I started playing this game because I was interested in tanks mostly, now after grinding out 2 tech trees to top tier I just can’t stomach playing ground… for the sake of trying to enjoy the game and not being incentivized through grind to push through the awful gameplay since well… I’m done with that now. However I find myself lately playing a lot of air, and same situation there, I’m not really grinding anything anymore, but its actually enjoyable.
Whenever I die in ARB or ASB, even as a mediocre player, I can almost immediately go “Oh I died because X Y Z”, I learn from the mistake, its not all so bad because of that. And if I don’t understand why I died its a simple trip to the replay menu and looking at what happened. In ground a lot of deaths are just seemingly out of your control. I die and I have no idea what I could have done better besides “well I should have camped that spot for 10 more seconds” etc. I watch replays and what I find is there is someone just sitting behind cover staring at my position for minutes at a time, and its just a standoff of who is going to lose patience first and move and thus get killed.
Watching replays also made me realize how much of an absolutely TRAVESTY second and later spawns are in GRB as im seeing just how many people on both teams make it into a posistion to spawn camp as soon as possible. I used to chalk up 1 death leavers to premium noob players, but I can see why veteran players will do it too.
Maps are too small, matches are too short, and the rewards STINK. I’m pretty sure it takes about 3-4x longer to grind a ground tree out than it does air.
Without the grind and dopamine hits from getting new vehicles or working towards something I just don’t see how anyone could possibly enjoy extended sessions of ground battles in this game after seeing everything that’s on offer. Where is ground EC? Where is world war mode? Its been over 10 years now, and its the same crap.
Agreed.
I came to this thread by googling “war thunder why does tanks feel like Call of Duty”.
I am a vetaran player with more than 10.000 hours since 2013/14, mostly I have focused on air. Several tech trees fully unlocked, mostly in simulator battles.
Now there was this recent tanks sale for the anniversary of the PRC and I got myself a T62 clone for like 30 bucks, because I thought why not.
… the absolute abomination I encountered when entering battles is horrible.
All of the battles feel like this meme, where a sweaty player hammers the keyboard, you know what I mean. There’s no tactics, there’s no strategy, there’s only “Get to that camp spot and wait” - thats for normal tanks.
Then there are these funny little vehicles, like a Fox or something, that apparently go 100 kmh, faster than anything else, and whose very small cannon is more potent than my T62 gun for some reason.
You just hear “POK POK” and you’re dead. Also, there’s stuff constantly exploding, 5000 different engine noises from all directions, drones, planes, ATGM sounds - everything goes "LIDJS=J=JGW?=(TJ(JSDIOSJDFP)(TH?W(=)$H?)=(H?)SDHF" (accurate representation of keys pressed per second by RB tanker it seems)
All these battles are a giant, messy clusterfudge of nonsense.
Ground EC is something I would actually enjoy a lot, but I’m afraid, we are in a niche here.
The majority of players seem to enjoy this messy gameplay? Idk. Maybe they all suffer from Tiktok attention span or something, I seriously, honestly don’t understand it.
The game has a ton of potential, the modeling of weapons, the sounds, the graphics, the variety - it’s all there but Gaijin does … this with RB.
Very disappointing.
if you get tired just take a rest for the day and come back later at a time when you have more energy or else you just end up banging your head against the wall only this time you’re performing worse and frustrated and seething
I wouldn’t go as far to say there isn’t skill expression in ground, its just that its very dull, it boils down to having an encyclopedic knowledge of tank weakspots/layouts, then an almost endless amount of map knowledge, the latter being the unfun part. In air maps sort of matter, especially when fox3 is in the picture, but doesn’t play nearly as big a role.
I still think ground is fun in shorter sessions, its just that when you need a vehicle and its idk 200-400k RP, even with premium account, with premium lineups, its going to take a substantial amount of games. I ground out the su27sm and F4F ICE in about an afternoon of hardcore grinding a piece, try doing that with any 10.0+ ground vic, let alone top tier end of the line ones. It’s just a recipe for massive burnout.
The speed is realistically modeled. It shouldn’t be a surprise that a small recon car is significantly faster than a proper tank.
The cannon is not more potent than a tank’s main gun, but the speed and maneuverability of the vehicle combined with the rapid fire of the cannon allows skilled players to get advantageous angles on opponents. A Fox would struggle to pen a T62 from the front, so it uses agility to flank instead.
What makes the Fox fun is the high skill ceiling for it. All of its main advantages, the speed, the small size, and the relatively high pen auto-cannon, need to be used skillfully to get the most out of them. Let me break that down.
The Speed: Contrary to popular belief you cannot just hold W for the win in the Fox. You need to know when to let off the throttle and how to properly turn or you will spin out, flip, break a wheel, and/or lose all your momentum hitting a map object. Add to that it’s terrain sensitive so you have to adapt to what you’re driving on. If you cannot drive skillfully and utilize your speed properly it will just get you killed.
The Size: the Fox is small, to utilize this properly you have to learn where you can and cannot fit, if you end up trying to fit somewhere you can’t you’ll get stuck. Additionally the Fox is exceedingly bouncy. Check out this clip for an example of what I mean
If you’re not careful when you try to nuzzle up against cover or squeeze into a hiding spot you will be magnetically repulsed and possibly flip over which isn’t always as recoverable and cool as I made it look there.
The Gun: the RARDEN has a high potential for effectiveness but only if you know what you can fight and where to shoot it. For lightly armored vehicles this is less of an issue if you can get the APHE to pen, but because the APDS is more versatile most players dont carry much if any APHE and those who do carry some often forget to use it. When using the APDS you need to learn where you can pen opposing tanks to hit ammo, crew, or critical components. It’s also not stabilized so trying to shoot on the move, while not impossible, is difficult and unreliable. Plenty of times I’ve found myself driving circles around a tank I know I can kill but I keep missing the weak spots and end up dead. Other times I one shot a weakspot on the move like it’s nothing. Very inconsistent.
Finally its not a particularly survivable vehicle. If you’re moving and/or lucky you can handle a few hits but you can also get 50cal’d. I get that people don’t like it when a little rat car speeds by and pok pok’s their big tank to death, but a lot of the time its a skill issue. Either an imbalance of skill between the two players or simply the lack of awareness on the part of the big tank. The Fox is loud, listen for it. If it’s camping a spot, start learning where to look. Be mindful of your peripheral vision, minimap, and kill feed. Do these things and you’ll die to rats a lot less.
This is a genuine issue that I will acknowledge. It’s telling that my strategy for the Fox is usually based on either getting to a camping spot, getting to a flanking area, or both. Something else this has helped me realize is how some of the maps are painfully one sided in this regard. One team will have the opportunity to get to spots that are far more effective against the opposing team than anything the opposing team can access, at least not with the same consistency.
Take for example Domination on El Alamein, specifically the B point. Using the example map the Red team has access to the highlighted spot, where as the Blue team has no equivalent spot. If someone from the Red team can get to that spot they have almost complete control over the Blue team’s access routes to the B point. The red line shows how easy the route to that spot is. In something as fast as a Fox it’s pretty easy to get there uncontested.
So for me, when I get this map in this configuration and I’m on the red team side of it I know exactly where I’m going. If I’m on the blue team side there is no equivalent spot, there used to be one that was kinda close to being equivalent but its been removed.
This same pattern repeats itself with quite a few maps. Some have better equivalent spots for both sides, though not always for the same cap point.
