Reward system should promote teamwork

Game Discussion General Discussion
,
1

imagine - you and a teammate have a nice aim on a crippled enemy tank and there is another hiding in cover

your teammate is about to shoot the crippled tank and get reward, however, you shoot first at almost same time and kill him - you both empty your guns

now the enemy in cover takes opportunity and comes out, killing your teammate, but you manage to kill him later and the match ends.

this could go better however, if you’d let the ally destroy tank, the other wouldnt dare to get out of the cover and both of you could call arty on him or something, destroying 2 enemy tanks without losses - and this would be preferable from point of view of your team - it would be logical to reward you more because you saved your ally, in addition, it shouldnt really matter which of you scored the kill either as you two should be cooperating - maybe you didnt score the kill, but you were there so your ally could kill the crippled one without worrying to get shot by some other right after

.

this is also an issue in air battles too - cmon, how many times had you seen somebody dive from space to steal your kill, sacrificing his energy just to do nothing for his team in the end - even loss!

or if you were that guy and kept flying high - provided cover for your team to ensure victory but end up returning to hangar without rewards because all the enemies in the match were flying low and you were guarding them from threat that turned out not to even exist in that particular match - or - if there was somebody boom n zooming your team down you could simply dive on him and kick him out, winning the match, but still being credited just one kill as if you killed some random attacker uncapable of impacting your teams tickets in significant amounts

.
.

sometimes it is better for your team that you dont score the kill, yet, the reward system pushes players to do it, resulting in stealing kills and leaving superior positions for nothing, how would you solve this issue?

i would give some solutions myself but i have feeling i should listen to yours first, not to come off as some noob just trying to live off other’s work

2 Likes
2

I am going to assume the guy in cover is not known by either friendly player.

This is perfectly acceptable behaviour imo. The reward for damaging a player but not getting the kill is already a thing (called assists). Also making a reward for doing essentially nothing would be really hard to code.

If players focus on the weaker enemy but dies because of it that is their problem for not playing as a team. The reward for playing as a team is keeping you and your team alive so that collectively you can get more kills.
(and win).

3

problem with assist is that you still need to damage the enemy tank yourself somehow, which is kinda dumb since you arent really assisting anything in most of the cases, assists should look like providing cover for the teammate as he disposes of the enemy

4

The reward for that is not dying and having a higher chance to win. Plus how do you reward someone who is literally doing nothing?

Also assists aren’t dumb. They make perfect sense 90% of the time. For example if you shot someone and track them but someone else gets the kill you helped them get said kill aka assisted them in getting that kill.

5

at least, there must be something that can be done in situations such as the example i noted under air battles, you cant really reward people doing nothing but you cant send them back without any rewards as they did some good just by being there

well, yes, and the problem is that not dying and having higher chance to win sometimes requires you do to things game doesnt reward you for - which is why i created this topic

6

Actually I just remembered the game does reward you for being close to a squad mate who destroys an enemy. And if you help that teammate the most you get the best squad reward.

However I think on an entire team level this would be dumb.

7

it should be noted that the reward for that is very low

1 Like
8

For air, you could do as follows:

  • If at event of “severe damage”, no assists are being rewarded
    • then: check within 2.0 km of damaged plane for allies of the kill credit
  • if another plane is found within 2.0 km,
    • then: award a “Dogfighting assistance” worth half a normal assist to that allied plane.

Or even a quarter.

Why? Because in real life, a significant portion of fighter tactics were based around one plane energy trapping/baiting the bandit while their wingman comes in and secures the kill/chases the enemy off. Perhaps most famous of such tactics is the highly effective Thach Weave of WW2 naval aviation fame. The Thach Weave was essentially two planes constantly switching places in such a way as to make sure the zero with its higher performance must pass in front of the guns of one of the planes in formation if it wanted to get a lead.

You cannot say that a plane that has energy trapped (or even outright stalled them with a rope a dope) their opponent has done nothing.

(while at it… we really should award dogfighting kills. If a plane crashes into the terrain or rips its wings off within 2.0 km of an enemy plane without receiving enough damage for kill credit - credit the nearest plane. Way too many times I’ve had enemies rip their wings off as I dove them or they dove me, or they slammed into the ground during scissoring and I got no rewards because I didn’t get my guns on target yet. In Sim, I had the same experiences of dogfighting an enemy - they stall out and crash and neither of us gets any reward… consequently, I stall out from pulling too hard and die to a flat spin before enemy gets a shot on me. The second happens much more often. The guy who made me get into a flat spin deserves a reward, even if it wasn’t that hard).

1 Like
9

this right! but if you ask me, the contribution to the kill is more or less equal

10

The main reason I’d be willing to concede for a quarter of an assist as a reward is mostly to avoid potential worries about “inflation” or “breaking the economy” or potential for abuse. I rather try and low-ball it with hopes of it gaining traction over it getting shot down for making the grind too easy or somesuch.

1 Like
11

“Double servicing” is a problem that can only be solved by improving team communications, not in the reward structure. There is no way for the game to be able to divine “intent” thru the game interface.
IRL it is done by “crosstalk” and by establishing TTP (Tactics Techniques and Proceedures) of wingman and platoons shooting either left or right, near or far targets etc.
GL trying to get WT players to follow that.

12

Another thing that used to be in the game, but no longer is - is LOS points and proximity points.

These were direct increases to your score and were basically bonuses for being around an enemy, which in itself is useful for your team as the enemy must divert his attention to you, and if you die, your team knows where the enemy roughly is.

Additionally, points given for tanking damage (being hit in any way, whether it is a penetration or a ricochet) used to be much higher. Around 40 points per every hit you’d take, while nowadays it’s around 10 points. This in itself is also a form of teamwork as the enemy is directly focused on you, wasting his shells, and giving away his position.

I believe that returning LOS and proximity points, while re-instating the same points gain for taking damage as before, would effectively encourage team play (as you would be directly incentivized to tank damage and see enemies) while increasing gains considerably and therefore increasing player retention.

3 Likes
13

Unfortunately, I believe Gaijin had cited “people abused it”, as seen here ("Ground Breaking" battle activity changes: what do they really mean? (Updated) - General Discussion - War Thunder - Official Forum , Bring back the proximity battle activity rewards for air RB and SB - Air Battles - War Thunder - Official Forum).

This seems to be an unfortunately common thing from what my attempts at reading and researching thing had shown me - any attempt at learning about EC objectives turned to posts about people abusing rockets on airfields and all that, and subsequent rewards nerfs.

I do believe proximity score would be the fairest way to reward dogfighting/energy trapping/baiting enemies, but I am not sure how viable selling it to the devs is based on precedent.

I do find it fascinating how part of their argument is “We removed it not only because of its uselessness (it gave very few points - only a few dozen)” while they also claimed it was abusable.

I believe it might have been more that such awarded everyone involved, rather than just 1/2/3 people so multiple people got to advance while having fun and doing so goes against the frustration-into-pay-for-convenience business model.

It is why I tried to propose “closest plane at time of severe damage tick within 2 km gets 1/2 of assists (or 1/4 if that’s too much) if no assist is awarded already”, as doing so would maintain the current paradigm of only 1/2/3 people getting rewarded for a kill (plus whatever score you got for non-critical/non-assist worthy shots).

It’s a very anemic return to what was, but maybe they cannot counter it with either their internal or externally presented logic.

14

I could only see it being abused in gamemodes with more limited visibility, such as Simulator.
If you’re playing Sim, you could constantly check your scoreboard for any changes as an indicator that someone is nearby.

In realistic and arcade, this is far less of an abusive trait because you already have many things to help with detection. But I can see how it could be abusive in Sim. But it’s at the level that calling it “abusive” in realistic or arcade would be quite the stretch. They could just rework LOS points to be added when you look in the direction that a marker has been set in RB, for example. And proximity still doesn’t give out exact enemy locations.

15

I think for simulator, if we could by some miracle regain proximity score - I think delayed reward would work well enough.

Once you’re within maneuvering range with an enemy, a hidden timer could begin incrementing. Once they are out of range, this timer begins to decay.

The higher the timer, the more when the opponent actually dies (either from crashing into the ground or ripping their wing or actually receiving severe damage - not finished off/destroyed - severe damage should be the cut-off) you are rewarded in a big chunk.

You could maybe also tie this into the “Useful actions” timer and only reward the score when the pop-up appears. This could, theoretically, still be abused but you’d only get a magic radar ping within 2 km every 15 minutes (or when dying), and that seems harmless enough to me.

16

TBH I think a severe damage mechanic for ground would be beneficial for all, especially with the state of a lot of current damage models, this has been especially apparent now I am spading the VCC 80/60, a tank a great reload and decent gun, but due to the fact that you will often get multiple critical hits without killing due to the mediocre spall I have often lost out on kills that were rightfully mine, you can say ‘skill issue’ and ‘aim better’ all you want but I’m aware that mediocre spalling is an issue for any gun under 75mm rn and with the activity based reward system as it is, playing unique vehicles like the VCC 80/60 doesn’t feel very rewarding.

17

Made playing the KV-1E so damn fun and rewarding lol