So I’m reading this article entitled something like: “Winner of Nobel’s prize for economics does something that I should care about…” and even worse than that the article opens with: “The Nobel laureate has been…bla bla bla”.
What’s wrong with this picture? Because if you don’t know than the following is going to blow your mind - there is NO such thing as the Nobel Prize for economics. Never was and never will be.
The Noble Prize founded by Alfred Nobel in his will upon his death dishes out prestigious awards to the World’s smartest in the following sciences and notable fields of endeavor: Physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and peace.
So why all the confusion? Well, you see, in modern times the Bank of Stockholm wanted to start an international prize for economics. There was just one problem. No one cared much about economics or even considered it a note worthy field of endeavor. So the Bank cleverly named their award: “The Alfred Nobel memorial prize for economics.” It was just different enough not to get sued, yet similar sounding enough to confuse people into calling economists “Nobel Prize winners” which they are obviously not.
This was all done intentionally in order to leech of the famous name and confuse the less informed members of the general population.
The confusion was, in fact, so great that after a while the original Nobel Prize committee was all like: “Meh, might as well tie that prize to ours now, it’s not like people know the difference anyway.” And the worst part is that freaking reporters AKA people whose job it is to provide unbiased and preferably double-checked facts are one of the reasons for the cleverly pulled-off deceit.
Cut to a game reviewer on the interwebz that says (with a straight face): “…although it has its downsides, World of Warplanes is overall a very satisfying flight game…”
A flight game? A flight game with magical boost of strength and duration that’s unrelated to the plane’s engine? A flight game where planes can climb straight vertically up for half a minute? A flight game where jets that have the same stall speeds and turn rates as propeller aircraft?
Hmm, no. I know that term “arcade” gets thrown around a lot, but “arcade” doesn’t give developers carte blanche to do whatever they want and still call their half-product a “flight game”.
But that’s neither here nor there. Let’s get to it, shall we?
Hello there.
Yeah, the rumors are true. The Mighty Suaraj has returned. And guess what? I’m going straight back to my crusade against Mr. Wargaming and his silly attitude towards our very own World of Warplanes…
So let us begin.
1. Silly maps and silly buildings
So I’m flying over the beautiful Arctic landscape in my pretty Focke-Wulf without so much as a worry on my devious mind when suddenly my beautiful aircraft gets hosed down with a stream of .50 caliber slugs.
I look down and I see an AA gun tactically positioned on a mountain top directly below me. I’m talking about a mountain that’s approximately the size and height of mount freaking Kilimanjaro and yet someone has managed to prop up an AA gun there? Why? Well, because we needed an AA gun there to protect the warehouse…
Really? A warehouse? You put a freaking warehouse on top of a huge mountain in Arctic? Who the heck needs storage space on top some huge mountain in the freaking Arctic? Are Yupik Eskimos storing icicles there? Or maybe the warehouse is there to make sure the AA gun is properly supplied? But then what is the AA gun protecting again?
Also, how exactly does the AA gun get resupplied? For some reason I get an image of some poor Himalayan Sherpa, forcefully drafted into the army, and currently towing a cr*pload of .50 caliber ammo up a huge mountain… Poor mustard probably feels like Frodo trying to get the ring up to Mount Doom.
I’m quite glad that the childish map Harbor was revised.
The original version just wasn’t cutting it. Every time I think of that V2 rocket pod on Harbor the following imaginary conversation between Adolf Hitler and Werner Von Braun goes through my mind:
Hitler: “Is my glorious V2 rocket complete?”
Von Braun: “Yes my Fuhrer. We’re just looking for a place to mount it.”
Hitler: “How about we mount it on top of that hill over there.”
Von Braun: “But my Fuhrer, there’s a beautiful fifteen-century Bavarian castle up there.”
Hitler: “That’s even better. We’ll demolish that silly castle but leave the outer wall intact so that my glorious V2 rocket is properly protected from enemy cavalry and swordsmen. MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.”
Von Braun: “Ehrm, isn’t it silly to place our secret weapon on a fully exposed hilltop and amidst such a huge landmark? Shouldn’t we at least put up camo nets and stuff?”
Hitler: “Ah, silly Von Braun. You know nothing of war. Just do as I say and please excuse me while I go about defeating Americans and Russians at the same time.”
*Von Braun scratches head*
Other maps still need some love. Plateau is a beautiful map just like Arctic but it suffers from the same unrealistic and silly ground target placement.
Asian border is the worst map ever. Fog would be nice if there were just hints of it here and there. So that you could try to evade pursuers by diving into a little bit of fog and make your enemies lose contact for a while. That would be fun I guess. But right now Asian border is a total mess of a map on which it is hard to tell where clouds end and the fog begins. The whole freaking map is foggy…and cloudy, which is why that silly fog is without purpose. Logically, if all the planes are in the fog, than all the planes suffer the same view penalties (if there are any, god knows I haven’t noticed anything yet), and therefore fog is without any relevant purpose. It’s just very annoying and not much else.
Pacific has that huge port on a tiny island where there’s nothing but palm trees (as noted by my pal jeff_peters). Why the heck does that meaningless little island have such a huge port? There obviously not importing anything since there are no buildings, houses, or industry of any kind. Perhaps that island is exporting something then?
But what? There are only palm trees on that island and not much else. Perhaps they’re exporting palm trees? Naah. If they were really serious about palm tree export they would have hired Victus by now. Everyone knows that Victus is a true professional when it comes down to mowing down palm trees in record time. Every single one of his Shturmoviks has palm prints all over. Trololololol.
What was I talking about again? Ah, yes. Revise some of the maps Mr. Wargaming, and also revise ground target placement methods that you’re currently using.
And while you’re at it, fix those AA guns. When I see AA fire, I want to see tracers buzzing all around my plane, and flak erupting all over the place. What I don’t want to see is some lame computer algorithm firing perfectly placed shots all the freaking time. Grim said it best when he said that AA in WoWP makes you feel like you’re flying through an acid cloud.
All right. Let’s move on now.
2. Training-wheel jets
They flat out suck. Please make them go away.
You see boys and girls, back in CBT the current 262 line was the German LF line, and the German high tier heavies were huge and unwieldy creatures that couldn’t turn once without stalling out.
Those heavies got removed as the 262 line got moved to the German HF line and the German LF line got those new P. training wheel jets. Why implement does training-wheel jets?
Because there are a lot of unintelligent players out there that apparently don’t understand that jets weren’t designed to do prolonged low speed turns at ground level. So here comes our brave hero Mr. Wargaming implementing jets that can do tight turns with flaps on full and still not lose much speed in the process. As a result silly people could now play jets too.
Mr. Wargaming and the players in question liked this concept so much that pretty soon even more training wheel jets were implemented (OMG, Yak-15 HURAAAAY!!!11!), and even some honest-to-god jets like the La-160, Sabre etc. were converted into low speed, gravity-and-aerodynamics-defying super turners as well.
Why is this wrong?
Because those silly training-wheel jets ruin game balance on two different levels:
Level numero 1. Training-wheel jets create a huge problem for high tier props as they are faster than props, turn almost as good as props and have much better firepower than props. Boom and zoom props like the Ta.152 are especially screwed in this scenario.
For example, I had one battle with the Ta.152 in which a La.160 got on my six. I turned into a hard, low-speed bank in order to force the La.160 into an overshoot. The La.160 being a jet should have a much higher stall speed than my prop and also should be incapable to do turns at 250 km/h without crashing into the ground. Or so I thought. It turned out that La.160 could keep up with me just fine no matter how hard I turned or how much I slowed down.
Unrealistic? Sure. Silly? Yep. Cartoonishly ridiculous and detrimental to game balance? Abso-freakin-lutely.
Level numero 2. Training-wheel jet’s low speed agility and speed retention has to balanced by a reduced overall speed and climb rate which makes those planes easy prey for those few ‘real’ jets still in the game like the 262, HG2 and HG3 etc…
So you can see how nobody really wins here.
So, Mr. Wargaming, please make training-wheel jets go away, and let players learn to fly actual jets. High stall speeds, speed bleeding in turns, brick-like agility at lower speeds – those should be the weak points of all jets. Stronk points of jets? Speed, acceleration and firepower – what more do you need?
And who knows, by modeling jets the right way, you might even make those high tier props better contenders in the process.
Thanks a bunch.
3. Ground attack aircraft
I’m not gonna say they’re underpowered or anything. But I am going to say that they’re not much fun to play.
Mr. Wargaming’s model of “Let’s turn Shturmoviks into total bricks with lots of HP, armor and gun dispersion…” is really lame in my opinion.
So let’s start with the dispersion of the guns that is present on all the attack aircraft in the game right now.
Why so much dispersion?
Because sometime during Open Beta Mr. Wargaming decided to buff the damage output of all guns in the game quite a lot (and for no reason whatsoever). As a result all planes died a lot faster and all the battles ended a lot sooner thus making WoWP a way lamer game than it used to be. This is “working as intended” at its finest. Another consequence of this unnecessary damage buff is the fact that GAA aircraft, having the biggest guns on every tier, became a bit OP-ish.
And this is where the fultard dispersion comes in. Mr. Wargaming simply decided to disperse all the guns on the GAA making them inaccurate so that GAA would be somewhat handicapped against fighters and would therefore focus on grounds exclusively.
Now, I’m not saying that GAA are underpowered right now. The guns are still devastating from up close, rockets can surprise your enemies from long range, and bomb traps are a neat trick as well (although that magic bomb shield is a joke). Also, with the large HP pools ILs are well suited for baiting of enemy fighters making them easy targets for friendly fighters.
So they’re not underpowered. But they’re just not fun either.
Now for an interesting fact: Did you know experienced IL pilots find IL-10 to be the most fun GAA in the game right now? And do you know why?
Is it because of the huge HP pool and stronk armor? Nope.
OP tailgunner? Nope.
Derp guns? Nope.
Super devastating bombs and rockets? Nope.
Hmm, maybe it’s the significantly better aircraft performance? You bet your a*s it is…
In fact, I’m pretty sure that every GAA pilot out there (myself included) would trade HP, armor and their OP tailgunner for some better performance and a little less of that silly gun dispersion on each and every one of their ILs.
It is as simple as that. Current performance of Shturmovik aircraft is a joke and has little to do with this fine aircraft’s historical legacy.
I’m not saying that Shturmoviks should out turn or out run fighters but merely that they should turn better than a fully loaded 747 and not have the accuracy of a drunk hillbilly wielding a sawed off shotgun.
Balancing is a big priority but fun is even more important. So please Mr. Wargaming, find another way to balance those GAA’s, because not only are the Shturmoviks not that fun to play (with a few honest exceptions like the IL-10), but the fultard supremacy mode that you’re developed to make them more significant is really ruining the fun for everyone.
And that brings me to…
4. Supremacy mode
In World of tanks you can win in one of two ways.
Numero 1. Kill all enemy tanks – something that’s not easy and usually takes longer than 2 minutes AKA the average time of a WoWP battle.
Numero 2. Capture the enemy base – something that’s not easy as well because the moment you start capping the base a stronk wailing siren lets the whole enemy team know exactly what you’re doing and exactly where you’re doing it. This means that the enemy team has a very god chance of killing you and stopping the cap.
In WoWP you can also win in one of two ways.
Numero 1. Kill all enemy planes – which last from about two to four minutes and is how battles end 90% of the time.
Numero 2. Look at Supremacy counter. If your team has more points then look at remaining enemy planes. If enemy doesn’t have any GAA left then go play bot on 4000+ meters in the corner of the map. Congrats, you just won a battle by performing the noble act of hiding like a little bit*h.
This is unacceptable to me. And it should be unacceptable to Mr. Wargaming as well if he’s really serious about WoWP, free2win and eSports.
There is no game right now ANYWHERE on the open market in which you can win by hiding in a corner like a little girl whilst doing absolutely nothing.
Well, there is one game actually. In the “Hide and seek simulator 2014.” you can totally win that way but that’s pretty much the only game of that genre.
Anyhou, the Supremacy mode needs revision. I’ve already suggested an activity measuring component to be added but perhaps Mr. Wargaming can come up with something even better. It is his freaking job after all.
5. Optimal altitude and optimal speed
This really confuses me. It keeps me up at night. Normal people worry about their taxes or rent. I rack my brain about unrealistic optimal altitudes for virtual planes. I really need a life. Truly.
Anyhou, Yak-1's optimal altitude is a pitiful 750 meters?! It was a low to MEDIUM altitude fighter.
Here's an interesting fact from Wikipedia (although I’m not giving it too much credence since the word maneuver was misspelled…twice):
"A simulated combat between a Yak (with M-105PF engine) and a Bf 109F revealed that the Messerschmitt had only marginally superior maneuverability at 1,000 meters (3,300 ft), though the German fighter could gain substantial advantage over the Yak-1 within four or five nose-to-tail turns. At 3,000 meters (9,800 ft) the capabilities of the two fighters were nearly equal, combat essentially reduced to head-on attacks. At altitudes over 5,000 meters ( 16,400 ft) the Yak was more maneuverable."
Yeah, that's right. Bf.109's were actually more maneuverable at low altitude than the Yaks, and the Yaks were more maneuverable at medium altitude. This directly contradicts the current values in the game.
Yeah, Yak's were good at low altitude, but they were even better on medium altitudes of 3000-5000 meters. So Mr. Wargaming's idea of making the Yaks low level fighters (750 meters is too low even for a freaking children's helium baloon for the love of candy!) is silly and makes no sense whatsoever.
Furthermore, Mr. Wargaming's inability to discern between lack of performance in terms of speed and lack of performance in terms of agility is quite silly as well. Some planes should lose speed performance on high altitude but not agility and vice versa. Right now, going outside of your optimal altitude will equally degrade all performance values: speed, turn rate, roll rate, acceleration, boost power etc...
And the way altitude levels are set up now really hurts game balance. I know that altitude is a bit compressed in WoWP but still it should be:
Low altitude: everything below 1200 meters.
Medium altitude: 1200-2500 meters
High altitude: everything above 2500 meters
This should, of course, change when WG increases the flight ceiling a bit in the following way:
Low altitude: everything below 1500 meters.
Medium altitude: 1500-3000 meters
High altitude: everything above 3000 meters
This is valid only for props up to tier 6, of course, as jets and high tier props should have an even larger flight ceiling.
Also, the optimal altitude ranges should be much larger for all planes. For example, Yak-1's optimal altitude should go from 500-1500 meters, Bf.109E's should be in the range of 1000-2000 meters etc...
Basically, my opinion is that optimal altitude should be in the range of approx. 1000 meters (with the light green super optimal altitude covering around 500 meters and dark green slightly less optimal altitude covering the other 500 meters). And also the penalties for going outside of your optimal altitude should be much lower than they are now. This would close the gap between planes and make WoWP a better balanced game.
Like I said, the altitude is mighty compressed in this game and one can go outside his optimal altitude with just one boost. At which point one immediately loses performance across the board and one's plane turns into a useless brick. This is not fun in my book and it also ruins immersion for players when they see planes behave in such an unrealistic and cartoonish manner.
Optimal speeds are a really, really bad joke in this game.
Yak-3, which was one of the best monoplane designs of the war, easily capable of reaching speeds of 650 km/h in level flight has its optimal speed defined as 263 km/h?!
WTF!!?? 263 km/h?! For a late war design that was built for high speed maneuvers and fast interception?! It's not a freaking biplane for the love of candy!
Optimal airspeed for the La-5? 294 km/h! It's like Mr. Wargaming wants to reduce all dogfights into low speed, slow motion turn fights.
Why? High speed maneuvers are way more fun. Just look at the Fw.190 A-5 if you don't believe me. It's currently one of the most fun planes in the game simply because it has a realistic and enjoyable optimal speed of 424 km/h.
Current optimal speed setting goes beyond Mr. Wargaming's usual inability to think logically.
Optimal speeds NEED to be revised for all aircraft, especially higher tier props and jets.
End of story.
Anyhou, these are just my opinions. All are welcome to comment, whether they agree with me or not.
Gracias.
Edited by AnuSuaraj, 20 February 2014 - 07:53 PM.