In the spirit of improvement here are some of my suggestions. A bit about me I started playing war thunder back when it was only an Air to Air game and have stuck around ever since playing it off and on taking breaks in the middle. I gave up on the air game mode at some point (more on that later) and have primarily played this game over the last years in Ground Realistic Battles.
Ground Realistic Battles
This has to be the flag ship game mode that most of the community plays and it can use a lot of help. I am better equipped to answer some of the things here then other places so this is where most of my input will come from.
Maps
The maps need a lot of rework. There are maybe 2 - 3 maps that are ok and I am genuinely excited to see rest I would be ok if you removed them from the game entirely.
There are a lot of things that can be done here. Let the community vote out maps that they don’t like and replace them with more maps every patch. This will ensure that the game stays fresh and everyone can play whatever BR they like on these maps.
Maps could be community designed. You can give the tools to the community to design maps and every patch pick some that you like and put them in the game to test. You can weight them as time goes on based on likes and dislikes and eventually remove them when the next patch rolls around. People love your game enough that they will do it for free.
Spawn killing has to be addressed. It is one of the most frustrating parts of the game itself. You can make maps where spawn killing is just not advantageous or people who do it can be locked out for a minute before they can respawn. This way it just discourages this behavior there are other things you can do as well. Like the tanks carry their invulnerability for a minute or a couple of minutes. This will make the enemy team have to give them some breathing room before they can attack.
Premiums I honestly don’t have a problem with copy pasted premiums from the tech tree. That is probably the most balanced way of doing it. You are not depriving a vehicle from the general population so every one can experience it. There are so many unique vehicles locked behind premium or events in the game that it saddens me that people won’t be able to experience them unless they open their wallets. USA can have an entire lineup around 9.3 and 10 from just the even / premium vehicles. I have spent way too much money on this game. So its not like I am against spending money. But there are vehicles I can never get because how much they cost stuff like the obj 279, XM8 some of the Centurions.
Occasionally having a unique tanks as premium is also good. But when stuff like RAH 66 or T58 gets locked behind a paywall you have kind of lost me a little bit. This is coming from someone that doesn’t mind spending the money. A good example of a premium done right is AL - Khalid. Its counterpart MBT 2000 exists with in the tech tree and its different enough to buy. You can also make tanks that have unique commanders who were real life people. This might be harder to do talking to the estate of the person in question and what not but it won’t take a unique vehicle away and it would be something cool to see from history.
In theory I don’t have a problem with the Senrai Maidens tanks. Except that you should pay actual artists for those tanks and give people an options to not see their non historical camos in game. If someone likes that camo I think they should be able to enjoy it same with pillows but please allow the rest of us to opt out of it and retain the military semi realistic fantasy that we want to experience.
Speaking of cosmetics, please disable bushes or allow us to do so on the client end. This mostly ruins the new player experience as they are still new to the game and can’t see the weak spots. I having played the game long enough don’t care as much. Since I know roughly where to shoot the tanks. They make tanks harder to see and overall just ruins the experience of most people playing the game.
BRs need balancing some brs get way too many uptiers and some get way too many down tiers. This is n’t a hard thing to see why. When Tiger 2 is as popular of vehicle of course it will see many down tiers than up tiers. There are just that many of them in queue and as a result we see the outcome that we see. There are also not many lineups around 7.3 couple that with no premiums at that BR you have a recipe for un-fun. There are other BRs in which either there are no premium vehicles so likely see less people queueing up for them. Or the Brs they see have vehicles that are that much better for example. Why would you get the German Colvis when Turms III is such a strong vehicle? So something needs to be done yes it will make the queues longer but I am willing to wait since I rather play a decent balanced game than the one that ruins my experience for the day. Yes I understand that not everyone is like this but I don’t want a game. I want a decent game where I am not just cannon fodder.
Selective Realism needs to stop. It gives a bad impression to the player base about German - Bias or American - Bias or Russian - Bias. I know a lot of the changes are done to balance the nations against one another and I am fine with the turret basket being a thing if that is the main reason for the change. Russian win rates are suffering and Nato tanks need to be nerfed. Perfectly acceptable explanation so please don’t couch it in well the document says …
M735 is another great example. I am sure that XM1 and all the tanks that were using it at some point were over performing but that topic has never been revisited and those tanks don’t perform nearly as well now than they did back then. But when you couch your explanations in documents. Then you should follow them regardless of what they say. Apply the same standards across the board.
Player skill needs to be taken into account when buffing or nerfing tanks. Why on Gods good earth is XM803 still 9.0? That it can still fight stuff like T-54s and AMX 30s is just insane to me. Turms III sat at 8.3 for such a long time ruining the lower brackets. At least it wasn’t insanely hard to kill but XM803 is fast has a dart and laser range finder and can fight 8.0 is a bit nuts.
While we are on the subject why is MBT 70 for the German and American not have the same reload? when the T-64 lost a second from its reload most of the tanks were rebalanced. But the American MBT 70 is a full 1.5 second slower in firing and sits at the same BR. The German one is just so much better. American might get a better reload for ATGMs but who is using those on that tank?
Lastly, don’t nerf tanks because of smaller nation tax. France is probably the best example of this a lot of their tanks are over br’ed like there is not tomorrow. BatChat 25t has not business being 8.0 that is absurd. There are other tanks too but that one is just so egregious. This drives people away from smaller nations and playing certain BRs. I don’t want to play France 8.0 cause its so bad. Also running into an XM803 would be just the icing on this sad cake. The game is hard enough without giving myself a handicap.
I am sure that there is a lot more that I can say. Like how putting the BMP-T was a bad idea all around and it should be moved up in BR. It shouldn’t take months to move problematics tanks up or nerf them.
