First of all, greetings, this is the topic that I’ve made on the forums, so please bear with me as I convey my train of thought.
The game is entering it’s 14th year this autumn, along the years there have been ups and downs and there are more than 3500 vehicles that are playable and still countless more ranging from slightly differing variants of the ones that exist within the game to completely unique additions that shall surely grace us in the future, which is all very mind boggling to think about.
The following has been evoked by top tier air getting ever closer to the current peak of technology that we have in the real world and that, really, there are relatively few vehicles left to add in terms of top tier air’s vertical expansion (that being, additions that will warrant simultaneous additions of ,top dogs" and thus increasing the maximum battle rating), which, also given the effort that is being put into modeling them inspires the thought about where that effort may go into when there’s no vertical expansion left to be had (within the realm of reasonable speculations and features that would be meaningful to model)…
By that I believe the implications will be that of massive horizontal growth, by which I mean not only vehicle additions that have been pushed aside due to the apparent priority that the top tier has had before it’s pinnacle or near-pinnacle has been reached (such is ground and it’s own plateau of top tier additions before vertical development was focused on the air tree).
I have a few things that I hope that the developers will consider and add with the arrival of this plateau of technology and features, but there will be a few inevitable things that I’ll mention for the sake of them being mentioned as examples (I’m sure there are topics for most of these examples, I couldn’t find them for the life of me):
- Further Meteorological condition development and, perhaps even dynamic weather
The game already looks beautiful, especially with ray tracing, but I cannot help but be put off by the lack of lightning but the sounds of thunder, beautiful towering cumulus clouds, but not the violent updrafts that would come with them, or the downdrafts that would be felt if flying under the mature ones and without a lot of the varieties present in the game that you might see in real life. Sandstorms have already been featured in the mad thunder April fools event or fog that creeps over the battlefield after the battle has started, etc etc etc. Perhaps this is held off as affecting visibility is so critical to gameplay.
-More vehicle functionality and features
Not quite a necessity but a fitting cherry on top of everything already implemented in the models of aircraft, here I’m thinking of the ability to honk horns, turn on lights (be it road, landing gear, strobes or hazards) and searchlights on ships, having the ability to set an ILS up to make an IFR landing, PAPI on airfields to judge glideslopes visually, OLS on aircraft carriers, etc.
-Improvement of current game modes, events and addition of new ones
Improvement of air sim and realistic battles for example, or like the planned ,Aerial warfare" format for the world war mode. Perhaps more time can be given to the implementation of the advanced AI we saw in Nuclear thunder in such improvements to give strike fighters and bombers more relevancy, which I suspect is probably the reason for it’s development.
-More frequent implementations of new nations and possibly new trees
A united Korea tree has been hinted at here and there, I think it may be planned to be implemented after the plateau (Since 5th gens are right around the corner, allegedly) as more efforts can be contributed that way for a quicker implementation of all the unique vehicles that it could come with. Other nations yet to be implemented could also perhaps jump in afterwards or before it due to the reason mentioned above in either configuration (subtree, scattered or nation tree).
To end things off I’d like to ask the person reading this about their thoughts about the future of the game and if they share my thoughts on these examples, my intentions are for this to be food for thought and to spark discussion and maybe the opening of suggestions for these features or popularizing the ones that exist, and thank you for reading.