Take berlin (now BR5 ger/ru) as an example. After the merge one of 2 things should have happened:
One side was populated pre merge and nothing has changed.
One side was populated pre merge and now both sided are populated.
In theory it should be equal or better than what it used to be. And yet I see ppl complaining it’s worse. Why is that?
(I have a certain theory but it’s purely based on my prejudice.)
People find it worse because Germany is fully kitted out, but the Allies don’t have much or not enough to fully deal ( even though, USA might not have the best tanks, but airplanes should do the job ) as for the experience, well, you mostly find people the spam optimal / meta squads with the most amount of automatic weapons as possible. made worse by the lack of type of squad lockable ( about those changes announced that should have prevented people from going full 3 flamethrower squads unless having the 3rd premium ) and above all, the overhaul experience is much more miserable because you’ll be facing a lot of stacks ( / people in team ) and matches last on average 8 minutes literally gainin no experience.
So yeah… fun times if that is the sort of things you are after.
Here are my 2 cents on the subject. I don’t think the matchmaker works as it should. If I remember correctly, in Heros & Generals, for example, the two factions were filled equally. 2 Germans - two Russians, third German - 3 Russians and so on. I don’t think that’s the case here. Furthermore, the tier system is probably also to blame. A squad with a tier 5 weapon and the rest of the mosin nagants is simply not a squad with 7 x tier 5 weapons. Many players have repeatedly pointed out these problems and were simply ignored. The dev’s should listen to people who have been playing games like this for decades instead of constantly trying to reinvent the wheel. So much for that.
so you havent play br5 german vs russian yet then since there is no russian br5 player for some reason theory doesnt = reality so yea even tho it suppose to be equal no one playing russian
As Erika pointed it out, it was never a playerbase issue in Berlin to begin with.
Soviet mains love low resistance botfarming so most will go for BRII and spam 3 squads of Pps42.
Berlin matches are now 1:1 but Soviets have worse gear and Axis are more experienced and skilled in game.
Its important to note that Soviets had 3 campaigns, 2 early war and 1 late war (in terms of equipment, not years) Berlin was painful to play as allies so many avoided it. Even worse most Soviets didn’t buy Stalingrad FA so they missed out on the better half of gear.
USA had 2 mid war and a late war, all 3 were playable/farmable at some point in the past year so they have a somewhat good average gear, most of my Axis defeats and USA wins were due to oneside either having a clan (nothing changed in that regard) or overall better gear.
Western front games are almost always stomps though with oneside getting destroyed, eastern front has more balanced matches. Ironic isn’t it?
Funny, the soviet abandoned it for almost 9 months and they are shocked that the germans still dominating Berlin/High BR… maybe being too comfy in Moscow wasn’t that great for the long run
Soviet gears beats Germans one in every campaign, so they never had “worse gears” to start with
And playing both German and Soviet BR2, yes the soviet population seems to stay below BR3 where they have the most advantages in gear compared to any nation
Real shame though, I would have loved to get some late war Soviet equipment, but I was in no mood to get myself farmed.
I was much more interested in the unique Italian squads from Tunisia.
I am fine getting the T34/85 ZiS53, is the only rank you need in Berlin unless you go for the meme tank such as the IS2, as much as I want to play soviet… nah they are too braindead in Berlin
I think a lot of Soviet mains are there, either because of not wanting to face BR5 Germany mains, attractive Soviet BR2 options, or a combination thereof.
It is because facing high tier players now is an entirely different experience than it used to be…
In the old system, you might have some high end players on the enemy team, but they would also have some mid and low tech players too. Now, if you end up in BR5, the entire enemy team is high end. That is a lot to handle. Especially if you are a player who does not have all the end game stuff yet.
Not only that, but they have all the best premium squads from all their campaigns. In old enlisted, you only had to worry about the premiums from that campaign. Now players have access to all of them in one match. People never had access to such powerful load outs before and it set the balance off kilter.
Then there is the fact factions now have to fight equipment its never been paired against in the previous system. For example, american/brit players never had to fight against Tiger IIs before…they don’t really have anything equivalent yet.
Yes, they can use their planes to fight it, but it means they don’t get the benefit of having armored ground support while the Germans do. It limits their options. Also, the Germans need only build AA guns to then counter Ally air, effectively countering both their vehicle options.