How am I supposed to have a good time in top-tier air-RB when players with ace crews dominate because they have higher G-Tolerance and Stamina which is only obtainable behind a ridiculous 3400 GE paywall?
Sure, “Ace” crews can be obtained “freely” or discounted if you spend tens if not hundreds of hours in one vehicle, but that is an unrealistic expectation given how massive the game is, how much there is to grind compared to how much time most players have to grind it, and, frankly, how boring and frustrating it is to play the same vehicle over and over and over again with shit mods and shit crew skills… The expectation is that if players want to have competitive line-ups/crews, they have to pay a ridiculous amount for every single vehicle.
Ground RB is just as bad. Reload rate, repair, agility, and leadership drastically effect the performance of vehicles in battles. It is completely unfair.
This, along with modification research, are some of the slimiest practices in the game and it needs to be addressed going forward. The recent roadmap was a good start to improving the grind, but increasing the grind/money requirement for crew skills was terrible.
Maybe, but if you spend only a little bit you can improve your game experience. I play several different nations, so I’m not trying to max out crew points on everything. I don’t have any maxxed out stat. Most of my stats are 2-3 yellow bars not even half way. I enjoy being tricky by using different playstyles and different nations. Nobody can memorise the armour for the 20+ different vehicles I play lol
Crew are skills are carried over between vehicles of the same type in that crew slot - you do not have to get new ones for every vehicle you use.
So perhaps you can not charge straight into top-tier RB in order to develop better crew skills at lower levels where many of your opponents will be at similar levels?
He is talking about aceing a crew… which is an aditional 2 points in all skills which at top tier is the difference between lasting 5s at 11g or 15s at 11g.
Ace needs to be bought or earned for an insane amout of RP.
Ace crews are P2W, especially beyond 8.0.
Although i fully agree with most of your post:
The basic principle of progress of every f2p game is either to spend money or a hell of time. The reasons why gaijin saw the need for a roadmap was that the overall progress for many players was still too slow despite they invested a hell of time AND real money.
I mean yes, 1.35 million RP (in addition to 1.1 million SL for expert crew) to get an “ace” crew for free (without GEs) for a 12.3 MiG 29 is insane, but what be your proposal?
Fully agree here.
I play WW2 props only, and 710k RP for ace crew for a 3.7 premium plane (BP B7A2) is a joke too. It took me (with a hell of ice cream bucket boosters) around 120-150 battles to get the “ace”.
But as i liked the flight characteristics with joystick of the TT version (also aced) i was sure that i play it longer - and the crew skill “ace” is in 1 vs 1s a real advantage in dogfights with very high g-forces, so it was for me worth the time…
Crew skills, and specifically ace crews are one of the few things in War Thunder that is genuinely pay-to-win. You are paying money for a direct advantage.
I would appreciate an idea to reset the skill points. Even just once per crew slot.
In the course of over 10 years many things in game have changed that could cause the initial allocation of skill points to be not ideal.
That’s the basic principle of p2progress or p2w games, not every f2p game follows that. To be honest, WT is far from a f2p game, I would say it’s in the middle between p2progress and p2w.
You as a dev need to know what mechanics you’re going to monetize, and in what way, in order to get cash from players while also keeping it player-friendly.
That being said, locking performance upgrades that directly improves your gameplay behind a crazy grind or a paywall, is surely something I would classify as anti-player move, and that surely doesn’t look good.
Ace crews are a lot of money for not so much actual increase in ability compared with expert - useful for sure, but complaining they are somehow P2W is pathetic.
What a load of nonsense - by that reasoning talismans are P2W too - since you get higher crew skills faster using them… and of course Premium time and premium vehicles are also P2W for the same reasons.
Ground skills are infinitely worse than air, for air you just need to upgrade the pilot and max level is 75, for ground there’s half a dozen crew members.
Because it’s set by mode (RB, AB, SB) and like some other things in game can’t vary within mode as the game is currently designed.
AB experience is tripled because this was at first just an air game and in AB you spawned three times and RB you spawned once. The fact naval and ground RB aren’t single spawn is not relevant, it’s been assessed as too hard coded deep in the game systems to change now.
I’m disappointed that the new Economy Roadmap completely ignored crew skills. It’s one of the most abusive grind components of the game.
-Crew skill requirements need to be lessened, and RB and Sim modes need to equal rewards to Arcade.
-Expert/Aced vehicles should be able to be re-slotted without losing their (very expensive) qualification. The way BR’s and lineups are constantly changing, justifies the need for this change.
