Naval mode is finally dead

Game Discussion Arcade Battle
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1518

If we knew the number of unique players, we could easily calculate the average number of battles per player.

Technically, this is possible using Global Statistics data from StatShark, but there is a problem with this method. If you’re interested, I explained the details here:

Spoiler

For this reason, I wouldn’t mix these two stats. Hopefully, one day the War Thunder devs will fix the leaderboard bug so we can make this kind of comparison.

And this is why I track the number of sessions (the number of battles played by real players, excluding AI bots). It’s the best way to measure the popularity of a game mode.

It’s not perfect, there’s still the issue of different average battle lengths across game modes. But it’s not too significant. You can check Bruce’s topic that addresses this:

Even if you account for the average battle time per game mode, it doesn’t change much.

The funny thing is that after the devs changed the aiming system in Naval Arcade, I decided to stop playing Naval altogether. As a result, I also stopped buying the Battle Pass (Naval was my main game mode, where I completed most tasks). And since I no longer play Naval, I’ve also stopped participating in Naval events. For about five years I hadn’t missed a single one, but now I just ignore them.

What’s surprising is how much more free time I have now. I finally have time for other things in my life. Before, I cared too much about War Thunder, and there was always something to do in the game: daily tasks, challenges, events. Nowadays, I only focus on daily logins and maintaining some squadron activity. I rarely even take part in Air or Ground events, I skip most of them these days.

Just this one aiming change ended up changing my life. And honestly, I’m really happy about it. It finally pulled me out of War Thunder’s addiction. I no longer feel like I have to play War Thunder every single day.

I disagree with this statement, these are two different game modes. Using the same logic, every good Ground or Air player should only play SB. In my opinion, people should play what they enjoy most, no matter which game mode it is.

I also disagree with the idea that Realistic is always harder than Arcade. It really depends on what you play. For example, try flying bombers in Air Arcade versus Air Realistic. Achieving good results with a bomber in Air Arcade is very difficult, whereas flying a rank 1-5 bomber in Air Realistic is generally much easier.

For me, the game doesn’t work like this: Arcade for new players, Realistic for average players, and Sim for good players. I just don’t see any logic in that kind of classification.

5 Likes
1519

That’s a terrible example that doesn’t even involve naval vessels.

Trust me, as a Pr. 206 user, my life would be much easier if I played naval arcade.

Edit:

I do agree, despite what I said earlier.

1 Like
1520

Nah skill isure

1521

Me as well. For 12+ years I’ve plugged away at tech trees, but it was Naval that had me showing every day, grinding every event, buying or earning every battlepass. With the aim change, my overall desire to play at all has tanked.

I still think War Thunder is a game without peer. It’s just what they did to Naval was so gross, it turned me off.

I try to jump into a tank or plane match but, I’m pretty disgusted with the company right now. It was a pretty violent change to mechanics without any real input from the community. And naval being so small, it’s pretty defenseless.

I’m still playing other games but, yeah. It IS freeing.

We’ll see how the trend trends. Growth is stagnating. Perhaps because the back-to-back hype is over. The fact that realistic is falling harder could be due to its exponentially harder aim mechanic in-light-of ZERO analogue to Arcade (now). People have no real context of how it works. No training wheels.

But it is still hella early. Few more months.

8 Likes
1522

Will the Yamato continue this crap?
It can’t take bullets, it explodes with any shot… anyway… the most armored ship in history with the worst performance… the Soyuz, which doesn’t even exist, is the strongest of the battleships… regrettable

3 Likes
1523

I suggest you discuss Yamato over here:

In short, however, Yamato’s problems stem from its fundamental design coupled with overly volatile ammo racks as a game mechanic. I would suggest testing it on the dev server, though, because in the next update a bug is being fixed with the Yamato which should improve the survivability of secondary ammo detonations.

1 Like
1524

today I almost agree, but remain hopeful

  • drop south kvarken conquest (so much worse after the last changes, and it was always the most annoying map)

  • rework all maps and spawns to take the increased accuracy into account (as much as we’re in a time of flux, boat and light fleet spawns are ridiculous, heavy fleet mostly has an open spawn and in or close to cover spawn already)

  • boost BR for SKR-7 and Pr206 BR (ammo limits were not much of an issue before, but basically nothing now, compared to powerful single gun boats they cannot be suppressed)

  • increase the BR or reduce the toughness of the French boats

Today it was (almost literally) kvarken, kvarken, kvarken, SKR-7, SKR-7… and with the French boats ruining the fun runaround and “running out of daytime” thing that was low BR I’m ending the day without finishing tasks. Sure it was a frustrating day too, but this is a game, it should help me with that, not make it worse :)

2 Likes
1525

Huge +1, even though I have both, they are an absolute menace with the current BR “brackets”. I would prefer more “decompression” so that other higher BR/greatly effective coastals can still duke it out with them in the same match. But something absolutely needs to be done about these things wiping out 5-10 enemy coastal botes every spawn. NOT every match, every SPAWN.

Alternatively (and I do not advocate for this solution as a first option) would be to reduce their fire rate OR increase how quickly they overheat. And then, if the overheat was increased, I would really like a keybind to select different fire rates for them. At least fast/slow, but fast/medium/slow would be nice too.

ALSO/OR for the crazy autocannon coastals like the Pr206, I think that super fast fire rate could induce decreased accuracy, thus giving the player a choice of high fire rate with reduced accuracy, versus slow fire rate with good accuracy.

If the “nerfs”/changes to those specific botes was done without a change in BR, I think it would need to be all of the options combined:

  • Reduced fire rate (at the very very least if the following options are not implemented, but I would still prefer a fire rate selector keybind, coupled with reduced accuracy+increased overheat for fast fire mode)
  • Increased overheat
  • Increased inaccuracy with fast fire rate
  • Fire rate speed control

Other possible options for balancing:

  • Decrease their shell’s effectiveness especially the Pr206. Could make them shatter more often Etc.

I am personally not opposed to these types of boats being quite powerful and effective, but in their current state and the BR they sit at it really is unfair. I do have a handful of boats that can counter them, but they are all at least at the same BR or higher. But any coastal boat that gets up tiered and faces the SKR or Pr206 is Dead on Arrival.

As an aside, I would love to have the ability to spawn 3 Blue Water Boats and 3 coastal boats per match, specifically for arcade. That would make me much more willing to hop in a coastal boat to contest the capture points without having to worry about running out of spawns a few minutes into the match. Especially if the Devs will not reduce the ticket bleed from one or two points being captured in Naval matches.

3 Likes
1526

interesting, perhaps just removing the AP-T from the belts would work too but like with RoF, heating, etc, I’m not sure how that fits into game principles regarding reality.

I’d also be happy for every nation to have a small seaplane in their tree, for them to spawn at a ‘seaplane’ spawn, which could be in the water, that is more appropriate to their speed and (with the new spawn rules) maybe a no bomb loadout, opening up another tactic off air points, and giving spawned fighters more to do, and all players a few more air targets for tasks.

3 Likes
1527

this, why Britain still has only Sunderlands while Sweden without naval trees has Arado for… what?
Japanese A6M2-N has secured quite a lot wins for me

2 Likes
1528

Its a no brainer and eady to achive if they took naval seriously.

Osprey and Walrus are already modelled for ship launch. Likewise the Kingfisher has an existing RN ships flight skin.

Swordish would simply need new floats as they were built with dual use in mind.

For more oomph theres Float Spitfires. They saw limited operational use in rhe Suez zone so no arguements about prototypes in the tree.

And thats just the tip as there are Blackburns, Faireys and Fokkers that wore British roundels waiting in the wings. A little more effort but worth it in the long run.

2 Likes
1529

yeah I would take just any. Just find this funny that Britain is the only nation lacking air tree float plane, with worst ship based float planes, and also not a single prem with a float plane (despite it seems like useless, this is huge SL income from capping)

2 Likes
1530

In fairness for a ship to have it itd have to be very early war or interwar since we removed them from our ships pretty much entirely

2 Likes
1531

If they’re waiting for the major update to fix things, this does not makes sense to me since there have been big changes outside the major updates to get us into this situation, most players would prefer rolling changes over consistent frustration.

hopefully they’re just wanting to generate some stats and really really tie stuff down, but this leads to any seriously disappointing aspects of the next update probably seeing the mode’s deracinated players find something else.

it’s sad that many lost a niche, and since NRB is complete nonsense I do feel for the players who’d learned the old system and don’t get the same things out of the new, the lack of excessively decorated boats and the amount of clueless island hiders in matches shows that lots have stopped playing IMO.

5 Likes
1532

After the ammo nerf and the “fantastic” aim change they were OK as they were facing mostly DD that could counter them BUT someone at GJ had another great idea to push all these DD at BR 5 and 5,3.
So we are again at the point that they are againr oaming free making 10 kills per game.

The fun part is that this is made worse by the fact that now with the event they are common in 3,3 and 4 and they absolutely destoying everything, why I don’t see them at 3,7 is a mystery I don’t understand.

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1 Like
1533

yeah so this is also rendered no one playing them, and 5.7-6.0 now are soaked to 6.7-7.0 BBs. Nice job

1 Like
1534

Fragility means nothing when you’re dead the moment they look at you.

1 Like
1535

Next version naval will worse though :(
because gaijin gonna nerf CAS in naval

1536

xaxa, as I said, a constant SKR7 spam at BR 3,3 !

2nd look at this dude, he is at his spawn destroying our spawn.
He got like 10 kills easy.

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Spawn to spawn fire is the norm now cause everyone got to be as good at aiming as a freaking seasoned player.

Also does anyone knows why they haven’t enabled anti cheat in NAB?

2 Likes
1537

SKR-7 should go 4.7 and above because lubeck(maybe have spell mistake but i think you know which ship i mean) looks worse but still go 4.7