You are acting as if this wasn’t done back in WW2 either. Also, people paying money for said things makes them money, why do you think they monetize it? Anything with the title “Free” has never been free, there is always a catch.
One more thing 400,000? Is bad, I’m sorry you have played for 6 years, clearly not cause back then that would have been 3.5 million RP with a repair cost of give or take 100,000 to 150k while purchasing the vehicle would have been around 3 times the RP, and repair cost combined.
I’m aware of the free to play model, the grind has always been bad.
I have played for 10 years, when it was aircraft only and the top tier aircraft was the Me-262.
The rewards were better back then, you could earn 60k rp in a single game now its capped at what 5-10K?
You also received points for assists and dogfighting now its if you didn’t kill it you are getting nothing.
Ground battles heavy tanks used to get bonuses for bouncing shots not anymore and you received points for being active in the game.
I managed to grind the Meteor Britain’s top tier aircraft without premium faster than I have managed to grind to the Sabre in the US tree.
They removed it because heavy tanks were getting needless RP for nothing! You don’t get bonuses anymore for bouncing shots. You get bonuses for surviving after taking damage.
It was easier to grind to top tier back in 2015 than it is now that was the point.
I’ve recently had a match in my tiger E where I got tracked and barreled in such a position the guy couldn’t go for my sides afterwards.
So we sat there. They kept shooting my barrel and tracks. I kept repairing unable to do anything else. This went on long enough that I racked up like 400 score purely from “Damage from the enemy.”
So it definitely exists, but only comes up (in a way that’s impactful) in really stupid, absurd situations.
Sry man - i joined later - i was addicted to SWBF 2015 those days.
To be fair - the fellow player @luque13 is imho right with his statements - especially regarding game design, difficulty of grind and the overall goal of gaijin to earn money with minors.
2018 / 2019 was as far i can remember the peak time of playing Air RB in props - after a few hundred / thousand battles you knew most of your team mates and your enemies, so what they flew, which tactics they use, etc. - and how to play on which maps.
Yes, it was often boring in the axis vs allied world, but getting kills was much harder vs experienced enemies - much harder than today due to the sheer masses of untrained pilots. I just came out of a 1 vs 4 victory which i had never won 5 years ago - i caught 2 guys on their airfield and managed to kill the last 2 guys in a severe disadvantageous position.
No, I don’t think so. The graphics are a little older, but in my opinion this is actually beneficial, because the graphics requirements are very low, so that people with smaller budgets from less wealthy countries can also play the game.
What is more of a problem, however, are more modern systems that you try to implement in a game with WW2 mechanics.
The best example are the small maps, which make a lot of sense with 50mm cannons without a rangefinder and little sight zoom, but have no place in top tier
Extra points can also be earn by registering more hits, the other day I caught this player having his ass stick out of a building, so I start shooting it and caught the engine and it set on fire, so I repeatedly shoot it with machine gun and continue to hit its engine and tracks, two minutes later his vehicle is destroyed I think he went through both the fire extinguishers bro and I accumulated around 600sp from the hit counts and killing him, almost ran out of ammo though lol
That’s almost always been the case for whatever reason. Back before repair costs were reduced the most expensive tanks were all rank IV/V, with stuff like the Lorraine 40t being 22k, and the Char25t being 15k to repair. It is extremely apparent in sim, since repair costs jump from 5-8k to 10k+ very quickly.
War Thunder or Gaijin specifically are deconstructing the History and roots of the Game by having removed or plan to remove unique vehicles for dubious reasons like historical accuracy while adding more and more of the same bland modern vehicles, redesigning the maps into high octane Call of Duty brawling lobbies, making entire vehicle types and gameplay approaches unviable, amomg many more examples.
Since approx. 2019 with the culling of three certain German Tanks, the developers forced the Game to “grow up” too quickly, leading to completely ridicolous Era mixing and messed up Balance, one death leaving due to the Advertisement of the Modern ERA coupled with the aforementioned COD brawling maps and the inflation of Store bundle prices to up to 75 bucks, for example.
It is not War Thunder that is showing its age, but Gaijin, the Devs and workers behind it.
And I am not refering to the good Kind of age that could attain wisdom and competence, perhaps also compassion. But the bureaucratic Type, where they are stuck in outdated and no longer acceptable ways, because in the administrative branch we have the saying: “This is how we’ve always done it, so we will keep it this way.”
Whilst i agree to most of your views the answer to your question is imho obvious.
The wording “superprops” is attached to very late or postwar aircraft which mostly never saw combat or scored an air kill. And the “super” refers mainly to engine performance based on 115/130/150 octane fuel - and not to superior design.
Technically seen we have just 3 non-US WW 2 superprops: the Mk 22 Spitfire, the Ta 152 H and the Fiat G 56, whilst just the first 2 saw combat and scored kills. The rather poor USSR late war and post war designs excel in Air RB mostly due to too low BRs and insane mid to low alt performance like the post war Yak-3U.
The rest of the so called superprops were US made and scored not a single kill in WW 2. Even the BR 5.0 P-51 D-30 scored not a single kill.
So the comparably high repair cost have to be seen as balancing factor - a lot of experienced players rack up kills like there is no tomorrow, but masses of untrained players drag their BRs artificially lower than it should be. The plane performs too good to see a further lowering of the BR, so gaijin tries to increase the repair cost to create a kind of deterrence for newer players.
Thx to the player revolt in May 2023 we saw a general reduction of repair cost, but you might remember the days when you needed 3 kills to cover your own repair cost. Planes like the G 56 or the Ta 152 C had repair cost of ~ 50.000 SL and the B-28 had 74.000 SL repair cost at BR 6.3…
Have a good one!
PS: You see the proof of my hypothesis if you check out Italian WW 2 props - they have all one thing in common: Too high BRs with rather poor plane performance and comparably high repair cost compared to adversaries at the same BR - but their pilots are able to close the performance gap with skill.
Big issue there is in sim, where your maximum earnings are capped. In ARB, you get get 3-4 kills for 33k SL/match - way outscaling your repair costs (especially once you realize that if you get critted/ignited/severe damaged irrecoverably - J-ing out gives you max repair cost while waiting until you hit the ground only gives you like 6-7k - less than you get for 1 kill or an assist if you die early. One of many systems rewarding the inverse of expected/realistic behaviour…) However, in air sim you stop receiving rewards after 600 score which caps at ~18000 SL if you survive the full 15 minutes and return to base to repair.
This leads to the vicious cycle of spawn in at 12k spawn cost in the F4U-4B, get 2 kills and then run away and afk on your airfield for 15 minutes. Taking any risk after those 2 kills means you lose money, as you lose the ~20% landing reward and whatever proportion was left in the 15 minutes if you die. This can lead to anti-team gameplay, as in my P-51 cannon mustang I am not punished for going to help a friendly who calls for help even with a maxed score - spawn cost is 3K, max pay is like 9k or so, thus surviving just 7 minutes will offset the costs while in the -4B I will have to consider the fact that I’ll likely go negative into SL if I risk myself for the friendly.
It’s the capped PvP rewards that cause a lot of issues for rank 4/rank 5 planes because even if planes are balanced with repair costs, such only works if you can actually make the plane work for you.
The score cap is that low? That’s incredibly stupid, no wonder my earnings were trash despite getting 6 kills and 9 ai kills in 50 minutes. I spawned 4 times, and I only gained 800sl when the match ended.
I’ve just been ignoring the system since I already have plenty of SL, and I just want to play the game without trying to optimize for rewards.
