It’s very common to get 6000+ xp in Squads and much less in Lone Fighter. The disparity between the two modes means if you want xp or progress towards your campaign, you are objectively losing out whenever you are play the Lone Fighter mode over Squads.
The reason being you have more opportunities to earn score in Squads since you command more units at once, and you have more targets to shoot as well. If you wipe out 10 soldiers as an attack pilot doing a bombing run, that’s only roughly 2 players killed. It amounts to 300 score when you do that. If you wipe out 4 players in Lone Fighter, that’s 120 score. Those 4 player kills were twice as hard to get, but yield less than half the score. And score is generally a near 1 to 1 to xp.
It’s bad because it’s not the main mode in the game and there isn’t enough feedback, I myself like squads much more, but know about a lot of people who prefer lone fighter. The problem is that the game itself punishes you for playing lone fighter meaning it gets lower number of players, meaning it doesn’t get room to improve. Like the mode or not, there should be an xp modifier to boost the score to be at least similar to squads on avarage.
Why? Just because you don’t like it, means no one else can like it and have fun/rewards in it? Everyone is forced to like Squads, in which you go around shooting dumb bots that barely fight back? Oh I get it…
Lone fighters is the scummiest mode I have played, goes against one of the things that DEFINES the game: AI squads, and is just not fun. Had so many hackers, so many people camping in bushes and doing all the tryhard stupid shit. Good. The focus should be on the actual game modes, not the mode that is horrible and goes against what sets this game apart from the rest of the highly populated crowd.
I still don’t understand why the mode should be bad just because you don’t like it. I for one don’t like Squads. I don’t enjoy shooting entities that barely fight back. I don’t enjoy bots stepping on my toes and blocking my way all the time while also giving my position away. I prefer the challenge that Lone Fighters offers. It’s scummy sometimes, indeed, but so is war. Adapt and overcome.
This sounds a lot like Arcade Battles vs Realistic Battles on War Thunder. Clearly just preferences, but because someone likes one, doesn’t mean the other should be shit. There are people that like the other mode and don’t like the one you do. It’s that simple.
Lone Fighters should have XP rates adjusted indeed, just like Realistic Battles do in War Thunder. Because it’s a harder mode to play you get less kills per game, therefore, they need to be more valuable so as to keep both modes balanced.
My problem with Squads and why I don’t like it so much is the revenge kill playstyle that permeates the game mode.
Oops, you killed the human leader of the squad first? He is now going to switch to his A.I. companion and beam you with his death wallhacks that outlined where you, the killer, was. Best way to stop this revenge meta is for his entire squad to be in view and mow them all down with your automatic weapon so the human player is literally dying over and over again as he tries to switch to his next body double. Yay! All the more reason to engage with the automatic weapon meta in the game that I hate so much!
There are many many many other problems with introducing A.I. too a competitive PVP shooter. You spoke of people crawl hiding in the grass and snow. And that’s because it makes them hard to see against the colours of the ground. This is annoying sure. What’s more annoying is bots don’t see like humans, so they instantly shoot at you no matter how clever you think you are acting or hiding. I hid behind a janky building made out of wooden planks once, I was stupid enough to aggro them and then hide in the building to break the line of sight. Unfortunate for me, the bots can see through that building because it isn’t a solid entity. So they shot me and shot me through the non-visible building until they finally got me.
Then there are planes and bots. Bots give you easy 10 man kill feeds all the time because their stupid clustering out in the open. They also damage your plane if you go too low because you’ve triggered their kill aggro radious) And, as a plane player, I sometimes like getting out of the plane and trying to go on a killing spree behind enemy lines. It takes a lot of skill to do this on a map that has no water and very little flat land. My reward for doing it in squads? I get instantly beamed by the bots who locked onto me and they kill me before my feet can even touch the ground as I drop less than 3 feet. Humans wouldn’t even think to look at a plane crash in this game because plenty of people suck at plane driving and crash often. The bots on the other hand act like T-1000s in these situations (because planes flying near them aggro them like crazy). That’s fun!
Then we have bot A.I. being abusable. When sneaking up behind player squads, pull out the knife as a lone unit and knife them all down as they do nothing. Why? Because knife swings doesn’t aggro like a gun shot does. Also, you get to pick off bots from a range and they forget you exist once you break line of sight and go back to following the host player. So snipe peak all the host bots into oblivion then kill the player last once.
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FYI, Lone Fighter also has bots rarely. They can fill player spots during inactive times because this game has 12 different matchmaking pools. And these types of Lone Fighters bots are like the Squad A.I. bots, except on steroids with pre-programmed paths. Maybe that’s who you think are the hackers in Lone Fighter. Because I’ll tell you, these bots in Lone Fighters do act like hackers at times with their line of sight and instant aggro once they see you, and their being able to see you through certain things that humans can not see through very well (or at all).
People who like squads should be encouraged to play it if that’s there jam. I have no problem with PVE modes existing or being rewarding. I just want the reward payouts of Lone Fighter to rival Squads. So I can play the mode I want to play without feeling like I’m wasting my time getting 1/2 the xp.
Well honestly what do you think will happen when you start acting a group of soldiers and take out their leader. Do you think they’ll just go oh well and let you kill the rest of them peacefully? Firing a weapon is loud and gives away your position as well. I don’t understand the line of thinking you are going for, unless you just want to take out a bunch of people without getting shot at?
I want human like reactions from the squads I attack. The problem with a leader repossessing his troops after he dies is he had knowledge from his death that makes him harder to deal with than if I were shooting at 5 different human players instead. Dudes in Squads be out here like Subaru rewinding time and replaying a death after they made a mistake.
A reaction from 5 players in a human squad varies. Some people push on and try to continue their death run to cover. Some try to get revenge or shoot back (without the knowledge the person who died had). Some have the knowledge of their friend because he’s talking to them on the mic post death. Some don’t even notice anything because they have tunnel vision or are blind/deaf. The bots all synchronously turn towards me when I shoot at them and begin revenge aggro mode until I break line of sight. Which I don’t like.