World of Warplanes, Thread the Second

[Elheru Aran]

Greetings all.

I did a search, which turned up a thread on WoWP, which was all the way back in 2013... so I think the safe thing to do is start a new thread.

Downloaded WoWP today (which fucked up my kid's Netflix, but that's life) and got started. Picked up a P-23 so far and then spent my first fight (in that plane, I got two or three fights in the starter P-12 before that) throwing spitballs. Finished the fight and promptly upgraded my 7.62's to a pair of Ma Deuces.

Suggestions? Recommendations? Tips?

I'm looking to play up the American tree to grab a P-38, apart from that I don't have any great ambitions as far as aviation goes. Definitely not going to pay money for anything premium. This is going to be a fun occasional diversion for me, similar to WoWS.

[Vendetta]

Even Wargaming are politely trying to pretend World of Warplanes never happened at this point, so I'm not sure anyone's going to have any serious advice that isn't "play War Thunder instead".

[Elheru Aran]

Hm. Is that F2P?

Can you explain why WoWP sucks? (speculating that it does suck and that's why they're dropping it)

I may still give it a chance anyway...

[Jub]

Yeah, my advice would be play War Thunder instead.

WoWP has basically no player base, so getting a match quickly tends to not happen. It also means that, as a newbie most of the people you'll play against will be committed long term players who will be better than you. On top of that game balance is even worse than in War Thunder, which is saying something.

War Thunder straight up has a larger player base, better game mechanics, and better balance. IMHO it's also more fun, but that might be a YMMV situation.

[Elheru Aran]

Hm. Well I had a good enough time in the low tiers, only got shot down once out of maybe 4 or 5 fights.

Flak is an interesting mechanic, don't think I've dealt much with that before. It's a pain in the ass though.

Anyway, I'll ride this horse for awhile. It's not costing me anything, so...

[Elheru Aran]

I will note one thing-- I am *quite* put out that they don't have the Hawker Hurricane. I've wanted to fly that in a sim ever since most of the Commando magazines I read as a kid had mostly Hurricanes, and it was one of the major RAF planes during the Battle of Britain, so I don't know what the problem is. Would be nice to have the Typhoon too...

[Vendetta]

Hm. Is that F2P?

Can you explain why WoWP sucks? (speculating that it does suck and that's why they're dropping it)

I may still give it a chance anyway...

War Thunder is F2P yeah.

The mechanical reasons why WoWP is bad are less significant now than the fact that literally nobody plays it (peak of about 800 players on NA at the moment but more like 2-300 for most of the day).

But basically the flight model wasn't particularly good (War Thunder is based on the IL-2 engine so it had a bit of a headstart there) and HP based combat mechanics never worked as well for the fast combat environment of planes as they did for tanks or ships, and it has WoT's "one life and back to the garage" structure which was also way less satisfying for a fast combat environment. (getting one shotted 90 seconds into a WoT match is annoying but super uncommon, in WoWP it was how the game worked), whereas War Thunder has a critical damage only model (so you have to actually hit something significant on a plane to bring it down even in the "arcade" mode, there are also simulator and full realism modes with more detailed flight models and longer battles where you have to start by even finding an enemy because the maps are enormous and you have realistic ammo and fuel loads) and you can use each plane in your hangar for the nation you chose once in each battle (though the battle tier is determined by the highest tier you have in your current lineup, you can send planes "on holiday" without selling them so you can build a lineup for the tier you want to play at, and this is based on arcade mode, sim and full real are one life but that life lasts longer).

Hence everyone played with it for a month, shrugged and then if they wanted free to play air combat went back to War Thunder (and War Thunder has you covered for all your Hurricane needs, with three land and two naval variants).

[Elheru Aran]

Ooh. I might have to look at that, then.

And I can't say I've ever gotten one-shotted 90 seconds in. I have gotten shot down rather early in the game once or twice. Today hasn't been great for me compared to yesterday. Guess I got Easy Mode for the first day or something...

[Thunderfire]

Yeah, my advice would be play War Thunder instead.

WoWP has basically no player base, so getting a match quickly tends to not happen. It also means that, as a newbie most of the people you'll play against will be committed long term players who will be better than you. On top of that game balance is even worse than in War Thunder, which is saying something.

OK War Thunders game balance was really bad when I played it and WoWP closed Beta a few years ago. Players managed to bring MIG-9s and MIG-15s into low tier battles and non arcade games nearly always mixed low and high tier planes.

[Jub]

Yeah, my advice would be play War Thunder instead.

WoWP has basically no player base, so getting a match quickly tends to not happen. It also means that, as a newbie most of the people you'll play against will be committed long term players who will be better than you. On top of that game balance is even worse than in War Thunder, which is saying something.

OK War Thunders game balance was really bad when I played it and WoWP closed Beta a few years ago. Players managed to bring MIG-9s and MIG-15s into low tier battles and non arcade games nearly always mixed low and high tier planes.

When did you lat play War Thunder? It's never been, and never will be, perfect, but they make balance changes every patch.

[Thunderfire]

When did you lat play War Thunder? It's never been, and never will be, perfect, but they make balance changes every patch.

2013

[Vendetta]

War Thunder has had its share of wacky balance issues (Russian planes used to respond completely differently to damage to every other nation because the team that designed them were prevented from talking to the team that did everything else as part of the agreement that got them into the military archives to get the data for them), but it's still nowhere near as bad as WoWP was, which was basically "Heavy Fighter or GTFO".