World War Mode News (November 2022)

[Grainman_ 22]

On 21/11/2022 at 21:27, DmGordeev said:

With the introduction of the mechanics of joining an operation, restrictions such as the entry timer for squadron players and the allowed imbalance became a big hindrance. I'll remind that before imbalance = 2 only applied to random players, and squadrons could enter battles as they liked and play 20 people against 2 random players, because this is "their" operation and it is strange to limit them. Now we add random players to the operation and this is now also "their" operation. If a player has entered an operation, there is a battle in it that he could play, and not see a ban in the form of a timer or imbalance. The goal is to add people to the operations evenly and we are doing that. Now there is a problem that in the operation for each side there can be 80 people, but we see in it a battle of 3 against 7. It is not clear where the other 150 people are. This is the first appearance of this mechanic and we have already outlined some plan for its improvement and we will move in this direction - balancing players in the operation, and not in separate battles within it.

 

Hmm, it might be that a lot of random players just join for one or two battles then leave the operation. I know I played a couple of operations for each side the full way through, but there was also several operations where I didn't want to devote an hour or two to playing it out, so I just played one or two missions then left.

 

On 21/11/2022 at 21:56, DmGordeev said:

50.3 vs. 49.7 in favor of the British, for operations that did not end with the commander's afk.

Huh, interesting, I assumed it would have been more victories in favour of the Germans.

[島風 2,396]

8 hours ago, Grainman_ said:

On 21/11/2022 at 12:56, DmGordeev said:

50.3 vs. 49.7 in favor of the British, for operations that did not end with the commander's afk.

Huh, interesting, I assumed it would have been more victories in favour of the Germans.

 

As A Commander Only Ever Having Used UK This Whole Interseason (Personally Not Even Playing The Nation) With 44 Operations At 93% WR

I Thought British Odds Were Way Higher Than Only 50.3%

 

• British Initial Strategic Power Is Immense, South Having 2 Artillery Pieces Allowing For An Easy Breakthrough In The South, Stacked With 3 Infantry For Border Control And A Tank To Rush Through - Totalling At 4 Artillery Pieces And Tanks With Germans At 2 Artillery And 0 Tanks
  • On Top Of The Fact North Has 3 Tank Units And After A Few Minutes Of Moving A 2nd Artillery Piece Allowing Again For An Easy Breakthrough
  • Germans Already Lowkey Start Off With Gaps In The Frontline At G4 & G7 - With An Exposed Artillery In G3 & G6 That If Not Retreated, Can Be Easily Caught In An Crushing Auto Battle With The British Tank Unit
• Full Air Dominance Being Able To Have 4 Air Wings Up Consistent Of Mixing Spitfires & Hurricanes From The Start While Germans Can Only Intercept With 2 Fighter Airwings
• Vehicle Line-Up Is Immensely Strong For The British - While Germans Offer A Pz.IV F2 (Limited Spawn Rate) And Marder III - The Churchill III, Sherman II, AEC AA And Aerial Line-Ups Are Nothing To Scoff At

Edited November 23, 2022 by ShimakazeChan

[Bruce_R1 2,118]

52 minutes ago, ShimakazeChan said:

I Thought British Odds Were Way Higher Than Only 50.3

As he said, that was only battles where both sides played to the end.

 

Britain had the superior side operationally for sure. But it took a couple days to collectively figure that out. I suspect the Brit win rate on the last day would have been a lot higher.

 

That right there is why this mode can't run continuously, or for there to be a practice mode. Once it launches, even if it's well balanced, after a couple days and thousands of battles the meta will inevitably be cracked and one side will run the table.

 

The leaderboard does reflect that though. I went 10-6 playing both sides evenly and ended up 37th. I saw a lot of British-only commanders with near perfect records ending up a lot lower on the leaderboard.

 

I knew exactly how to win 95% of the time as Britain after 10 games max. There was nothing my opponent could have done. Going 41-3 playing only Britain for 4 days the way you did for no prizes just strikes me as... Sad. I mean a lot of games were less than the full 2h but that's still a lot of time.

 

But yeah, a system that vulnerable to being meta'd like that can never give out good prizes and be fair. Best thing about this event was that there wasn't anything really at stake so squadrons could use it just to do something different, and commanders just did it to help their squadrons out altruistically. Add back any big rewards for playing and it will get toxic again, guaranteed.

Edited November 23, 2022 by Bruce_R1

[島風 2,396]

6 hours ago, Bruce_R1 said:

But it took a couple days to collectively figure that out. I suspect the Brit win rate on the last day would have been a lot higher.

 

That right there is why this mode can't run continuously, or for there to be a practice mode. Once it launches, even if it's well balanced, after a couple days and thousands of battles the meta will inevitably be cracked and one side will run the table.

 

I Figured This Out Day 0 - Simply Taking A Gander At The Wiki Which In Its Barebone Info Habbit For WWM - Still Displays A Clear Advantage In Vehicle Line Up And Strategic Value Starting Off.

[島風 2,396]

7 hours ago, Bruce_R1 said:

But yeah, a system that vulnerable to being meta'd like that can never give out good prizes and be fair. Best thing about this event was that there wasn't anything really at stake so squadrons could use it just to do something different, and commanders just did it to help their squadrons out altruistically. Add back any big rewards for playing and it will get toxic again, guaranteed.

 

I Mean, Operations Just Have To Be Rebalanced To Remove Any Biased Meta Nations - Last Season The Battle of the Chinese Farm Was To My Knowledge Very Balanced In Both Sides, But That Season Got Completely Overshadowed How Easily Broken Battle for the Fulda Gap Was Because Of The Addition And Weak Frontline Presence Of The Germans Operationally.

Edited November 23, 2022 by ShimakazeChan

[Bruce_R1 2,118]

1 hour ago, ShimakazeChan said:

 

I Mean, Operations Just Have To Be Rebalanced To Remove Any Biased Meta Nations - Last Season The Battle of the Chinese Farm Was To My Knowledge Very Balanced In Both Sides, But That Season Got Completely Overshadowed How Easily Broken Battle for the Fulda Gap Was Because Of The Addition And Weak Frontline Presence Of The Germans Operationally.

This isn't chess. It takes about 10 runthroughs to find the optimal strategy, about 20 to refine it to eliminate all possible counters. Spending a lot of time balancing scenarios might add maybe 10 games to that? But it will still happen. And neither of the s2 operations were very well balanced, either. It's got nothing to do with meta nations. These scenarios simply aren't that complex, and can't ever be. So every new one of these has about three days of useful life before the meta is entirely defined.

[widepeepoSad 583]

On operations were 90% of the players are randoms, sure you guys are right. But on a equally matched operations, with full squadrons on each side, Germany has a good chance to win most of the ops. The initial push of the Brits is better early game, but in the end Germany only has to hold a small size of the map.

UK has better tanks in general, yes, but since most of the missions they'll play are going to be on attack mode, Germany can hold perfectly well.

On air battles the 109 would win against most Spitfire teams just by climbing. UK got the better bombers (specially the Boston, but since it's kinda unique it's not really a threat), but Germany can defend itself pretty well with the SdKfz, while the UK 20mm AA is kinda eh. 109s can also be very deadly with the 50 kg drops, while the Spitfires get no drops and the RP 3s on the Hurricanes are kinda unreliable and also only 1 drop of bombs.

You can just drag battle after battle and in the end the UK side won't be able to take the hexagons needed to win.

11 hours ago, ShimakazeChan said:

 

I Mean, Operations Just Have To Be Rebalanced To Remove Any Biased Meta Nations - Last Season The Battle of the Chinese Farm Was To My Knowledge Very Balanced In Both Sides, But That Season Got Completely Overshadowed How Easily Broken Battle for the Fulda Gap Was Because Of The Addition And Weak Frontline Presence Of The Germans Operationally.

Chinese farm was not balanced at all. Even tho we won with Epik a couple of ops with Israel, the Egyptian side was a 100% better. T55A is way better than the M60AOS and the SMT would **** on the F4E. The F4E is better at bombing, yes, but since you can only have a couple of planes up each time, and with the SMT on the other side + the Shilka, it was not really impactful. 

19 hours ago, Bruce_R1 said:

Add back any big rewards for playing and it will get toxic again, guaranteed.

Also. No prizes, sure, might not get toxic. You're not gonna get sweaty nerds like me and my buddies causing havoc against 99% of the playerbase, but... Mode would be dead pretty fast. If there is no reward, there is no reason to play it. Play it to get a little bit of RP with vehicles you don't own? Meh, sure. How many are going to play for that? Enough to keep the mode alive? Bragging rights? No one cares, since the real prizes are on the TSS, everyone who is good or wants to be good at the game knows where the better players are. They would need to delete SQB 8x8 to get people here for the "bragging rights".

Just look how SB air is,  you have 10% of the players who are there to play "sim" and the other 90% is just zombie bombing or botting for easy RP. Take the RP gain away, you have nothing. Dead mode.

And I say this with the utmost respect for the work and effort DmGordeev has put on this. WWM is fun, it is somewhat balanced and well thought-out, sure, might not be what we wanted as a squadron vs squadron mode, but it surely is better than spamming 8x8 SQB with the same line-ups for years. The problem is, we cannot keep dividing the playerbase on different modes and expect a healthy amount on each of them, there is a reason Gaijin killed AB SQBs or SB tanks (that is why its a side event with daily line-ups), same reason why they almost killed SB air. We already have too many modes with different tiers between them. No incentive, no players. It is just going to become a novelty for a couple of days and then dead til the end of the season. Not trying to manipulate into giving stuff for playing this, but I think it is known that people play either to grind or get stuff for the market/get unique things.

Edited November 24, 2022 by widepeepoSad

[島風 2,396]

6 hours ago, widepeepoSad said:

Chinese farm was not balanced at all. Even tho we won with Epik a couple of ops with Israel, the Egyptian side was a 100% better. T55A is way better than the M60AOS and the SMT would **** on the F4E. The F4E is better at bombing, yes, but since you can only have a couple of planes up each time, and with the SMT on the other side + the Shilka, it was not really impactful. 

 

Hmmm, Taking Perspective From Epik On That Season I'll Take Your Word From It, Playing That Op As A Smaller Clan - Against About Equally Skilled / Manned Clans Where Not Everyone Has The Top Dog Vehicles - Felt About Equal Operational Wise.

 

 

[Bruce_R1 2,118]

7 hours ago, widepeepoSad said:

Also. No prizes, sure, might not get toxic. You're not gonna get sweaty nerds like me and my buddies causing havoc against 99% of the playerbase, but... Mode would be dead pretty fast. If there is no reward, there is no reason to play it. Play it to get a little bit of RP with vehicles you don't own? Meh, sure. How many are going to play for that? Enough to keep the mode alive? Bragging rights? No one cares, since the real prizes are on the TSS, everyone who is good or wants to be good at the game knows where the better players are. They would need to delete SQB 8x8 to get people here for the "bragging rights".

Just look how SB air is,  you have 10% of the players who are there to play "sim" and the other 90% is just zombie bombing or botting for easy RP. Take the RP gain away, you have nothing. Dead mode.

And I say this with the utmost respect for the work and effort DmGordeev has put on this. WWM is fun, it is somewhat balanced and well thought-out, sure, might not be what we wanted as a squadron vs squadron mode, but it surely is better than spamming 8x8 SQB with the same line-ups for years. The problem is, we cannot keep dividing the playerbase on different modes and expect a healthy amount on each of them, there is a reason Gaijin killed AB SQBs or SB tanks (that is why its a side event with daily line-ups), same reason why they almost killed SB air. We already have too many modes with different tiers between them. No incentive, no players. It is just going to become a novelty for a couple of days and then dead til the end of the season. Not trying to manipulate into giving stuff for playing this, but I think it is known that people play either to grind or get stuff for the market/get unique thing

Ok, so what I said in my initial post which you might not have seen was in terms of overall rewards this should be resourced similarly to current SQB or TSS. GE, titles, boosters, decals, all good. Let it rain for that stuff, resource the event same as they are now. More rewards than this first run for sure.

 

I think the best thing you could do for squadron growth and health (and by extension playerbase health) would be to run a 4 day event like this every three months, with better rewards next time.

 

I think it would be a huge mistake if they went back to irregular 10 day "seasons" with unique season vehicles, which will bring out the toxicity, and because those seasons would take longer to pull together and organize, couldn't be held as frequently. Over two years is too long.

 

SQB will always be nichey because it requires full investment in a ground tree, which excludes everyone who just likes noodling away at low tiers with their friends. WWM fills a niche that allows everyone in a casual squadron (and the majority of squadrons will always be casual for-fun groupings) a way to feel part of something a little bigger for a couple days. Save the new vehicles for major events, regular updates, and Battlepass.

 

They don't have the maps or, I suspect the staffing to do more than one of these quarterly with a new scenario each time. They'd do the most good building on this moderate success by repeating the same kind of four-day event with another updated old scenario in another three months.

[widepeepoSad 583]

7 hours ago, Bruce_R1 said:

Ok, so what I said in my initial post which you might not have seen was in terms of overall rewards this should be resourced similarly to current SQB or TSS. GE, titles, boosters, decals, all good. Let it rain for that stuff, resource the event same as they are now. More rewards than this first run for sure.

 

I think the best thing you could do for squadron growth and health (and by extension playerbase health) would be to run a 4 day event like this every three months, with better rewards next time.

 

I think it would be a huge mistake if they went back to irregular 10 day "seasons" with unique season vehicles, which will bring out the toxicity, and because those seasons would take longer to pull together and organize, couldn't be held as frequently. Over two years is too long.

 

SQB will always be nichey because it requires full investment in a ground tree, which excludes everyone who just likes noodling away at low tiers with their friends. WWM fills a niche that allows everyone in a casual squadron (and the majority of squadrons will always be casual for-fun groupings) a way to feel part of something a little bigger for a couple days. Save the new vehicles for major events, regular updates, and Battlepass.

 

They don't have the maps or, I suspect the staffing to do more than one of these quarterly with a new scenario each time. They'd do the most good building on this moderate success by repeating the same kind of four-day event with another updated old scenario in another three months.

Oh, yeah, missed that post, mb :p.

99% agree with you.

Not having the same kind of rewards as before is going to keep most of the sweaty nerds out of this. I still got the 1st place decals from 2-3 years ago and I couldn't care less. Maybe a 2000 GE reward for 1st place, on a 10 day season, could be more than attractive for the average player and make them play.

 

Still, SQBs are good for "casuals". You just get 8 players, go in, go out, that's it. Might not win them all because you don't own the meta vehicles, maybe couldn't even play the first 4 weeks because of the high br, but it allows quick engagement without much commitment. Meanwhile, WWM requires the full 2 hours, specially from the commanders. Sure, it would be a special event, but still, don't think people would stay more than the needed amount to get whatever prize they're giving, unless they're fighting for top places. I've been checking different squadrons for a while now, and most of them don't get above 15 players "engaging" with the "community" daily. Even the top SQB people get at most 20 people on a day? They just account share and get points. A 4 day run every 3 months will do no impact on how squadron mechanics are right now. That's why having big prizes becomes a good thing, you get a massive influx of players and communities engaging every day trying to get them.

 

Edited November 24, 2022 by widepeepoSad

[Josephs_Piano 7,044]

On 24/11/2022 at 23:51, ShimakazeChan said:

 

Hmmm, Taking Perspective From Epik On That Season I'll Take Your Word From It, Playing That Op As A Smaller Clan - Against About Equally Skilled / Manned Clans Where Not Everyone Has The Top Dog Vehicles - Felt About Equal Operational Wise.

 

Same here - I went so far as to spend up large to get the F-4C and gunpods just for that.

 

Can't check my results now but my memory is that I played most of my battles as Israeli with a >50% win rate in both campaign and battle

[Bruce_R1 2,118]

20 hours ago, widepeepoSad said:

Oh, yeah, missed that post, mb :p.

99% agree with you.

Not having the same kind of rewards as before is going to keep most of the sweaty nerds out of this. I still got the 1st place decals from 2-3 years ago and I couldn't care less. Maybe a 2000 GE reward for 1st place, on a 10 day season, could be more than attractive for the average player and make them play.

 

Still, SQBs are good for "casuals". You just get 8 players, go in, go out, that's it. Might not win them all because you don't own the meta vehicles, maybe couldn't even play the first 4 weeks because of the high br, but it allows quick engagement without much commitment. Meanwhile, WWM requires the full 2 hours, specially from the commanders. Sure, it would be a special event, but still, don't think people would stay more than the needed amount to get whatever prize they're giving, unless they're fighting for top places. I've been checking different squadrons for a while now, and most of them don't get above 15 players "engaging" with the "community" daily. Even the top SQB people get at most 20 people on a day? They just account share and get points. A 4 day run every 3 months will do no impact on how squadron mechanics are right now. That's why having big prizes becomes a good thing, you get a massive influx of players and communities engaging every day trying to get them.

 

So when I say prize-funded "at the same level" as TSS or SQB, that's a much higher level than you're suggesting. A back of the envelope guess I'd say TSS gives out around 5 million GE (about $25,000 equivalent) in prizes a year at a minimum. To do a WWM 4 day event quarterly and prizefund it comparatively to TSS would be more like 2000 GE each for the top 200 players, or even more. (There's all kinds of different ways you could do that distribution, I'm not saying that one is the one I'd pick personally, I'm just talking about overall rewards levels.) But if you had a mix of consumables, decals, prizes, etc at those kinds of levels I do think you'd keep people's interest.

 

This would still be WAY less than previous WWMs, given that they had multiple unique vehicles. I'm sure even a single vehicle, given all the staff hours involved, could cost the company more than $25k, with the artwork and the research and the characteristics modelling and management involved across the entire company.

 

I disagree SQB has any value for casual players as it is currently. There's no point in participating as a squadron or a person unless you have a plan to get yourself in at least the top 100 squadrons at the end of the season; that implies playing every week with your squadron for a couple months, and taking it seriously. It is purely "end game" content for people who have done all the grinding they really ever care to do. For anyone who still wants to increase their vehicle holdings and can't be part of a one of the top 100 squadrons, it's a complete waste of time; better to grind alone in random battles instead. Players know this and act accordingly. You still need that end-game content, sure: if you're done with the grind and still want something to do it's fine, I don't begrudge them having their SQB one bit, but SQB does next to zero for reinforcing the squadron system, because it appeals to such a small fraction of the current player base at the moment, and it's very much that kind of all-or-nothing thing. (TSS... well TSS has its own set of problems but that's another conversation.)

WWM on the other hand, can bring in all those people still messing around in lower tiers. It doesn't take two hours, not really, unless you're a commander. If you've never really played, or completely forgotten how, you could still contribute. We had plenty of squadron members dropping in and out casually all weekend. Got back in touch with old timers, brought new people in... it basically gave a lot of casual squadrons an "event in a box" they could just run without all the effort of pulling together something for the membership, advertising it broadly, all of which costs time and effort, and using it to increase their own internal engagement. Every squadron that put any effort into it, of any size, saw their numbers go up (in game and on their Discords) this weekend. That's a good thing!

 

Would those positive impacts also have happened with even bigger prizes, and longer WWM events? Sure. Of course I want players to get more stuff for their efforts. But I'm thinking more in terms of sustainability. Whatever they can do and keep doing on a regular schedule, will always be better than something that is offered intermittently and randomly, this last time with a 2.5 year break. The majority of our currently active members weren't even playing the game the last time WWM was offered.

 

Basically what I'm saying is, they could spend the same amount they do today on TSS or SQB, and offer a regular quarterly event rather than some big orgasmic blowout "soon (tm)" and have bigger positive effects on squadron and community health than either of those two engagement avenues are giving them today. This was fun. They should do it again. But keeping it regular (quarterly would work) and small (but still bigger in terms of overall player rewards than this one) would be way better for the playerbase than waiting a couple years between those old full 10-day things.

Edited November 25, 2022 by Bruce_R1

[Josephs_Piano 7,044]

No overview of results this time?

[Alikiwi55 124]

Doing it quarterly is probably a practical idea, which would roughly take us to February, so I'm thinking maybe they could do the Fall of Singapore this time round ;-) If they could manage it, they could include Naval this time so all three areas get a shot at it (no pun intended, but...). Still, let's hope they do it again soon, but not years later!