A big problem for naval it the gamemode. It just doesn’t work at all the way it’s layed out. It needs to be enduring confrontation to be remotely interesting, they can keep the current gamemode for coastal fleet.
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I’d love this for naval. Take the big ships out of arcade, put them in EC. Done. Problem solved. Then revert the aimbot they implemented in the Hornet update to return some excitement, skill, and interest to small boats.
I think a solution for preventing the gamemode to die is as follows:
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Make it not a race for points keep the encounters between 15 km and 20 km in the beginning.
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Make the bots not a problem in driving on the map they should benefit the Players on their team not ram kill them by pushing them in vulnerable positions.
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Bots should not get kills players are the focus so when a player and a bot shoot someone and the bot technically kills them let it go to the player. (after all you want player to stay in the mode not bots)
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Put in some AI controlled air squadrones in higher ranks (out of the WWI era cause to the lack of AA guns)
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make the Spawns moveable with the fleet like integrate the carriers as centers of the both fleets and spawn areas for the ships and planes (but keep them at a minimum distance of 15 km from each other and indestructable for a huge portion of the game)
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the aiming assist is nice but do we really need it people should get back to their own calculations (at least in RB), Distance (guessed so around 85% correctly is ok and realistic for the time it mostly took place), heading ( Heading ok but speed shouldn’t be as accurate as it is rn)
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Rework the locking mechanic for players if you can’t see a tagert behind a rock , mountain or smoke or what ever why should they.
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In the fleet Idea I have make it more based on dd’s and LC’s and HC’s for bots, BB’s and BC’s where rare in Numbers so only players need them.
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If you decide to go in with the AI air squadrones make them cordinate a strike with you together.
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Make the games longer but also more beneficial for players (25 min ain’t enough time for huge naval battles, at least always 30-45 min)
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like I mentioned in my Idea of 2 battle fleets fighting no points to capture so the points would only get down through kills and the side who got below the half of theirs first is getting a reatreat movement (their fleet with carriers and AI dd’s, Lc’s and Hc’s is now trying to drive away from the enemy, like in reallife)
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a win can then be achieved by killing the points or having more after time runs out, maybe when all players gave up on one team.
I think its a good basic concept this way, not perfect I know and it needs a few adjustments here and there but I would love to know everyones oponion on it.
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I like alot of this, but I’m not sure about the CL, CA and DDs as bots. I would rather the player start off as a CL or CA with two escorts (DD). And by doin EC stuff, and SP to use on BB, BC, CV and SS. I also might just be miss reading everything.
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The whole problem I see there is that then too many BB’s will be on the battlefield again and that will harm the basic idea of my plans there. You know like I said a battlefleet was never having only BB’s they always had screens to protect the Capital ships. I just want to simulate somehow more realistic experience for users and kinda want to make it also very eventful and increasing the tention by every on going second in that game.
Should but won’t be. gaijin are too greedy and incompetent to fix anything. until all the creative directors are replace by people less retarded, and preferably liquidated.
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I mean they can just turn up SP cost for BBs.
This would also encourage players to do map objectives too. And of course the sp cost would be higher than planes in gRB
I think all the big ship players might find a lot of joy in Enduring Conflict. Game goes on for hours and hours, and you can drop in and out whenever you like. And all of your suggestions works from an Enduring Conflict standpoint. There’s already a lot of framework to encourage and discourage unit types through SL costs.
Another idea is: We COULD start moving ALL of War Thunder to a Enduring Conflict system where there’s not waiting for a match. Just drop into an ongoing 6h or 12h battle, and contribute. Get your payout when the match resolves. Let players focus on achieving or swarting objectives. Include tanks in land battles. Recon planes, etc. Just one big map with battles going on where ever. Planes can fly from instanced server to instanced server to support naval or ground troops.
I feel like THAT is the future of War Thunder. Reduce BR importance by making everything viable logistically. Somewhat like it is in SIM.
Or, if we can’t, we can at least create Naval Arcade for Coastal Boat players with Pre-Hornet aiming.
A lot of us aren’t interested in matches over 15mins. Or at ranges beyond 10km.
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So Gaijin’s initial announcement of the content is not correct?😏
Got an actual source to back up that claim?😑
Certainly most DD’s and Cruisers were added later - but I see no evidence that he ones in the initial announcement were not actually there from the get go.
alright. Took me 5 mins of googling and… I really aught not to have. Not my burden of proof but, [shrugs]… I wanted to take a trip down memory lane.
"The high level of realism is one of the key design features of War Thunder. Vehicles are as close to their real life counterparts as possible. Classic large ship battles during the war were contests of patience and planning, where engagements could last from several hours to several days. In War Thunder, where all kinds of vehicles fight in one battle and players can control aircraft, tanks and ships, it is not possible to change the size of the ships or make time run faster, as everything needs to remain consistent. Our internal testing showed that battles with large battleships would be too long and boring, or required design changes that made ships entirely unrealistic. For this reason, we are focusing on fast attack-based craft, which are rarely reproduced in games. Ships, that are more suitable for the formula of our game. These fast, agile and dangerous “Knights of the Sea” are worthy contenders for aircraft and tanks on the ground " - says Kirill Yudintsev, Creative Director of Gaijin Entertainment.
And they were right. Large scale battles with these titans of the sea are BOOOOOOOORRRRING.
But I’m not against people having their toys and fun just… give them a gamemode for it. That game mode is Enduring Conflict.
Leave Arcade to Boats and DDs, Maybe cruisers. And GIVE US BACK OUR AGENCY in Aiming. Christ. It’s so shite what they’ve done with Arcade Aiming. There’s literally no game anymore.
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I genuinely like this idea but it’ll never happen. It flies in the face of the instant gratification mechanic that pretty much every live service game is pushing now. Plus most players simply don’t have the patience to wait for rewards.
This needs to happen asap. There’s now zero difference between a noob and an experienced player who had to learn how to place shots accurately. Worst of all gaijin’s baked in incompetence in naval all but guarantees that in a lot of maps with bluewater+coastal battles, coastals have a very low chance to dodge bluewater vessels because the spawns are way too close and the new aiming system makes it much easier to target them. Bringing out slower vessels like the Candid and M-17 is just asking to be killed seconds out of spawn.
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It’s really a spit in the face of ever Naval player that put the time in over the years, and loved the game.
And it’s a disservice to players now who have nothing to look forward to, really. I guess… just that grind to BB so they can finally just… sit in place an entire match, waiting 30+s between salvos. If some OP Russian Premium doesn’t pop them at spawn.
Give us back agency in arcade aiming. Give us back a game worth playing
What they did there is a travesty.
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Or what?
Also this from Scarper, one of the devs (Old Forum, 11 Aug 2016, quoting at length because old forum could go away soon):
Spoiler
Several reasons why we are focusing on the “smaller” fleet.
1.How to play?
It is clear that game play for very big ships is different from game play in tanks or aircraft. Such a huge and unwieldy ship must have an appropriate battlefield and adapted mechanics. Cruisers can easily battle against other cruisers, what will make a head to head battle until the first hit, where the hit ship will just die slowly without any chance to strike back. No health points, no instant repair, only big ship which slowly sinks to the bottom and a player that can only watch while his ship is destroyed.
This game play will bring a dubious pleasure, but it is realistic, because large ships are destroyed in this way. What about action in the locations, they need to be equal to fighting units - the players need time to re-group the ships and prepare for battle. But with dozens of minutes convergence alone, during which everything could end even before it begun - some wild hit from a distant gun, without aimed fire as there is no line of sight, yet the defeat is already quite real, and it’s over.
As for interaction with other types of vehicles, here-in lies some further difficulties. In locations that are suitable for the interaction of different types of vehicles, these ships don’t just rotate on the spot so they are unusually vulnerable just to small torpedo boats. At the same time we can not afford to change the characteristics of these ships, we can not increase their speed and agility, as then it will be required of the lighter vehicles also. What is the outcome of these changes? Totally unrealistic battles, to the extent that a generic bomber will simply not be able to catch the ship, such a boost would be needed to the characteristics of the ship to allow it, for example “a cruiser” to have slim chance in escaping from under the enemy shots.
The main issue is, Assume that the average time of battle in WT will be about average time of battle in real life but with a wee bit subtracted because our players dont want to keep their vehicles in one piece. You can think of the Battle time of “each” vehicle from the first shot fired, or the time that the enemy was sighted - This is also true for air battles, it is true for tank battle and it will be true for naval battles IF we are determined to keep the physics and damage model reasonably close to realistic. So, at sea, with higher tonnage, the truth is that the average battle is MUCH longer than an hour, even for 1-2 vs 1-2 ships. whilst in real life, it never was shorter than 20 minutes - so it will be in WT. When 20 minutes is longer than average battle in any mode, it is still OK for Naval Forces, But an average of 2-3 hours for a battle is generally more than average player will subscribe to. We made it and we played it - but you do not have to trust us. Just use common sense - realistic physics with reasonable scenarios will cause realistic battle duration’s (or maybe a bit quicker, but this is only about a players interest in getting to the action quicker, taking risks, not something else)
Aircraft, tanks, bang - whack, bang - whack caboom, Ships, bang, …bang…bang…(silence) splash splash, splash (incoming) etc etc, it isn’t the same, not by any stretch of the imagination. I see Battle of Britain used as an example of a long air battle, it wasn’t a single engagement, battle of the bulge - again wasn’t a single engagement - aircraft, tanks, SMALL ships - short lifespan in terms of single combat in our game, large, heavily armoured capital ships, long lifespan in single engagements (unless you are really lucky like in rl) Nope at this stage it just doesn’t make sense.
2.Mechanics
Even small motor gunboats could have a crew of more than 30 men and this is not a small number, with our “craving” for realism large ships will not fit into the dynamics of game battles. Even huge vessels are extremely vulnerable to aircraft and they had very complex tactics, including reconnaissance, protection, long range combat and even rules to their movement do not comply with the gameplay - fighting for frags and rewards.
Capital ships move so slow that they cannot dodge ANY hits at the distance they are fighting at. The only possible solutions are either boost their speed x5 at least so they can dodge or limit the shooting distance. But even if we boost the speed x5 (making it equal to the slowest aircraft) that won’t solve the problem of shooting beyond visible range.but still it is possible that one ship can destroy another with a lucky shot - e.g.Bismarck vs. Hood. Two shots fired, battle lasted 30 minutes, hood sank in 3
Maps could be made bigger but that would involve hours and hours of travelling only to get taken out in the first few minutes of contact, there are a few of us who would be happy to do that, but there are just too many that wouldn’t.
3.Economy
Ships DO take longer to sink, even one lucky shot can take a whole ship out of action, without destroying or damaging critical modules. Even with critical damage it would take hours for a capital ship to sink. Thus without simplifying damage model to a HP system or the like there will be no game play at all
How can you count kills?
In reality destroying one capital ship could take hours and hours, and, sometimes seconds - in case of ammunition explosion. With smaller vehicles it is clear - destroying an enemy brings greater rewards, damaging an enemy also brings rewards or can take several hits to destroy an enemy. With ships that have crews of over 1000 men for example, it is much more complex. It is exactly the same for the economy and research and development - even if we ignore big crews with a great variety of functions and qualifications and hundreds of different modules, there is still the question “how many millions of “lions” should a torpedo bomber receive that has taken down a capital ship with a lucky strike?
For such battles we would require a significantly redesigned game mechanic - a completely different gameplay.
4 Imbalance in Nations
As we know, and let’s be honest about this, not all nations had a heavy warship fleet that could match the opponents at the time. There would be nothing up front that could appear in the development of the tree and compete on equal terms with their opponents unless we use small ships to begin with.
We aim not only to give you the very existence of warships in War Thunder, but also to create highly interesting gameplay as well, which would fit into the overall concept of the game, allow each player the participation of all types of equipment in a single battle. The US, Great Britain and Japan had indisputable superiority over the USSR in the number of aircraft carriers, which immediately deprives the USSR of this class of vehicle from the beginning - and yet it happened not because of the technical backwardness of the Soviet Union, but for the simple reason: the Soviet Union had not experienced a great need for these ships, because the main fighting took place both on land and in the air. The same can be said for Germany, their naval power was not the greatest at the beginning of our time frame. But how do we explain that to the many players across the world who still want to be the best? Make no mistake, many players use the soviet and German nations in game.
At the same time, small class ships were common to all nations, and here they are just perfect for most of the current vehicles represented in War Thunder lines of development.
5.Specialty
One more issue is that vessels such as battleships were used very selectively, battles lasted for hours and even days and often ended with an enemy retreat or not being destroyed. Moreover ships such as the “Yamato” or “Missouri” were unique in their class, and definitely, players wouldn’t like to wait in the queue because the single e.g. “Yamato” for the current battle has already been taken, or dozen of battleships in one battle without a supporting fleet will be a clumsy and easy target for aircraft.
Some of the admin comments to that thread were awesome sauce too, looking back: Smin1080pYT for instance saying “The point being you could not [realistically] have 16 Yamatos”… also “But by making the “perfect” all round situation for a direct confrontation of ships that would result in, a say 30 minute battle, you effectively have cut every aspect of a true unpredictably real battle out and cut and gutted the complexity of naval combat down to a 16 vs 16 arena arcade game. Other games have done that and we are not out to do the same.”
Also: " The “perfect situation” you were talking about for [capital] ships to result in an under 30 minute match would require both teams to have almost identical composition and be placed so specifically that almost every battle would be identical and play out the exact same way.
“You would remove all sense of tactical and strategic thought and severely simplify the complex nature of Naval Warfare… It removes all of the tactical, strategic and complex value out of naval battles” (And yet, 9 years later here we are.)
To the point at hand, the official answer from the linked Q&A was: “Player-controlled destroyers and other large ships may appear later, in other gamemodes, it will be decided based on results of closed beta.”
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Typical GRB or ARB battle.
Same as current GRB/ARB
Bla bla bla “dev said in 2016 nonsens”, it’s not 2016 don’t you see, if someone was lazy or unimaginative in 2016 in terms of game design, doesn’t mean that it never changed, after short time since OBT of the ships they changed damage model and introduced cruisers, and evolved naval patch after patch to 2022, when the suddenly stopped developing it for two years just adding models, and now when something finally changing some old folks pissed off cause of changes cause they rusted with the modes.
Or that they caved (once again) to fans and market pressures and broke a good idea.
In 2016 they said naval as it actually is today would never be successful and wouldn’t be worth the massive development effort. Now, in 2025, naval games comprise… 1% of all games, even after massive effort. In fact, they couldn’t make it comparably successful to the other modes, that’s just a fact. They predicted this would fail, and objectively they were right. They said it would not be realistic and would have to cut everything interesting (hey, like AB aiming) out of naval to make it even begin to work: they were right. They said a battle with 16 Yamatos would be historically absurd and diminish the respect and support of the fans who were awestruck by that legendary ship with every death, no matter how good the in game model: they were right there too.
They say that people wouldn’t like long periods of travel, just to get one-shot: 100%.
They say the damage model would have to be absurd to get TTL for battleships down to 15 minutes or so… hello shell room explosions that they’ve admitted are totally unrealistic but they can’t change because of the impact on game play! Right again.
If you read what the naval devs predicted in 2016 they basically every predicted every problem the mode has today, and said that’s something “we are not out to do” in War Thunder. But hey, store premiums gotta premium. So they did anyway. But hey, someone could always ASK Smin or Scarper if they thought what they wrote then was wrong, and why. Or whether they think they were being “lazy or unimaginative” back then, I’d be very interested to hear what they said about your insulting them there. How about it, @Smin1080p_WT? Is Kweedko right and you’re just a “lazy unimaginative” person? @Scarper_CM ?
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Do you have their financial reports per mode? No, therefore it’s you imagination that it’s not profitable.
Why should i even want to read what someone, who probably won’t even work there now, wrote decade ago.
Do Community managers from 2025 are game designers or programmers or even QA from 2016 to you?
See, in 2024 you could possibly make this argument. Here in 2025, we know from Statshark that the number of games per night in naval, both modes combined, is roughly the same as the PvE assault modes combined (around 1% of games). Serving that naval playerbase has cost them certainly millions in dev: they certainly didn’t get it for free. The assault mode playerbase has basically cost them nothing for the same effect (in terms of games being played… in terms of store sales obviously it’s different). When one thing costs millions, and gets the same effect as spending nothing, those millions were objectively misapplied. It’s not even an argument to say otherwise, it’s just denial.
The two people you called “lazy and unimaginative” that I pinged are the same two people I quoted from above from 2016, both still senior Community Managers with Gaijin, who were undoubtedly relaying info directly from the dev team, as they often do. I’m sure they have an opinion on whether you’re right they were all lazy and unimaginative at Gaijin back then. I for one would be interested in their reflections on whether naval has or has not worked out the way they expected.
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Where did that came from? Your imagination again or you could show some proofs?
You clearly didn’t know cost of developing. Imagining millions where dozen thousands of bucks level.
Nice bait mate.
You have no idea who you’re talking to or what I know. You’ll just have to trust me that I know very well.
Or you could just do the math on 2 devs x 9 years x $100k a year and see what you get. Not to count all the asset creators that made those lovely ship models.
And no, there’s no point in showing you any proof at all, you wouldn’t accept it. But it’s very easy for anyone else to check themselves by counting replays per hour for “assault” (which are also all saved on the replay system) vs “naval.” Or they could just trust me on that, I don’t really care either way.
Hey not my problem if you’ve been warned here repeatedly not to insult the Gaijin devs and moderators and here you are doing it again. A few posts ago you specifically said @Smin1080p_WT and @Scarper_CM were “lazy and unimaginative” people. It either bothers them or it doesn’t. Again, I don’t really care either way.
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