I agree that tank-only mode would not be viable in WT; I am personally opposed to it. My purpose in mentioning player support for tank only mode was to highlight the direction of popular interests, ie, what WT players actually wanted. Sure, tank only mode would be controversial, but at least a sizable proportion of players would receive it well. NOBODY wanted Infantry mode. At best, there were a few comments on infantry-related official posts after it was already released, but overall, we see a largely negative response on social media. Unsurprisingly, given War Thunder is a game specifically about vehicles, and excluding infantry, while infantry-focused or combined games are already extremely common. This whole ordeal just goes to show how out of touch Gaijin is from its community.
The reason realism is incompatible with infantry is that War Thunder cannot possibly integrate infantry in an implementation which is both realistic and engaging to play. The primary use of tanks is in long-range confrontations, assaults on open plains, etc. Not in urban centers where threats come from every corner. Infantry are supporting elements when tanks are deployed, and are largely powerless against enemy tanks.
Think about real-life current conflicts: tanks are an armored spearhead while infantry in the open are disproportionately vulnerable to battlefield threats such as artillery, drones, and small arms fire. If this was the implementation in a game, infantry would be profoundly ineffective to play; a tank is more powerful than dozens of infantrymen.
Therefore, the implementation in most games featuring both tanks and infantry is unrealistically biased, extremely so, towards close-range and urban combat. Although such battles aren’t unheard of, they are very much rare for tanks and other armoured vehicles, for good reason. Nobody likes getting jumped by people you can’t hear or see until they are pointing RPGs at you from a fourth story balcony less than 200 meters away. This leads to rather frustrating gameplay for tanks, and a low skill factor for all.
But is this actually the case? Of course it is. Mobile Infantry event (April Fools 2023) used Seversk, Sun City, and Alaska maps, all CQC (as an aside, I genuinely liked Mobile Infantry, but that is totally different from this recent development). The infantry beta is based on, you guessed it, an urban map with close-quarters fighting. Sure, current GRB maps are slightly biased towards CQC, but infantry mode will be much, much worse. Not realistic, and certainly not fun either.
