Game design is always a balance between player expectations, technical limitations, and business realities. Not every change hits the mark.
Writing the devs off as lacking design knowledge or motivation does not reflect the complexity of maintaining a game as large and detailed as War Thunder. Constructive criticism helps more than blanket negativity.
It’s just reality. Having very basic game modes and map designs that have only seen minimal changes in a decade is absurd. The devs intentionally went all in on inflating the game with more and newer vehicles and weapon systems, while keeping gameplay elements either static or barely patched to prevent them from falling apart. It’s clear they either don’t care or are somehow incapable of improving the gameplay.
There are some aspects of the game that certainly fall within those categories.
But when you have well research and written bug reports that fix actually quite major issues sat for 2 or 3 years, it does get exceedingly frustrating.
and certain aspects of the game, such air Sim have been totally abandoned by the devs for no reason. They’ve probably lost a huge potential market simply because they just didnt seem to care
Yes, the focus has largely been on adding new vehicles, nations, and equipment, since those are the things that drive player interest and revenue. However, saying the core gameplay has been completely ignored does not hold up. There have been actual changes volumetric damage modeling, adjustments to spawn mechanics, loadout balancing, and attempts to deal with BR compression.
It is completely fair to ask for deeper gameplay improvements, but dismissing the developers entirely overlooks the scale of the project and the progress that has been made. When the community has provided strong, focused feedback in the past, it has led to real improvements. That approach is far more effective than just venting frustration.
Letting major bugs sit for years—despite clear community reports—is frustrating and shows Gaijin’s priorities often miss what long-term players actually want.
Still, it seems more like limited dev resources and a focus on monetizable content than outright neglect. Modes like Air Sim were a missed opportunity, but probably not due to lack of care. Just low priority because that niche of players tends to prefer DCS, IL-2, and similar titles.
That is why organized, consistent feedback matters more than just venting. It has worked before and will work in the future.
I would personally argue though, that with the right amount of effort, it could be an alternative to them, a more entry level/forgiving SIm game compared to DCS. Unfortunately, its total lack of update in the past 3 years (and probably longer than that for major improvements) has unfortunately irrecoverably harmed their chances of making air sim profitable and a major part of the game. The only real hope now is the RB EC gamemode they are apparently working on and Sim getting third party improvements.
In my experience, not always. For example the Challenger 2 community submitted a vast amount of research and reports to get the CR2 buffed and fixed and got a lot of community support for a full rework. Instead they fixed one bug report, made up some information to nerf the CR2 and haven’t fixed a single bug report since. That was over a year ago.
Unfortunately there are large aspects of the game that the devs just dont care about
here is picture from the A32A radar set from the manual.[img]
and here is text what tells what the ground radar can be used, so the PS-431 / A radar makes shows an map made by the radar. so it is possible at this used to in navigate the plane in low visibility conditions. but the radar map cannot show small targets like a tank, but the missile can be guided to specific area.
A32A user manual is also declassified, and i can link it here if you want to take a look.
here is specific information from the PS-431 / A. AKA PS-42 TA. this radar has wrong band, in game this radar is on band I when this radar is on band X. so it is wrongly modelled. secondly PS-42-TA has track range of 12km, in game this track range is 5km. and search radars historical max detection range is 160km, but in game radars max range is 90km.
Referring to it as a map is misleading. The original term used is “kartliknande”, which translates more accurately to “map-like” or “mapish”—not an actual map.
It simply displays radar returns that can assist in navigating challenging weather conditions, such as low visibility during night or heavy cloud cover.
The text does not mention anything related to munitions, targeting specific areas, or any integration with the RB04.
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