Either you have a good game, you eat a few shots, have a good battle with a dominating team or your on the opposite and your team eats ♥♥♥♥ and you get ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ 1 shot non stop even after critting and hitting multiple times. Never any back and forth

f2p

The opening kills and pushes generally set the tone for the game. There are times where the winning team gets cocky and then gets demolished. But generally, once the first kills start happening, people are generally in spots/pushes that will remain consistent

I would say a decent chunk biased perception but mostly what sinner said - advantage feeds on advantage. The game doesn't have catch-up mechanics much.

Because the matchmaking sucks and the game itself kinda sucks most of the time too.

Occasionally you get very, very, very lucky... Mostly tanks at same BR or very few mild uptiers each side... Full teams of determined players who play to the end...

Even if you lose one of those matches is actually fun. Too bad they're uncommon.

practice and stuff like that. this game uses skill and learning your vehicle and using some sense like asking yourself how easy and well you can be exposed. try to limite the amount of directions you worry about getting shot from

Just roflstomping any team with fast vechiles, ruining their paths and camping. Its normal

Because your opening moves tend to be the most important. If all the fighters go "MINE MINE MINE!" on some low flying attacker/dive bomber then they have already lost because all the enemy fighters are now above them. That's just one example.

Originally posted by Sir Harlz:

Because your opening moves tend to be the most important. If all the fighters go "MINE MINE MINE!" on some low flying attacker/dive bomber then they have already lost because all the enemy fighters are now above them. That's just one example.

That's a big one.

Especially when the shoulder shooting really starts going nuts.

Originally posted by Leonov:

Originally posted by Sir Harlz:

Because your opening moves tend to be the most important. If all the fighters go "MINE MINE MINE!" on some low flying attacker/dive bomber then they have already lost because all the enemy fighters are now above them. That's just one example.

That's a big one.

Especially when the shoulder shooting really starts going nuts.

This^ is especially dangerous in air AB as the high volume of players leads to 5 or 6 planes all trying to kill the same enemy and end up slamming into and shooting each other.

Though I would say another very important thing for air battles is who you got paired up with, the vast majority of my 5.7 RB matches for example are with level 80+ players who are either playing JU-288c's for SL or flying aircraft that they love and are extremely good at using so teams working together and using the chat is a constant, in those matches its not a matter of who has better pilots (players) because both teams are practically equal what matters is who has the SL grinders, if the enemy gets matched up with them, the most likely end result is that they lose, if you get matched up with them, you lose. But the wider point is that the type of players you get matched up with can vary or be constant/predictable and the nations they play can often ensure a victory or loss despite however skill the pilot may be long before the first target is spotted. Personally I like it as it makes planes like the Ta and Spitfire a small wild card which due to the climb rate and speed might save the JU-288's or kill them early leading to the enemy team having more fresh planes to fight the enemy fighters, it makes otherwise one side matches pretty fun as the game revolves around the nations and bomber wing rather than the fighters and attackers like in 3.7 or lower or higher BR's like 11.0.

As for OP, I assume you are talking about ground battles but even if its naval or something I personally think that the match maker feels rigged because of how even on the same map with the same opening moves the outcome can still change, I had two matches on korelia recently where both teams did the same thing in both matches, rushed A and C, ignored B and then the players who died swapped to planes and bombed the respawned tank players BUT in the first match it failed as the players on my team just kept spawning and the enemy air force was unable to halt the advance of AC1's, B1-Ters and T-50's leading to us washing over the americans and germans while in the second match most players on my team left after the air assault started leading to a loss. This happens a lot in top tier where one match your team will endlessly respawn and in the next they leave after the first death leading to it feeling one sided as the enemy or your team collapses quickly in one match and won't give up in the next. However, I just had a match that defy's this principle as there were no one death leavers, my team absolutely dominated the enemy but the enemy in turn never gave up, the minimal number of deaths for their team was 3, 3 or more per player and on top of that I had won the match prior so I should have lost but my own team just kept fighting too, we turned aral sea into a tank graveyard.

So while the match maker may feel rigged (and possibly is) not every match going to be: you won last time so you lose this time, like in my 5.7 air RB matches, its a mix of the match maker, player nations, preferences of vehicles and often the opening moves which all combine to determine the result of a match.

on the ground one side is always doomed to have a bunch of quiters, who dropp out after the one vehicle they did bring (most of the time a premium) dies starting a sometimes slow, sometimes extremly fast spiral of people being outnumbered, frustrated, not spawning or quiting as well.
Often it is not the team that gets the most early kills that win, but the ones who's players actually respawn.
I seen teams with 12 to 3 deaths early, win easy cause the 3 deaths instandly left while the other side kept spawning

Also depends what map. Ardennes could be decided if the entire enemy team goes for A which basically dooms them, but on maps like White Rock fortress its quite the back and forth type of match

The game has a real bad vicious cycle, something most developers try to prevent. If one side is doing badly, then it will get harder to do well.

The skill balance is pretty bad, most matches are coming down to which side will have the two or three players that can get multiple kills. This actually forms a sort of skill based matchmaking, because the one and done will return to the matchmaker while the high skill players will stay in the game and not join new matches.

An example, I was in RB ground on a map about 500 meters away from a light tank in the open while I was in an M4 sherman. I miss multiple rounds because I can't gauge distance and I can't tell if I'm overshooting or undershooting because the ground explosion just melts into the graphics of the tank I'm shooting at. Meanwhile, the other guy's 37mm keeps hitting my front even though he's on the move. Only my armor saves me.

About the 5th shot I finally take his engine out, 6th shot takes his cannon out. 7, 8,9,and 10 all miss. In my mind they are all aimed, but I must have moved my mouse. Finally 11 hits and ends this.

Guy spawns in a plane, I see him coming, unload main cannon and MG's too no effect and he litterally hits my plane with a 1000#. I mean literally, it bounces off my turret. It's hard for me to hit bases with a low level bombing run without using the bomb sight view, and this guy can directly hit a tank. On my screen the little circle and big circle were right on the plane diving in, and the tracers are going through the plane. That doesn't mean I'm hitting him. In the game, there are these weird offsets from the aim circle and where the bullets are going in third person.

There is no way a team made up of people like me are going to have a balanced game versus people like that. It's entirely coming down to those two or three people who can play like that.

So you end up getting a game where only 1 in 5 matches are competitive. There are two ways this get's fixed, either low skill players turn into high skill players or low skill players play something else. In my case, I just play AB rank 1 most of the time and have fun not caring about all the stuff that you're supposed to do in the other parts of the game.

Originally posted by FizzyElf:

Originally posted by Leonov:

That's a big one.

Especially when the shoulder shooting really starts going nuts.

This^ is especially dangerous in air AB as the high volume of players leads to 5 or 6 planes all trying to kill the same enemy and end up slamming into and shooting each other.

Air AB? No, I see this everyday in Toptier RB. Braindeads in a flock rushing after someone they cant ever catch by that wasting time and teammates lives XD

most players are realyl braindead...

I left WT in summer 2018, only to return in fall 2021, and the difference in skill is immense.

Back in 2017, in Air RB, everybody would climb and leave a lonely attacker being useless and have some fun (because attackers rarely decided tha match on most maps). back in the day, the timer was also 1h and not 25 minutes.... anyway, most battles were played high and playing japan was a pain because verybody knew how to BnZ you.

Now, everybody just drops down to get that lonely attacker and then the FW turnfight you in a zero. High altitude battles have nearly dissapeared...

Originally posted by ulzgoroth:

I would say a decent chunk biased perception but mostly what sinner said - advantage feeds on advantage. The game doesn't have catch-up mechanics much.

Not just that, in RB that advantage is also spawnpoints. 1 death can feed multiple players SP through the kill and all who got an assist. When a single death can potentially get multiple people a points for another spawn. And spawncost being lowered with successful scouts it isnt hard to snowball.