As we all know, uptiers and downtiers are made so we wouldn’t have to wait for too long to get into a match. Well I’m sure I ain’t the only one who wouldn’t mind waiting a few seconds more and not get an uptier. This is absolutely absurd. Out of 15 matches I’ve played with my Finnish PT-76, 13 were full uptiers and 2 were 0.7 higher uptiers. Funnily enough, when I played 4.0 Sweden I constantly got uptierd to 5.0. Or when playing 3.7, I only went to 4.7. Personally, lower the uptier, downtier br from 1.0 to 0.7 and lets wait for a bit longer.
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I’m right there with you. I’ve been playing more AIR AB/ Air realistic because the uptiers seem less severe especially in the lower-mid tiers.
Ground uptiers are really painful and way too common. it’s killed my motivation to keep playing. I’ve already spent a lot of money on tanks so I guess they got their money’s worth but not being able to enjoy certain tanks because of this ‘mechanic’ is really … ugh.
I firmly believe it’s a psychological mechanism to make you PAY more to grind through it. Well I’ve had it.
I play 3.7 I face 4.7 I play 4.3-4.7 I face 5.7 and so on and so on.
Say confirmation bias all you want but the ratio of uptiers to balanced games is REALLY really skewed.
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Yes, that is by design. You might ask yourself “if I’m getting uptiered all the time, how are these people getting downtiered all the time?” The answer is that they’re not. We’re all uptiered the vast majority of the time.
Explanation: there can only be up to four people at top BR in any match. No more.
This prevents “curbstomp” situations where you’re the only 6.7 against a team of 7.7 for example, but it also means that by design, we’re all going to be in an uptier (not necessarily a full uptier, mind) 75% of the time. That’s all else being equal. In reality, different BRs have different popularity and populations, which can impact this percentage. For example, 7.3 is a very popular BR (for France and Russia especially), so 6.7 gets more uptiers than other BRs do. Conversely, 7.7 seems to get a lot more downtiers than average, or at least it does for me.
In a way, this is a pull factor to get you to keep progressing through the tree. The first time you meet 4.7 tanks when playing 3.7, you think man, those are awesome, can’t wait to get to those so I can have a good time too! Except you’re being given an incomplete image. You see how that enemy tank behaves in a downtier, but when you finally get it, you’ll mostly be uptiered, and struggle with it, and will seek to move on to the next BR; and the cycle continues.
If you can reject this frustration and just play the game, you’ll find out that this uptier system has a few interesting implications.
If only four people can be top BR at any one time, that means a good chunk, maybe even most of the enemy team, will be at your own BR. Or if you’re in a full uptier, they’ll be 0.3 above you most commonly, with only a few guys having the really strong stuff.
You may think you’re at a disadvantage, but that’s not necessarily true. Most of the enemy team will have comparable hardware to yours. And in a partial uptier, a good chunk of the enemy team may actually be of a BR lower than yours.
Truth be told, I am actually more nervous when in a full downtier these days, because I feel a lot of responsibility towards the team. Playing a lot of German 6.7, for example, I am unironically more comfortable in 7.3 games than I am in 6.7 full downtiers. Never once have I gotten a nuke in a downtier, but all of my nukes have come while either being uptiered from 6.7 to 7.3, or once being fully uptiered from 5.7 to 6.7 (and just to make it more absurd, ,y first seven kills of that nuke match were scored in a Dicker Max).
My only issue with uptiers at certain BRs is that they penalise heavies even further (and they’re already quite disadvantaged by the way the game is structured), but that’s a pure balance issue. And the recent decompression has helped with that a little bit.
Moreover: it’s the same for everyone. Those guys you’re fighting in an uptier that are of a higher BR? They’re going right back to being uptiered after their match with you has ended. It’s an even playing field, so you can perform as well or as poorly as other players do in the same uptier situation.
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Actually, the +/- 1.0 BR “spread” for matchmaking has been around at least since they changed it to a 5 tier system which was right before I began playing over 9-1/2 years ago. And the terms “uptier/downtier” were never even used here until 3 - 4 years ago. And frankly it has and still seems to be just used as an excuse for poor results. No one ever complained about this stuff before then. Granted, when I started it was 5 nations, just planes and there weren’t a lot of jets at that time, Korean maybe early 'Nam era? . . I forget now. Then they added tanks and later naval, and 5 more nations and all of them keep getting more and more vehicles and the BR “spread” matchmaking hasn’t changed thru all of that. And every time they add ONE vehicle, it will change the dynamic of whatever +/- 1.0 “spread” it fits into. All this means that there have been/are “gaps” where not as many vehicles at one BR as another, and this can be reflected in the MM’ing at times. And another thing is what is an “uptier”? is it having one vehicle with a higher BR than yours on either team? 3 or 4? . . . the perception here leaves a great deal of this wide open. A full uptier or downtier is pretty simple to figure, but most games are usually some kinda mix of several BRs. Heck I play AB Air usually, 4.3, and I see games pretty regular where almost everyone is 4.3 and none more than 1 step up or down. What you face in games is wholly dependent on what the players have in the queue, as the MM’er can only place that which is in queue into a battle . . and that can vary widely by the servers you choose to play, time of day, nation, BR . . . etc. . . you get the picture. While the idea of shrinking the spread has been around a long time and I would not oppose it, there are some obstacles keeping it from happening. One thing, they can’t just “flip a switch” and change one little bit of code to make that happen. And the effect it might have on wait times cannot be predicted. And as most of us know, Gaijin won’t do anything to extend wait times . . . bad for business. Personally I don’t bother looking at that stuff, I check the leaderboard for a second at the start of the game to see if it is a full game or not, that’s about it. As always you have a few options when you see something bigger/better than you, you can run away, get some buddies and gang up on them, or . . . give it your best shot and die like a dog . . because . . yeah that happens . . . it’s a war game . . and no one wins all the time. Personally I like killing stuff of a higher BR, you get that little “Rank doesn’t matter” award . . maybe if they raised those rewards a good deal then people wouldn’t mind so much facing higher BR enemies . . I dunno. I just think it is easier to just not worry about that stuff, because you can’t really do anything about it. If this is a reason for one death leavers, well that’s just kinda sad . . .
But whatever you decide, just give it your best shot . . sometimes you’re the windshield, sometimes you’re the bug . . .
Good Luck
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Yeah … same here. With the last major release the games are starting to get more and more redicioules. Since the last major the uptier rate is above 75%. And even if i get a down tier match and always shot out at once because the bullets hit me in such an insane way. And the only answer I got from Gajin is “it is gameplay!”
Wow … it is even getting better and better. Better to drive people more and more away from the game and produce bad marketing and feedback from the users/ gamers.
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Either get used to up tiers or play a different game. Those are your options.
You will get up tiers at least 60% of the time. most likely more, id say more accurately 7/10 games will be up tiers
i personally would be fine with having No uptiers, or the lowering of the BR’s as you suggested, and having longer wait times, but i doubt they will do that.
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You will just need to realize when you are in an up tier and play accordingly. The example i like to use is you can take an M22 to basically any BR and get kills/side shots. You just have to play smart. So any tank/vehicle that you have, you Should be able to play in a (full) up tier, since it is better than an M22.
You are so funny man.
WT is talking to be realistic and on the same time the game mechanics is even getting more broken and the matching making in front. Example ???
- On 6,7 RB Tanks, when you are matching 7,7 good luck … WW2 vs Cold War tanks
- 12,0 RB Air, when you are matched 12,3 and higher good luck … Aim 54 and similiar rockets are waiting for you.
I am long enough in this game to see how the story here is. But the developers just still didn’t want to develop a match making mode for a straight BR-match-level. That means straight 6,7 or 12,0 and not +/- 1 BR. Easy to develop that. But no.
So all newcomers in that will lose fun immediatly because they’ll no chance even to get a foot into the door.
wait. ill come back in 8 months and respond to this too.
I don’t mind the uptiers bc of all the problems I’d like to see fixed, lowering it to 0.7 isn’t one of them. There’s plenty of tanks that still perform well.
…but yeah, I made the mistake of playing 4.0 Sweden today too. That was bad. Really bad 😅
What gets me irritated is intentionally leaving certain BR vehicles out of a lineup just to still get 75% or more uptiers. I personally believe it is there purely as a frustration mechanic that’s only goal is to frustrate you enough to spend. But no matter what you do it’s always gonna be there unless you are playing all top BR vehicles. Nothing like being on team US in constant uptiers with you always outnumbered at least 2 to 1 every match. That’s going to get me to stop playing entirely here soon enough I’ve had it with that bullshit.
They should have some top BR matches with just the top BR folks! That would cut down on the need to have as much upteiring.
What i want is the real TOP TIER back, a space that takes a while to grind or a lot more money to buy to than a 70 euro premium, this is what i invested in back when i chose high BRs as my preferred playstyle, however since then it has become a space infected with the cancer that is premium and squadron vehicles, the only way to bypass this is with a top tier aircraft in your lineup, which for many people (especially the certain few who don’t touch air or helis) means they are forced to deal with hordes of low levels in premiums like the 2a4M, Clickbait and T-80U-E1, these 3 specifically have cemeted a foundation of idiocy in top tier ground teams, fundamentally ruining the experience and raising the question of ‘why grind there when others just buy there?’…
Like whoever codes this garbage should be fired, because it’s starting to show they can’t make a balanced BR system. Played 15 matches as 8.0, 14 of those god forsaken matches are uptiers with tanks I can’t win against because either they have armor that can take my round, or they have a APFSDS with laser rangefinder and just tear through the armor.
With 37000 games under your belt ,can I ask has the up tier always been an issue.Is anything new happening in War thunder today that wasn’t present years ago? Is it on a decline now?
That’s not easy to answer. Those many games were years ago now. I’m mostly playing about as often as I post, these days.
Aircraft in GFRB have always been a problem. There was a time when GFRB was actually named “Realistic Tank Battle”. I kept pointing out they were calling it “tank battle” when aircraft had the dominant role in the fight. Their response was to change the name of the mode.
I’m not playing top tier anymore. I have all my vehicles spaded up to around BR 6, and have quit even trying to play with my higher BR vehicles.
It was years ago that I finally caught on to people 1DLing from GFRB. Before that, I was in every fight until the bitter end, no matter what uptier I was in. The games I found the most miserable and grindy were those where I had a bad uptier, but kept doing well enough to respawn. I actually hated those games. Once I figure out 1DL was going on, I joined the movement. (4 years ago, maybe?)
Last year, I seriously backed off of how much I played. This year, I’m barely there. My suggestion that they have some top tier fights that were all top tier players, as opposed to the current offering, would ease the need for all the uptiering, but it’s my opinion that they want to keep things grindy, so that people will pay for premium time and vehicles. It was that realization that largely prompted me to look for other games. I’m not going to pay anymore to keep from having to play the game. I regret the money I have spent on this game already.
I do know that my tanker friends have all quit long ago. My friends that I tried to get into this game balked almost immediately.
Have you ever played any more strategic games? (WARNO, for example) It’s interesting how much more effective SAMs and SPAAs are in other games.
In decline, though? I don’t know. I’m not playing nearly like I was. I think the hardcore tankers are gone, and that is likely one of the reasons the 1DL is so noticeable.
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