World of Warplanes

[Highlord Laan]

I can't be the only one here playing this. It's currently in it's 1.0 state, but it's still a blast. Fully mouse and keyboard compatible and useable. I'm told that the only difference a joystick makes is in ultra-competitive tier 9-10 play, and that a good mouse pilot is still more than capable of holding his or her own.

Main balance issues currently revolve around heavy fighters, more specifically German heavy fighters. German and Soviet trees are, as they were in WoT's early days, the most developed and balanced, or overpowered, in the case of German heavies. Even the devs admit it, which makes me almost certain that WoWP is handled by an entirely different branch of Wargaming, given how the WoT devs act towards the playerbase.

I'm going up the US and UK trees. Both are currently only two lines each, as opposed to the sprawl of the German and Soviet trees, with the US revolving completely around light fighters until tier 9, where jets show up, and the Brits having a short heavy line. There's also a two-line Japanese tree, but I'm not interested. It revolved around Zeros, which I snarl at and try to destroy by reflex.

American fighters I've currently got in the hangar are the P-36 Hawk and F2A Buffalo, both at tier 4. UK planes are the Bristol 133 and Bristol 146, tier 3 and 4, respectively. I'm liking the UK fighters more, which is surprising since by raw numbers, the American planes have better performance. The Bristols just seem to be more balanced machines to me, with the US planes having very strong points counterbalanced by glaring weaknesses.

Case in point; The P-36 has great maneuverability and soild speed, but average HP and shitty firepower it's tier. It's a support fighter. The F2A has solid to absurd firepower for it's tier, decent speed, soak up punishment for fun, and turns like an iron pig. It also quite quickly turns into a high-speed, screaming lawn dart/fireball rather easily during boom-and-zoom.

So. Anyone else getting out of the tank ruts and taking to the skies?

[Broken]

For my sky fix, I've been playing War Thunder when I have the time especially since they are running bonus missions right now for access to their ground combat beta. I tried World of Warplanes early in the alpha and found it uninspired and the flight models more akin to thrown rocks with no performance differences between them. Later in the beta I tried again and got a bug with my machine guns permanently firing without pause except to reload, which WG was totally unable to tell me the cause of, so I returned to WT. While I have considered playing more WT and trying WoWP again, right now my secondary hard drive that I keep most games on is dying, so until my new HD arrives I'm not playing much. I hope World of Warships is more interesting then WoT or WoWP (I still have several thousand gold on my WG account), but I'll be keeping an eye on the naval section of WT too.

[The Vortex Empire]

Yeah, the economy in War Thunder is rather rough, but I enjoy the actual gameplay much more in it than in WoWP.

WoT still has my vote though, I don't enjoy planes nearly as much as tanks.

[Scottish Ninja]

I played a good bit of WoWP during beta but I've been taking a break since launch or so, partly because I wanted a break and partly because I wanted for newbies to start coming in so I could go seal-clubbing with my 100% Tier 1 pilots. It's a decent bit of fun and I might get back into it fairly soon, get my tier fours back at least.

[wautd]

I tried the beta but quickly gave up. Unless a huge lot has changed I find War Thunder pretty much superior in every regards

[krakonfour]

I tried twice, during early and late beta. Both did horrible, unmentionable things to my computer.

[xthetenth]

I'd been playing, but the energy fighter meta totally sapped my will to play the game even though I'm on what's probably the best tourney team in the game. Yeah, it's been that rough. Almost as bad as I find WT (no interest in historical or full real, and arcade is simply terrible point and click, take a random amount of damage and get bounced by people coming from spawn).

Hopefully the next patch sorts things out.

[Alkaloid]

I haven't played WoWP since alpha, but I have been mucking about in WT lately and it has some distinct design advantages. Damage models better on flight performance and the really 3 dimensional maps and focus on destroying targets on the ground make for some fun dogfights through and around terrain. The controls are far to simple to make combat at altitude fun and remove a lot of interesting options to use altitude to you advantage.

The one thing both games do, and I assume they do it because WoT took tanks from the late 20s onward, is start the tiers too late. I have no idea why a game called world of war planes which supposedly allows me to advance from primitive to semi modern war planes would not include the Sopwith Camel, the Bristol Fighter or single Albatros or SPAD variant? I'm entirely sure Russia had an air force during WW1 no? 5 second google, first aerial ramming attack in history performed by a Russian. Cool. Why do we not care?

Low, slow biplane dogfights for control of an airfield are some of the best fun you can have in WT but for some reason they make sure you get a brief taste of them and then never get another? It's mental.

[xthetenth]

Biplanes are terrible in both games. In WT it's so point and click it's practically a Sierra game, and in WoWP it's similar but more about just who has more people who can shoot half decently rather than any other skill. A bad player who can at least aim well will kill a much better player who's distracted because nobody moves fast enough to get out of the other guy's line of fire.

Biplanes would only really work well with a really simulationist focus and that's preposterously unfun for most people.

[Thunderfire]

Biplanes are terrible in both games.

They were not bad in WoWP about 1 year ago when agility was still the king. e.g. most players used a F3F in the close beta T4 tournament. But the game went downhill after 0.4.0 and I stopped playing.

[Alkaloid]

They're no worse than monoplanes for any of those things though. All biplane (ie t1 battle) dogfights tended to be lower, slower and more chaotic because there were more planes in shooting distance of each other at any one time. I found them much less pointy clicky because half the time enemy fighters flashed across my nose before the lead indicator even showed up. (That thing is the worst in WT, take it away and skill, even if it is just the ability to judge a lead, comes straight back into it)

[Broken]

I have to admit, I haven't played historical much in War Thunder, but its quite interesting with the lack of lead indicator and the more realistic flight model (I have seen B109's lose wings diving too fast in historical mode). And you could feel the strain when my fully loaded Hellcat struggled down the runaway to just get off the ground rather then the more UFO physics of Arcade. I still play mostly arcade since its quick and a good moneymaker, but I will check out historical/events more once they revise the tech-trees. If you feel like training for historical mode, you can still play arcade but turn off the lead indicator.

[xthetenth]

Biplanes are terrible in both games.

They were not bad in WoWP about 1 year ago when agility was still the king. e.g. most players used a F3F in the close beta T4 tournament. But the game went downhill after 0.4.0 and I stopped playing.

I'm saying the gameplay was and is awful not that the planes are underpowered. There wasn't much room for skill other than who can cut the hardest turn and keep their guns steady then, and now the mouse controls are good enough that being able to cut a hard turn isn't worth much. The only difference is that now heavy fighters are overpowered, but other than AGO trolling it's still the same old dogfight where if you're caught off guard by a plane it can pretty much burn you down at will and even if you're good you won't be able to get away with more than half your health.

Really WWI biplanes should have a more simulationist flight model because otherwise you're always maneuverable enough to get guns on target if they aren't trying the same on you, and the dratted things don't move fast enough to get to where the enemy can't turn sharply enough to keep his guns on you.

[Highlord Laan]

Biplanes are terrible in both games.

They were not bad in WoWP about 1 year ago when agility was still the king. e.g. most players used a F3F in the close beta T4 tournament. But the game went downhill after 0.4.0 and I stopped playing.

Agilty is still a killer. Boom and Zoom is currently king of the hill, but what many players (even the "good" ones) ignore that is that one you finish the "boom" part of that, you're at low altitude facing off against a turn and burner. I've slagged more that one cocky P-51A in my Spitire by playing the defensive game until they [try] swooping in.

The only thing I really rage against at the moment is the total bullshit that is pretty much the entire German tree. You can tell that while the devs love their Red air, they're also total Luftwaffe-files that believe every iota of bullshit they've ever heard or read. Also, the Japanese tree has it horribly bad. Their early planes will fuck your day up, especially the Zeros, but once the other trees get their high-performance aircraft (around tier 6), the Japanese fighters are so hugely outclassed it's actually kind of shameful.

historically accurate, but shameful. Kind of like the treatment of the US tree. The UK tree is solid, if small. I personally am in love with the Bristol 146. It's got solid climb and dive, really good turning, and respectable firepower. If it has one failing, it's that it's too much of a generalist. Still fun to play though, and an absolutely beautiful aircraft, too. Side by side with my other favorite, the Bristol 133, possibly the highest performing tier 3 in the game. For some reason whenever I look at the side or front of it, I get the image of a dignified English Bulldog, complete with tophat and monocle, because of it's long, drooping sides.

[xthetenth]

Agilty is still a killer. Boom and Zoom is currently king of the hill, but what many players (even the "good" ones) ignore that is that one you finish the "boom" part of that, you're at low altitude facing off against a turn and burner. I've slagged more that one cocky P-51A in my Spitire by playing the defensive game until they [try] swooping in.

Once you finish the boom part you're onto the zoom part. If you forget the zoom, it's your own stupid fault. The whole idea is that you're firing at the guy and making him break or killing him and then pulling up away before he can react because he's got way less energy. If the P-51A loses to the Spitfire it's because the P-51A pilot made a mistake.

The only thing I really rage against at the moment is the total bullshit that is pretty much the entire German tree. You can tell that while the devs love their Red air, they're also total Luftwaffe-files that believe every iota of bullshit they've ever heard or read. Also, the Japanese tree has it horribly bad. Their early planes will fuck your day up, especially the Zeros, but once the other trees get their high-performance aircraft (around tier 6), the Japanese fighters are so hugely outclassed it's actually kind of shameful.

The Germans were pretty balanced, then they buffed boom and zoom hard repeatedly and Germans all tend to be good at that.

historically accurate, but shameful. Kind of like the treatment of the US tree. The UK tree is solid, if small. I personally am in love with the Bristol 146. It's got solid climb and dive, really good turning, and respectable firepower. If it has one failing, it's that it's too much of a generalist. Still fun to play though, and an absolutely beautiful aircraft, too. Side by side with my other favorite, the Bristol 133, possibly the highest performing tier 3 in the game. For some reason whenever I look at the side or front of it, I get the image of a dignified English Bulldog, complete with tophat and monocle, because of it's long, drooping sides.

The US tree apparently has one of the two best tier tens (F7U is probably better than the Javelin), and both the P-51s are stupid OP. The US light fighter line is pretty solid for most of its planes and the naval fighters apparently get really good at the end. The US is better off than you think it is.

[Simon_Jester]

What did they do that made zoom-and-boom more powerful?

[Highlord Laan]

What did they do that made zoom-and-boom more powerful?

Greatly increased the damage from the one on top, and greatly reduced both damage and accuracy of people firing upwards. Both are being changed in the next patch.

I'm also told that a lot of low-level turn fighters had their agility reduced.

[xthetenth]

All that and made plane performance worse when out of an optimal altitude band, with boom and zoom planes' ones being higher so it's really hard to catch up to them period.

[Simon_Jester]

To what extent were these modifications realistic?

[This is not to say they should be in just because they're realistic. The game is or should be designed to be balanced between ldogfighters and zoom-and-boom zerstorer tactics. But I'm curious.]

[xthetenth]

Not much at all. Planes with similar altitudes with optimal performance have radically different ones in game.