Time-locked event vehicles would not be bad if there was a way without spending absurd amounts of money to acquire all such machines. Ideally, event machines should in practice be sorta like the battle pass is - “early access” before the machine goes on market.
Though, the means to unlock them should be unlocking and spading tech tree vehicles, and owning certain premiums/other event vehicles. If the final prize is non-premium, it should be researchable after unlock. If the final prize is premium, it should be purchaseable for GE after unlock.
For example, to unlock the old BP event Zyrinyi I, you would first need to unlock and spade every single Italian WW2 casemate TD, own the premium 105/25 M43 (itself unlocking from spading the tech tree copy) as well as both Turans. Then the Zyrinyi I, being a premium vehicle, would unlock for GE purchase.
Meanwhile the Panther II would unlock from spading every single Panther-chassis machine, owning every premium Panther variant (Dauphine, T-V, Ersatz), then as the Panther II is non-premium, you unlock it for research.
I got the idea from how the terrible Rank 1 French Tanks and OS2Us were reintroduced.
Except the Battle Pass is far too grindy, and has swung too far in the direction of being just another event. The first two seasons were such a breath of fresh air - I legit did the challenges for the event Corsair without even trying to in season 1 because they had no expiration limit and thus faded into the background of just playing the game.
Then things were made far grindier because snail was losing money, which I was honestly okay with. What killed the BP for me was 1) challenges expiring after a few weeks, 2) not giving any sort of bonus in BP point earning for having active premium time, 3) retaining the nonsense Special Task system from pre-BP war bond shop, and 4) not allowing us to straight-up pick our daily tasks from a list (at least if we have premium time active). It collectively became too much of a chore to bother with.
