TIL there is a modifier to how much tickets you lose each time you respawn - it depends on how many bots are on your team at the start of the match and this mechanic needs urgent adjustment.
We’ve spent a few hours looking at replays, no datamining or other tools used, so it’s a bit rough numbers and we may have missed something, but there are some general rules.
At the start of the match depending on how many bots are in the team you get an (x±1) as a number of tickets you lose each time you spawn - this can be as high as 13-14 tickets in a full team to as low as 7-8 tickets in a team with 8 bots which is a MASSIVE difference. The amount of tickets your team loses stays the same regarldess of the type of squad a player respawns in (spawning in a plane/tank ‘costs’ the same as spawning as infantry).
To me this looks like a mechanic added to help people in teams full of bots who got the short end of the matchmaking, essentially giving the underdog team more tickets to spare which by itself is not bad.
Problem is this modifier DOESN’T CHANGE when the bots get replaced with players joining late.
EXHIBITON A: Gaijin Entertainment - Single Sign On
Attackers have 7 bots at the start of the match - they lose 8-9 tickets per respawn.
One minute later 5 more real players join.
By the end of the match the attackers have TWO bots on their team yet they still lose 8-9 tickets per respawn as if they still had 7 bots.
EXHIBITION B:
https://enlisted.net/en/replays/#!/replay/422053366594581150
Zero bots on the attacking team - they lose 12-13 tickets per spawns. I’ve also seen one guy costing the team 14 tickets at 28:04 but atm I can’t figure out why.
EXHIBITION C:
https://enlisted.net/ru/replays/#!/replay/422047190431608736
8 bots at the start - 7-8 tickets per respawn.
By the end of the match they have 7 real people (and 3 leavers) and they are still losing 7-8 AND EVEN 6 tickets (timestamp 17:45 - 2 people spawn, they cost 13 tickets= 7+6)
The defenders win by time - attackers STILL have 246 tickets by the end of the match.
So if you’ve noticed how some games feel much slower than others even though the attacking team is losing tons of people, this might be why - sometimes it will take you twice as many kills to bring the enemy to a zero.
The first replay I’ve linked shows the most ridiculous scenario which can happen - the teams are pretty much balanced by real players 1 minute into the game yet the attackers’ tickets are practically doubled, giving them an unintended and frankly unfair advantage.
I urge the CMs to forward these observations to the devs to adjust this mechanic, as it clearly brings unintended and uncontrollable changes to the game balance.
One suggestion would be to make this modifier self-adjust every time the number of real pleyers changes or at least check for real players every X minutes or once an objective is captured.
I’d also like to thank fellow players nicolaij1914 and Krivoi_T64KH for coming up with the questions that lead to this discovery and staying in a call though the night staring at replays together.
Lastly, I can’t seem to attach the replay files directly in this post but I’ll be glad to add them if you guys know how.