I believe I’ve found the reason for it. In random battles, all good players are “star savers”. Look at this screenshot, posted on reddit:
It’s not surprising or new, we see it all the time. And I’m not judging, I’m a proud 20km Shima / TRB Yugumo / TRB Kagero player who sold his Akatsuki for a TRB Shira and never looked back. I keep torping from max range and avoid cap circles in the first 10 minutes like they were Keep Families Together rallies.
There is little reason to try to win in a random game where 90% of the players are between 48% and 52% winrate and the reward is mere +50% XP. Increasing your winrate from 50% to 60% only increases your reward by (1 + 0.6*0.5)/(1 + 0.5*0.5) – 1 = 4% I get more XP growth by living a bit longer by staying away from risk and throwing torp waves after torp waves. I can’t wait for the legendary upgrade that will further increase my DPS by 15%.
So in random battles people see nothing but hiding sniping ships getting the top positions of the XP list and assume that it works in ranked battles too. Not really. The reason is likely that there are less players in ranked, so you can’t always find spotted targets. If you hide behind an island and spam HE, you probably won’t save your star, but you throw the game. In random, throwing isn’t a big problem because the matchmaker keeps you near 50% and even atrocious bad play can’t get you below 33%. I guarantee you that a suicide or AFK player in ranked would have one digit winrate.
“M&S will always look for excuses for defeats”
Let’s have a look at the evolution of one Gevlon
“CVs are great, I’m enjoying it and have good win rate”
“CVs are pointless RTS minigame” – after losing a bunch against better players of T7 and T8
“MM gave me losses when I used economy flags” when you lost a bunch
“I’m a great player and cracked the meta in Ranked” when you won a bunch
“My strategy of avoiding caps is better for winning, objectives are pointless”
“MM is rigged to keep my random win rate down”
“I didn’t need those wins anyway as I am getting more XP from losing when I ignore objectives”
By the way, the ranked season just started. You can play your favourite 7v7s and in decent teams to boot.
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@Stawek: CVs were great until I’ve reached the rank with strafe and manual drop which add exactly nothing to the game but stupid amount of clicks. I don’t understand why it exist and even less why they are not in low tiers so people can just avoid picking carriers completely.
The Economy flags will get a re-run soon. Short version: I’m absolutely convinced that it’s happening and paying a dime for them is a mistake.
I didn’t “win a bunch”, I kept winning over the T8 portion of ranked. I see no reason to stop.
Avoiding caps is better in ranked for winning, in randoms for XP/credits (nothing helps winning there).
It’s not that I get more XP from losing, it’s that it doesn’t matter what I do, I’ll have 50% winrate, so why not have higher base XP?
I haven’t seen any ranked announcement. Are you sure there is a new season?
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Sorry, I meant the clan battle season, not ranked.
Some people have 55+ win rates, you can’t claim it’s impossible to achieve.
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@Stawek: no, I claim that it’s pointless to achieve. Sure I could find a partner and queue with carrier + AA cruiser. Or push points focusing on killing one DD and causing some damage to other enemy ships before dying. But I get more XP just torping BBs at 50%
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No, you don’t. Your average XP and damage aren’t impressive at all.
You’re trying to sacrifice win rate for XP but you end up with 44% win rate and just about average XP (1450 vs 1410 average) on Shima and mere 10% more on Yugumo.
You simply aren’t good in this game yet. You’re accustomed to flawed game designs that let you skip the learning curve through tricks. It isn’t working in WoWs. For comparison, I have significantly more average XP and win rate on all my high tier DDs (1800-2000 on all T10s). Interestingly my stats from Fletcher look very similar to yours in Shima or Yugumo – 45% win rate, 1400 XP. It was my first line to level up, therefore, I sucked really bad when I played through it. My Gearing stats were similar at the start until I came back to it a year later and played 300 games to learn the hull.
Your stats are consistent with a new player showing signs of progress, not with MM rigging. You don’t need CV divisions. If I can have 55% overall solo win rate and 60+ on my favourite ships so can you, once you accept that you have something to learn in the first place.
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@Stawek: I had 51% winrate with the shima until an “unbelievable” loss streak. Probably due to using signals and +XP camo again because of the unique upgrade quest. Today I have 8 wins 2 loss with it, which is also bizarre. I’m absolutely sure the Useless Mahan test made the MM go bonkers.
Anyway, what matters is the ranked, and so far my stats aren’t bad at all.
It’s not the game design that is flawed and let me skip “skills”, but social players. I have no doubt that next ranked season I’ll sail to rank 1 in no time.
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@stawek “You simply aren’t good in this game yet. You’re accustomed to flawed game designs that let you skip the learning curve through tricks. It isn’t working in WoWs.” the same applied to gevlons league of legs time. When he started playing like a silver jungler (his big trick) he got out of bronze league. Then He discovered how to play like a gold jungler and to much amusement from trolls (https://syncaine.com/2017/01/26/gevlon-and-lol-the-alternative-facts-are-finally-here/) he published his post as to how he “broke” the MM. The irony is Gevlon is a seriously good gamer, who could go far, I think in some ways hes better then me and Im a plat top in lol.
Im watching his torp DD the same way Im watched him play marders in WOT and the AH in wow. You gotta admit hes GOOD at this. Theres just kinda.. Idk. Something inside him thats telling him the worlds been rigged against him and that bothers him. I think its his upbringing in communist hungary where he was taught that everyones SUPPOSED to be equal?
See Im a british peasant. I never had a level playing field, never expected one. All I ever fought for was a fighting chance. When your used to fighting a stacked deck IRL it dont bother you if the Devs might be cheating. Which begs the question then gevlon: why do you play games with stacked decks/loaded dice? It obviously bothers you.
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Oooh, that’s a bold claim!
Do you seriously mean rank 1? Not some bs “top 5%”, but a true and proper rank 1?
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@Nightgerbil: simple, to show the people who rigged systems can be identified and broken.
@Maxim: sure. I reached rank 10 with 66% winrate, which is top 1% of the top 5% who got there. I’m used to get into the very top of every game I play, why should this be different. Every PvP game is played by socials who are predictable like a bot. They just can’t adapt.
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Rank 1 isn’t a challenge for somebody with slightly above average skill and enough time.
It is rare because it multiplies the fraction of people with good enough skill with the fraction of people with enough time to play the game. 200 games to get to rank 1 is 50-60 hours, that’s 10 hours per week. It’s a lot of dedication on top of ability. Considering how hard it is at the start the average people have even less time (as they aren’t gaining any ranks at the start competing with the best players). The average age of WoWs player is 33, we are talking adult working people with families who simply can’t play 2 hours every day for 6 weeks.
You will have no problem getting to rank 1 next season. You’d get it even this season if you had the Shima in time.
Rank 1 is the top 1%, sure, but how much of that is skill and how much is time spent? maybe it’s top 30% skill and top 10% free time (divided by 3 because 2/3 people simply choose not to play Ranked at all)?
Look at a random page in Rank 11, most players have less than 50 games meaning they either quit early or never had the time to play more. Only some 10% per cent of truly terrible players have hundreds of games played in those low ranks (but they play 5-10x more than others so are more likely to be played against).
The really bad players won’t get it but the OK players can if they have enough time.
@nightgerbil
Can’t tell about WoT but he isn’t making anything special in his DDs. It’s slightly above average XP with below average win rate. That’s a really poor performance for a GOOD player. Though much better than the majority of M&S, it is completely inadequate compared to making trillions in Eve. I have some mediocre players in my clan and they show better average performance than that. While Gevlon can easily make good stats he is seriously hindered by his choice of ships and silly strategy.
There are no easy tricks in WoWs like playing the market (easy only because the majority of players refuse to treat a game like a job or crawl for 30 minutes in a shooter). Overwatch is clearly balanced for top players (and rightly so) therefore easy to abuse in the lower ranks. It’s like 6-pool zergling rush – you can get 90% win rate against newbies but it’s useless against good players.
In WoWs the teams are symmetrical meaning classes can’t be abused. There is no market to game. There is no coop to create perfect algorithms for (well, there is and there is a possibility that good team could make lots of XP playing them by the numbers). There are no easy but boring things to do. There are no outrageously broken ships. I suspect a good player could do the WoT trick of suiciding early for quick XP, but there is very little point in doing it – the “grind” isn’t a grind when it’s enjoyable.
It is seriously, seriously hard game and can’t be learned by simply reading the manual carefully. It requires thousands of games to be able to absorb the information and react in real time. Sure, being better than the average M&S is easy but beyond that, there is a whole lot of crap to learn. By the way, Gevlon, you need to play CAs and BBs to learn how they think.
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@Stawek: reply comes tomorrow as post!
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