There’s too many P2W aspects of War Thunder that cannot be ignored. Using money gives a player a massive advantage in game. The most relevant aspects are as follows, and they all can be bought with GE (Golden Eagles).
Why I made this post
Recently, I have seen a large increase in the amount of premium vehicles in matches. This is not a problem by itself, but it brought my attention to the advantages paying players have in WT. I also had a match in GRB which a player spawned 11 vehicles (having 15 kills). This person was basically unstoppable, and is what you get when you combine a skilled player and a paying player.
Another recent development we have seen is the addition of the first premium platoon pack, the German “Two Fronts Pack”. It is two Tigers and an Ostwind. The vast amount of premium vehicles available in some nations really is stunning.
NO ALTERNATIVE OPTION TO GE
Additional crew slots give the most important advantage in Ground Realistic and Air Arcade battles: the ability to spawn more tanks or aircraft in the battle. The first 5 crew slots are either free or available for SL (Silver Lions). But 5 more are available, and only for GE!!!
The cost:
5th Slot: 200 GE 6th Slot: 500 GE 7th Slot: 800 GE 9th Slot:1200 GE 10th Slot: 1800 GE
(source unreliable, but I can confirm cost for 5th and 6th slot)
Backups are one of the lesser monetized aspects of War Thunder. You can get them in the warbond shop and from daily chests. However, the amount available to a F2P player is limited and needs to be carefully rationed to last. In comparison, players using money can buy them for 60 GE a pop, and spam backups in every battle. This is a huge advantage, especially given that backups allow players to use the most powerful vehicles available twice.
By combining backups with crew slots, a player can spawn up to 20 planes in AAB or 20 tanks/planes in GRB. This is 4x as much compared to use of 5 crew slots and no backups. Of course, there is usually not enough time or SP to spawn the maximum possible, but this still shows the massive difference in potential.
Crew skills are another important factor where GE is important. By purchasing crew skills, player will get ahead much faster than without payment. And a reminder, crew skills affect tens of important parameters of vehicle’s performance!
source: Crew skills - War Thunder Wiki
There are 3 separate segments of crew skills: the individually upgraded skills, expert, and ace. Crew skills are slowly gained through hundreds of hours of play… or bought using GE.
Basic Crew Skills
Reference
Basic crew skills make up 50% of the total crew skill potential.
(1000 GE buys 17,500 points):
Air skills: 33,881 points (23,553 without defensive armament upgrades)
Ground skills: 71,130 points
Naval skills: 50,571 points
These points are hard to earn. 100 RP in AB gives 3 points; 100 RP in RB and SB gives 1 point.
Example
The air and ground trees in WT take about 5 to 10 million RP to research. Heli trees are about 1 to 2 million RP. Naval is about 4 million.
Consider a specific example:
Using values from January 2023 (~2 years ago) for China ground, heli and air (mid-sized tree).
Total RP: 14,529,300 RP (Source: Reddit post)
If you researched the entire tree:
- playing RB/SB only, you would get ~145,000 crew points
- playing half AB and half RB/SB, you would get ~290,000 crew points
- playing AB only, you would get ~435,000 crew points
Consider the second case where you get half the RP from AB and half from RB/SB. Assuming you had 6 crew slots, that would be about 48,000 crew points per slot. Considering the crew training costs shown above for reference, that is still not half enough for full upgrade! I was personally shocked by my calculations and thought I might have made an error, even.
This example shows you how hard it is to fully upgrade the basic crew skills.
Ace Crew
Text
The ace status of a crew is 20% of the total crew skill potential. Despite this, an aced crew is excessively hard to get without paying real money.
For a high tier vehicle, rank VI and up, it costs about 1,000,000 RP or more to gain Ace qualification for free. Even for the average rank IV vehicle, it cost about 500,000 RP. This is extremely excessive. Speaking from personal experience, I have never gotten a free Ace qualification on ANY vehicle.
Or you could just buy Ace qualification, starting at ~2200 GE for top tier vehicles.
Bushes are one of the most complained about aspects of War Thunder, and with good reason. They are very effective at concealing tanks, especially at long ranges.
The only way to get a bush for free is to spend 2,200 warbonds in the warbond shop FOR A RANDOM BUSH. The option to buy a bush only appears once every two battle pass cycles (each battle pass lasts 90 days).
Due to these factors, it is hard to get a good bush from the bush gacha. However, players can also simply spend 500 GE and buy any bush of their choosing. Resultingly, only paying players can access properly concealing bushes.