Suggestion for Reworking Boosters in War Thunder

[FlyingDoctor]

Why the need to post up such a large response to such a small comment though… And to me in particular…

I ain’t gonna read all that, for the fact of me merely telling you that I think it will encourage pick and choosing of fights to fight, resulting in more abandoned teams, and other matches where peopel will be blaming the team because they thought they’d be getting a good reward due to them winning, but everyone else was inferior because they were unable to get the booster activated because of the fact they don’t have that much time to play.

And this urge to paint it out as a development and issue, not actually what it is, player choice…

Because it really is player choice.

I’ve spawned SOOO many times in some matches, and it’s just mad fun… But people pick and choose already, and you can see it…

With this sort of thing being a thing (Post Match Activation) it could lead to being more of a thing.

It comes to the player, making a choice, good or bad, based on thier own thoughts. It’s nothing to do with the server or the game, as to whether or not the player is doing it.

I am unfortunately a person who thinks the community needs fixing, because there is a lot of people who are just really so uptight. Some of the comments that come through are just way up there.

[richthofen122]

@FlyingDoctor

Why the need to post up such a large response to such a small comment though… And to me in particular…

You would have to ask Chat-GPT, I love experimenting with it. Sorry for making you my Guinea Pig there.

Anyways, here are some Rewards of Matches with Boosters and stacked Boosters

Spoiler

[FlyingDoctor]

I knew it was AI but didn’t want to even put it out to you… Don’t use that crap… Not for responses like that.

[BeautifulTai_wan]

@Uncle_J_Wick

picked this quote out of your whole reply to clarify some things:

1. This whole game is a prime example of video game psychology 101.
2. Playing and gambling activate the same chemical reactions in almost the same brain sectors.

Therefore there is no need to provide gambling in the game if the neurological reaction wanted is already provided by alternate means.

@Uncle_J_Wick

A post-match activation of a booster is nonsense if you try to earn money.

Please explain. I see a potential additional revenue stream/GE sink (direct incentive for gaijin) and beneficial repercussions (indirect incentive) with post-match boosters. If they are so worried about losing profit, they can even lock post-match booster activation behind premium account.

This is a precedent that has been set already, after all. When the game asks a f2p player to get premium for their day of playing, it offers the SL they could have earned as additional incentive to pay. Premium time has a handful of exclusive features, along with that. (Map ban, and ability to hide username)

[Uncle_J_Wick]

@BeautifulTai_wan

Please explain.

U look (as the OP) like a reasonable guy - so my thoughts about this topic.

In general:

1. Everything what looks reasonable from the perspective of an experienced player is usually not suited to please gaijin’s target customers: Minors with access to credit cards. That’s why the game got “dumber” over the years: Tankers are trapped in CQC maps and Pilots are trapped in 16 vs 16 matches. The main goal is to make actual skill less important.

2. Every function in this game fulfills a dedicated purpose in order to earn money with those minors in the rather short time they play the game.

3. Everything what intensifies play time is good as the game is designed either to invest a hell of money - or a hell of time. The longer those minors play, the earlier they are trapped in the hamster wheel called grind - and they feel the need to buy premium time or vehicles.

4. There is no free lunch - every event (with a “free” vehicle or pfp) intensifies playtime, stuff like daily & special tasks support this and BP challenges are designed to play all modes (air, land & sea) and all nations - also creating an artificial need for premium products - and they encourage reckless game play, just in order to finish the current task.

Boosters:

5. Those boosters are designed to intensify playing right now - combined with the thrill of getting a good game (without getting teamkilled during take-off) and having a good result (=make them work).

6. A post-match activation kills (together with the lack of a time limit) the need to play right now and constantly good - and, ofc, the satisfaction to get a booster actually working.

7. With millions of players in more than 10 years gaijin is able to predict player behaviour quite accurate. So the frustration of wasted boosters is part of their strategy. The sole purpose why they even allowed this suggestion to get published is a sign that they look for additional income & ideas to make money.

Proposal:

8. Imho the only way something similar to the suggestion could actually be considered would be the invention of a kind of “ultra-boosters” with the described attributes - combined with the goal to replace the current offers in the store.

9. Gaijin has enough data to analyze the usage of paid (=with GE) boosters and the outcome (SL & RP) of them - and they know what kind of players are using them.

10. So as soon as the outcome of a booster is predictable - the booster gets more effective and the current GE price should skyrocket. If their data shows that just rather new (= usually less successful) players use paid boosters i would expect a rather moderate increase.

Summary:

Imho it is up to gaijin to calculate a replacement of currently offered (to be paid with GE) boosters with those “ultra-boosters” - a conversion of the already “free” (war bonds, good games, loot boxes, login, etc.) boosters is contradicting their purpose to increase play time and player commitment.

[Kerry_Freeman]

@FlyingDoctor

You actually did further on up the post where you’d used all your boosters as you were quiting AW.

Wrong! Nowhere did I say I was quitting AW. In fact, I actually said I’d be back in AW if it had player-controllable warplanes and warships. To my point:

I’m here because I have to be, because no other game offers the planes and helicopters that War Thunder offers. I’m not here because War Thunder is somehow superior mechanics-wise, or because it has better gameplay, because it isn’t and doesn’t.

@FlyingDoctor

You can say that, but I think it’s more to do with you quitting AW.

I never quit AW.

Nope, you stated above that you had quit AW and stacked all your boosters.

Wrong!

I see where you got confused though:

@Kerry Freeman

I had over three hundred common Boosters stockpiled from years of play when I got everything I wanted out of the game and quit.

This statement was made in reference to World of Warships (WoWS.) Not Armored Warfare (AW). The context of that post made it clear to which game I was referring, so… gotcha!

You are deliberately taking my comments out of context in a failed attempt to claim you are not totally incorrect. A troll’s move.

[BeautifulTai_wan]

@Uncle_J_Wick

• Those boosters are designed to intensify playing right now - combined with the thrill of getting a good game (without getting teamkilled during take-off) and having a good result (=make them work).
• A post-match activation kills (together with the lack of a time limit) the need to play right now and constantly good - and, ofc, the satisfaction to get a booster actually working.
• With millions of players in more than 10 years gaijin is able to predict player behaviour quite accurate. So the frustration of wasted boosters is part of their strategy. The sole purpose why they even allowed this suggestion to get published is a sign that they look for additional income & ideas to make money.

I don’t really see how post-match activation kills the satisfaction of getting a big boost or the need to play immediately in order to actually make use of the booster. I’m personally ambivalent towards boosters that expire within 2 days of getting them, as the majority of my boosters are the non-expiring type (and I’m not touching those for a specific reason, lest I get the opportunity to guarantee an amazing game is boosted with post-match activation). Expiring boosters either get used once I see them down to ~10 hours left until they disappear or used immediately if they’re for multiple games with a minor reward increase. Sometimes I just let them disappear anyway, if I’m not feeling the urge to play. I’d actually feel more inclined to play; despite my mood, if they could be activated post-match but still had an expiration date.

As for gaijin being able to predict player response to their monetization strategy? With the review bombing of 2023, I don’t think they’ve got a particularly good idea of what players actually want. They clearly thought the status quo was fine; until the day it wasn’t, and it blew up in their faces.

@Uncle_J_Wick

Proposal:

8. Imho the only way something similar to the suggestion could actually be considered would be the invention of a kind of “ultra-boosters” with the described attributes - combined with the goal to replace the current offers in the store.
9. Gaijin has enough data to analyze the usage of paid (=with GE) boosters and the outcome (SL & RP) of them - and they know what kind of players are using them.
10. So as soon as the outcome of a booster is predictable - the booster gets more effective and the current GE price should skyrocket. If their data shows that just rather new (= usually less successful) players use paid boosters i would expect a rather moderate increase.

Again, not really seeing how this proposal can’t be modified as an additional premium account benefit. With the free boosters that are dropped from logins, boxes after matches and the warbond shop, there’s basically no difference if a player decides to use them, lose them or just ignore them. Post-match activation (but only with premium account active) would very likely reduce the apathy some players have towards these. Boosters purchased with GE could have their prices raised for post-match activation for players without premium account; and be discounted back to standard level for those with premium account time, or those who prefer pre-match activation.

@Uncle_J_Wick

Summary:

Imho it is up to gaijin to calculate a replacement of currently offered (to be paid with GE) boosters with those “ultra-boosters” - a conversion of the already “free” (war bonds, good games, loot boxes, login, etc.) boosters is contradicting their purpose to increase play time and player commitment.

Giving paid boosters an option to “upgrade to post-match activation” as an additional fee is a perfectly fine proposal, and this could potentially even apply to the very large free options through premium account time. I disagree that post-match activation defeats the purpose of the free boosters.

[_Poul]

You always have to look at things from Gaijin’s perspective. They always want to keep everything (including rewards) on the desired level, and they have tools to do this.

You think that after-battle booster activation can be added to the game without any additional changes, but that’s impossible. Simply because booster values were carefully calculated before they were added to the game. The booster values you see are set the way they are set, because the devs knows very well that because of different conditions, you will “waste” like 90% of big boosters. That’s how the whole system is designed, and that’s why they could add 500% boosters.

From Gaijin’s perspective, there are two ways to solve this issue:

• Reduce boosters. They would have to reduce them a lot, for example a 500% booster would become a 50% booster, a 10% booster would become a 1% booster. But this brings a problem, because most players will start looking at boosters as “nothing special”. And the whole addicting element of especially big boosters would disappear. For example, look at this booster:
  
  The whole exciting thing about this 500% SL booster is, if you do everything perfectly in the battle, you will be very happy with the outcome. Now imagine if this booster was changed to 50%, but you would be able to activate it after the battle. Instead of 929k SL I would get 93k SL from this booster. Does that additional 93k sound any exciting to you? Many players would start ignoring these booster completely, and that would only hurt Gaijin.

• There is also another way that would allow the devs to keep big boosters and allow their post-battle activation. They could simply reduce rewards in all battles by reducing game mode multipliers. From my perspective, this solution is even worse than the previous one. Because every battle you play your rewards would be reduced by let’s say 5% (I have no idea what the numbers would be to compensate for post-battle activation ability, just guessing here). This solution means that players who play often would lose a lot of rewards. And they won’t be able to get all these rewards back by using big boosters. But players who only play rarely and mostly focus on boosters would gain more rewards with the post-battle activation ability. The interesting thing is, this solution could again hurt Gaijin, because it would make more sense for players to play less than currently and only focus on boosters.

I totally understand players would want to get post-battle activation with the current booster rules, but that’s simply impossible. The devs admit many times in the past they want to keep rewards on the desired levels. That’s the reason why they have game mode multipliers in reward calculations. Game mode multipliers are hidden values, and they keep changing all the time (depending on global gains, the more people gain, the lower the multiplier becomes). You can read more about this system here:

Spoiler

Answering your questions and comments about the revision of the mission victory bonus reward - Project News - War Thunder - Official Forum

Check especially this part, which simply explains how the game mode multiplier system works:

On average, losers have lower activity and battle time, the question is by how much. We see that the losing player gets +64 conditional RP while the winning player lost -95 conditional RP. With an average W/R of 50%, players will only lose from these changes (original forum post)

The total earnings of Research Points will be adjusted by game mode based on the statistics of earnings in that mode. For the example above: if we accept the correct calculations, then the average mode earnings for winners will decrease by 11.4 RP/minute, for losers will increase by 9.6 RP/minute and for the mode as a whole will decrease by 1.8 RP/minute (or by 1.8 / ((665 / 500 * 0.5 + 192 / 400 * 0.5) * 60) = 3.3%). But since the final earnings are adjusted according to the required level based on statistics the game mode RP multiplier will be increased by the same 3.3% - from 2.04 to 2.11 in the case of aircraft RB which is its purpose.

[Kerry_Freeman]

I appreciate the level of detail you went into here, but you missed one important factor.

Because we do end up wasting 90% of the boosters we get, all boosters end up seeming like nothing special.

We already ignore all boosters, because we know they’re just going to end up wasted.

It’s a waste of our money if we bought them, and a waste of our time if we earned them. They’re not worth using because of that 90% waste.

Boosters might as well be removed from the game, because we already know that using them is a waste.

[DiamondLag]

Runescape has the solution to boosters. Just copy that one.

No need to reinvent the wheel

[_Poul]

@Kerry_Freeman

Because we do end up wasting 90% of the boosters we get, all boosters end up seeming like nothing special.

We already ignore all boosters, because we know they’re just going to end up wasted.

Please don’t use “we”, because it’s just your opinion. I used “waste” with quotation, because these boosters still work. If you don’t have a perfect battle, you won’t gain much with them, but you still gain. It’s always something extra to what you would get without boosters.

@Kerry_Freeman

It’s a waste of our money if we bought them, and a waste of our time if we earned them. They’re not worth using because of that 90% waste.

Boosters might as well be removed from the game, because we already know that using them is a waste.

This doesn’t make any sense, unless you think about boosters like “all or nothing”. When I use big boosters, I always use specific lineups or vehicles I want that potential increased gains.

I usually use big SL boosters in Naval, because the potential SL there is crazy. I usually use big RP boosters on vehicles that are hard to exp, just to make my life a bit easier. I’m a person who exp every single vehicle in the game, so RP boosters are always welcomed from my perspective, even if most of them will be indeed “wasted”. They still help. I definitely prefer to get ~4.5k RP with a “wasted” 500% booster than ~1k RP without it after a bad battle.

For that reason I never ignore big boosters. For me it’s not an option to let a 500% or even a 150% RP booster to just expire without using it. I always use them, even if most of them don’t give me much. From time to time they work, and it’s amazing how much you can gain with them.

That’s the reason why boosters work how they work. The devs know that most players will activate these boosters and play with hope that the next battle will be great. This is the same element like with gambling. Most of the time you will lose, but from time to time you will win, and this is enough for you to keep trying. In terms of gambling, this is of course destructive, because it costs money. Meanwhile the boosters are usually free (I really don’t recommend buying them with GE, they have crazy price). As long as you use only free boosters, just look at them as a bonus. Yes, nothing is guaranteed with them, but that’s exactly how they are designed and that’s why you see so high potential bonuses on them.

[Kerry_Freeman]

This doesn’t make any sense, unless you think about boosters like “all or nothing”. When I use big boosters, I always use specific lineups or vehicles I want that potential increased gains.

I too have a current specific lineup of vehicles that are in use. The problem is, they’re all spaded, so most of that RP goes to waste.

I’m currently gaining RP and SL in order to reach the next aircraft on the USA research tree, but it’s extremely slow going even with the biggest free boosters.

Even if I have a perfect game, the amount of RP and SL I get from a 300% booster is negligible.

If I play my usual game, blasted out of the sky by a missile before I even get ten feet beyond spawn, or I get killed before I can drop any bombs or shoot any missiles, how much boost do I earn when that happens? I don’t know, but it might as well be zero percent.

And I can’t just quit after one death to save on the waste of SL either like I would normally do, so I’m forced to use up all my crews at least once to try and salvage at least some of the RP and SL involved because a 300% booster feels like it has a chance to actually regain some of it. It’s a snowball’s chance in hell, but it’s still a chance. The problem is, that’s all it is - a feeling. And feelings don’t equal facts no matter how much you or I want them to.

It never works. Before the economic “rework” I’d have to eat the inevitable loss in SL. After the economic “rework”, I still have to eat the inevitable loss if I don’t have Premium Account time.

So, here’s the only logical conclusion possible, without any feelings involved:

Using boosters at all, results in a net loss. More of a net loss than if I ignored the boosters entirely, due to repair costs and other such drains.

And trading a loss in fictional currency for a loss in real-world currency, is not a fix or a rework. It’s a re-break. A rebork, akin to locking the economy changes behind a paywall.

[LostPlayer2023]

Nobody said gajin can’t make it harder to get boosters. The daily login boosters should stay because it would be a cause to start and play the game for a couple of matches until you go a match where u want to boost your rewards. The idea of adding a post-match booster activatin system would make the game way better for NOT SO SKILLED PLAYER who have a life and can’t play the game so often be ause then they can atleast grind something and would have more fun instead of getting a booster and pray that your them won’t die or steal everything.

[Kerry_Freeman]

In a word… Bingo.

[LostPlayer2023]

I have some friends who have a full day and can only play 2-3h a day under the week. How long does gajin want them to grind to get somewhere. I grinded faster to toptier in a year without any premium stuff just pure skill and suffering. But giving those players the ability to get on thier (just for example) 5 kill match + win + 20 min suvived 500% extra would mke them feel better and motivate them to play more.

[Kerry_Freeman]

Agreed.

[LostPlayer2023]

Hopefully they don’t make boosters only availablöe for real money if the change the current booster system into this

[Kerry_Freeman]

FULLY AGREED!

Hopefully they don’t make the boosters available for real money only.

[FlyingDoctor]

@Kerry_Freeman

Hopefully they don’t make the boosters available for real money only.

Why is this being catastrophized now?

The fact you just wanted them removed for no reason at all, and now we’re on to them costing real money, shows a real problem with regards to perception. It’s jaded.

[Kerry_Freeman]

It is not I who has a problem with perception. It’s you who has a problem with context.

I said they might as well be removed because even the biggest boosters provide so little benefit.

If they’re changed as proposed, and they actually provide benefit, then it would be bad to paywall them. And to be honest, it’s bad to paywall anything that grants an advantage, or appears to.

Quit being an asshole just to be an asshole.