War Thunder Changes Roadmap

[Stona_WT]

After your feedback and suggestions, we would like to show you the development roadmap of War Thunder for the next few months.

These are not all the changes and suggestions that we would like to introduce to the game according to your wishes and comments, but, as it seems to us, the main ones. We will not be able to do more in the near future, and most likely, after the implementation of the roadmap, you may have other suggestions, comments, and priorities that may change in general. Therefore, we plan to have another session of collecting feedback in the fall, after the work is completed.

This is a really large roadmap and we probably won’t be able to complete some points in time.

Besides the proposed changes being significant, this is the most essential change to the game’s economy in 9 years. Additionally, it is being rolled-out at a radically expedited pace in light of the current circumstances.

Therefore, please perceive this roadmap as an experimental and exploratory endeavor. In the interest of transparency: Should it turn out that the changes outlined herein, whether in part or in their entirety, cause damage to the economic well-being of War Thunder that poses a risk to the further development of the game, we may decide to modify or roll back some or all of those changes.

On the other hand, some things may be completed before time. In these cases, we won’t wait for the scheduled dates and deploy improvements as soon as they are ready.

Please note that the roadmap points might be subject to change.

Economy Revision - Our Plan in Detail

Changes to Silver Lions mechanics

• Improved the balance of Silver Lions (SL). Increasing the reward multiplier and reducing the cost of repairing vehicles to make all vehicles break even for the average player, including without a Premium account. Update June 2023.
• Calculation of the economic parameters of each vehicle from average indicators instead of vehicle statistics. For all vehicles of the same type and one Battle Rating (BR), the average statistical indicators will be calculated, after which they will be used to calculate rewards and repair costs for each vehicle in accordance with its economic rank (rank and position in the rank). Update June 2023.
• Improvements to Premium accounts, if your total repair cost exceeds your income, you will be compensated after the battle, ensuring that your SL tally for the match remains at zero, unless you have teamkilled. Summer updates 2023.
• Adding free back-ups to newly purchased Premium vehicles. Summer updates 2023.
• Dynamic repair costs reduction. The shorter the lifetime, the cheaper the repair (without changing the max repair cost by the date of feature introduction). Summer updates 2023.
• Capture point reward for vehicles that failed to survive until capture completion. Summer updates 2023.
• Free repair if destroyed by an ally. Summer updates 2023.
• Detailed calculation of the reward in the mission results window, as well as in the private message window after the battle ends. Next Major Update.

Changes to progression and Research points

• Condensing of tech trees by grouping of vehicles and decreasing required Research points (RP) to research vehicles in groups by two times. Summer updates 2023.
• Reduction of research and purchase costs of rank VI-VII aircraft. Summer updates 2023.
• Skill bonuses in RP. Extra reward for a certain number of kills in a session. The required kill number, as well as the bonus value are determined by the game mode and vehicle rank. For example, the approximate values for rank III arcade ground vehicle battles are: 3 kills +15%, 6 kills +30%, 9 kills +50%) . Next Major Update.
• Detailed calculation of the reward in the mission results window, as well as in the private message after the battle ends. Next Major Update.
• Research bonuses for new nations. After obtaining a top vehicle of one nation (such a vehicle will be clearly marked in the research tree), a bonus is added to the research of vehicles of this type in other nations, where the top-tier vehicles have not yet been received. The bonus is given for three battles every day for each nation separately and depends on the rank of the researched vehicle. Approximate values are: rank IV +15%, rank V +25%, rank VI +35%, ranks VII-VIII +50%. Fourth update of the year (October-November 2023).
• Revision of the naval progression. Next Major Update/ Fourth update of the year (October-November 2023).

Other progression updates

• Revision of the use and obtaining of the fire prevention equipment, repair sets for tanks and ships, as well as countermeasures for aircraft. Update June 2023.
  • FPE of ground vehicles will be split into default for single use fire extinguishing, and an improved type, which requires module research and is capable of extinguishing fire twice.
  • FPE of naval vessels will also be split into default and improved. The default one will take longer to put out the fire, with no limit on the number of uses.
  • “Parts” in ground vehicles and “Tool Sets” of naval vessels will also be split into default and improved. Default tools available without modification research will field repair of all modules, not only mobility ones, until partial functionality, similar to Arcade battles repair mechanics.
  • Standard countermeasures will become available immediately to researched aircraft. Options such as “chaff only”, “improved flares”, “mixed”, “flares priority”, will be available by researching the module. Additional options, such as BOL pods or additional chaff pods will remain available by module research.
• Mission points reward for repair and fire extinguishing assists of allies. Summer updates 2023
• Helicopter research progression by playing ground vehicles. A player will be able to select either tank, or helicopter, to channel the research points in ground battles. Summer updates 2023.
• Addition of the limited list of Battle Tasks and some Battle Pass tasks to existing Aviation Simulator battles. Exact approach can be refined later. Next Major Update.
• Battle tasks and Battle Pass tasks available in ground Simulator Battles. Next Major Update.
• Keeping progress of the daily login reward in the PC version by collecting daily rewards in WT Mobile. Next Major Update.

Matchmaking

• Night battles are temporarily disabled with the “La Royale” Major Update. In the future, they can be optionally enabled. Next Major Update.
• Changing the matching settings for high-rank battles in order to collect more complete battles at the cost of a minimal increase in waiting time. “La Royale” Major Update.
• Display of BR ranges in the map filter. Update June 2023.
• Revision of the set of maps available to piston and jet aircraft for more eventful battles, transferring some of the large maps to higher BRs. Update June 2023
• Improving the balance of late Cold War era vehicles, when the homogeneous steel and full-caliber shells to APDS, ATGM, gun stabilizers, etc., by changing the BR of certain vehicles. Summer updates 2023.

Locations and missions

• Strike UAV moved to higher ranks (vehicle BR above 9.7, matching BR above 10.7) to allow players to have SAM systems capable of countering them. “La Royale” Major Update.
• Hydroplane respawn points moved to the map center, allowing them to spawn over the friendly airfield. “La Royale” Major Update.
• Reduction of the effectiveness of AI anti aircraft guns located on fields and convoys in all aircraft modes. “La Royale” Major Update.
• Special winter trees for winter versions of locations. “La Royale” Major Update.
• Fixing issues with bushes when shot-through or after a collision. “La Royale” Major Update.
• Locations “Poland” and “Eastern Europe”: changing the landscape outside the towns in order to get rid of large forests and hills, introduction of fields with small interspersed forest/hills instead. This will get rid of the massive problems of standing in forests where no one is visible, and will lead to more active gameplay. Summer updates 2023.
• Changes to the landscape/design of locations in “El Alamein”, “Aral Sea”, “American Desert”, “Japan”, “Sinai”, “Normandy” based on player feedback: removing places from which one can control most of the map and encouraging fights at closer range. Summer updates 2023.
• Changing the landscape/design of locations “Alaska”, “Seversk”, “Vietnam”, “Maginot Line”, “38th parallel”, “Stalingrad”, “Karelia” based on player feedback. Planned to remove the places from which one can control most of the map. Summer updates 2023.
• Massive revision of asset collision in ground vehicle locations in order to get rid of inconsistencies of visual and physical models. Summer updates 2023.
• Improvement of “Jungles” by reducing the number of positions camouflaged by vegetation, which will improve visibility and reduce the number of shots from ambushes. Next Major Update.

Gameplay

• Refinement of the damage model for small-caliber HEAT rounds. Fragments of the shaped charge jet along the flight axis will be capable of inflicting damage to the crew in the dimensions of the fighting compartment of any tank, if they are not stopped by more massive obstacles. “La Royale” Major Update.
• Improved indication for spawn zone protection. First is a more obvious indication of hits on players protected by the spawn zone, so that the shooter understands why their shots went through the protected vehicles. The second is an indication of players firing at the spawn zone: such shooters will be additionally marked in the game world and on the mini-map, similar to being scouted.Summer updates 2023.
• Finalization of the mechanics of the commander’s sight in tanks. Adding a short delay to hunter-killer mechanics. Summer updates 2023.
• The ability to accept an apology for a teamkill. When accepting an apology, the apologizing player is not awarded penalty points, followed by a possible kick from the session and a ban for this teamkill. Next Major update.
• Destructible 3D decorations, adding the ability to shoot down or destroy (taking into account the settings of damage to allies in the selected game mode). At the same time, we do not plan to add the effect of the decoration on the projectile to simplify the vehicle damage model. Next Major Update.
• Reworking of network logic to solve one of the problems of ghost shells (“disappearing shells”) - the favored killer mechanic (“killer advantage”). In the case of a small difference in time within the player’s ping, limited, for example, by 120 ms, between receiving damage blocking their shot on the server and the player’s own shot, consider that the player managed to shoot. At the moment, the player sees their shot, which did not happen on the server, and believes that their shell has disappeared.Next Major Update.
• Refinement of the tank and landscape collision solver in order to fix situations when a tank that has flipped on its turret top is almost impossible to turn over. “La Royale” Major Update.
• Improved target hit alert in the aircraft battles. For an air target that is considered shot down under current conditions, but still has the ability to hit its offender, or if there are munitions on fire, we are going to add a delay on reporting the frag, possibly blocking the control of the shot aircraft after some time. Next Major Update.

Others

• Making it easier to report hate speech in a chat, adding a separate category of complaints, as well as showing the chat log that is attached to the complaint. Summer updates 2023.

For your convenience, you can also find the above mentioned topics presented in the planned timeline: