I play this game since like 2015. And back in the days every match was fought until the end and the snowballing was not erasing every little crumb of joy a game can have.
The fun in war thunder was always that it was possible to turn around a match with skill and effort and creativity.
In top tier and high tier there are currently alot of problems and the most annoying are these 2:
One death leavers. not because they leave the game and therefore are not useful teammates. but because its always random how they are divided between the teams. if you are “lucky” there are more ODLs in the enemy team. but that just means your team will steamroll the enemy team and its a very uninteresting match with 0 dynamics and changes and effort. I understand that there are people that want to play only one vehicle. Thats okay. But its not okay that the other players have to suffer from this and the randomness it brings into the game.
The maps are so small and red-zoned to a point where it is very hard to work with the terrain, which is a major part of vehicle combat. Also the amount of urban combat zones is just ridiculously high. But there are alot of vehicles that are not suitable for that and IRL no tank commander would drive his tank into a city without infantry support because its just too risky (and in the case of this game: just too random).
I know that gaijin has a solution for one-death-leavers in Enlisted. If you leave a match in enlisted while you still COULD spawn a squad, you will simply not get ANY reward from this match. (at least this is what a friend told me. i never played this game and if i did i would have not noticed that because i never leave matches early.)
While i think that this is a very good way to deal with this problem, there could be another solution for it: give people that want to play one vehicle a game mode where they can do that. team versus team but everyone has only one life. thats it. OR: distribute the ODLs in a way that the teams equally suffer from this problem. anything is better than how it is now.
It is not just a me-problem. Its also just unfair to sell people some premium CAS-Planes or any premium vehicle in a higher BR and then let them have this kind of shitty game experience. And i am not even one of these people. I only use premium vehicles when i get to that rank and BR bracket they are in or at least can build a suitable lineup from premium- and event-vehicles.
So here are my (and my communities) ideas:
Make maps way bigger. It will reduce the steamroll effect and give the team more chances to turn around a match.
Since Maps are bigger now, give IFVs the ability to set up spawn zones. (like in shooter games) AND/OR let players spawn at zones under control of their team.
Let ODLs have their game mode with only one vehicle and one life. With that you would also end the discussion about “CAS in Ground RB!!!111” and all the other complaints because in this mode it would only be MBT against MBT. (Finally world of tanks with better damage system lol.)
Reduce ticked bleed for top tier matches. (Something that maybe will be covered from having less ODLs in matches, but with bigger maps there also should be more time to react.)
War thunder has always been a game about combined arms. I like it that way and I think it is what makes war thunder very interesting. Players that one-death-leave just sabotage the game experience for everyone else because the combined armes aspect of the game is very limited when games are over in like 5 minutes and this is bitter reality in some BRs.
Thank you Gaijin for making this great game and please find a way to make high/top tier enjoyable again.
Generally I think your thoughts are coming from a good place, but my only critiques :
Bigger maps would be nice, but the way Snail tends to do bigger maps is by just making spawns unnecessarily far away from the small hot spots most of the fighting will take place anyway. It doesn’t really achieve its intention, just makes people drive bored more, and can actually encourage ODL’s because people don’t want to drive back a long way again after death.
We don’t just need bigger maps, but better maps, and think of ways to engage people more during long drives. We used to have Static AI (AA / AT gun emplacements) way back in the day to keep people occupied. Maybe bring those back?
I’d be really cautious with this. Many maps have overpowered vantage positions. Serious balance concerns if one team can just print new tanks in such locations. (Also, if done near caps, or on flanks, or to spawn camp etc).
It just risks fragmenting the playerbase too much. Snail cares about queue times too much this.
I generally find that the team who wins on tickets, typically controls the entire field and is spawn pushing anyway. I see why you suggest it, but it could also just make inevitable defeats drag out longer than necessary for the few people left willing to keep spawning in a lost cause match.
They haven’t added any ‘counterpart’ to the pansir in the nearly two years it has been in the game.
All the balancing feels like it’s based around an SPAA that only one nation has, hence why we have nearly every game being dominated by Russian aircraft with missiles that can’t be countered while any NATO missiles that would have equal impact are deemed as too strong for the current capabilities of the game.
It also doesn’t help that the majority of missiles fired by top tier NATO SPAA fly like they have Parkinsons for no reason at all and that their RADARs can barely pick up a plane letalone a missile.
It’s easier to simply remove the things that cause a lack of balance rather than waiting several years for the possibility of ‘counterparts’ even being mentioned by Gaijin.
For the 1DL issue, gaijin needs to make it worth it to spawn multiple times.
Maybe they could give a player who only has 1 tank as the top BR in their lineup a second spawn for that tank. However, this doesn’t solve the issue of players leaving due to uptiers or bad maps.
For maps, we don’t need larger maps, we need better designes (and more rural) maps.
Same thing happened to M247 as well. It’s only after 3+ years that we started seeing some better options at approximately that BR range (IR slingers). So this means there’s still hope something better will eventually come.
Advocating for removal of “better” stuff instead of adding more will basically have us stuck at a certain point forever.
Doesn’t make sense, then CAS would be operating basically with impunity. Advocating for mixed battles would also be a better choice than straight up removal of vehicles.
This is literally what Russia has been doing since the Pantsir was added, what are you on about? It got even worse with the introduction of the KH-38 missiles.
Remove Pantsir - Both Kh-38 and 65D can perform well.
Keep Pantsir - Only the Kh-38 can peform well.
Not that the missiles are even comparable, as the Kh-38 is leagues above the 65D in capability. The 65Ds are slower, less accurate, less direct damage, less indirect damage, more volatile to smoke/terrain.
Apparently Gaijin likes to do that. They’ve done it with M247 and A-4E before.
Remove Pantsir - GRB turns into an even harder race to get enough SP to spawn a plane. After that GRB turns into a glorified ARB where ground units are equally as helpless but give more RP/SL and are way more satisfactory to kill since they’re not AI controlled.
The M247 and A-4E definitely did not have the same impact as the Pantsir. I don’t remember having as much, if any, pain against those as I have with the Pantsir and Russian CAS today. The capabilities of modern CAS is so much worse than back with the A-4E.
This is what top tier GRB already is for anyone that isn’t Russia. Why should Russia get a free pass from the hell of CAS?
Just because 12.7 planes are more lethal than 8.7 ones doesn’t mean the situation wasn’t comparable. A-4E was basically one of (if not the only one) planes that had guided bombs at 8.7, which meant it could operate from ranges non-US AAs simply couldn’t cover effectively.
On the other hand, most non-US CAS only had access to dumb bombs and rockets which forced them to come close for strafing runs. Guess what was waiting for them ? Radar AA with HE-VT rounds that don’t have tracers, so dodging those on purpose is basically impossible.
Same goes with M247 and A-4E from US.
Gaijin does these things, doesn’t mean I’m supporting it but we only can deal with it in hopes something better will come, removing vehicles, especially AAs is never a good idea.
Thoughts on putting in a Ground RB mode with only vehicles? just finished playing in top tier and am honestly getting tired of agms taking my out from 7+ miles.
To be fair, aircraft and helicopter are a complement to ground battles, SPAAs are just doing their job.
I know you’re talking about top tier, but one or two BRs below and CAS is annoying for any team.