26 replies to this topic

[Reitousair]

I agree with OP's sentiment but I disagree with OP's reasoning.

Gold consumables are generally a waste of gold, compared to other purchases that can be made. I take serious issue with gold-only consumables as they provide straight-up advantages over silver consumables and can only be obtained for free in extremely limited quantities, or you pay real money to purchase them.

 

Here's a Picture Comparing Standard Consumables to Their Premium Counterparts

 

For those who can't view the image for whatever reason:

All premium consumables reload 30 seconds faster (and have the generally minor benefit of instant recharge when you respawn)

    This is fairly powerful as it allows you to play aggressively, especially in the case of engine cooling or control assistance. Being able to fix crits/turn/boost more often can be critical to success (especially more boost.)

 

Premium fire extinguishers/medkits reload faster, but also provide a near (if not outright) invulnerability to what they fixed 

    This is a very important characteristic in combat situations, especially for killing bombers (no more double pilot crit) or surviving an engagement (no more getting set on fire twice in short order, particularly good on JP aircraft)

 

Premium exhaust bleed (CO₂ inerting) provides even more fire resistance, not huge, but it can be a life saver in a pinch

 

Premium mixture control (high-octane/anti-oxidizing additive) provides double the thrust of standard and a bit more speed

    This is a pretty serious upgrade, actually, when it comes to the upper end of play, better energy retention, stronger boost, and higher speed are great buffs which the premium version adds more of (still inferior to engine cooling, however)

 

Premium turret ammo is just a straight upgrade over regular turret ammo 

    More crit chance on weapon systems that tend to rely on crits to even out DPS races (or cripple a pursuing aircraft to flee,) in tandem with proper equipment crit rate gets buffed to the point of making it difficult to engage/disengage a bomber

 

The biggest offenders; premium ordnance

THESE are what I take by far the most issue with as they are the most egregious offenders to the point I argue they are outright P2W.

Heavy Warhead provides double the buffs of demolition expert; this is insanely good as together with DE, you get 30% buffs to ordnance damage and blast radius. 

   This massively improves ordnance consistency and even allows certain planes to reach certain thresholds for killing ground targets (Tu-2 can 1-shot 50 point targets in mining plants when it's top tier, for example)

 

Improved Explosives gives you a 30% buff to your blast radius (and 10% damage, of course), together with DE you get a 40% increase in blast radius and 20% increase in damage.

   This is slightly less useful on most aircraft, but on bombers this is huge, 30% extra blast radius means there will be considerably fewer times where you leave a single building on almost no health. This also means less accurate bombers don't suffer as much when playing at higher altitudes (like the Ju-288A/C, for example.)

 

Reminder that regular ordnance only provides an extra 10% damage it provides no blast radius increase whatsoever.

 

Amusingly enough, I think gold ammo is the only premium consumable type that isn't always a straight upgrade unless their stats have been modified since we could last readily view them. Universal is a balance between all ammo types while incendiary and frag have a tradeoff compared to universal. The only outright better ammo is APHE which provides more armor penetration than universal, pretty important for gun-focused GA's.

 

 

Having no way to regularly and consistently obtain them for credits annoys me because they are a further way to optimize your plane, except they're locked behind a paywall or extremely inconsistent methods.  You can only earn 3 of a premium consumable in a weekly supply crate, tops, ordnance has a slight chance of 5. It's extraordinarily rare to earn more than 1000 gold which only gives you 8 battles of full premium consumables. What's worse is that some of them can provide a massive competitive edge which you just can't get unless you run said premium consumables, and again, paywall/inconsistent method to obtain these competitive consumables.

 

Before the whole "just outplay the guy using premium consumables" argument is thrown at me. Yes, you can win against people using premium consumables without even using consumables. But you can also win against a specialized Vampire in your stock Typhoon if the skill difference is large enough. This does not discard the fact that there is an imbalance of power between the two.

 

As anecdotal experience, I only run silver consumables myself but have been in situations where the lack of the faster recharge time has cost me the game. I have also experimented with using full sets of premium consumables or using specific premium consumables; I tend to see my performances improve. I also have a friend who pretty much always uses premium engine cooling due to the 30s faster recharge allowing him to make riskier plays more often.

There was also a time where premium cooling allowed certain non-bomber aircraft have literally infinite boost

 

Definitely no self-shilling here 

Still, this is a fairly good way to show how important a 30s faster recharge time can be.

 

So, in conclusion: it would be good if gold-only consumables were changed to be purchasable using gold or credits. The advantages they provide aren't always game-changing, but the current methods of obtaining them are less than ideal if people want to perform at their absolute best. Particularly so because gold has so many better options and thus has a tendency to make purchasing premium consumables unappealing.

[hoom]

Block Quote

 There was also a time where premium cooling allowed certain non-bomber aircraft have literally infinite boost

 Ooh, is that the infamous unlimited boost glitch?

 

Gold only consumables is a breach of the Free-to-Win manifesto

https://www.gamasutr...to_the_curb.php

[trikke]

ty, Reito      that should be stickied somehow        i'd never heard 50% of all of that stuff        or i don't remember hearing it        one or the other

 

leets... that's why they're different from the rest of us          knowledge sponges

 

[Lose_dudes]

I sorta agree Marco

[Lose_dudes]

cundalini_, on 16 September 2020 - 01:18 PM, said:

Not sure why you’re attacking what he’s saying.  Tanks changed their exclusive gold ammo to include silver purchase long ago.  Universal ammo is good enough in this game, so the gold really is a waste of money.  But it’s a revenue stream from the unsuspecting, and the company exists to make money, so...pretty sure there’s been discussions in the past comparing them, I don’t think 2.0 changed it much. 

Uh oh... The 'muny grab hayterz' return...

[trikke]

someday, maybe soon...   WG will introduce their own branded credit card         

 

which would become the only way to purchase gold, gold consumables, tokens and premium planes        and of course tanks and ship stuff, too

 

big discounts at first, just to gain traction        and i mean uuuuuge discounts        and... because we're sheep, we'll just... accept it

 

 

[SkyWolf__WM]

SkyWolf__WM, on 29 December 2020 - 11:58 AM, said:

 

Or People who can afford it to help make it affordable for whiners like you fellatiolini.  And I don't CARE what they do in tonks or rubber duckies. 

Edited by SkyWolf__WM, 29 December 2020 - 05:01 PM.