You made some valid points but if i may use your 5 year example i see it different. I talk here about Air RB and especially prop BRs.
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What i see is that you have way more vehicle options to play, but the game play regarding game objectives in itself is basically the same, the only major change happened in May 2020 when gaijin rendered bombers useless by rolling out respawning bases.
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The game play suffers heavily from c+p spamming of certain models like P-51s or 109s which killed together with adding totally irrelevant nations like Sweden or Israel any immersion factor within the game. The fact that most WW 2 props in the Chinese tree were available only after WW 2 fits perfect.
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The PvP interactions saw various changes by nerfing or buffing certain nations either direct via weapon “adjustments” and BR changes or indirect with nation allocations and adding countless prototypes. Watch some 5 year old DEFYN vids of USSR aircraft and compare the power of 20 mm ShVaks…
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So whilst the game play and immersion went south gaijin created newer maps without the passion they showed like on Norway, Stalingrad or Operation Iskra. The newer maps are clearly optimized to accelerate engagement and limit options for tactical/strategic game play substantially.
So i don’t see any improvement for me regarding the game.
What changed significantly is the average player skill and the importance of individual game impact. So if you are not a dedicated fighter player your chances to win or lose are reduced to a random event.
16 vs 16, clouds, ground targets in straight lines, premium spam (Wyvern & XP-50) and imho (not often mentioned) the MM decides the majority of matches just by the set-up.
5 years ago turnarounds 1 vs 3 or 4 were mostly hard earned wins in 1 hour matches - these days they happen quite often, even when experienced players are involved.
I won yesterday 1 vs 6 without any efforts, 3 guys crashed, 2 other guys flew into my guns and the last enemy in a 4.0 Yak-3 did basically everything wrong, despite having ~700:~200 kills in it.
So from me a clear no, the game got worse.
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Steam growth in 2024 was basically zero, WT’s worst year on that platform since 2021.
Yes, there are other market segments (consoles, direct-use-of-client), but they’ve been around about as long so it’s likely curves are similar unless someone can point at a specific reason why they wouldn’t be. (The obvious depressing factor that could have pushed people off Steam faster than they came on this year was likely the CIS offshoring starting in July, but note it had already been a flat curve for several months prior to that given the lack of any April event boost.)
That doesn’t mean that the game is doing badly, just people should recognize that it basically hit a plateau in early 2024 on at least one primary platform after two full years of strong growth, and is still holding that position now. That can be because there’s just a finite limit to the number of players this kind of game is going to appeal to as is. If that’s the case, and there’s no competition, it can stay at that plateau for quite a while. It’s still a remarkable industry accomplishment for a 12 year old game to get a second lease on life the way this one has. It was really very niche until the covid year of 2020 doubled player numbers (again, in this one segment only for certain), and then they doubled again in 2022:
Spoiler
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The OG Project Cars and iRacing are.
iRacing focuses more on anti-cheat than fluid ergonomic experience, but ultimately they’re simulating the same things.
It does not matter what YOU consider competition, it matters what Gaijin Entertainment considers competition, and they see DCS as pressure whether you acknowledge it or not.
I think it really depends on individual perspectives and what each player prefers in the game. From my point of view, the game has undergone some good changes. For example, not too long ago, the repair costs in Simulator were so excessively high that it was literally impossible to make a profit with SL.
Then there was added BR rotation in Air Simulator, which I think is another great feature. Recently added shared kills are also a fantastic addition. There have been tons of new mechanics and vehicles, especially at tiers VI and VII, which personally interest me the most. At these tiers in ASB, I’ve experienced some of the most epic battles.
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From what I have read WOT killed itself with a few greedy and ill informed decisions which led to a stampede away from it’s player base.I feel this game is doing the the same.
I love to see people like this. People that get that War Thunder is not about getting to top-tier and staying there. It’s about playing vehicles and line-ups from eras that interest you. That’s why all the issues at top-tier don’t even bother me, because I’ll simply play vehicles from another period of interest. There are new players and experienced players at all BRs of the game, because people get this. I personally can’t stand the FOX-3 gameplay of top-tier, it just doesn’t interest me. Same with the meta vehicle spam of top-tier ground, I’d rather lower BRs were there are more chances to see weird, quirky, non-meta fun vehicles.
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I said happier not happy, playerbase will never be satisfied no matter what gajin trys, thats just how it is.
What im asking is for irl performance be implemented to the game, for example, chali 2’s are so much better irl than in wt, and thats because there are so many errors with them in wt. And even if that was fixed, the leopards will still be better.
There will always be better vehicles, but making a vehicle worse even though if they were equal to there irl performance, they still wouldn’t be broken, confuses me.
I confess i dont know…i like WW2 tanks, and even in those i am not an expert (but i read a lot).
BUT…i see topics asking for Chali to be improved…but also for M1, Leopard, Russian, etc…
I am not saying you are wrong…i dont know…i am pretty sure that if chali was improved as you suggest someone would complain that it was too strong, unreal or unbalanced and something else (opposing tanks or chali BR) had to be changed to compensate.
I personally dont agree with everything in WW2 tanks (far from it), but i gave up on trying to understand what the playerbase wants. More often than not (not saying it is your case), players that claim to be the voice of the majority really just want some vehicle they like/hate to be improved/nerfed.
In the end of the day…nobody is 100% sure on the real stats and best BR for each vehicle…hell…even IRL and in lots of real battles, actual military experts made huge mistakes on the relative merits of their weapons…
MY POINT. There is no “universal” playerbase…not even a solid majority on most issues…just a lot of different opinions…
Cease. Begone. Your location has been reported to the Strv 103 mafia, prepare to get deleted by cheese wedge spam.
One thing I’ve noticed is prices on the market place for vehicles coming down pretty quickly. People are not willing to spend as much money now.
You are fully aware that i talked about WW 2 immersion.
i mean the Book “Great battles of Swedish armed forces in WW 2” is even thinner than “Victories of Italian armed forces in WW 2”…
Nevertheless my condolences for having exorbitant prices for alcoholic beverages!
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I’ve always made the comment that the seller makes the market, so if they’re lowering thier prices it’s not necessarily a sign that the market is dropping, it can just be that those who want to sell are lowering thier prices because they need to sell them.
If it was just a few items sure… but it’s the whole market for items lol.
It’d only take a few collectors to make the prices all drop. If they’re selling their set, then they would likely try sell all sets.
It’s the purchase price you should be looking at even and the rate of sale of those in the past 6-12 months (Which should be even 24 to recognize the cycle that new year brings because it’ll drop at certain times related to season and festive times.)
We’ve just had a sale and new coupons/Vehicles will be hitting the market soon. Some vehicles on market currently usually dip around those times as people want GJN Coin to buy new stuff.
Finland, Denmark, and Norway do exist, and I recommend that you look at the casualty figures for the winter war :)
It’d have honestly been better if Sweden was implemented as “Kalmar Union” or simply Baltics/Scandinavia.
Let finland have the WW2 glory, let Sweden have the modern MBT and aircraft glory.
Eh, there are still some really cool WW2-adjacent swedish designs like the EH and DT, along with stuff like the Strv 74 and Pvkv M/46.
I do still want a lot more Scandinavian designs though, like native modified finnish designs and norwegian/danish stuff.
Friend, I understand you a little, I’ve been playing WT for a very long time, and to make you understand I’m attaching a photo that shows you what I used the first time to install war thunder. Sometimes I stopped for periods, because like you I saw all the rottenness within the project, I saw how Gaijin obviously being a company put profit before fun for the community, if the 2 things coincided then they made money from it both, otherwise gaijin must always make money first, because it is a company and this is a product, pay to progress, if you want to do it faster, otherwise you grind and in years of grinding you will make it, obviously there are people above all the new generations who they don’t care about propeller planes or WW2 tanks, they want modern vehicles, and to link me back to the previous sentence, gaijin exploits this to make money (because they are a company and this is a product as I was saying, for us it is a game, for them it’s an end to a means) and people who want the modern means have a way to get there faster. I agree with you that in this way you lose all that preparatory part of the energy combat that occurs with propeller-driven aircraft, or all that part of knowing where to shoot at each tank because each tank was different as with the WWII tanks, learning to understand the gun elevation, the distance, the projectile to use and the best point, using tactics efficiently because you had tanks that weren’t that fast anyway, I understand your frustration, but I also understand that war thunder it’s a broad game, and as such you have to find your oasis of happiness, comfort zone, where you like to play and feel comfortable playing, if you have friends to do it with it’s even better, but believe me don’t waste a second of your life to think of changing things by shouting in the forum, because they won’t listen to you anyway, and you will inevitably only give bread to the white knights who will immediately rush to say that WT is a perfect game and that it’s only you who has no skill. WT is not perfect, you will never be, but it has its positive sides, and comfort zones for anyone, it’s up to you to understand what this area is and make the most of it, and if the game dies one day then so be it.
Peace and love from an old gamer
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