Great War event review

Game Discussion Realistic Battle
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I completed 5/6 tasks for both factions, I didn’t complete the 1st tasks, as I got back in the game later.
I couldn’t take part in Battle for Jutland event either, as I don’t have the battleships for it.

As I understand, the Great War is an April Fools event, that brings several things into a form of realistic battle:
Vehicles of 1st World War - Zeppelins, early planes, first tanks and infantry with machineguns.
Apparently, the vehicles are boosted, so they travel faster than their… official specifications. You could argue that this is a mixture of AB/RB I guess.

About battles themselves:
They devolved into sniping contests for the most part. Funnily enough, that armored car (Garford, I think) with a large cannon and several machineguns basically proved to be the best with its firepower and mobility.

Huge numbers of players lining up to German side, I think, is because of Zeppelin being an option. Would be a nice ‘meme’ vehicle for it, maybe even have utility in some game modes. Though, it does need fixing its gunner mode - they for some reason are converging their shots way closer than they do in pretty much every other aircraft.
At first, it seemed the German Empire usually won these fights - and I can see why - A7V is basically the best tank of the bunch.
It has the best frontal armor of 30 mm, main gun that is in a fairly convenient position, and huge - 18 men - crew. They may not be well spaced out, but the number alone helps.
I’d class the A7V as a heavy tank, as artillery strike seems a bit excessive.

The French counterpart basically is only good as a sniping tank. Armor is weak, and crew are huddled together, so it often would be taken out in a single hit.

The 2 main gun tanks were cumbersome to use.
Player would need to keep pressing the button to switch the main gun, otherwise the sniper mode would not work for the other gun. But the main gun mode disables machineguns, and that also causes problems.
I think they could make use of naval mechanics here - allowing machineguns and “secondary armament” to fire on it’s own to the targets designated by the player. Heck, they practically are ships on land.

Infantry:
Not really a fan of them endlessly respawning, and attacking seemingly at random, only to get slaughtered by machinegun and defender fire.
As folks who hold the captured points - Yeah, I see the appeal.
Unfortunately, clearing them out for the attacker is cumbersome (especially when you have just 2 crew remaining in your vehicle, with no functional machinegun; thankfully I had ammo for main gun, otherwise I’d have to find ways to roll over the poor sods), as they are sitting in trenches there, instead of flank-able improvised defenses (Where are engineers from Enlisted building sandbags? And machinegun nests?)
Also, the game does not reward their kills, which I think it should.
Overall, their numbers seem sparse, but I guess this is to ensure that folks with “potato” devices can play.

The map is the same, well, while it basically becomes a sniper-fest at the beginning, you can enjoy some movement, either from cover to cover or after the sniping exchange dies down.
It suffers from the usual domination (3 capture points) mode issues.
If it was similar to Enlisted invasion mode, then I think it would work better.

Overall? Nice event, I enjoyed it for what it’s worth. Bit sad that Zeppelin can not be earned.

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Also, I like the music in the event.
It was close for the immersion that you take part in this conflict.

Anyone knows a link where it is, so that I can share it here?

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you dont need the ships, you get them for free, all you need to do is equip either germany or britain ships (can be reserves) and you can join

not quite, the A7V has the best armor (and survivalbility), of all the event tanks, thats why, also on start chammond had like way lower pen and slower reload then on the day 1 of the event, and well, mark IV/V are not too great, and the car is on both teams and is quite good.

yeah i agree they were really basic, but compared to the old infantry it was definetly an upgrade

they do give you 5 score points per 1 kill, up to 500 mission points, says that in the devblog

well its basically that one map we already have in game (i forgor the name), but ww1 themed and with more hills.

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Apparently this one:

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On the subject of infantry being sparse, an update soon after the event went live halved the amount of infantry. IIRC the servers used to crash often when the event first went live, too, so it might be to help lessen the load on the server.

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Gotta say, this event is probably the best one in a long while. The rewards are good, the grind doesn’t overstay its welcome, and what it’s ‘testing’ honestly feel like they would be good additions to the game, granted with a bit more polish, shine, and depth.

The Event

I think the biggest problem with the event is that Germany is easily the better option than the allies, and it’s not solely because of the A7V.

While I would agree that it’s the best tank in the event, I wouldn’t say it’s OP as many people claim, and while it contributes to the player imbalance, it’s not the sole cause.

To put it simply, Germany is the better option of the two to grind out. First of all, it’s the only side with a rigid airship, which is incredibly novel and just fun to fly and use. Secondly, The vehicles you get from it all go to Germany, so you can wield all 3 in the lineup instead of having them ‘parted out’ to different nations you may not play, meaning you can get a taste for the Mark series and the funni car, so there isn’t much of a point in grinding the Allies aside from the Chammond and the bomber. Germany is also one of the big 3, which means that more people are likely to either main it or invest in it, which means you not only have the Germany mains playing it, but also a lot of the playerbase who main other nations. Importantly in this context, that would include US mains who make up a big chunk of the playerbase, as well as all the minor nations using similar logic. If they ever do this event again, they need to give the Entente some ‘big ticket’ vehicles to drive interest, or at least some rewards for everyone else, which could be solved by giving the the FT-17 and a rigid airship of their own, maybe also throw in the Czar Tank and Holt-Gas Electric to entice more people to the Entente, American and Russian mains especially, and you can entice all the minor nations into playing by having the FT-17 reward unlocking the tank for all the nations that used it.

As for the event itself, player imbalance put aside, it was a lot of fun, and makes me think WW1 and early interwar can genuinely be implemented into WT, either as a tier 0 or a new Tier 1.

All of the tanks dealt with each other well enough, and while they do have a speed boost, I feel that can be solved with map design and being more lenient/charitable in terms of ‘interpreting’ their stats. No artificial boosts to speed, but maybe, say, have that universal nerf to vehicle traction be less so or outright eliminated for these vehicles, and so on. Though, developing maps designed for early tanks in mind would be much more effective.

The issue with it devolving into a sniper fest can be attributed more to map design as opposed a fundamental issue with WW1 vehicles.

Also agree with having MGs behaving more like AA on ships, especially if they go with implementing infantry.

Future WW1 Content

This is one of the things I suspect Gaijin is testing, and I think we can expect an update overhauling the tech trees in the future.

My basis for this is that none of the ‘event’ vehicles are tagged as event vehicles, being slotted into the tech tree. This suggests to me that Gaijin is at least considering WW1 vehicles, otherwise they would have put them with the rest of the premium and event vehicles. It could be that they did this to prevent seal clubbing for events, but I doubt it. It hasn’t stopped them from doing low br event vehicles before, and, while they are entirely usable, they also aren’t good. Anyone who could ‘seal club’ with these would have more efficient methods of grinding the event.

In addition, for marketing, starting out in WW1 would make the game sound much more impressive, and while the First World War isn’t as ‘big’ of a market as the sequel, it isn’t like there is no market.

Honestly, I’m kinda surprised that Gaijin started naval at WW2/WW1. They could probably do an earlier ‘start’ date. Maybe one day they will expand to sailing ships, ironclads, and pre-dreadnoughts proper. Perhaps something worth considering next April First or Dreams Come True, maybe a similar event with ironclads and sailing ships some time down the line.

Also hope, if they do implement WW1 ground and air, that they also include a line for blimps and airships. They are a lot of fun and are very much usable. Especially hope they implement the Akron class if they do. Second biggest man made objects that can fly and the largest Helium filled airships.

Infantry

Infantry was rough, but as a test? I like where they are going with it. Having them be a way to secure points would be a great way to incorporate them organically into ground battles while maintaining the focus on vehicles, as well as making CAS less of a nuisance and a more active defense against spawn camping.

I do also hope they actually end up with implementing playable Infantry into War Thunder. It would greatly expand what vehicles can be added, and, so long as they are their own mode, there won’t be any issues with alienating the playerbase. People bring up age rating, but there is Infantry in the game already through the single player missions, and there’s already stuff like Fortnite. So long as there isn’t any blood or dismemberment, it should be fine.

Overall Thoughts

Love this event, and I actually feel excited for the future of War Thunder, which I haven’t for a long time. Very excited to see what comes out of everything.

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My concern is how horribly balanced it is, considering you only have 1 map and only a handful of vehicles to balance this should have been the easiest to balance event, yet it was the outright worst with 100% winrates for Germany, and it’s blatantly obvious why.

it’s just disappointing how little effort goes into it, even for a limited event… all you had to do was play test a few rounds and it would be clear as day that some tweaks were needed before pushing it live, but that was too much to ask… instead it only gets changed when people complain enough about it, as they have to fight an uphill battle to complete the tasks as Entente with constant losses against steamrolling A7s.

All just so avoidable, but that seems to be a common theme with this game.

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A7 is not that good. I’ve played both sides and genuinely didn’t notice that big of a difference between the two sides.

Don’t get me wrong, I agree that the A7 was the best tank in the event, but the degree to which it has been overblown is absurd.

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Less now than it was at first, but it’s still far stronger than the opposing Charmond.

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That, to my understanding, was due to a bug where it couldn’t be over pressured, not an intended mechanic.

And the A7V really isn’t that much stronger. Genuinely, if you are having issues taking it out, to the point where you decry it as ‘OP’, that’s not an issue with the A7V or the Chammond.

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Why did gaijin not give entante the SPAD

As in, why didn’t they let us keep it after the event…

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Mate, I used the A7V and survived multiple penning shots, took out my driver and gunner on three separate occasions within a minute, tracks and engine gone, and survived a bombing run from the flying cardboard box AND managed to get three elims before being smacked by a Garford.

I can’t even survive a ricochet in my Chamond.

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My review:

Pro’s

  • You get to keep cool WWI vehicles. This was a great idea, love to see more of this.
  • The grind was not too bad, contrary to last year’s Mad Thunder for example
  • Not too long (last year’s Mad Thunder was 3 weeks)
  • Pretty fun and interesting diversion for a while
  • Captured the grim WWI atmosphere pretty well
  • Infantry was not very decisive, but still neat to see and made it more immersive

Cons

  • No keeping the biplanes and Zep (real shame)
  • Map was very atmospheric, but terrible to play with all that mud and unbalanced to boot
  • Bad vehicle balance, especially the first days
  • Gameplay loop got tiresome pretty quickly

While interesting and fun for a while and especially having cool rewards, clearly not on the level of Dune themed event , Warfare 2077 and Tailspin (reruns pls!)

Also Gaijin was clearly right choosing overall pretty fast late interwar vehicles as starting tier, I love goofy tanks and planes like this but a lot more people would have dropped the game very quickly if required to play such slow vehicles.

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I’ve survived similar nonsense with other tanks, the event vehicles included. I would not take your anecdote as any indication of the A7V being OP.

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It has 18 crew that get divided in 2 halves, compared to like 6-7 that are all in front and one the ammo.
And sure, it’s not OP, Germany just happens to win every game for no reason.

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They don’t though, at least not in my experience. At most they have a slightly higher winrate, and even then, they died easily enough with the funni pan and truck.

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Then you haven’t played the first days of this event.

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Ignore him, he’s obviously a Wehraboo who believes Germany should win every game.

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It is completely OP when it’s on the other side, and completely useless when I have it.

Seriously - I get OHK-ed by Gar’s all the bloody time, but can I do it in reverse?? The heck I can!! :(

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