Rant Mode On.
I’ve always been a bit disappointed with what Warthunder ended up being. There’s hundreds of vehicles more or less accurately modelled, with weapons systems that are more or less accurately modelled - and yet the gameplay hasn’t progressed beyond the capture the point mechanics.
I held out hope that World War Mode would be finally produce some sort of dynamic campaign that would make us actually care about the battles we engaged in, but sadly, for whatever reason, any hope of that seems to have been lost a long while ago.
I’ve recently returned with a new account (after my old one got hacked) and I’ve played nothing but simulator since returning, but even that gets old. If any developer is reading this, I really hope you’ll take this on board. There’s a large number of players who would like nothing more than a dynamic, persistent campaign that turned Warthunder into more of an RPG - where we could even name our crews or something. It makes sense from a player population perspective too, I know I’d be more inclined to log in every day if I felt like my actions in game were having some sort of impact on a bigger picture…
Anyway, Rant Mode Off.
Since I am still looking for that elusive realistic, dynamic campaign I thought I would ask if anyone would be interested in creating one through Custom Battles? Even if it just happens on a weekly basis for a few hours.
I have a vague idea of how it might work, and I’ll give an example with an Operation Sealion scenario;
Week One: La Manche, Sea and Air Battle. Dawn.
Week Two: La Manche, Sea and Air Battle. Midday
Week Three: La Manche, Sea and Air Battle. Dusk
Week Four: La Manche, Sea and Air Battle. Night
Supposing a German win, it would then go Latish Convoy.
Week One: Latish Convoy, Sea and Air Battle. Dawn.
Week Two: Latish Convoy, Sea and Air Battle. Midday
Week Three: Latish Convoy, Sea and Air Battle. Dusk
Week Four: Latish Convoy, Sea and Air Battle. Night
Supposing another German win, it would then go to Operation Britain. Then it would go to Ground Strike Britain (Lydd) and then Ground Strike Britain (Herne Bay). Unfortunately in this scenario there are no British maps with ground combat, but maybe a map like Flanders could simulate a last stand.
If the battles go the other way, and Britain wins at La Manche, we could go Denmark (we’ll say that the map is upside down and the island is Jersey for immersion reasons), then go through the Normandy maps as per an early D-Day scenario.
Few things to consider:
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If this got popular as a weekly event and received some attention from content creators etc, then I feel this might help convince the developers that a realistic dynamic campaign, based on real nations and (as much as possible) historic vehicles is worth pursuing. Some people aren’t into simulator mode and that’s fine, but there’s many, many players who are looking to scratch the itch of realistic scenarios that gives them something to think about, rather than just capturing a flag on a map repeatedly.
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It would foster a community within a community that enjoy more realistic scenarios and, from Gaijin’s perspective, potentially offer a good amount of exposure through sim content creators.
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If it became popular enough to fill a 64 players server, there’s nothing to stop two parallel servers running side by side. We could tally up the scores at the end of the four weeks (a simulated full day) to determine the winner.
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This is a good opportunity to showcase naval, which up until now has been very much neglected by players - and this campaign mode would enable everyone, whether they’re a ground, naval or air player, to experience something and contribute to a running campaign.
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A website/discord/blog could keep track of scores or even encourage people to come forward with their own stories or their own AARs from the fighting, even giving people the opportunity to roleplay a character/characters for the event.