1: change the max level you can reach. Getting up to Level 100 and getting a million Silver Lions (SL) is nice and all for a new player, but it honestly does not take long and begs the question: what is next? So here are three ways I can make the level grinding more interesting.
1A: cap the max level at 1,000. Simple as that, now people can grind up to Level 1,000 and every 100 levels, they get an additional million SL for making it to level 100, 200, 300, etc., and then when they reach 1,000 they get… one million SL!
1B: a prestige system. Much like Call of Duty, you get to Level 100, you get your prize, and then you get the option to prestige. What does it do? Simple, your level resets to the beginning, you get to keep your stuff, AND you get a cool border, title card, and you do that multiple times until you’re max prestige, Level 100, with a cool border with like a tank firing flames or something. Oh, and a new picture, because profile pics are cool.
1C: both combined. So now you get the best of both worlds. You can now prestige every 100 levels until you get to 10th (max) prestige. But wait, you got to top prestige, now you get to level… 101? Yep, now you get to enjoy levelling up until Level 1,000 with more perks, more SL, and if Gaijin is feeling friendly, instead of SL once you reach Max Prestige, Level 100, you are now gifted with Golden Eagles (GE) for every 100 levels you complete at Max Prestige. Also you get a cool border, cool background, cool profile pic, and the ability to terrify new players as they see a Max Prestige, Level 1,000 player at low tiers because where else are you going to play at?
2: change Battle Pass rewards. Simple as that, every other game that has a Battle Pass has the ability to unlock their respective monetary “coin” like Call of Duty has CoD Points, Fortnite has… I don’t know, Fort Bucks, and on and on. Why not allow people to make a bit of GE? You don’t need to go overboard, like maybe you can win a grand total of 3,000 GE through the entire thing. Plus it is a good incentive to buy a Battle Pass and will monetise the game because now you can literally spend money to grind to get free money.
3: Double XP Weekends. I’m aware we get two (2) times a year where everything is half off: Gaijin’s birthday and Christmas. However that is honestly not worth it. This game is grindy as it is, and the only two times it is not grindy is within a two month period? That is bad business, and while I get the entire purpose is to stress people out enough to buy premiums, I think the better answer is to allow one weekend a month for various bonuses. Maybe a weekend in May allows you to buy stuff with SL half off (or double SL research). Another weekend in June let’s you research faster or half off research. July allows you to level up quicker so you can reach your prestige and get that fancy 1 Million SL. Many other games do this: Call of Duty, Battlefield, and many others. People enjoy the game during that time, you get a lot more avenue because people are willingly playing for the grind, they will even buy premiums to maximise their profits, and if they don’t open their pocketbook (or mom’s credit card) to buy a Challenger 2 OES, well they are using it to buy GE for Premium Time. It is a proven system that works for many other games, and I believe War Thunder (and perhaps by extension, the other ones) should implement this system as well.
I enjoy the feedback, and would appreciate to hear what else you would enjoy in this game.