Currently in Ground, nations are restricted to one team and has to face other nations. In air it is more flexible but still has cases where all of the planes in a nation are grouped together on one team. But to come back to Ground, here are several points I want to talk about.
Player Count
Currently there are nations that are played at a much larger volume than other nations. Obviously we know of the big three as USA, Germany, and Russia. As in a recent stream, BVVD said they did not want 0.7 br games as to reduce queue times. However as we saw for the past few months queue times have increased especially for Russia with large amounts of players in that nation. However there is an even bigger problem with player count that connects to “meta” nations
"Meta" Nations
Currently all nations are not balanced throughout all the BRs. Each nation has a br where it is the “Meta” and therefore has a large amount of players in that br playing for the wins and kills. I will take just one example which is Russia’s 12.7-13.0 lineup. In Feburary of 2026, the T-80 BVM was played 1.78 million times compared to Leopard 2A7V at 870,000 and M1A2 Sep V2 at 682,000. But tank games aren’t the problem here. If we take a look at top tier helicopters, the Mi28MN was played more times than the Z-10ME, AH64E, and Tiger UHT all combined together. This means that there’s more chance for Russia’s teams to spawn a top tier heli in a game. And this applies to CAS but I can’t rely on stats as CAS could be used in air battles.
Variety
Now BVVD also said in a stream that they reject 0.7 br games because they want to make sure each game has a variety of vehicles players can face. However with mixed nation matchmaking, then one player can theoretically face every single vehicle in that 1.0 br range. This would prevent boredom from facing the same type of vehicles over and over again and prevent inbalance among nation specific vehicles.
Sim Battles
I understand that players would want specific nation matchmaking for a historical feel and we can leave simulator battles as restricted nation matchmaking. Realistic battles don’t have a historical feel because we have cases where Russia and Germany are on the same teams and copy paste vehicles. Plus realistic battles are more focused on having arcade features compared to simulator battles. And lastly this would increase the player count of simulator battles as it has a reason to exist to stimulate historical battles rather than just restricting POV and speed.
Copy Paste
We already have many cases where vehicles from a nation are copy pasted to another nation. For example Germany got T-72 from East germany and China got T-34 and IS from Russia. We already lost the restriction of specific nation vehicles and moving to mixed-nation matchmaking shouldn’t cause any more problems.
If mixed nation matchmaking was introduced to the game, then there would be no problem with balancing as players from all nations can be put on both teams so whatever the “meta” is will spawn on both sides and counter each other. And this would help with queue times as nations with large player counts won’t have to wait for smaller nations to queue up.
These are just a few reasons I could think of but would be happy to talk about below.
Honestly, i kind of want it to be more strict on it.
With nation v nation, you know there is a certain playstyle you have to work around.
With fully mixed mm, it all becomes sort of the same. We get that already with the many vehicles that are copied in many nations which makes it kind of bland.
This makes me wonder if mixed mm might actually make balance worse.
If a tank is very strong and fights other tanks, it will get really good stats and move up. If it now fights a lot of itself, it becomes a more balanced fight. That will push its stats down a bit and make it less likely to go up in br.
I think a big thing holding sim back is its mm list. I like being able to put whatever i want in a lineup and going into a match. With sim, i have to go check the list and hope the tank i want to play is allowed.
I miss when sim had the regular mm.
The sim list needs to be revised. Vehickes of similar era and no copy paste. I should not have to worry about italian hellcats when playing axis sim and sinilar.
Yeah, it gets annoying sometimes. Sadly, wouldnt help a lot of players. I remember getting teamkilled by a t34-85 in my is1. (He said he thought i was a german tank)…
Well wouldn’t it cause players to use multiple playstyles rather than just sticking to one playstyle?
The problem is that Gaijin constantly needs to play a game of cat and mouse moving br up and down when there’s really no one right number when we use a system of 0.3 and 0.4 br differences.
I think Sim should purely replicate nation vs nation and remove all copy paste vehicles to prevent confusion.
Ground RB should be a step up from arcade with what we have like no self aiming crosshair, reduced mobility, and no free cas. Realistic and Simulator are too similar as one of the reasons why simulator is played less is because the nation vs nation fight is already in realistic. Simulator right now is just for players who want realistic to be harder. Simulator should be more popular than having 10 players waiting in a queue. And fixing just the lineups won’t fix simulator’s play count
That’s a different issue entirely. I once almost teamkilled a hellcat I was squaded up in voice.
2 vehickes that look identical should not be on both sides. If it takes me 5 seconds to try and identify a hellcat as fried /enemy I will die. Simple as.
They are quite similar but you cannot really adapt a multiple crew vehicke to a game like WT in a much better way.
The issue of sim player count is just that gaijin has been neglecting the mode for literally years at this point.
Something has to be done to increase the player count then. Many people play this game to have nation specific vehicles. Why is it that realistic is the most popular when it should be players go from arcade, to realistic, then reaching the final mode of simulator. It should be like arcade is where you learn the basics, realistic is where you learn how to aim and deal with more “realistic” mobility, and simulator is where players can take that skill into fighting historical battles with actual realistic features. Realistic matches have no realistic feel with third person POV, teammate marking and no friendly fire, and barrel sights.
True this could happen, but Players will complain more about vehicles that are too op as they can’t abuse the meta vehicles and not face them. Gaijin will listen more and balance it
It’s the same situation as heli PvE. The mode is shit, ergo nobody plays it, ergo gaijin does not improve it since nobody plays it, ergo the mode is shit.
Because that’s not how it’s meant to work? People play the game to have fun. And different people find different things fun. Realistic has the perfect mix of realism and arcadiness to be fun for a lot of people. And looking at aim it’s still really arcadey with one person controlling the whole tank.
If you want the most realistic experience of historic battles go play squad, squad44 (post scriptum still in our hearts) or hell let loose. There you can experience historical style battles with several people inside one tank and actual infantry running around which you have to be wary of lest they blow a Panzershreck sized hole in your ass.
War thunder’s trying to fit all the military audience in their game, hence why we have arcade, realistic, sim, heli, air, and even the coming infantry mode. If they neglect sim mode then they’re shooting themselves in the foot. Right now players are complaining about certain nations having advantageous vehicles at certain brs. You can’t balance that in nation vs nation in realistic when military doctrine and ideology aren’t considered and all nations make military vehicles for different purposes. Realistic should be focused on balancing since players play it for the quick fun action. Having a leg up in realistic should be based on skill alone. In simulator mode, that’s where specific nations can shine and balance isn’t a factor anymore as limited POV and realistic features limit the amount of unbalance that is being abused in realistic right now.
Realistic is already skill based enough. And it’s called realistic. What you are suggesting with mixxed mm is either
A) clusterfuck
B)civil war mode
Tanks usually in realistic scenarios don’t fight copies of themselves.
About gaijin shooting themselves in the foot. It’s gaijin, that’s what they do and they sure as hell are good at it.
I completely disagree. It would be an reason for me to stop playing this game after 10years.
All the individual nations would then be pointless. You might as well just create one large tech tree. And it takes away the realism of a conflict you want to “re-enact” for yourself and have fun, which is one of my top criteria for playing a game that doesn’t require three years of study and still offers realism.
The fact meta nations like USA and Germany don’t do well against non-meta nations because of player disparity is a real issue.
Also Germany’s T-72M1 is either its own or copy-paste of Italy’s. Either or, whichever came first. Neither are copy-paste of a Soviet T-72 because at the time, the Soviet T-72 was an ancient model.
However, with mixed matches we’d finally not have skilled players tipping the scales on which sides win as much as we do currently.