New ARCADE aiming

Machinery of War Discussion Navy
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87

To be honest, lead indicator in Naval Arcade makes sense, because it literally teaches new players how to aim. It’s also consistent with other Arcade modes. In Air Arcade you have real-time lead indicator on enemy planes. In Ground Arcade you have penetration indicator. So every Arcade game mode has this kind of helper for new players.

I personally don’t like the lead indicator in Naval Arcade, but I don’t think it was a bad decision to add it. It definitely helped new players. I played Naval Arcade for a very long time, and after the devs added this lead indicator, this game mode became much harder for me. Suddenly everyone was able to hit me, I lost a lot of advantage, so this change was obviously negative for me. But it made aiming much easier for new players, which is fine. That’s something I can accept, even if I don’t like it.

The problem is, with this new system, aiming will be so simplified that the whole skill will be basically gone. New players will just keep pressing left mouse button to shoot. Experienced players will try to fight with the system and try to predict enemy movement changes. But it will be irritating, illogical and completely unpleasant experience to aim with this new system. That’s why I’m quite sure that most experienced players will just stop playing the Naval game mode.

For me personally, this aiming change is one step too far. Instead of this, I would prefer fixing some annoying bugs, like the aiming bug I mentioned in one of my previous posts. Especially the change to make lead indicator almost instant in Arcade happened very recently. It’s strange that they don’t even wait longer for the effect of this change, but decided to completely change aiming in this game mode.

The devs see all the stats obviously. Maybe the almost instant aiming update reduced the number of players in Naval Arcade? Or maybe it just didn’t attract enough new players as expected? That’s why I wrote in my previous post they look desperate. It’s not good to make such big changes so often without even giving the previous change some time to stabilize the situation. For me, it looks like they realised this change was a mistake, but they don’t see moving a step back as a good solution, so they decided to try something even more extreme.

I don’t see how this change could attract more players, but like I mentioned before, they probably think they have nothing to lose right now. Unfortunately, the remaining Naval Arcade player base is too small for them to care about.

3 Likes
88

yes I made the same experience after implementing the aiming indicator - but I got used to it. And ok its fair to new players - but if they want to create a WoWS clone the players will go or stay at the original - and as mentioned even this game has a lead indicator…
I hope they don’t set the update live during the actual naval event - but setting your hope into GJ is useless…

1 Like
89

I thought about ignoring this event. Naval events are not hard for me, but there is a very high chance that I will completely stop playing this game mode, so grinding new vessels wouldn’t make sense anyway.

This change can actually have a very serious consequences for me. Because if I stop playing Naval Arcade then I will stop doing events, but also I won’t be able to progress in the BP as effectively. So far most of my BP progress came from Naval Arcade tasks. It’s possible that this change will actually “free” me from grinding this game. I’m pretty sure that without playing Naval I will stop doing BP as well.

The good thing is, I will have more time for playing other games. In the last 5 years I mainly played War Thunder, because I always had something to do here. I simply didn’t have much time for other games. This may now change, which is not necessarily a bad thing.

My only regret is that I bought a lot of premium vessels that I haven’t played with yet (I have all rank 1-4 premium vessels in the game). It looks like I will never play them, because I don’t like this new aiming system so much. But at the same time, at least I will stop buying new Naval premiums. So there are some bright sides to this change. I can finally stop caring about this game mode.

4 Likes
90

I am quite in the same situation - and naval is my main source of income in SL.
As I mainly play coastals - switching to RB w/o the automatic reload of torps this will be very hard. In addition the torpedo speed in RB is much lower. And therefore coastal is much more common in AB.

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91

I’d really like @HK_Reporter to weigh in on this and answer a few questions if he knows the answers.

  1. Is there any way this won’t go live at this point?
  2. When were these changes first put forth, and was there any pushback internally?
  3. Does Gaijin really believe they will bring enough new players to offset the veterans who will leave?
  4. Why even bother having a naval mode if it’s in such a sad state?
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92

All feedback from the community had been passed to developers this week.

Personally I am also against this change (as well as the new DM mechanics) and I have made internal feedback on these issues. However, whether to push them forward or not is up to developers’ decision after all.

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93

Naval is already changed like this, using higher resolution and larger screen means have more change to avoid enemy torpedo, in ground RB, means have more chance to find enemy vehicle.

94

I appreciate you taking the time to answer.

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95

I deeply appreciated that you have passed our feedback on, it’s good to finally hear something in that regard, and that you also support the community on this. I can only hope the devs do as well.

Is there any chance at pushing for the devs to actually speak to, or poll, or in any other way communicate to the naval players? Half the time it feels like we’re the actual naval alpha/beta testers, and we really need a way to talk to the devs and inform them of how the naval game actually plays out, what actually functions, and what doesn’t.

4 Likes
96

I am not against improving the current arcade aiming system, there might be worth a tweak or two - but this change really goes beyond anything sensible. It makes any player skill redundant, and while I do not object that arcade should not be overly complex, a full auto-aiming may be interesting for a new player the first three matches - and then they will be as bored as all the existing player base that probably will have left by that time - this change will be the dead of naval arcade. Bored to death.
Not sure what is the aim - trying to kill naval quickly, just changing something for the sake of change, or taking decision under high pressure without thinking through - but this is certainly a killing move.
If there is the view that the current aiming system is too complex, Gaijin may simplify it to the extent that there is more help from the system taking into consideration your own movement. Makes it easier, while still having the last remaining ‘fun’ part of being able to dodge a salvo resp. trying to anticipate the move of the enemy before shooting.
The proposed aiming system with point-and-click aims at 6-year old kids, but hey, war gaming should really not target such young target groups. Alternatively it may benefit botting.
This change should be reversed. As mentioned in my comment above, some tweaks may be made to the current mechanics, if a requirement for simplification is important, but this goes beyond anything sensible. Please do not kill naval.
And for last - Gaijin, please play your own game - and you will notice there are more important items to fix (e.g., terrible map design that kills the fun, BR compression, server issues, …)

4 Likes
97

There’s another piece of good news for naval players. In Arcade Mode, you no longer need to lead salvos, as the gunners will do it for you. Just aim the sight at the part of the hull you want to hit and press the fire button. The target will now always be in the sight’s field of view, even when firing on a collision course at long distances.

Looks like it’s official now

1 Like
98

What a terrible and unnecessary change, they might as well make it a text game.

Do you want to shoot the Bayern? Yes/No?
Do you want to shoot the magazines? Yes/no?
If yes, magazine explodes.
Do you want to shoot the Colorado?

5 Likes
99

Naval arcade is about to become a lot more chaotic with all these auto-aim shells flying everywhere. I’m pretty sure this would just make games end much faster with all the rapid fire meta ships dominating the game even harder than before. Throttle juking and maneuvering would be much less effective I’ll imagine, and if you really want to be annoying, you can unload the entirety of your anti-air armament into another ship within range without having to aim at all.

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100

and even the ships/boats w/o actual lead indicator get this “system” for their machine weapons - means e.g. the PR206 has to click and boom… and again… just easier as already.
The next step then will be that the “aiming” takes also evasive actions into account after newby players whining about some of there shoots don`t hit…

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101

… in a few months…
“another fantastic improvement of naval arcade! your ships are completely controlled by Ai - you can relax and watch your ships move and fire w/o need for this nervy mouse action. You may even start the battle in background and the result will be given afterwards…”

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102

When I was testing it on the dev it appears that the AI controlled ships in arcade will have a really good hit rate went into a custom battle full of AI and I got shredded. It also appears that AI gun controlled turrets, both secondary, and main will have a 100% hit rate. Also hitting planes is now extremely easy as you only have to aim for the center of the plane. That goes for machine guns as well even dreadnoughts with a small amount of AA guns will be able to take down planes pretty easily if left to the AI.

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103

That sounds like unintended consequences of their dumb changes. I can’t imagine they actually want that kind of accuracy from bots. What’s the point of even playing arcade at that point?

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104

so we all assume that they don’t play there own game - even the changes in targetting time last year had a massive impact on coastal gameplay - they are much quicker to choose as target…

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105

There is no way they could be playing and making these changes. Just those quicker targeting changes you speak of made ships with good FCS totally irrelevant. I just don’t get it. How can you develop a game you don’t play or understand?

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106

Yes, but not all the players this is aimed at can read.

3 Likes