Yeah fair, and probably easier for Gaijin to implement than my idea. Though this also lowers the sample size per vehicle, and might still be affected by the individual skill level of the top % players.
Still, it’s better than what we have now
I know, it just makes for a much easier example with simple single % values rather than a combined sum of multiple values, over certain periods of time that Gaijin have already vaguely confirmed they use.
Of course winrates generally suck for vehicle balancing, being the one main stat that doesn’t actually depend on the individual vehicle, but also the team or lineups, but it’s also irrelevant for my idea what value you use. Basically it goes something like this:
Example
With the current system, desired value (D) must be equal to or within a certain margin of tolerance to 50%. For that the players vehicle value (V) is taken and divided by the desired value (D). So if a player has 70% value on a vehicle the calculation simply goes:
V / D → 70 / 50 → 1.4
The resulting value of 1.4 shows the vehicle overperforming by 40%. For this is is absolutely irrelevant that the specific player here has an average value (A) of 80%, meaning in this specific vehicle he is underperforming, even if statistics show the exact opposite. However to filter out player skill is quite simple, by using individual player average (A) in place of a global desired average (D):
V / A → 70 / 80 → 0.875
This then clearly shows the vehicle is underperforming by 12.5% relative to the player skill, and allows the vehicle to be objectively balanced. This can then be applied to players of any skill level equally, and will still give vehicles more objective rating.
The only issue I can think of is that it doesn’t account for differing skill floors and ceilings on vehicles, but that seems like the lesser evil compared to “If played by good players → moved up”, at least in my own opinion.
Now, for a realistic implementation, all of these values would be split up into different subcategories or earnings, kills, assists and/or whatever other values Gaijin use, and also generally being taken only in from a certain recent timeframe, perhaps the last month or two, to reflect only the current game, but none of those things are relevant to the example at all.