Yes, I get that, but the problem is that this is completely subjective. Therefore Gaijin will go for the option that is the minimum common denominator and pisses the least amount of people off, and it works.
An example of this subjectivity. Yesterday I spawned in a Nashorn and there was a Paladin next to me and I was like man, this is some Twin Peaks fever dream shit. But then in a match after that I killed an ASU-85 with the PAK Puma and that was “normal” because of course the ASU-85, like the JPz 4-5, looks a bit like a StuG, and so the instinct part of my brain feels that it “fits” aesthetically.
That’s so arbitrary.
Now, I will make a different example which I hope will explain with absolute clarity what I mean when I talk about selective realism. For you, it’s seeing a time-travelling vehicle that is out of place. For me, even if we had perfect historical matchmaking…
I would, at some point, end up playing the Tiger II on American Desert.
Please understand. The idea of a Tiger II fighting in Nevada is, to me, more outlandish and implausible than a literal alien invasion scenario in which we have to fight sci fi tanks from an alien invader.
At least an alien invasion as a speculative what-if exercise rests on things that are simply unknown, but theoretically are physically possible (other life exists and has the means and motivation to come here).
Whereas the idea that a middling economy like Nazi Germany could crane the Tiger II onto a ship, then sail across the Atlantic, land it, operate it in a full combat scenario and then supply and sustain it, not just close to the coast, but inland, in fact deep inland into one of the most inhospitable areas of the continental United States, is simply ridiculous. There is no scenario starting from 1939 or even 1933 real world conditions that could ever possibly deliver you that result (and any radically different scenario would simply not lead to the Tiger II as we know it).
We could make a literal “strictly-by-date” matchmaker and eventually I would spawn in American Desert and remember, ah yes, this is a fun and silly game about vehicular combat and nothing more.
They’d say people play it and pay to get there faster even if it’s effectively an unbalanced open beta mess. And they’d be right.
It does though. I’ve listed some above, which haven’t been addressed yet, primarily surrounding research, progression, and balance of bad vehicles.
It got much much better after the summer decompression.
I’ve said it before and I’ve said it again. I am not a good enough player to compensate for the shortcomings of a bad tank. If the Tiger II really was so bad and out of the meta, I would not be dropping nukes with it, much less in uptiers.
The forum is an echo chamber, by and large. Remember the forum contains an infinitely minuscule minority of the wider player population. By, like, several orders of magnitude.
The overwhelmingly vast majority of players doesn’t bother with the forums, reddit, or even CCs, they just get back home from work or school, play the game for two hours, and move on with their lives. I was doing exactly that for the first year and a half I spent playing WT. Then I started lurking the old forum because I wanted to get better and learn. And only in Sep '23 I started writing posts here in the new forums.
This isn’t just a casual vs hardcore thing either. The tournament player I mentioned in my earlier post? He’s not on the forums. He learns of BR changes when he boots the game and sees that his Panther II is now 7.0 and needs to be swapped out if he wants to play 6.7 with me.
I have a few IRL acquaintances and three close friends who play WT and have for years - two of them since before there was such a thing as ground vehicles in the game… None of them frequent the forums, I’m the one sending them news and info that I read here first in my spare time.
The forum is useful to Gaijin, but not in the way you think. It can be very misleading to overstate its importance.
I could. But why would I do that? I took the much easier option. I concluded that top tier isn’t for me, so I don’t play it, and if people enjoy it, good for them. Simple as.