Problems with compression

Game Discussion General Discussion
1

as per the title we all know what we are talking about, it is a problem that has been going on for years, and why not talk about it today which is the 11th anniversary of WarThunder? 11 years of unresolved problems, of a stupid and unfair BR compression, of mixing historical periods and historical inaccuracies, of different technologies compared that make certain vehicles obsolete, or unable to cope if they are in up tier. I believe that as a community we must push gaijin to change, because as a community we can do it and we are capable of doing it, and we know it well. It’s time for Gaijin to structure the game into historical periods, with their sub-periods, so that the means are placed in a certain correct range and that they compete with what in that period they actually fought or competed with or for which they were were built as a deterrent. What do you think about it? or what would you propose to do?

(please make sure it is a constructive discussion, sarcasm and denigrating others are not welcome)

1 Like
2

Historical matchmaking would kill the game. Vehicles should be balanced by their attributes, not by the year they entered service. I’m sure you would love to play the Pbv 301 against a team of T-62’s, im sure you would really enjoy that, and not complain about it if it were implemented.

What is unfair about the BR system, Its the same for everyone, does that not make it completely fair for all players? You might say its flawed, which wouldnt be wholly inaccurate, but its the reason the game works as well as it does, and if your solution is historical matchmaking, then that has a lot more issues, but it isnt unfair. The BR system is fine as is, they can keep decompressing slowly, adding 0.3 or 0.7 here and there to keep up with the new vehicles added. The only thing i would want is for them to make BR changes more often, to shake up the meta more frequently

Bug reports. If it can be changed and is inaccurate, it will be at some point, even if it doesnt happen immediately.

Also no sarcasm everybody. Magicmitch is watching and he will report you

4 Likes
3

it would be very nice if it were true, but unfortunately it is a utopian concept, and the historical balance is balanced in itself because history speaks clearly. if historically speaking it took more than a Sherman to take down a Tiger, then it creates battles where the Tigers are in the minority to preserve the balance in battle, but it would certainly be stimulating as a game play, and different from the usual, There are many possibilities, you just need to be inventive. and then explain to me, what is balanced about seeing an F4 Phantom fighting against a Mig 29? due to the way the game is structured the mig will always have the upper hand, in terms of armament, speed and maneuverability, there is nothing balanced about this. so why keep talking about balancing with a +1-1, which enhances the technological differences of vehicles from different historical periods. another example? World War II tanks facing Cold War vehicles. or Cold War tanks vulnerable to APFSDS because in the period in which they were operational they did not face that type of projectile and therefore did not have suitable armor. there are many examples of how this “balance” as you call it is actually an imbalance.

I don’t know how long you’ve been playing, but I would lose count of how many reports have been made and never corrected or even ignored

exactly what I meant when I said to avoid unnecessary sarcasm, but I see that it is too complicated to be able to have a constructive conversation in this forum, because I forget that everyone here is aerospace engineers, pilots and historians. oops sarcasm.

4

Related to the issue that you’re talking about, I would say 2 things:

  1. BR decompression by either increasing the BR ceiling or lowering the BR spread for the games
  2. Changing the BR system to vehicle capabilities instead of how well or poorly certain players perform in them.

Why do you have to be mean?

1 Like
6

Ok we’re on the right track, and finally some proposals

because unfortunately this forum is very toxic, and often people argue more to denigrate others than to actually have a constructive conversation, so if possible avoiding unnecessary sarcasm would be better :)

7

It is definitely not. The tank matchups in real life were not balanced in the slightest. What you have said here, literally is its own disproof. History shows that these matchups were not balanced. If you go the rooute as you have said here and try and stop there being more than x amount of y vehicle in a battle:

you are limiting player choice arbitrarily to try and change a system that already works just fine. It also does not make anything more balanced, you are still facing that vehicle that is considerable more or less powerful then your own, it just creates more imbalance because of the larger gap in capabilites of different nations at different points in time. For example, if you take this route, basically all of the swedish ground tree up to 6.7 becomes completely obselete.

The Phantoms that can see the Fulcrum are all capable of killing it. They are disadvantaged against it, and will more often than not lose in a 1v1 to it, but in the larger battle they can quite easily kill one. the same could be said for those Phantoms versus a Mig-21 or any other matchup in the game, in an upteir you are at a disadvantage, but in a downteir you are at an advantage. The game is balanced because you can only see a maximum of 25% maximim br vehicles in a game, and you will often also have as many maximum br vehicles. The differance in capability between the vehicles 1.0 br apart is in most cases, not such that the bottom br vehicle has no chance, and where that is the case, BR changes need to happen.

What about this? this is so commanly brought up, but just saying it is meaningless. there are plenty of cold war vehicles that are less capable than ww2 vehicles, i gave you an example earlier in the Pbv 301 that you chose to ignore. WW2 vehicles facing cold war vehicles is not an issue, unless the cold war vehicle is significantly more capable than the ww2 vehicle it faces, which like i said earlier, is most of the time not the case. Take the T54’s for example, they are superior vehicles to a Kingtiger, but the Kingtiger is still able to kill a T54 with relative ease, shooting at the right spot. The T-54 has to shoot at a similar spot to one kill the Kingtiger. They are not equal vehicles, but it is not an imbalance for them to be able to face each other, especially when the german team might have other 7.7 vehicles like the M48, and the reverse is true for the M48 versus any other 6.7 vehicle.

Again, this generalisation does not hold up when you look at specific examples. most of the tanks from the cold war can still kill many tanks that had armour designed to withstand early darts, and there are many post-cold war vehicles with no meaningful armour at all. There is a reason light tanks with little to no armour at all are the meta in the 9.0 br area. You need to stop thinking of the game in historical era’s and start seeing vehicles for what they actually are worth based on their capabilities.

You have gone on about proposals, so why dont you explain exactly how you would like to implement your historical matchmaking. As in specifically how you would match games, how vehicles would be separated and how they would be compared, and how it would all work, if you are wanting to get rid of the BR system.

8

So BMP-1 vs Leopard 2A6 and T-80BVM when?

9

for every problem an answer was found, the allies ones balanced with the number and tactics in the Second World War, because qualitatively the German vehicles were better at the time, and in a direct clash the shermans could not keep up with the tiger, who he would have literally passed, but you can’t be in 2 places at the same time so the greater number and tactics won. so yes the balance in this sense would exist, then obviously the player’s skill comes into play.

if it worked well people wouldn’t complain about it so I wouldn’t use this term, furthermore you don’t limit the choice, you simply create a different type of experience and difficulty, perhaps more historically accurate too, which highlights the real strengths and weaknesses of the means in historical context that belongs to it. then if it didn’t work as an absolute system, because it leaves many nations exposed, it could work as a game mode, and I’m sure that many people would appreciate it, and as I said it would be a different type of challenge, because having a more powerful tank in inferiority numerical is still difficult to manage, and at the same time having a greater number of vehicles but knowing you can explode in one shot puts you in the same level

you can even say every single encounter, unless the pilot of the mig 29 is a total incompetent, but since it is assumed that someone who has arrived at the mig-29 knows how to pilot it, a Phantom has no hope of being able compete, especially for the low flying trend, the phantom’s AIM-7s are almost useless, and the mig has definitely better IR missiles for dogfighting, better speed, and better maneuverability. the cases in which a mig-29 finds itself in unfavorable conditions to be shot down by a phantom are decidedly low compared to the probabilities of a mig-29 user, therefore I would not take those possibilities as a parameter to define that they can easily compete with each other, because no, they shouldn’t do that

those are rare exceptions, and the fact that it can destroy it doesn’t mean they have to compete, because in any case the kingtiger was not designed for the t-54 and vice versa. why then do we put the M60A3TTS (9.0) with apfsds against the t-54 1949/1951 (8.0) and here you have a clear example of different technologies colliding (+1-1), and tell me where in your opinion is the balance? certainly the t-54 with a lucky hit could destroy it, but in how many cases?

10

wait until this guy finds out Panzer 4 in 2023

11

This is a good idea, was mentioned several times in the past and would be something i would play for sure.
HOWEVER…the BIG problem is that most of these ideas wont work in a PVP game where players can simply choose not to play.
Whenever there was a game mode where one side had a technical advantage, even if compensated by numbers or other restrictions, the players would end up queuing for the “stronger” vehicle and there would not be enough players to play the weaker ones.
(saw it happen a lot in WW mode…was one of the reasons the mode “died”)
PERSONALLY i would actually feel less pressure playing the Sherman on your example…BUT most players would not play it. It does not help that the 4/5 shermans would have to play as a team to kill a tiger (I recall that in many cases we are talking about the 75mm armed sherman, which cant harm a tiger from the front)
Gaijin is not always “inventive”…but they do have to work with players…and if i learned anything on this forum is that most players think game should be as they want it … and they will avoid playing anything they don’t like :)

I would love to play historical scenarios with historical matchups, with uneven techs, numbers and air support…but i can see that it would be hard to make it work in pvp, and keep players interested on all roles.

THAT SAID…i would like them to try…even if on an event…although i was told they did try in the past and players would simply not play it from both sides.

Odd that you mention utopia when you seem to be the one using it :)

1 Like
12

yes, I imagine that everyone would like to play only the strongest vehicle, but this is because the player lacks re-education, and seeing that there are not places for everyone, they will necessarily have to play and engage with the other vehicle. I also firmly believe in re-education of the player’s habits, because wt is a team game that is not played in a team, except by small organized groups, but for the most part people are in a team but play individually. that mode would force people to have to cooperate to win, this would bring about a change in the players’ way of thinking, at least that’s what I think, I could also be wrong, furthermore this is just one of the ideas, but there may be other solutions. however, by the concept of utopia I mean the fact that the current method is defined as balanced, when it is totally unbalanced, this is what I meant with the term utopian, then I don’t know if I understood what you wanted me to allude to, damn language barrier

13

so your solution, for a better system than the one we have currently, is to have people throw themselves repeatedly at a far superior enemy they know will kill them. It is absolutely crazy to me that you cannot see the idiocy of this idea, or even the hipocrisy, literally in this same comment you talk about how a phantom cannot kill a Mig-29, which is decidedly untrue, but a phantom certainly has more chance versus a fulcrum than a 75mm sherman has against a Kingtiger. How can you think that it is more balanced?

Chronic whiners such as yourself will complain endlessly until every matchup is in your favour, and even then you will find something to complain about. the fact that some people complain does not make the thing they are complaing about bad.

They are not rare exceptions, it is the majority of 1.0br difference matchups. the fact that youve picked the TTS is proof enough of that, and even then the T54 can still fairly easily kill one, the TTS will just get the first shot off if both tanks are moving because of the stab

Either way, you are just cherrypicking things ive said, and still arent actually putting foward an idea with any detail or answers.

14

ok I understand the kind of person you are, so I won’t waste any more time with you, since you persist in using inappropriate language anyway.

1 Like
15

I mean, you still havent said anything of any substance or actually proposed any solutions. you are wasting your time posting what amounts to nothing anyway

16

reread my proposal, it was there, maybe not detailed but it was there, you on the other hand just complained about everything the whole time, so bring a concrete solution or other ideas, the post was created for this, If you have nothing concrete and constructive to say, why are you still here? you’re just pointing the finger at an idea that doesn’t work for you without offering a better one.

17

The existing system is better than your half baked idea. My proposal from the start is keep it as is.

18

The BR system is great overall. just the person in charge of choosing the BRs is:

1: simply an idiot or
2: deliberately making the game annoying so you buy premium time/vehicles to skip the compression to get to top tier or
3: deluded by wrong stats and thinking we want quick queue times over a fair/balanced game.

I feel 2 is the most likely.

1 Like
19

To be quite honest I reckon it’s number 3 but worded differently.

They’re looking at the stats alright but are ignoring the factors that go into why those numbers the way they are. Like take the F-4F Late for example. A Phantom that has no SARHs facing BRs where it will see missiles multitudes better than the 9Js it has equipped.

They say the jet is performing well (back when it was 11.0), ignoring the fact that the only people playing it were those who love/main phantoms. Of course they will perform better.

20

OP, you are conflating two different issues.

Compression is about density, not matchmaker type. It’s about “how many vehicles are in a bracket?” and not “why are these specific vehicles in that bracket?”

Just as a hypothetical example, it would be possible to have a historical matchmaker that suffers from horrible compression: divide all vehicles in the game into two brackets, WW2 and Postwar, with no further bracketing. There, done. Now, Pz III Es and IS-3s are in the same bracket.

This is obviously an “absurd” example, but it serves to illustrate the point: you’re talking about two separate things, compression, and matchmaker type.

So, let’s deal with them separately.

Is there a huge issue of BR compression in War Thunder? Yes, a thousand times yes. No argument there, I completely agree. Nothing more to add.

Independently of decompression, would we be better off if we had a historical matchmaker? I don’t think so. Here is why:

There are a few, clear and very compelling arguments in favour of performance-based matchmakers. First of all, it means that every vehicle ideally (this doesn’t always happen in practice, but in general terms) has a chance to be competitive. Therefore, every vehicle is worth playing more or less equally.

After all, if players aren’t going to play the vehicle, why have it in the game at all? It’s a waste of manpower, working hours, and graphical/sound assets. Investing these resources is only justified if people actually play the vehicle.

Another obvious pro is that it’s easy. You just need to create the vehicle, and done. Drop it in game, see how it does, determine its BR. Instead, if you needed a historical context to justify the presence of every new vehicle you introduce, you would need a lot more work, pace of updates would be slower, and the number of vehicles in game would be much lower.

A game with a limited amount of vehicles can have historical matchmaking far more easily, because the number of variables is smaller. A game that plans on having tons and tons of vehicles can benefit from the relative simplicity of a performance-based matchmaker.

I think it’s obvious which option would be more attractive, if you were thinking about it from a pure business POV.

To make things even more complicated, some of the counters you would need to make historical matchmaking viable, simply do not exist in this game. Like when you say:

This sounds nice on paper, but the problem is that the reality of historical armoured warfare was a lot more complicated than that.

For example, during Barbarossa, Germans in Pz 35 ts still managed to defeat Soviet heavy units with KV-1s. Have you ever asked yourself how that sort of thing was possible? It was because German doctrine allowed their tanks to work in close cooperation with infantry and towed anti-tank guns. We can’t recreate this aspect in WT without overhauling the game mechanics.

There is more than just doctrine, too. You would need to simulate logistics as well. German tanks would have perpetual fuel shortages, limiting how much they can move on the battlefield, or perhaps limited availability of ammunition and (for later in the war) even camouflage schemes.

Artillery would need to actually be the tank-killer it is IRL. Technical faults and maintenance issues for King Tigers would certainly allow a pack of Sherman 75mm and M18 players to win. Making this be competitive and enjoyable for both sides sounds like a nightmare, though. Especially if you then have to do the same, for hundreds of possible vehicle combinations in the game.

If you don’t include these limitations, and go just by numbers, you end up in a situation like the last World War season, everyone wanted to play the Germans in Operation Nordwind. I had so much fun driving around in a Jagdtiger that could not be frontally penetrated by any opponent I could possibly meet, but for that exact same reason, queue times were atrocious, and you ended up often in the paradoxical situation of having ten German players vs four American players just so a match could actually start. Which… yeah.

A game like IL-2 Tank Crew can get away with this, because they have a very limited number of available AFVs confined to one specific historical scenario. It’s impossible to reconcile it with the vast array of vehicles in WT.

One more issue with historical matchmaking is that WT is an incredibly arcadey game. It simply does not have (or wish to have) the simulator aspects that would make a historical matchmaker more interesting, where the sheer granularity of the experience and immersion can overcome the balance problems that the game might have, and make you have fun anyway.

WT clearly wants to be fast-paced, competitive, accessible, and huge. None of these things go well with historical mil sim, I’m afraid.

On a final note, I would recommend looking up custom servers that do historical reenactment battles. There are several which are excellent. I’m interested in that sort of thing too, a more roleplay experience, I just know this isn’t the game that can offer it in its normal modes. But in custom battles with other players, yes, totally.

1 Like