More and more the 2 usual patterns become obvious and tiresome:
- You ended up in a doofus team that stumbles about and does not 'click' at all. Neither the GAAs nor the objectives get protection or a proper beating. Mostly individual players go anywhere but where it counts, the game is then either already lost in the first few minutes or since the other team is nearly as incompetent as mine it takes a bit longer.
or
- You have enough smart players that use the minimap, understand the value of a brave and relentless GAA and protect it. They know to check the general situation with frequent use of the tab key and go where it is necessary. Or you at least have 2, maybe 3 really good players that just dominate by experience.
Either way, it is loopsided, and becomes rather boring fast. If the first scenario becomes painfully obvious quickly, I by now simply leave the match because
- There is no comeback from an early majority of red bases due to the short match length
- getting my behind handed to me while trying to do the right thing since nobody else gets it
In the second scenario I just go through the motions, but do feel sorry for the others that actually try to change the outcome. The victory is meaningless, since it wasn't a struggle, but an early good start (mostly by chance rather than design or coordination) as the lemmings happened to flock to the key objectives to absorb damage for the GAAs working the ground targets.
And what bothers me as well:
- unless you get to have a match with repair airfields, you might as well kill yourself in a hopeless combat to shorten the outcome and you also should suicide a damaged plane before the squall line hits. It doesn't get more brain dead than this.
- the enemy direction markers are neither prioritizing by distance or damaged, the ALT UI can't be turned on permanently the overall situational awareness is terrible. I doesn't encourage you to play smart or conservative, there is no point as it's information is so inaccurate and unsupportive, you're off better by just going in and pray and spray til you die.
The short match time might serve the crowd but I wish for lengthier matches where coordination, communication and wit mean something. RIght now all you need to bring is Fighters and GAAs, all the other classes are so handicapped in comparison, they're just free XP for the others. Why? Because it all comes down turn fights since you need to stick to the target to kill it and the destroyed ground targets get you the installation, and therefor the points. So e.g. a Fw190, being a fast diving slow turning fighter is a specialist with no niche big enough to justify its use, as in the end the close-up turn fights are what destroy the enemy fighter. I surely regret having gone that way and do not enjoy it. Feel free to disagree, this is my feedback and how I see the game now, and now the devs got to hear my side (if the mods forwarded it).
In all, it's a nice game for a couple of rounds, but I see neither a reason to invest beyond 2 low tier premiums nor to actively seek a clan, as there's simply nothing here to stimulate or challenge me.
EDIT: 3 days since last a mod logged in (Ph3lan) to check on topics. That's a lot of backlog to go through, makes you wonder how much of an impact any of this feedback will actually have with so much going by unnoticed. Great way to start a relaunch, WG!
And some more:
Why the hell is flak shooting at me when I'm dogfighting with red planes at 500m distance and closer? A tier 4 / 5 fighter plane gets eaten so fast by AAA, I might as well not even try. But then again, I need to take out the red planes to get a chance of whittling down the base defence. It makes no sense, since no AAA will ever shoot at me if I'm that close to one of their own; and what else am I supposed to do to turn the base blue (as a fighter)? Getting shot at while approaching, fine, that makes sense, but then again; how violent am I supposed to dodge to avoid the flak hits? So far maneuvering did nothing to help with that.
In all the flak mechanic is crude and there is no way to be smart about it, you just soak it up and watch your HP get reduced, yay...
And the worst revelation I had: ignoring the ground targets, not attacking anything requiring effort (e.g. climbing to the AI bombers) and just simply dogfighting whatever gets in front of my guns nets me more XP, grade points and cash than being a team & objective oriented player. Even when playing a GAA you don't get credits or XP for a partially destroyed ground target, either you kill it and get it credited or you don't and the guy doing the coup de grace gets the kill counted. So in both cases you are advancing faster by being a selfish prick instead of a team player. Supporting gets you nowhere in terms of advancement.
But then again, it fits the overall narrative, public on=brain off.
Edited by Jbnn, 23 November 2017 - 09:30 AM.