My account is 6 years old and so far I had never bought premium time. I only bought the vl pyörremsky plane for swede after I got to rank 7. And Got the sherman 3-4 for sweden when I got the t72 in ground. I have also bought the t34 57 but that’s about it. None of these could help me research the things I was researching so I never got a taste of the bonuses. I got the gripen a basically f2p. But today I decided to treat myself to the Somua sm despite how expensive it is where I live. And I feel like my eyes have been opened. I never thought It would be that good. I never thought It would speed the grind this much. I feel like I wasted my time. After 6 years I only had one top tier vehicle but now I feel like I am getting new vehicles every 0.5 games. Its just fascinating to me. I will probably buy premium time when the 10 day expires from the somua sm. It feels like a brand new game. This game isn’t f2p at all and I just noticed that now.
it always felt to me as if playing without premium time is like playing a demo
the progression feels “right” with prem, you dont get negative sl for playing bad, and so on…
Stockholm syndrome. The grind is still horrid for ground battles. Also really bad for air but its way better than ground. But for air it feels like unlocking a new weapon in an fps game. The average f2p gets to top tier in a couple of months. Imagine if you had to play pistols in an fps game for 7 months to unlock your fav gun. And then you have to play with a worse version of the gun you want for 100 games so you can get the actual thing with the attachments and then you can have fun.
also my prem will end in a week and I will either give in and buy more or suffer like crackhead that’s been given the good stuff after 30 years only to give him a taste and then throw the batch. Horrible example fr fr I don’t know why I said that
oh i dont even grind ground, where i usually play grinding lasts for a few days at most lol
i disagree, just had a game (4 kills, no bases no ground) which got me 40k rp, the plane is mirage 2000-s5
I recently learned premium time is multiplicative on premium/talisman vehicles not additive.
So if you got 1000 RP base, you would see these multipliers and think you get +1000 for premium time, and +1000 for premium vic. But what actually happens is you get 1000 base + 1000 from the talisman, and then premium time multiplies both of these by 100% resulting in 4000 RP not 3000. So playing F2P you grind literally 4x slower than a double premium linup.
Takes me about 6 hours to grind the new 400k RP vehicle in russia with premium 10.3, that would 24 hours without either.
Took me 6 years of on and off playing to get to top tier. Granted I was simply ass at the game for the first 2 years and I took a REALLY long break on multiple occasions but that’s simply no excuse. Someone that wants to play top tier has to either play a game that they don’t want to play (props are a different game change my mind) or pay 70 dollars and grind. This game is simply not f2p
Fwiw, the next 50% off premium time sale will happen at the end of October, start of November. I personally prefer the 180 days for “$20” from the webstore, so you don’t have to mess with GE’s: Gaijin.Net Store - Premium account for 180 days
Premium time sales happen at least twice a year for 50% off, so you can get 180 days twice a year if you wanted to. The price for a full year is a little bit cheaper, but not by much compared to the 180 days. (Less than 180 days gets much more expensive per day, why I prefer the 180 or 365 options).
I just wanted to mention about the sale coming up, so if you did want to get more right away, you will save some money by only getting enough to last until the next 50% off sale.
I doubt I will spend money on this game for a while now. I still feel kinda guilty for spending that much on a game. I am fine economically but like damn its just so bs to me.
Do you have access to the Gaijin marketplace? Ie, are you on PC and not console? If so, in case you didn’t know, you can buy items from the webstore, using the GJN coins you get from selling stuff on the marketplace. Including GEs and/or premium time. Just another thing I wanted to mention if that might help you. (Selling event vehicles, and/or selling coupons that you might get from the SL crate events, etc.)
I don’t grind events. I mean get the vehicles but I have a life so I cant get the coupons. I was gonna sell the f14 iraaf but couldn’t grind the coupon aswell. Its not really a financial issue Its just a mental thing bc how culture I guess. I think Id be fine with spending ingame money to get golden eagles but like I said its just too time consuming. Id rather just spend money no matter how stupid it seems to me. Its 1000x more stupid to no life an event for a 15 gjn copy paste tank.
On flipside tho, premium doesn’t interact with Skill Bonus.
The issue with this is that people in premium jets and premium accounts are no longer incentivized to play the game to best of their ability as skill bonus becomes worthless.
Instead, they are incentivized to strap napalm on their premium jets and suicide bomb which is terrible gameplay for both their teammates, the player and the enemy team (it makes matches be shorter, end faster and steals bases from dedicated strike/bombing craft).
I don’t do this, but this is what I’ve arrived at looking at the post-battle reports of people with and without premium in the “why I bomb in jet fighters” thread.
What I am saying is it should be multiplicative with skill bonus as well.
I have a few frustrations with the game, I absolutely free-load and have only spent the price of 2 coffees in the past 24 months. Mainly because I’m broke but also due to some frustrations with running the game on my hardware, and the bad teams, and the feeling that Gaijin is using dark patterns to mess with my brain. When I hate it, I play a single player game instead. It’s still fun to drive the tanks in War Thunder. It’ll never get old. I’ll probably waste money on the game again one day, if the economy recovers. Thank god I’m unemployed, otherwise the snail would be taxing me every few months lmao
Apparently it is fine for at least 6 years F2P…
The grind is easier in the mode you have more skill in.
ground rewards are considerably worse.
It depends on what you play.
If you want to play jet fighters in air sim between 7.0-9.0,
without premium, you will go broke within a few matches.
Horten - Imgur: The magic of the Internet
F80C - Imgur: The magic of the Internet
F2H-2 - Imgur: The magic of the Internet
F9F - Imgur: The magic of the Internet
Me262 - Imgur: The magic of the Internet
The like
F86A5 (Imgur: The magic of the Internet)
Mig-15 remains absurdly unaffordable as well: Imgur: The magic of the Internet
Your maximum potential income is measured in mintues and available on vehicle stat cards. You can earn up to 15 x 0.92 of your statcard reward if you earn 1050 or more score (2000, 3000, 4000 earn you the same within 1-2%).
Proof:
More proof:
(HeliBoys Sim EC Sheet - Google Spreadsheets)
Example: 19 734 for the F80C assuming you get 2 kills and land and survive 15 minutes.
To NOT go into negative SL flying in SB at the 7.0-9.0 BR bracket, you MUST have a premium account.
Demonstrated example:
19.7K SL.
It costs 17369 SL to spawn it.
Your absolute best performance income if you don’t die is 19.7k.
If you die on the way back to base, it becomes 15.7k
You see it right.
You are losing 2k SL for spawning the Horten and failing to RTB in time to get landing bonus.
If you then respawn, you’ve paid the total of 15.7k-2x17.3k- = - 18.9K.
If you survive another 15 minutes but fail to land in time, it becomes 2x15.7-3x17.3= - 20K
If you survive another 15 minutes AND finally land in time, it becomes 2x15.7k-3x17.3k+19.7k= - -0.8K
If you survive ANOTHER 15 minutes and again don’t die, you earned enough to respawn without going into negatives! 2x15.7k-3x17.3k+19.7k+19.7k = 18.9K
This all of course assumes you always survive 15 minutes after getting 2 kills. God forbid you take off and die 5 minutes in without a kill. Yes, you read that right - a 2:1 K/D ratio leaves you at -20K SL, you need to add +4 kills on top with 0 deaths to make enough cash to respawn next match.
Doing it F2P is frankly impossible if you are actively looking for dogfights and not just killing people who just started playing.
Most hilarious part is that starting with like F8U-2, it becomes affordable again because SL/min scales up to meet spawn cost.
However 7.0-9.0 have awful sl/min economy modifiers compared to their spawn costs.
Premium doubles your sl/min income across the board AND makes it impossible to earn less than 0 SL at the end of the match.
Yeah french 7.7 is one of the best lineups in game. I have the whole tree and still keep coming back to 7.7
Swedish planes all have beyond absurd repair costs for horrible planes.
J32B(9.3)=13k silver lions
J29F(8.7)=12.6k silver lions.
And before it was fixed the j21 series of aircraft (4.3 props btw) had the ungodly amount of 10-15k repair costs. It is simply not feasible to grind sweden air without premium
In terms of efficiency, even grinding event vehicles conversion coupons will generate a huge time saving if you buy a year of premium from the rewards during a sale.
If you buy premium, buy during sale and buy at least half a year in the store or a year in the game.