Removal of national tech trees

Game Discussion General Discussion
21

That is a fair point. But is that any worse than specific nations completly dominating (in terms of projected vehicle performance) at certain BRs like russia at top tier, germany at 5.7, germany at 1.0-3.3. If certain vehicles are clearly dominant and theres vehicles like the dicker max that have no real spot currently. Doesnt that indicate something seriously wrong with the balancing of vehicles in this game?

In our current system if you choose the wrong nation to play you get completely smacked by either germany or russia depending on the players. In a nationless system it would be less about choosing the wrong nation to invest millions of RP into but which lines of vehicles you want to research.

22

Yes. One of the benefits of condensing all tech trees into, say, four folders is that this issue would go away. You have just removed one major disincentive to players grinding more countries.

I don’t think it’s achievable, or a goal, to make every single vehicle equally appealing in game. The issue being solved here is of a different nature. If you want to play Italy and lack a late war AA, you could, in this scenario, take a Kugelblitz with you. It makes playing Italy more viable, not less. Consider that in the current system, instead, what you get to fill that same BR gap in Italy’s tree is… huh… the Hungarian ZSU-57 used by the communist regime that was on the opposite side of the Iron Curtain?

I don’t see how this hypothetical solution is less elegant than what Gaijin is currently doing, tbh…

Hello. I don’t know if you’re referring to OP’s proposal or to my own, genuinely unsure there, but I’ll add my thoughts anyway. Yes, I agree that having just one pool is too much, and would cheapen the depth of the roster, but grouping trees into four folders (for example) wouldn’t really do that, imho.

For the majors, lack of a type of vehicle can result in a certain type of gameplay, yes. That’s because they have an abundance of other vehicles they can rely on. For the minors, however, you end up with a lot of empty space, and Gaijin’s solution to fill said empty space is usually to cram in copypaste vehicles, or use time travel so they can use more modern vehicles to fill previous gaps.

Condensing tech trees into theme-appropriate folders would reduce copypaste. For instance: the East German T-72, Hungarian T-72, and Soviet T-72 would be in the same “Warsaw Pact” folder (under their respective national trees for DDR, Communist Hungary, and of course USSR). They would no longer end up on opposing teams. This would keep flavour unique while still eliminating the issue of lineup viability for minors.

(Bonus points if it results in Gaijin actually adding the Hungarian T-72 instead of the copypaste version we have now).

Necessary? No. But we’re going to start to run into problems soon. Lots and lots of them. Like Rhosta said, trying to play with friends is next to impossible if you’re using a combination of three different trees. This is a disincentive to progression, and it’s caused by the fact that the matchmaker is being asked to do too much: assemble matches from every possible permutation of 10 countries queueing up for a match.

If we uncouple the representation of countries in WT from the way the matchmaker functions, and lower the number of variables to four (for example), this problem will go away.

Besides, many potential additions will always have issues with lineup viability. This will force the implementation of copypaste and the undertiering of modern vehicles. Even countries that could support nearly a full tree would end up getting a watered down version. Look at the Hungarian subtree we’ve just gotten, compare it to what it could have been like, and tell me that isn’t true…

No reason to think future nations won’t get the same treatment.

23

You could also add multiple flags to certain statcards of vehicles like that to facilitate their use in SIM battles. If multiple nations used an exact copy of a specific tank with little to no visible differences then instead of having 5 t72 m1s you can have 1 t72 m1 categorized as a ‘multi operator vehicle’.

You could even add retrofits and other modifications to the t72 m1 and link those modifications to national flags. Again facilitating proper sim lineups. (Like how russian vehicle mods completely change the armor and weapons of the tanks)

1 Like
24

Yes!

Like, think about it. What is the purpose of nations in War Thunder?

It makes perfect sense if you’re trying to recreate the Battle Of Britain, but the game has grown to the point that it’s now unrecognisable (as it should, after ten years). Even the Axis vs Allies, East vs West matchmaker locks have been removed.

So, for the purpose of the matchmaker at least, nations are already vestigial. I doubt anyone here has any serious attachment to the idea of Israel teaming up with the Third Reich to fight the British in Antarctica.

Where nations remain relevant, is that they are a great organising principle for introduction of vehicles and player progression, as well as marketing. Very well then! Let’s keep them for that. But, let’s unburden the matchmaker from having to deal with them.

What really befuddles me is that this logic is already present in-game after a fashion. Hungary now makes up a non-trivial portion of the Italian tech tree. So, we have Italy-Hungary as a tree. Let’s take it one step further. Many steps further, to its logical conclusion: national tech trees should be sub components of “folders”, as I’ve been calling them.

25
Spoiler

While it is true that the divide on national basis does bring an imbalance to the game (Sweden will never be nearly as potent as USA for example), I don’t think this is necessarily a problem. Backups for vehicles are very easy to get in the current state of the game and could quite easily assist in bringing said Swedish lineups somewhat up to par with stronger nations.

And while certain nations will of course still be stronger at certain BRs than others, I think this is more an issue of vehicle balance than it is national balance. Especially with the recent expansion of sub-trees for certain nations it can make for quite a more balanced game experience.
I am aware that one of your main points for making this topic was the community divide in opinion on how certain nations should be handled, but if we ignore those opinions I think this is a fairly reasonable point. We don’t really know Gaijins logic behind how these sub-trees are selected anyways. Some conclusions can be drawn, but they really seem to just pick and choose on what they like most.

In a system that removes national trees and instead has more of a melting pot with vehicles to pick out of the balancing situation wouldn’t change either way.
Nations at certain tiers dominate due to their vehicle selection and performance. National trees or not, the vehicles will still be strong at their given BRs and I cannot imagine why someone would (for example) skip on putting all Panthers in the same lineup, just with an added Jumbo instead of a Tiger.
If anything you could expect more of the same than what we have now. I think that, if anything, the game would become less balanced.

I’m not quite sure if this is a proper response to your statements and whether I understood well what you mean, so if it isn’t please tell me.

Spoiler

Hey there. I was referring to the OP’s proposal, but I do appreciate your input.
Would I be wrong to assume that the multiple pools as you refer to them could function similarly to Armored Warfare’s system?
I would be much more open to that than the single large pool, but still don’t like it as much as the national basis.

When it comes to the ‘minor’ trees as you refer to them I would have to disagree with the notion that they would have a bunch of empty space.
The nations I mentioned in my comment would not have this issue anywhere, really.
Hell, I would even add the Benelux to the list of nations that could work very well independently with longevity to boot and perhaps even Spain.
Nations such as these would have 100+ vehicles at their disposal, especially when you do things such as combining Czechoslovakia and Poland, which isn’t nearly as outlandish as adding Hungary to the Italian tree.

As for the matchmaking issue, I can’t really argue with that.
Personally, I wouldn’t mind seeing mixed matches of nations fighting themselves.
This may seem counter to what I said previously, but for me it is important to work with what you’re given and use said recourses to their fullest. I find that having limits to your line-ups is much more interesting than having limits to the people you face. Then again, that’s just personal preference and not reflective of War Thunder as it is now.
Still, I expect matchmaker to be a bit looser as time goes on, considering that Gaijin isn’t done adding new nations.

Spoiler

When it comes to this in particular I find that the Hungarian example isn’t the most representative of your statement, considering that Hungary post WW2 severely lacks in the local vehicles and modifications department. I could, however, see your point if we used the Finnish example, as that is quite a disgrace compared to what it could’ve been.

Yet despite this, I disagree. Every nation at some point had a way smaller tree than they have now and continue expanding. This is due to their longevity and vehicle pool that Gaijin can still pull from.
I would argue that there is no nation in the game (besides standalone Japan and Sweden) that would have an issue with leftover vehicles to add.
Gaijin of course can’t add all unique stuff at once, yet even if they did they would choose not to. Always having something new for a nation to be added is what keeps this game going. War Thunder has no true end goal or objective other than the grinding of vehicles.
Italy, France, China and Israel all have a ton of unique vehicles yet to be added that are arguably more interesting than the things they have received in recent times, just the unfortunate case is that Gaijin quite neglects these nations when compared to to the main big three. The same could be said for South-Africa and Finland.
Finland is, in fact, a good example of this longevity that new nations could have. It started off severely depressing with only five unique vehicles (of which the T-72M1 was one of them and soon after didn’t have a uniqueness anymore as Germany got their own). But as time went on Finland has received unique vehicles and modifications only, keeping their line going.
The same could (and likely will) happen with future nation additions.
Perhaps then the concern arises that early copy/paste would dominate the tree for quite a while. This could indeed potentially be an issue, but recently Gaijin had made an interesting development in the Chinese tree. They replaced the Chinese PT-76 with a domestic Chinese light tank, the Object 211. I imagine this won’t be an isolated case and that Gaijin will look into this solution more in the future of China and I wouldn’t rule out this possibility for any future nations either.

That being said, I do understand your points but still disagree.

1 Like
26

I read lots of interesting stuff in this thread, but from my pov there is nothing wrong with national tech trees; a healthy portion of patriotism is fine - it simply looks like the root cause for an addressed need for a change lies with the current form of tech trees and sub trees which leads to discussions and controversies.

I quote myself from a similar thread:

The key is imho to find the right balance of nations and game play. From a holistic pov the main problem of this tree/sub-tree nonsense is that gaijin tries to balance minor played nations with vehicles (or captured premiums) or to fill gaps in line-ups with sub-trees just purely from an income perspective.

Their reasoning regarding bundling some nations are historical, technological or cultural connections, but we have enough indicators (=deviations) that these are strawmen points. With the current approach you can simply earn more.

The game is killing itself with the current approach - it makes no sense if you can use identical vehicles in various nations to fight identical vehicles from other nations.

Example: As an US pilot you can buy the captured Bf 109F-4 to fight with or against the identical plane flown by Italy and Germany - and you meet very similar Bf 109G-2s from Germany, Romania and Finland.

The longer you think about this, the more you see that anything trying to find a workaround for the main problem is not solving the root cause for this mess.

A possible solution would be to separate nations completely, but allow the players to combine those nations in their line-ups based on a selected time frame you want to play.

If you take Italy for example: Until 1943 you should be allowed to combine them with German line- ups, from 1943-45 to German and Allied line ups and after 1945 solely as Nato power.
Or Germany 1945-1989 - those were 2 different Nations trained to kill each other as part of their alliances. China and Taiwan in the same tree, their prop fighters killed each after 1945 and might have conflicts in the future.

Anyway, i hope some smart guys find a solution to cover gajins’ interest in earning money and players’ interests to have at least some kind of realism in their game play…

27

True and true. I just don’t trust it will be handled well. And on top of that, I am increasingly worried by how the matchmaker will handle having to put together matches with squad combinations from 15 tech trees.

That’s perfectly understandable, meeting a variety of enemies keeps things fresh. I think the sheer lineup enormity you’d get by pooling the trees would still achieve that result, but it can be an issue for sure.

I don’t disagree. But I also don’t think that really negates my argument.

Gaijin could deploy the Hungarian sub tree whenever they wanted. Even if we take everything else as a given, including the number of vehicles that would first appear into the tree, there was no reason at all to copy the Soviet T-72 instead of giving Hungary its own version. It’s not even that different, I can’t believe that it would have been so time consuming as to nuke the timing of the update.

Could it be replaced eventually? Sure. But development time is a scarce resource, so that might take years, because at every turn, you’ll have to choose what to prioritise, and there will be new major tech tree vehicles to add (because marketing), new tech trees to introduce, etc etc. Which is how you could end up in a situation where, say… the British ground tech tree remains in a very unfinished state after multiple years.

There will be less pressure or urgency now to give Italy one of its own SPAAs. They get to use the ZSU-57, after all.

And there was absolutely no reason to give them the BTR-80 either…

I have no problem with Gaijin pacing themselves with vehicle additions. But this goes beyond just having a prolonged release schedule.

Glad to see you here. Reading your input is always a highlight on the forums for me.

Nations being in the game definitely makes sense. It’s the full identity of nation = tech tree that is, imho, past its expiration date. And already technically being phased out in the case of the IT/HUN tree.

Yes. Like I said, cart and horse. They’ll place a vehicle where needed, and then find a justification for it. Which makes sense as far as it goes, but a holistic approach would be better, and it is possible.

This is basically the “foldered tech trees” idea that I was talking about, yes. It’s literally how I envision it working. It would keep the trees themed. DDR vehicles may be “German” but they belong in a WarPac tree, not in the same tree that has BRD equipment.

2 Likes
28

Well yes but no. After reunification germany actualy used some GDR vehicles. Like the mig29. And germany used the italian p40 which makes the seperation after 1943 an issue in foldering tech trees based on political ties.

29

Yes, but War Thunder is not a historical conflict simulator. If I wanted it to be one again, I’d be asking for a return to historical matchmaking, at the end of the day.

The thought process here stems almost entirely from my realisation that - at least imho - we currently have too many tech trees, and there is a number of unintended problens with them that people tend to overlook.

The quesrions follow organically from that premise. How can we keep the nations and vehicles we already have, but structured around a different organising principle that conserves player progression and premium vehicles, reduces copypaste, and unburdens the matchmaker?

To me, folders are the answer. The reason why DDR vehicles should be with their kin is flavour of the tree and technology being played. Not historicity.

30

My buddy’s and myself are playing wildly different Nations (10.0+ BR) all the time and waiting times nearly never were reaching the 1 minute Mark at all.

Most of the time it’s instantaneous.

Only if there’s a new vehicle people want to unlock/spade, like the day the PSO dropped, the matchmaker was searching a little bit longer when everyone of us was picking a different Nation, including 2 of the big 3.

Can i accept smth like this on the patch day?
Absolutely.

Do I want games, where everyone is picking the same vehicle at the chosen BR?
Nope.

Would be boring as f.

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31

I just don’t see this happening and personally I like the national trees.
Maybe they could put new nations that are to small for even a Israel type tree into Continent trees??

32

The current way it is done is fine.
Just a small part, that i do not agree with. And this is other nations (that have no tech tree for themselves) getting added. They should, of course, but distributed to smaller nations, instead of, like Argentinian tanks being added to Germany. Germany is already huge, it needs no foreign tanks. Give those to France, Italy, etc, so those trees can be competetive too, with more and bigger lineups.

Another way, it was done in Armored warfare, is that they have these “dealers”, that have similar characteristics, instead of organising them with political affiliations, war threaties, etc.

34

TBH is not, curent meta in GRB is fast tanks with good guns and when u stack togeder all those nations that has this tanks is imposible for the oponent team with slower tanks to do anything about it.

35

What does anything you wrote has to do with the one i wrote?

36

i dont care