The current incentive is “click it if you want to reduce waiting time”.
But the waiting time is usually 30-45 seconds ot near instant anyway.
In fact, I would wholeheartedly support the decision to wait 3-5 minutes for a match to start if this meant better balance and less uptier/downtier players.
For example, if I was starting the game as BR3, the MM should spend the first 2 minutes looking for other players with BR3 only, then the next 2 minutes adding players with BR2 or BR4, and only as last resort would it add BR1 or BR5 players to the mix (equal numbers for each side) if somehow the teams were still not full.
Personally I would much rather wait for a more historical match as well rather than see instant start in bullshit conditions (like LVT in Tunisia or Puma in Stalingrad) (I’m not even talking about Tiger 2 in Stalingrad because this insanity meeds to be fixed asap).
Now, regarding the actual possible bonuses that Join Any Team can bring:
XP bonus.
It was promised but never implement to this day.
Indeed, if I sacrifice my ability to choose a faction and agree to be used as filler for matches that need players of my BR, I should have an incentive to do so.
No uptier/downtier.
Maybe not exactly feasible with current playerbase numbers but would be great to be guaranteed a full BR1 match for example if I agree to give up my faction selection privileges but instead I can play within my BR1 without facing BR3’s Pz IV J every game.
Free choice of XP allocation faction post match.
Since I am sacrificing my ability to choos5my faction, it wouldn’t be without reason that after I complete this random faction match, I would be prompted to choose which faction I want to allocate this earned XP towards.
In this way, people who really want to grind/unlock faction X would be more open to playing as another random faction since they would still be able to progress their faction X in Join Any Team matches.
I guess the elephant in the room is how desertion would effect the “join any team” bonus.
If I can just desert some matches until I get my main faction through the “join any team” button and also get the XP bonus it kinda defeats the purpose, in fact the additional desertions would make matches even worse.
Another question is how large should the XP bonus be?
Honestly if it is just a +50% XP I wouldn’t even bother. But I also don’t see DF being generous enough to give out something larger than a 50% bonus.
I agree with this, the 3rd option is best. Just gain exp points that you can use on any faction you like.
That’s equivalent to a 4x exp boost, assuming you want to level 1 faction but join at random. Except no dev in the history of devs would ever have given a 400% exp boostfor something like this, but global exp points sound much more manageable.
When I first saw exp under the silver currency on the research tree, I actually thought they already were global. Because silver is. I think it’d be intuitive to make them global.
To be fair I do see how it can be exploited e.g. by using German top BR to earn loads of XP and avoid playing e.g. Japan low BR.
But then again the free allocation privilege could be taken away if you start quitting games.
Yeah I giess one quit would be fine, like I will never play Stalingrad on BR 4-5, but then it should be clear that you can’t keep quitting and expect to have the XP bonus.
Not really? You’re still playing 1 match and getting just that match XP, not x4.
You want to level only a single faction. Joining randomly gives you a 25% chance to actually play that faction, which means 25% of the overall exp you earn in all your matches actually go to that faction.
If exp were global, you could receive 100% of your overall exp and put it all into this one faction, which is 4x as much as 25%.
That is why making exp global = keeping the current exp system with a 4x multiplier.
Ever played War Thunder? 50%-90% of all your matches are uptiers. In a game where BR is truly important because your cannon and ammo may not be able to pen that +1.0 tank, but you know darn well they can just click on you and delete you
I don’t think you can ever make it to where uptiers are less common, unless you want a 5 queue which would just suck all the fun out of this game. After that, this game would truly become War Thunder: Infantry Edition cause the only thing left would be the grind. Lol
But anyways, I don’t see why everyone has an issue with III fighting I’s and V’s. Let them have a little fun toying with I’s, and let them bully V’s with “inferior” guns
You’re not quadrupling your earn rate. You’re just concentrating where your earn rate goes. It’d have that booster, yes, so it’ll be faster to research than single nation queueing. Still won’t be a quadruple increase in speed
…from where it currently stands when you play a single faction. But from where it currently stands when you queue as a random faction.
I can’t fully identify where your error is, but neither of the options (1. global exp, 2. 4x for random join) would end up being faster in research than current single nation gameplay.
Current exp distribution:
100% x 1 (number of factions, assuming single faction play it’s 1)
Current exp for your main faction when random queueing:
100% x 0.25
Global exp variant:
100% x 1 (but you can play on any faction so it’s always 1)
Random queue with no global exp, but a 4x multiplier:
100% x 0.25 x 4 = 100% x 1
But you can just as well play as only that faction now without randomness and receive the same 100% but there’s no x4 factor.
Well I want to play with my Gaz AAA and T-26 without being deleted by Pz IV J in every match, similarly my T-34-76 gets blasted by Tiger 2 while all I wanted to do is drive my favourite tank in a game.
if the incentive for playing a loosing side is less or equal than 50% extra, winning by default with a team (basic 1.5 bonus for winning) will still net more silver than loosing with the underdog team.
if the incentive is less than 100%, people will still go to the winning side, cause less stressful and easier to play and farm the underdog team.
if the incentive is pure XP instead of silver, playing with a faction in which such XP is not useful is still a factor for not going for the incentive by playing the underdog.
incentives are the way to go, but it must be a solid reward, balanced and useful enough as to force you to make a choice, which is actually very simple:
“do i accept i will most probably loose while earning more (and more useful) rewards, or do i choose to go for certain win, earning less (and less useful) rewards in a less stressing enviroment?”
if the choice is win earning X resources or loose earning X resources, while X being equal, which one would people choose?
Well personally I’ve already been playing Any for a while withou any extra reward/incentive and enjoying it a lot because I play to experience different fronts, factions, maps and weapons of WW2 rather than grind or main something, or even simply “win” – maybe because I have most stuff unlocked already.
However I do believe that incentives or bonuses are very much needed, as I indicated in the 1st post.