Opinion: World of Warplanes is missing something

Well I haven't tried Warthunder so can't really compare WoWp to that one, but I can say a lot about WoWp itself.

Yes the UI is there, yes the interface is getting there, yes the game visually look very impressive with high graphics. The gameplay itself is actually very fine too, the way planes shoot and damage each other... at first I was skeptical about planes with hit points, but after a while I got it's really good that they have them and that it's done well, so what's the problem then?

Well, if you want to have an epic battle, the battle needs to last more than approximately 4 minutes. You need to have a whole build up to battle, and no that doesn't mean 30 seconds of planes hovering, then 20 seconds of reaching the target and then instantly being dropped into a fight, which lasts for anything from a few seconds to a minute or two, it all goes by so fast that by the time it's done, you don't feel much was accomplished, you just did some fast paced shooting, maybe got a few enemies down and moved on. This is arcadeish, this is quick fun, and this is by no means an epic battle, nor it has a chance to be one. Not while the maps are so small at least, and not while the point of the game is to have lots of action, quick.

Another element that's missing is teamplay, even when you try hardest to achieve it, you can do so little. For example, me and Hawx usually fly together, one of us takes a bomber, other a fighter, and covers the bomber. However, as soon as we engage a single plane and fighter starts dealing with it, even if its successful, by the time the enemy is downed, the bomber is already across the map so it would be harmful to go back to cover it instead of engaging near targets + the bomber is probably already dead cause another fighter came in the meantime and took it out easily.
And lets not even mention 2 fighters playing together. In reality, most fighters had their wingman, and the idea was that the main fighter engages an enemy target, while the wingman covers him. Here, it's pretty much impossible cause things are so hectic and happens so fast that tracking your wingman is just never going to happen.

Also, the cameras available are done so poorly that you actually do not want to have anyone from your team near you, cause you can only see so little when in sniper mode, if you have anyone besides you, above you, bellow you, you're not going to see it till you crash into each other, and this has been made even worse since the last patch cause now if you have someone near you, you can expect your plane to start acting like an UFO with a drunk pilot. But ok, lets call that a bug till the next patch, and forgive them for that one if they remove it. It still won't change the fact that having a friendly near you is a bad thing in WoWp, and that just makes the game outright stupid.

As it is right now, it's a game excellent for quick and solo fun, if you want to have some fast shooting that will look nice, wowp is your choice, but if you're looking for epicness, forget about it. WoT never provided us with epic tank battles either, but you got at least a bit better feeling when it comes to epicness cause the battles there are slower paced to start with, and are usually not over within 3 minutes of start.

What WoWp needs to become epic is much bigger maps, much better camera settings, and much less arcade hectic feeling, but I seriously doubt we're ever going to get that. That doesn't mean the game is bad, it's rather fun and does its arcade plane fights well (if we disregard the numerous bugs)

 

Well the thing is it's not a full on arcade either, what you're asking for would make it more arcadeish, yes, but then it would just be outright for those with attention span of squirrels. It's aiming to be a simulation with the elements of arcade, or maybe an arcade with the elements of simulation, giving it the best of both worlds, but the thing is, that's not working out. Sim players want sims, arcade players want arcades, and neither really wants something in between, which is what WoWp is.

As for NA, yes it was a ghost town all along, that's why NA got a huge E3 special, when playing 200 battles during E3 period would net you 5000 WoT gold + you could earn further 1750 per day by being in top 10 fighters/bombers. This was done so that when people at E3 sit down to try out the game, they don't end up in ghost town. EU is not so ghostly, and you get full games pretty much from 7am till 2am, you only get less than full games in the middle of the night, and even then sometimes there's just enough players for a full game. I hear on RU, there are even more players so they likely have even less of an issue with that. And yeah the maps are designed to be played 15vs15, when you get a 5vs5, of course they're going to feel empty xD . The main issue I have with them is that they get overcrowded at 15vs15, and then things tend to get laggy, buggy, glitchy and twitchy, and I don't like that one bit.

 

Because the maps are already extremely small as it is now, and they were actually bigger before, one of the patches in closed beta actually reduced all maps size by 25% which was a horrible move.

The game already feels like everyone is boxed in, the number of collisions I see per battle is over 1 per battle which is insane considering how few airplane loses were actually due to air to air collisions. This is precisely why they introduced this idiotic collision avoidance system (which should really be called collision increasing system due to what it really does), cause way too many planes are colliding, and they are colliding cause they tend to be forced to fly very near to each other.
And by being boxed in, I don't mean just horizontal map size, I mean vertical too, literally all the fights take place within 2000 meters off the ground, the highest I've ever been was 3500 meters - there is a sort of flight ceiling in place and it's really way too low. Many air battles were fought on altitudes of 5000+ meters, some even at 10.000, WoWp dummed that down to 2000 tops for fights.

bottom line

Is plainly wrong, if people were even closer together, you'd reach the enemy even quicker than you do already (20-30 seconds from battle start), and it would bring even more planes in a close space, yes that would be a lot of action, but it would be a lot more chaos, with a lot more collisions, and a lot less tactics (which are already so few)

Everyone is in a box already with the current map sizes, you're talking about making the box even smaller. That's simply full-arcade approach, and that's definitely not what I want to see in this game. If I wanted that, I'd play Quake

 

It's not ridiculous at all, when you're wrong, I'm going to say it, and it is not a matter of agreeing or disagreeing, it's a fact. If you do something that makes the game even less of a simulation than it already is, you're going for the arcade approach, don't you?

I do agree that when comparing to other flight games, WoWp is nowhere near, they do feel better, yes. And we should be asking the question of why is that, and yes one of the answers would be half the battles are just going in circles (I'd add with a ton of planes near you).

I apologize if that was rude, though I don't see how, but I stand by that, smaller maps would mean as soon you spawn in battle, you've got something to shoot at, and that's exactly how it was when I played quake. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong in my comparison.

Oh really?

Warthunder - "The average size of maps in the game currently range from approximately 65 km x 65 km to 100 km x 100 km to 200 km x 200 km"
so the smallest map is 65x65km, or 4225 square kilometers

WoWp - "The size depends on a battle scenario: players should have an opportunity to find an enemy easily, yet they also need a space for maneuvers and tactical decisions. For now, the typical size is about 220 square kilometers."

4225 tends to be about 19x larger than 220, and that would be the smallest Warthunder has to offer.

Well that's a polite way to say someone to shove it . One could even take it as a personal attack, but whatever

Smaller maps would make the game much worse than it is already, just like it happened when map size got reduced by 25% in closed beta and when entire forum of closed beta testers collectively facepalmed about that decision. Developers didn't listen to us then, and we stayed with this map size. Gameplay of the game has definitely suffered cause of this decision. I'm saying all this as someone that tested this game for almost a year now and that has plenty of experience with how gameplay was, and is.

 

Quite the contrary, I base my opinion on facts. I don't think you're wrong, I know you are wrong, based on facts, not on my opinion. Yes my opinion got formed by those facts, and that's all.

I know that everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but if in my opinion 1+1 = 5 , well, there's a mathematician out there that can tell me with every right that my opinion is wrong.

Ok, so lets try like this. Simulation is meant to simulate something from real world, hence the name, while arcade is trying to make a fun representation of that. If we can agree on that, lets move on to:

In real world aerial combat, your plane would take off from an airfield, fly for anything in between 0 (in case your airfield happens to be under attack) and several thousand kilometers (in case you're flying a long distance bomber or a bomber escort) , then engage the target (only counting flights in which you actually got to engage the target) and you did not do this in a small area roughly 200 square kilometers, you start a fight at one point and by the time you shoot down someone or get shot down, you can be anywhere from 0 to several hundred kilometers. The battleground for a real life dogfight was enormous.

So, if you want to make a simulation, you're going to make an enormous battleground (sounds pretty much like what warthunder has) , and if you want to make an arcade, you'll reduce it to something small (what wowp has) . Smaller you make it, more you move in the direction of the arcade.

Please, correct if I'm wrong about any of this.

Second of all, you would not get more action with reducing the size of the maps, they already tried that, that's how we got the current map sizes. The result of map size reduction was
1: faster action
2: shorter action
Sky is a big place in reality, it offers a lot of action cause you've got that much space to move around in. When you don't have that much much space, you get to fight and end up circling for half the time before killing all or getting killed, that's what you have in WoWp. Making maps even smaller would do that.

Your comparison with city sim and race sim does not work in this case for the simple reason that it has nothing to do with what we're talking about here. Smaller maps are opposite of what real life aerial combat consisted of, races with more cars are not opposite to reality. However, if you in your simulation with 12 cars added the fact that cars can suddenly reach 490km/h like a certain NFS game did (I seriously forgot the name, but I'll never forget taking a Corvette to 490km/h on a highway) then your simulator would go more arcade like, because there is no corvette that can reach almost 500km/h.

Then I would suggest you reconsider your proposal that would in fact make it more arcade, based on previous experiences and facts.
As for simulation, go for IL-2 1946, probably the best flight simulation ever made

Better map design would help for sure, but smaller maps were tried and it already failed once, you weren't around to test it back then, I have and I'm just telling you my experience, and not just mine, I'm fairly active on EU WoWp beta tester forums and I know fully well how the community reacted to small maps - collective facepalm.

In my opinion, when someone says something wrong, correcting it is in no way rude. It would be rude if I threw in an insult or two towards the person that said something wrong into it, however I have not done that.

Yes and no. Yes when it's used to diminish or belittle the person you're talking with, not when it's meant to state a fact.
Example :
"It's obvious 1 + 1 = 2" - is arrogant, diminishes the person that claimed it was in fact 3 by trying to make it look 1 + 1 = 2 is something that everybody knows
"It's obvious 1 + 1 = 2 because of the following facts..." - is not arrogant at all.

I didn't say that you're plainly wrong, I said your statement is plainly wrong and I'm pretty sure I did a lot of explaining why.

Aha, so you're trying to say that WT has managed to make maps that are 19x larger, actually feel smaller than WoWp maps.

Well, assuming you're correct since you played both, that either means WoWp has managed to make 200 square km maps look enormous, or that WT has managed to make 4225 square km maps look tiny. And from my year of playing WoWp, and 10+ years of playing IL2 franchise games, which actually has WT size maps (and larger) , I'm going to have to say that WoWp did not make its maps look enormous.

So WT managed to make its maps more action packed and fun while they're in fact much larger maps than what WoWp has. This is telling me the problem of WoWp is not the fact that maps are too large, but in fact too small, but that there's also something else in gameplay that WT has, and which makes it able to bring so much action in so large maps. Since you have played WT, you're far more competent than me to say what is it.

So far, you've called me rude, arrogant, impossible to have a discussion with, added that it's not just you but others have issues with me too and you added that grow up bit at the end.

 

Breathing space and removal of everyone's an ace mode.
Lets translate what I just said
Breathing space - larger maps, with important areas (areas rich with ground targets) , which the bombers would go for, and that would pull fighters with them to cover them/hunt enemy bombers. So the main action would take place in a relatively small area, but you would get a lot of options on how to approach it, how to get away from it, basically, it would allow you to think and fight across the sky, not in just a small portion of it. This also includes the flight ceiling which is way too low and pretty much keeps all fights the same, they start at about 1000-2000m, and end up at about 100-500m, so not only that everyone is circling in the same area, but they do in the same altitude as well. Getting rid of the ceiling would mean that at the same time someone is fighting at 500m, someone else is fighting in that same area at 5000m, without getting in each other's way or colliding.

Everyone's an ace - In reality, most planes were shot down by other planes while flying straight and level, once a plane begins to turn, it was almost impossible to hit it as only the greatest aces could tell where they need to shoot to hit a turning target (and even then, most aces of WWII were not famous for shooting down a turning target, but for knowing how to get behind someone while they're flying straight and level) . In game, you get that nice little circle that shows you exactly where you need to shoot at any given time to hit your target. This inspires people to do circle fights, cause they know that at some point while they follow their target, they're going to get their aim on that little circle and score hits. Remove that, and the incentive to follow someone in a circle will massively drop, instead you'd be forced to disengage and try to reengage in a better position, and the trick would be to find it

I believe this is a good suggestion as well, and I've actually seen it mentioned on the forums before. Developers didn't take notice though, but the idea is good

The whole issue with circle fights is that the way game currently is, you're damned if you do, and damned if you don't. If you're the one in front, you stop circling, you're dead for almost sure. And if you keep circling, well you're about to do many circles and get killed eventually when your opponent miraculously aims at you. And if you're the one behind, the moment you disengage from a circle, the one you followed will start following you, and you'll be the one in front, so you're forced to follow, wait till you get a shot, whether it's a miraculous one or not. So adding g forces to it would definitely change it and put an end to endless circling.

I know exactly what you're talking about here, and it's precisely why I don't use mouse controls, cause they do not put you in full control of your plane, they put you in some control, and AI in some control, making your plane act in a certain way that you do not desire. With keyboard controls, you're fully in control of your plane, but the controls are much less smooth, so you can always get a plane to go in a general direction, but to get it to go in exact direction you want is a very difficult thing to do.
I'm not sure if mouse controls actually contribute to circle fights though, I haven't tried them that much to be able to tell that, all I know is to me and my flight style, they're useless.

 

I think I figured out why - warthunder seems to be developed by some of the people that developed the original IL2 games, and they sure as hell know how to do their job, and they delivered the most impressive flight simulations 10 years ago and ever since then kept improving.

the middle ground you're suggesting is very much what we have in WoT already, there is this ^ part of the crosshair which turns green when you're aiming at part of enemy tank you're likely to pen, yellow if it's unlikely and red if only an idiot would shoot there, and adding something like that to wowp would be great. Red if you're definitely going to miss, yellow if you've got a chance to get a few hits, green if it's great time to blow someone up. Excellent middle ground, would love seeing it. Doubt we will tho :\

It would combat it, but definitely wouldn't be enough on its own to eliminate it

Well that would be lovely if they did, but we're talking about the same developers that thought making your plane turn like a UFO when near another plane is a good idea, and as I hear it, now they introduced teleporting planes as well xD so I wouldn't put my money on them xD

That bastard does more than controlling, he actively crashed 2 of my planes, when it suddenly decides that it should start spinning around xD

Well I'm used to them, I flown simulations only with keyboard for over 10 years, and that 1 year my friends bought me a joystick for birthday, my computer malfunctioned so I couldn't get games to run. By the time I got a better computer, I lost the joystick xD . I did test it out once at a friend's computer and it was less than impressive though, happens when it costs 10$ xD

 

well yeah, before they ventured into F2p, they were into pay once, play forever, so they had to focus on the gameplay to make people want to pay that once. Now they're new to f2p and it shows practice makes perfect, WG started it off not so nice at the start too

As for the perfect game, you're never going to see one, cause if they make a perfect one, why would anyone ever bother to make another game after it?

if you were near another plane, it wasn't the ai, it was the bug which they seem to have fixed in 0.5.2, it seems the bug that made planes act like UFO's did so by increasing your roll rate by about 300-400% when near another plane

Don't worry, even if they do decide that, there's good news - they said it will soon be available to pick control settings for joystick and mouse from every version of wowp (just like there's mouse 0.4.1 now) , so even if joystick controls go wrong in some of next patches, you can still use the previous ones that were good