This is a genuine discussion post and I’m not trying to drag on naval at all. It is by far my most played and favorite game mode in War Thunder, however, there have been recent events and signs that are giving me grave concern for the future of Naval Battles as a game mode in War Thunder.
For me, these signs started with the Flight of the Albatross event. I’m grinding it out and so far, the grind has not been horrible (for me at least). The issue is that the prize, the Alcion, is literally just a copy/paste of the Albatross hence the name of the event. It’s extremely concerning to me that they would make a vehicle event in which the vessel is already in the game. Weapons, speed, displacement, and crew are all the same. The only real difference is the depth charges and let’s be honest, what’s the point of them is submarines aren’t even in the game?
Yes, there is a plane event happening right after this for the Iranian F-14, but that plane is given new armament in the Fakour-90, Sedjil, and Yasser rockets. This vehicle also has its own unique camo.
To add onto this, there is no new naval vessel in this most recent battle pass. Just a crate with a vessel from a previous event/BP and all of them are extremely weak.
All of these are signs that resources are being taken away from Naval Battles. Will there be a time Naval Battles are no longer updated? What will happen if Naval Battles are removed all together?
What are your thoughts? Am I just overthinking the recent BP and Events?
Good. That’s what all time-locked vehicles should be.
It’s also a great way to get people access to areas of the game they may not have, especially with high-tier Coastal being quite grindy.
Both are novelties at best, it’s functionally the same situation (again, good if we’re stuck with time-locked content).
But only currently, as once we get subs (likely sooner rather than later) it’s the depth charges which will be more gameplay-relevant.
Good and good again. That’s less time-locked content being added and a way to get previously unobtainable content.
Naval has had actually quite a lot of love in recent major patches, not just vehicles but especially in gameplay/UI/etc improvements and quality of life upgrades. Your complaint seems to be centred around wanting “new” vehicles and not much else.
If you want shiny new and unique toys, ask for them to be added in the tech tree, or as permanent premiums. That’s where they belong, it’s best for the health of the game, especially long-term.
It would turn like submarines in WoW as the rat guys or the same as artillery pieces in WoT as the rat guys, in WT wouldn’t be different, but it would be way more complex to operate it as people may think.
The least to compensate the bad event vehicles we had after Call of the Dragon.
I can only see some new movement to Naval with addition of the super battleships e.g. Yamato, Bismark or Tirpitz. And no you’re not overthinking, but honestly, they were just bad selection of vehicles.
I don’t think they are ? The unique depth charges and associated launcher for AIcione had been in the files for two years already, so it 's probably been in a near ready state for almost as long - probably longer.
The PBM-5A in the current BP had been added and removed from the files on a few occasions all the way back to it 's initial appearance in 2018.
There 's a recurring fascination I’ve seen, w/ how quickly Gaijin can go from deciding to add a vehicle to actually implementing it. Something that might be worth equal attention is how long they’ve gone between having a vehicle in hand and adding it.
changes maybe
improvements … nope
not in my opinion
i am still bombarded by you are turning left right port starboard etc and no mention of the bomb about to hit … never mind the warning about the plane that launched it
the range changes have shown how much of a dice game it has become or is it pure coincidence almost all my first salvos are over by .36 then .28
the damage model that has meant it is way harder to get a torp kill also hasn’t improved it much
and after all this time as an enjoyable game to play it is not much if any better than the beta test
when was the last time the major prize needed every unit … i missed the first so the whole thing was a no entry for me … the last unit was usually for cammo which allowed you to miss one unit and not make it a complete farce
why would they want the flight of the albatross event to be a failure
Future of naval battles should be good PVE mode, where two teams are trying to complete set of tasks; be it providing a cover for an amphibious landing, convoy attack or defense, and so on. All the scenarios could utilise all the vessel classes and aircrafts and require player cooperation.
The team that scores more points wins.
Just like it was in Ace Combat Infinity
Naval is stuck in a Big Gun/Thick armour upward trajectory that simply doesn’t follow real life post war trends where missiles and sensors became far more of a defining factor. If coastal had remained a seperate entity it would have been easy as you have Frigates and modern DDs that follow their earlier predecessors but combined with Bluewater even a missile and CIWS Frigate would struggle having high damage potential but low kill probability against WW2 BBs.
Unfortunately Gaijin have given no hints on how they intend to cover the last 70years of developments. Currently we don’t even have decent radars with every one being the exact same unit that doesn’t reflect how they operate in reality and early 1940s sets are identical to 1980s. Compare this to the aviation radars, or the differing optics of tanks where NVG, vehicle specific zooms etc is the norm.
Maybe there’s a magic big update coming in the future, but I doubt it especially as Naval is the unwanted step child of the game. Instead it will continue to be (often unannounced and seemingly untested) tweaks that don’t always make for better gameplay (eg the disastrous introduction of the Fragmentation changes, uncontrollable leaking!).
As to the event boat - iirc Alcione is actually a very slight downgrade from Albatross as she lacks the ability to drop bath bombs (in game at least, in reality?). As you are unlikely to use them on Albatros anyway it an unusual is/isn’t a Cut and Paste
I may perhaps be in a position that stands in contrary to most Naval players when it comes to Naval rewards for events and such in that I actually don’t mind the lack of naval rewards at this time. Unlike air and ground which lays out a basic framework of early game, midgame, and endgame early on and have since gotten years to attempt to fill in the gap and expand onwards with every update, Naval simply lacks this vision. Every update we get a sprinkle of vehicles all over but at this time (thank in part because Gaijin haven’t gone around for an admittingly huge task of rearranging plane BRs in Naval game mode to allow decompression) we don’t even have an idea of what will be the Endgame top tier. Will it be the last Battleships (which I would vouch for) or will it be Cold War+ missile cruisers and destroyers? Without this knowledge, every event or premium vehicle inserted (especially unique ones) would be vehicles that wouldn’t make it to the tech tree to fill out the BR bracket, so until this is resolved, those extra vehicles can go on hold.
(For an example, for a while, 5.7 Japan has IJN Aoba and IJN Furutaka as tech tree vehicles. While these are excellent ships, Premium introduced IJN Myoko, which has an additional turret. For the longest time, I thought this was quite unfair until they gave us the IJN Haguro recently. The waiting game now extends to the US tech tree with the Des Moines-classes.)
Aviation radars used to be this way too, and have slowly evolved to be more an more detailed, to the point where honestly it’s so detailed that my eyes glaze over reading the radar changes in datamines (this is not a bad thing). I’m sure we’ll see the same kind of thing over here eventually, especially with sonar obviously coming at some point.
Oh how I wish this were true. Literally every tank in the game uses the same identical copy-paste, zero-personality reticle, and the devs have arbitrary decided that any tanks with real zoom below a certain level get that replaced with a generic higher toggle zoom instead.
To say nothing of tank optics being inside barrels; we very much don’t see this goofy CoD-style forehead shooting in Air/Naval.
Unrepairable breaches have been a fantastic addition, ships are finally dying by sinking instead of by definitely-not-HP-bar crew loss.
Most likely this, for better or for worse. In addition to subs and later battleships, WT Mobile has also been adding quite a few large missile-type ships recently, and they’re all placed after the last of the BBs.
Yeah, this obvious compression really needs fixing. Hopefully soon, now that we can have separate Air/Ground/Naval BRs for aircraft.
… as per usual they didnt bother thinking about the effects and changes … and if they did they did nothing anyway
specifically the time it takes to sink
hit with a torp it either blew up on the spot or did next to nothing
now it usually takes time to sink so anyone hitting it with bigger than 20mm often gets the kill … they need / needed to change the reward so that torp kills from planes esp but also boats get credit if they do the major part of the damage even if it doesn’t sink immediately or is sunk by someone else