War Thunder is pay to win

That is my point. In general, we don’t spend money if we don’t gain something.

Aside, bushes are “free” in the WB store atm. Not sure if I invest in one or rather pick a “free” talisman instead.

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Crew skills.

Refer to this post.

36 hours in a rank 3 aircraft, played exclusively in ASB and no other plane played, no other crew slot used. Also getting max reward, surviving full 15 minutes and landing each time.

36 hours if you play perfectly.

36 hours is what it takes for your aircraft to go from blacking out doing a realistic high-G dive at ~500 km/h and pull out into absurd insantiy where you can dive at 720 km/h, yank the stick back COMPLETELY and fly in circles for 7 seconds with only blacking out at the very end, sustaining 11G that slowly decays to 8 G the whole time.

Only now did you reach level 10 for crew levels to qualify for expert, so now acing is 31 hours on top.

Then add another 36 hours to get keen vision/awareness to maximum - a neccessity even in ASB because planes STOP RENDERING depending on crew skill. This overlaps with the 31 hours for ace “thankfully.”

For over 67 hours of PERFECT GAMEPLAY, you need to play at a significant handicap compared to your peers who either played for over 67 hours already (perfect gameplay) or just went and bought the crew slot to maximum skills.

Again: 67 hours assumes getting full 15 minute survival + landing and earning at least 86% of the 92% maximum reward.

While there’s stupid premium vehicles that need their BR looked at, they’re at least “if you use a unit, it handles the same for everyone with the same control settings and circumstance.” Crew skills make one Bf109 capable of pullling 6G turns indefinitely, while the other passes out after some 3 seconds pulling 5G.

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So my way of crew point spread is like this
For planes:

  • G- Tolerance and Stamina
  • Keen vision and awareness
  • everyting else

For tanks:

  • Keen vision and awareness
  • Leadership and driving and targeting
  • everything else

I still dont think even with buying out crew points in SIM its all about SKILL.

You don’t think being able to pull off UFO-grade maneuvers while your opponent in a better turning plane cannot match you is an advantage?

Diving at 600 km/h with an Xp-50 and blacking out pulling out of the dive while he's already vertical again

If I was in my experted crew slot, I’d have finished the maneuver and stayed on their tail.

it is but only for people like you who are aware of it. Its not that evryone who plays SIM for first time or for a month knows about all thiose manuvers and tiny detailes… I still think in SIM skill is number one then everything else.
So like me for example I can buy plane and buy crew to max and even aced it in minute with GE…but Im 100% sure you would dominate me without crew upgrade so bad I would probably rage quit

I had an epiphany how to test for sustained G (a spiral descent while having WTRTI run and record G forces sustained because red text doesn’t appear for this).

Unfortunately, Windows Game bar doesnt record WTRTI overlay, so I only got graph separate from the video:

Still, quite telling:

ExpertCrew


Noob crew


Video demonstration:

TL:DW

Expert crew can begin a ~5.5 G turn at 5 km altitude and reach sea level without passing out (at least 35 seconds)
Noob crew passes out after 21 seconds of the same.

Caveats:
I cannot perfectly replicate the exact same maneuver. I used WTRTI display to keep the maneuver over 5.4 Gs. At times, as you can see, I exceed 5.5 but never reached 6.0G for either aircraft.

The “Noob” crew had a moment where G forces dipped under 5G and it seems I was just barely under 5.5 G there.

I also forgot to force WTRTI to use the same steps for both, but the graphs should still be more than telling.

Now for spiked/insane G that knocks out both crews:

Much easier as the red text appears with “custom difficulty” set to display such warnings.

Both are begun at 670 km/h and sustain at least 8G until passing out. Again, not perfect replica as I was afraid of stalling the plane from just full-sending “elevator up.”

I get it again 10 out of 10 times you will beat me its not that everything is in doing Gs, thers aiming, manuvers, speed of plane, awarnes of you, knowing map positions… commmon you cant say “Max your crew” and you better…

Fully agree - from 2023:

If i assume 10 minutes as average match length we talk about 1.200 - 1.500 minutes (with boosters) in Air RB to get the 710 k RP. That’s a little bit faster (~ 25 hours) but i had already a level 75 crew.

If you have the choice, passion and you want to get a quick 1 vs 1 advantage: Buying crew skills is the easiest way to get the upper hand in rather rare 1 vs 1s.

If you want to save the money I always recommend to use a good low tier aircraft (which is a reliable and stable SL / RP source) to build up crew skills before you get above 3.0.

Even if it takes time - it is way more frustrating to get constantly clapped due to missing crew skills with a linear progress than taking a sidestep and use a low tier bomber to build up crew points (at the right place) in order to use full potential of an aircraft.

Example:

I earned the event Bv 155 (as first German plane) - and managed to lose 20 planes in the first 20 matches. Mainly because i was unable to adopt my play style - so either i blacked out and got killed or i blacked out and exceeded the very low rip speed. The 20 matches allowed me to research the Ju 88 A-1 and i flew ~ 150 mission to build up crew points. As a result i lost just 30 Bv 155s in the next 150 matches.

Have a good one!

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While we all have different oppinions on crew skill, I just add an advice here:

Use air events to max out crews and ace planes in the process. This past event, I have maxed out a swedish air crew with the (now ace) Ju88.
I have been following my own advice for years and now have hardly any non-max air crew in 8 of my nations. (For Israel, I decided that I will ignore the lone B-17 for maxing purposes, for China I also decided to ignore gunners on all but one crew until ground is maxed.)

Is this on a gut feeling or did you crunch numbers? On a gut feeling, I do leadership late, because it adds a small percentage at a high price. For bringing up leadership later, you could bring up all traits on a lower level instead, which may be far more than what leadership gives you. Worded differently, you are only interested in raising dividend if you have stock.

I watched some YT videos on how to spread points most efficiently, thats it.

When I started to play tanks, I did it in a mix of maxed out and green tank crews. I performed equally poor in all of them. Today, I perform still poor in all maxed out tank crews. I am not convinced that acing the vehicles will change that. ;-)

I agree I still think only sesional/players that play couple of years can somehow benifit with maxed crew if they know map really good. I still think in Ground battles knowing map is all you need to know and also weak spots

Laughs in Turm 3, 2S38, T80UD, J7D, RDF/LT (still bad but at least better than the HSTV-L)

All of these things have been under BR’d for up to years, these one’s are particularly bad because they don’t have any tech tree counterparts and are just blatantly broken. This has been a theme for a very long time and there’s been others like the IS6 in the past that were just like these are currently. These are just inarguably P2W vehicles that you need to pay real money to obtain.

Sure, I can win fights even with my noob crews.

However, you cannot deny the fact that my noob crew blacked out after 21 seconds of turning with a virtual enemy, while my expert crew maintained conciousness until the ground told me to stop (at least 35 seconds, likely could last longer if I had infinite altitude to keep trading for speed to maintain 5.5G turn)

This has come up for me **numerous times**.

Once, I had a 1vs1 THAT I WON against a bf109K4 in my P-51-D-5 using the “noob crew slot” (since I already had F4U-4/4B taking up my high level slots for that BR bracket). We started the exact maneuver in the video - diving from 4 km altitude and turning hard to try and shake me. I’m pulling lead, we’re about the same speed as I’m neither closing nor falling behind and suddenly - I’m flying straight towards the ground while he pulled a vertical. Luckily, there was still 1.5km to go so I recovered and managed to predict where he was to resume the chase. If I was in my experted crew slot, I’d have probably got the shot. 50 seconds later I managed to get the killing shot.

My BF109K4 done far more extreme maneuvers than I did, too - being on the defensive and dodging gunfire while I was just riding his tail.

Another time, I posted video - I’m doing a vertical fight with a XP-50. XP-50 dives, I dive with him. He rolls and pulls up. I roll and pull up. I pass out before I finish and lose track of him from blacking out and fly straight after leveling out. As you can see from my earlier testing - this maneuver would have had no effect on me if I was using my maxed crew slots rather than the noob slot as a consequence of "I’m gonna learn Bf109F4 to the level of F4U-4!

Another time, I’m in an I-185 (completely untrained crew. Only lobby I felt like playing in terms of “has more than 6 players both sides” and “has decent ping” and “is on a map I like” was only joinable by soviets. So soviet time. I got into a turnfight with a Bf109 and… passed out turning in a flat circle. As you can see, the expert crew wouldn’t pass out even if doing 5.5G for 35 seconds.

Most recently, I decided to try learning the spitfires because “i’m ready.” Noob crew again because I used to only main 'murica and that’s it. Well, I end up in a sustained rate fight against some bf109 and turn with him and start gaining position and then screen blacks out and I fly straight for some 2-3 seconds. You’d think a spitfire would win a turn rate contest with a bf109, right?

Big problem is, I want to avoid the stigma of “single-nation meta plane only main” and made it kind of my goal to try and fly a fighter/interceptor from every big WW2 player (Britain, USA, Italy, Japan, Germany, USSR, maybe french? Their domestic designs are kinda early war-ish tho) and do it enough that I become familiar enough with them all to be able to play confidently against them.

I’m not even vying for big epic shiny jets. I just wanna “be a well-rounded WW2 pilot and eliminate bias/reliance on potentially OP planes.” Crew skills though have been constantly making it way harder than it should be since I know these maneuvers are very much possible AND effective… in my american planes with maxed crew.

Hey do you know how GJN is acquired? People still have to buy it, they’re just paying for an event vehicle and someone else gets their money. Its still P2W. Also you’d be better off spending the time grinding events (especially in lower tiers) actually working a job and just paying for the premiums.

Again, people still need to spend money to get these things, having a marketplace just makes it so someone is paying for anothers purchases. It’s still P2W

I am not going to argue about these vehicles being p2w as I simply don’t know. But you don’t need to pay real money for them. I could simple exchange my event trophy for it. I have done that many times.

But then you would pay to win. ;-)

Yes and selling your event vehicle still means someone paid for that vehicle, why are people acting like GJN is being printed and handed out for free. People have to BUY it still. These premiums can only be obtained by someone one way or another spending money on the game. This isnt a hard concept to understand Gaijin is still making money off this VIA people buying GJN.

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They’re still P2W vehicles, someone still has to spend money on it. Just because you sell an item for GJN doesn’t mean that the vehicle isn’t P2W.