I need second opinion...

[quickr]

...cos I'm going crazy over here.

 

Let me adjust my tin foil hat. There. Ok, so the thing is. Last couple of ... months?... maybe a year?, I've been noticing that I'm not scoring as much citadels as I did before. Ships sail full broadside in front of me, 5km off, 10km off, 20km off... Overpens, overpens, overpens... No matter the ship, armour, distance, calibre. Where used to be a citadel, now I'm seeing nothing but overpens and ricochets. Then I check stats of players that kept sailing broadside entire game and it's usually 44-48% players. Players, that clearly don't know what they were doing and I as an (above?) average player should be able to delete them in 1-2 salvos. But it doesn't happen.

 

Why did I put tin foil hat? Cos I, please don't laugh, honestly think there is some "noob protection" in play. Something preventing me from deleting those bad players and ending their game short.

 

Or there was some patch that I missed that removed citadel from ships? Or instead of improving my aim over 16k+ games I'm actually getting worse? Or game mechanics (shells randomly falling short for exmpl.) are completely broken?

 

At this point I honestly don't know what is happening. I fire a salvo, I expect one outcome but receive another one completely different.

 

Please bring another perspective. I need to hear that I'm not going crazy

[Migantium_Mashum]

I know your pain...

 

Yesterday, I am on my GK, I have a Henri turn full broadside to me so I fire both front and aft turrets at him..

 

Now Henri is full broadside at 11km... 12 shells go at him and I score 1 Hit, 8 Ricochets and where the other three shells went who knows.

 

 

[ColonelPete]

The noob protection is called dispersion.

 

When your shells do not hit the citadel, then you do not make citadel damage.

Additionally we got a lot of ships with extremly fast AP in the last years, which tend to overpen broadside enemies, that are too close.

[FixCVs_Nautical_Metaphor]

It is not the first time that the years-old "shells falling short" bug that WG refuses to fix, has been labelled "deliberate noob protection".

[quickr]

11 minutes ago, ColonelPete said:

When your shells do not hit the citadel, then you do not make citadel damage.

OMG That is amazing!!!! Next thing you'll tell me when I lose all my HP i die?

 

 

[GarrusBrutus]

32 minutes ago, quickr said:

Cos I, please don't laugh, honestly think there is some "noob protection" in play.

100%. It goes the other way around too: an enemy player shoots at me and completely misses only for this one stray shell to magically citadel me. Check his profile after the game: 43% wr.

And how many times have you seen squishy cruisers reverse from an island only for your salvo to completely land around him? Check profile: Complete noob.

[quickr]

4 minutes ago, GarrusBrutus said:

100%. It goes the other way around too: an enemy player shoots at me and completely misses only for this one stray shell to magically citadel me. Check his profile after the game: 43% wr.

And how many times have you seen squishy cruisers reverse from an island only for your salvo to completely land around him? Check profile: Complete noob.

I hope you are not pulling my leg here If you are being serious then thank god I'm not the only one experiencing this

 

 

 

[ReapingKnight]

I raised an issue similar to this but was told to "git gud". I However believe that from this explanation as well as some replies about the "noob" shooting back and getting cits maybe the RNG of dispersion is negatively impacting good aim 🤔

 

Discuss 😁

[HMS_Kilinowski]

55 minutes ago, quickr said:

...cos I'm going crazy over here.

 

Let me adjust my tin foil hat. There. Ok, so the thing is. Last couple of ... months?... maybe a year?, I've been noticing that I'm not scoring as much citadels as I did before. Ships sail full broadside in front of me, 5km off, 10km off, 20km off... Overpens, overpens, overpens... No matter the ship, armour, distance, calibre. Where used to be a citadel, now I'm seeing nothing but overpens and ricochets. Then I check stats of players that kept sailing broadside entire game and it's usually 44-48% players. Players, that clearly don't know what they were doing and I as an (above?) average player should be able to delete them in 1-2 salvos. But it doesn't happen.

 

Why did I put tin foil hat? Cos I, please don't laugh, honestly think there is some "noob protection" in play. Something preventing me from deleting those bad players and ending their game short.

 

Or there was some patch that I missed that removed citadel from ships? Or instead of improving my aim over 16k+ games I'm actually getting worse? Or game mechanics (shells randomly falling short for exmpl.) are completely broken?

 

At this point I honestly don't know what is happening. I fire a salvo, I expect one outcome but receive another one completely different.

 

Please bring another perspective. I need to hear that I'm not going crazy

 

Yes, I often spray all around a beached player and citadels don't come easy. But maybe we have become so confident in our skills, that dispersion really takes its toll. Dispersion is a noob protection by design. It helps the people who can't aim and punishes the players who aim carefully. This effect is more noticeable the more your aim improves.

We have salvos falling short, we had server lag. All these things went unnoticed in the times when Jingles still made videos on T5 ships. Now that the core playerbase is progressively understanding the game, such things get more attention.

 

28 minutes ago, ColonelPete said:

The noob protection is called dispersion.

 

When your shells do not hit the citadel, then you do not make citadel damage.

Additionally we got a lot of ships with extremly fast AP in the last years, which tend to overpen broadside enemies, that are too close.

 

Come on, occasionally you should realize when a topic is made by an experienced player, who knows the trade and has given out expert advice himself. Don't give him the noob-treatment, please.

[NewHorizons_1]

Not sure it's related, but I started to notice I scored more citadels if I didn't give quite enough lead.

Shells hitting amidships = overpen while shells hitting the stern = full pen or citadel.

It's almost like the server seems to think the ship is a little behind where the game client thinks it is.

So, in effect the overpens we're seeing on hits amidships are actually recorded, by the server, as hits through the bow.

[quickr]

5 minutes ago, HMS_Kilinowski said:

has given out expert advice himself.

Hardly but I appreciate the kind words

 

6 minutes ago, HMS_Kilinowski said:

Yes, I often spray all around a beached player and citadels don't come easy.

Yeah, dispersion can be a bi**h from time to time. I'm talking about actual hits on hull. Shells going into the ship and doing nothing. That's what is bothering me.

[GarrusBrutus]

On a related note: The "pittadel" is also a thing. Shoot at a target for multiple salvoes, no cits. Target gets to about 5% hp. Citadel kill shot. Sure game, sure.

[quickr]

Just now, GarrusBrutus said:

On a related note: The "pittadel" is also a thing. Shoot at a target for multiple salvoes, no cits. Target gets to about 5% hp. Citadel kill shot. Sure game, sure.

That happens a lot. Didn't know it had a name

[ColonelPete]

19 minutes ago, HMS_Kilinowski said:

Come on, occasionally you should realize when a topic is made by an experienced player, who knows the trade and has given out expert advice himself. Don't give him the noob-treatment, please.

He asked for an explanation. That is the explanation.

[AkerJack]

40 minutes ago, quickr said:

OMG That is amazing!!!! Next thing you'll tell me when I lose all my HP i die?

 

 

Only if you lose them all

[GulvkluderGuld]

5 minutes ago, ColonelPete said:

He asked for an explanation. That is the explanation.

Agree with Kilinowski. Do you happen to posses proof there are no bugs in the game? He's an experienced player and he suspects a bug (or "feature") have been introduced. It's not like there's a shortage of spaghetti code bugs already, so evidence is on his side. 

[NewHorizons_1]

36 minutes ago, GarrusBrutus said:

On a related note: The "pittadel" is also a thing. Shoot at a target for multiple salvoes, no cits. Target gets to about 5% hp. Citadel kill shot. Sure game, sure.

Yup, like this :-

First time I citadelled a Bismarck .... on around 500HP

 

[ColonelPete]

55 minutes ago, GulvkluderGuld said:

Agree with Kilinowski. Do you happen to posses proof there are no bugs in the game? He's an experienced player and he suspects a bug (or "feature") have been introduced. It's not like there's a shortage of spaghetti code bugs already, so evidence is on his side. 

• a bug would affect all players, it does not, and it does not match his theory
• as a new feature, it would improve the performance of bad player and reduce performance of good players, we do not see that either

[Miragetank90]

You came to believe that you were, over time, getting less citadels than before and that there must be a reason for it. Fine and well. 

You had suspicions and the one you settled on was that there might be some noob protecting occurring. You checked their stats in those cases and confirmed your theory that such ''protected'' players were indeed usually noobs, since they fall within the appropriate stat category. It's worth noting however that this is also the category within which, unless I'm mistaken, a majority of or at least a very significant number of WoWs players fall.

 

So, are you getting less citadels than before? Sure, maybe. Is it because one group got handicapped and/or another got stealth buffed overnight? No. 

Confirmation bias is more likely. 

 

 

Expectations in outcomes, especially which are not entirely in one's control lead to frequent disappointment. 

Your direct control extends to aiming and lowering maximum dispersion ellipses. These don't guarantee cits even under perfect conditions. 

 

Expect nothing and reap the rewards as and when. 

[lup3s]

3 hours ago, Miragetank90 said:

Expect nothing and reap the rewards as and when. 

 

Sounds like those new PA CLs 

[Miragetank90]

2 minutes ago, lup3s said:

 

Sounds like those new PA CLs 

 

PA CLs sound a lot like life then.

[tocqueville8]

 

[tocqueville8]

On 3/30/2022 at 10:20 AM, quickr said:

Or there was some patch that I missed that removed citadel from ships? Or instead of improving my aim over 16k+ games I'm actually getting worse?

 

I think it's easy to get sloppy and forget that some cruisers have fairly small citadels: for instance, the Aoba's is underwater underneath the gun turrets, so you really have to go for under the superstructure.

[_HomTanks_]

6 hours ago, quickr said:

Please bring another perspective. I need to hear that I'm not going crazy

I had this feeling and thought for a long time too. But i can't prove it, and since i can't prove there is a noob protection, i don't want to comment and make speculation about it. All i know is, there has been this short falling of shells problem and i doubt it's been completely fixed. Another important point is the RNG itself. The RNG plays the most part in this game and we'd never know if it'd been set up in a way to reduce the skill gap between players, but it could've been the case. I mean, if something has been done, it must be on the RNG-end.

[quickr]

2 hours ago, WgPlsNerfColorado said:

I had this feeling and thought for a long time too. But i can't prove it, and since i can't prove there is a noob protection, i don't want to comment and make speculation about it.

I had this feeling for at least a year now but like you said, no way to prove it. Today I had some really dodgy games, hits that just HAD TO BE citadel but they weren't so I decided to make a post and see if someone else experienced the same or I'm just going crazy