World war reflections

[Mockingbird0901 39]

Opening.
First of all I would say that I really enjoy the attempts at asymmetrical warfare in this mode. The removal of markers was in my opinion a good change, and although the arcade players weren’t too happy about it, at least now you only had that part of the player base complaining about it, rather than nobody being happy with meeting half way. Although the teams had some imbalances at the start, these largely got fixed over the course of the event. In this post I’ll come with some of my thoughts regarding the event.

 

UI

The user interface (UI) could have been made clearer. For the first battle as a commander I had a hard time understanding how to make my artillery attack, I didn’t even know that helicopters could pick up infantry, how to set up a route for units to follow was unclear to me, how to make my units entrench didn’t become apparent until later in the round, and understanding why my planes/helicopters couldn’t take off again after having landed was poorly explained. This was after both watching the commander video made by you and reading the entire wiki on the subject. It was simply put a mess. I’ve run into several other players who are doing the same mistakes that I did when it comes to this all throughout the event, so this is clearly not an isolated incident. Explaining what types of battles would be triggered by different events could also use improving, such as attacking an entrenched unit, vs two unentrenched units facing off, or attacking a column. This could also be made clearer for the players in the battles. I had battles where our team was attacking a position, had killed the enemy to the point where they weren’t spawning any more, and our units were sitting in the cap circle, yet it wouldn’t get capped, and the battle counted as a loss for our team. Why? I’m still not sure.

There was also the issue of people not understanding how to use aircraft in the mode. It seemed to me that a lot of players went something the lines of ‘Oh, I can spawn multiple times? I better suicide bomb something as I ram into the dirt then and grab a new plane’. This led to a lot of planes getting wasted, which was frustrating as a person trying to lead the battle.

During some battles we would get xp towards our vehicle research, and sometimes we wouldn’t. The reasoning for this could be made clearer. Personally, I couldn’t understand why, as it to the best of my knowledge wasn’t dependent on using vehicles I already have, nor if we won or lost.

 

 

Also, simply because it would make more sense, have the Germans on the left and the Russians on the right on this map.

 

 

 

Units

General:
With one of the goals for players in the event being getting kills and assists, it could often be frustrating to have AI units killing the enemy after you had initially shot them, which would leave you without either. Not getting the kill is understandable, but not getting an assist for it is frustrating.

I find that the Fulda event was better balanced than the Chinese farm event overall. The Fulda event had a better balance between the capabilities of the planes, compared to the tanks. This lead to what I would argue is better gameplay, where people got to play the mode, in stead of getting shot at in spawn by planes wielding ballistics computers and enough ordinance to comfortably destroy several units. While it’s somewhat fun for the people in the planes, it’s less so for the people on the ground. Having arguably terrible ‘stock’ AA, compared to what they had to deal with from the air, did not help this matter.

Fulda gap:
While I in general find that this event was better balanced overall, the difference in capabilities between stock tanks and top tier tanks in this event was in my opinion greater. Sitting in a hull down position in a Leo2a4 I was able to get 18 kills without dying. I can’t see this happening in the Chinese farm event.

The German team had an easier objective, only having to defend, while the Russian team had to attack, which helped offset the imbalance in the capabilities of the team line-ups.

 

Chinese farm:

Far in performance between stock AA and planes, leaving ground units to be killed with ease.
Israeli side having light tank with stabilizer causing unbalance considering Egyptian side had to attack.

Global map
Fulda gap

 

Respawn area in I7 for the German team could have been moved to G7 instead, letting the Germans fall back somewhat if need be to the south without instantly losing access to the resupply area. Seeing as the roads on the map lead up to both these grids from the south you could even argue that both areas could be turned into a resupply area, although that could lead to balance issues. Other than that I’d say that this was a well-balanced event as far as the map goes.

Chinese farm

On the global map you had the issue of the Israeli side being at a great advantage on the Chinese farm event. At the start of most battles that I fought, the Israeli side would send a infantry unit from either J7, or more likely, G5, down to E7 with a chopper. This would likely be countered by the Egyptian side by having choppers pick up the infantry closest to the helipad, while cutting off their chopper with jets. These jets would then be met by Israeli jets, and it would either be a stand-off where both units would hold off until the Egyptian choppers had dropped off their units and was returning to base, or air battles would be triggered, letting the Israeli choppers fly in as well if they chose to do so, or drop them off in E5 to entrench there. By forcing the Egyptian side to open up their lines in order to defend early game to the south, this opened up the E5 area to be held by the Israeli side, making it substantially harder for the Egyptian forces to encircle the E4 square, one of the safest ways to win as the Egyptian side. The Egyptian team could also send an infantry unit to the I7 area, in order to try and open a front there. This was however highly risky. The Israeli side could however send their infantry to either E6, F7, or G7 to do the same to them, cutting off one of their respawn areas to the match less than 4 minutes into a upwards of 2 hours long match in the process. The Egyptians only helipad and airfield being just next to it does not help them, as loss of these at an early point in the game would all but guarantee a loss for their team, as the Israeli side would then be able to fast cap all the way up to A1 before even the first waves of reinforcements could arrive, leaving the rest of the army as being counted as behind enemy lines. If this failed the presence of an Israeli air-force when the Egyptian side would then have none would be devastating regardless.

Suggestions
Tutorials. For everything. How to initiate different types of battles. What you have to do in different battles as a player. How the respawns work in regard to sometimes being given more vehicles, or more spawns in the same vehicles.
 

Have a few Surface-to-air missile (SAM) sites on the map. These would function like the artillery in that you could fire them manually at an air unit within range, with a reload to follow, with the air unit tanking more losses the longer it stayed within range of the SAM site. These could be slow to move and entrench for balancing reasons, with poor defences against ground units, but still capable of shooting down enough choppers to make it a unviable strategy to rush one of them with a chopper loaded with infantry, like people would do against artillery.

 

Have Egypt get infantry entrenched in E7 at round start, as well as a second helipad, around A3/B2 area. Empty at start for balance. Simple suggestion to make the Egyptian side stronger on the global map, as I at least personally found that it was harder to win as Egypt than as Israel in this event.

Ensure the teams in a battle are somewhat balanced when it comes to player numbers. 2 vs 20 is not fun, especially when the 2 have some mid-tier tank, while all of the 20 players show up in the top tier vehicles for their team in that event.

Increased credits for people playing stock vehicles. Players were complaining about getting killed and losing credits while facing vehicles 2 BR’s higher than their own vehicle. This is in my opinion understandable and leads to less people playing. Having people not want to play means that they have less of a reason to join a squadron, and having players join a squadron is as far as I know a good way of increasing player retention.

 

Implement a timer indicating when a unit will arrive at the designated area ordered by a commander on the map. Simply a small box with a timer coming up if you have a unit selected and mouse over where they’re going. I have no way of knowing when they will actually get there, it's all just guesstimating.

Remove the slider for air units between 1 and 29. Considering you had to bring a minimum of 30 air units, why even have a slider between 1 and 29? This could simply start at 30, and have it say ‘minimum’ next to it. Also having 15 choppers at one helipad, and another 15 at the other, without one of them being able to take off and join forces with the other one, getting to 30, was frustrating. Have them be locked from other duties then, but able to regroup.

 

Have a way of giving the people commanding stars. People playing in squadrons with few players would send their commander into battles, leaving the global map unattended. This often made for an easy win for the other team. As a commander, initiating auto battles with 80% win chance, cutting off X amount of units, capturing this many zones, winning a war or two with Y% leadership participation are some suggestions for what could award points towards a star.

I’m not sure if this would lead to better gameplay, but considering how slowly ground units moved I think it could be interesting to experiment with smaller hexagons, to see how that would effect the front lines, leading to more manoeuvring possibly being required by the people commanding. This would naturally also require more units, to prevent there being holes in the line. This could lead to the commander getting overloaded, which would be bad. To prevent overwhelming the other side simply through making the commander of the opposing army get too much to deal with through having multiply players commanding different parts of the battle at the same time on one team, simply restrict it to only having one person able to control the map at a time.

 

F6 and G6 on Chinese farm were at the start of the match held by the Israeli side. Have these two be neutral instead to make it harder for the Israeli side to end the round quickly by capping anywhere on the south flank.

 

A resupply grid captured by the enemy should still spawn your units if the enemy moved off it. Considering your unit didn’t get a ‘behind enemy lines’ timer if sat at one of these, despite that units team not holding it, and being behind enemy lines, indicates that it’s connected to units outside the map. So let those units move forward from there when reinforcements arrive. Maybe have it trigger a battle with the enemy unit

 

More ways of showing how a battle went. A battle where a infantry unit was trying to hold off an armoured unit would by the game be considered a defeat as long as the armoured unit won in the end, even if the defending side made them pay for it heavily. On a strategic level I would personally consider it a win if we were able to destroy 2/3 of the enemy armoured units while defending, even if it did cost us all of our infantry unit. Making this clearer for the people playing that actual match could help in motivating players, as you would often get defeat after defeat as the Germans, yet you could still be winning on the global map from a strategic point of view.

 

Make the timer showing when an airborne unit is ready clearer. It could often say that choppers were ready to fly, yet it wouldn’t let me take off with them. This could be because there was a timer on them, or because of the limit in how many units of them I could have active at any given time. Making this clearer for the person commanding would help with frustration. On the right when i clicked it it said that they were 'ready to fly'. When it enter the menu it sais that I have reaced the maximum amount of chopper armies that I can have at any given time.

 

As an extention to this, have the timer found here also show in the pop up menu for spawning air units, with clear text indicating that the unit will be ready in this amount of time. Also, having it say 'ready to fly' and 'Not enough aircraft to fly out!' right after each other makes little sense.

 

 -------------------------
So, what are your thoughts?

[PlanetP 890]

Good post!

 

Many times, as  commander, I played in a battle and it decided the operation's success or failure.  The problem was I didn't get to see the final map...couldn't get back to it.  The only reason I knew who won was the game message.

In fact, there were many times that I wasn't commanding;  just kicked out of the map at the end of a battle.  All players should be put into the final map at the end....

[JimmyHat57971 37]

"There was also the issue of people not understanding how to use aircraft in the mode. It seemed to me that a lot of players went something the lines of ‘Oh, I can spawn multiple times? I better suicide bomb something as I ram into the dirt then and grab a new plane’. This led to a lot of planes getting wasted, which was frustrating as a person trying to lead the battle."

 

 I certainly experienced this, having never flown jets before and having no interest in flying them again.  I was just trying to get the daily spin award...which only was 10 or 15% boosters.  Never a good one. 

 

I didn't have trouble hitting the target, I had trouble pulling out of the dive using RB flight models!  The other major issue I had with aircraft in season 3 is how you didn't have planes for dedicated roles.  No bombers /and/ fighters, instead every plane is a fighter-bomber.  It would be great to play an early war season with actual fighters vs actual bombers. 

Edited July 19, 2020 by JimmyHat57971

[Kanyiko 8,568]

10 hours ago, Mockingbird0901 said:

There was also the issue of people not understanding how to use aircraft in the mode. It seemed to me that a lot of players went something the lines of ‘Oh, I can spawn multiple times? I better suicide bomb something as I ram into the dirt then and grab a new plane’. This led to a lot of planes getting wasted, which was frustrating as a person trying to lead the battle.

 

That was something I also noticed.  Some matches would end with players smashing their aircraft into the ground, j-key their tanks or even starting to teamkill one another as they waited for the timer to run out - a lot of players new to this mode don't seem to realise that they have to conserve their vehicle as it counts towards the end result of the entire campaign.

 

One thing that irked me were the 'intercept convoy' missions where the enemy had aerial reinforcements at their disposal: three times out of four the mission would turn out as a slaughterfest for the 'attacking' team - the defending team had the advantage that their spawn point moved around the map, while the attacking team's spawn remained at the same spot.  Both in the Chinese Farm and Fulda Gap missions this meant that after about a minute or two, the more enterprising members of the defending convoy team would both sneak up on the spawn on the ground while their aerial component would start and bomb the **** out of the attacking team's spawn.  I had a couple of these missions and they literally turned out as spawn - dead 10 seconds later - spawn - dead 25 seconds later - spawn - dead 17 seconds later. This was even more the case in Fulda where some of the higher tier players had thermals at their disposal, which meant that players using the default tank would be killed in seconds by enemies they would never even see, hidden away in the scrubs half a mile away or even further.

 

Still, overall it was fun.  I liked the absence of markers; I had a number of personal firsts (first Sidewinder kill, first tank kill from a helicopter, first helicopter kill using a plane as well as AA) and I hope future events will feature similar 'dissimilar' encounters - the Korean War or the Suez Crisis come to mind.

Edited July 19, 2020 by Kanyiko

[NinjaMouse 42]

On 19/07/2020 at 14:40, Mockingbird0901 said:

There was also the issue of people not understanding how to use aircraft in the mode. It seemed to me that a lot of players went something the lines of ‘Oh, I can spawn multiple times? I better suicide bomb something as I ram into the dirt then and grab a new plane’. This led to a lot of planes getting wasted, which was frustrating as a person trying to lead the battle.

 

Whether it's lack of understanding or just disinterest in the overall campaign for solo players, the real problem here seems to be the inability for aircraft to repair/reload during battle. The whole J out area is not very realistic or appealing when there's no reciprocal benefit of doing so. Once an aircraft's out of ammo, fuel or damaged - it's game over.

[Bruce_R1 2,118]

3 hours ago, NinjaMouse said:

 

Whether it's lack of understanding or just disinterest in the overall campaign for solo players, the real problem here seems to be the inability for aircraft to repair/reload during battle. The whole J out area is not very realistic or appealing when there's no reciprocal benefit of doing so. Once an aircraft's out of ammo, fuel or damaged - it's game over.

The idea was, you flew through the door icon on the map and you got a new aircraft and an airspawn, and that way your old, empty aircraft was still in play for future missions on the operational side. People just didn't know that.

[NinjaMouse 42]

56 minutes ago, Bruce_R1 said:

you got a new aircraft and an airspawn

If we consider spawns as "lifes", J'ing out would result in a loss of life and if there a no respawns, a "Return To Hangar" (death).

 

1 hour ago, Bruce_R1 said:

People just didn't know that.

Such a lack of understanding is a consequence of an over-engineered game mode. The average player doesn't have the time (or patience) to read an essay. Whatever its intention, it evidently didn't persuade players to use it.

 

An Air RB or even EC respawn model would of been better, IMO.

[VVookie 6]

Solution for players sabotage is giving squadron members ability to ban or remove players from their operations an/or battles. Random players can ruin an operation for a commander. 

Some of the mechanics are still being glitchy

-(operarion map)

when a battle starts while a unit is owerlaping it the unit is moved(jumped) in the direction it was moving rather it being pushed in the direction away from the center of the battle(marker)

-the WW should be a way to promote and advance squadron gameplay and players should be discouraged to go solo. 

Putting a mercenary system would be a good system to solve random players problem. 

[Bruce_R1 2,118]

23 hours ago, NinjaMouse said:

If we consider spawns as "lifes", J'ing out would result in a loss of life and if there a no respawns, a "Return To Hangar" (death).

 

Such a lack of understanding is a consequence of an over-engineered game mode. The average player doesn't have the time (or patience) to read an essay. Whatever its intention, it evidently didn't persuade players to use it.

 

An Air RB or even EC respawn model would of been better, IMO.

The issue is that wouldn't work with the idea of air armies being moved, often from distant bases, by the commanders on the operational map, and the key to having aircraft for multiple CAS battles for that team for the next fight being returning alive. EC and air RB don't have that issue 

 

I agree it's poorly communicated and not working, because players who don't care about that op will just suicide to get a new plane. But the door is on the map, and you can see it in the sky as well. I saw a lot more people using it in Season 2, so I think it's just the unfamiliarity of new/casual jet players with the ruleset.

 

I also think they need to drop the size of air units from minimum of 30 spawns to fly, since we're talking about it. 20 or 25 would be better. 

[NinjaMouse 42]

18 hours ago, Bruce_R1 said:

The issue is that wouldn't work with the idea of air armies being moved, often from distant bases, by the commanders on the operational map, and the key to having aircraft for multiple CAS battles for that team for the next fight being returning alive. EC and air RB don't have that issue 

You're probably right, I'm speaking from a solo player perspective. With only a single spawn (quite often the case for solo), gameplay's restricted to the ammo/fuel capacity of any given vehicle, so battles were relatively short, necessitating the need to jump from one battle to another in quick succession just to keep playing - further removing any sense of coalition.

 

Campaign maps do not match directly with battle maps, so the inclusion of airfields (like helipads now) shouldn't make any difference. My thinking is that a commander will release a fleet aircraft to any given battle and whatever survives by the end of the battle are returned to the inventory. Quite simple, but much more realistic and engrossing for the player.