This would just reverse compress a lot of midBRs that frankly wouldn’t be too fun to play.
The logic at least in my opinion is that doing it this way minimizes the impact - I’ll explain
So if we start from top tier, we expand BRs to a higher bracket that is less populated (current changes overall) or make a new higher top BR (pushing the BR cap higher) - then all the other vehicles going up don’t really have to “change” a lot on what they see as a whole since the earlier-gone-up higher BRs are still there to meet them again and the lower BRs get slowly decompressed.
Compare this to if we started with 4.X decompression first - you’d have 5.7s pushed to 6.0, 6.3s and 6.7s to 6.7 and 7.0 which would make 6.7-7.0 an even more crowded and compressed BR, ruining the BR until it ‘normalizes’ when the next patch drops - which then bricks the 8.0 region. This would continue until we reach the top, and it would just cause far more people far more distress and annoyances than doing it the former way at least to me.
I do also agree - we need FAR more decompression for both air and ground overall.
However, to play a bit of devil’s advocate here I also don’t think Gaijin can or should change say, 5 BRs all at once as I’ve seen some people say as it’s a lot of work with hundreds of vehicles, but also because it would mean it would be near impossible to tell why what vehicle was over/underperforming off of data alone due to the immense number of potential variables. I also understand that yes, stat balancing is extremely flawed as shown by the Italian CL-13’s BR tampering a while back, but at the same time is still data indicating how the vehicles perform in game and can’t be discounted entirely as the game isn’t played in a vacuum.
These changes (albeit quite slowly) do decompress the lower BRs, and while I’d like to see them do them a bit faster and with less issues (M26/IS-2s should not be going up to 6.7 this patch, the AUBL/FIAT didn’t deserve the bump last patch and the Ozelot/Type 93 didn’t deserve the bump the patch before that in my opinion) but overall I think this process is the way to anger the least amount of people while actually bringing change.
These changes (albeit quite slowly) do decompress the lower BRs
They decompress the lower BRs that does not need decompression and by compressing the already compressed BRs some more.
From BR 1 to BR 7 we have primarily pre- and WW2, that is roughly 10 years of development and really all that happens is an increase in armor and firepower until they started throwing in all the Swedish things and whatnot anyways, with planes mostly limited to just simple bombs.
7 BRs for 10 years of tech.
And then the next 5 BRs it’s literally everything from the 1940s to 2020s with massive developments in technology, from stabilizers to thermals to APS to ATGMs, to APFSDS to ERA and other kinetic and chemical protection to jets and helicopters with a whole array of ground striking capabilities, laser guided weapons, radars, warning systems laser rangefinders.
5 BRs for 80 years of tech.
Just increase top BR, moving things around without expanding the BRs is a complete and utter waste of time, moving a Tiger to 6.0 is a joke and making it face an IS-3 is not decompression, the Tiger ll H and P at the same BR despite a clear difference in vehicles is not decompression.
Take everything from 7 and up and increase everything by 2 BRs, that’s decompression.
The last parts are arguable, but yes, this is very true.
I don’t get the point of decompression for low tier which is very fairly balances when 7.3 and higher BRs are all messed up and compressed to hell.
That’s why I don’t agree with the BR changes they are doing right now, it solves nothing.
They’ve been changing BRs since forever and the issue of compression never went away. I don’t even know if it is pure incompetence, or Gaijin somehow making big money out of compression, although can’t imagine how.
It’s ridiculous for sure, we all know the saying “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results”
I’d actually consider paying money if I felt I got some value out of it… $60 gets you so little in this game it’s nuts, the price of a triple A game for a vehicle that could be a copy paste of TT vehicle in the first place, but is also just 1 vehicle out of 10 slots, assuming you also spend money on that as well, then also you need to buy a crew on top of that and you still only have 1 crew for 1 vehicle of 1 nation out of 10 nations with 10x ground, 10x air, and however many times naval and helicopters.
The last parts are arguable, but yes, this is very true.
If BR 7 becomes BR 9 then there is a lot of space to decompress in the void down to 6.7, and even with 2 extra BRs you’d run out of space before decompressing the whole mess but it’s the only way decompression works, moving things around is not and never has been and never will be decompression.
You can squeeze a balloon anywhere you want, you can move the air from one side to the other but it’s never going to have less air in it and reduce the pressure, only less air or a larger balloon would.
Because they removed the entire lineup from 7 to 7.7 and only left France and Russia there to just shit on 6.7.
The only thing left at 7.0 and 7.3 is the Kugel at 7.0 for some reason, can’t get HVAP though because your Panzer IV chassis is super OP at 7.0 somehow, and the Wiesel at 7.3 to drag the entire 6.7 lineup to it’s demise.
And the Leopard 1 was barely hanging in at 7.3 to begin with, placing it at 8.0 is just insane, it has no redeeming qualities against all the things it ends up facing, it was at a k/d of 1.6 or so at 7.3 and just dropping like a brick since the increase, and 1.6 is already very average for TS performance.
Thunderskill is useless, you should not use it. WT Data Project (which is a layer on top of Thunderskill) is even worse, since it has additional bugs in its code on top of Thunderskill’s
It was the culmination of a decade of garbage or lack of changes
No, it wasn’t, because if that was the case, people would have been slowly lowering their reviews for “a decade”. They didn’t. Reviews actually went UP over a decade by a good amount.
Players considered the game likely to be fun for new players as of March 2023 (great reviews)
Then NOTHING CHANGED to May 2023.
Logically, therefore, it is not possible for the game to suddenly be unlikely to be fun for new players as of May 2023, so reviews would necessarily stay high if they remained honest evaluations of a new player’s likelihood of fun.
The change in reviews is, therefore, responding to something other than a new player’s likelihood of having fun. That is against Steam’s best interests. So of course they don’t allow it.
As a Steam user, I appreciate that I can actually trust their reviews to reflect how likely I am to have fun, and NOT random political movements or beefs or other things I don’t really care about while browsing the steam store.
not just the CAS issue
CAS didn’t change from March to May
not just the SL grind
SL grind didn’t change from March to May
not just the RP grind
RP grind didn’t change from March to May
not just the BR compression
Compression didn’t change from March to May
not just the bias issues
Bias didn’t change from March to may
and so on
Literally none of your examples did, so NONE of your examples explain a sudden swing in ratings, and are thus must be excuses/not the reason for changes. All that was the same in March, when reviews were great. So reviews based on any of that would still logically remain great.
No, it wasn’t a combination either. It wasn’t ANY of those things, in ANY percentage of each. Those do not mean the same thing. There literally was not even a single straw added, nothing changed. Zero straws cannot break a camel’s back.
You felt emotionally slighted by an implication of something, but the game didn’t actually change.
New players will not find the game fun or not based on whether you felt emotionally slighted by something that didn’t actually end up happening. So it is off topic for steam reviews and correctly removed.
Nothing changed in the game. Like I said pretty clearly.
“People left bad reviews” is not “something changing in the game that is a logical basis of bad reviews”. Leaving bad reviews is why they left bad reviews…? If so, “circular logic” is also not of relevance to new players, and would also be off topic.
Then read the reviews, they’re not just randomly saying the game is bad cus bad, and new players are definitely affected by a bad game being bad anyways. New players don’t exist in this magical paradise free from all these issues.
It doesn’t matter what a review says. If it says “The grind is terrible” but the grind didn’t change since earlier when reviews were great, then it is a necessarily dishonest review motivated by some external factor, not motivated the actual content being discussed. I.e. people wanting to stick it to Gaijin, not people who actually naturally felt this was an issue worth writing a review about on their own. That is intentionally misleading new players.
If it was honest, it would have been posted previously during any of the earlier times when the grind was exactly the same before too, not all coincidentally on one date.
Or rather, a few % of them might be honest, but in aggregate, some 95% of them weren’t (the proportion spiking above normal background levels). Since Steam can’t sort them out, and the 95% dishonest ones have way more impact, it is reasonable to simply temporarily freeze review math until things settle down.