The Teamwork Initiative

Game Discussion Realistic Battle
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Disclaimer: this discussion is about ARB matches taking place at BRs where propeller driven aircraft are the majority.
This is NOT a discussion about separating gamemodes based on plane types. Make your suggestions for that here
This is NOT a discussion about current/past/future damage models of any planes.

Hello all,

The recent changes to the survivability of bombers sparked a lot of discussion about bombers and their overall role in War Thunder. After reading peoples thoughts and participating in the discussions, i started to think of ways to improve the overall match experience in ARB for all different planes and their roles.

I would like propose a few changes to the way Air Realistic Battles (ARB) are structured. Favoring more teamwork oriented overall structure and roles, where all plane types would have more equal impact on the outcome of the match.

The current situation and inequality:
The current situation in ARB heavily favors fighters and team deathmatch-type gameplay. Meanwhile other, less dogfight capable aircraft serve more as something for the fighters to shoot at or something to get fast rewards with before moving to the next match, rather than something that can have a meaningful impact on the outcome of the match.
Teamwork doesn’t seem to be encouraged or even required for a victory.
Often people can be seen to go in for the first targets they see in hopes of getting fast rewards, with little regard to the outcome of the engagement.

Spawns and the start of a match:
Let’s start by looking at the obvious first step, the start of the match.
Instead of spawning bombers close to the same general area on the map as fighters, just higher, they could be spawned further back, some ways behind the airfield and spawn point of fighters.
Strike aircraft could be spawned slightly ahead of the airfield, but not as far and/or high as in the current iteration.

  • Friendly fighters would have an easier time to reach the bombers altitude to escort them, without requiring the bombers to slow down or circle back as they currently need to.
  • Strike aircraft wouldn’t have as much of an advantage on reaching ground targets and objectives, but still would have slight head start to give slower strike aircraft an equal chance of reaching them
  • Fighters and interceptors would have a better chance of reaching altitudes to intercept enemy bombers/strike aircraft.
  • It would discourage bombers and strike aircraft from rushing straight towards a bombing point/ground targets, to get easy and fast rewards as the enemy would have greater chance of intercepting them.
  • Overall making it riskier to go at a bombing target/ground targets alone would encourage teamwork and gives incentive to escort bombers and strike aircraft or intercept opposing team from doing so. More on this later.

Objectives and roles:
AI ground targets could be left fairly unchanged from the current iteration.
If all plane types would have equal chance to reach objective they wish, be it ground targets, enemy aircraft, ground targets or bombing points, it would discourage rushing in for fast rewards.

  • Make separate bombing targets; some with less health spawning closer to the center of the map, designed for strike aircraft. Others with massive health pools designed for bombers with heavy bombloads.
  • The destruction of bombing points should reduce the amount of tickets from the enemy team more than they currently do, and be proportional to the size of them; see above.
  • RP and SL multipliers based on aircraft type and targets;
    Fighters having a reward multiplier for destruction of enemy fighters.
    Interceptors having a reward multiplier for destruction of enemy Strike aircraft and bombers.
    Strike aircraft having a reward multiplier for destruction of ground targets and damage/destruction of smaller “tactical bombing targets”.
    Bombers having a reward multiplier for damage/destruction of bigger “strategic bombing targets”.
    This idea needs refinement, maybe changing roles of some planes etc. Please leave feedback, suggestions and ideas for improvement

Miscellaneous ideas and mechanics:
Some other ideas to encourage teamwork.

  • Give small rewards for staying at close proximity to friendly planes for X amount of time. This would encourage flying in as a team instead of rushing in alone. Needs refinement to avoid being abused by flying with friendlies away from the battlefield
  • Increase the rewards for staying alive in a match for extended periods of time. This would both discourage rushing in for fast rewards while encouraging staying with friendlies to have a higher chance of survival.
  • Match times would need to be adjusted to discourage rushing in.

I know that ARB especially has moved towards faster matches, faster time-to-engagement and encouragement of rushing in.
But overall i think these changes would still give players to freedom to play as they wish, while giving more incentive to use teamwork to engage the enemy and complete objectives.

I would love to hear feedback and suggestions to add to the lists.
I’m probably also forgetting most the things i had in mind for this, so the list might get additions from me as well in the future.
Please let’s try to keep the discussion on-topic and civil.

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No thanks, i dont want to rely on others.

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Thanks for the input, but consider this;
the idea would not be to rely on others, but to encourage teamwork.
Anyone would still be allowed to fly alone, and people still would. And a single person could still have a massive impact on the match outcome if they are skilled enough.

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Jeaaa… no
Your ideo is seriously flawed… happy to discuss.my.pov after my sleep, but for now just this:

Whats the poimt of forcing bombers that dont play a role in vs combat into the mode at all?
They play their own little minigame already in arb, if they do an impact on tickets they will either be to op and can end the round quick or to weak and everyone continues to ignore them.

If the dm.stays at it is and they have an impact, then that forces people to attack them, an that is super unfun for everyone wanting to play plane vs plane. Currently they almost dont die, can kill your fighter quickly and are always the planes that push a 10min game into a 25min one. Wasting time basically for anyone in the match but unable to safely engage that stupid bomber.

If i habe the choice of playing with my fighter against fighters or bombers, i pick fighters.

Like it was before the change… almost everyone agreed to climb->fighter on fighter action-> ground pound → if the bomber comes to close he eats it → game.ends

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Oh and we also dont forget… the airspace is not a one way street… no one ever stopped the bombers from.making a u turn at tje start and climb to 8k+ and then bomb the bases in peace

Sideclimbing is not smt only fighter can do

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Your view that the mode is a “deathmatch” -mode, is exactly that, your view. If it was intended as such from the beginning, we wouldn’t have; bombers allowed in ARB matches, bombing targets or ground targets.

All planes play their “own little minigame” already.

This is not a discussion about the damage model. The game is not made for you or everyone who sees things like you. The game has multiple different plane types for a reason.

Again, this is not a discussion about the state of any planes survivability.

And you have a choice, enemy team has fighters as well and you are free to engage them.

I have yet to find a bomber that outclimbs 99% of the fighters they face. But these changes would also be to encourage, people who wish to do so, to escort bombers. In turn this would discourage climbing to space.

This discussion is about encouraging TEAMWORK in the CURRENT ARB RANDOM BATTLE MODE.

ARB is a gamemode where bombers have always been present, and probably will always be. So might i suggest that instead of talking about your preferences for the current mode, you make your own suggestion here to have a dedicated fighter vs. fighter mode. Or suggest a bombers only mode in the same place.
This is not a debate or discussion about separating gamemodes. Thank you.

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If you want teamwork, play squad.

1 out of 10 matches ish I have a single teammate who is able to play team in some sense. That’s the reality.

More than half of the players give a s*** about ARB/gameplay because they are only interested in ressources/min.

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Squadron battles it´s the only gamemode where exist teamwork.

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But i want to see teamwork in War Thunder, not to play another game. I think it’s quite clear.

And that’s why i’m trying to discuss possible improvements to encourage teamplay, while discouraging rushing straight in alone.

I think it’s quite clear that i agree that teamwork doesn’t exist in ARB Random Battles. That’s the whole reason why i’m proposing changes and improvements to encourage it.

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200days warthunder playing and don’t know what a squad is?

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Because it isn’t public.
Would be great to have such a gamemode for ARB only.

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If you meant i should play IN a squad, you should have worded it better. Since “squad” is also another video game. My apologies for misunderstanding, but it wasn’t quite clear what you meant.

And i play in a squad every now and again, but that’s not the point of the post. The reason i proposed the changes is that i’d like to encourage the whole team to play as a…team. And for teamwork to have more meaning. Instead of having War Thunder be a deathmatch.

If you disagree with the changes i’m proposing, that’s fine. But i’d like to hear why you disagree or don’t want to see the changes?

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I thought this is a forum about WT only…sorry for my misconseption.

You can’t change their opinion about ARB, because they are GRB main.

We discuss the value of bombers/base bombing over years. Guess what GJN changed, exactly, NOTHING. You want to change half of the gamemode. What are the chances for that?

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No worries. People tend to say all kinds of things unrelated to WT all the time, so i wasn’t sure.

I know that things related to ARB mechanics have been suggested before. But the recent changes to bomber DM prove that even if it takes a long time for some changes to be implemented, it can happen.

If we never suggested things or kept suggesting, why would they feel the need to do so? Even if it’s sometimes repetitive, it’s necessary.

I know that Gaijin is a business and WT is a product. So changes that don’t have a direct impact on revenue are sometimes slower to implement, but we can give suggestions and hope thay they deem some worthy of implementing.

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The playerbase killed teamwork years back, it needs to be encouraged anywhere possible.

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I have seen hundreds of suggestions over the years - you managed to collect some good points, you see based on your initial feedback that teamwork is not for everybody.

From my pov encouraging teamwork is futile as long as you don’t create significant monetary (SL/RP) incentives. Players tend to follow their own benefits and as long as teamwork “activities” do not significantly alter their income structure - meaning SL/RP income per minute - nothing will change.

So if you want to encourage teamwork for the masses the whole monetization scheme needs a substantial overhaul. Seeing gaijin’s policies in the past: they are reluctant to grant incentives without taking it from somewhere else.

Regarding some details of your suggestion:

  1. Spawns

    We had a similar spawn situation on Kamchatka - bombers spawned for one team 11 km behind their main airfield with allowed (at least in theory) escort missions. After a hell of matches on both sides: Players did not use this opportunity. I described it here (forum link).

    The spawn system as of today is mainly a tool to steer player income for specific plane classes by influencing their potential success - the allocation of aircraft to these has (except bombers) nothing to do with their actual roles. This system is balancing by gaijin - SL/RP relevance is decisive and not game play balance.

    So by changing spawn locations you influence this balance without touching the game play impact of already existing imbalances. You see a negative impact for most of interceptor aircraft on maps with “air spawn for all” as their foreseen initial advantage vanishes - or the severe imbalance in favor of UK/US night fighters (described here) or British twin-engine day fighters (described here).

    Assigning new spawn locations to improve game play makes sense - but without considering that the current system is designed to steer SL/RP gains of fighters and bombers regarding interception success or that allocation to specific classes has other reasons too (like SP for Ground RB) you scratch just on the surface of the topic.

  2. Objectives and roles

    Whilst your points make a lot of sense - have in mind that teamwork can be made attractive by increasing income or enforced by being essential for a victory.

    Especially regarding ai units in their current form you might think about the fact that there is no real point in flying a strike aircraft in Air RB besides grinding as most fighters can destroy the same targets with similar effects. Subsequently there is no incentive to protect them. The picture changes completely when just strike aircraft can destroy critical targets with heavy cannons.

    It is the same like with fighter vs fighter combat: You can assess the combat value of your teammates by watching how they fly and position themselves and you tend to support (when 2 need help at different locations) the more valuable player. You do this as your own survival rate and win chance increases if you protect valuable players.

    That’s why you tried to keep (ages ago) Me 410s with MK 103s or BK 5s alive on Sicily - these were the only axis planes besides Do 335s or 190 with MK 103s able to kill medium ai tanks which were essential to avoid ticket defeats in case some B-29s were at 11 km.

    That means that in order to encourage teamwork a change of ground targets is the most obvious way to create the necessity to protect specialist aircraft. The current layout produces ultra fast ticket defeats on Tunisia or almost impossible to counter ticket disadvantages on Poland - created by aircraft with average and not specialized armament; that makes no sense.

Summary:

Just based on my remarks it should be clear that teamwork is strongly connected to gaijin’s setup and monetization scheme and is intertwined with individual goals and preferences whilst the game play in itself is centered about steering player behavior and not about exiting or demanding game play.

From a holistic perspective your goal can be achieved way easier: Triple the current SL and RP victory bonus - this kills the calculations of players measuring their success by SK/RP by minute and is a very strong motivator for working as a team for all other players.

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This is actually something that makes me remember, they made the loss/win not matter so much, and that also added to the teamwork depreciation. By making the awards not matter as much, they made the players not bother about trying.

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Well, thats one of the easies way to make people play better again yes, just sad that gaijin thinks the excakt opposite :D

Not sure if it was WoT or AW, but one of them i think had also a system in place that basically did two things:

  1. The loser team loses a % of XP and Earnings that the winner team gets. So theres no XP lost or boost, but u notice it very hefty when u lose, but also when you win. Making the motiviation to win raise strong.
  2. I think in AW it was, there was a System that gave the best 3 players of a team a lootbox for their performance, nothing to big insise, just like an 20% (real 20% not gaijins 20%) xp boost for one match.
    Making it viable to continue to play properly even if you may lose. (the reward was based on the points u made i tink, the more the better)

But as saied, gaijin goes exaklty opposide paths, they reduced the rewards for winning, and increased them for losing… thats part of the problem so many players dont care about winning anymore.

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Problem is, that’s what the players VOTED on…