I had the pleasure of having a nice game with spawn killing and CAS combined.
Use a tank to kill spawn camper tanks? Pe-8 bomb for you and your teammates. Use a SPAA to kill Pe-8? well, get killed by spawn campers. Spawn a tank again to try and kill them again? Hey, look Pe-8 is back after reloading in airbase.
unfortunately friend I understand you, I play 11.0 with Americans, and unfortunately the situation is disgusting. the gaijin clearly favors the Russians, with indestructible T-80BVMs and ka-50/52s. I am writing this message to you after a game where a ka 50 resisted 2 missiles, it only caught fire and then put out the fire after running out of missiles he went back to the base to repair and came back, and killed a dozen us, and a t-80bvm killed 4 of us having absorbed all our shots. This is all pathetic and unfair, and I wouldn’t advise my worst enemy to play WT right now. and i think i will quit too if they don’t fix it soon, and i’ve been a PAYING player since 2013
The problem with war Thunder is that the gaijn for new vehicles invent statistics, and even when there is evidence that they are wrong, they ignore it, even that the t80bvm was destroyed in the front of the hull most likely by the t64 UA, and in tues the front of the bvm is impenetrable , they don’t verify sources and they take it as the manufacturer wrote on Wikipedia, it’s like America made a tank and said that the whole tank has 1500mm of armor on each side, and a 210mm gun, and the shells have a speed of 3000m / s and reload 2 seconds, and gaijn without reflexes would add it, and that’s how it is with russian vehicles, whether from ww2 or today, i recommend playing tank crew clothing russian manufacturer makes this game, in short no one plays russian tanks or planes and prefer the usa or the UK, because they are so weak, and in tues everything is invented, sometimes I have the impression that the only well-rendered nation is Germany and the rest is made for them and improved so that they would not be sad, I will not even talk about absurdities such that is2 can destroy a tiger 2h ahead believes where in reality the 122mm had lower penetration than the german 75mm/70, but what do you need to keep up the propaganda, unfortunately there are a lot of cool games with an idea for the east only developers from the east are 90% not suitable for making games, for example Eft or wt.
it’s not enjoyable if your only goal is to get to top tier.
There are many tanks and nations and br’s.
Forget top tier and play it when you get it.
The obsession with people achieving top tier is the fundamental issue with gameplay and other players.
i have top tier in 5 nations, do i play it much? no because its boring.
Did i “grind” to get there? - - - no i didnt - i just played all br’s enjoyed all the tanks etc and voila! i have top tier and frankly, the vehicles may be better, but the gameplay is sterile and the lower br’s are more fun.
I wish people would stop being obsessed with top tier, and if not - at least show some degree of skill or knowledge when you get there.
As long as the devs do not solve the disaster of the damage model, the volumetric bullets and the penetration calculator, the game would not be fun, it would be somewhat boring to the point of playing two or three games and closing the game because of the bullets that do nothing The absurd ricochets, the bullets that in reality pierce other tanks and in the game cannot, are all things that are frustrating and only encourage people to stop playing waiting for another company to release a better tank game.
Tank games are not popular enough for any other company to bother. And this ground mode relied soley on the popularity of a novel air game (due to a simplifed control method) and is strapped on as it could not sustain itself in todays gaming environment; it couldn’t even get off the ground itself!
Now, there is not much hope, we only have to wait for the others to stop being afraid of success, solve the problems and finally have a game in good condition and worth playing more than 3 games a day.
What you may not understand is that some people admire modern tanks and would love nothing more than to play those tanks just as much as the classic IS-2s or Tiger 1s.
But the glaring issue is that it’s almost impossible for a casual player to get to top tier IF they want those tanks.
This is an issue that I do not think they can ever resolve and yet makes the game a lot worse overall.
When I started the vehicles did not go much beyond WWII, the point was not the love for particular vehicles but the game, the playing of the game. The grind elements give that feeling of “progress” but is just a addictive element that should be avoided as the reason for playing (in my mind).
Just think, if someone’s love for vehicles was bi-planes and pre-war tanks then they would be able to play what they want off the bat and never EVER have to play beyond Rank 1.
My thought is if people do not like the game from 1.0 to wherever their favourite vehicle is then maybe that is asking for disappointment. There is no real “end game”, the end game is the match you are in, to play for the enjoyment of playing, not the buzz from “progress”.
The issue then comes that so many now might want the top vehicles (which many players might well have sat on for ages and want new things as they are now bored, whereby a new player has the complete opposite and too much to do) and to get there they push through the game blindly (and so getting too far ahead with their experience).
Now this means that balancing is rubbish as many of the stats are by players sleepwalking through, then they get to where they want to play and possibly bring down that area too (depends if someone is here for grinding or trying to win matches). Those 10 players you took out might well be naff at the game and therefore is not a challenge, or then the 10 players might all be on top of their game and you were able to best them; you will never ever know!
Coming from a position of no real love for the military I never had a goal or a vehicle I had to get, the idea was to play a game. And to top that the 8.0ish and above was never really intended to be played on the maps/modes/gameplay style the game started with (after ground was added), hence a really wobbly game in my mind.
The thing is how do they make “where I want to play” achievable without mucking up the journey to get there. And yes, starting afresh with the latest tech in mind is going to be an almost impossible task if people want to be there yesterday. But then there are SO many different types of player all in one game that pleasing all is never ever going to happen (needs more modes, interesting things to do, but the population is relatively small and niche).
You’ve said lots of supremely interesting things in this comment, so sorry if this turned out into an almost sentence-by-sentence breakdown of your takes, but I found plenty to think about.
This is manifestly true, and maybe it’s my neurodivergence or maybe it’s just a personal attitude thing, but I don’t really understand why people obsess so much over the grind. I’m glad I don’t, it’s the aspect of WT that I find less interesting.
However, the game’s business model is clearly built around this. And I’m not just referring to premium time to speed up research etc, that stuff is obvious industry standard. Look at their marketing: they promise you Leopards and A-10s, and then a new player is confronted with a Pz III B etc. The dissonance is huge, and yes, it can make some players decide to buy a top tier premium to quickly rush through the ranks, but many others will do exactly as you say. They’ll play through the game like it’s a chore, half-interested in the vehicles they’re unlocking. They’ll either burn out in the process, and quit, or play very poorly on their way up and then get to top tier without having developed the skills they need to do well.
Yes. Moreover, the game sells you the illusion that if only you unlock the next vehicle, you’ll start “actually having real fun”. It’s the silent promise of a shortcut, you don’t have to actually get good yourself, just unlock the next vehicle. This is an artifact of the uptier system, since you always encounter a certain tank while being uptiered against it, think it’s super powerful, then you actually play it while being uptiered with it and the cycle begins anew.
I’m sure it helps keep the player population the way Gaijin wants it. But I suspect that it will harm the game in the long run. Producing burned-out players that don’t fall in love with the game/try to master its technical depth, doesn’t seem like a recipe for success to me. But I’m just a random dude and they’ve been doing this for years, so what do I know? There must be plenty I’m unaware of.
Yes. And when you combine this with the increasingly expanding roster of vehicles and countries (which I’m not against, just to be clear) you quickly outstrip the boundary conditions of balance in the original game, so to speak. It simply becomes impossible to chase down all the variables, and every change has another unintended consequence somewhere else.
That’s the part I currently find most frustrating. It makes it really hard to get an objective idea of your progress.
For me, it was the opposite starting point. Not in the sense that I’m a warmonger or anything lmao, I mean in the sense that I came to WT knowing exactly what I wanted: playing German vehicles from the 1930s and 1940s.
My interest in the history of the 3rd Reich predates me playing this game (or knowing that it existed) by several years. I’ve had the privilege to study German wartime economic data with a luminary in the field, when I was still in academia. Now that I’ve researched and spaded all of them, I have no ambition other than to get better and better at playing them. I suspect that makes me a very atypical player of this game, in terms of experience. I never look at SL and RP. Just at how I can do better with X machine. Check my recent Jagdtiger thread and you’ll see what I mean, and what keeps me playing this game.
Exactly. And to a degree, really, you don’t need to. But with better game design, you can get to a situation where you have the right incentives that Gaijin wants from its player base, while still giving players the tools to enjoy the experience, and - if they’re not here for the grind - to set goals for themselves, and chase them.
I think that’s the primary reason why they don’t get touched. They don’t want to mess with queue times by adding more modes, and they don’t want to risk compromising a winning formula by altering or replacing existing modes. And yet, they’re the part of the game in most need of love right now, in my opinion.
Even the last season of World War had some very creative and imho fantastic game modes. If that were a permanent event, I’d play that and sim all the time and forget about “regular” ground RB.
Which I assume is exactly the reason why Gaijin doesn’t make it into a permanent mode… :)
I go through WT moods as well
A few remarks though
Those who complain about top tier being boring, or being too oriented to long range ATGM or missiles or CAS or whatever; unfortunately this is a reflection of how modern warfare is fought. Maybe Gaijin needs to change the maps (make them much bigger) or change the game mechanics, or allow options like No-CAS or No-heli or whatever. Tanks irl are more or less computerized gun platforms where the tank figures out where to point the barrel for you.
In terms of having fun in WT, the most I have is when I feel like I’m up-close and personal in combat, and so really you are talking about WW2 era +/- a few years where tankers (irl) still needed to actually see what they were shooting at, and this kind of mirrors the gameplay and vehicles capabilities. I play as Germany mostly, and my 4.0 BR PvIV lineup is simply fun; tanks are fast, reload is fast, traverse is fast, but has negligible SL and RP rewards. My 5.7 Tiger/Panther D/ Pz.Bef.Wg.VI P feels more “serious” as actions need to be far more deliberate and mistakes are penalized. Once I hit 7.3-7.7 BR I simply stopped having fun, and after a dozen games or so I just went back to what I enjoyed, and right now that range is smack in the middle of the worst BR compression in years
Also, playing to grind is really horrible for your mental health. You put in hours and days to unlock a vehicle only to realize it sucks, then you laboriously unlock all the mods till you spade it, and then all you wind up is with a vehicle that is “as good” as the best thing you had 1 tier lower. Then you realize you need to do it for multiple vehicles to complete a lineup. The natural reaction to this is 1) to stop playing 2) to stick to certain BR and ignore the grind or 3) to throw money at it.
Gaijin is trying to make you do #3
I could not have said better, probably. Somehow, the game becomes more and more frustrating with time.
For me, I don’t grind for the sake of getting to T10 faster, I’m jus st trying to enjoy the game. Playing BRs 5-6 in Germany and USA. But even that become problematic recently.
I would add few more things to the summary in this post.
First, the maps are getting smaller with every single update. This reduces the variety of tactics players can employ, makes the game more and more boring. They are more and more reducing the gameplay to a head-on point-and-shoot melee. First, we had “Normandy” map cut almost in half during the summer. Then, after the recent update, the “Port terminal” become reduced to something like a bowling lane, with a cap in the middle. So players are lining up against each other and shooting like if this is sort a duel between Russian noblemen. There’s simply no way you can be creative in your game, flank the players, etc.
Second, matchmaking becomes horrible. After the recent patch (Oct 2023) I’m uptiered every single time. I have 5.7–6.3 BR spread, and now I see vehicles from 7.0 in every game. If there was a larger map you could be creative - say, go on a flank. But with the castrated maps, I have no option just head-on battle. And there’s no damn way your Tiger E can overcome Tiger II (H); and no amount of skill can compensate for that.
Finally, developers have zero respect for the community and don’t take any feedback. World of Warships devs also had few f…ups with subs and CVs. But, at least, they learned from their mistakes and they don’t screw the game any more. So nowadays WoWs become much more enjoyable game - not because it’s getting so much better, but because WT is becoming much worse.
I see a lot of comments about grinding. I admit that reading it gives me the impression that players can only have fun in 12.0 or 11.7.
I’ve been playing since 2013 and I still have so much fun playing WW2 tanks for example, I don’t care about the grind, it takes as long as it takes. Let’s just say I’m having fun without needing a carrot. A nice explosion (even mine), nice sounds, nice graphics too, action, etc etc, all that is more than enough for me.
In any case, when playing this game over the long term, breaks are naturally necessary.
I’m totally on your side on this one, I’m a relatively new player, but I can resonate with everything said in this post. My main gripe with the game right now is the lack of large maps that can accommodate the play style of top tier MBTs, their introduction to the game felt more like an afterthought with little to no regard for reworking the now aging legacy maps. Even newer maps are getting smaller and smaller (Iberian Castle, Test Site and Flanders). It makes me really mad that we have all these tanks which excel in long range engagements, yet we never get to use them in their intended purpose.
After 3 years I do have more periods of not playing the game now than ever before.I would habitually put the game on after coming back from work late but less and less now.
Everytime I fall back in love with the game something is altered and I am punched in the face by the latest travesty whether it is repeated maps,changing vehicle BR ,a constant uptier or just a flood of terrible filler vehicles like the M109 ,AMX 10 or Finland T34 and Swedish M4s.
So I am “another moaner and complainer” .No I am generally enthusiastic ,positive and love the game but I am hanging on by my fingertips and really not playing as much as I used to because the fun to rage scales are so heavily unbalanced right now and I am flicking the off switch.
I didn’t renew my yearly subscription for the first time in 3 years as I don’t hold out much hope for the coming year and BR/Tier wise I have no desire to climb any higher as WW2 is my thing and WW2 gaming is becoming a sad mix of modern and old and it’s pathetic.
From my pov - and reading all of of the threads - the best way to handle wt as a whole is to find out why you play it and what are your goals whilst playing.
Most still active long term players found over the years niches within the game allowing them to deal with flaws and weaknesses either by finding workarounds or by simply accepting them.
If you compare it to IRL - you might have found the perfect life and wife, but your relationship to her is constantly burdened by interference from outside (mother in law, friends with “advises”) it is simply up to you either to deal with it or if you hope for the best (how old is your mother in law?) or to think about a change (can i afford a divorce?, impact on kids?, replacements?) in order to keep your inner balance…
Ok - a little bit off topic, but if you replace wife with wt mother in law with updates / BR & game mechanic changes you might get the point…
This is valuable and yes I found doing the Battle pass challenges gives me a purpose.
The little in game battle tasks are good in terms of rotating vehicle selection to fit and getting me to jump up and down BR.I just wish the prizes were better as Gaijin stumbled on to a good way to ensure players only used Era Specific vehicles in a battle.
Yeah - i like the challenges too - and nothing better than fulfilling challenges tailored for Ground RB in Air RB. I love these tasks to kill enemies with bombs or rockets in Air RB - they may take a while but they are fun.
With some experience you can score bomb kills from 7-9 km alt, it is just a matter of timing (and bomb timer) to kill landing/repairing enemies on the main / auxiliary airfield. Heavy rockets need more practice, but the have ranges up to 7km…90 degree dives from 7km and firing at 5 km works best :-)
Unfortunately gaijin does its best to avoid this - contrails show your position, clouds make the necessary predictions impossible and 16 vs 16 ensure that you find a lot of P-47s at very high alt mid/late game - or the game is won or lost by tickets when you are there…
Have fun!
what is it and how to do it?
Do you want to know what’s really pissing me off right now?
I read such sensible things here from people I’ve never met and who really deserve respect for the way they look at and deal with things here.
I have learnt a lot from you and I am so grateful for that. But why the hell can’t Gaijin???
That’s just stupid. It’s not like we’re trying to revolutionise the genre.
Many have good ideas and such a good sense of where the problems lie and they usually work on themselves first before demanding changes on the outside.
Now we’re at a point where you’re partially powerless as a player because you’re at the mercy of certain mechanics.
The only question that remains is WT yes or no. And that’s a shame … After all, there are people working hard to create the assets and vehicles for the game. It just feels somehow distant and cold. And that also spills over into the discussions.
Thank you for your attention. I’m going to do my daily WT-BP routine and then go and touch some snow.