysmal. After spading my helis I’m not touching it even with pincers (ever again), as we say in germany ;-) Its a lost gamemode if its only purpose is to enable people to grind and spade their vehicles (and its not even good at its only purpose) and no ones playing it for the fun of it. It should and needs to be good for both groups. To bring more new players in but to also make them stay once they have reached top tier. as well as giving a gamemode with various viable tactics and playstyles and missions to fulfill to the long term players that already loved the gamemode as it was. That is the task at hand.
(and just to clarify, I’m not saying that to sound teacher-like or as if you didnt already know that, because i believe you already do). I think most people here are aware of that. I say that because i believe that is what the snail is mainly trying to achieve here. And if that’s what they want then thats something that we cant change. We can only come up with ideas of how it might be better for everyone that wants to play it and hope that gaijin picks some of these ideas up. That doesnt mean that i necessarily agree with the idea that naval EC has to be a gamemode for someone that is playing his first naval match. (Though nothing speaks against naval ec being more inclusive and open to everyone. But it is a more complicated gamemode that has way more mechanics in place than normal RB so someone thats new to naval will generally struggle…like not scouting the carrier…NAVAL EC TUTORIAL VIDEO WHEN SNAIL??? Team up with some CCs man…) Or that it has to be the number one mode for grinding. (though ofc, nothing speaks against naval ec being good for grinding as well, i’m happy if the rewards improve.) But if thats what the snail wants to achieve, we cant change their goals…only provide better ideas of how to achieve them. Or well maybe we could also discuss their goals but we dont even exactly know what those are…
Exactly.
Imagine a Ground EC equivalent; people being forced to spawn 1930s Light Tanks vs 1950s Super Heavies because “actually it’s better if you earn the SP for 1950s Super Heavies starting from 1930s Light Tanks, because otherwise, those spawning 1950s Super Heavies away have an edge vs those who only have up to 1940s Heavies to spawn right away; but if everyone has to grind from 1930s Light Tanks, then it’s balanced, it’s not like some people will clearly get 1950s Super Heavies before anyone else and then stomp on them, specially screw people joining late and being forced to face IS-4Ms in M3 Stuarts. Also let’s ignore that this still leads to 1940s Heavies being unbalanced against 1950s Super Heavies WHILE also being unbalanced against 1930s Light tanks.”
Or imagine the Air EC equivalent; people being forced to spawn Korean War jets vs Gen 4.5s because “actually it’s better if you earn the SP for Gen 4.5s starting from Korea, because otherwise, those spawning Gen 4.5s right away have an edge vs those spawning Gen 4s right away; but if everyone has to grind from Korea, then it’s balanced, it’s not like some people will clearly get Gen 4.5s before anyone else and then stomp on them, specially screw people joining late and being forced to face SU-30SM2s in F-86s. Also let’s ignore that this still leads to Gen 4s being unbalanced against Gen 4.5s WHILE also being unbalanced against Korean War jets.”
It just doesn’t make any sense