That actually depends on which ones you get. Some can be done fast, others rely on luck (win x amount of matches while achieving y). And you can only switch a limited amount for free (SL) each day.
I agree with most of what you said here, as well as with the notion that fun should trump realism every time. But I come to a very different conclusion than you.
Recently, my most played vehicle in game has been the Jagdtiger. Many reasons why I love it, which I won’t get into now, but one of the things I find very rewarding about it, and really 6.7 in general, is that shot placement is incredibly important. A big tank destroyer with a giant “f you” gun would basically be able to click and pen almost anywhere at lower BRs. Not so here: either you meet light vehicles that require you to aim your APHE for crew location (less they simply overpen and pass through without damage), or you meet enemy mediums (let alone heavies) with lots of sloped armour that you can’t just expect to lolpen. You need to memorise weakspots religiously or you’re screwed.
This is even truer because in the current “meta” (god I hate that word), heavies are at a severe disadvantage. This is a balance problem that I hope gets rectified soon, and the recently announced decompression is a good step, but still, generally speaking: if you have an 18s reload, and you’re usually pitted against opponents with autoloaders and greater pen than yours (if lower postpen damage), you need to make every shot count. Period.
This is where I come to bushes. First defensively, and then in terms of the shooting skills and weak spot memorisation we’ve both been talking about.
Defensively, bushes make my Jagdtiger a lot more viable. They’re part of the layers of security onion, beyond just relying on armour. “Don’t get spotted/hit” is always the first, of course, but in a prolonged engagement - especially if you’re 1v2 or 1v3, you need to stay alive in-between those 18s of reload. That means angling between shots, wriggling unpredictably in place, moving the gun so you don’t get barreled. And good bush placement also allows you to survive far more often in these situations.
This is true for all heavies, and some more than others. Tiger II P is a completely different tank now that I’ve bushed it up. And lol, the Sturmtiger, don’t even get me started :D
Mobility is always an advantage. This is especially and acutely true in a game built on capping points. Armour is always a disadvantage, and quite literally dead weight, up until the point that it actually guarantees a bounce. And while you can mitigate the lack of armour in a variety of ways; you can’t do much to mitigate a lack of mobility.
Vehicles that sacrifice everything for armour protection (they’re slow and have either mediocre guns, or good guns with long reloads) can’t actually benefit from said armour protection, if the game is balanced in such a way that even very light and fast vehicles can cheese their way through your frontal armour. This is why, while many people have rightly the image of an invisible bushed-up ASU 57 or AML in mind, I’d argue that the biggest beneficiaries of bushes are actually heavies, even more so in the current imbalanced situation that greatly penalises them.
(Of course that is realistic, and the reason why heavies went away IRL, but like we’ve established, fun is more important than realism, and there’s no reason to have a vehicle in game if it is not competitive).
Now, let’s come to the question of bushes from the offensive perspective. You say bushes nullify your skills of ID’ing the tank and having weak spots memorised. I agree to an extent with the former, but not with the latter. Countless times I’ve spotted, say, a bushed-up IS tank at a distance and wondered, is that an IS-3 or an IS-6? Obviously that is a moment of indecision, because while their respective weak spots to an APHE shot are somewhat similar, they’re not exactly overlapping. But you can aim for the tracks or the gun, and do real damage, while also knowing that the “hit cam” will show you what tank you’re engaging (even in simulator!).
And once you know it… you can still aim for the weak spot. Yes, the tank is covered in bushes, but you’re familiar with its proportions, size… and when you get it right, it feels incredibly rewarding. One-tapping an IS-6 absolutely covered in bushes at 1600m through the gun mantlet weak spot at Sands Of Sinai is an amazing dopamine rush. And just as skill-based as locating and hitting the same weak spot on an IS-6 without bushes, in my opinion. :)
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you can’t play the game without ULQ because you are terrible.
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ULQ reduces visibility when on the ground, I don’t understand how people can play with worse vision.
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it allows them to have smaller bushes / trees etc and see through forest when people with higher quality wouldnt be able to
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Trees are sprites in ULQ, and sprites block thermals and are in general harder to look through.
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You aren’t wrong insofar as it is possible to hit weakspots on a bushed tank, but it’s more difficult than if it were non-bushed. The difficulty scales with the precision required to nail the weakspot. On an IS-6, like you mentioned, the weakspot is quite large and easy to locate bush or no bush, as it’s effectively the entire turret face to the right of the gun. Since he can never obfuscate where the barrel is, you always have an anchor to place your shot, just aim at the gun and aim slightly to the right.
But a more common example is the machine gun port on the Jumbo. The entire front of a Jumbo can be hidden by bushes (Particularly easily with the 6 bush pack), and the machine gun port is a small target that isn’t particularly close to anything you can use to anchor your aim. You can eventually find your way in through using the hitcam, but this requires a lot of shots, giving him ample time to respond, even if it’s only by barreling you. And that’s a reaction time he only has because he’s bushed, and I was unable to hit his machine gun port with my first or second shots.
This generally holds true for any weakspot that is either small, not close to any unhidable part of the tank, or bracketed by strong armor. Take the Maus posted just above. I know his armor is weakest where the turret normalizes, which is roughly in line with his guns. But I also know it has a mantlet at that same level that will eat my shot, and if I aim too far out, something like 90mm HEAT won’t kill his crew. And if he’s moving his turret, that’s a third variable. The same holds true for tanks like the T-54s, Tiger IIs, Pershings, Panthers and plenty of other tanks. And that’s just ones with vulnerable turrets. Turret rings are far easier to obscure. Yes, the hitcam will eventually let me put the shots where they need to go, but it hands them a massive advantage in the time it takes me to line up a shot I should have been able to make from the first second.
I’m not going to touch on the overall heavy versus light balance, since it’s somewhat off topic, except to say armor’s value is in giving you a reaction time advantage. If you have good armor, your opponent either has to take extra time to pick out a weakspot accurately, or they have to rush the shot and hope it doesn’t bounce. Meanwhile, if they’re unarmored, all you have to do is line up a shot center mass and click. All being equal, you will win that fight. The Jadgtiger is a bad example of this, as it’s binary. You can either punch through the entire casemate, or you can’t. There’s no need for enemies to take the time to aim an accurate shot, you either get lolpenned, or you bounce them without risk while they scuttle into cover. Tanks like the IS-6 are a better example. in that they have a weakspot that enemies can get through, but only with careful aim.
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I disagree that the Jagdtiger is a binary as you say: many guns that can’t get through the superstructure, can still easily get through the LFP and machine gun port, which given the ammo placement, can result in a one-shot. In particular, protection is the lowest at the very corners of the LFP, right next to the tracks; even a T45 APCR round pens there and is likely to cause decent damage.
That’s why - bushed up or not - angling and wiggling in place can save you when playing it. There are further variables too, for example the Tutel’s T29E3 shot can pen the lower corners of the superstructure, but not the rest of it.
Still, again, I generally agree with your observations if not your conclusions: these are indeed added variables. A Jumbo’s machine gun port is hard enough to hit at, say, 900m even if you can plainly see it, especially because we know volumetric can be a bit finnicky in game when you’re trying to be very precise. Meanwhile, even a bushed-up Panther engaging said Jumbo is not exactly gonna be able to hide its turret cheeks (although it can if anything pray to the volumetric gods since its gun mantlet is quite broken). I just don’t see these added variables as a negation of skill, but rather part of the problems you need to solve, obstacles you’re presented with, in order to achieve “X”.
This is especially true when both sides use bushes. For this reason alone I would like to see them made slightly easier to obtain through playing, as opposed to buying it. At a very minimum, they should be available in every battle pass, not one every two. But ultimately a skilled player will also - in time - include “spotting bushes that shouldn’t be there” and “shot placement against concealed weak spots” in their toolbox of skills; and an unskilled player will not.
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Again, tell me how I can get these free when they are no longer in the warbond shop.
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Good luck getting level 57? on the battlepass, completing your daily tasks, completing your special medals so you could get your one bush per 3 months by just playing for fun.
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If it worked like that, everyone would be using it. The reality is that no matter what graphic settings I use, I will do good ;).
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Is 50+ Special Tasks medals in the Warbond shop difficult? Most of my Battle Pass levels are maxed around the end of the Battle Pass.
I want to repeat that players are not getting just a bush in 3 months; you can potentially earn premium vehicles, tailsmen, camouflage, decals, etc. within that 3 month period. All those add up to a potential value worth around 2k–3k GE (I calculated this before). I have already earned multiple premium vehicles, bushes, and tailsmen this way.
50+ special tasks medals isn’t what I would call easy, no… especially not if you’re supposed to play for fun and not for the grind, yet you have to specifically play to complete tasks for months.
Players are not getting a bush in 3 months no, because it’s no longer available in the shop, and even if it was, that’s still 1 bush for 3 months of grinding, which is ridiculous, whilst being coerced to spend more money on the battlepass and whatnot in the proces… and then do it another 5 times, again all assuming the bushes were available, which they are not.
I still don’t see how people think this is reasonable.
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Spend more money on the Battle Pass? I think I have earned more from the Battle Pass than I have spent on it consistently. Most of those Battle Pass vehicles can sell for up to 40-50 Gaijin coins, which translates to around 10k GE (5 times the cost of getting the Battle Pass). You can use that GE you bought using the Gaijin coins you earned from selling the previous Battle Pass vehicles to buy the bushes (more than enough to get 6 bushes). All of these can be done in 3 months. No offence, but I really fail to see how this is not beneficial.
Furthermore, 50+ Special Task medals are absolutely doable. I missed out on up to one full week during one Battle Pass season, and I still managed to get to the full Warbond Store level upgrade way before the Battle Pass season ends. The Battle Pass is 90 days (that is, 90 potential Special Tasks), and you can miss out on up to 40 Special Tasks, which is almost half.
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Not only ground. ULQ also reduces visibility in air battles which makes it really difficult. Sometimes aircrafts dont render if they are in front of a cloud.
Some people think ULQ gives people major advantages but thats not true.ULQ makes far objects completely pixelated which makes spotting tanks really difficult. I wont lie it does reduce some shadows which helps in some situations but spotting pixelated tanks is a difficult job even with no shadows. Disadvantages of ULQ are far greater than the advantages.
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Wait for the next warbond shop.
So the 18 month grind now becomes what, 36 months?
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I don’t think the amount of time you spend on the game is anywhere near average, 50 special tasks is playing 50 out of 90 days, completing all the dailies and completing the special medal every single one of those days, that is a lot of hours.
A newer player is also going to lack the tools to complete these tasks, as well as BP challenges.
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50 special tasks is 25 - 100 hours. Over the course of 50 days, that’s up to 2 hours a day.