as i know, back in 2014 the game was more “realistic” and actually had objectives and historic philosophy
I am fine with gameplay when it comes to low tier to 8.0. Most maps are more designed for WW2 to Cold war tanks. But once it reaches anything above 9.0+, the maps start to feel way to tiny for me. Zero breathing room for modern machines, pure chaotic CQC.
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they had flying ponys back then
Yes, but that is what gives you both tactical advantage and disadantage. Map has several chokepoints where enemies NEED to go through to get to you, and all arount it makes routes to get to them
Yes, them big cardboards like Nashorn do suffer to find their place in cities. THo them heavy armored ones work out pretty well.
Its hard to disagree that older maps were better. Again, because the game was simplier, there were no MBTs, no thermals, ect.
Most of the old maps were small enough to fit a great battle with WW2 era tanks. Now its obvious that some newer maps lack that, because they were designed for them MBTs. But i dont agree that all of the newer maps are that bad. American Desert is decent, Breslau is, well, city; Seversk-13 is also a good map where you can fit every machine. And so on.
Then again, the screenshot you showed is actually very fair. But i disagree with it within several points. Especially with italy and american desert. Those maps are designed that way that LTs are easy to flank enemies with, and TDs can position to cover the flanks and main streets. There are few special positions for them TDs and LTs, but im certain that you just dont really need much more on those maps for any type of machine, as both of them are “maze-like” maps which work perfect based on great situanional avareness.
I agree. WT is just one of the products that you can immediately tell the makers have never used. Across shitty ui, no map voting, insane RNG reliance, BR compression, and much more, it just fully fails in every single little way.
Here’s how I imagine 90% of gameplay features were decided upon.
Gajin guy 1: “Hey let’s add artillery strikes!”
Gajin guy 2: “Why?”
Gajin guy 1: “I dunno, it just sounds cool.”
Imo, everything about scouting was poorly thought out. It Gajin made a change SO SIMPLE as just making the scout marker disappear early when the scouter dies, that would be an absolutely massive improvement to gameplay, all on its own.
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That’s exactly what people are pointing out, lol. You’re agreeing with the people you claim to be disagreeing with.
Correct. WT is best understood as a drip feed content industry product. A living game, in a sense. They constantly add new stuff that fundamentally alters the way a bracket is played. Combined with the map changes, the chasing of player preferences etc, that means the game never settles into one enduring meta.
While that may be a negative to you, it also keeps the game fresh for many players who return precisely because the game changes all the time.
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I would honestly not mind UAV scout nerfs as long as the score for them went up significantly in return because it’s such a powerful and helpful thing for your team it should be worth something; but I also acknowledge it’s insanely strong as it currently is.
The goal of Realistic and Simulator battles should be realism.
Arcade for everything else. Biggest issue RB faces is people wanting Arcade mission and map design but without markers and realistic physics leading to conflicts of interest.
Difference between Realistic and Simulator should be accessibility: ARB gets mouse aim/instructor and third person view. GRB Tanks can’t friendly fire and can have full third person view and no parallax to deal with (also GRB has a functional queue rather than restricted lineups that push me to play GRB over GSB while I can play exclusively ASB and be mostly happy with it).
The balancing should occur in battle-ratings (we don’t get I-16s and Spitfire Is fighting Bf 109 F-4s and Fw190 A-1 nor M4 shermans facing Tinger IIs nor Buffalos and Wildcats facing A6M2/A6M3s (without the floaters at least).
Nobody wants to fly I-16 vs Bf 109 F-4. It’s historically accurate. It’s also not fun for either party.
I do want realisticly designed mission scenarios, maps and vehicle behaviours though.
The goal of realistic and simulator battles is to support the wider strategic objective of the game, which is to earn money.
GRB has become the most popular mode in the game precisely because it sells the illusion of realism while retaining the accessibility of arcade, imho.
It’s not “an issue RB faces” because RB is not a thing that exists in the natural world, it’s a product. Part of one anyway. Any business that can choose between catering to audience X or catering to bigger audience Y which also includes parts of X, will choose the latter. They’d be masochistic if they didn’t.
Here you have literally answered your own point, man.
Really hard to make that fun and balanced in a PVP game.
Imagine playing realistic Fall Gelb. You have to drive your Pz 38t through the Ardennes without stopping for three days. No meeting enemies until you’re out of the forest.You refuel on the road with the assistance of support vehicles.
The biggest threat to the operation is a traffic jam, so your goal is to follow signals very closely or the immense concentration of AFVs on a narrow shitty forest road will literally crash the offensive.
Then you finally break out of the forest and race for the river, where your task is to secure a bridgehead, only problem is that on the far bank there’s a guy in a prepared defensive position in a Char 2B with a disco ball decoration and a “did you angle today” sticker that’s ready to blast your ass back to the hangar because the only thing you can frontally do to him is perhaps sing him a song.
For anyone involved that was an extremely dramatic personal moment. It’s one of the most famous ground operations in contemporary military history. But it would make for atrocious PVP gameplay.
The queue issue is on gaijin side, not consumer side.
They made GSB use “rotating line-ups” that are not actually carefully curated.
Meaning, despite the seeming promise that these rotating lineups would provide authentic-feeling match-ups and minimize IFF issues, in reality you still get tons of italian shermans, german KVs and so forth causing excessive confusion on the markerless battlefield and constant friendly fire.
Additionally, after failing at providing the promised outcome (authentic experience, sensible visual IFF) they still heavily restrict gameplay. If I wanted to progress tanks entirely using GSB, I’d be able to only play one or two days per week if not less because the tanks I have unlocked are only available every N days (WTLineup example: M4 Sherman:
If I only owned the M4 sherman and only tanks in the 2_1 and 3_1 brackets, I wouldn’t be able to play warthunder AT ALL today as today is 5_1 and 8_2_2, tomorrow is 4_1 and 9_2.
Therefore, queue times are sabotaged despite want and interest.
I want to play GSB.
I am not allowed to.
Whereas in ASB If I want to fly my 109 F-4 I can do it 24 hours of the day 7 days of the week. Now, some days I’ll have uptiers, other days I’ll have downtiers and that might affect my enjoyment (4.0 109 F-4 vs 5.0 Spitfire Lf Mk IX is not fun - it climbs better, accelerates better, turns better and is faster in the domains where it’s relevant. Only in stability & ease of use is the 109 F-4 better (lower skillfloor to not kill yourself from spinning out)) but it doesn’t prevent me outright.)
You can take live realistic scenarios and narrow them down to specific pivotal moments.
KRABB_NATION and WingalingDragon and InvaderPork do just that.
Last year they ran a community event of the Normandy landings in SB controls with curated lineups that make sense for the scenario (both tank and aircraft) and it was very fun.
Last year they ran a community event of the Iwo Jima landings across multiple days with timeskips to the hot zones and it was incredibly fun as well.
They’re re-running the Iwo Jima landings soon too.
They’re also doing Ju 87 stuka and B-17 dynamic campaigns based on authentic or historical scenarios.
Also there exists Il2:GB Combat Box that again uses the same philosophy:
Example -
Crossing the Rhine
March 1945 - Allied forces are swarming across Europe, liberating territory from the Reich. After capturing the Seigfried Line the 9th Armored Division of the US Army unexpectedly captures the only remaining bridge across the Rhine. Ludendorff Bridge is wired with six thousand pounds of high explosive, but as the Germans try to demolish the bridge half the explosives fail to detonate, leaving the bridge intact. The GIs quickly take advantage of the situation, securing and repairing the bridge and building tactical pontoon bridges to support their operation. “Cross the Rhine with dry feet, courtesy 9th Armored Div” is proudly painted on a sign across the bridge, with hundreds of tanks and thousands of troops making the crossing safely. [Mustache guy. I dunno if forum censors his name so I’m being safe] orders all possible measures be taken to destroy the bridge, including the use of artillery, heavy bombers, V2 rockets and even underwater frogmen equipped with explosives.
Mission concept and design by Talon, implementation by Alonzo. Thanks to Haluter and Jonno for extensive testing.
This is a very fun scenario.
Player tanks are also a thing:
just cause they dont have a place in the game doesnt mean make them OP
TD absolutely have their place in the game.
Not to mention all the different types of TD there are; some work very well in close-quarters combat if needed.
And that’s the advantage of having a lineup; you can bring out the TD when the situation calls for it.
It’s not just the map that matters, but also the game mode (3 points, 1 point, 2 points), and even when you use it. Using it on your first or second life makes a huge difference, even on the same map.
i agree when the team isnt absloute dog doo doo they can actully hold entire routes by themselves
but 95% of time team is about as smart as a rock
No, it is 100% a revealed consumer preference.
I think you don’t understand what happens to MMOs with unpopular modes. Queue times enter a downward spiral. The number of players decreases, so the queue times increase. This becomes an additional barrier to players looking to enter or rejoin the mode, so the queue times decrease even more, and so on.
The rotating lineups are necessitated by the fact that the sim community is not big enough to sustain a high number of matches. But then the spiral continues because people are dicinsentivised from rejoining sim because of the rotating lineups.
The key feature of an MMO is a “zero second matchmaker” and this is exactly why.
Lineups are not curated because few people are attracted to sim. You’re inverting cause and effect. If sim held the promise of player retention/making money, they would not be leaving it in this state.
Correct. Sim is essentially abandonware. And that’s because it’s unpopular as a concept. But the fact that it’s abandonware also contributes to its lack of popularity. Of course sim would instantly be more appealing if the issues you bring up were fixed. But fixing them means investing man-hours and resources that pay off better elsewhere.
Again, there’s a reason for it. There is a small but established niche for flight sims. Tank sims are a much more iffy concept, despite a couple of titles existing.
I am aware. I also follow Ultrasim on Discord and other such things. They are interesting to me. I like hardcore wargaming too. But the point is that the audience for these things is tiny. Tiiiny tiny. How many WT players have also played Command Ops, or Grigsby’s War In The East? Hell, the very video you sent me has 761 views. Hundreds! Compare it with any video from an established Ground RB CC and you will immediately see where the problem is.
Of course a company will go for the bigger audience.
If that Fall Gelb mission I mentioned existed, I would probably try it out. I just know that for every one player that would try it out, nine more would just stick to GRB. And if I want casual gameplay I would stick to GRB too.
Compare the playerbase of IL2 with the playerbase of WT and you will, once again, have your answer.
It means “give them a place in the game”, duh.
Unfortunately, I can only confirm this. I even think some people play with the screen off or are blind
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i was below average a few years ago and im still below average by those standards now im considered a average player the skill drop of is insane in this game
this game used to be a lot more skill based back in the day
I think they are mid at best.
It’s true that the game used to be simpler. But I’d say that the newer maps don’t fit to MBTs, too.
Imo Fulda or Maginot are good toptier maps, but maps like Sun City don’t fit to low-, mid- or toptier.
That’s true, you can work with situational awareness. I think we can agree, though, that Gaijin have lost their creativity and all these maps are just obstacles placed all over the map randomly.
Especially in higher tiers the map rotation is super monotonous because a lot of the maps play the same.
Gaijin should make separate maps for each tier and they shouldn’t be afraid to make them unique.
If I’m correct the first map ever was Karelia. It is a very unique map with vastly differing elevation levels, sniping spots, flanking routes, opportunities for cqc etc.
Today we have maps like North Holland which is a worse copy of Eastern Europe, super uncreative.
I think one example that shows that Gaijins’ plan is to simplify the maps is the rework of Sinai. They cut out the entire hill which used to be the most important pat of the map with high tactical value. Now it is just another boring, flat map.
my main issue is the lack of traction.
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Nah, imho they’re just standardising to the lowest common denominator. For example:
When they announced it, they literally said, “data shows that Eastern Europe is the most liked map in the game so here’s a copy”.
These things happen for a reason.
I love Karelia, but I see so many people bitch about it. I really dislike the new Eastern Europe and much prefer North Holland because it’s basically Eastern Europe with less visual clutter (the new version of EE seriously overdid it imho). But apparently the average player has other tastes.
Completely correct. Just worth keeping in mind they wouldn’t do it if they didn’t stand to benefit from it. And the benefit is the fact that players like standardisation, sadly.
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What you say makes total sense.
I think it’s especially the newer players who like simple and standardized maps. After a few years of playing the game they become boring.
A big problem imo is that Arcade seems to become less popular. I don’t think there is data on that but I don’t see anyone playing Arcade anymore, it became niche. There used to be a time when YouTube Titels said if the gameplay was from RB or AB, both modes had their audiences.
I think Arcade should be made more popular again, so players who might still be overwhelmed by RB can get used to the game there.
Instead, what’s happening right now is that RB is turning into a mix between RB and AB.
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