War Thunder is pay to win

Game Discussion General Discussion
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222

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!

2 Likes
223

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.)

224

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.

225

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

226

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. ;-)

227

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

228

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.

229

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.

230

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.

231

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

232

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. ;-)

233

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.

1 Like
234

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.

235

The game is balanced around the fact that a new player won’t start at rank 3 unless they bought a premium. Unlocking and spading rank 1 and 2 should give you enough crew XP to close the gap for the most important skills. If you chose to skip that grind and also skip straight to sim, well, your crews will obviously reflect that.

236

Let’s look at my china tree because I havn’t touched that one at all.

Let’s pick P-47D23RA as our goal aircraft.

RP to unlock rank 2: we need 6 vehicles and already own 2.
Ki-27 Otsu for 2900 RP (29 skill XP)
CW-21 for 4000 RP (40 skill XP)
I-16 for 2900 RP (29 skill XP)
I-153 m63 for 4000 RP (40 skill XP).

We have gained 138 skill XP unlocking rank 2.

RP to unlock rank 3: We need 6 aircraft
P-66 7900 (79)
p-40 9200 (92)
P-43 5300 (53)
I-16 t10 7900 (79)
i-16 t17 9200 (92)
A29 7900 (79)

474 skill xp.

Finally, we get P-47D23RA for 18K RP (180 crew XP).

Our final is 654 crew XP.

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Adding up (22+64+110+160)x2 for G+stamina, we get 712 crew XP needed to get both G-tolerance and stamina to level 2. This is NOWHERE enough to even take an expert to compensate (only a level 4 crew at best and we need level 10). We can’t even afford to have both level 2 G and stamina.

Spading the P-47 takes 19.9K RP, so 199 crew XP. We go from 654 to 853 - enough to actually get the 712 we needed for level 2 in both G and stamina. To get 2.5, we need 215 more (712+215=920) - NOT enough. We still cannot expert our crew.

We pass out if we exceed 4.8G for 21 seconds (at least at sustained 5.5G without any significant spikes above or below 5.5).

Now, this is less of an issue for the P-47 as it’s not a turn fighter and has bad MER, but do the same for Bf109F4 or A6M3 or MkIX Spitfire - all aircraft with excellent retention known for doing a lot of turning for one reason or another.

Meanwhile my maxed american crew can casually sit at 5.5G without even a hint of greying out and only has to stop due to running out of altitude to maintain the 5.5G consistently (a 5 kilometer spiral)

And we still havn’t improved keen vision and awareness at all so we will see planes phase out of existence while looking at them.

Oh, and as a new player you want rank 3 planes. Rank 2 planes got terrible visibility, lack trim and got questionable gunsights. 3.0+ BR also feels way more popular than 1-3 for finding lobbies.

237

I mentioned using and spading rank 1 and 2 before moving on to rank 3. I have everything spaded at those tiers so I can’t tell you exactly how much crew XP each plane gives, but even the most sparse trees have 15-20 planes to use before moving on to rank 3, big nations have at least double.

Also, consider that most new players will start playing arcade first. Arcade gives more crew XP. Players jumping straight into sim are a minority.

238

Just because it’s a minority does not mean it does not happen.

Yesterday alone I had a game at 2.7-3.7 where I shot this guy down:

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Another guy from the same screenshot:
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Another name i can pick out from that screenshot of a cool moment is…

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Why would these players go straight to ASB?

Their names all include @psn. Controller players. They seem to average around 2-3 hours of AAB, 2-3 hours of ARB. Likely this made them decide “not having mouse to aim with is putting me at a massive disadvantage” and went to play the mode where they’re on even footing.

And as said, rank 1/rank 2 planes are genuinely harder to fly than rank 3 ones due to cockpits, trim and gunsight (i hate telescopic gunsights).

239

I’m not saying it doesn’t. I’m saying you kinda have to go out your way compared to the average player for it to be a big issue. For example, I had the same problem with the Israel tree, but you’re expected to be a more or less experienced player before you start grinding that one. By that point you probably know you can farm crew experience in AB or Assault before heading into RB/SB.

240

I don’t know why we have to debate the truth a company has to earn money in order to run servers and pay wages?

So if I can - without paying money, just by playing - trade in a good vehicle in exchange for a far less usefull collectors item, this good vehicle isn’t exactly behind a paywall. After all, the other person usually spends his dollar on a non-P2W object that is just rare.

241

They do, but they’re also running a PvP game.

In a PvP game, you expect a unit you obtain to perform the same under the same circumstances used the exact same way by any player. The only difference in outcome should come down to player skill, teamwork and strategy.

It’s OK for there to be a premium roster. Even E-sports games do that (AOE2:DE with its DLC factions). It’s OK for there to be pay-to-progress (for unlocking NEW units to add to your roster) albeit in a reasonable manner (don’t do the thing LoL does where you release a new unit way over-tuned and OP then nerf it down a week or two later - letting those who bought it dominate and abuse it).

Hell, I’d even be cool with there being a pure DLC approach - you need to pay to unlock aircraft above Rank N (one time fee, reasonable) or to unlock more than X nations (you get 3 nations of any order, unlocking the rest costs a one time fee).

But the fact that the same plane can do 5.5G indefinitely while the other passes out after about 21 seconds doing the exact same maneuver is frankly absurd.