Summary of changes to Air Matchmaking in 2.45.1.61 (22 Apr)

Game Discussion Arcade Battle
6

The wiki states :

For 3 vehicles

The average BR is calculated using this formula:

BR = A/2 + B/4 + C/4

where A, B, and C are the three highest BRs of the vehicles in the crew slots, ranked in descending order (highest first).

The final result is rounded to the closest decimal from possible options: .0, .3, or .7 (these are the BR steps in the game).

Using their formula for 2.3 - 2.0 - 1.7 the result is 2.075, which would give a BR of 2.0, not 2.3, 2.0 being the closest step…

I thought your post was fine, but their actual implementation was faulty…

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7

good stuff. Sick of the clubbers.

8

All the more reason to just toss this averaging stuff . . they said make it “simple”
Highest BR is as simple as you can make it, more fair to all players and frankly, is the only thing that actually makes sense.
These over complicated & convoluted systems benefit no one and are just rife for exploitation . . just really hard for me to get my head around the waste of time, manpower and resources to continue with such a system as that which is in place now . . . but that’s just me . … ☻

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9

Most times when Gaijin tries to improve something they just come up with another tar baby, I just try to adjust to that :)

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10

This new br system is making even less sense. If I play one 10.7 solo, it is 10.7, but if I add one 10.0 below into the lineup, the br actually drop to 10.3 by adding a plane. This does not make any senses.

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11

Doesn’t stop clubbing

I make it 2.0875, but it still should be 2 according to wiki - needs a bug report
image

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12

Raised an issue - please add yourselves to it:
https://community.gaijin.net/issues/p/warthunder/i/7ycR9v0Job3Y

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13

This is already explained by the bug moderator:

There is a mistranslation in English wiki. It’s supposed to be “rounded up”. See Russian wiki:
Матчмейкинг | War Thunder Wiki

Окончательное значение округляется до ближайшей десятой в большую сторону из списка значений: .0, .3 или .7 (это шаги БР в игре).

I’ll tell to responsible for wiki that they have an error in the English article. Thanks for the report.

It’s just a mistranslation. This is a Russian game, so the original language in which everything is written is Russian. Then it’s translated to English and to be honest, I see many translation mistakes. It’s always worth to check the source (original Russian text) first.

So this is not a bug and it won’t be fixed.

Personally, I see this new system favors one vehicle + one reserve lineups. There is little sense now to use e.g. 4.0 + many 3.3 BR planes as a lineup. It makes more sense to use one 4.0 BR and one reserve plane to reduce the BR of the 4.0 plane to 3.7 and just play with this one plane. When you die, just change the battle and play with your 4.0 BR plane again. Unfortunately, unless you are fully downtiered, the 3.3 BR planes will have a big disadvantage, and if you really want to play them, you can just create one 3.3 BR plane + one reserve plane lineup and use it at 3.0 BR.

The only exception is when you do specific challenges and tasks that require more effort in one battle. Then it makes sense to use full lineups, but I would probably take full lineup of 4.0 BR planes and possibly face 5.3 planes (unfortunately, it is how it is). To be honest, in full uptiers you won’t be able to complete harder tasks anyway, like e.g. the Hero of the Sky (12 or more kills in one battle). If someone wants to complete this kind of task and get a full uptier, it’s probably better not to even spawn.

There are a lot of issues with how everything works in War Thunder, but we have what we have. I don’t see this change as a good change. If anything, the new rules are just stupid and not well thought out at all.

Yesterday I saw a lot of players in Air Arcade using two planes lineups. Of course additional plane was there only to reduce the BR of the main plane. In my opinion, this is the new Air Arcade META.

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14

That’s actually nonsense, according to that answer it seems vehicles are strictly rounded up, i.e.

3.7 - 3.3 - 3.0 = 3.7/2+3.3/4+3.0/4 = 3.425, that number would be closer to 3.3 but gives us a 3.7 lineup which apparently is not a bug.

3.7 - 3.0 - 3.0 = 3.7/2+3.0/4+3.0/4 = 3.35, which gives us a lineup of BR 3.3… which would be a bug according to the russian original, it getting rounded up to the nearest step which would be 3.7

So which one is it? There clearly is an issue… Gaijin, don’t try to fix something that isn’t broken, you just make it worse =o

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15

The explanation could be this part:

Battle ratings exist in steps of 0.3 or 0.4 (strictly speaking: steps of 0.33 rounded to the nearest tenth), and range between 1.0 and 14.0.

It could mean that something that we see as 3.7 is actually coded as 3.66(6).

So, in your example:

3.7 - 3.0 - 3.0 = 3.66(6) / 2 + 3.0 / 4 + 3.0 / 4 = 1.83(3) + 0.75 + 0.75 = 3.33(3). Which is actually what we see as 3.3 BR.

But this is just how I try to explain what we see, based on available info. I obviously have no idea how the system is implemented internally.

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16

It’s just fishy, it used to be clear, they ‘simplified’ it and now it’s simply worse than before…

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17

Apparently it’s easier to do weird math over just switching it from +/-1 BR to +/-0.7 BR

18

If you meant the gaps between BR steps, it’s actually the same as it was before. It’s just some players misinterpreted the system and thought that the gap between e.g. 1.3 and 1.7 BR vehicles is “bigger” than between 1.0 and 1.3 BR vehicles. This is of course not true and it never worked like this. The BR step between vehicles is always 0.33(3). We only see this x.3 and x.7 vehicle BR rounding because it would look very strange if we saw e.g. 1.33(3) BR on the vehicle stats card. It’s just simplified on the UI for us, the players. At least that’s how I understand the BR step system.

If you meant how the lineup BR is calculated then it’s not really that hard to get used to the new system. You don’t really have to do any calculations, you just have to remember you can’t use now additional vehicle that is only one BR step lower than your main vehicle. But I do agree that the new system is not simplifying anything. They obviously had to write something as a reason for this change.

They probably noticed that players overuse the previous system and too many players used e.g. 4.0 + 3.7 + 3.3 lineups (with playing only 4.0 + 3.7 BR vehicles and only gaining when compared to proper 3.7 + 3.7 lineups). Now the choice is more like: one strong plane + many much weaker planes in the lineup (which is not really worth it imo) or on paper stronger lineup with many vehicles at the same BR, but without BR reduction. Of course they missed the fact that there is also a third option, using just one strong plane with BR reduction (thanks to additional plane) and just leaving battles as soon as you die. I believe that the third option is the best way to get good scores and rewards. Essentially, you maximize your time and efficiency in the vehicle with artificially lowered BR.

That’s why I don’t think this is a good change. But I’m not a dev, so it’s not up to me.

19

I agree (plane plus plane two steps lower) is probably the meta now, and I agree they probably did this to stop the previous (plane+1-BR-step-lower-plane at the lower plane’s BR) meta, replacing it with a (plane-plus-2-BR-step-lower-plane at the in-between BR), that and the Sakeen spam at 3.0. As such, it’s slightly, ever so slightly fairer, than the rule that preceded it.

I think if you’re running a full lineup because you’re spading multiple vehicles at once and trying to leverage backups and a single big RP booster on that game to do so it still makes sense to run matched-BR lineups (since maximizing the booster means staying in as long as possible and there’s still value to getting boosted modification RP on your second and third planes). Same but to a lesser extent with a big SL booster or even if you’re just grinding for score that day. Every minute spent in lobby is wasted time, might as well stay in to the end of a match if you can with a big lineup.

If you care about kills though, or bases bombed etc., for instance because you need that for a daily or event task or a decal, or you only have one aircraft at a certain BR to spade out still, it now entirely makes sense to run the plane you plan to play in a lineup now with only other aircraft two or more steps lower and give yourself that 0.3 BR advantage.

Before it was finicky, having to have one plane exactly one step lower, and then another one two steps lower (but not more than five steps lower), I often couldn’t be bothered. But now that everything two or more steps lower counts, and that’s the only rule I need to remember, why wouldn’t I do it all the time?

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20

I guess it depends. I currently do the event on EU/CIS servers, playing at lower BRs with propellers in Air Arcade. I use the system with one strong plane + one backup plane and the score is very good. The battle is also funnier, because I don’t have to use planes that are two BR steps lower (which would be a big disadvantage). This way I always play with a strong plane.
My waiting times for battles are usually less than 15 seconds (often a few seconds), so I don’t really lose much here.

Personally, I wouldn’t use big boosters in Air Arcade, the rewards here are really bad. But if someone only plays this game mode then of course it makes the most sense to use full lineups with big boosters. There are definitely situations, where full lineups are a better option.

The funny thing is that I still see many players using lineups from the old system in Air Arcade battles (this doesn’t make any sense in the new system). We need to give this change some time to see what the effects will be. I don’t see myself using e.g. 4.0 + 3.3 + 3.3 lineup and actually use 3.3 planes. This option doesn’t make much sense to me.

21

I don’t think using 3.66 should make any difference, using 3.7 then BR goes to 3.35. That should be the same as 3.33. If it is rounded up, shouldn’t anything above 3.3 and below 3.7 goes to 3.7?

22

If the result is exactly 3.33(3) then there is no rounding up, because you are already at specific BR step, so there is nothing to round here. If you had 3.33(3) + 0.(0)1 then rounding this value up would put you at whole 1 BR step higher. But this 3.33(3) is like the last value that is not rounded up, because it’s equal to the BR step. You are rounding to the nearest BR step. In War Thunder, BR steps are probably implemented like this: 1.0, 1.33(3), 1.66(6), 2.0, 2.33(3)… This would explain why rounding in the new system works the way it does.

I think it would be easier to understand this with natural numbers. Let’s say the BR steps are 1, 2, 3, 4. If the math says something is exactly 1, you don’t round it up to 2, because 1 is already a BR step. You only round up if the value is not equal to the BR step.

I’m not a native English speaker, so sorry if something is unclear.

23

I’m with you guys. This doesn’t help anything. At all.

Downtiering is still possible so you’ll still get that one Bf 109, MIG-21 or Harrier at +1.3 that players complain about.

I went through my presets and deleted all the downtiered lineups, then started with a clean slate to see which semi-decent lineups I could build now. Not many.

The only thing this now rule has accomplished is making me play some nations (like Israel) a lot less from now and I’ll be doing a lot more one-death-leaving with whatever plane I’m spading.

There are no upsides to this new rule; it’s just bad all the way down.

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24

So I just had an AB air game with a lineup around ITP (M-1), instead of one 4.3 plane I just used max 4.0 to downtier it to 4.3… didn’t even need another plane, 17 air kills plus survivor… the system is still pretty much the same , if you know how to downtier, though there’s nothing ‘simplified’ about it…

Quite often I see new players now that would have been downtiered before but aren’t any more, and probably don’t even know about the possibility to downtier.

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25

They will learn over time. But right now it’s a huge advantage to use one strong plane + one reserve plane. I’m not as good player as you are, but I can get around 10 kills without dying, using this new system.

I must point out that my playstyle is mainly based on surviving battles (or at least not die too much). So I play differently than most players. We have to see how many players will start doing the same.

Technically, this new system prevents players from using the old META lineups, e.g. 4.0 + 3.7 + 3.3 BR. With my playstyle, this new system fits me better, because less players should use higher BR planes in battles. If someone dies a lot, it probably makes more sense to use full 4.0 BR lineup now.