Video Q&A with War Thunder Game Director Viacheslav Bulannikov!

Official News, Development Blogs and Updates
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So, according to him, we “just need” to hide behind a building or something to avoid FnF or having allies in AA destroy them. BUT DOES HE EVEN PLAY HIS OWN GAME?? How do we know when an IR missile is coming our way? At what point do players use AA in the early/mid-game and destroy missiles?

Not banning more maps because, according to him, we can ban up to 32 maps (at worst), and apparently we’re playing with players who have different banned maps than ours? WHAT??? When? Banning 5 maps wouldn’t cost them anything, but no. It would PLEASE the players because apparently they “like” their players, but no, not that.

No bigger maps because “the players” prefer smaller maps. Which player? What BR are these players? Because the top-tier tanks are just terrible. We have tanks that can fire over 3 km, but most battles are at 150-500m. Incredible use of the capabilities of modern vehicles. And I’m not talking about WWII vehicles; it’s possible to fire over 1 km without any problem, but no, the “players”…

PvE/PvP in helicopter battles. The game mode is niche, and nothing is planned to improve it. I don’t know, but letting it die instead of paying attention to it, improving it, and I think, even sure, that it would become less niche and more popular. But I’m not sure, because apparently, improving a niche mode doesn’t make it better, right?

Top-tier premium vehicles are, well, top-tier vehicles, and it’s ridiculous to say they don’t have top-tier combat capabilities because they are clearly copy-pasted from certain tech trees (Clickbait, Type 90, Su-30, Ariete, Challenger 2, F2A, T-80, etc.), and sometimes even better (depending on the br). So yes, they are offering top-tier access to new players and they’re not owning up to it because, I think, but I’m not sure given the state of the game, money.

So the video is basically: we have problems in the game, and instead of fixing them (like a tank-only game mode), we’re going to work around it and pray that it coagulates well.

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61

Yes i saw the whole damn Q&A, I have never seen a group of developers more out of touch with reality, with their own game and with their player base in my entire life.

Its a joke to see half the questions, as others already pointed out, blaming anyone but themselfs.

HAVE YOU you actually watched it? Or answers from other users on this post? They have better points than me.

Take a look a the SQB question for example (13:54), do you think that after playing 2 months, being the nº1 squad and nº1 player of said squad, getting only 1200GE its balanced??? There is a whole ahh post in the forum trying to change the mode for the better, and all they can say is:
“Nah, its good as it is”

But i guess at this point no one is surprised by an answer like that from gaijin

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Wrong, they most important part was the end. Their never going to release the basement guy

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Exactly my thoughts, which players and what players are they talking about? They never asked me or the community about it before, so how could they know better than us? Their “metrics” don’t tell the whole picture.

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I mean theres disagreeing with what was said, and then theres calling out statements such as “player feedback is collected and taken into account”.

Like, cmon lol.

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Yes we need way bigger maps in toptier grb, i think no one actually enjoys small cramped maps at toptier.
I would love to have a grb ec mode

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66

More like ignored and used to vilify the player base

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So, they’re not planning to improve helicopter PvE, but they’re not going to touch the XP cost of helicopter modules.
These devs don’t deserve even 0.50€.

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So according to Viacheslav Bulannikov the game is perfect everything is balanced

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The questions were taken directly from the community and some of the most upvoted and popular examples: https://www.youtube.com/post/UgkxxejXIidTUau70r8vQnlOX70lLHZVfNwW

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So, do you still have plans to balance the game? Currently, some Russian vehicles and the French Rafale have become extremely overpowered, and this has been going on for several months. The win rates in top-tier are now quite frustrating. If this issue isn’t resolved in the next update, it will be a disaster for gameplay. No one would want to play any vehicles other than the overpowered ones.Merely adding new content while leaving existing vehicles overlooked is not a good approach.

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I think they have exaggerated, but it is also easy to understand as some of the explanations for the answers seem to have logical fallacies.

For example, in the discussion of different gameplay modes other than point capture, BVVD says “Players want point capture, that’s what they are playing,” seemingly ignoring that it’s the only option being presented. Of course that’s what players will play if it’s the most common mode. But discounting player feedback asking for more modes because players are currently playing the available modes seems shortsighted at best and disingenuous at worst. BVVD asserts that other modes would be too complex for players to manage, but there are plenty of modes no more complicated than the existing ones that could be visualized.

I understand that developers have a creative vision for the game that will not always align with the players. But this Q&A seems to be more evidence of a antagonistic relationship between the developers and the players, where the developers feel that the most important thing they can do is blame the unpopular decisions they have made on player behavior, instead of exploring new and different ways the game could expand.

I am a player who enjoys the game and I’m grateful for the work of both the developers who make it and of the forum staff who allow us to keep discussing it! But it’s very clear that the development staff need to reassess how they interact with the concept of the game and how to modify that concept as development continues.

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According to the new leak images, Germany will not receive any new additions aside from the phased-array Typhoon. Moreover, I don’t think Gaijin will introduce new helicopters for Germany. This update will focus on phased-array aircraft for the air forces, as well as air defense systems for Japan and Sweden. Gaijin capacity is just that limited.

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Never once have I seen people asking for smaller maps, especially ones where spawn trapping is the norm. Infact there have been countless requests for larger maps and for the spawn trapping issues to be resolved. Does the fact that that question was a very popular one not raise any alarm bells that maybe the players want bigger maps?

And the argument that “players play small maps more this means they want smaller maps” is terrible. People are playing smaller maps because you keep only adding smaller maps and taking away from larger maps to turn them into COD sized TDM matches. It’s essentially like saying “my kid likes eating his vegetable” when all you feed them is broccoli and sprouts while the kid cries at the table.

And the devs have the cheek to ask for players to vote for the for the “Labour of Love” Steam Award.

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I wanna see the source on “democratic voting” in relation to the maps

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Same with the BR spread and player frustration with queue times. I have never seen a player complain about queue times besides maybe with the introduction of night battles. But there have been plenty of players frustrated with up-tiers that put them in a complete disadvantage against an enemy vehicle. The WW2 brackets are riddled with this issue and its not fun in the slightest. They would have had a better argument if a feedback system existed or they tested a mode where the .7 spread was implemented.

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I’m not familiar with the internal development and vision of this project, so I can’t fully understand and therefore disagree with some of his statements, for example, regarding matchmaking filters and waiting times. He mentioned multiple times that matchmaking must be fast and that allowing players to remove more maps from the search could increase queue times. I think it should be up to the players to decide whether they want to wait longer to get what they prefer, rather than getting anything, not enjoying it or leaving and receiving a 5 minute penalty. And if players would get frustrated with waiting then they just reduce their filter restrictions until they are satisfied with queue times.

Personally I mostly play GRB and I prefer single capture point missions because that’s where I have the most fun, battles are often intense and focused around a single objective, unlike triple point missions that dilute teamplay by spreading everyone across the map, or the “capture the enemy point” missions, which are often located near spawns resulting in spawncamping.

I would love to have an option to ban all maps except single point capture (and maybe some triple points arranged in a row). Or at least a toggle that lets me choose which mission types I want to play, instead of accepting whatever random mission is loaded.

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I kinda knew what kind of answer we would get but to be honest gaslighting was not on my radar.

I could write a bunch of paragraphs explaining why about things like map bans, bigger maps (or better yet, map design), heli pve, new PERMANENT game mode, br range etc and etc have to change but its already been said. Have been said for years in fact.

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The answer about amount of players on +1 BR is literally not an answer to the question. As well about map bans. As well as helicopter PvE. The answer about squadron battles is horrible.

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Just going to say this too.

The most appropriate response a Community Manager can give here is to either offer a further explanation of BVVD’s responses (if they have the answer and some of us do understand if you do not), or to assure players they are listening to the comments here and will take them back to either to BVVD or the dev team in general for further clarification or to revisit a stance with new information. A Youtube Comment section to one video is not the same population as your own forum. There might be some overlap sure, but best to not assume they are the same people.

If you don’t like bad assumptions on player takeaways from the video, do not insinuate an equally bad assumption that players didn’t watch it.

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