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.
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:
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
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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No, you’ve picked the design which causes more repair costs to the players…
And what about damage made by AI AA? If it severely damages a plane will it also count as “dead” at the end of the battle? Cause everyone knows that Gaijin either nerfs of buffs AI AA and this will bring a even more negative feeling towards Gaijin’s tweaking of everything in the game.
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I don’t want to get into discussion how brave heroes in reality keep flying without wings and returning to the base without any problems (I saw this kind of discussions in the past, and they are absolutely pointless from my perspective). This is just a game, and you can’t predict and simulate all situations.
From your screenshots, for me that’s a problem with the flight model in the game. For example, on the test server, one of the Russian players managed to land his plane without the tail:
Spoiler
Like I said, this is a flight model problem. And it will be hard to solve this completely for every plane in the game in every damage situation possible.
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Is there plans to incentivize bailing out of the destroyed aircraft? Some extra SL or RP for the pilot not getting “knocked out” as their aircraft plumets in a flaming wreck and they get picked up by a search and rescue team? After all, “Try to come back alive - your country needs you.” unless you have “Crashed… for good luck!” :p
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I believe that more than the damage model, it is the instructor who causes this, since the plane is heading where you are pointing, so the instructor corrects the movements so that it goes where you are pointing. What should be done is that the instructor does not correct your movement when you have such serious damage.
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Yeah, I remember when I dodged SARH on the deck, but got my rudder damaged due to flying on a low speed, and despite this I was still able to fight. And I did this, but the game considered me as severely damaged and counted death in the end of the match. I’m glad such bugs are fixed now. It was surprising and annoying
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Yes, it’s called “Severe Damage”. As soon as you get severely damaged you will be considered “dead” at the end of the battle so better not waste any more time and just bail out, this is what a “well” thought mechanic will bring into Air Battles.
It’s ironic that so many here complain about ODLs and they don’t realize that this is what will increase hugely with this mechanic.
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If it was just the instructor then it would allow ridiculous things like that for every plane. Seems more like a FM issue to me.
I don’t think this has been implemented in ground. I’ve had multiple kills “stolen” the old way without any new credits.
My two cents:
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The “severe damage” message should not be the same color as the “aircraft destroyed” one (make “severe damage” yellow or dark orange maybe?). Very seldom do i actually read the text that comes up as it takes focus from the game and i might miss important things if i take my eyes of the battle to read.
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I would like a clarification on how this will effect warbonds, tasks and such as there now will be more kills and less assists in general (as an average). Any plans on changes in that regard?
@Stona_WT ?
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This is misleading as engine extinguishers aren’t stock on non-premium aircraft that have them, and not all aircraft have self-sealing fuel tanks (or burn through fuel in a fire quick enough to avoid crippling damage). It should be considered severe damage if the fire burns long enough to cause severe damage, simple enough to me.
Well yeh because it’s still yet to be added to the game in any capacity, this was just a test bed in air.
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