Does anyone else feel like there’s not much incentive to advance past BR2?

Mess Room
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So, I want to preface this with saying that I like the Merge. Overall, it has definitely been an improvement to the game. With that said, in my opinion after having played for a while after the merge, how things are right now the tech tree might as well just be broken down into 2 areas; Low BR (1-2) and High BR (3-5).

BR 2 is pretty clearly the most balanced rank for any nation, and the best experience imho. You have enough useful gear to keep games interesting without it revolving into an explosive spam / Automatic weapon fest. Bolt actions are still competitive, but there’s also semi-autos that offer some interesting trade offs. SMGs and MGs are powerful, but still don’t completely outclass everything else. Tanks are dangerous but not unstoppable.

Moving up to high tier, the gameplay is still fun, but in a way more akin to Normandy or Berlin pre-merge (no duh!). Explosives and automatics are frequent. Tanks are often behemoths that are much more dangerous to encounter. Fire is everywhere. And soldier’s live are cheap and should be expected to be short. No single player is going to make much of a difference in any given battle in my experience, but collectively small victories can be achieved.

It’s still fun in a sort of Chaotic way, and I definitely get more kills, but tbh I think I prefer the simplicity of low BR matches. This isn’t really saying one is better than the other, just an observation/opinion on my part.

But then there’s the grind to take into account. I don’t really feel any inclination to play Rank 3 or 4, since they’re largely going to upteired into Rank 5 games anyway. This essentially means BR 3-4 are dead tiers to me (I know I could try to queue into downtiers at BR3 but I don’t feel inclined to quit 50+% of my games).

So this means that once I reach BR2 I basically have to stop until I can get a solid BR5 loadout (I have that already for Germany, but my next highest faction is the US at BR3). Then after that, you need to actually have enough silver to afford to outfit all of your units, which with the current game economy isn’t likely going to be easy. I think this is what leads to the player imbalance we’re currently seeing. Low BR games are perfectly fine, but then you get to high BR and suddenly the allies can barely compete.

I genuinely do think this is a playerbase issue more than anything else, and I think the best way to solve this would be to add in more queues; either in a [1-2][3][4-5] format, or in an ideal world a [1-2][2-3][3-4][4-5] format. I don’t think this would mean everything is perfect, but it would at least give more use BRs beyond Rank 2 and Rank 5.

Anyway, a bit of a rant before bed. What do you guys think? Am I out of line, or do y’all agree?

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i only been playing a short time but i agree,the cost effort and fun stops at tier2,why pay more for less fun…even if u buy your way to tier 5 then your skill outclassed…there should only be a one tier fight difference or like u said tier 3 will die.

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Yeah, I started playing back in August, so that was enough time to grind out a decent amount for Germany at least before the Merge.

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I also enjoy playing BR2 the most at the moment,

Though, as a German there are little problems playing the other BRs.

Panthers and Berettas perform still more than good enough in BR5, so BR4 is also fun.

The BR3 gamble is a pretty stupid concept, so I try to avoid it.

Br 1 however doesn’t exist, you will face BR2 and BR3 all the time so there is no point in playing it ever.

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I can agree with almost everything in the OP.
In BR3 you get many, many attractive gadgets, practical semi-auto rifles, good submachine guns, all of which are iconic WW2 weapons.
But BR3 will be fighting BR5. The difference in weapon performance will be overwhelming, troops that should have been heavily upgraded with M1 Garlands and Gew41s will be attacked by troops with modern assault rifles such as StG44s and AS44s, and shiny new Shermans will be destroyed by Tiger tanks.
This means that players who have just been promoted from BR2 to BR3 will find little enjoyment in collecting BR3 gear, as their hard-earned weapons will be almost obsolete in the matches they participate in.

The OP is correct, there are currently only two queues, 1-2-3 low BR and 3-4-5 high BR. This may be unavoidable for the purpose of focusing the dispersed player base on the same game, however I don’t think it gives players a good experience. Some improvement will be needed in the future.
One thing I can think of right now is to provide more cues so that players can enjoy each BR. Specifically 1-2, 2-3-4, 4-5 queues.
Or maybe make the rating rules more flexible by determining BR by the BR average of the troop’s gear, instead of using a calculation method where if you have even one BR3 gear, you get promoted to BR3.
It seems like something needs to be addressed.

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I can’t relate to this opinion. I do play BR5 germany/soviets and BR4 Japan quite a lot.

But there’s no point of playing different BRs than BR 2 and 5. (For japan BR4 obv)

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I usually play in the US with BR5’s and rarely use BR3 gear. I like the Garand and M1A1 Thompson, but I have to use the M2 Carbine or Drum Thompson given that I am dealing with German soldiers filled with StG44 and FG42.
I’d love to feel like Band of Brothers or Saving Private Ryan, but I’ve rarely tasted those games, even before the merge.
I can’t deny the impression that the cues are only available in low and high BR, which makes setting up BR3 gear unnecessarily challenging.
If you want to recommend the game to your advantage, it has become correct to skip BR3 gear as much as possible and play with high BR after BR5 gear is available.
I understand that the merge was done to concentrate the dispersed player base and that if the BR queue is too fragmented, the merge loses its significance, but it seems to me that there needs to be a queue where BR3 can play with ease.
What I still want is a three-tier queue of BR1-2, BR2-3-4, BR4-5.

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So, i am the only one that plays BR3 to get all the maps? Except for Japan of course.

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Nope me too! But convincing clan mates is very difficult most the time, I actually play Any nation BR3, Allied BR4 just to use Corsair…

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I do have presets for BR2 and BR5. If I want to change one queue of maps for the other, it takes me literally few secs.
I honestly don’t see any advantage of queueing for all maps at once.

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i would personally bump a bunch of items and gear from BR4 and BR2 straight into BR3, and make it its own queue. give BR3 a good amount of gear to choose, but all within their own relative power, and let all factions duke it out in all maps with those.

say for ex., mp38 br2, mp40 br3. pps42 br2, pps43 br3. that sort of thing.

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In that case, you could easily just rework whole system into 3 queues made of BR1, BR2, BR3.

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exactly. now we have 2, then we have 3. fill in with bots if needed, or extend at player discretion the “waiting for match” timer.

then dump it into a 1 week test server, and work from there. BR III could end up being the most played and most fun. who knows?

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I honestly can’t imagine playing BR5, let alone 4. This really needs to be looked at

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imagine a constant rain of people from the sky landing directly in the objective zone, constantly, all the time, non stop. all received by a continuous spam of explosives of all types, colors and calibers.

there is a BR5 match in a nutshell.

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ngl I do this with my two Russian paratrooper squads at BR2 anyway :sweat_smile:

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I experienced a taste when Soviet paratroops were still allowed RD44’s in Stalingrad. No thank you.

@Atomik_Invader it was you! :rofl:

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All the same guns.

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exactly. but this way, you can play them either on low BR and mid BR. choices, choices.

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If they we’re cycling through Soviet Paras and Chauchat squads, then yeah there’d a good chance it was me :sweat_smile:

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