On June 13, 2023, Gaijin published an article called Economy Revision - Our Plans in Detail as part of their response in the wake of the review bombing of the game due to prior proposed economy changes, and in that article was they said this:
Currently, War Thunder features 10 playable nations, and we have no intentions of stopping there!
Spot the problem?
That is a bad sign. That confirms that least one more nation will get added to the game as its own tree and heavily implies that multiple will be. Given that this was said on June 13, 2023, we can almost certainly expect one of those new nations in 2024. That is not good. More minor nations as their own trees are fundamentally bad for the game’s health.
Most people will never play many of the minor nations ingame. For the longest time, Italy was the least played nation ingame, and the only reason it isn’t now is because Israel was added and Israel is even less played. So that begs the question: what is the point?
Obviously it generates hype in the short term, but in the long term, what you get is a giant drain of resources to make a nation that nearly no one will play. Beyond that, the nation itself is also not fun to play. Sure, it can have some fun vehicles in it, but we are now at the point where there is no nation left that does not have a significant amount of copy-paste in it (and don’t bring up Yugoslavia because slightly modifying a vehicle doesn’t make it unique and have you seen its prospective air tree?).
The great thing about the first nine nations ingame was that they all had something unique to offer. Granted, China was a bit of a disaster upon launch, but it is now in a place where I am very comfortable calling it a worthy addition. But Sweden was the last nation left with enough stuff to make it worth having its own tree. Sweden has a really diverse, interesting, and almost entirely indigenously-designed ground tree. It had a lot of holes for a long time, but the Finnish subtree, the only significantly copy-paste part of the tree, filled nearly all of those holes, and having some copy-paste in a tree to fill holes is fine because for Sweden it was filling holes in a 90% unique tree. The exact same applies to Sweden’s air tree. Outside of the Finnish tree, the only copy-paste vehicles in Sweden’s entire air tree are the J6B, J8A, J11, T 2, B3C, J20, J26, and J26 David. All of those are rank 1 vehicles aside from the J20 which is rank 2, the J26 which is rank 3, and the J26 David which is rank 3 and an event premium. That’s a very small amount of copy-paste and the tree has true gems like the J22s, J21s, Pyörremyrsky, T18B (57), A21RB, SK60B, Saab J35XS, AJ37, and JAS39A. It’s a fantastic tree.
However, there’s an issue. Sweden is where the consistently unique options stop. Sure, Yugoslavia has quite a few unique planes and tanks, but being more unique than Israel isn’t the bar. Even Sweden already has issues. It’s helicopter tree has nowhere left to go aside from a supposedly tested Eurocopter Tiger of which no images exist, and its bluewater fleet tree has nothing above 6.0. Sweden was the last minor nation worth adding.
Then there’s the issue of Israel. Israel is a disaster of a tree that should never have been added. That is not a political statement, but rather, it is a statement about the quality of the tree and its effect on the game’s health. Nearly no one plays Israel and it’s fully understandable why. It’s an all-but-entirely copy-paste tree that doesn’t have any uniqueness until the Gal Batash and the Merkavas. It also has very little room left for expansion. In air it can go much further, but in ground it only has the Sabras, a few more Merkavas, the Pereh, Namer, Eitan, and HVSD/ADAMS. As for helicopters, the limit is already reached. All that could be added is the AH-64Ai, which is yet another Apache, an SA 342L, the AH-60 which will just be an MH-60L DAP with Spikes, the Mi-24V “Mission 24”, and the gross, disgusting monster that is the Ka-50-2. As for its naval tree, its coastal fleet is actually pretty good, but its bluewater fleet doesn’t exist outside of 3 rank 1 destroyers. Israel is emblematic of all of the problems that new minor nations can have.
But subtrees like South Africa and Hungary fix all of these copy-paste issues, and while Finland’s subtree is entirely copy-paste, it’s to a nearly entirely unique tree that needed to fill holes in lineups, so it’s still valuable. Subtrees allow you to add all the unique vehicles while leaving out the copy-paste ones (unless there’s a good reason to add the copy-paste like there is with Finland).
New minor nation trees are bad. But since we already know that at least one more is coming, let’s make 2024 the last year we ever see with a new full minor nation tree. Keep all of the unique things to subtrees.