I am not sure if your general approach is not a little bit too much to ask - even if i share your views about missing tutorials or rather rudimentary attempts to create an illusion of demanding game play for the mode Air RB which is the core of this discussion.
Game rules are part of the registration process - and as written somewhere else the game mode Air RB looks exactly like the majority want it to be - Arcade+ with better rewards and a single spawn. Gaijin proved that the meet the expectations of this majority, numbers don’t lie.
The idea to spoon-feed game basics is from my pov flawed - at least if you look at external providers of tutorials. The overwhelming majority of vids are topics like “Best way to grind” or “Best premium vehicle for grinding”. Actual vids of how to use aircraft (tactics / strategy) are rather rare.
This means also that there is a rather small demand for the aircraft tutorials - as otherwise this demand would be satisfied with corresponding tutorials. That you find a lot of them for ground vehicles shows also the preferences, when aircraft are for most players just a tool to be used in Ground RB.
Coming back to teamwork: From my pov the Ground RB players have tools like “help with repairs” which are at least a small incentive. The rewards in Air RB are tied to shoot down an enemy after he damaged a friendly. Pure deterrence or distraction by luring enemies away from inferior friendlies.
That’s why i support the idea of team work in Air RB at prop BRs, but i am also aware of that changing mindsets is almost impossible without strong incentives.
Have they? covid numbers + numbers after starting ad campaings make “counting playernumbers” reeeeeeally difficult
I mean, thats true, but i think thats because of lack of interesst.
But what i think ure saying it totally right, many many people and players focus only on whats best, whats the next op terminator… i mean, they havent been so popular when they came out because they where bad…
But how? To have proper teamwork you firstly need to have the people for it.
Like in WoW, theres people that want to socialize and play purely pvp, theres people that want the opposite and only play pve, then theres people that play pve in a guild, some play only raids, some only dungeons, some only arena, some only quests and so on.
Its the same situation that we have currently in WT, these days we have people that want 100 different thinks from the game. You neven gonna make ONE single ARB mode to perfectly fit them all.
As of right now, i would support that the current ARB is smt the average player can life with and have some fun in it. Theres stuff for everyone. U want to afk base bomb? u can. U want pvp fighter vs fighter action, u can. U want escord bombers? u can. U want ground pound stuff with il-10? u can.
Only issue is that its not harmonising anymore when it comes to the “late” game of a match, that could still use some dev love.
I tend to believe that a few years back it was different, only a much more narrow type of player was playing the game and that was mainly team pvp action.
Since ads and corona the world has changed in every game, now gaming is much more common, not only hardcore pvp players like to play team pvp games these days. You can see this change of players in basically every game.
I’m not a big gamedev or something, but when I made features that I found intuitive enough for a player that could just click on things to realise what they do - I then started to watch people play and ask them their feedback about these things.
The main problem was a lack of knowledge about how exactly these features work. Some assumed their own behaviour, some just stopped using that feature whatsoever, some tried and in some aspects succeeded, in others they were wrong.
Then I had to make an in-game “tutorial-like” explanation with, mostly, diegetic narrative. I just realised that devs should actually talk with players and show them how to do stuff and the rules of the game/gamemode, it can be not with literal wall of text, but with something authentic and in-universe.
For example, strike aircrafts and their things. How to describe to them that if they attack ground targets, they will have more rewards?
Make other targets a bit less eye-sticking for them and preferred targets more eye-sticking.
Make an objective special to them that in-universely describes that they are the attacker aircraft that were sent to do an attacker job, save the princess, something something.
Make a counter for ground units that is SPECIFIC to attacker aircraft players to show them that their actions of ground attack are counted and valuable, while other actions would not provide a change to said counter.
Instead of literally making slightly better rewards and assuming that players will notice. No, they won’t notice the slight change in rewards shown after the battle in an excel-like table when you hover over specific texts.
This is not an hardcore/pure team pvp game anymore, this is a common mainstream game these days. Its not what i personally want from it, but that is what the mainstream does to a game.
And then Gaijin makes a Heli PvE “capture the point” mission that is notoriously bad about explaining what players should do. You have two parts of said mission - capture the point and return to the base.
Only curious minds could connect these two missions that just appear randomly one after another. Players just capture the point and assume that they finished the mission, while in reality, they did not. And they also just locked that mission for everyone else because they do not understand that THEY, who actually captured the point, now should have to return to base to finish the mission. Because the only explanation is two texts that are not connected in any way.
Instead, Gaijin could just change the mission’s description. Instead of “capture the point” they could say “Transport troops to the base: Land on target point” and “Transport troops to the base: Return to any base” or something. They could also write a nickname into the “return to base” part, to directly tell the player that its them who should return to the base to finish the mission.
But instead I stumbled upon people who actively argued that I am wrong and the return to base part is not connected to capture the point part and its just a separate mission or something, lol.
I never have captured anythink in heli pve, isnt it just shooting FF at enemys? :D
But sure, tutorials and stuff are bad. Always have been. With the new wiki gathering infomation is even harder now, interesst is also low so no yt channel is really doing it aswell.
Its just smt the most dont need/care, as they play the mainstream modes instead of smt like a pve heli mode.
And tutorials for grb excist, and making one for every “feature” that can be used ingame would be a task of the devil, as more new system come into the game then you can create tutorials for it. (also it would need like 15h of tutorial)
And I am not even talking about in-universe description of missions that would do that better than just plain text of:
“Mission 1: Capture the point”
“Mission 2: Destroy the targets”
And so on. Like its not a gamemode, but a sketch of a gamemode that is pitched to some head devs and these objectives descriptions are just placeholders, lol.
Why do we capture a point, why do we return to base after that, what is an explanation to these activities, is it really that hard to make just normal in-universe objective descriptions?
Instead of capture the point - transport troops, evacuate troops, transport supplies, its definitely a transport mission that lacks any authenticity, its just bold “capture the point” with a big random helipad in a random location with big “A” above it. So diegetic…
Well, for some helicopters, capture the point mission is the only way to grind in that mode.
Especially before you unlock normal weapons for said helicopters or, idk, napalm to then bomb random bases that appear here and there…
You see, it all just placeholders, you bomb randomly appearing targets without any description, with vague and bold placeholder objectives description and then you have to assume the logic of a mission, that in nuclear escalation convoys are spawned on warehouses with some logic behind that, that in ARB, ground units get you more reward than BIG RED TARGET-like circles that look way more “valuable” and “eye-sticking” than small dots of pillboxes and aa.
For 15 years its all was just randomly appearing placeholder targets. And it still is. And the only difference is in Nuclear Escalation, where they now tried SOME LOGIC behind ground targets. They made like, a sketch of said logic and called it a day, it seems… And how they described said logic to players? They did not. They just described some of it in forum posts, thats it.
I now feel that Gaijin just lacks an actual narrative designer or something, lol.
Peoples inability and unwillingness to read the wiki for explanation of game mechanics (aircraft radar and it’s multiple modes and functions for example) is inherently not the fault of the developers.
Expecting to be handheld with explanations and tutorials through every step of learning the game mechanics and vehicles in something like War Thunder (which has tons of different mechanics and vehicles that have differing strengths and weaknesess) is absurd.
But history shows that nowadays people are unwilling or completely incapable of learning the most simple things, thus we have Zeroes at absurdly high BRs. People turnfight against them in everything and lose. And now if you fly a Zero and fight against someone in a P-51 for example, and the P-51 pilot has even the tiniest amount of knowledge of both planes, you cannot win alone.
Things weren’t always like that. People learned by themselves, quite quickly, that doing X thing against Y enemy is gonna result in loss, and adjusted their playstyle. Now it’s just “I do this same thing over and over again and i keep losing. It is clearly the games fault and not mine”
Right about 1 thing: Things weren’t like this; it was worse. People became experts to the point that they stopped playing.
That’s the issue the game is dealing with: Ads are focusing strictly on Modern.
So everyone is rushing to it, and when they go back to lower battle ranks, they quit.
Players definitely should not actively search for information to play the game, lmao, that would be the worst design.
Imagine a microwave that has an assortment of random plain buttons with no markings. And the manufacturer said to you, that there is a manual you have to read to understand how to use a microwave.
Expecting for a game to describe what you should do in its gamemodes is absurd??
“Kids these days have it easy” type of boomerslop meme or something. The fact that it was normal 20 years ago to just throw players into a match and expect them to find out things by trying is not normal and user-friendly. You should at least describe what players should and shouldn’t do by using narrative design.
No but have but there are things that need to be studied in order to understand how they work and how to use them in the game, such as radars, IRCCM, Fox-3, PRH and other things
Comparing microwaves buttons to something as complex as War Thunders game mechanics which has insane amount functions you can assign keys to.
But sure let’s go with your example. The game already has instructions and tutorials on how to maneuver vehicles and shoot different types of armament, and which buttons correlate to what function - The Basics
Same as a microwave has markings on which button does what - The Basics
But to take apart the microwave to access something more complex, you would need to read the instructions on how to do so. Or you have already learned and mastered how to do so, so you don’t need to.