Responding to the Severe Damage feedback & release time

Official News, Development Blogs and Updates
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Hey everyone, thanks for testing out the Severe Damage mechanics and leaving your feedback on it! The majority of feedback has been positive towards this new mechanic, although there’s some points that we’d like to talk about before releasing this mechanic, which is set to go live sometime this week.

One of the main talking points relates to severely damaged aircraft being considered destroyed at the end of a battle. When designing this, we thought about two things: there’ll be players who don’t want to be considered destroyed at the end of the battle, and players who inflicted the severe damage feeling like they should get the destruction at the end of the battle. We’ve thought about both ways, but would like to stick with the original design which rewards the “attacker” side with the destruction at the end of the battle, and brings more frags that is generally better. Even though both decisions will leave some players not satisfied, we’ve picked the design which rewards the player who caused the severe damage.

Some of you mentioned that one of the messages was too long, and we agree. The “A kill of a severely damaged aircraft counted” has been changed to “Severely damaged aircraft kill counted”.

We have also read feedback that severely damaged aircraft could have a marker added to signify this to other players. We’d rather not add this because a severely damaged aircraft could still be as dangerous as a regular aircraft. Adding a marker to signify this might be misleading in some cases and we’d like to keep it simple.

Also mentioned were aircraft on fire. Fires don’t count as severe damage because they can be extinguished and not cause any meaningful impact on the flight characteristics. However, if the fire causes a lot of damage to the parts of an aircraft previously mentioned in our news post, it’ll then count as severe damage.

There were also some requests to add a similar mechanic to ground and naval vehicles. While we discussed this internally, there’s no specific plans drawn up for this as we don’t see it as necessary at the moment.

Last but not least, there were some bugs where light damage counted as severe damage, which should now be fixed. Although if you happen to encounter any related issues when this mechanic releases, please report a bug here and we’ll take a look.

Once again, many thanks for testing out this new mechanic and leaving your feedback! As mentioned, we’re planning to release this new mechanic sometime this week. Stay tuned!

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The attacker side being rewarded is wrong, because:
→ the attacker recieved 80% of reward already
→ the attacker is not able to “confirm kill”, so unrealistic on how a kill is acredited in real life.
→ the defender might be able to land, and make his aircraft being repaired, alike the Israeli F-15D (loosing a wing) or the B-17 from Stigler’s story being completely torn off by bullets and shells, but still flown 600+km before landing

→ i suggest Gaijin change this, to not give the kill at the end of battle IF the defender is farther away than Within Visual Range (about 10km)
(That kind of rules for rewards already exist for ejecting people–> easy to implement)

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I have to admit that I find it an interesting change, this way you can get casualties against planes that you destroyed but by chance the plane was not completely destroyed and it escaped. It will probably require touch-ups, but it is a good idea.
With the issue of implementing the same in the GF, it could be possible, since in reality a tank with several penetrations is not operational, although to be honest, if they gave real damage to all the GF bullets it would be more than enough to make a much better game, and also check the servers since it does not register many shots, especially the shots from certain 20mm automatic cannons.
In short, it is a good change, but much more is needed to solve the game’s problems.

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Of course players who inflicted a severe damage should get the destruction of that aircraft. After all the new system replaces most kill conditions with the severe damage mechanics:

If an aircraft is damaged to the extent where it would have been counted as being destroyed previously, (…) this new mechanic will count it as severely damaged.

By killing severely damaged planes at the end of the battle, you keep the number of destroyed planes at the same level as in the old system. Otherwise, players would die less than in the current system.

This is the real problem, this is why this system was introduced in the first place. Many players, who died from “already destroyed” planes were complaining about this fact. This new system makes already destroyed planes indistinguishable from other planes. So no one will be able to complain that “already destroyed” plane still managed to kill them somehow.

It’s strange that bugs like this always favor players during testing. Then the bugs will be fixed and players will actually see what this new system looks like, after it’s already implemented.

Well, that’s a shame. I remember about two years ago when you reduced the effectiveness of aircraft cannons, how many players complained about “it’s too hard to kill enemies right now!”.

With this severe damage system, there will be only two ways to instantly kill an aircraft: killing its pilot or tearing off its tail. I’m sure when players realise how this new mechanics really works there will be a lot of complains. This new system won’t touch the “kill stealing” issue (what most players think), it will just make planes much harder to kill with most “plane destroyed” situations being replaced by “plane severely damaged” situations.

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how about kill assists? I would expect that after implementing the new mechanic its much harder to get them. This will inflict the corr. battle pass tasks.

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Minor nitpick:

I think the naming of all the new “Severe Damage” stuff should be refined.
Getting a pop up, even if it’s in the same color as “Aircraft Destroyed”, that just says “Severe Damage” does not give the same feeling as it should. It just feels like getting a critical hit, rather than what is practically a kill.

Severe Damage → Mission Kill
Severely damaged aircraft kill counted → Assist Counts as Kill
There are some other new messages as well, but I don’t remember exactly what they were, but they should be changed in the same spirit.

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Don’t know what game are you playing, but rn, damaged planes do not count as a kill at the end of the game and this is how it should remain.

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You are missing the fact that severe damage mechanics will replace most kill conditions.

In the old (current) system, this is a kill condition:

Spoiler

In the new system, this kill condition will be replaced by a severe damage condition:

Spoiler

In fact most current kill conditions will be replaced by severe damage. Only 2 kill conditions will stay the same in both systems: killing the pilot and tearing off the tail.

Severely damaged plane on the battlefield would already be considered destroyed in the current system. So it’s like a delayed destruction mechanics. Severely damaged planes are pretty much already destroyed, they are just not marked as destroyed yet (so other players understand that they can still be dangerous).

What do you think will happen if the devs decide not to kill all severely damaged planes at the end of the battle?

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I think that the name “Severe Damage” should be changed to “Mission Kill” or similar, I believe it would fit the context in which it is being used better.

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It will replace ONE of the kill conditions actually in force: tearing wings. Which is the only current problem as (some) planes can still fly with a wing tear off, while they count as dead. And they also added new ones, as killing the engine or the control surfaces now count as a sever damage and will lead to a kill at the end of the match, while before you could try to glide to the base (or at least glide long enough for the game to end).

Instead of fixing a simple problem (which, to be honest, was very minor and I could not recall anyone complaining, but lets just forget about that), they decided to create a whole new one by adding unnecessary complexity and pissing off players.

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I agree with most of these except this one.

If someone destroys an aircraft I set on fire while it’s still burning I feel like I should get severe damage reward. If the aircraft puts out the fire then proceed as proposed

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Great. Another nail in the coffin of air AB, not that I thought that there was space for more nails. Games ending after four minutes, most bombers being completely useless, awful lot of domination games, ever decreasing score granting for some actions, critical hits nerfed into oblivion… and now, overcomplex kill mechanic because some people were unable to understand that a greyed plane could still be a threat. And that of course without any reduction in task requirements.

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Alas, making a marker that changes its tone from “alive” bright red to “shot down” darker one and back would be both readable enough and at the same time make it impossible to mistake a critically damaged enemy (for example, without a wing or an engine) for an alive one while he’s flying (or rather gliding) away at ground level.

And even if we consider them dangerous even when damaged, they’ll have significant problems while aiming, which would make them less of a factor in a dogfight where there’s no time to visually analyse each enemy aiming at you.

Making the marker change its colour (alike to highlighted ground AI units) would solve the identification problem.
You won’t be reinventing the wheel, since the mechanic of highlighting/differentiating via blinking has already been present from the start, and it’s not any “completely new” colour (I dunno, let’s say orange/beige/whatever else) that would actually be unusual for the players.

The only downside would be the short-term acclimation period of the AB/RB community, but in the long run it saves lots of nerves due to wasted positioning on an enemy that crashed after you lost your altitude and time.

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I would actually count the wing breaks as a directly destroyed plane, which is severe damage I would put it when it is a very damaged wing, or the engine in black, in essence extremely severe damage but that logically would not count as a shootdown exactly.

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This one is extremely smart. Simplicity works best here.

I still think ground vehicle rewards are perfect and do not need this mechanic.

Naval is compatible with this mechanic for sure, and would be nice, but air definitely benefits the most.

I never received that bug in my testing, so I guess I know exactly how it’ll perform.

There is no change. Doing light damage to aircraft guarantees a kill assist.

@poopooo
That’s unrealistic because people can land and repair with broken wings:

Spoiler

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Well, but that happens in the game, in reality the fact that you are missing a wing leaves your plane useless and the normal thing is to jump out of the plane, that there are cases of pilots who returned without parts of the wings is something anecdotal and depends of the pilot’s skill and the airplane model.
In any case, the image that you have put in reality is a destroyed plane yes or yes, just because the requirements of being shot down in the game are not well done does not mean that it is realistic, so since things are going to be changed it is a good time for that to be modified.

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Does this affect ground combat in anyway i.e spaa player shreds a plane before the end of a match and its severely damaged before reaching an airfield would you be credited a kill at the end of the game???

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Please check this article:

Especially this part:

Spoiler

Welcome to the “Severe damage” mechanic

As of now, the death of an aircraft is counted under one of the following conditions: the pilot was knocked out; the aircraft crashed into an object and was completely destroyed; the aircraft had its tail torn off; the aircraft received damage that causes it to be counted as dead but it can still conduct further combat.

Relating to the last part, currently when an enemy aircraft gets destroyed (“Target destroyed”), they can sometimes still fly, shoot, land to repair and have no automatic bail out. The aim of this was to allow you to score a frag and at the same time prevent another player from finishing off the heavily damaged enemy aircraft and steal the frag.

We’d rather not count the aircraft as destroyed based on “guesses”, but instead would like to leave you the opportunity to attempt to control a “severely” damaged aircraft until it’s either completely destroyed or returns to the airfield to repair.

However, with different game modes, aircraft control options, player experiences, and the number of aircraft in the game, there hasn’t been a single system that could reliably and accurately determine this state.

Due to this, we’re proposing to remove this condition from the game mechanics and instead replace it with the “Severe damage” mechanic. How will this work? If an aircraft is damaged to the extent where it would have been counted as being destroyed previously, despite still being able to fly, shoot and land to repair, this new mechanic will count it as severely damaged. No destruction or death will be credited until the severely damaged aircraft is further finished off.

I understand most players tested this new severe damage mechanics with jets, where they used powerful guns and missiles, that cause huge explosions. I don’t play jets, but from other players opinions I assume this new system didn’t change much in this area on the test sever, and it was still pretty easy to kill other jets.

I played on the event sever at lower ranks, and the difference between the old and new system is like night and day. This kind of situation was normal on the test sever:

Spoiler

https://youtu.be/i2Jgauq1laI

I know you will say I again destroyed his wing, but look for how long my teammates keep shooting at this guy. He should be dead like 10 times already with the old system, but he is still alive, because they can’t kill his pilot or tear off the tail (the only kill conditions that are left with the new system).

These guys are wasting their time and ammo on the plane that shouldn’t even be alive anymore. And you can’t even recognize severely damaged planes in the new system (in old system it’s easy, as you see different nameplate color).

From my perspective, a player who plays propellers in Arcade, this new system will create a lot of issues with already dead planes staying alive for longer. And what should I do in this situation? Try to finish this guy and waste more time and more ammo on him, or just leave him for my teammates?

The current system in my opinion is well made. With severely damaged planes turning nameplates to grey, you can see the situation clearly. You can still attack them if you want and receive an assist (60% of rewards). With this new system sometimes you won’t even know who is severely damaged and who isn’t and if you attack severely damaged planes, all you can get is 40% of the rewards.

I do understand, with this new system there can be 2 players credited for 1 kill (at least in stats, but not on the battle summary screen). For some players this will be an improvement. For me personally, the current kill credit system actually makes more sense. The first guy (the guy who caused a severe damage) will get the kill credit, and all other players know that attacking enemy with grey nameplate won’t give them kill credit anymore (but they can still attack them if they want, for assist).

I personally don’t see anything wrong with the current system. And even if players thought the current system should be improved, then why not just changing the destroyed plane nameplate color from grey to e.g. orange or yellow, to indicate in a clearer way this plane is still dangerous?

This new system will also affect the stats, that will be messy and not accurate anymore. And these stats are later used by Gaijin to balance vehicles. This could be a problem in the future, as planes with good guns should receive more “fake frags” in their stats (it will be much easier to finish severely damaged planes with them).

The new system will also create illogical situations. For example, you critically damage an enemy (which guarantees you an assist), then your teammate severely damage the same plane. What do you do now? If you just leave that plane, you will receive an assist (60% rewards), but if you finish him, you will only receive 40% rewards. And to confuse you even more, sometimes you won’t even know if your teammate already severely damaged that plane or not yet. So would you waste more ammo and time on that enemy or just assume the plane is already severely damaged, leave it and be happy with an assist? How is all this not confusing? Especially from the propeller players perspective (or, to be more accurate, planes with weaker weapons).

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“We heard your feedback, but decided not to care about any of it” like always…

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regarding kill assists - actually you get a assist even after a critical damage - in future this will mainly be a “severe damage” which results in a kill. So we will get less assists but more kills.

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