lolwat?
Gaijin’s business model is give everyone access to the game for free, and all their revenue comes from people wanting to get vehicles slightly faster or get cosmetics.
It’s quite literally the League model you described.
Weird of you to accuse League and War Thunder of showing signs of failing when there are none.
Reddit mourns when you’re away, furry.
Read this post here Grind is insufferable - #112 by Uncle_J_Wick
Well, everyone here is smarter than the WT subreddit.
That post proves that War Thunder is staying strong.
You can complete an entire tech tree playing 2.2ish hours a day for 6 months, air and ground, free to play.
396 hours.
Sure, it’s a chunk of time, so is playing Arma 3 for 600 hours.
Not by the average player nor without a top tier premium for each.
That is the average player.
I a non-average player could do it in 4.5 months free to play.
I back in 2019 when rewards were lower than today did it in 5.5 months adjusted for Japan from start to finish.
The conclusion is many of them don’t have anything to offer to the game, no spending power, and also not even willing to spend their time in it. They only do the bare minimum to support the game which is 1 hour per week and still want all the toys they probably abandon after 5 matches lol
Similar to customers who pay $20 and expect the services of a 5-star hotel.
This page proves the opposite:
https://wiki.warthunder.com/Category:Premium_aircraft
I cannot access this content for free, no matter how much time I spend playing. Among the content that is restricted to me due to my lack of financial resources (unfortunately I don’t have $700) are vehicles with extraordinary performance that often outshine their free counterparts (In other words, they give competitive advantage over the rest), as well as unique gaming experiences.
In contrast, in League of Legends, I can access all champions without restrictions. There is no real privilege in the playable content.
That’s the thing, this is a tank and air game, so you’re getting classes of vehicles.
You can get every class of vehicle by just playing.
You can get every meta vehicle in the game by just playing.
There is not a single premium that is going to give you a lethality that the tech tree won’t give you in spades.
I kinda like some vehicles remain exclusive, like when you drive the E-100 out people in-game like “woahhh E-100 I’ve never seen this shit before bro”, sometimes you also have players following you around just to be around your rare vehicle
That feeling
To talk about classes, there must first be clearly defined roles within a team framework with a common goal guiding the reward. But, since ultimately the only thing that matters to win in this game is individual performance against the single opponent, that is, reducing the number of enemy players to zero, then I don’t see how this could justify anything. Even if it weren’t so, there are certain vehicles within a particular class that are doing the job better than their free counterparts. So, I ask, What is the lethality that the He-177 bomber provides me, which the Ju-288 at 6.0 in Air-RB also provides to the same extent? Isn’t there any advantage to the XP-50 reaching its interception tasks higher and faster than the P-38 or the Me-410? Is the premium Whirlwind P.9, with its 484 rounds, comparable to its free variant with only 240? Is the common-sense assumption that more rounds make a vehicle more powerful invalid? It would then follow that both planes are equally capable of fulfilling the same function with the same amount of effort. Could you please explain me how?
Did you actually read my entire post or did you stop there to hammer this out?
LOL.
The SAV 20.12.48.
If I may offer some advice:
Learn the maps. Figure out which parts of the maps work best for the style of play you are most comfortable with for the vehicles you are playing.
Play to your vehicle’s strengths and exploit your opponent’s weaknesses. There are a lot of resources both in game and from content creators to help you figure this out.
Specifically to address the grind, if progressing through a tech tree is your goal, then stick to a BR range and don’t move forward until you have spaded every vehicle in that range. It will slow your progression down a little, but you will have more than enough SL to purchase the next vehicle(s) in the tree when you are ready and spading your current vehicle will help you research the next vehicle faster, especially if you are using premium time. This will also help you to develop and refine your skills with that nation’s vehicles which will be useful as you progress into the higher BR ranges.
Along with learning the maps, pay attention to where your teammates are and maintain situational awareness of where the enemy is located. If you drive down a street and see a bunch of burning tanks from your own team, it’s probably not a good idea to go that way. Most importantly, and I’m bad this one, don’t let yourself get overextended where it’s just you against the whole enemy team because your teammates didn’t move up with you.
The teams that do the best are the teams that stick together and help each other. If you see your teammates engaged, see how you can help them. If you see one repairing and you can help them repair without putting yourself at risk, then do so. The more teammates you have alive, the better off you’ll be, and they might just help you out later on.
Remember, it’s just a game. You will have good matches and bad matches. Even the best players get steam rolled sometimes. Every player has felt elation at having a good match just like every player has felt frustration at getting their asses handed to them, and you’ve probably made players feel both of those emotions yourself. Don’t take it seriously, and if you feel it really starting to get to you, then put the game down and take a break.
You had me until here.
Also here, some of your input is highly valuable - but with your quote you look like you follow another myth of wt: Player frustration as a business model.
Your conclusions are imho based on the assumptions that long-term players would be a target group of gaijin - and that the average player is nothing more than a game addicted masochist looking for ongoing punishments.
Regarding target groups:
If we would have access to data regarding age structure of players, their play times (whilst active and playing the game in total until uninstalling) and money spent during their wt experience it would be way easier to convince you, that experienced long term players are not the main target group.
Imho the game is tailored to satisfy the needs of masses of very young players, which are playing the game for a rather short time (1-3 years ?) until they get caught by irl stuff. Anything more complicated than point and click (like in every other shooter) makes the game less attractive for them.
That is the main reason that things like tactics or strategy, demanding map design & game play and actual skill became less decisive or vanished to a very large degree.
Long-term players are requiring exactly the opposite - so we have a kind of circumstantial evidence that you might be not correct with your assumption.
Regarding frustration as business model:
Imho there is no psychological evidence for your claim.
Repeating activities without any success (in order to produce endorphins) is not a desired goal for spending leisure time and money. Even guys paying for to get punished (leather and whips) have a benefit from that.
But there are a lot of publicly available studies regarding design of video games which prove that intentionally implemented drawbacks (your frustration) are actually increasing the player commitment and his willingness to spend more money.
The perfect balance of fun & drawbacks is essential to encourage players to keep playing whilst spending money. That’s the reason for special offers like a 50% discount for a premium vehicle or a 500 k SL crate popping up directly sfter a match.
The pure fact that the game exists for more than 10 years and had and has millions of players provided gaijin with enough data to accurately predict player behaviour and allows them to “steer” players in the right direction (= spending money).
I see no long term failure of wt. Even this forum is imho far away from being representative for the whole player base. If i see here long term players complaining that wt it not considering their demands - they simply miss the fact that they are not their target group.
An open top fast firing BT-7 F-32… eh. I never bought it cause the tech tree tanks are better.
You really do talk out of your arse sometimes bro…just sayin
With premium and one premium vehicle I make roughly 5k to 10k research and 50k to 100k silver lions every round. With out any premium I get roughly 2 to 3k research and 15 to 30k lions.
Unlike what most people think this game isn’t pay to win. It’s pay to grind faster. If you want premium to be worth anything you have to have the skill set to go with it.
You don’t. Every thing I’ve read you say is completely on point.
You must have missed some of it 😆