[Discussion] Balance, Bias, Matchmaking and Battle Ratings

[Bringo_Gaboso 3,820]

tl;dr remove the Cromwell until you have backup tanks able to support it

[DAlexandre 5,605]

The MM is running a +/-1.0 BR spread, despite everyone being against it on the official thread about it. So welcome to WarThunder, where you're asked for your feedback, only so you can be ignored.

 

P.S. - You're lucky you're still in low tiers, wait until you get a stock, crappy, 6.3 so you can fight IS-3s and T-54s.

Edited May 7, 2016 by dalexandre099

[Major_Flisk 173]

i have just been killed by a kv2, which has a BR of 4.3.all my vehicles are tier 1 except a Cromwell 5, which is 3.3. the maximum BR for any British tank in tier 2 is 4.0. how can this be? i keep seeing these vehicles in my battles that are so much more powerful than me. how do they do it. example. i was playing russian tanks and all my vehicles were t3 or less and i saw a pt-76 fighting in my battles. i thought great i'll train for that, so i did. i never had any other t4 vehicles, and as soon as i got one i was fighting in t4 battles. how is it that a t3, BR4.3 heavy tank can be fighting against tanks where the maximum possible Br is just 4.0? somebody please explain this.

thanks.

 

According To The Official War Thunder Wikipedia

Source - http://wiki.warthund...=Battle_ratings

 

"Battle ratings are calculated by examining how well an aircraft or ground unit in different game modes, and they may differ for each game mode for the same vehicle (for example, an aircraft or ground unit may perform considerably better in arcade mode than realistic battles mode, and so will have a higher battle rating in the former)."

 

"This allows for a balanced game at all tiers and using all vehicles, meaning that certain nations having technological advantages at different periods in the game's timeline is not an issue when playing, and planes that are too powerful do not ruin gameplay for those flying less effective aircraft."

 

My Assessment

From A Historical/Mathematical Standpoint:

 

During the course of the Second World War - technology improved exponentially. That is to say, as the war progressed, new means of production allowed for the rapid progression of technological advancement that made previous technology obsolete. And having this new means production, insures the ability for a specific nation to hold the advantage, even if the leap in technological growth is a year behind leading nations current means of production – they will not be able to counter the technological leap until sufficient means of production could be achieved. And until such time - numerical force must be employed to off-set that particular advantage. Now that we established how technological advancement gives a particular nation an advantage, we can now discuss the issue surrounding the Battle Rating System.

 

From what I have experienced - the Battle Rating System does NOT update on a specific basis and thus can NOT allow for a balanced game at all tiers due to the fact certain nations hold a significant technological advantage, despite the claim the system does not pit powerful vehicles to ruin gameplay, I see that it does in-fact do the polar opposite of what the Battle Rating System claims.

 

Based on the observations I have gathered thought my experience, it is my honest opinion that the current implemented Battle Rating System does NOT calculate how well an aircraft and/or ground unit is performing and thus allows for certain nations to hold a technological advancement at different periods in the game's timeline.

Edited May 7, 2016 by Major_Flisk

[ko102crew@psn 559]

As has been said your 3.3 Cromwell is pulling you into matches where you can see 4.3 tanks. So once you lose that Cromwell your hosed. Work on getting more tanks into that BR range. Lose the Cromwell for now and add it back in later once you have stronger tanks that can compete at that level. Tiers don't mean anything. Tier 2 can see Tier 1 and 3. Tier 3 can see Tier 4 and 2. Its all about the BR not the tier.

[Rainbowprincess 9,975]

unlike for aircraft in arcade, you can't decrease the BR in tank battles by using tanks of lower BRs. So the tank with the highest BR will be used by the match maker for determining your match.

[MalleusTempus 803]

Based on the observations I have gathered thought my experience, it is my honest opinion that the current implemented Battle Rating System does NOT calculate how well an aircraft and/or ground unit is performing and thus allows for certain nations to hold a technological advancement at different periods in the game's timeline.

I think you misunderstand what they mean by performance, it isn't the machine at all the BRs are based on but the Muppets (ie us) behind the controls. Now don't get me wrong I'm not defending their BR assignment method, I think its idiotic, but yeah the BRs move based on what we do with them.

This is why you have stupid BRs like the P47, people load then up as bomb trucks, get murdered and the stats say the plane should be lowered.....riight.

[*The_Prince_Jay 242]

I got 2 question?

Why have the American tanks only seen nerfs?

Also why hasn't the m103 ammo been fixed yet? o.o

[_Sev_ 1,115]

1) Because the name of the game is: Buffs for Soviet Vehicles because "historical accuracy" and nerfs for the rest because "balance".

Ever asked yourself why they show their sources for a RoF buff for Soviet vehicles, they themselves stated over and over RoF is a balancing tool so no source needed, right?

Funnily enough if they find a soviet source with higher RoF its instantly implemented but sources for other nations are ignored because of "balance".

Look at the RoFs of all open toped TDs being way to low, Panther line the same etc. etc. there are enough documents but "No" because of balance.

A clear double standart.

 

2) Because they handle the ammunition the same way, 105mm L7 started even with nerfed penetration. The 128mm Ammo has also way to low penetration values. Tiger II has nerfed armor for no reason so the IS-2 with its post war shell can pen it etc. etc.

They started right in implementing the penetration values of USN standart, problem is in that the hammer and sickle nation was then on the end of the food chain, hence the APHE meta which is totaly unhistorical and the overly nerfed APCR and AP shots and overperforming slope armor.

They now just change the values like they want to and created a huge mess instead of staying with one, transparent line for everyone to see and comprehend.

[poopooo 559]

The british and americans need a rebalance in 4,7 to 5,7 br, the shermans cant fight vs heavy spam of t34 85, tigers and panthers.

PD: the 17pdr of firefly need a serious buff,with APCBC cant penetrate hull front of panther and bounce on the sides of the tanks;not to mention the damage, the bullet passes next to a crew member and does nothing or directly penetrates and does not cause any spalling.

Edited May 10, 2016 by poopooo

[John_Dabel 7]

Balancing is realy ruinnig tank games. That +- 1 BR matching when match is counting is tragic. With 5.7 US Jumbo Sherman fight against German Tigers II ???? 

Tank games are little bit different to air battles. Elemet of surprise is not working at tank games when you are not able to damage your opponent.

[_Sev_ 1,115]

The BR +-1 would be not that bad but with the overcompression its a hellhole.

In fact talking about BRs is senseless as long the overcompression exists, you cant fix one vehicles BR atm without breaking several other vehicles, the compression has to go.

[GodWentAFK 133]

I don't care what new tanks your coming out with soon when the one I'm currently trying to grind with is matched this bad. Sure, these BRs make sense with they were matched within 0.5, but 1? In air combat, a pilot in a worse plane can win by flying better a decent percent of the time. it's annoying to play against tier higher planes, but it's possible. In ground war however, YOU CAN'T MATCH PEOPLE WITHIN 1. 

Around the 6-7 BR it is unplayable half the time. If you are on the low end, you will go against t-54s and IS-3s that you mathematically cannot penetrate from the front, in a medium or heavy tank. You have nothing you can do against a t-54 besides shoot its tracks because it 1 hits you. This problem is mostly with the americans at that tier right now, but it exists elsewhere. For instance in Tiger IIs, I often get put against IS-4Ms. I'm sorry but I guess I'm not good enough at ground forces yet to kill 10 tanks that I can't pen at all and can all pen me every shot. 

I'd rather wait 5 minutes for a game with balanced tanks than wait 30 seconds for a game against 10 tanks I can't damage and lose my lions instantly. 

[Nomad_Gaming 6,221]

Only current BR problem in Ground Forces that comes to mind is the T-54 1947 and IS-3, both at 7.3. But the point I'll be making largely concerns late WW2 vs Cold War, these two tanks are just the biggest culprit at the moment.

 

The IS-3 is more than capable at 7.7, and I think could hold its own at 8.0. The T-54 1947 is just as capable in gameplay terms, perhaps marginally worse due to the turret design, nothing major though, but it gets a lower BR than the 1951.

 

The only reason I can think that these two vehicles have strangely low BRs (the IS-3, at least) is that new players driving them for the first time aren't used to Tier 5 gameplay yet and keep having bad games in them, which produces 'statistics' that tell the devs to knock down the BR.

 

Either a 10 BR system is needed like another player mentioned, or a 0.7 spread (which was apparently "tested" and didn't work, but it's safe to say that if it was tested it was done in a controlled, artificial environment because the general player base never got to test it, which strikes me as very odd).

 

If not simply to enrich game play as a whole and make matches fairer and less afflicted by BR compression, it's needed to separate late-war tanks and late-war prototypes from post-war tanks which have a big performance gap. A little crossover is okay, but not so much that WW2 tanks see cold war tanks on a regular basis.- especially when one nation has far more cold war tanks to choose from - in regular random match making, it just causes problems.

 

 

During closed beta, and shortly thereafter, we had a 0.7 spread. In fact, it was in for three months:

 

https://forum.warthunder.com/index.php?/topic/161857-discussion-about-coming-ground-vehicles-matchmaking-system-changes/

 

 

Posted 22 July 2014 - 01:14 AM

BR changes and tank matchmaking system rework:

• All ground vehicles’ Battle Ratings have been adjusted to better match aircraft BRs and reduce the waiting times;

• Maximum gap between the lowest and the highest ranked vehicles in a battle increased from 0.7 to 1.0 BR; now the rule of maximum 1.0 BR spread applies to all modes

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 11, 2016 by Nomad_Gaming

[GodWentAFK 133]

Everyone complains about russian bias, and everyone who plays ground battles know that russian tanks are twice as likely to 1 hit you than their german or american counterparts. The reason for this is their ammo. Their ballistic cap shells are far more deadly than anything the other countries have, especially around tiers 5-7. Their 85mms will 1 hit you a lot more often than a german 88 will, and the only reason for that is their shells. They burst twice inside your cabin vs the one time at most the other nations shells will. These shells aren't taken into account in battle rating. 

People found this "ammo bias" in the statistics of the game, and made a thread about it. This thread got very popular, over 40 pages long. 

Then Gaijin shut down the thread. If you try to find it now or click a link to it from last year, it will bring up an error saying "you don't have permission to view this forum." 

Well we did it guys, we finally found a developer who care about their fans less than EA does. Ignoring your players just to feel nationalistic pride about the USSR's tanks isn't how you run a game company. 

Sorry you couldn't be 'Merican, but don't try to make yourself feel better by screwing over you game with unbalanced russian bias that is easily confirmed in the data tables for the game. 

 

You need to nerf or remove the russian's capped shells OR have them count into battle rating, which would make a lot more sense. 

[Lunatic242 3,073]

tbh germans 1 shot kill me more often.

I would always expect a dickermax to 1 shot kill me while the SU-122 or the SU-85 will not.
I can always expect a nashorn, tiger, king tiger, what ever. to 1 shotk ill me with the 88 mm but not the russian 57 or 85 mm.

To me the germans has superior firepower through both gun and ammo and they are the only opponents I treat differently or fear in the battlefield...
well besides USA and UK, which I treat them virtually the same to how I treat Ai's with higher rewards.

if Russian HE shells go, So must the German HE shells.

[Cryptocurrency 1,197]

Everyone complains about russian bias, and everyone who plays ground battles know that russian tanks are twice as likely to 1 hit you than their german or american counterparts. The reason for this is their ammo. Their ballistic cap shells are far more deadly than anything the other countries have, especially around tiers 5-7. Their 85mms will 1 hit you a lot more often than a german 88 will, and the only reason for that is their shells. They burst twice inside your cabin vs the one time at most the other nations shells will. These shells aren't taken into account in battle rating. 

People found this "ammo bias" in the statistics of the game, and made a thread about it. This thread got very popular, over 40 pages long. 

Then Gaijin shut down the thread. If you try to find it now or click a link to it from last year, it will bring up an error saying "you don't have permission to view this forum." 

Well we did it guys, we finally found a developer who care about their fans less than EA does. Ignoring your players just to feel nationalistic pride about the USSR's tanks isn't how you run a game company. 

Sorry you couldn't be 'Merican, but don't try to make yourself feel better by screwing over you game with unbalanced russian bias that is easily confirmed in the data tables for the game. 

 

You need to nerf or remove the russian's capped shells OR have them count into battle rating, which would make a lot more sense. 

Prime example of a guy who expected p2w but instead got

Even with post war ammo the guy cannot get a 1.0 KDR with a post-war ammo tank which he claims is OP.

[Stoikc 1,469]

Everyone complains about russian bias

only 95% complains about russian bias, the rest are good players.

Edited May 11, 2016 by Althix

[KyleRittenMouse 1,795]

tbh germans 1 shot kill me more often.

I would always expect a dickermax to 1 shot kill me while the SU-122 or the SU-85 will not.
I can always expect a nashorn, tiger, king tiger, what ever. to 1 shotk ill me with the 88 mm but not the russian 57 or 85 mm.

To me the germans has superior firepower through both gun and ammo and they are the only opponents I treat differently or fear in the battlefield...
well besides USA and UK, which I treat them virtually the same to how I treat Ai's with higher rewards.

if Russian HE shells go, So must the German HE shells.

You kidding me right now? The Soviet 85mm one shots all the damn time, the SU-152 (which is at the same BR range of the Dicker Max and Nashorn) one hit kills anything it sneezes on. I have not one shotted people all the time with my German 75mm's and 88's, especially now thanks to Last Man Standing. Soviet 122's don't even have to be aimed, just hit and pen the tank anywhere and it's an instant one hit kill.

Prime example of a guy who expected p2w but instead got

Even with post war ammo the guy cannot get a 1.0 KDR with a post-war ammo tank which he claims is OP.

Must be a bad player, the SU-122P is ridiculously easy to play

Edited May 11, 2016 by Russian_Tears

[VN_HungNguyen 1,782]

A bad player always blame everything else but himself.~~

[HauntTheShinyy 1,115]

don`t make judgement about the bad players and stuff

 

 

its a common to see when player who is not played tons of battles

 

they got more open eyes for everything

 

many of the aspect are fact they are more one sot miracle tanks than the other even the Russian rank 3 T34/85 is so superb tank and i cant believe, just ad this in your rank 4 tank line along side 6.7 tank and you see what i mean 

 

it kills everything ,because "Cannon and shells"  

 

but like we all know this game is from Russian so they not allow other National stay as Even situation with others not in million years ! 

[RegulusImperator 94]

Maybe I'm just a poor player but I think it's fair to say that shells with high explosive filler are just plain superior to those without, and it's a problem for American and British tanks that don't have access to those*. With AP shells you have to snipe individual crew members or hope for ammo rack, with APHE shoot just about anywhere that can pen and let the explosive radius RNG handle the rest.

 

I'm not whining and am happy to be proven wrong but I don't see any downside to shells with explosive filler and tanks that have them are just plain superior to those that don't. At minimum, I feel like the AP shells should have 0% chance of being ammo racked (no explosive filler to blow up), while shells with explosive filler should have a good chance to blow up depending on how much filler is inside.

 

*(Except arguably in tier 1 since most tanks are small, cramped and have few crew members and fast reloads so AP does the job well enough in most cases)

Edited May 11, 2016 by Regulust

[Stoikc 1,469]

kek. this game always been oriented on the western market k? because western  players pay more for the same amount of goods.

[VN_HungNguyen 1,782]

Hm... I just figured something... people who are complaining about Russian bias in this thread are all AB players. Is it strange?

[Addos1 27]

Everyone knows that 83% of statistics sighted in these forums are made up. Oh wait, OP didnt even bother to cover his ridiculous statement with a made up stat.

I do love the 'russian bias' losers on these forums though, always good for a chuckle!

[MadSlovenian 1,357]

Even tho has has a russian bias complain, the 365A shell on 85 really has a big amount of HE filler and it has like 20 mm less of pen than Tiger I gun so yeah.

The 85 is really good and at least in my case it oneshots like 60% of the time.