Same, I have no idea what you were replying to as it seemed quite irrelevant to what I had replied to you initially. Hence my reply stating general confusion.
(The last part is not this thread but the “hidden messages” topic where some chap called Spiritusss started attacking me thinking it was you (something about similar avatars, but all removed by a mod now), because I mentioned editing topics to get them unhidden, and he went off on one mentioning your name (he thought I was you or a second account of you, or something… he was very odd) which I can only guess was due to a previous encounter… or him just being unusual).
I could not say that in a better way.
one has to grow in game, with tanks and experience.
rushing head on towards the enemy is the dumbest way of playing this game, and I didn’t quit playing WoT to get another game like that…
I was just talking about flanking in terms of micro-strategizing vs just going on some cliff on the edge of the map + how maps are just far too open and even the best situational awareness can be insufficient.
I also like conspiracy theories. Who exactly is this strange feller I should exact my eternal revenge upon?
These two are only hard to reconcile because of poor map design.
Some people care about their performance and points and would rather get more kills even if it means a higher chance of losing.
Some people care more about the match than their personal performance, or have already gotten enough kills and points and want to multiply it with an epic victory royale.
What good map design does is it couples the two together.
I don’t disagree, there is definitely some truth to this. But there are also cases where it is simply a problem of player understanding being indulged. Look at Jungle. The rocks in the F row? They give you a commanding position on the approach to C, but are not so OP that it’s impossible for the other side to remove you from there. Can we call those rocks “not playing the objective” because you’re not seeing directly into C? You’re effectively doing area denial on two major directions C can be approached from.
And yet that spot is now locked away. No map in the game is now a clearer example of lane fighting than Jungle. And that’s clearly due to a section of the player base wanting a map dumbed down.
True. But this is not something maps can fix, not really. War Thunder is a team game, but there is very little team play going on. The squads that coordinate, are usually those that win, and even two good players in a squad can carry a match against uncoordinated opponents. I don’t know how you fix that, but I doubt maps are the answer.
There is also what you say, of course, some people stat pad, others want to win at all costs, others are solo-thundering, others just want to relax. But precisely because it is so complex, maps aren’t a fix. The variables in play are too many.
I’ll give you an example. If I decide to play a Dicker Max, the playstyle of the vehicle itself will “funnel” me towards kills over contesting caps. This is even truer for new players who might not understand so much about the nature of the game modes. Therefore, here we run into a balance issue where the game modes we have, are suitable to some vehicles and not others.
So what are the options?
“Just don’t play Dicker Max” for example. But then why have it in the game? Because if you leave it in the game, it’s for people to play it. It’s bad enough that impractical SPGs like this aren’t very suited to the game modes, they’re also not very suited to 75% of the maps (a percentage that keeps increasing as they become more and more lane shooting maps).
Or, maybe if the player knows what they’re doing, they’re gonna take a few risks when it looks like the match is in the balance because “if I don’t do this, we lose anyway, who cares if I explode?” But that, again, is not something you can encourage through map design. It’s down to player experience and attitude.
If we did as you say, and had - for example - perfect map design that allows both “cappers” and “killers” to equally contribute to a chance at victory - you would get drowned in complaints from people that think that a sniping SPG, or a fast go-kart like the T55, shouldn’t be able to influence the outcome of the match by “camping” from a spot they forgot to check with their binoculars.
It’s the land equivalent of the people who complain about CAS. And therefore, you’d end up with Alaska anyway, over and over again.
The only way out of that loop is to not hold players’ hands with maps, the same way we don’t with every other technical aspect of this game.
So, to be clear, your friend used the overly generous map border to rush down an area where he wasn’t contested, set up in a spawncamping location, scored 23 kills, and this is a good thing?
Can we really assume that all 23 of those kills were just on bot level players who took no action to attempt to counter him? Or is it more likely that there really isn’t much that can be done against a skilled spawncamper once they start from that strong of a position.
You can ping his approximate location, but are there any friendlies who are in a position to even spot a target as small and hard to see as a T55E1, especially if he’s bushed and using good concealment? Or he can relocate between kills, meaning you can’t even ping him accurately.
You can throw artillery at him, but at that kind of range it’ll be so inaccurate as to not be a threat, unless they’ve put crew skills into artillery for some ungodly reason. Or he can relocate between kills, making artillery a complete non-issue.
You can’t push out of spawn towards the points without giving him a free shot. And to push him, you have to push through a giant, open field, against an enemy TD with a good gun and a rapid reload who has cover, concealment and a lot of locations where they can hide. And again, if he literally just repositions after every couple of kills, what then? Unless you have the armor to bounce his gun frontally, you just have to pray that you somehow spot him before he spots you. That’s not even touching the fact that if the team starts focusing him, the rest of his team can just push freely and set up a crossfire into the spawn from the rest of the map.
Really, the only hope you have is that when you die to him, you have enough points to spawn an aircraft. And if revenge bombing is the single counter to a position on the map, any position, that’s a problem.
Again, flanking as a concept is fine. I just have issues when said flanks are completely uncontestable except by other people who are also flanking (Meaning in a lot of games they’re completely uncontested), and where the positions enabled by said flanking allow free spawncamping and have enough cover and concealment that the player using that spot has an enormous advantage over the freshly spawned team.
Outflanking should enable skilled players to dislodge snipers from powerful positions and get good shots on well armored brawlers. It should not be a free ticket to spawncamping.
Good for the winning team. Bad for the team that made the mistake of not fanning out correctly at the beginning of the match. Which is the root behind 90% of these discussions.
I was there. One guy drove towards him four times and got killed four times.
The first step to deal with this situation would be to have covered said flank. At least a couple of people would have been enough to, at least, make it a real engagement you need to win. Unfortunately, there are limitations to WT’s team-based aspect, and you’ll always end up with the team that all randomly choose the same spawn, or whatever. But that is, again, not a flanking issue, and would not be fixed by removing flanking options. Just look at Advance To The Rhine. 90% of the team spawns towards A and clogs up the back alleys, to the point that they start getting into each other’s way (since obviously in such a limited space you get diminishing returns with every new tank you add past a certain number).
Suboptimal spawning choices will always be a part of this game unless the spawning system is completely reimagined.
But ok, let’s say the initial mistake has been made. How do you rectify this?
Correct. If none of this is working - can’t get him with arty, there’s no friendly air available to intervene, you don’t have a couple people escorting you to go find the guy (and remember this is a vehicle that dies even to MG34, not just .50cal) - then the right thing to do is to change spawn and try something else.
Speaking as someone that plays as a sniper a lot (not so much a flanker, though I’m trying to learn): the best way to trivialise a camper, whether of the fast or slow variety, is to not drive in front of them.
Changing spawns also gives you the option to hopefully gather enough SP to get in an airplane and go kill the guy.
Then he’s playing correctly.
We are constantly told that CAS is an anti-entrenchment mechanism made to make the games more dynamic. Removing a T55E1 from your spawn is a pretty appropriate use for CAS as designed in game. That’s why it exists.
Of course, said spots that need “de-trenching” have a weird tendency to be sealed off by Gaijin anyway, because apparently slow turretless TDs aren’t at enough of a meta disadvantage as it is… but that’s another topic.
That’s sort of the point. One or two people covering that flank gives you a fighting chance. You can do this with every mechanic in the game, actually. If the enemy team has plenty of guys in the air and your team will not spawn planes or SPAA, your team will be punished for it. Because a crucial team need is not being fulfilled.
The same is true of fanning out, flanking, and counter-flanking.
Usually when I notice a spot is being left open, I’ll try to go there myself. It’s why I usually go A on Seversk, for example. I know nobody else will (sometimes literally, usually it’s me and two more players or something).
Which is a team play issue.
Again: we expect players to memorise weak spots, reload times, etc. This is no different.
It’s only free if the enemy team doesn’t contest you. Which is, again, a team issue.
So, genuinely, the counter to these flanks is to always have every square inch of the map covered at all times, and if they aren’t and someone happens to find the hole, they deserve access to a powerful spawncamping position that’s incredibly difficult to dig out? That’s quite a take, considering the skill level of the average team.
Especially when you consider that not all teams will have someone attempting to use that flank, nor will some teams have tanks that can actually abuse that flank. Meaning that even if a team completely commits to this plan, odds are pretty good you’re going to have players wasting their time and leaving the team that’re actually contesting the points outnumbered.
Even if you 100% devote your time to making sure these flanks are always covered by the most appropriate tank you have, you’re just one player. Using my other example, on Maginot, you can only cover one side of the map, potentially allowing someone to stroll through the other hard flank and start spawncamping.
In other words, one guy saw the incredibly powerful position your friend was in, attempted to dig him out 4 times, and died 4 times. What exactly were his options here? Both spawns were in your friend’s line of fire, neither offered enough cover to leave them, and there was no way to push towards the spawncamping position other than by pushing through an open field.
Again, both spawns are in that line of fire. Choosing the other spawn is just choosing which open field you’d like to die in.
But even for maps where the other spawn is an option, leaving a spawncamper uncontested is putting your team at quite a disadvantage. Every kill they get maximizes the SP loss of your team, as none have had a chance to earn any SP before their death. So you have to hope that A) Someone else manages to kill him or B) You have enough time to push all the way around the map and get a firing solution on them before they cause too much damage on their own.
In my experience, leaving such an important task to my team is a recipe for disaster.
And yet his reward for playing correctly is vastly more than what a sniper or a brawler can get for playing correctly. To be clear, what he’s done is have the map knowledge to know a powerful position exists, push there without being contested, and then do about what a sniper is expected to do. Not to discount that your friend played well, but 23 kills? That’s quite the payout for basic knowledge of positioning and how to play a small, fast sniper.
CAS isn’t a good solution to spawncamping for one very simple reason. Who are the players most likely to know there’s someone spawncamping? Those who have just been killed by them. And what do they have in common? A large deficit of SP from spawning a tank and achieving nothing in it. In other words, the only players who know where the spawncamper is also lack the SP to spawn CAS. Sure, other players in CAS can kill them, but they have to actually be watching the killfeed actively to notice spawncamping. And in the quoted position, the large amount of tree and bush cover make for excellent concealment against plane attack.
Ultimately, CAS cannot be the one answer to any single approach, because it’s not always available, it’s not always giong to be targetted where it’s needed, and it causes even more toxicity when it’s constantly used as a counter.
Spawncamping is too egregious of an issue to be left down to teamplay. Even if I 100% dedicate myself to dealing with it, what happens when I don’t want to play a flanker? Or if I’m playing a lineup that lacks a decent one? What if there are more than one flank to cover? Is being spawncamped a suitable punishment for these “issues”? Should the game be reduced to “spawncamp or be spawncamped”?
What if only one side is particularly vulnerable to spawncamping? What if the flank that the spawncamping route takes is substantially easier for one team? Both are true of Normandy, and others. Is it a “team issue” when one team has a distinct advantage over the other in an area they can choose to exploit?
This isn’t akin to a lemming train or something similar. You’re asking players to drive out into the middle of nowhere, into a position where they cannot contribute to taking the points, on the off chance they can prevent a flanking enemy from taking a dominant position, when they themselves have no such position they can use? Regardless of what tanks they have available to them, and what playstyles they actually want to play?
Just as I want maps that don’t allow brawlers or snipers to be completely dominant over all other playstyles (Like the hated city maps and Fire Arc etc, respectively), I want flanking to be impactful, but not dominant. And spawncamping should just not be allowed.
Every square inch? No, not at all. Like I said, not all strategic spots on the map are those with circles on them. Normandy is quite linear and simple in this regard, and there is a very limited number of spots you need to take in order to gain full map control, beyond the open southern flank we’re talking about. You don’t even need to take them all. Take a few and contest the others can also suffice.
They are, from south to north: the church, which can look into B (or the approach to said church, if you’re on the Western spawn); the hemicircle road in the village; the pizza pie; and the obelisk. Depending on the situation, a couple people being on, or watching the beach, can also be important.
That is more than within the capabilities of a team in numerical terms. Unfortunately, lack of pre-spawn coordination between teams will hamper you, but that is true of every single map (which is why I brought up Advance To The Rhine earlier), and is also true of vehicle selection. It’s the same for both teams, at the end of the day.
Sounds like you do agree it’s a team play issue.
War Thunder has a criminal lack of real tutorials, so it’s not like Gaijin isn’t responsible for this. But the solution lies not in dumbing down the game, it lies in teaching players to be better.
When I started playing in February 2022 (quite recent by WT standards) I had no idea what I was doing. It’s not like I’m unsympathetic to new players, I’ve been through that ordeal recently. But the skill ceiling being so high is one of the reasons why I keep coming back to this game. Players should just be given more resources on how to play well, in my opinion.
Not all teams will have someone attempting to cap and fly. Not all teams will have someone attempting to take down planes in an SPAA.
True, but that’s not a map issue either, it reflects the inherent imbalance currently present in many lineups. I’m a German main, so forgive me for the all-German examples, but I’m going with what I know. At any BR between 5.3 and 6.0, the lack of a light vehicle is very sorely felt for precisely this reason. The PAK Puma exists… except of course it’s an event vehicle.
As always with War Thunder, Gaijin is the cause of most of its own issues. They should fix the trees.
Like I said above, I don’t think this is the case at all. Here too like in Advance To The Rhine, cramming too many people at the obelisk or at the pizza pie is going to give you diminishing returns after a certain number. You can absolutely spare one or two to go flank.
Correct. And that will always be true. Which is why this game is won by teams, not single players.
It’s frustrating, and it can be mentally exhausting to play by “trying to be the team” and do everything yourself. I don’t always have the mental energy to do that. There will be evenings where I manage to do it, and evenings where I’m feeling more casual and I’ll just fuck around the map without too much thought into where I’m going or what I’m doing. But then again this is a game, not professional sports, so it’s fine. I just know that if I’m playing more casually, we’ll be less likely to win, and that’s that.
This is always true. Not just for flanking.
I love using the northern hill as a sniping spot when playing Maginot. It’s one of the few map spots in this game that fits many German vehicles like a glove. I’ve had my fair share of multi-kill games from up there, since you can engage such diverse positions as the flanking route, the houses, the hills close to said houses, and the bunkers that sit in front of B. But if A falls, there’s nothing I can do to help them. Especially if I’m in a slow TD.
He attempted poorly.
If you go straight north from the northern spawn, you actually can get to cover unseen.
Yes. Because there is a huge issue with team play in this game. That’s exactly the point, both things are true: if you trust your team to do something that needs doing, you’re probably screwed. At the same time, you can’t replace your entire team. You can try really hard to compensate for one task that’s not being accomplished, but many times that still won’t be enough.
Because it’s a team game, and it’s the team that wins or loses.
That doesn’t mean the game should be dumbed down, it means players should be better supplied with tools to improve.
That is par for the course in a game whose “meta” (a word I detest) is so clearly skewed towards vehicles with good mobility and low reload times. This too is independent from flanking. When I’m playing my Jagdtiger (so almost every day) I have to sweat and labour so much. I do reasonably well in it, but the point is, sometimes halfway through a game I’ll be like, whew, this is exhausting and I feel like I’ve had to apply 100% of my mental capacity to make this work so far, let’s check how the teams are doing… and I’ll have five kills and one cap under my belt.
Meanwhile if you head out in a LeKPanzer, the amount of spawn points you score right off the bat is literally disgusting. “Wait, how am I sitting at 1700 spawn points already?” Is something I’ve legitimately asked myself, since getting to that with a slow turretless TD with an 18s reload usually means I’ve had to expend some of my sanity :P Even if you just focus on kills, many times I’ll go play 4.3 to relax and get, say, 10 kills without breaking a sweat. Because the vehicles tend to have the mobility and reload times to allow for that sort of thing.
The place being uncontested was an error on the part of the enemy team. The rest, yes, good summary: map knowledge, situational awareness (all the more important in a vehicle that actually dies easily, unlike some other go karts) and serviceable shooting. I’d say that’s a good cross section of the skills you need at all times in this game, so I see no issue with it.
And when teams don’t do this, it’s their own damn fault. Situational awareness is one of the most important skills you can have in this game. I am extremely communicative in chat, I always tell people that I’ve spotted something and where it’s going, even if it’s away from me. I always check the killfeed and sometimes will tell people on the other side of the map, “look, you have X around there”.
Most of the time? Words to the wind.
You should know, I like to make little montages of games where I feel I’ve played quite well, mostly because WT doesn’t support replays in between updates, so it’s the only chance to immortalise them. Take a look at this one, if you feel like it of course.
I’ll provide you the context of why I’m sending this. This was Golden Quarry in BATTLE mode, my spawn was on the western side. I went where A normally is, to preempt possible flanking from that route, and see if I could do some flanking myself. It worked reasonably well.
Then, people started dying behind me, after leaving spawn. An M26 player being the killer.
I was a little confused, usually the insane flanking maneuvers to attack spawn are done south, and I was north, I was sure no one had slipped in behind me. And our team was in the town, so I had no idea where this spawn camper was.
So I started asking in chat, “ping the M26”. Repeated the question a couple of times. Eventually, the guy had killed five of our new spawners and was sitting on IIRC eight kills, so I was starting to get seriously worried he was going to get a nuke.
So I turned my fat JT ass around, drove all the way back to spawn, and found the guy myself. And well, if you watch the video, you’ll see where he was.
No crazy flanking. No cheaty position. He just drove through the town, got a few kills while doing so, then set up there, and my team kept driving in front of him and feeding him kills. All the while refusing to ping his location or alert team mates that this was happening.
If I hadn’t been there to go stop him, we would have lost the match for sure. Because situational awareness is a skill, and it should be rewarded, and its absence should be punished.
Same for SPAA, and yet.
This game is built around counters. It’s balanced like rock-paper-scissors. I’m not saying it can’t possibly be any other way, I’m just saying that you can’t expect to change one ingredient alone; you need to switch out the recipe if you want it done differently.
Mate, you’re talking to someone who plays impractical tank destroyers for fun. It’s not like I’m a god of war at this game either. My crippling ADHD means my absorbing interest lies in German vehicles with derp guns. Trust me, I know. You’re simply accepting the tradeoff. If I were to minmax, I would almost never play the Jagdtiger: the LeK or the JPz 4-5 are almost always a better choice, given the shitty map rotation we’re given, and the way BRs are balanced. And yet, it’s my second most-played vehicle in WT.
Now, some of the balance issues around heavy bricks like that should be rectified. But all the same, I know there’s a trade off to me spawning in it even in suboptimal circumstances. Just ask yourself this - what if you don’t want to play SPAA? I’m often in that position, I’m trying to learn to use SPAA because it’s useful, but not because I enjoy it. If I don’t use it, I know we’ll be more vulnerable to planes. It’s that simple.
Or if you’re playing a lineup without decent SPAA…
That is a tech tree issue for Gaijin to fix.
There is always more than one thing to do in this game. Ergo, your fate rests in your team’s hands.
This is a game about map control. Control of caps, and control of strategic locations. One way or the other, it almost always ends with one side losing more and more map control until their spawn is threatened. If one flank is left open, this can happen a lot more quickly.
There’s nothing particularly bizarre about that.
Then it’s a map issue for Gaijin to fix. However, that’s not the case in Normandy, both sides can use that flank. Just ask the Fiat 6614 that wrecked my team’s ass yesterday by using the same tactic from the Western spawn (he even managed to cap and hold C!).
SPAAs are also not capping, and yet their job is essential.
An ideal team needs a bit of everything. You need people to push caps, people to cover key zones of approach, people who snipe, people who fly/do SPAA duty, and people who flank. You rarely get this ideal combo from the matchmaker, of course. But that’s true of both teams.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. If the game is only “direct contribution to taking the points” then let’s just make the maps into three narrow straight alleyways, and have teams composed entirely of T-44-100s and T29s.
They absolutely can use it. Seen it and done it myself. And you could repeat this logic for everything. You want players to hold down the pizza pie, on the off chance that someone will drive there? Yes. Because 9 times out of 10, someone does.
If the two people on your team going south meet a counter flanker, they can potentially have saved your entire game right there by killing the guy. And if they meet no opposition, they can keep driving, get south of C, and turn the other team’s life into a nightmare.
I feel like I’ve already addressed this above. I play what I want to play, and I accept this comes at a cost. Even if the balance between lights and heavies was better, you would still need both on a team, and sometimes, you wouldn’t get it, because you can’t predict what people will spawn in.
Fire Arc is not completely dominated by snipers, at all.
I’ve talked about this in another thread. I’m going to put the post I wrote below, in a quote, up to you if you feel like reading or not.
Cheers :)
As far as I can tell, there are seven maps with the size required to provide actual long range options in Ground RB (thus excluding the sim, enlarged version of some maps): Fulda, Maginot, Red Desert, Fields of Poland, Surroundings of Volokolamsk, European Province, and Fire Arc.
That’s seven out of, I think, fifty-tree- A fifty-fourth map is coming in this update, Test Site 2217, and it looks to be another urban close-quarters map, though we can’t be sure until we actually play it, naturally.
Out of those numerous smaller maps, as many as thirty-five are under 2x2km, total. If you actually consider just the playable area, it drops to below 1.5x1.5km.
This, in and of itself, is already bad. The game has thousands of vehicles with different strengths and weaknesses. Purely going by these numbers alone, vehicles that specialise in sniping and struggle in close quarters are inherently penalised. This is, of course, on top of the additional issue that the game is built around capping points, which already makes long-range specialists more situational.
But this is only the beginning, because this is a whole onion of bad, and there are many more layers left to peel.
First of all, while those may be seven maps out of fifty-four, the map rotation system does not feature maps equally. I don’t know if there are global data available on this, but I can report my individual experience at least. I get Seversk, Hurtgen Forest, Alaska, Sweden, Golden Quarry and (small) Ardennes with embarrassing frequency. I can’t even remember the last time I got Volokolamsk.
The numerical preponderance of short-range maps is thus augmented by their preponderance in matchmaker selection. This penalises the performance of vehicles that do poorly in knife-fights even more.
The next layer of this ugly onion is map design. Even the “sniping” maps are not, in fact, built around sniping, or say, the effective utilisation of gun depression. Ultimately all of these maps still require you to get very up close and personal if you want to win, because of how they’re broken up. For example, even the infamous Fire Arc - the key to that map is the B point, which of course is inside a tiny cramped village whose control is usually decided by knife-fights and corner peeking.
Such maps are also frequently altered to further “streamline” the fighting towards the cramped areas, too. Meaning that the open areas simply become long drives on the way to the objective, where you’ll be slugging it at under 300 metres once more.
And even on the small maps, it sounds like whenever sniping-oriented players adapt and find locations where they can minimise the weaknesses of, say, turretless tank destroyers, those positions are immediately taken away.
Look at what happened to Jungle. The spot behind the F-row rocks, south of C, was my go-to when playing something like the Jagdtiger. There was no guarantee you’d get there uncontested. Even if you did get there, you could be flanked and be in a tough spot reacting, since turning right could expose your left side to people down on the road or up the opposite hill. It was also a prime bombing spot for CAS. In other words, it was not overpowered. Sometimes it didn’t work. Other times, I nearly get a nuke staying up there.
Now, that spot is sealed off. That is one fewer map where it makes sense for me to spawn in a JT first. Note, I’m not saying you can’t do well with it on Jungle, but that if you’re minmaxing, you’d always rather spawn in something else first, which is why now Jungle is a map I greet by spawning in a LeKPanzer first.
This is a balance problem. You can’t just handwave it away…
People like what they like, and it’s fine. I’m happy for people who like brawling to get brawling maps. But the lopsidedness is really bothersome, especially because every new map they add is invariably small. We’ve had Golden Quarry, which I don’t think I need to expand on, and Iberian Castle, which is imho a very good map and has at least one place where it is possible to have 900m-engagements, but is on the whole an urban map, won or lost by fighting in the town itself.
Sometimes it feels very disheartening, because there’s no acknowledgement whatsoever that this is an issue.
And I play WW2 almost exclusively. Can’t imagine what it’s like in top tier…
flanking deep and to edge of map is fine but usually the map is broken and only 1 side gets bigger advantage, the maps are not mirrored so it’s always imba, the scale of imba though can be insane on these flanks.