Razer, I agree with almost everything you say in almost every thread I’ve seen in this forum, and therefore I know that you know better than this.
Yes, IRL China bought all these vehicles. How would they maintain them in the event of a break-up with the Soviets during WW2? Where would they get the replacement parts and logistical supply chain for their IS-2s, if they were using them to fight the Soviets?
You can legitimately believe that the ability for Soviet and Chinese IS-2s to fight one another on the battlefield is good for gameplay and balance, but it’s definitely not a realism argument.
Similarly, there are many areas of this game where gameplay correctly comes before realism, beyond just field repairs. A few examples off the top of my head:
Do you think it’s realistic for Nazi Germany and Israel to jointly deploy, sustain and operate Tiger IIs and M-51s in the Korean mountains to… fight the Brits? I’m certainly glad all maps are open to all factions, hell, 38th Parallel is one of my favourite maps for long-range sniping with WW2 tanks, but the scenario is a little… outlandish.
Even if you look at it from a pure wargaming perspective and therefore as an exercise: then where’s the infantry? Why are we sending heavy armour into Sun City with no infantry support? That would be suicidally insane. Not that I’m against infantry being added to the game, for me the more combined arms the better, but the average WT match looks like a wargaming exercise only in the most superficial way, the map construction of caps primarily. The rest doesn’t really make much sense.
Is it realistic that there can be four Maus tanks in one team, when no Maus ever fought in battle, and the one complete specimen we have, is in fact not one specimen, but a turret and a hull being produced separately and then mated by the Russians - the turret itself an early prototype iteration that had already been discontinued in favour of a new design choice? I’m happy I get to roll out in my Maus any time I want, it’s one of my favourite tanks in game. Here, too, gameplay (having fun in the Maus) comes before realism.
There’s more, and more, and more.
We turn turrets at maximum theoretical speed even when giving the engine full beams. This is not realistic, but it makes gameplay a lot more intuitive.
Likewise, we don’t have to worry, like IRL WW2 tankers did, about how a turret would actually move - giving it full speed at the beginning of the rotation, then slowing down to make it come to a halt at the desired angle. This would make weakspot/pixel hunting much more difficult, as well as hitting a moving target.
We have an autoloading Sturmtiger with a rate of fire much higher than IRL, and truth be told all tank reload times in-game are fiddled with as a soft balancing mechanism, which is again not realistic, but arguably good for gameplay.
Artillery, which is a major tank killer in reality, is basically nothing like the real thing in game.
I stand by my position that while WT’s attention to real-life elements is commendable, gameplay is the first priority. That’s why you can rest assured, if I propose a different tree system, it’s not because I want to see “a historical battles simulator”. That would be interesting to see done elsewhere, but WT isn’t the game for it, imho. I mean, I even argue quite openly for performance-based matchmaking of vehicles as opposed to the historical matchmaking some people demand, precisely because I agree with you that War Thunder isn’t a simulator of IRL battles.
My arguments are subjective, may be wrong, may be right, but they’re usually motivated by my thoughts on gameplay and balance. Not really in trying to recreate a WW2 simulator experience or something like that.
