Right now—the gap between BR2 and BR1 is more or less going to widen. When I play BR1, I’m here to enjoy the pure fun of bolt-action rifles, where bolt-action rifles are the mainstay and tanks rely mostly on machine guns too. Sometimes the balance gets broken because of the presence of BR2 weapons or vehicles, and the impact of this is really significant. That’s why players don’t really stick around BR1; they basically move up to BR2 or even BR3 just to steamroll lower-tier opponents, though BR1 ends up feeling even more hopeless.
Since the game hasn’t shown any signs of adding a BR6 or locking BR4 so far, I think we should give BR1 a try. It would let those starter weapons shine again.
On the other hand, there’s also a chance that machine-gun-only tanks like the Panzer I and the Matilda Mark I could be added in the future. Locking them to BR1 would give these vehicles a proper niche to thrive in.
Besides, this kind of early-war scenario actually lasted for a while during the real World War II
No, no—this might be way too absolute. To put it another way, I’ll quote a line from Fortress Besieged: “People outside the wall are dying to get in; people inside the wall are dying to get out.”
We could first take a look at the Chinese server of Enlisted—they’ve already implemented BR-specific lockouts. Right now, Germany’s BR2 is really strong. That’s because Allied players are moving up to BR3 to bully the Germans, leaving BR2 underpopulated, which in turn makes the Axis overpowered there. BR4 and BR5 are fairly balanced though, since both sides are more or less evenly matched. Another factor is that the Chinese server actually fills in the gaps with bots, while the international server scrapped that feature long ago. The reason is Anton doesn’t want players to earn credits easily. Over here, when there aren’t enough players, we end up waiting ages for a match. It’s also a matter of philosophy—Anton is just too stingy. Meanwhile, the Chinese server hands out tons of credits via lottery draws, so they don’t even care about this stuff.
So here’s the thing—the Chinese server wants to get rid of this system, while the international server community is pushing to add it. I think we’d be better off adopting a middle ground. BR1 and BR4 are the most critical—let’s start with those two first.
The issue between BR I and II comes down to mainly the much stronger SMGs of BR II that make the usage of anything else feel unrewarding, difficult and obsolete in comparison. That becomes even more apparent when you take into consideration that most maps favour close-quarter combat to capture objectives, which are often small, cramped and inside buildings, thus favouring fully automatic weaponry.
As for tanks, there isn’t really much of a gap. BR I tanks can often frontally pen BR II without any issues, maybe except for the T-50 on Soviets. BR I infantry can stand up to BR II tanks easily via Explo packs, TNT charges and even the AT rifles, so that isn’t an issue either. The up-armoured Pz.3N was moved to BR III so it no longer dominates this BR bracket.
Locking BR I to itself would be nice, if it would not result in BR II going up against BR III, where the gap is even larger. Additionally there’d be no reason to use BR II bolties, they’d be pain to use against SMGs and would have to put up with BR III semis.
Tbh, I think a better solution for the BR I vs BR II question, would be to disallow SMG squad cycling spam with or/and limit the number of such weapons per squad as I believe this issue mainly stems from over levelled veterans coming to lower BR and breaking the ecosystem via utilizing multiple squads of the same specialization whilst also abusing the strongest weapon available at that BR.
PZ3j1 & grb vs KV aint exactly fun.
KV vs panther also isnt exactly fun.
So +/-0 for all BR’s is more than justified.
Also alot easier to balance out specific BR without having to think about possibility of uptiering or downtiering.
Good idea, but not applicable as the player base is not large enough to cover for such change, or at least not anymore. Don’t know about other regions but in Europe it takes around 1 - 2 minutes to get into a match in a BR I - III bracket and even then you usually have at least 1-3 bots per team, exception being the weekends of course.
Secondly, distribution of players across BRs would be too uneven, leading to more one-sided matches or rather stomps at that point. Each faction has it’s preferred BRs, where most play and weak BRs where most don’t play.
Perfect example is US BR IV which has little to offer. US BR III has good weapons and better balanced since there’s much less of a chance to play with BR V. So BR IV US would be pretty much empty.
Same goes for BR II GE, no reason to suffer against PPS-42 spam, while fielding mostly paper-thin tanks. The weaponry isn’t very enticing either unless you’re purely there for the feel of certain favourites like the MP40 or ZB-26. So might as well stick to BR I or go for BR III.
The feature works now because it is BR 1+/-, so it can cover more matches, but if it were BR 0+/- then it would no longer suffice. Plus there’s too little people playing “join any” right now, making it BR 0+/- would only make this number even lower and less efficient at filling lobbies and balancing matches across BRs.
Yeah GE on BR II is easy to find, because nobody wants to play against BR II Soviets. Did some games on “join any” some days ago. Every match we dropped in with GE and Soviets, we were on GE side. However I then tried Soviets and US and those had much higher wait time, Soviets being the worst due to not having Japan yet. So if there’s already such a problem at this BR, imagine locking it into a BR 0+/- system.
Like I said, secluding BRs into their own space would only strangle the player base more. But limiting the usage of certain assets or disallowing busted squad cycling like SMGs squads on BR II for Soviets, could work in favour of balancing BR 1+/- system, so there’d be no need to separate individual BRs, well maybe except for BR V tbh.
You’re talking as if everyone is using “join any” instead of keeping to their favourite BR and faction, it’s weapons and vehicles. The “join any” group is a small minority of players, not even close to a third of the player base which would be needed in case of this suggested BR change.
There’s little incentive to fill in for stomping matchups which aren’t fun even with the 50% bonus. At least currently there’s at least a chance of getting a down tiered player in an unfavourable BR that could sway the tide of battle.
Wouldn’t be even regardless, since certain BRs favour specific factions too hard. You’d just be at a disadvantage anyway. If average players already struggle due to certain individuals abusing OP weapon cycles, imagine a match where instead of facing 1-4 of those, you face a full team of them. GL at that point.
day 1 from merge my opinion was just do it. Its a catch 22. you dont have enough players so your MM is too big (makes balance a nightmare and shitty dead BRS)…because of this, likely not to get enough players anyway because “meh” experience…
So just get it over with. At least BR 1 shoulda been seperate from day one
We get more and more bots in our games as time goes on anyway, and I have got used to playing with bots in custom match mode, so it wouldn’t be a huge deal for me, but it might get me playing more general games then I currently do now. Every person playing in custom matches is a player not available for the general mode. I really have no desire for the general mode anymore. I don’t have to deal with maps and modes I despise.
Understandable, I guess everybody prefers even ground more than being challenged. Well, given most seem to agree with the change to lock BRs, I’ll wait for what the devs cook up and the outcome of such changes.
BRI doesn’t get played because there’s not much there. The iconic weapons are at least at BR2 and BR1 is just hitting new players, even more so than BR2 which often feels like you’re sealclubbing.
