It’s actually more complicated than that. Here’s all the history we have of War Thunder sessions in Naval Arcade:
The Hornet’s Sting update in March introduced the simplified aiming system. Then you can clearly see a huge drop in April and May. Kweedko completely ignores this drop and claims that all players loved the change.
BTW, I also played in March, but I hated the simplified aiming system so much that I ended up quitting Naval entirely in the following months, just like many other players.
The Leviathans update in June added iconic battleships to the game, which increased the number of players again. You can see that the player base remained higher in July as well. The effect of the update is very clear.
We can only regret that the Hornet’s Sting update broke the aiming system in Naval, because we’ll never know how many players the mode could have had if the devs had kept the old system. But it’s quite clear that the numbers would have been much higher than they are now.
With the Leviathans update, Naval Arcade climbed just slightly higher than the pre-aiming-change numbers, which is honestly very sad.
Yes, and I don’t deny that there was already a big problem with player numbers even before the aiming change. It really started about two years ago, when the devs began simplifying Naval. Back then I had no problems with player numbers or queue times, but after many of these simplifications more and more experienced players simply left the mode. If you remove all the skill from a game mode, it quickly becomes boring. I have to admit, I got bored of Naval with these simplifications too, but I kept playing. The aiming change in March 2025 finally made me quit.
Smaller you are, easier you grow % wise.
Naval received a massive update with highly popular ships alongside decompression but all of that still failed to produce a 2x increase in players, which is alarming, especially when you take into account Naval’s already small player base.
More so when you realize other, more popular modes received little to nothing in comparison to Naval.
Leviathans were the perfect storm for Naval’s growth, but that one failed pretty significantly.
50% is pretty much nothing considering the circumstances Naval was in.
Many players forget that we used to have a dedicated Helicopter PvP mode, but it was removed due to too few players participating. Now, helicopter players only have the dedicated Helicopter PvE mode.
I don’t think the devs will give up on Naval so easily, especially since we know some features are still a work in progress. However, I think that Submarines could be the final and only major test left for Naval. If Submarines don’t make the mode popular, it’s possible that Naval will eventually be removed, leaving only the PvE mode. That’s exactly what happened to dedicated Helicopter modes, so it’s definitely not an impossible scenario.
If most Naval battles end up being mostly AI bots, the mode will essentially become PvE anyway. So why keep it at all? Naval EC (obviously with some changes) could become the only Naval mode in the future. From the devs’ perspective, this would make sense, as dedicated PvE modes require much less development time and are much easier to balance.
This an incredibly pessimistic viewpoint. Naval’s player base is nowhere near as small as heli’s, even during heli’s peak.
Submarines are also not the only thing left to explore for naval.
Naval’s popularity does not need to reach some arbitrary marker in order to remain a viable game mode. The loss of heli PvP was due to more than just low popularity
I agree, but that’s the point of a discussion - we’re here to share different perspectives.
Probably not yet. Unfortunately, we don’t know the Heli PvP numbers, since StatShark didn’t exist back then.
But they are the only things we know are being worked on, and they are actually already in pretty good shape (we know this from the last Submarines event - they were in a playable state). So it’s probably now just a matter of adjusting maps, making final balance decisions, etc.
At the end of the day, it’s all about money. If a game mode costs a lot to keep going but doesn’t bring in enough, it’s just a headache for the company. War Thunder is a business, and it works just like any other.
Do we know that as a fact ?
I always thought our PvE modes are dead but it looks like they have more players than a fully fledged PvP mode.
Yes, we have missile ships to be added but one could question when enough is enough and simply put the mode on life support.
It kinda does as modes are here just to make money for Gaijin. If that revenue isn’t enough to cover development cost, I don’t think there’s a big incentive to continue forward.
All those months translate into money spent on development, so if the return is abysmal your incentive to invest more money drops off a cliff, regardless if you’ve spent 6 months or a year.
I haven’t really taken the time to properly read this thread fully but I do think that being overly pessimistic isn’t great.
On another note, I do want to add some of my own thoughts.
The “new” arcade aiming system has permanently put me off from playing arcade ever again, Especially since the option to use RB aiming in arcade got broken because of it. Not that I played it much to begin with compared to RB.
And I know I’m not the only one that feels this way. But I do know some people that started playing because of it too. Though I doubt enough to offset the loss.
Update Leviathans was also an incredibly important update for naval. But I’m not too surprised at the somewhat lacklustre response from non naval players. The people that said “I’ll play naval when they add bismarck”, or the like, were never gonna do that. If they really intended to, they would’ve started playing to prepare for it months or years ago. They just looked for an excuse. I know a few people who said something along those lines and now shifted their goalposts.
Another reason for a lack of popularity, imo, is the lack of any “professional” CC coverage. But that’s a different topic I think.
(Apologies that most of this doesn’t really serve as a direct reply to you, just wanted to share my thoughts on the general topic too.)
It would be decent if somehow AI players would be able to buy premiums.
Considering the amount of content they make for Naval throughout the year relative to other modes, I think the money they get out of that is pretty bad.
I do believe Naval is living off of the success of other modes.
