LMG, on 08 June 2018 - 07:06 PM, said:
I think I mentioned that a while back; for 1.9 to truly shine we can't have GAAs or bombers. Hell, at the time we literally could not have bombers at all, which is why we ended up with the anti-tank stuka instead of the divebomber.
dityboycom and Porkins Jr. would disagree with you.
In a pure gameplay sense, the superiority system made GAA very important.
If you didn't devote time at the start of the match to eliminate a competent GAA player, you had to run the risk of losing the match later even if you killed all the bots.
Going for the GAA early ment you sacrificed altitude at the start of the match and risked losing later.
This garbage saying we couldn't have Bombers in 1.9 is well, garbage. Conquest mode would've worked just as well using the 1.9 flight model, gun mechanics, and UI.
CorvusCorvax, on 08 June 2018 - 07:24 PM, said:
This one of the reasons I think a return to some form of 1.x is not going to happen. The focus of the game changed, and the pure air-to-air aspect of 1.x has been abandoned. The idea of some fighters-only events, with no respawns, might be interesting. No bombers, no GAA, no fix-it airfields, no capture, no ADA. Just a straight-up furball. The person that wins that event gets a nine-skill French pilot. 
Anyone who wants to GAA or bomber during those events could keep on doing that. Except, they would be playing against bots. And make this event open to all tiers. Let the new guys in on the fun.
Conquest mode is a failure to understand the distinction between the tactical air power and the strategic air power. The tactical is the elimination of soldiers and vehicle assets on the front lines. Strategic is the destruction of the enemy's ability to fight be the elimination of his production, transportation, and morale.
Conquest tries to have its cake and eat it too. Bombers eliminate strategic points, but only on a tactical level. The buildings respawn just as soon as the points change sides and no progress is made towards a larger effort.
The sectors themselves are just a mechanic to force a dev desired density of fighting to make things feel more fun, at the same time serving as a layer of "depth" for those that want to win.
Heck, in 1.7 I would've welcomed a capture the flag mode, in addition to standard battles. A gamemode that would've taken advantage of the game's arcade nature without sacrificing its simulator one. (shamelessly parroting dity here)
What the game now isn't WWII aerial combat. There is very little anymore that makes the game unique from other arcade flight games out there. And how many of those are still being played?
"The Story of World of Warplanes: A Postmortem"
DISCLAIMER: The write up is part fact, part conjecture on my part of the events leading up to where we are now. I would provide sources for my conjectures, but I'm lazy and a single * will notate a conjecture on my part and a double ** will be provided for whole paragraphs of my conjecture.
Is the game enjoyable despite? Yes, I'll grant it that. But it isn't a sustainable fun. The devs are admittedly caught in a trap outside of their control. When the decision was made to make the game more arcade, the then current game's production was stalled. Effort put into a new gamemode was probably started two and a half years ago, during 1.6*. By then, it was too late to rollback to 1.4 and the game had already lost a huge majority of it's player base due to ever changing controls, gun mechanics, increasing wait times, bugs that should've been caught in CTs, no promised clan wars or esports, deteriorating dev communication, and the sound changing every patch.
The game existed on life support, with the occasional event to spike up the primetime population, along with the occasional new line or premium to get people to pay for the game. The game slowly bled players as the development for 2.0 depended. Old employees were eventually sacked*, and I'm very doubtful if much of the original development team is left programing WOWP*. Radical ideas were shot forth to try and relaunch the game*. The prospect of turning the game into a MOBA was briefly considered. Time began running out when the higher ups realized, that while the game was churning a profit on life support, it wasn't producing an increasing profit*. Something had to be done, because closing the game altogether would cost more money for WG than shutting it down altogether. The devs need a reason for the game's failure. One was found.
The 3D environment. The game is too difficult for most players because it has an extra dimension to think about. Changes were made to eliminate the learning curve that was the result of this confusing gameplay mechanic. When you change one thing, you have to change another. The devs needed to make the game more accessible so more people would be able to play. If more people need to play, not all of them are going to be able to grasp the game's complicated nature. If they took what the game had and simplified it, if they added more gimmicky mechanics that could substitute actual skill (Mario kart consumables introduced in 1.9) then more people will play and want to buy premium time and planes and WG would make more money. (** as to the motivations)
Small changes were put into the main game to test out these developing features. The changes passed the Russian supertest and player attrition rates stayed the same so all was well. The gamemode neared completion and more of the persha's hand began to be revealed. The first closed test was released last year in March. Small leaks sprinkled forth information of the game's new nature, rightly called by the Russians, "[the new regime]".
The long anticipated aspect of bombers had been added to the game. Bombers had been stated as not appearing in the game because they would not have fit into the game's standard deathmatch battle format. However, when ever the decision was made that bombers would be added to the game, the failure of the devs to develop a new gamemode before hand would be focused by the inclusion of this new class of aircraft.
Reception of the gamemode was poor. Which is an understatement. A grotesquely huge understatement. They realized they were taking a big risk. Perfect the gamemode now with closed tests, be extremely vague with the plans for the implementation of the new regime, and hope the old population sticks around long enough for a new population to be assimilated. The plan, switch the barely sustaining population for a low threshold en mass new one and rebuild the game from there. The risk? Everyone getting sacked by the higher ups* should persha listen to the community and delay or worse yet discard what they worked on for two years. They took the only choice afforded them and pushed on, unable to perform a full relaunch due to gamebreaking bugs being present and a lack of sustaining content being in place.
What's happened since October is stuff everyone here already knows.
4
