I know this will have been discussed many times over, but the size of the maps on this game, (including, bizarrely, on Sim Ground) is simply getting to the point where it’s making me play a lot less often than I would have.
Every map is either a ‘Call of Duty’ urban set up, which is totally historically inaccurate, or wide open fields where most vehicles and certainly all vehicles once we’re in to the Cold War era, can destroy each other from spawn to spawn. Once you’re in modern vehicles it gets even worse.
Maps which do offer some degree of cover invariably end with every player having their own personal ‘rat runs’ where they repeat the same tactic over and over again and the same routes, because well and truly there are genuinely only maybe six or seven paths a player can take.
I have played this game on and off since the very beginning and I held out hope for a long while that the World War Mode would produce some sort of enduring confrontation with huge maps and dynamic campaigns. Obviously I was mistaken. In fact, they appear to be going more in the other direction now with large parts of the map being locked away to force even closer encounters, making flanking impossible and half the vehicles they’ve created for the game virtually pointless.
If I sound jaded, it’s because I am. I just find it incredibly frustrating that a developer has this much of a playerbase and has modelled so many vehicles and weapon systems and yet even “simulator” mode is stuck with heavy tank brawl gameplay. Warthunder could be so much more - even if it was only for the simulator modes, but I guess they know that already.
Maybe in the minority of the player base but I do honestly think that making maps much larger would solve a great deal of the issues people have with gameplay. Spawn camping would be virtually impossible if each side of the map was expanded by 25% with spawns put behind an out of bounds area for enemy, with spawns spread out across a much wider area to make it difficult for CAS to know exactly where SPAA might spawn.
Having much larger maps would mean all those weird and wonderful vehicles that they’ve put in the game would have a purpose. Vehicles that were literally designed to flank, would be able to do so. Vehicles that were literally designed to be ambush guns (Archer for instance) would have a purpose.