I have several issues with Naval Arcade.
Bots/AI: all are OP and need to have their crew skills dropped significantly (75%). I was recently shot down right after spawning by a bot Frunze at 11.72km. I’ve lost two coastals to the Hipper right out of spawn in Encounter. No clue at what range as I couldn’t see the Hipper either time. My coastals/planes don’t last long when confronted by bots. My 7.0 bluewaters are getting tore up by bot battleships when the bots used to just be an annoyance.
Aiming: It’s now too easy for players/bots to shoot us at longer ranges. I preferred the old aiming system prior to the green circles. I’d settle for the green circles, anything besides but what we now have.
Zoom: I don’t want to automatically unzoom when the locked vessel sinks or goes behind an island. I usually go directly to a nearby target but now have to rezoom.
Ammo Rack/one shot: do away with or lessen the the occurrence of ammo racks/one shots. I have had matches where all three of my bluewaters were one shot while I delivered none.
Matchmaking: I often squad up and when I do it seems we wait longer to join a match. It’s as if the match is waiting for another squad. Matchmaking should always be random.
Uptiers: Hate them but seem to get a ton of them. Is there a formula that puts better players in constant uptiers or are they purely random? Downtiers seem extremely rare.
Naval has been my favorite since it appeared in the game. I typically play a few hours a day after work and at least 8 hours a day on weekends/days off. I currently find Naval more aggravating than fun and sometimes wander off to play other games on Steam. I’m hoping these issues will be fixed soon. I’ll be trying this next tank event (T-34-85) just to take a break from Naval.
The current system makes the BR 3.0 French heavy boat a weapon that does not require any play skills.
Their bridges are high enough that they can always see the enemy and their sights can always catch him. and Just one click with the cannon slightly protruding from cover is all it takes to kill the enemy. Measures to disable the cannon are no longer possible. The shorter boats are killed before they can aim their guns.
Why didn’t you have this in mind before you changed the aiming system?
Actually, how Marne is OP even in realistic modes shows that its problem is not on aiming mode.
It’s more of problem of ‘huge survivability difference between boat DM vs ship DM’.
We finally have updated global stats from StatShark website. This is a new feature of StatShark (to see this data, select one of the Monthly Stats periods and then press General Statistics).
Naval Arcade players in February 2025 (last full month with the old aiming system)
Based on data: February-March 2025
BR
USA
Germany
USSR
Britain
Japan
Italy
France
1
33
46
45
20
21
11
11
1,3
92
186
159
54
55
37
55
1,7
3917
1569
5015
1573
1636
1089
1190
2
10920
11417
13853
4566
4110
3229
2738
2,3
4932
4062
4890
1739
1465
791
883
2,7
3598
3940
3575
1464
1121
646
777
3
2631
1778
2295
1306
577
280
547
3,3
15297
4710
8973
2701
5089
2004
752
3,7
7584
6079
4868
2167
2949
1118
1254
4
24088
23521
18327
4816
7849
3283
2306
4,3
28369
25245
23173
10466
11102
4974
4648
4,7
11241
21755
11746
8768
6018
2228
4489
5
15664
14617
15388
5581
7734
2016
2846
5,3
13866
11053
16272
5197
7999
1756
3039
5,7
22354
10622
17416
4279
9321
1517
3244
6
4302
2886
8752
1373
2376
350
498
6,3
4396
2467
4422
1046
2156
454
453
6,7
4130
2460
2554
1049
1953
250
329
7
7369
3428
4081
1471
4003
375
483
7,3
3051
2262
2171
1041
2344
211
294
All
187834
154103
167975
60677
79878
26619
30836
Total:
707922
Total number of players in February: 707922
Naval Arcade players in March 2025 (two weeks with old, two weeks with new aiming system)
Based on data: March-April 2025
BR
USA
Germany
USSR
Britain
Japan
Italy
France
1
74
96
86
46
59
25
43
1,3
91
177
174
67
92
52
104
1,7
3579
3912
4586
1604
1800
1092
1866
2
11684
12221
14938
5535
5928
3643
4583
2,3
4577
3324
4623
1591
2581
857
1456
2,7
3451
4586
4389
1386
2815
665
1410
3
2759
1967
2851
1468
827
362
1149
3,3
16136
4502
9487
2627
6855
2399
1567
3,7
7251
6216
4764
2047
4202
1326
1979
4
21062
14817
14317
5897
8756
3834
3096
4,3
31474
25836
23713
13431
13436
6266
5840
4,7
12414
22470
12202
11545
7287
2858
5698
5
17260
13784
14639
6896
8356
2508
3802
5,3
15287
11540
13763
7531
7528
2278
3933
5,7
24145
10515
12422
4867
6331
1859
3978
6
8538
2993
6308
1123
2113
465
884
6,3
6126
2471
4271
567
1741
597
888
6,7
7214
4148
5115
1778
2998
465
1596
7
9891
4324
5101
2042
4681
505
2103
7,3
4413
2856
2820
1515
2976
290
1451
All
207426
152755
160569
73563
91362
32346
47426
Total:
765447
Total number of players in March: 765447
Naval Arcade players in April 2025 (first full month with the new aiming system)
Based on data: April-May 2025
BR
USA
Germany
USSR
Britain
Japan
Italy
France
1
118
168
147
59
75
20
48
1,3
84
149
190
54
82
44
80
1,7
2668
2925
3355
1522
1479
894
1099
2
7471
8395
10075
3526
3610
2535
2444
2,3
2774
1474
2918
1302
1326
638
872
2,7
2463
3522
3382
1488
1418
536
827
3
2675
1732
2722
1493
838
377
883
3,3
15216
4581
9559
2848
4931
2182
1456
3,7
7590
6344
4985
2455
2555
1241
1672
4
19493
11112
11712
6592
6998
2927
2501
4,3
22075
19776
18128
9565
9525
4342
3958
4,7
9865
18371
10422
8841
5428
2260
3405
5
12942
11105
11104
5827
5617
1798
1797
5,3
11327
8870
10282
4052
4871
1570
1495
5,7
18862
8410
9152
4200
5849
1396
1427
6
6040
2648
3711
1347
1495
302
358
6,3
3391
3211
3234
1173
1135
343
354
6,7
5207
3550
2860
1554
1986
293
638
7
7546
3704
3784
1729
3089
364
781
7,3
2693
1750
1943
1073
1749
183
394
All
160500
121797
123665
60700
64056
24245
26489
Total:
581452
Total number of players in April: 581452
BTW: They count battle BR for global stats (don’t ask me how they do that, I thought they take these stats from player profiles, but it looks like they have access to data from battles). You can see e.g. 7.3 BR stats here, because players can take 7.3 BR planes into 7.0 Naval battles, and they are counted as 7.3 BR. This is also the reason why you see so few 1.0 BR players. Most players in this BR are uptiered to 1.7 or 2.0 BR battles. Info from the StatShark changelog:
The new additions are under this General Statistics tab. Note that the counted value for matches is based on the BR of the highest vehicle within the game so if you’re in a 3.7 match and get uptiered to 4.7, you and everyone in your game will count as 4.7. We can guarantee that this, as well as the player statistics, is very accurate.
It’s the number of players that played battles, not battles. It counts all battles of all players (since it’s BR based), so one player can be counted many times if he played many battles.
For us this is actually much better than the number of battles or the number of players during the month (one player counted only once) for 2 reasons:
The number of battles would include every battle, it doesn’t matter if the battle had 32 players or 2 players plus 30 AI bots. So it’s not a good way to determine the popularity of the game mode, especially after the devs added more AI bots to Naval and battles now start much faster.
The number of players that played Naval Arcade during the month (one player counted only once) wouldn’t be that good as well, because someone can play only 1 battle during the month, and he would still be counted as Naval Arcade player.
The way the StatShark devs decided to count the number of players makes the most sense. I’m just not sure how exactly they gather these stats. Maybe there is some API in War Thunder that allows them to get this data, I don’t know.
I saw this in battles, but also on other players screenshots. There were players on the forum posting their scoreboards, and you could notice they faced a lot of AI bots in basically every battle. I never saw that many AI bots before. The Naval Arcade game mode looks very empty lately, at least from what I saw. I don’t play Naval anymore, so I still wanted to see April stats to confirm this. But I was pretty sure the number of players would be much lower than before. I just see too much negativity everywhere about this aiming change, it was only a question how many players left the game mode.
Total number of players in February: 707922
Total number of players in March: 765447
Total number of players in April: 581452
To be honest, I expected an even bigger decline. The difference between March and April is -183995 players. It looks a lot, but keep in mind that March was the month with Naval event and we had this aiming change in the middle of it, so probably a lot of players wanted to try the new aiming system. This is probably why March had more players than February. You also have to remember there were some serious Naval bugs in April. If you take all these factors into account, 581452 players in April may not be that bad. But it’s still clear that Naval Arcade has lost a lot of players (even compared to February).
I know that some players were expecting a huge increase in player count because they thought WT Mobile players would join Naval Arcade, but I don’t think that was a reasonable way of thinking at any point.
The big question is where are all the players who claimed they didn’t play Naval Arcade just because they didn’t like the overly difficult aiming system, but will definitely start playing Naval Arcade with the new much easier aiming system. I bet most of these players played only a few battles after the update and decided that they still don’t like Naval Arcade.
I think this is accurate. Players who were curious tried the new aiming mode and maybe even liked it better! But… then… found the game mode boring because there was nothing left to it anymore.
No skill. So…
No room for growth.
If you’re not growing your skill in a game… are you even playing a game?
The problem is, the damage Gaijin did is going to take time to recover from, even if they revert the changes right now.
This is the first battlepass I haven’t participated in. It’s also the longest time I’ve kept the client closed. And I’m perfectly comfortable not participating in sales, when I used to be excited to pick something up on a discount.
Revert the aim changes, and then provide some kind of incentive to bring players back. Maybe some more Coastal boats that are zoomie. Those are fun.
Oops sorry for the misunderstanding. This is about AB. It should not have been given an unusual reaction time to a large caliber gun with a one-hit kill.
Actual, Arras’ win rate, KpS, and KpD all jumped from before the update.
Honestly almost all the naval changes that came with Hornet’s Sting and after have decimated both player numbers and enjoyment. The shell velocity changes seem fine, and I wont talk about bugs, but its easily pinned on a few changes.
Arcade aiming: most people hate this, its an overly simplified system with a lot of bugs, and relies on the game client running perfectly to function properly most of the time. Its been beat to death with dislikes so I’ll leave it there.
Fire Spreading: Fires can now spread and detonate your magazine, and do so extremely quickly (as in 2-5 seconds quick), even from turret fires. The extinguishing system was not updated for this to lower spreading chances when active or faster times for ammo fires, nor was any countering mechanism added like flooding mags. As it sits it lowers times to kill massively, as you can just hit an enemy turret and change targets, as they will explode soon after most of the time. If you’re a stock ship and your turret gets set on fire, get ready to respawn momentarily. Your armor values also don’t reduce fires, as small spalling shrapnel can set undamaged turrets or elevators on fire as well, even from small caliber guns.
Gaijin Bots: Increased threat and increased rewards, but more frustrating to play against. These bots will all target the same player many times and constantly shell them, causing infinite repairs and flooding. Their shells seem to have increased trajectories and cant be dodged, as you can watch them fly in almost parallel to the water. Added to the fact they use their main guns as 20km+ super accurate AA, and constantly kill snipe (stealing player rewards) makes for a frustrating experience. Doubly so if a bot kills your ship with a magazine fire soon after spawning.
A complete reversion to pre Hornet’s Sting (minus the added ships) would be preferable to most players than what naval has become.
Agree with this, I have not touched Naval at all, and in fact I have not played WT for about a month. Only played a few matches in ground recently to get that snail deco but that’s about it.
Under the current AB aiming system, the respawn points are extremely unfair on some maps.
The respawn point on the southeastern coast of the African bay is especially problematic.
When players respawn there, they are immediately forced to move westward into an exposed area with no cover, effectively guaranteeing their death. Given the current mechanics, where players are exposed to unusually accurate fire, a respawn point like this is clearly inappropriate.
The armored boats are insanely OP now, since the AimBots ignore the issues caused by boat bob. They are firing from mostly unstabilized tank turrets and they slaughter larger but thin skinned boats that only have AA defenses.
It is SOP now for game companies to release untested updates and let the users betatest - it is a win win. They do not have to pay for betatesting and they are getting paid by the players who have to do the betatesting. (actually not just game companies, pretty much every tech company has given up on testing and QA/QC
And then look at NRB numbers so what we got there same ~20-25% drop in Player count and Games played, then we look at GAB and also see the drop in %(actually even more drop), AAB also drops, do you gonna argue that NAB changes affected all modes?
So i think naval modes changes in aiming and other stuff barely affected playerbase, the more what affected it is just patch release, when player numbers increase and absents of events - why playerbase decreased. When new patch come in June there gonna be new wave of increase. So relax, i don’t think they gonna change aiming back. And looks like next patch gonna be Naval one with new meta superbig ships probably with some changes in gameplay too.