Hundreds of hours put into this game, and what do I have to show for it? Highest tech tree vehicle is 9.0, haven’t even finished WW2 stuff. I’ll try to come up with reasons to play this game
Historical Accuracy: what a joke. Modern vehicles vs. WW2 vehicles is the kind of historical accuracy this game offers. The game does offer fairly realistic models and gameplay, more than other competitors that I know of, but they change historical stuff to balance the game too much. The maps may be based on historical locations, but then you get tanks designed to fight on flat ground going to maps full of hills and vice versa, and many maps only allow for 1 type of gameplay. In this game prototypes that may not even have been completely built get an equal amount of ability to be used as ones massed produced in the thousands, on a realistic battlefield that would never be the case. There are many other realism issues, but some are excusable for gameplay purposes.
To experience military vehicles: Also a joke. You start out with ancient pieces of tech that no one has heard of or cares about, and if you want to experience modern military vehicles, it will literally take years. Thousands of vehicles, the vast majority of which are locked behind literally impossible amounts of research. Playing the game doesn’t give you any meaningful amounts of progress towards most vehicles. No reason a single tech tree should take years. It’s all arbitrary too, they could make the grind way shorter, but they won’t because of greed. Some vehicles have been altered to balance the game, giving you a false experience. Many unique vehicles people want are locked behind pay walls of ridiculous prices, $70 for a single tank is insane, and it’s pure profit for them.
For fun: this game simply isn’t fun. Some reasons why:
a. The objectives (or rather, objective) are boring, since they can’t seem to find a more creative objective than capturing zones. Players want to battle with their vehicles, not go to a zone and sit there. There are plenty of ideas out there for different objectives that they refuse to implement.
b. Game is not balanced: so many impossible uptiers where no matter how hard you try, the superior tech of the enemy makes it all useless. The logical move in cases of uptiers is to quit and try again, since you can’t contribute meaningfully anyway. When the best move in a game is to not play the game, there’s a problem. The modification system makes you pay for what you’ve already bought, and often unmodified tanks are much worse than the spaded version, even to the point of becoming unplayable. The game thinks allowing lvl 100 bullies with more hours in game than in real life to fight people who just installed is fair and balanced, no skill based match making at all. Premiums sell off of being unique or overpowered, but they can overlook that imbalance as long as players pay. AIR planes in GROUND battles is also perfectly balanced apparently, yeah your 7.7mm roof mg is enough to defend against the bomber flying at over 1km altitude. But don’t worry, you will still have to pay the repairs for deaths not your fault.
c. Broken game mechanics: there will always be invisible enemies, ghost shells, shells bouncing at impossible angles, people shooting from behind cover, impossible shots, lying protection analysis, lying pen indicator, lying lead indicator and broken detection mechanics in arcade. I can’t recall the last match where there was not at least one of these issues present. For example, an 88 flak killed my jumbo through the angled upper front plate (not mg port), protection analysis conveniently had it as a non pen, or my Soviet 122mm shell ghosting twice, and then non penning the side of a VK somehow. When the reload is over 20s, these mistakes of the game become especially noticeable and make the game unplayable.
d. Teams: Yeah full squads of lvl 100s in bushed up premiums vs. lvl 10 teams sounds perfectly balanced and fun. Sometimes, your team is more of a burden than a help, even with teammates getting you killed. The only teams conceivable to wt are 16 player teams, no variation at all.
e. Suffering in this game is more memorable than happiness: every single game I load into, I am reminded of why I want to quit. The bad games are much more memorable than the good ones, because the bad games are usually more than the good ones. For a good game to happen, the game needs to consistently implement its mechanics at a bare minimum, which rules out 90% of matches already. You are punished for doing bad with repair costs, but for doing good you will still most likely have to pay those same repair costs.
e. Inconsistency: Players want to have a game that follows its own rules consistently, but that is too much to ask. One can play their favorite vehicles in an attempt to stick to something they enjoy, but the amount of inconsistency in this game will always find a way to ruin the fun, there is simply no guaranteed way to have fun in this game.
Playing with friends: valid, but applicable to any other game too.
This game has no purpose, no matter how hard you try, there will always be something to beat you down and make you suffer. One can only conclude Nihilism or Absurdism from this game. Should I quit?
You have to play the game on your own terms no matter how much Gaijin tries to force you to play on theirs. That means diminishing your expectations (and input of money and time) to the level of satisfaction (or lack thereof) the game provides.
TLDR: Go touch grass and come back when you feel like it.
You don’t need to go for the latest and greatest stuff, I quite literally never heard of the B7A2 before the Homare 23 prototype was announced and after unlocking it, both variants are my favourite prop planes to play ( Considering the Sakeen, and early/mid war Spitfires and Zeros used to be my favourites, I thought it a high bar to achieve).
You getting frustrated with the game? Don’t force yourself to stomach it. Take a break, switch to a fun line up, try something new, play customs, log off and do something else.
(There’s nothing I can say about historical accuracy unless you found a group of players that like to re-creat stuff).
Over all, if you don’t enjoy it, take a step back for a bit. Maybe if you looked for a different goal or took frequent breaks, you could perhaps find the game fun.
If nothing can make you keep playing, uninstall. Don’t let gajin make your life miserable. Move on and enjoy something else. Perhaps you might comeback after a while like I did. Or you might never look back like several others. Regardless of what you plan with doing with this game, just know that there are people you can talk to in and out of the game and that YOU can decide whether or not the game stays your device, not gajin.
cool story. ig dont play then?? lol Its a game. What purpose do you want it to serve lol. If it’s not fun for you by all means don’t play it. Not sure why a whole validation post is needed
The only reason I havent given up yet is a group of friends i sometimes play with and the fact that there isnt another game that really has the level of depth.
But it is annoying how little effort the devs seem to put into fixing the widely discussed issues
I would have to agree with your points it is a horrible gaming experience and I do believe it is done intentionally. I struggle to think that people are so incompetent or care so little about the work they produce that they would end up with a game so broken, unbalanced and buggy. It has to be that they are doing exactly what they are told to do and the end result is this steaming pile.
There’s always going to be frustration with PVP games. My bigger issue is the arcadefication. Trying to appeal to the lowest common nominator and newcomers to this game just to squeeze an extra buck. Hell they give you free currency if you get your newcomer friends to buy something. That is just. Yeah.
I’ve banned factory because it’s mere existence pisses me off even more now when they announced the map retextures because there was no actual work to improve the god awful mapping situation. Waste of work and time to “remake” them. The novelty of them looking nice wore off pretty fast when they play like crap.
No new modes. No communication. Excuses and word salads. Nothing.
A friend got me into this game. In hindsight he was kind of joking about “it being painful” but I’ve outright said to others that this game is bad and to NOT play it, because of sunk cost fallacy and awful mechanics.
I’ve rated negative and just can’t rcommend it unless they start fixing the issues people are being very vocal about for years.
That is why I would love to see skill based MM so if I suck I will get matched with guys on my level of skill not gonan get rekt by top clan tryhards that dont leave their home ;)
y’know, I took years off, stopped playing before supersonics, before the french tech tree was even a thing, came back recently.
Game is much better than I remember (the players… not so much), believe me it could be much worse.
2013-2015 was so much worse, you had clowns like KLAN or ASTRO full stacking using meta vehicles and farming lobbies and flaming people in chat, thankfully the game is much larger so these idiots are filtered out but back then you played a certain BR at certain hours and you had to face them and their torrent of edge and vitriol.
1- I love the historically accurate vehicles.
I love the fact I can use WW2 equipment against inferior more modern equipment cause it goes to show that age doesn’t dictate capabilities.
This also has no impact on realism, as history and realism are two entirely separate concepts.
2- I love learning about vehicles, and I love their designs and playing my favorites across the ages.
Especially prototypes and laid down ships that sadly never saw service.
3- I like that War Thunder has Battlefield game modes.
While I am waiting for more PVE content, the Battlefield game mode formula is great and engaging.
Rounds bounce off of extreme angles is nice, and reminds me that I and others need to aim better.
Ghost shells server-side hasn’t been a thing, the only “ghost shells” left are packet loss related, which if you’re on wireless Internet there’s a higher chance of packet loss.
Superior technology is at higher BRs in over 90% of cases.
In the <10% of cases those enemies can still be overwelmed by teamwork, and their technological advantage is usually at most 0.3 or 0.7 BRs lower than they should be.
Of course said vehicles should have corrected BRs regardless of this fact.
You should play the way Gaijin intends you to: Selfish teamwork. Prioritize your survival so you’re a better player to your team and can position yourself in maps; play the vehicles you like and don’t focus on the grind too much.
Gaijin literally wants you to play on your on volition, they don’t want you to skip vehicles and go for the shiniest.
If this was a game to skip dozens of vehicles, the grind wouldn’t be ~100 hours per tech tree with a premium account and decent play.
Iirc, isn’t reload altered for balance reasons? I know on obvious cases like the Strumtiger and Churchill Petard but can’t remember if it extends to normal tanks.
If that was what they wanted the game wouldn’t be free to play to begin with.
Repair costs wouldn’t be covered under premium account.
More decoration slots wouldn’t be locked behind premium account.
The game would only have subscription, and the subscription would give you everything at once.
The incentive structures exist for you to play tech tree vehicles of every rank.
It’s why ranks exist to begin with, it’s why reward penalties exist if you go too high or too low with the ranks, it’s why you have spading bonuses.
It’s all to incentivize you to play each rank.
Of course premium vehicles exist, of course premium account exists.
However, they don’t let you inherently bypass the grind. They are still locked to their BRs + 1.
They only add a doubling of base RP [+33% if you have a premium account as well cause it’s not multiplicative].