Naval mode is finally dead

Game Discussion Arcade Battle
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666

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.

3 Likes
667

Ah.

@Kweedko, according to this data, it looks like naval games have dropped by 200,000 matches since the update. Can you confirm?

That is a 25% decrease in games.

This may help us determine if the majority of players feel like this naval aim was a bad idea. Perhaps even… a catastrophic failure.

6 Likes
668

Annnddd colour me utterly unsurprised at the massive decrease in players.

5 Likes
669

I’d like to see some graphical changes to naval. For example visual effects of guns firing and the smoke afterwards could use some love.

670

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.

6 Likes
671

Hmmmm. Well, I played roughly 3 to 15 games a day. x30 days. I USED to.

I’m not playing ANY. Until they fix this.

Thanks for the clarity.

1 Like
672

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.

4 Likes
673

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.

674

Naval is dead:

  1. Shooting from resp to resp
  2. On NRB your viewfinder go down and down and some time go back to enemy ship
  3. Maps are not balanced
  4. Coastal fleet should play only with other coastal
  5. It is boring
5 Likes
675

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.

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

10 Likes
676

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.

6 Likes
677

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.

4 Likes
678

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.

1 Like
679

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

1 Like
680

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.

btw Steamcharts also shows that drop.

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681

Of course it affected Naval Realistic a lot. Numbers you are talking about:

Total number of Naval Realistic players in February: 323276
Total number of Naval Realistic players in March: 384651
Total number of Naval Realistic players in April: 291457

You can notice a huge increase in March. I just want to remind that the first 2 weeks of March had the old aiming system in Naval Arcade and 2 weeks the new one. I’m sure many players switched from Naval Arcade to Naval Realistic or at least tried both modes to compare them after this change. We also had Naval event in March, which surely affected the number of players.

That’s why I wrote before that March is a weird month and it makes sense to compare numbers to February. You can still see players reduction, a bit less than 10%. Meanwhile the Naval Arcade number of players got reduced by 18%. These are facts, everyone can calculate it, math doesn’t lie.

The interesting thing is that when you look at my battles, I only played 31 battles last week (according to my forum profile). Previously I could play even 200-300 battles per week (I know it’s crazy), so it’s a huge reduction. Naval Arcade was probably my main game mode, but I also played other game modes (Ground Arcade, Air Arcade, a bit of Air Realistic). But when I stopped playing Naval Arcade, I decided to stop buying Battle Passes. I also stopped doing events, e.g. I’m skipping the current T-34-85 event.

In my free time I simply started playing other games than War Thunder. I still log in to WT from time to time and try to get enough RP for my squadron activity, but it doesn’t take that many battles every 3 days. So the Naval Arcade aiming change definitely affected how I play War Thunder. I can’t speak for other players of course, but at least based on my example, the aiming change in Naval Arcade also affected Ground Arcade and Air Arcade game modes.

Previously, War Thunder was pretty much the only game I played for years. That’s not the case anymore, and I actually enjoy this situation a lot. There are many great games out there and I have never had time to play them before.

BTW: In the current sale I didn’t buy a single premium vehicle. I also consider stop buying Premium Time, since I don’t play War Thunder as much anymore, so I don’t really need it. And I have been using Premium Time since I started playing this game many years ago. So this Naval Arcade aiming change affected many things for me. It’s not as simple as just “stop playing Naval Arcade, play more other game modes”. Everything is connected.

7 Likes
682

Man 291457/384651 = 0,757 so ~25% as i wrote

683

The production team should first achieve the most basic balance, and then complete other detailed tasks at the end
In this game, the US Navy, whether it is warships, cruisers, or large cruisers, has a very fatal weakness!
This is an armor issue! I vividly remember that 10 minutes after the start of the game, my warship and the side armor of the Alaska were completely unable to withstand the firepower of the Soviet Red Navy cruiser “Zhelzniakov”.
May I ask why the armor of US Navy ships is so weak? So much so that even the shells of cruisers can penetrate the main armor belts of 343mm and 228mm?
This is a very infuriating thing! If it’s not resolved, it’s better to delete the United States

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