Honest question and this goes for Realistic battles, SIM battles- air & ground >
Is the almost artificial drive to make the game fair and balanced (vehicle and weaponry performance buffs and debuffs) not removing from the need to practice in skill & game understanding? I am not talking about KD, I am talking about learning your line-up and effectively using the right vehicle in the right situation in the right terrain to achieve optimal results in countering the enemy team.
Please do not :
- Rant about bias
- Attack each other on skill
- Attack the devs
Keep it clean, informative and to topic.
Could You elaborate about this?
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Added it in in basic. But basically, engine / traction / reloads / turn times / seeker effectiveness / etc. Add to that map design and battle style.
It will depend exclusively on the situation and map where I find myself. For a example, ground battles Sinai is a great map where fast moving vehicles shines if it has good firepower with gun handling.
Using my most used vehicle during the last month — AMX-30 Super it excels in mobility and firepower to counterweight the lack of armor for it battle rating. In Sinai map, I quickly reach best spots at the middle while in cover behind rocks and snipe people going for point A or point C.
In this case I’m using the gun handling and power for knocking out a vehicle in one single shot with ease, higher level and specialized crew also helps a lot to counter more armored vehicles like the T-64B or M48 Super.
Unfortunately or fortunately, it depends, I don’t use a full line-up, limiting myself to only one since I’m after fun and quick matches. If I manage to stay alive till the end of the game good, if I die early I simply go for another.
This strategic may seems to be bad or worthless, but I can affirm that some of my survival skills during a match has been made because of this practice of using only one vehicle per match.
My question for you would be how it goes for all maps in rotation for BR and with what ease / difficulty you (personally) adjust?
When using fast vehicles, usually I always take the middle path, were most people tend to take flanks thinking they’ll get someone on the middle but everyone is also flanking or using common paths, with this the adaptation is more easy, as I take unusual paths, if I reach the middle to end part of the map, at least two or three destroyed vehicles is guaranteed.
In ground, there is no question. Top tier is badly compressed and so many major game breaking issues are outstanding on various vehicles that it is 100% game balance.
In my main gamemode of ASB, there is some pretty clear BR related issues. Things like the Sea Harrier FRS1 being the same BR as the Mig-23MLD is just insane to me. (you also have the whole, “these identical tornados have different BRs because they have different effeciency” nonsense which also is really annoying)
Also the lack of a 12.3 or 13.3 Air Sim Bracket, results in hard-uptiers which just suck.
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This rates back to my original question. You think the current balance of play is forcing common paths more than it used? Thumb suck lets say pre-2022 vs post-2022.
In terms of current balance and “meta” can you elaborate more?
Things like the fact the Challenger 2 is limited to 4 round ready rack despite 2 year old bug reports for it being 20+. Let alone the 30 or so bug reports relating to armour, ERA and just straight up holes in the model. All of which result in the CR2 being a far far weaker tank than it should.
Will it be a “meta” tank. No probably not, but it could at least be usable. At the moment. Britains TT basically ends at 10.7.
(and thats without even mentioning hte lack of usable top tier IFV or SPAA)
I’ve heard similar reports from the Merkava, Leclerc, Type10/90 and the Chinese MBTs
You also have issues like the Typhoons CAPTOR-M radar is borderline unusable. Which in a BVR Meta, is brutally punishing; nerfs it hard.
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Making vehicles balanced, in an assymetric way at least, makes skill be more important, not less.
If I can take out a plane in ASB whose prop torque is insignificant compared to its power to weight, that has a bubble canopy (while my peers don’t), that has significant ammo advantage or ballistics or damage, that can both turn well and zip around to dictate engagements and has very forgiving stall characteristics (all this compared to peers)…
I don’t need nearly as much skill to beat my opponents than if things were far more comparable.
If things are instead moved around with BR so that my sustained turn becomes average to below average and all I have is top speed and instantenous turn rate where my power-to-weight makes sticking the fight a bad idea, I’ll need to employ far more skill to win my match-ups. Inversely, if my top speed becomes useless against my peers while I retain my UFO like sustained turn - I once again need to employ far more tactics and skill to win.
Extreme case: P-51H fighting Bf109K4 is not going to need a lot of skill.
Less extreme case: F4U-4 fighting Bf109G2 still not going to need as much skill as F4U-4 fighting Ki-84.
Yes, specially regarding map changes, like Sands of Sinai is a good example of this behaviour of forcing players in one thing instead of giving the free will to play wherever they want in the map for example.
Would you call the game currently being balanced asymmetric or symmetric? Also, what side would you favor?
Would you see this as a negative impact to the learning curve or positive impact to the learning curve? New player VS veteran, etc
I’d say prop tier air simulator battles are ~mostly asymmetrically balanced (opposing planes have their “sweetspot” for engagement - if you force fight at this sweetspot through trickery and teamwork, you win. If you fall for the enemy doing the same, you lose), skewing in (US+Britain)'s favour over (Germany+Italy). It is more balanced when considering (US+britain) vs (Germany+Italy+Japan).
There’s a few outliers - XP-55 is stupid at 3.0, P-51-C10 is also kind of wack at 4.0. Ki-84/Spit Lf XIV/Yak-3U feel undertiered as well. I don’t really fly 5.3-6.3 brackets much, so cannot comment on them.
Main balance issues has more to do with age of flight models. More modern planes feel they had their models implemented with greater fidelty - left turning tendencies, sensitivity to slip/skid for wingstalls, control surface lock-up, compression - “feel” better implemented for more modern planes over older ones.
Oh, and some mechanics that aren’t exactly “sim-like” - namely tail-gunners having auto-slew to auto-IFF black dots in third person view and ability to retain stable gun solution while on fire and spinning.
There’s issues, but usually I don’t see issues I cannot reasonably attribute to skill issues (or lack of headtracking) or team coordination for the usual axis/allied setup. Soviet planes feel kinda powerful at the usual 3 km flight altitude, but they also go like… no ammo.
Usually when (germany+italy) dominates, I notice they’re in a voice call or otherwise coordinating better than my team and that’s fair game (even if I lament my allergy to voice chat).
Would you say the same for the rest and the rest of the game modes?
There usually is a thing that is at a “OP” BR till more people use it or those who does use it do insanely well. Here I do hhave a bit of a gripe on the fact that vehicles get balanced by effeciency. Right now, I have noticed that the M23ML suffers in up-tiers as they become free food to the F18 but then again, exact same goes for thhe F18 prem turning free food.
This I feel on a personal level - except for I would to an extent say the issue persists on the new vehicles for about two weeks to a month after release before they become “stable”.
Some things will always have to be taken in “for game sake”.
Would you deem this to be worse or better since the changes in game play (thumb suck) post-2022? The “Linear” Age?
Excluding any possibility of engaging different roles in a match, it would be good since both veteran players and new players would have to equally adapt to the new, it’s a positive curve for learning.
I havn’t flown air sim before 2024 in warthunder so i cannot comment.
I usually find team coordination to be pretty nice outside of grind events filling lobbies with afk farmers and riggers.
ARB has atrocious mission design that encourages head-on into middle of the map for matches that end in 5-7 minutes with only rare ones giving you actual full length matches. Balance wise, I think the mission design there drives the most issues at gunfighter and dogfight missile brackets.
My only BVR plane (ignoring aim-7C and aim-9C shenanigans through clouds) is stock and on a noob crew so idk about that brackets.
Jets feel horribly compressed in both ASB and ARB though starting with the post-war up until where I got experience (gunfighter vietnam). Planes that utterly dominate downtiers become meek in up tiers rather than feel “it’s a bit easier” vs “it’s a bit harder”, it becomes “I get 4 kills doing nothing yeeting 18G side/frontal missiles at flareless, chaffless, RWRless victims and then I die to an all-aspect IR as I didn’t realize all-aspects exist at 11.3 (I joined a 10.3-11.3 lobby)”
GRB has the whole CAS situation.
GSB has issues with lineup design.
Both have “maps devolve rapidly towards whoever has the thickest frontplate or the girthiest gun.”
The balance by silver lions feels extra dumb in ASB as your maximum earnings are capped in 15 minute cycles, so an ariete dominating a 8.0-9.0 lobby looks no different to a stock 7.7 Horten just shooting A.I targets in an empty pve/bomber lobby
I was thinking more in line of propeller planes.
Closed Beta planes that werent really touched feel they handle… weird, while planes that were updated or released down the line actually stall as you expect them to and have lock-up issues and proper left-turning tendency you’d expect from their designs.
'Twas funny, I spawn rushed top lane on abandoned factory against the usual path and got called a spawn camper. I was literally trying to stem the flow of them heading to A in the first place.
A panther at full pace has a lot of momentum, where a hellcat has good acceleration and movement. Quite a difference.
I hate the CQC flow of battles and would like to see some variance again, but good insight - thank you