I don’t “not get” a claim of monkey’s paw, I just don’t really have a reason to take it seriously if no reasonable motivation is provided along with it.
That’s what the person was implying. For events, you could swap out the current ones with some of the old ones. As in they give you an option for it.
But some events bring back old vehicles no matter if it was a twitch drop or not.
That was the implication I was making. Didn’t I say the same though? I am sorry if you misunderstood. English is not my primary language. By the way 15 % of 500GJN is 75GJN (425GJN is left).
Either way is fine by me. I don’t really care for Stale Thunder anymore as I did couple of years ago.
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If you want an older event vehicle then go buy it on the gaijin market. If you are going to cry " I didn’t get the chance to get the BM-13 because I didn’t play the game then" then ask gaijin very politely to make every event vehicle a tech tree vehicles so everyone can get the. So none of them can be special. You also have the problem of not all top tier prizes being equal. So that would never work. Event vehicles are rare and can be sold on the market for a profit.
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What you’re describing is essentially how perverse incentives work. And you’re absolutely correct. I, too, have started hoarding a couple event vehicles for the same reason, even though I find that very distasteful, and would be happy if the system was redesigned.
This is absolutely correct. I’ll make an example.
I only play Germany, and for now at least, I’m not flying yet, though I intend to start learning soon, and I think I’ll dabble in a couple trees eventually. So, when the Japanese plane with the guided bomb was announced, I thought to myself, you know what, I might just try this crafting event this time, because who knows, maybe I’ll start grinding the Japanese tree next year and I’ll actually be happy to have this plane available to me for use in games.
Then I saw how horrible the crafting event was, and decided nope, I’m outta here, sorry. The other vehicles didn’t interest me either since I don’t play naval and I care 0% for top tier. Never did a single thing for this crafting event.
But if this event had given me an opportunity to win the E-100? I would have subjected myself to the shitshow and then some, trust me. And if (they’re not marketplace vehicles I know, but it’s to drive home the point) it had allowed me to earn, say, the Panther II or the Tiger II 105, I might well have no longer been responsible for my own actions… 😂😂
The marketplace system is perfectable. Both for us and Gaijin. There’s just little incentive to tinker with something that “kinda works”, especially when you have no competition, which is the one frustrating recurring theme that plagues this game.
From an epistemic POV, you’d have to reliably separate the performance of the tank from the performance of the players, if you wanted to achieve this.
Note that I’m not saying the outcome in terms of player enjoyment would necessarily be better or worse, that’s a separate topic. Let’s suppose for the sake of the argument that we decide to place vehicle BRs purely “according to performance”, how do you measure it?
You can’t play test it, since there is no way to normalise for such an intangible variable such as “player skill”. You can’t just go by the statcard, because as we know first-hand, how a tank performs in game is something with nuances that go beyond the numbers you read on the card. You could design a much better AI and have it play matches against itself using multiple combinations of tanks, but you still run into a series of issues, such as - serious AI development would be overkill and expensive if you were only going to use it for BR settings. You could use it to make a real single player mode, but that draws players away from the queue, so Gaijin doesn’t want that.
Moreover, how you code the AI in question could well influence the results of the tests, in ways that might not apply to how human players would end up playing.
There are even more issues beyond this. You can’t just test a tank in isolation. You need to see how it would perform in many possible combinations of different nations and vehicles on its team and so on. That is a lot of work you’d be doing “redundantly” because players already do that testing for you, for free. So from a cynical perspective the devs have no incentive to replicate “in a lab” what players are already doing out there.
And finally, even if you can get this done, what does it net you? The only reason why a vehicle is in the game, is for players to enjoy playing it. Otherwise, what’s the point? So even if the AI is “right” and the players are “wrong” you will default back to the players, every time, since they’re the ones keeping you in business.
Please understand, I’m not saying the BR system is perfect, or that Gaijin’s interpretation of statistics are always sound (we don’t even know how exactly they weigh which factors etc). But in conceptual terms, balancing by performance is absolutely correct. The only real alternative would be historical matchmaking, which would require very different game modes and a different game structure we’re unlikely to ever see.
If you want an older event vehicle then go buy it on the gaijin market.
Link please to the market pages for any of the vehicles I listed in the OP: the Ka Chi, the Zrinyi 1, or the Sturmtiger
then ask gaijin very politely to make every event vehicle a tech tree vehicles so everyone can get the. So none of them can be special.
Orrrr I could just ask Gaijin to do this thing I asked them in this thread, which is a lot less extreme, less unfair to the original event participants (since I now also have to grind 1 event per 1 vehicle, just like them), and makes way more sense for Gaijin revenue-wise, since it drives interest in all future events.
Link please to the market pages for any of the vehicles I listed in the OP: the Ka Chi, the Zrinyi 1, or the Sturmtiger.
I cant there aren’t on the market. I guess whoever got those while they were available got something really special that makes their account more valuable.
…(since I now also have to grind 1 event per 1 vehicle, just like them), and makes way more sense for Gaijin revenue-wise, since it drives interest in all future events.
Besides things like the Obj. 279, IS-7, PT-76-57, and other strong vehicles having a price uptick every time gaijin runs loot crates for sl where you can get a rare vehicle coupon It doesn’t actually increase the quantity of sales just the price, so no one is buying. So I’m not buying your idea that it will increase sales. Maybe for stuff like the IS-7 because that thing could only become more affordable. But no one actually spend more than 150gjc of real world money on digital vehicles. And again your idea that you can trade vehicles “1 for 1” just cant work because no vehicle is valued the same. People would go for the most powerful and expensive vehicle on the market place. No one is going to grind for the LOSAT ever again because it is a novelty vehicle.
They arbitrarily got something purely for the accident of having joined sooner. That is not fair or reasonable, that’s the main thing this proposed feature fixes.
Nor did they do anything at all to DESERVE that advantage or perk. They grinded one event, but my proposal (very much intentionally for this very reason) also requires anyone getting them to grind out one full event of the same time to get it, perfectly fairly, same price those people paid.
no one is buying. So I’m not buying your idea that it will increase sales.
That was MY POINT. Read the comment again. I said it drives interest in event participation in the future, not sales on the market.
I agree, there’s almost zero money being made by Gaijin on the market. Most rare vehicles make them about $150 a month total in fee commissions, which is barely enough to stock their break room with coffee.
The real money is in getting butts in seats playing the game and thus indirectly buying premium time, paying for parts/FPE as they go and so on. Having a WAY better motivation to do events (since you get one of your dream vehicles at the end not some random junk) → way more butts in seats → tens or hundreds of thousands in bonus revenue, not $150 in market fees.
Nor did they do anything at all to DESERVE that advantage or perk.
Being more skillful from playing the game so long and dedicating more time to it. Spending more time grinding, however sad that sounds, by it self make you deserve it more because you put in more.
But what are you talking about? Read my first opening post: I said you would have to still grind an entire event to get the vehicle. So no, they DIDN’T spend more time grinding. That was the whole point of my proposal to avoid people being able to make the exact argument you’re trying to make / having any reason to say it was unfair.
Sorry man, but the “first come, first serve” mentality has nothing to do with skill or relations to played hours. WT is no rocket science and long-term players are obviously not the target group of gaijin.
So even as i respect your pov - this is actually not really a valid argument towards the obviously younger player base.
Gaijin gains their income (like all other f2p games) from kids with access to Mum&Dad’s credit cards allowing them to buy in at top tier - and/or combined with micro transactions. Just look at the lobbies.
The main issue with rare event vehicles is that
a) the grind effort was much lower some years ago
b) some stuff is completely broken
c) some players can’t even participate (xbox, ps) in the market place
d) the sole purpose of events is to encourage players to play more
e) if their goal is fulfilled (encourage to play) they should be available for all
I do agree that the loyalty for a long period should have benefits, but after a certain time (3-5 years) those rare vehicles should be available for new players too.
New players requesting access right now are either real passionate and will wait - or they will grow up and get sucked into income taxes, family, job… and might have no time left to play wt.
Exactly. I fully support your idea in the OP (“switching event vehicles”) but imho you should consider some of the concerns of the players into your view on things.
From my perspective i saw some valid points like commission income for gaijin or the unclear real intention of gaijin for keeping some very old event vehicles “unobtainable” for newer players. I also see the long term loyalty of some players as a valid point, so a “3-5 years” waiting period to switch event vehicles would be adequate to honor their long term commitment.
In addition to my last post:
Although i do support your general proposal - from my perspective some of your other statements look (to be polite) highly questionable.
First one:
First of all balancing of a ftp game has nothing to do with fairness. And try to convince a lev 1 player with 2 hours experience in a 1.0 reserve tier aircraft that he has theoretically a 50% win chance vs a lev 100 player with 35.000 player kills at rank I & II - fighting him in his rare event vehicle MBR-2- M 34 (btw also at BR of 1.0). Alone the aced gunners will spray him down before he gets guns on target.
Imho you mixed win ratios with win chances.
The problem with the 50% win rate goal of gaijin is that all statistics based on plain averages simply favors more experienced players as less experienced players are artificially lowering the average ratio.
This effects gets even stronger the more less experienced players are part of the portfolio. So if a certain nation in wt would be loved by masses of rookie players you have either to nerf their opponents or to buff them to achieve your desired goal.
The business model of wt is not aimed to create fair and “balanced” game play, it is just a vehicle to earn money by offering the perfect mix of “fun & frustration”. Premium vehicles are designed to help players to overcome fully intended obstacles (SL % RP income) and/or give them certain advantages in exchange for real money.
I am not sure if this statement was sarcasm or not.
Fact is - the same rules like for the 50% win rate (necessity to buff or nerf) applies for vehicles and are showing the essential flaw of adjusting BRs this way is obvious - very popular vehicles with good performance get dragged lower in their BR than their actual combat effectiveness would justify if the majority of their players are rookies.
Why? Because experienced players are able to use them correctly and are able to use their full potential. That’s why experienced players choose usually vehicles able to have good performance even in full uptiers and are devastating in full downtiers.
Gaijin claims that the current BR spread of 1.0 in R B matches allows the lower tiered vehicle to have a fighting chance vs the vehicle with the 1.0 higher BR.
This does not work when a highly overtiered vehicle meets a highly undertiered vehicle in a full uptier on equal terms. Assuming the same skill level of both players - the undertiered vehicle will always win a 1 vs 1.
That’s why highly passionate (and mostly highly experienced) players try to get some awareness of gaijin in order to achieve a level of game play which favors skill, not pure technical advantages.
Example for prop planes:
The problem is if such an experienced player is flying an undertiered plane and meets an equally skilled player flying a way less popular plane (flown mainly by experts and therefore with artificially increased BR) so an overtiered plane - the pure performance gap between both planes is way too large to be compensated by skill. And this gap gets even bigger if the undertiered plane is fighting the overtiered plane in a full downtier.
So if those pilots meet each other on equal terms (energy states) the better plane performance allows the undertiered plane to nullify the remaining advantages (in case there are actually some left, maybe turn or dive speed) of the overtiered plane and can dictate the fight and win.
This is why guys with the aim to achieve high k/d ratios - so 15-20:1 or more - always (or at least very often if they fly solo and not as a squad) fly similar planes, exactly those which are severely undertiered.
And the main effect for rookies whilst flying an undertiered plane? The plane performance advantage allows them some kills vs equally skilled pilots without being forced to learn. So as soon as they meet a better pilot able to compensate the technical advantage even in a far inferior plane they are helpless and get killed.
So actually this hole thing could be seen as highly counterproductive for rookie pilots. Real life example in wt - uptiering of Re 2005 to 6.0 despite have the performance of a 4.3 - 4.7 plane. Why? Because their main opponents in this BR segment were unable to use their massive performance advantage to kill it due to a lack of experience (on average) and the Re 2005s were flown by very good pilots.
Just look at this forum - if a lot of players with 10-25+ k battles assess that certain vehicles are highly undertiered (or overtiered) they express imho reliable statements and prove that the balancing mechanic might look fine for Gaijin on average, but it is far away from being “perfectly functional”.
And as i have written earlier - some of those rare event vehicles are broken. And a hell of them are low tier planes are used to bully new players. The USSR BR 1.0 MBR-2 flying boat is a perfect example - they are so rare that a player can score K-Ds of 17:1 in it without raising the BR - just check the stats of no 3 of this month kpb list.
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They did it once, sort of, around the time the MP opened.
Think it was the T-34-E event where you could swap it for the German sd thingy (4.7 now), the AEC II, the boarhound, and maybe something else or maybe not the boarhound (one I want in hindsight).
This might not be exactly the same (not ANY event vehicle), but at the time I bought coupons off the market and converted to some rare vehicles above (check the prices now, I paid 10-15! Plus first was from doing the event myself), and all I can say is it never happened again so Gaijin obviously saw it as too advantageous. A bit like why the BP was so easy to profit from in the first one so they shut down how coupons were exchanged and then reduced the prizes (I hate the BP system personally, btw).
I agree, but 50/50 win rate isn’t “fairness”, it’s usually actually directly in contrast to fairness, if anything. A “fair” game would give someone twice as skilled twice as many wins, whereas a 50/50 targeting game will actively handicap them or put them up against similarly good people to drag them back (“unfairly” if anything) to 50/50
all statistics based on plain averages simply favors more experienced players as less experienced players are artificially lowering the average ratio.
There’s no better way to do it. Balancing on vehicles alone would skew things even MORE for MORE people . And there’s no possible solution that doesn’t skew it for anyone. Well there is a “possible” solution: adding ELO on top of BR. But I’m assuming that would make queue times be like 20 minutes, so not feasible even if possible.
it is just a vehicle to earn money by offering the perfect mix of “fun & frustration”.
No game runs on frustration. Just fun, period. Frustrating and fun are basically opposites, and not fun games people simply quit.
I think the word you’re looking for is SLOW. Slow and fun, sure. So you skip grind due to impatience. Not frustration. If you’re frustrated then it’s an error in the game design/business model, not a feature.
I work in the industry myself, specifically freemium games, I’ve literally never once heard a single coworker or executive or anything say anything about seeking frustrating play experience. This is basically a weird War Thunder forum/reddit/whatever-specific fantasy as far as I can tell.
That’s why highly passionate (and mostly highly experienced) players try to get some awareness of gaijin in order to achieve a level of game play which favors skill, not pure technical advantages.
They do it because they want to get a leg up, simple as that. And they’re just wrong, even about their own preferences. If they actually got what they wanted, 90% of them would hate it and quit. This has been tried many times before in game design history, it’s very well established to be a complete dumpster fire when you don’t do any sort of ELO or matchmaker balancing at all and just ignore player skill. That’s why nobody does it these days, including Gaijin, correctly so.
Just look at this forum - if a lot of players with 10-25+ k battles assess that certain vehicles are highly undertiered (or overtiered) they express imho reliable statements and prove that the balancing mechanic might look fine for Gaijin on average, but it is far away from being “perfectly functional”.
To be clear, I’m not saying they’re wrong that the vehicle is at a higher or lower BR than it’s equivalent in another tech tree. I’m sure they’re 100% correct about those statements. The part they’re wrong about is that it would be more fun if it wasn’t like that.
a “3-5 years” waiting period to switch event vehicles would be adequate to honor their long term commitment.
That sounds pretty reasonable to me. Or rather a sliding scale more so based on how old the vehicle is (obviously not the raw amount of time, lol, or you’d never get there, but like “1/2 or 1/3 of the time that it’s been since it was released”?)
commission income for gaijin
I didn’t dismiss that as wrong, it’s just way less money than the alternative. They do obviously make commission income, but you can objectively calculate it yourself. The market shows all sales and we know the commission. So for example, the T-34E sold roughly 60 units in the last month, for about $62 GJN on average, x15% = They made $558 of commission on that.
That’s like a hundredth of one percent of their monthly revenue. And that’s one of the more active ones. Some obscure thing like a boarhound selling for 600 but only 2 times only = $180 in a month.
Maybe overall the entire market makes 2% of their revenue or something, I’d guess
Hmh - the keywords were “perfect mix” and not “fun and frustration”.
So as you work in the gaming industry you are fully aware of the importance of psychology - if you feel better you can replace it with “fun & intended setbacks” - my underlying core message remains the same.
The up- and downtiering mechanism is a perfect example for this.
I don’t understand this whole part.
First: My general understanding of a MM includes the combination of fixed and volatile elements of a player and their positioning against other players.
If i claim that the current BR system needs to consider more than the plain average of game results of vehicles in order to compensate the highly diverse player base as this a average is not reflecting the actual combat power or effectiveness if used by a top player your reply “Balancing on vehicles alone…” makes no sense.
And “adding ELO on top of BR” makes even less sense if you meant to adjust the BR rating with the individual player skill. ELO on top of BR is job of the MM - and is actually in place.
I do agree that intended imbalances are suited to strengthen the overall commitment - as long as those imbalances can be detected and somehow circumvented by experienced players. And also that a pure skill based and fair game play has actually a negative effect on the long term commitment, but the last part is confusing me.
Even after reading it 2 times i am not sure what you want to express with the second part of your statement.
In any case: I have no idea how long you are playing war thunder, but player skill is actually used (to a certain degree) within the MM. But not to increase “fairness”. Especially in the old forum you find a lot of posts in which smart long term players were able to identify patterns with the MM. One of the easiest to detect is that your teams gets “weaker” during ongoing win strikes and the enemy team gets stronger (both on a average) or your positioning in the lobby screen right after spawn.
The problem is: I have no intentions to pay money in order to get a copy of their latest annual report. And i have no clue if the local GAAPs in Hungary requires a detailed P&L statement which would be suited to identify (and therefore quantify) commission income. Even if we consider that the have to use IFRS standards it is unclear if their annual report they have to publish is detailed enough.
As long as you don’t have these data - all you can do is wild guessing. At least the total revenues are known (idk which fiscal year): 121 mln €. So if we would assume your guess would be near the truth, we talk about a hell of money…
As a final word:
Good luck with your proposal.
I recommend to add a poll to your first post whilst considering all the player feedback in this thread. In order to react on some concerns i suggest you might add a question suited to compensate gaijin’s interest to get a compensation for potential losses of fee/commission incomes.
Having in mind that gaijin’s main interest is to keep the players playing the game and to burn earned SLs - maybe an additional SL payment of 5 to 25 mln SLs for a change of vehicles?
I started playing wt too late (around 7 years ago) but as i have everything i need i had no issue with investing 42 mln SLs in loot boxes last round just in order to get my hands on a very rare prop. Ofc without success, but i am sure that other players would consider to invest additional SLs to get hands on their desired rare event vehicle.
With enough positive votes for the whole topic - you know what to do.
As i have said what i wanted to day - have a good time!
Often times people mean on vehicle alone when they say something like you did, by way of “letting each player run free = suited to each player” or something. It doesn’t really make sense, but it’s a commonly said thing anyway.
It sounds like you mean the opposite, balancing around segment of player more narrowly. That is what I meant by “Adding ELO” as in, skilled players face other skilled players at a BR. That does what you want, but would require insanely long queue times.
You could also maybe reduce the queue times by basically saying “If you’re a good player, you get a permanent +0.3 to your BR” and vice versa. People would probably burn down their studio though, lol. And also smurfs would be rampant in either version.
player skill is actually used (to a certain degree) within the MM.
I suspect this as well, but 1) Never seen any proof of it and 2) It just seems to be used to balance out the match, NOT to in any way stop the skilled people from clubbing, so it’s kind of off topic. You still club, they just seem to also put another clubber on the other team, for example. They can’t be manipulating BR, because I would see obvious hard evidence of that if so (facing impossible vehicles, etc)
At least the total revenues are known (idk which fiscal year): 121 mln €. So if we would assume your guess would be near the truth, we talk about a hell of money…
I just lazily googled it and it said 2 million a month, seemed plausible. If it’s 10, then I would have given a smaller % estimate. Anyway yes the market does add up to a meaningful amount overall but “Everyone being like 4x more interested in every single event” would add up to MORE.
maybe an additional SL payment of 5 to 25 mln SLs for a change of vehicles?
Yeah maybe
Simple fact is that, as someone has pointed out. The events are here to get people to play the game. Now how they do this is by giving you special timed rewards that your monkey brain knows you can only get it for free once and then sell it for a profit to buy actually good premiums to grind out the trees. So its more valuable arbitrarily. And you trying to negate that rarity even slightly is unnecessary risk.
I don’t completely agree that events gets new players to to join and spend “their parents credit card”. There are many factors you have to get right before you can get a person to spend money on your game. Are they interested in this type of game? Will they enjoy the gameplay style? Is the grind challenging but rewarding? Are we enticing them to continue well enough?
And with that you have someone that might be the 1 in 10 people that have spent money on the game.
And then you have events that can get the 10% to spend money on completing tasks or backups or whatever. Older players i think are more likely to spend money in a game they invested more time in than lower lvl players that just got rank 3 and are getting dominated by lvl 100 players with 5000 hours in the game. So you are not going to get people to spend more money just because they have the option to grind for an event vehicle that was available in the past. They are already spending money on premium time and top tier premium vehicles and have the skill to grind out the event for free and are probably the same people that already spend money during the events. Gaijin is not going to get that more money by allowing people to get past vehicles. You just create a cesspool of toxicity every time you would run an event like that because everyone would be grinding for the same 2 - 3 vehicles every time. You would make the old players feel less special and the new players outmatched.
I have left this in draft and came back to it continue writing it like 3 time because I just cant be bothered, so ill just say what I have read someone else point out but in my own words.
This game isn’t fair. And it cant be. Because no one that pays likes a fair match.
And you not liking the fact that new players cant get past event vehicles is part of the fun and reason as to why it is so.