it did not make so much difference when the game was enjoyable to play
the aiming change from the last ‘upgrade’ made the game a pain to play … these things have consequences no matter how much they are denied and shouted down
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StatShark just released May stats for War Thunder:
You can see that Naval Arcade is still losing players*. Interestingly, Naval Realistic retained its player base from last month.
*Keep in mind that the Naval Arcade aiming system change took place on March 18th. So April and May are the first full months with the new aiming system that supposed to attract more players to this game mode.
EDIT: If anyone wants the total number of players in battles in different game modes as a text (so they can copy it easily), here are the summarized values:
| February 2025 | March 2025 | April 2025 | May 2025 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Naval Arcade | 700038 | 773962 | 577037 | 549307 |
| Naval Realistic | 363161 | 424557 | 326009 | 326165 |
| Ground Arcade | 7052451 | 8137704 | 7606969 | 8111991 |
| Ground Realistic | 16170581 | 19477607 | 18350577 | 21191702 |
| Air Arcade | 5417842 | 6201936 | 5678512 | 5521346 |
| Air Realistic | 8239146 | 9374528 | 8511122 | 8557263 |
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Attract with what? There was no naval grind events which attract new players and drive players from other modes to naval, neither patch with content. And not will be in another month.
Ground RB shows where all players went in May.
You could also post number of battles per mode statistic.
And statistics per BR in naval April to May.
If anyone wants to see how popular the different game modes are compared to each other:
Naval is the only game mode that lost players from February to May. I still wouldn’t call it dead (title of this topic), but it definitely doesn’t look good.
What the devs are doing with this game mode clearly doesn’t work, at least for now.
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It never looked good in last two years. Cause lack of changes and fixes. New marathon system also not helps.
Where you found that chart? Strong steam chart counting or?
I took the data from StatShark, then created this graph in Excel.
BTW: If you are interested in stats, you can also check out Bruce’s StatShark data analysis here:
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Thanks for clarification ♥
It’s a good graph, just note in the case of Pouls data players who played multiple modes and BRs during the reporting period are counted multiple times so it’s not a good estimate of the total player base for the game. But as relative data between modes, pretty useful.
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Well, I use this data to compare the popularity of game modes. I called it “players in battles”, because it shows how many battles real players have played. I’m not a native English speaker, so maybe it is confusing to someone.
I can’t use the total number of unique players that played Naval, because this doesn’t tell you anything about the popularity of the game mode. If some player played just 1 Naval battle in one month, he would be counted as +1 Naval player. At the same time, if he played 1000 Ground battles in the same month, he would also be counted as +1 Ground player. Based on this example, unique players stats would show you both game modes are equally popular, which is clearly not true. So the number of unique players doesn’t tell you how popular the game mode really is.
Likewise, the number of battles played is not the best way to determine the popularity of a given game mode. For example, when the devs added more AI bots to Naval battles and changed that battles start much quicker now (even without many players in the queue), it is obvious that we will get more battles per month. But these battles will often be filled by AI bots, not real players. This again doesn’t show the true popularity of this game mode.
Counting players in battles is the most accurate way to see how popular the game mode really is. How many real players participate in the battles of this game mode.
5 Likes
Updated sessional data from Statshark for 1-31 May confirms what Poul saw counting players. NAB saw more erosion last month, NRB less so:
Spoiler
By BR, all the player gain is at the high end, it’s naval AB low-to-mid no longer being played as much that has produced almost all the losses here. The highest two BRs appear to be accelerating in the leadup to the next update as established players get ready to grind the new ships, but it’s not making up for continued losses at the lower BRs.
Spoiler
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You can learn many interesting things with StatShark data.
If anyone wants to check which BR is the most popular in a given month in Naval Arcade:
Spoiler
The difference is calculated based on the highest players value in the same month and is expressed as a percentage.
I know that you can also see this on the StatShark website, but they don’t summarize all the values. With the table above you can more easily see how many players in total played specific BRs.
It’s really great to have StatShark website these days.
1 Like
That also implies that new people aren’t joining the NAB game, it’'s just players who are sticking on grinding themselves upwards through the BRs. Means that when the update releases, we’re probably going to continue to see a drop off in players, people giving up on the grind, and a total lack of people playing Rank I/II/III ships.
3 Likes
I was playing the BP challenge Coastial Defender and while stopped I was taking shoots at a M17 that was crossing my T.
Now normally if not decimated I should have score lots of hits but my shells were going left and right.
Then I remembered what Fuego was saying but I noticed they were not randomly missing, the hits were consistand on their impact, left cannon missed to left and right to the right.
Then I started shooting the cannons one by one and lol, all hits were dead in target.
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“Realistic aiming” has nothing to do with Arcade aiming systems, nor did it affect Arcade prior to the update.
No it did.
I ran AB with realistic aiming set to yes ever since the last aiming changes in 2021. Saved me having to learn two interfaces. Worked great. Just used RB controls and factored in the speed deltas.
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Yeah, you are incorrect. Before the Naval Arcade aiming changes a few months ago you could change the aiming to full manual “Realistic” aiming, where you have to change the aim point (lead) manually, IN Arcade matches.
You should edit or just delete your post because your claim is simply false. Cheers.
EDIT: Lol, they still haven’t removed it. Even though there is no need to try and further disprove your incorrect claim, tell me then, if you turned this off how would it affect aiming in Naval Realistic Battles? Make it Naval Arcade aiming, but in Naval Realistic Battles? Yeah, this was a setting that affected Naval Arcade Battles only:
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I tried to switch it to RB while IN an AB match and it doesn’t currently work. It USED to. It doesn’t now. I ran Realistic Aiming in Arcade matches for YEARS because I prefered it. That option no longer exists. You can toggle the switch but it does nothing.
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Yes, and they’ve said that’s not a bug. I know, it sucks. I won’t play AB in its current state because of the aiming mechanics, just RB now (which I honestly think is in the best shape its ever been, and this patch is going to make it even better).
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Yup. I made a bug report that was ignored/not read correctly when aiming was changed. You can see my report waaaay up there at the beginning of this thread 👇😉
And I am still posting about this nonsense, even today:
And just in case you have not seen this thread, and if you would like to add your vote to my poll thread, here you go:
EDIT: lmao, sorry I see now that you posted a TON in the poll thread. Cheers bro.
Poll about changes to Naval Arcade Aiming etc
[Poll] with multiple options for the changes to Naval Battles
1 Like