There are legal issues with taking away things people paid for, yes, but there are not any legal issues with just handing out something people paid for to everyone for free, suddenly. In this case, a simple example would be “Hey guys, from now on crew skills all train 10x faster, and starting players in a nation get a 2,000 point boost wherever they want to help them out”, and it’s functionally now irrelevant. But you took away nothing that needs a refund.
Similarly, they could just hand out Obj 279’s to everyone for free if they really wanted to, without any legal issue.
They could but they want people to keep paying so by making something that so many paid for or still pay for irrelevant they will lose custom.
I doubt WT will ever exist the moment it stops making money because of the cost of running the servers etc
I wasn’t saying they were about to do it tomorrow or that it’d be a good idea for them business-wise, I was only speaking to the legal comment and “class actions” etc you said earlier.
Even if a disagree with some of your other conclusions, the main issue is still the bad economy of Ground RB. Crew skills are just one of many results of this - and gaijin refuses to improve this economy as they earn money with the current state of the game.
I am not sure if a player with 10k matches is still assessed as valuable asset for gaijin as the game looks like to be optimized for masses of younger players with access to credit cards. They won’t play that long if they got caught by studies, job or family. So if they can be motivated to put money in their short time they play the game, gaijin has success. These “newer/younger” players are looking for instant action and have the money to skip the learning curves on their way to their desired goals.
If we can agree on the fact that crew skills reflect your overall commitment to the game and are either a result of time invested or actual skill (usually a combination of both) the discussion about how to get these points in different modes is important but not really suited to cancel crew skills at all.
Have a good one!
Btw -You made some interesting points in your reply, as i assessed them as mainly off topic, i decided to put them behind a spoiler…
Summary
Gaijin 80/20 statement
Low tier seal clubbing
Matchmaker
Layer of unfairness added by crew skills
Event restriction to rank III
Despite that to most of these points were extensively discussed in the old and the new forum, i would like to share my pov to your addressed points:
Gaijin 80/20 statement
They simply fail to offer the right products for non paying players, and the business model of f2p games relies solely on paying customers. From a holistic pov f2p players have the sole purpose to fill lobbies and to play target for paying customers.
Your own experiences regarding skill distribution within the ranks might differ, but if you have friends playing all modes and all BRs and watch their replays i see no no real difference.
Low tier seal clubbing
This is imho a real problem, especially in Air RB as the majority of the players at level 1 or 2 simply will be discouraged to continue playing if the meet frequently stat padders. Even admitting that it is the right of every experienced player to play low tiers - i have simply no respect for those people. I met today one of the top players of the infamous ENSO stat padder squad - 10.000 kills in rank I & II planes with his first 3 planes - no need to continue…
I mean if you are an experienced player where is the challenge to club more or less helpless players at rank I or II? I play rank III & IV in non-op aircraft in order to compensate my experience advantage as otherwise there would be no challenge - and subsequently no fun; at least for me. And around 4.0 there are a lot of op premium planes like Wyverns or XP-50s which were dragged way too low in their BR due to inexperienced players.
Matchmaker
I mean it is obvious that gaijin uses a kind of player ranking (ELO) within their MM, but the results are simply crap as they are not able to deal with actual combat performance.
Yesterday i faced an enemy team with >600 days fighter experience whilst mine had less than 100 days, but they had a hell of experience in Ground RB, so the match was decided by the MM.
I mean i survived, but i can’t win playing 1 vs 6-8 for ~ 18 minutes as i fly aircraft which are good in the right hands, but not able to fight multiple enemies simultaneously as they rely on positional advantage, turn rate and situational awareness allowing me to create and win 1 vs 1s even vs op planes. If i had chosen an op aircraft i might have won, but i play for fun and for me there is no fun in using op single engine fighters…
Layer of unfairness added by crew skills
I actually read the whole thread and i fully agree that the overall economy of Ground RB is disappointing compared to other modes, but imho you as an experienced player know how this game works, so you can use your knowledge in order to deal with fully intended obstacles.
I mean i played wt with an inactive MS account > 5 years. Forced by MS to open a new account (the old was compromised and deactivated) i reinstalled wt but gaijin refused to transfer the vehicles of my old wt account to this new wt account (still 140+ mln SLs and several fully researched TTs on the old one).
So i had to start from square 1 - but i used my know-how to accelerate progression and i decided to focus on getting my hands on the 3 planes i had the most fun in the previous years, so it was rather easy to grind and to gain crew XP by playing the right stuff and allocating the crew points to get maximum benefits from them. I stopped playing SWE, but i am at rank VIII in the JP and IT tech tree - despite i will never play these F-16s or jets in general as i play WW2 props only.
So in other words: If you see that gaijin refuses to improve the overall bad economy of Ground RB it looks like we both waste our time in discussing this.
Event restriction to rank III
There is a very long thread about this issue. I mean getting to rank III is a matter of hours and not really a challenge, but alone my reference to this stat padder squad is justification enough for this restriction - and it is, ofc, supporting sales of op premium vehicles at rank III.
If you try to think about that wt itself might be more than a video game designed to make money, you probably would think otherwise.
If you look at the roots of the company and see that they have since a while a Chinese investor you need no tin foil head to acknowledge that wt can also be seen as a quite powerful platform to support certain views on things. In the forum such things are usually discussed as bias.
So even in case they would run dry i see no end of wt in case they stop making profits. Don’t get me wrong - everything entertainment related is used trying to transport certain views on things.
You might just look at Hollywood and this ESG score related nonsense - i am actually waiting for a movie with a female Noah having a wife…
Lazy argument. Skill is not the same thing as a giving certain players an advantage because they shelled out money to give themselves an advantage over other players.
My own skill is not at issue, but since we’re taking pot-shots at each other’s motivations- lets look at your skill:
Ace crews are night and day to level 1 crews. The time to get ace crews is not feasible for most players to do so for more than a tiny amount of vehicles or possibly no vehicles.
Expert <> Ace isn’t a “very large difference” dude, and either can have access to a g-suit giving the same modifier on the same plane. Are you taking about difference from a level 1 crew to a fully upgraded level 75 Ace crew or something ridiculous like that? Who the hell plays at a BR where this matters with a level 1 crew. With normal grinding your crew will be upwards of level 25 by the time you get tier 5 which will have you maxed on all the items that actually matter, add expert on top of that and the difference isn’t that large with Ace crew.
What you’re saying here is basically buying a tier 7 premium or something and sticking that on a level 1 crew and be surprised that isn’t a good idea
Air arcade exists and in fact has about 50% of the playerbase of the two air modes. You use multiple crews, many of them will be much lower in level as a result, and you may even have just recently unlocked a new crew slot even after 3,000 battles in that nation
(But also, people who just bought a high tier plane matter too and shouldn’t have arbitrary P2W advantages either, even in air RB)
And if you (like you should) have 2 slots for bombers and 3 for fighters, and just unlocked a 6th slot for fighters that you will actually use in battles regularly but is level 1 even though you’re at BR 8.0?
And if you bought a high tier premium as a newer player? (in AB or RB)
So then you play both? What does that matter? Arcade is the best mode to grind crew skills by a long shot… even if you just unlocked a new level 1 crew you can just take that crew first, and then 2 good crews in meta stuff after to get high score… your level 1 crew will benefit from the success of those other 2 crews
Yup, that’s dumb. Since RP gain/time spend is kind of normalized between game modes, crew skills should be too and currently it isn’t. AB gives you significant more crew skills than any other mode… presumably because Gaijin thinks people start off in AB first before venturing in other modes, which may be true for the first few 100 games, but then people may go into other modes and unlock new nations/crews, and will suffer decreased crew XP in anything but AB.
They should change that and normalize crew XP between modes as well
Obviously in context, because all the time you spent on RB was not getting those other 3-4 crews up to snuff at ALL, but WAS getting you into higher BR brackets. So is one of many reasons why you’d be in jets with crews that have no reasonable G tolerance, etc. (when you play an AB match again later)
