There are already ten nations in the game. Adding more nations and vehicles can certainly increase variety, but as the total number of vehicles grows, the likelihood of them being similar or repetitive also increases significantly. We can already see this with Leopard 2s, Abrams tanks, and T-80 variants appearing everywhere.
As a result, the benefit of adding more vehicles is beginning to show diminishing returns. Players naturally enjoy fresh content, and continuously introducing new tanks certainly generates revenue for Gaijin. After all, Gaijin needs to pay its employees, make a profit, and keep the company running.
However, I believe the key to the game’s long-term profitability is finding the right balance. War Thunder cannot continue relying primarily on new vehicles to drive updates and development. It also needs a steady stream of new features, improvements to realism, and genuinely new gameplay experiences.
For example, the Leopard 2’s engine could sound more authentic, water-splash effects could become more realistic, and the overall immersion of operating a tank in combat could continue to improve. Even if a player is driving the same Leopard 2 model two years later, the experience should feel different—more immersive, more convincing, and closer to reality.
That is what players truly need, and I believe it is ultimately the direction that will allow War Thunder to remain successful for many years to come.
It identifies one of War Thunder’s central long-term challenges: new vehicles are easy to monetize, but they do not necessarily improve the core gameplay experience.
The diminishing returns from adding vehicles are becoming increasingly apparent. When a completely new nation or a unique type of armored vehicle was introduced in the past, it brought substantial variety. Today, however, many additions are simply more variants of the Leopard 2, T-80, or Abrams. They may differ statistically, but they do not always provide a genuinely different gameplay experience—especially for veteran players who have already reached top tier in several nations.
Of course, Gaijin cannot stop adding vehicles. New vehicles are easy to promote, give players clear research goals, and generate direct revenue through premium vehicles, pre-order packs, and progression boosts. By comparison, improving engine sounds, terrain physics, environmental effects, and map interaction requires considerable development work but is much harder to monetize directly.
That is why I strongly agree with the idea that driving the same Leopard 2 two years later should feel noticeably different. Meaningful improvements could include more authentic engine, track, and gun sounds; a greater sense of vehicle weight; more realistic effects from mud, sand, snow, and shallow water; better destruction and interaction with buildings, trees, walls, and bridges; more detailed fire-control, thermal-imaging, crew, and active-protection systems; and game modes that offer more meaningful objectives than repeatedly capturing circles.
New vehicles may bring players back to see what has been added, but deeper gameplay, stronger immersion, and a core experience that continues to evolve are what will make them stay.
From the player’s point of view, a lot of the fun comes from chasing something new. But the more vehicles you add, even across different nations, the more overlap becomes unavoidable.
The novelty starts giving less and less back. World of Tanks is a good example of this. They kept adding new tanks and pushing loot boxes, but over time more and more vehicles started feeling similar, with smaller differences between them.
Eventually, a lot of players just started thinking, “What’s the point? This doesn’t feel new anymore.”
At 10 nations, with 3 (3.5 if you count helis) types of vehicles, with a “4th” (infantry) on the way, it’s clear that the devs are struggling to consistently support some trees with a meaningful number of new vehicles every year, like:
Sweden has had two lackluster back to back updates, with an spaa, a jet, and a premium jet between them
France has only gotten a single French plane all year, and in 4 updates it’s only gotten a single Franco-German joint designs.
If game modes are averaging a single unique design every 8 months per nation, and anything else being added is just copy paste, that’s obviously going to be pretty disappointing
The problem isn’t just the number of nations. It’s that the more trees and vehicle types you have to support, the harder it gets to keep every nation feeling fresh.
If a nation only gets one genuinely unique vehicle every several months and the rest is mostly copy-paste, then adding even more trees is just going to spread the content thinner.
At some point, “more vehicles” stops meaning “more variety.”
I’m all for new trees and now that Dual Korea is planned, I’m hoping it gives leeway to more independent trees since there’s not a lot left once coalitions are excluded.
It depends on what the variant is. If it’s identical to an ingame variant or one that’s easily added to the manufacturer nation (say CW-21 for USA) then sure. On the other hand there’s plenty of vehicles that despite being based on a in game vehicle would preform differently.
In the same way a Leo 2A4≠Leo 2A6, stuff like ZSU-23-4≠ZSU-23-4M Donets or T-72M1≠T-72 Scarab.
Also if we keep adding more and more subtrees to existing nations, the less likely domestic vehicles appear and the less options remain for coalition trees.
The more individual TT nations in game means the less content per nation per update.
Unless people expect Gaijin to keep increasing the additions per update this results in less content for the average player who plays a few nations.
Also the countries left in the world who have unique vehicles is approaching 0. Adding more nations so a player can see a flag on the scoreboard seems pretty useless at this point.
However, Gaijin loves to monetize their CTRL + C/V keys so it’s bound to keep happening
If we include December it’s even worse Gripen E was added late with no bug reports and it’s the wrong model with so many errors it should’ve been deleted since it’s supposed to be the Apex of swedish air yet it gets to be added as some last minute slop and not even a model that looked good either given it was clearly done in an hour by some intern.
Not to mention Smin stated Norway wouldn’t go anywhere else yet the US who doesn’t own the Scania trucks gets to have both the G wagon and the trucks despite them using a stationary model? Only after fighting did we get the radar truck removed and yet we still didn’t keep Norway exclusive to Sweden, again why call it a subtree and say the vehicles won’t go anywhere and then the next update you add their new vehicle to another nation.
Should Japan get the US ADATS because they have a stationary trailer mount?
F16A a worse JA37D at a .3 higher BR, literally a worse CAS jet at 12.0 when paired against the Gripen A.
JAS39D, one of the worst 13.7 jets added only second to the two worst F16Cs at 13.7 at that time being the OCU and F16AM Norway
The only Finnish vehicle that could’ve filled the gap between 1.7 and 3.7 was made a premium and it’s one of their unique vehicles.
Next update
Then we got a terrible SPAA that still doesn’t work, a copy and paste Premium which is already mid at 11.0 in air
This update gave us yet another update of pure slop with a worse Draken at the same BR as the premium one in air RB, it’s broken as hell right now with no fixes done yet and it’s also 10.7 in air Sim while the premium one with countermeasures is 10.3 for reference the F4E is 10.7 in Sim, the RB-15F is all sorts of borked and is worse then every other ASHM that’s been added aside from Penguin which is also exclusive to Sweden.
Idk what you mean two updates it’s literally been back to back misery, let’s not forget for 3 updates in a row our vehicles were added two days before dev closed with no time to bug report because Sweden is a last minute nation as per usual.
As.for the post at hand modeling small details is a huge part of the game for some, I’ve given gaijin plenty of flak but occasionally they do give a lot of good measures for some vehicles to give them more character and it’s a shame they don’t do it that often when even small differences make some vehicles feel far more unique, I’d also love for gaijin to focus on adding unique stuff over Copy and paste when they say they want to represent a tree.
I get some nations didn’t do many modifications or changes but adding anything to change them up that’s historical would go a long way imo to getting some people to stop calling all additions copy slop.
Yeah, that’s exactly the problem. A new flag on the tech tree doesn’t automatically mean fresh gameplay if it’s mostly variants, copy-paste tanks, and trucks.
I’m not against adding nations or vehicles. I just think new content should give us something different to do, not only something different to unlock.
Fair point. A vehicle being based on an existing one doesn’t automatically make it copy-paste. A variant with different armor, weapons or mobility can play quite differently.
I also get the concern about stuffing every possible subtree into existing nations. I’d like to see more domestic vehicles too.
My point is more about the overall direction. Even if a new tree has some genuinely interesting vehicles, how much fresh gameplay does it add once players have gone through it? I’d like updates to improve the experience of driving the tanks we already have, alongside adding new ones.
Yeah, I agree. Small details can make a vehicle feel like that vehicle, even when it’s based on something already in the game. Gaijin does get this right sometimes, which makes it more frustrating when other additions feel rushed.
I’d love to see more historically accurate differences in how vehicles look, sound and handle. Give each one a bit more character. That would do more for me than adding another tank that feels almost identical to the one I already have.
Over time, I’d love to see the actual experience of driving it get better — better track sounds, more realistic steering, more detailed controls, little things that make it feel more like a real tank.
Imagine someone stops playing for six months, comes back, takes an old tank out of the garage and thinks, “Wow, this actually feels different now. They’ve improved so many little details.”
To me, that’s the kind of direction that can keep a game alive for years and make it really hard for anything else to replace.