Why should be someone rewarded by the time thay are in game rather than by their activity.
I play sim most of the time, but it seems like, you pay sl. to play sim than earn sl. in sim.
My average kill count is about 8 ennemis and 3 deaths, but I still loose sl., because of the way it is.
The way sim rewawding is, is wrong and dont draw new players in, more like the oposide.
And if someone want to get sl in sim, thay bomb two basis, get points and spent ten min. on an airfild, in the end thay get more sl than someone who got many kills. not only players but aslo IA, and did more for the winning.
As in arcade you get specific amount of sl, in realistic you get little bit more becose its just harder, as in sim it should be the same way. but no. I hope you make sim more playable. dont mean it offensively.
I am freetoplay player and sim is the reason I play this game. thanks and I hope there is someone felling the same way.
It honestly makes sense, unfortunately, why the reward system is the way it is:
- You can pick your lobby
- You can thus join an empty lobby on Denmark with a bomber or strike aircraft at subsonic tiers and gain tons of score unopposed as intercepting you in a 4v4 or even 2v2 game becomes practically improbable
- You can join lobbies based on what players are present. This allows you to avoid high-threat enemies and competing teammates to seal-club newbies
- You can fly always downtiers and control what nations are present (e.g: never fly against the ariete/saggi 2 in korean tiers).
- It’s much harder to score 1 kill
- If you can reliably score 1 kill, you likely can score multiple
- Take-off, search, intercept, land, rearm repeat takes a long time
- You can collaborate with an alt or a buddy to join the same lobby as you and just give you free kills in a cheap-to-spawn significantly uptiered plane
What does this lead to?
- Some players can obtain enormous score arguably unfairly (lack of danger or threat to them)
- Some players will barely get a single kill in a multi-hour match due to either lack of targets or simply the enemy being much better
How do we make it so people are rewarded for making an effort, but prevent abuse?
Logarithmic functions!
That’s exactly how our current score looks like:
200 points = 54% reward
400 points = 75% reward
600 points = 86% reward
800 points = 90% reward
1050+ points = 92% reward
Scoring a single kill (450 points) gives you the majority of the possible reward. Doing better gives you only slightly better.
Now, this does not mean I condone the way sim rewards work. Not one bit, but I believe it’s important to understand the potential logic and justification for our current system to try and find potentially viable solutions that resolve issues without exposing the mode to more abuse.
Potential solutions based on the above
1. Deathbank/Insurance
Your take-home reward stays the same as described by the logarithmic function and 15 minute windows.
However, you are rewarded twice: Once as score to be considered by the logarithmic function…
And once at a flat SL rate/action taken that is added to a pool of “insurance”/“deathbank.”
Going off of ARB values for a kill in the f2h-2, here’s an example:
- I spawn my F2H-2 for 15 000 SL.
- I intercept an Il-28 and shoot it down.
- I gain 450 score which will translate to something around
0.75 * 15 * 1370= 15K SL if I survive the full 15 minutes and land - I gain 4500 SL insurance
- I gain 450 score which will translate to something around
- I continue flying and a german hawk missiles me out of the sky at 10 minutes, thus my 15k SL becomes just
0.75*10*1370*0.8= 8220 SL - I go to respawn, I have gained a death-bank of 4500 SL so my next respawn only costs me 10 000 SL. I’m still facing a loss in silver lions.
- Next fly-out I do amazing and score 4 kills in the span of 5 minutes - I max out my 1050 score, but get shot down at the end of 5 minutes
- I’m paid
5 * 1370 * 0.92 * 0.8= 5000 silver lions - I’m also given an insurance of 4*4500 sl = 18000
- I’m paid
- I go to respawn. I pay ZERO (0) silver lions and keep 3 000 for my next respawn reduction. If I die again doing nothing, my respawn will just be 12000 sl.
This method prevents excessive, unfair reward for farming fixed lobbies or bombing in an empty lobby on an oversized map
However, it allows you to bank SL for performing above and beyond to indirectly increase your profits by reducing the cost it takes to respawn.
Maximum income remains the same (you won’t gain more than you can currently do by never dying), but your minimum income goes up as repair costs become offset if you do very well.
This also benefits premium players, for while they don’t need to worry about going negative, they can earn 0 sl still. This will help offset that 0 to positive
This also increases lobby lifespans as your deathbank does not transfer between battles. Racking up 50K SL in deathbank thru base bombing and ai hunting means you wanna stay in that match even once competent enemies show up, as you’ve no guarantee you can do that next lobby!
2. Underdog Bonus
One issue I see with air sim is the fixed matchmaker. Why fly your 8.0 korean jet when max BR is 9.0? You’re throwing money into the trash.
I’ll happily fly my F4U-4 in a 5.3-6.3 match as respawn only costs 3k, while my F2H-2 will cost 5 times that.
So, what if we made it that if you die to a plane at least 0.5 BRs above yours, your next respawn is discounted by 20%? Since even premium pays repair costs, it’s just floored at 0 sl for gains, it will benefit premium as well.
3. Endurance Bonus
Spawn cost could be reduced by ~5% for every 30 minute cycle (different from useful actions as it restarts on death and could be gamed) you’ve gained at least 800 score in
This means ditching a lobby and engaging in lobby shopping means you might be worse off than showing gumption and trying to fight back against enemies who have a chance to beat you. (yes, I’m very annoyed at korean jet battles becoming dead after 1 air supremacy as people ditch due to repair costs and whatnot).
Edited for formatting.
And while in hindsight it kinda looks like LLM, it’s not LLM written. it’s just how I write lmao
As much as I’d love to go to any other method than the activity method that ticks every 15 minutes, I also don’t want to go back to the days where this was possible:
This match was within 3 months of 50% of rewards being locked behind landing.
Today it’s 20%.
Today we also have the activity system which both combined make this type of scummy gameplay impossible.
And I’m honestly happy this is impossible today, cause those are honestly wild rewards for effectively going in a straight line 17 times.
TLDR:
People were exploiting Sim for rapid farming and grinding. So they changed sim to the current system, but needs an overhaul/improvement and is no longer appropriate for the pace that is the higher tiers.
If you are talking about props and early jets, the current system is fine for the most part, but falls apart when missiles and super-sonic jets enter the equation.
I’d say it falls apart terribly at early jets/experimental/late props (F4U-4B costs 12k to spawn!) too.
Mostly due to spawn costs.
You pay ~15 000 to spawn a banshee, and can earn at most 1370 * 15 * 0.92 = ~20 000 SL
It’s very easy to go into hard negative income even with a positive KD.
Thus my deathbank proposal - you can’t earn more than you already can without ever dying, but you can earn more than currently with a positive KD (or positive impact capturing/bombing/CASing) if you did die.
I think spawn costs are an entirely different issue to SL/RP rewards and need some notable changes. Yes they definetly need a reduction in the mid tiers. But they also need to remove the cost of the first spawn.
What always gets me is that you are starting the game in debt and it never makes sense to me that we have to pay for that intial spawn, instead of only the respawn.
I juat dont think you should pay to play this gamemode. Good step would be, if you do something value enought, you get reward of the repair cost.
Problem is, people would immediately abuse it by 1 death leaving and lobby hopping to play only with the free spawn.
Would be better if we get our money back when the game ends or we leave it on the runway.
One big issue at the moment is that you only get the full reward for your points if you survive the full 15 min. If you die after 5 min. you only get the reward for 5/15 min. (33%), even if you scored 2000 points in these 5 min.
This is the most stupid part of this system. It almost forces you to hide at your airfield after getting 500+points, because the risk to die and loose a lot of rewards(and pay the respawn costs) is way higher than the additional reward of going to 1000+ points.
If they
-return the last spawn costs when the game ends or we leave it on the runway (so you can spawn in the last 5 min of the game without loosing SL)
-give the full 15 min. reward for our points if we die(NOT J-out undamaged!) (so you don´t loose SL with KD>1)
-give a higher landing reward (especially RP) to encourage players to value their plane and return to base.
sim economy and gameplay would be much more enjoyable…
But of course allowing the plebs to stay positive contradicts with the “buy moar premium” agenda.
@RunaDacino I like the death bank idea, but it could be too complicated. Sim reward calculation is already a mess.
It’s funny that the current rewarding system actually encourages BOT-like behavior, even as a solution to what called “bots/farming problem”. In a battle it’s super easy to get 400-600 score in several minutes, and after that I’m supposed to rtb and circle over my airfield until the useful action cycle ends, instead of doing anything active like dogfight, base bombing or ground objectives, which all make me in risk of dying and getting much less RP.
exactly what is wrong with this?
he went in the straight line for almost 2 hours though…
he only landed 2 times so he spent 15 X his spawn cost to play this game, which I don’t know what it was, but let’s say it was 10K, that’s 150K he paid for spawning. And players NOT playing like this wouldn’t get the rewards for the bombs (though may not die as much, though may die more, depending on the breaks)
So 2 hours for 800Kk doesn’t seem too unreasonable especially if my other option is what we have now.
Now the rewards are lower but these dudes are still going in straight lines… who was punished?
It was an A2D, the spawn cost was less than 3000 SL per spawn.
Right and it is also a premium so the rewards are multiplied as well… my point remains the same - dude is still flying in straight lines but our grind is now 100 times longer - thanks for playing.
I think their current cost is now higher (just like other premiums during the Econapocalypse).
Right now I spend too much time looking for a game - if it were more appealing to try sim out more would and the games would be plentiful.
You can earn over a million SL and 100K RP playing for 2 hours straight of Arcade or Realistic so I don’t see why it’s so absurd in Simulator (even if you’re just traveling in a straight line).
And what I seriously don’t understand is why you would care either way… Gaijin, I understand why they may have some sort of plan to make grinding harder so peple pay to shorten it, but you, you, another player, I just don’t get… If your issue is it’s not fun, is having no targets MORE fun?
Different era gamers. Other players having nice things in a way that looks easier upset players that did it with effort and his own joy.
I’m not sure if you can understand, it’s really hard. People who work hard to get an iPhone will get mad at someone who won it in a lottery ( something like that)
Back to the topic, reward nerf only increased botting. Players lost more than bots with this constant nerf. If reward gain is reduced 50%, that means that a player will need x2 time, the bot too of course, but if the person plays 2 hs only weekends means month to grind, the bot will be days
Something that can be done will be to make a reward multiplier per player target destroyed, like skill pts on realistic. Every 5 players you get some bonus. Of course increasing all rewards, that way people will enjoy PvE and PvP will have boosters
I suggest to give rewards after landing, this way people will volue thayer planes and it will still keep “the sound of the sim” because noone could leave whenever thay decide thay dont need more. Thay would have to land and leave afterwards.
Botting, its just to drop bombs and sit on the airfield for another 10minits with no interest, to help team win the mach. Fighter that goes to the mach with the vision of killing other have almost no chance of profiting, because if you fight 5 ennemis and the 5th one kills you, your reward isnt even the cost of the plane you flywith. If the reward would be right after landing, players would do what thay want, land get reward and going back to the game.
Today is just botting and the worst is, that for the time ypu spend in sim you get much less than if you gave the time to the arcade bettles. The way it is, isnt offering anyone any reason for playing this gamemode. It can be better.
People doing this are essentially why the rewards are bad.
Last week i had a 2 hour sim game in which i got:
10 AirToAir kills (real players)
±60 ground kills (AI)
2 Deaths
Possibly other actions i cant remember (ill add the screenshot later)
A-10C
What did i get for 2 hours of gameplay? Barely 30k RP. The exact same amount i would have gained in 3 good-ish F4E games.