That’s just how it goes here heh. My advice is don’t all the time. WT forums are a slurry concoction of Twitter, 4chan, and Reddit blended and then seasoned with 50 tanks of Sugar.
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Their just not the dominant option anymore. You will see it occur often though.
I like that I can actually rips someone’s wing of and leave them. I got my 80%. I don’t have to waste energy and position to finish of crippled planes anymore. Less people are also going for such planes since the effort, energy and ammunition isn’t worth 20% of the kill, most of the time.
I generally had more enjoyable games because of this.
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Oh nice you have been around a while.
Yeah it’s really annoying sometimes and it doesn’t work properly because of gaijin spaghetti code, you can try bug reporting but it will probably be labeled as “not a bug” :/
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There’s no point to it aside from stacking repaircosts on you.
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The thing is that most English-speaking players misunderstood the severe damage mechanics, and the written off mechanics is connected to it. If you understand how the severe damage works, then you understand why the written off mechanics exist.
The severe damage mechanics is like a delayed kill mechanics. Most situations that were previously considered a destruction were turned into severe damage:
If an aircraft is damaged to the extent where it would have been counted as being destroyed previously, this new mechanic will count it as severely damaged. No destruction or death will be credited until the severely damaged aircraft is further finished off.
[RoadMap][Development] Following the Roadmap: We’d like to hear your feedback on our proposed Aircraft Destruction Mechanics & Night Battles design - News - War Thunder
In the old system, cutting more than half of the wing was a destruction. So doing that would already give you a kill credit with 100% rewards:
Spoiler
You didn’t have to chase this guy to finish him. Of course you still could, but it didn’t make much sense.
In the new system cutting more than half of the enemy wing was changed to severe damage instead:
Spoiler
So you receive now only 80% of the score and no kill credit yet. You can chase this guy and finish him yourself to get the remaining 20% of the rewards and a kill credit, but you will have to use more time and ammo to secure this kill. Or you just leave him and potentially lose 20% of the remaining rewards.
So it was easier to destroy planes in the old system. Now you have to damage them more to kill them.
And this is where the written off mechanics appears. If they didn’t introduce this mechanics, that would mean less kills in battles. On the Russian forum, players were already unhappy about delaying their kills with the severe damage mechanics, so the written off mechanics was planned to calm players down a bit. It was like: “Don’t worry, you won’t miss any kills because of this delay. Even if the battle ends before you manage to secure the kill, the severely damaged target will die anyway due to the written off mechanics”.
So these two mechanics are closely connected to each other. To be honest, I think it’s possible the written off mechanics will be removed sooner or later, when things will calm down a bit, and people get used to the severe damage mechanics. Especially after they decided to credit two players for one kill in their service records. So you can always write a suggestion to remove the written off mechanics, and I’m sure the devs will be happy to do this. It will slow down the research, tasks and challenges progress a bit, so it would be actually a good change from Gaijin’s perspective.
I personally don’t like the delayed kills mechanics, so the written off mechanics is like “whatever” for me. I would prefer to not have the severe damage mechanics in the first place. The old system wasn’t perfect, but they could adjust and improve it instead of delaying kills. But that’s just my opinion.
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Except when it didn’t.
I vividly remember people falling out of the sky with only one wing while still being alive.
I vividly remember trying to limp my way back to the AF with one wing and a shoulder, still alive.
That’s why I wrote “more than half of the wing”. Because the rules for less or equal to half of the wing didn’t change between both systems.
Cutting more than half of the enemy wing:
- new system = severe damage
- old system = destruction
Cutting less or equal to half of the enemy wing:
- new system = critical hit
- old system = critical hit
Video example of cutting less than half of the enemy wing and getting an assist (no severe damage):
More clear example, “kill stealing” enemy, because he had less than half the wing cut off (and I didn’t know this):
If you cut off less than half of the enemy wing nothing changed between both systems.
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But it didn’t. I posted a photo above of a plane with almost no wings left, I landed that aircraft, repaired, and took off again. That wasn’t awarded as a kill.
This is the very rare situation that took away the kill credit from the player. I mentioned this situation a few times in the past (check THIS topic about the severe damage mechanics).
If you manage to go back and repair, after being severely damaged, the enemy won’t get a kill. In the old system the enemy was already credited with a kill, so you could literally land in a dead plane, which was a bit weird. I personally never saw this as a huge problem.
There are only two conditions left now to be considered destroyed: sniping the pilot or tearing off the tail. All other destruction conditions became severe damage in the new system. It’s all written in the official articles, so you can just read them (official article 1, official article 2). Or you can read mentioned forum topic, it’s all explained there too (I know it’s huge).
EDIT: I found a battle example of this situation in the old system:
You can see at 2:50, I lost more than half of the wing, so the enemy got instantly credited with a kill (that’s how the old system worked):
Spoiler
But I still managed to land and repair:
Spoiler
In the current system, the enemy would only get severe damage. And since I managed to land and repair, he wouldn’t get a kill credit (and remaining rewards) at all. So yeah, that’s the change between the systems. It doesn’t happen that often, but that kill credit is something that was taken away from players in this situation.
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