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Community Specialist
Hello Pilots!
We would like your feedback on the "Invasion" mode. Once you fill out the poll questions, please also answer:
Please also feel free to discuss any other sentiment regarding this new mode in this thread.
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Senior Master Sergeant
Glad to see you following suit with the EU... and you even know how to make a proper poll, something the EU rep hasn't figured out yet. 
Any Fighter variant, really... (LF / MR / HF) you'd need to go into specific planes to be more detailed.
Bombers and GAA, while being crucial to success they are very often left to fend for themselves.. and quickly dispatched by the Defending team, which is statistically likely to win anyway.
A completely untested fustercluck, that is massively imbalanced to favor Defenders. I was on defense 90% of the time, and we won 80% of those matches. (NOT Hyperbole)
Players are punished for playing well, as all the bots and poorer human players throw away respawns... a good player quite often finds himself not eligible to respawn AT ALL by the time they die.
It is also completely unsuited to the missions you have tied to it, why do you have no death requirements on a compressed map, in a mode specifically designed around respawns... unrealistic.
It promotes people doing things to win their plane, not the match... and when you have a full team of people with separate agendas, it is laughable to try and call it a "team game".
Stop designing things that require significant teamwork, and then throwing it all out by incentivizing people to NOT work as a team.
Having said that, there is -some- potential in the mode, but I fear your dev team is incapable of capitalizing on it... so it is pointless to expound.
PS: Oh,yeah... the economy. Credit gains are pitiful, often losing credits on a win... Exp coefficient was totally out of whack, massive exp gains from relatively low Mastery points.
Edited by Cenotaph, 08 March 2018 - 08:43 PM.
Master Sergeant
Senior Master Sergeant
Which aircraft type do you think is most effective in Invasion mode? Which do you think is the least effective?
Far and away HF's and LF's.
GA/Bombers are near useless without escort, which they usually find themselves without and the bots usually are just eating respawns,
MRF's can prove useful, but either are useless on defense compared to HF/LF's, or they get hunted by HF/LF players on offense and usually run into troubles dealing with them.
LF's range from so strong on defense that they pretty much guarantee a win if they're on defense team, to being able to catch enemy players no matter what they do to the point that even smart players can't deal with them.
HF's rip apart GA/Bombers on defense and have the most efficient capabilities at killing planes, meaning that usually an HF flight on defense guarantees defending team wins.
Impressions?
Mode needs a lot of work, defending team has the odds heavily in their favor to the point that they don't even need to work as a team to win. I found myself doing whatever I wanted and still watching the attacking team lose all their planes. Attacking team requires such strong coordination between the players that if the group is split up between spawns, it could spell doom for the attackers before the match even began.
Matches are so fast that even excellent players were struggling to make an impact, and would frequently die only once on attacking team, after the bot GA/bombers had eaten all the respawns, and more often than not would come out on defense with hardly a scratch.
Some aircraft are just blatantly the best for the mode. I flew almost purely tier 8 matches and I can already say the XF5U, Spitfire 14, Ki-94-II, I-250, and Yak-15 were miles ahead of every other aircraft in usefulness. Especially on defense a flight containing those aircraft could wipe the attacking team with ease. While the I-250 is an unorthodox choice I personally used it to carry attacking teams to victory simply by dragging all the players and bots behind me to let my team cap.
I might just be a tin-foil-hatter however it seems a lot of the bots on both sides were cranked up to ace levels. Usually in high-tier matches you only see at most 4 aces on each team, however I saw matches with almost the entire bot team performing ace behavior (perfect shots, very smart maneuvering, using consumables ASAP.) This led to some frustrations for me and others when a bot HF would dive on you and no matter what you did you would get shot down, even with some of the most crazy evasive flying techniques.
Overall: I'd say Attacking team needs some more respawns and there might need to be some AI tweaking across the board in Invasion mode.
I do fly Chinese aircraft a fair amount so... *ahem*
CHINA NUMBAH WAN
Senior Master Sergeant
Reitousair, on 08 March 2018 - 08:22 PM, said:
MRF's can prove useful, but either are useless on defense compared to HF/LF's, or they get hunted by HF/LF players on offense and usually run into troubles dealing with them.
I found my F-94D (Affectionately known as Brrrrt) quite effective, but like I said in my post, being detailed would require going on a plane by plane basis...
Hell, I even flighted up in it with someone in a tier 10 (as I helped him do his missions), and was often the only 9 in battles... and still we wrecked faces.
In general, all Fighter variants had decent-excellent potential in this mode, especially on defense.
Edited by Cenotaph, 08 March 2018 - 08:32 PM.
Second Lieutenant
Well, my post was apparently deleted, so I'll have to write it all over again 
Fighters in general. They can capture sectors faster than GAAs for the most part, and can easilly stop a GAA on its tracks.
Bombers. GAAs can somewhat defend themselves from fighters through gunfire, ordnance or use of their reargun. Bombers for the most part rely solely on their often ineffective reargun, which can't deal with their main predators, Heavy Fighters. Flying low only exposes them to more threats, most of which can still survive the reargun for long enough.
Defenders have too much of an advantage by having more air-to-air combat-capable planes. Not only do the attacking fighters have to fight at a numerical disadvantage, they can't even help their ground pounders properly because of it. The one disadvantage the Defenders have is the lower total respawns available, which doesn't really matter if they win every single encounter with the enemy. They have total control of the sky at any given point, which often leads to spawncamping, even if the Attackers capture an Airfield. I think one of the things that should change is that sectors captured by the Attackers spawn Air Defense Aircraft and AA guns to keep the Defenders at bay and actually push them back. It doesn't harm the Defenders, as they don't really have anything to do over a captured sector to complete their objective, but it keeps them from straigh up overwhelming the Attackers by giving them a slightly safer zone to fall back to
Edited by LMG, 08 March 2018 - 09:23 PM.
Senior Master Sergeant
1. Most effective plane.
Light Fighters are equally useful on both Attacking side and defending side.
Heavies are good on defending side (cutting Bombers and GAA), but not that much good on attacking side.
Multirole.. Thunderbolts, Corsairs, BV are good for attacking, J7W are good for defending. but I didn't saw much of Soviet multirole one.
Do 217 bomber can be lethal if bombers form a flight and using their bombs wisely. using 1mins for guaranteed capture and bonus 1min 30sec time.
2. ineffective plane.
Bombers and Ground Attacking Aircraft. Even it is key planes of attacker in Invasion gamemode.
Specially German's one.
German Attackers usually use 'killing enemies GAA' for capturing base. and using speed as advantage, but they sacrifice forward-firing weapon and rockets for faster speed. but there is no GAA on enemy side, and time is too short for Me 329 or 265. compared to Soviet IL counterpart. Me 329 and 265 are way too much underpowered.
and German bombers takes tons of time for reloading their payload, and It usually can't cap base quick while it played on solo.
both of them usually failed to cap base, and wasting respawn counter.
Specially, Bot GAA/Bombers are completely worthless. They are worse than nothing.
As joke, Excluding bot GAA/bomber and make this game mode 6~8vs12 would be better.
3. describe.
It sucks. really. It is too unbalanced. Defending side can have fun of killing bots and poor humans with full support of Air-Defense fighters and Anti-Air Artillery. while Attacking side only can use six of Anti-Air Planes (Fighter/MR/HF) and forcing to have six of damn worthless bombers/attackers. Attacking side usually become outnumbered and outgunned.
I found out that if defending side focus fire on player fighters and bot/player GAA, these planes will waste respawn quick, and makes attacking side suffer the pain.
This gamemode need to have serious overhaul.
not extremely awful as E.T.(1982) does, This mode is still good for throw away forever, but for now, This mode is still mediocre gamemode.
It would be great if you guys run the goddamn test server.
After Conquest test server(2.0) You guys ran away and hide. cause of too many blames strikes you. Stop hiding and show us contents at test server. THIS is what you don't test something before launching it. untested rubbish mode. which need to get overhaul.
Testing something after it launched as new update is really terrible idea. it is nonsense.
I guess, This pilot is worst teammate when you are on match, *Facepalm
Former 2.0 stat.
7155 matches, 53.12% win rate, Hall of fame 772.
Member Title : Senior Master Sergeant
Master Sergeant
honestly the effectiveness of each class is not relevant to the issues with this mode.
The Attacking team is at a huge disadvantage, every fight they are outnumbered thus higher statistically to die.
Defenders then kill the attackers.
Situation only worsens as points are taken, Attackers ball up and have huge numerical advantage.
Fixes,
1) Allow defenders to cap points back, (GA and Bombers on defence side) this balances the fighter composition
or
2) give more time to cap, this gives attackers time to widdle the defenders numbers down rather than having to charge in, especially near the end.
or
3) place a Comm center or rocket base near the outside of edge of the defense zone. A major point easily gotten to by both sides.
It should be difficult to take (due to number issues) but once taken it can help cap or draw planes away from confrontations.
Senior Airman
Airman Basic
GhostPrime, on 08 March 2018 - 07:45 PM, said:
Hello Pilots!
We would like your feedback on the "Invasion" mode. Once you fill out the poll questions, please also answer:
Please also feel free to discuss any other sentiment regarding this new mode in this thread.
I find the matchmaker to be an absolute JOKE.
The lower tier is almost ALWAYS outnumbered by the higher tier on a 75:25 basis.
This might work on lower tiers, but once you are running Tier 7 up the lower tier does not have a chance UNLESS they are on the defense (Blue).
Next aggressors verse defenders.
The favor is heavily weighted in favor of the defender. Both sides should have an equal chance, they do not.
TEAMWORK is an absolute necessity, the the game prizes are not GEARED for TEAMWORK, but for Individualism or the kiddie me Me ME FIRST attitude!
Go back to the creates, go back to Allies vs Axis. Keep the game objectives. Put the "prizes in the crates. The earning of crates caused teamwork cause if you won, you got more crates. Getting more INDIVIDUAL points, does NOTHING for TEAMWORK.
Command Chief Master Sergeant
GhostPrime, on 08 March 2018 - 02:45 PM, said:
Hello Pilots!
We would like your feedback on the "Invasion" mode. Once you fill out the poll questions, please also answer:
Please also feel free to discuss any other sentiment regarding this new mode in this thread.
I used bombers to good effect on the missions that required them. For every different mission, different aircraft were important. HOWEVER, some missions with 15 kills in one battle were almost impossible because the battles were so short. That’s a problem.
I was playing the missions to get the planes, and not worrying too much about winning the match.
Another problem was the defenders had all 12 players and 4 or so air defense aircraft per point on their side to massively outnumber the attackers. I did win a lot of the time, but it was biased toward the defenders in a big way. That’s another problem.
Edited by comtedumas, 08 March 2018 - 11:27 PM.
Senior Master Sergeant
Senior Master Sergeant
comtedumas, on 08 March 2018 - 11:06 PM, said:
HOWEVER, some missions with 15 kills in one battle were almost impossible because the battles were so short. That’s a problem.
Especially as more and more people get bottle necked at that mission... and start to fight over targets like starving hyenas.
Senior Master Sergeant
It occurs to me, the Question about the importance of teamwork... that really should be split into two questions, for each side.
-- Is teamwork important on Attack: 100%, lack of teamwork is a near guaranteed fail.
-- Is teamwork important on Defense: Lol! ... No, not really.
Second Lieutenant
Didn't I write a huge treatise on this in your other poll...?
1. Light Fighters and Multiroles. In particular the tier IV and V Bf109s, the tier VIII and IX Batplanes and all the Spitfires.
2. Bombers. They really got it in the neck this time around. Even the mighty RB17 gets its [edited]wiped so hard...
3. Didn't I write a whole treatise on this last thread?
SpiritFoxMY, on 06 March 2018 - 04:34 PM, said:
Ok, so seeing as the first weekend of Invasion and Westwall has wrapped up (and the rest of the forum has descended into flaming over the event rewards), I think I'm just going to plop all my thoughts into this thread:
Game Mode: Invasion
The Good
Anyone who's been reading my posts will know I like this game mode.
It's a nice change of pace - one of the clear differences between Invasion and Conquest is that I don't feel pulled in multiple directions and have to constantly go through the decision-making process of deciding which cap is most critical to defend. Do I defend the Rocket Base or try to capture the Airbase? Do I try to intercept the bomber formation or push to capture the enemy Command Center? Invasion has very clear schwerpunkt and there's a fluid nature to the battles as the Attacking team rolls over one cap after another. It also helps that there are very few "special" capture points, at least on the good Invasion maps - and by "special" I mean caps that ratchet up the pressure in ways that are hard to counter (bomber formations, missile strikes). Because of this, I can focus on the meat of the game - dogfighting. There's less "dead" time of people scurrying across the map to try and defend different sectors from attack. There's less frustration of losing a game just because the bots you were expecting to defend a cap suddenly decided to all suicide into the enemy's face. In invasion, you lose a cap, its done. No counterattacking, no juggling chainsaws bouncing around defensive points. Its done. The defenders get compacted as they're pushed back and the Attackers push harder against them, usually ending in one climactic battle where one side crushes the last survivors or takes the last cap. Ideally at least.
This mode also feels like it REALLY rewards staying alive. You stay alive, you're conserving resources as the fight drags on. I didn't feel like the bots were overly profligate with respawns... at least not without direct human input (in the form of enemy humans swatting bots out of the sky). No lawndart teleportation (just isn't worth it) and even killing yourself when your HP is low takes a lot of risk and calculation - are you really going to do that much better at 100% HP? What if someone dies right before you do and takes the last spawn? Personally, I've fought more battles on a single sortie than I ever have in Conquest: there just feels like there's fewer things to slowly grind you down in Invasion, compared with Conquest. Or maybe the games just end faster, before these things start becoming important.
A special mention about the bots - I have not seen a single Attacker fly into a rock all event long. Congrats on meeting the basic requirements of airmanship, bots!
Dogfighting skills seems to make a huge difference now - a good pilot or two can swing the battle wildly simply by mowing down the opposition so fast, they cannot make enough headway on the cap to either capture or defend it. A good pilot or two can build up such a large respawn advantage that victory becomes almost assured. At the same time, it never felt like I was unfairly being ganked by superior pilots/numbers and being constantly sent to the hanger unlike in Conquest where whole conga lines of bots would form to feast on me and consequences be damned. Overall, I never experienced many moments where I'm raging at the bots for losing the game for me - I always felt I had the agency to move the needle in a match: even the losses on the Attacking side - if I had just shot straighter or picked the Spitfire instead of the Beaufighter to kill first, I might've turned the game around. Never felt like "FREAKIN' BOTS WHY DON'T YOU DEFEND THE COMMAND CENTER INSTEAD OF MILLING AROUND USELESSLY OVER A GARRISON!?"
The Bad
Attackers are still handicapped. I think this is as much a matter of Map as anything to do with the basic balance of the mode - specifically, the new river map with its central airbase and the black mesa map with the three Garrisons seem to actually give the Attackers a fair shake; every game I've won as an Attacker or lost as a Defender have been on those two maps; the key being that on the Mesa map, the three forward Garrisons are easy flips that immediately grant the Attacker some breathing room in the form of additional time. What's more, they can be flipped so fast, the dogfight becomes much more even much more quickly, which is bad for the Defender, especially if they don't have the wherewithal to withdraw to their next line of defense. The river estuary map has the Airbase as a pivot - seizing it gives the Attackers a vital staging point and a place to retreat to for repairs in the heart of the defender's territory. And its relatively easy to swamp early on. Other maps like Archipelago and Asian Border are too fragmented, with Airbases flanking a central Garrison; capping the Garrison buys you 90 seconds but leaves the Attackers sandwiched between two fresh forces while themselves being depleted. I haven't beat either of those maps as an Attacker.
Ground Attackers and Bombers have is really bad in this game mode. There's something to be said about the Defending team having all the fighters in the world to go hunting these lumbering behemoths. In the past, with both sides more or less equal, teams had to choose between bomber hunting or taking out enemy fighters. And since fighters capped faster, they were the bigger threat and so the bombers and attackers were mostly left alone until the fighters were quite done. Here, there're enough fighters to deal with the clouds of lumbering death while simultaneously fighting off Attacking fighters. Ground Pounders in Invasion are free kills to eat into the enemy's limited respawns. They can be surprisingly dangerous when all of them hit a target at once but because of the limitations of ground kills vs. air kills, so long as the Defenders focus down the attacking fighters during the assault, they can weather the storm. Bombers in particular are hopelessly vulnerable in this mode and need either buffs to improve effectiveness (survivability, lethality) or have ground targets rebalanced to be worth more combat, capture and mastery points than they currently are. The latter is something to consider for Ground Attackers too.
This mode is NOT newbie friendly. The limited respawns and the compacting of the battlefield means that weaker pilots will quickly get sidelined in a fight. Even worse if they're on the Attacking side which requires players of a skill level considerably exceeding that of the Defenders. So overall, the experience for those pilots is probably reeeeal [edited]. They spawn in without a clue of what they should be doing and quickly get shat on by every member of the opposing team, because they're an easy kill and an easy way to rapidly deplete the enemy's respawns. The game mode is jarring for newcomers (I had a guy load in and go "wthwhy do they control all the points?") and if they're on the Attacking team... well, they're going to get shat on.
The Invasion meta seems to be really hard on less agile/lower endurance airplanes like the 190s, Republics and Heavy Fighters in general. Because the battles are faster paced than before AND, capture is permanent, it puts the airplanes that require considerable winding up for their success at a disadvantage. Of course, especially as a defender, lightly armed airplanes will never do either and so I do feel that the Spitfire meta is simply reinforced in this mode - fast, maneuvreable, able to take a hit and able to do the hitting itself. The only difference is in the vertical - because of all the bombers around, airplanes that can go high are valuable. The altitude advantage is also more valuable than before because of the increased focus on PvP dogfighting. Overall, planes I enjoyed all weekend: 109E, P-40, BV210, BV212.03 (this thing is hilariously OP in Invasion mode). Planes I did well in but didn't particularly enjoy: Mosquito, Spitfire IX, P-51K. Planes I hated: Fw190 A-5 (my favorite conquest plane!), Do217M (got shat on).
***
But a truce to this mournful story
For death is a distant friend
So here's to a life of glory
And a laurel to crown each end
Second Lieutenant
I suppose if you want a summary for question 3 its;
"Great mode, but unbalanced against the Attacker."
***
But a truce to this mournful story
For death is a distant friend
So here's to a life of glory
And a laurel to crown each end
Airman Basic
the mode on the 1st weekend was an exercise in frustration, as some have said you need to play as a team but the set of missions (the secondary reqs. are stupid) makes people play to maximize their gains, I know I did (help cap things or farm bots to finish a mission). having a finite amount of tokens makes for frustrating gameplay because the bots will seemingly solo fly into the closest cap area regardless if they have support or not and the whole team gets punished for that. there were large amounts of game crashes, more so than normal, you could tell by the amount of people flying into the ground/mountains shortly after spawn. overall the game felt laggy, dot style guns (think vickers venom) seemingly had to lead targets farther up to get damage to register.
the imbalance of fighter style planes on defense vs 6 ground attack type planes + 6 fighters on offense made dog fighting a losing proposition on offense, I would argue maybe dialing back to maybe 2 GAA and 2 bombers per attacking team to allow more support planes.
Second Lieutenant
Anubis_TD, on 08 March 2018 - 10:31 PM, said:
honestly the effectiveness of each class is not relevant to the issues with this mode.
The Attacking team is at a huge disadvantage, every fight they are outnumbered thus higher statistically to die.
Defenders then kill the attackers.
Situation only worsens as points are taken, Attackers ball up and have huge numerical advantage.
Fixes,
1) Allow defenders to cap points back, (GA and Bombers on defence side) this balances the fighter composition
or
2) give more time to cap, this gives attackers time to widdle the defenders numbers down rather than having to charge in, especially near the end.
or
3) place a Comm center or rocket base near the outside of edge of the defense zone. A major point easily gotten to by both sides.
It should be difficult to take (due to number issues) but once taken it can help cap or draw planes away from confrontations.
no.1 and no.3 would just turn this back into Conquest mode ad the mad scramble to hold on to what you have while pushing important caps. Usually it ends up with me praying my team is competent because I can't do everything at once. So, no. Just... no.
No.2 though I wholeheartedly agree. Give the Attacking team more time off the bat. Make sure the first layer of targets are either easy to cap (Garrisons) or will be focused by the bots by default (Airbases). Give the attackers more breathing space at least in the initial push.
***
But a truce to this mournful story
For death is a distant friend
So here's to a life of glory
And a laurel to crown each end
Master Sergeant
GhostPrime, on 08 March 2018 - 07:45 PM, said:
Hello Pilots!
We would like your feedback on the "Invasion" mode. Once you fill out the poll questions, please also answer:
Please also feel free to discuss any other sentiment regarding this new mode in this thread.
I think you should already know which side has the advantage, a HUGE advantage. The imbalance spoiled the game for me, but I am well aware balance is not a Wargaming priority; indeed they see imbalance as part of war. That is Wargaming's choice, and their inability to make this game a success is a direct result. There's also the lower tier as a minority debacle, which serves what purpose? I'm sure I have no idea. Unless the purpose was to annoy the living crap out of everyone, in which case, op success.
This forum is full of complaints about imbalance. In the Russian culture, it may be appealing, but to Western society it is a game breaker. Wargaming seems to want to remain culturally insular while trying to make a commercial success of an American server. I'm over trying to point WG in the right direction, the same as many others. We love your game, but we are a minority in our society. Balance your game on this server, and things would change for you, dramatically. However, I am through trying to tell you this.
To quote Heinlen: "You should never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig."
Command Chief Master Sergeant
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