WAR THUNDER - THIS GAME IS PAY TO WIN

[Antiriad]

The first thing any player should realise is that this game is pay to win. Don't let anyone else say otherwise, forget what the reviews say, this is a pay to win game. The interface and game mechanics do a very clever job at hiding this and trying to confuse you, but after 114 hours of game time, I now have come firmly to the conclusion this is a pay to win game. Those sneaky folks at Gaijin will not advertise this.

What proof of this is there? Well the easiest example is to say that the lower level tanks are pretty accessible but soon you realise this is only to make sure that the premium players have a steady flow of cannon fodder. Even after you upgrade your tank to a higher level, you are simply put in with other tanks that have paid upgrades and no matter how well you play unless you pay (or do literally hours and hours of grinding) you will find yourself with a slower tank, less gunnery and more visibility compared to other players. Visibility matters in war thunder because premium players can get camouflage and non premium cannot. But is it WAY worse than that - camouflaged players are actually graphically INVISIBLE. That's right. INVISIBLE, not just harder to see, but the game actually makes the tank DISAPPEAR from the non premium screen. Not matter what resolution your monitor, no matter how hard you squint into the distance, you will not see a premium player before they can see you and voila you are zapped first and die.

this is just one example,; there are loads of others. For example, every tank upgrade essentially gives you a slower, less powerful tank until you upgrade it. And upgrading it requires, guess what, more currency, i.e. cash, unless you go for the long hours of grinding options. Your slow new tank will be put against the fast, upgraded premium players and there is no chance you will win. Unless you pay for something, then you will be doomed to be blasted and cannon fodder for others, maybe achieving a mid rank score in a battle at best, but never ever being able to come out on top.

Why is my opponents tank faster than mine? Because they paid and you didnt.
Why is my opponents tank got a more powerful gun than mine. Because they paid and you didnt.
Why is my opponent LITERALLY INVISIBLE and I'm not. Because they paid and you didnt.
etc.
This applies to crew as well by the way, another nice little infinite money pit you can put your cash into to improve your teams ability.

So payment is needed to win. But is it also needed to buy and play with the vehicles on display. Improving your battle rank is a linear progression, but lateral vehicles exploration across the countries and vehicle types also costs money (both real and in-game currency). Its like a giant toy shop - all the toys are there, but to play with them all means you have to buy them all.

So bear that in mind before dipping into this game. If you want the 'free to play' experience, it will be many, many hours (hundreds) before your crews and tanks are good enough to compete even at the lower tiers. Without paying, I estimate probably thousands of hours will be needed of grinding to have some capability to win at the higher tiers.

At least know what you are getting into. I did my own calculation and estimate that to unlock a battle rank 11 vehicles with fully trained crew and all modifications would cost somewhere between £300-400 Euros, or the alternative would be probably something like 10,000 hours of playtime. The only 'free to play experience' is probably at battle rank 1, which is the lowest level using early WWII tanks that are pretty shonky, but a good blast I suppose (having now played 114 hours of it anyways).

So don't be deceived. It's pay to win. End of. Some fun to be had along the way though.

[Shillelagh]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Antiriad:

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Washell:

If it takes, say, 5 years to get to the same point as someone who paid for the shortcuts, it may technically be pay to progress. But 5 years down the road they'll have added bigger and stronger things to keep the paying crowd happy and most importantly, spending. Then you need another 5 years to catch up to their current state. And so on, and so on.

This means you'll never catch up, and the only way to get into a place where you can win, is to pay. At best, you can catch up for "free" by devoting almost every waking hour to the game.

yep exactly - and that's the whole point. Go and grind but oop! guess what, we changed the goalposts. Stopped playing clash of clans for exactly the same reason.

Trying to explain that directly on the War Thunder game forum got me banned from there. They don't like people talking about this in public it seems.

Every level up you get, means you have an unmodified tank which means you need to grind away as cannon fodder until you get the mods to make your tank comptetive. Engine, transmission, the cannon movement speed, turning speed. They call it a lack of 'skill' but is not. Its a like a race between a honda civic versus a ferrari.

there is also this thing about invisibility - newbies don't realise their enemies are actually quite literally invisible to them because of the levelling up of the crew. Literally doesn't render the opponent until you get close, by which time you are already shot. Camouflage you can't get unless you pay.

So its pay to win. Gaijin should be honest about that.

It was debunked that crew skill visibility changes whether or not a tank renders. It does not. Visibility skill doesn't even do anything in realistic

[Shillelagh]

Also, just give playing high tier with late/midwar tanks a shot. Oh my lord is it a blast. They're kind of small, so you can hide places players won't check (played low tier Italy with 10.0 tanks and low tier Japan with 7.0 tanks) and hit the relatively thin side armor of more modern vehicles. Really fun. Playing high tier vehicles isn't very fun because every mistake is so expensive.

[Antiriad]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Shillelagh:

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Antiriad:

yep exactly - and that's the whole point. Go and grind but oop! guess what, we changed the goalposts. Stopped playing clash of clans for exactly the same reason.

Trying to explain that directly on the War Thunder game forum got me banned from there. They don't like people talking about this in public it seems.

Every level up you get, means you have an unmodified tank which means you need to grind away as cannon fodder until you get the mods to make your tank comptetive. Engine, transmission, the cannon movement speed, turning speed. They call it a lack of 'skill' but is not. Its a like a race between a honda civic versus a ferrari.

there is also this thing about invisibility - newbies don't realise their enemies are actually quite literally invisible to them because of the levelling up of the crew. Literally doesn't render the opponent until you get close, by which time you are already shot. Camouflage you can't get unless you pay.

So its pay to win. Gaijin should be honest about that.

It was debunked that crew skill visibility changes whether or not a tank renders. It does not. Visibility skill doesn't even do anything in realistic

where was it debunked? Please show me. I only go with the evidence I can witness. tank rendering is a problem until you up the keen vision skill to 3 or more. then it gets better. Since I did that i never had a problem with it. before then as a newbie... it was very annoying indeed.

[Shillelagh]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Antiriad:

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Shillelagh:

It was debunked that crew skill visibility changes whether or not a tank renders. It does not. Visibility skill doesn't even do anything in realistic

where was it debunked? Please show me. I only go with the evidence I can witness. tank rendering is a problem until you up the keen vision skill to 3 or more. then it gets better. Since I did that i never had a problem with it. before then as a newbie... it was very annoying indeed.

I'm on my phone, Google it or wait a bit I guess.
I've got 0 visibility or awareness skills on all my crew (i play realistic, so those stats don't matter) and rarely get rendering issues. It's a bug, just like every other.

[Antiriad]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Shillelagh:

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Antiriad:

where was it debunked? Please show me. I only go with the evidence I can witness. tank rendering is a problem until you up the keen vision skill to 3 or more. then it gets better. Since I did that i never had a problem with it. before then as a newbie... it was very annoying indeed.

I'm on my phone, Google it or wait a bit I guess.
I've got 0 visibility or awareness skills on all my crew (i play realistic, so those stats don't matter) and rarely get rendering issues. It's a bug, just like every other.

Everybody says its a bug but nobody can prove it. (shrugs) . Sorry. I don't buy it. I also play Ground realistic BTW.

[Shillelagh]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Antiriad:

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Shillelagh:

I'm on my phone, Google it or wait a bit I guess.
I've got 0 visibility or awareness skills on all my crew (i play realistic, so those stats don't matter) and rarely get rendering issues. It's a bug, just like every other.

Everybody says its a bug but nobody can prove it. (shrugs) . Sorry. I don't buy it. I also play Ground realistic BTW.

Can you prove that it *isn't* a bug?

[Xunzul]

I trust u Antiriad, lots of time ago, Gaijin make public the match making code, there's even a balance to make teams who must lost and team who must win. After seeing players decreasing by reading it, they choose to hide it forever and let people forget about it. (I talk about more than 10 years ago)

I stop playing that game for that reason and many others, as when there aren't all those upgrades, same tanks with same guns doing different perforation statistics, for the reason of the matchmaking i talked about. Same thing but worse happening on world of tanks where gaijin copy the same meachanics of camouflage on warthunder to let people spend more money, and world of warship idem. It's all casinò games and the pray is the free player who try to grind to win.

Legalized cheating on rigged games. (...and the facts saying, the players who want to cheat are in great number more than those who wont to cheat). Genuine players are going to die all soon, nobody protect us, the economic machine will eat us all.

[Antiriad]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Xunzul:

I trust u Antiriad, lots of time ago, Gaijin make public the match making code, there's even a balance to make teams who must lost and team who must win. After seeing players decreasing by reading it, they choose to hide it forever and let people forget about it. (I talk about more than 10 years ago)

I stop playing that game for that reason and many others, as when there aren't all those upgrades, same tanks with same guns doing different perforation statistics, for the reason of the matchmaking i talked about. Same thing but worse happening on world of tanks where gaijin copy the same meachanics of camouflage on warthunder to let people spend more money, and world of warship idem. It's all casinò games and the pray is the free player who try to grind to win.

Legalized cheating on rigged games. (...and the facts saying, the players who want to cheat are in great number more than those who wont to cheat). Genuine players are going to die all soon, nobody protect us, the economic machine will eat us all.

this is very interesting and since I am new to the game I did not know this history but suspected as much.

[InnerPhoenix]

its pay to win and some cheat, nothing new, next.

[Xunzul]

Yes but the gamedevs must write on the game description it's a pay2win and rigged, they're fraud, for casinò games taxes must be paid, if they don't write it and let people thinks it's not a pay2win there's double fraud. That meaning there are illegal stuff on steam.

Casinò games are pay2win, normal games are pay2play. "Free2play" is a scam advertisment to fraud with taxes in these rigged games.

[daylatus]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Antiriad:

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από TheFunkly:

Sounds like a skill issue. The game is definitely pay to progress but not pay to win. Even then if you are dedicated you can play this game completely free.

basically, you can play for free but you will continually lose, or go round and around in a karelia map loop nightmare. You will never, ever top the leaderboard unless you pay. end of.

Look man you only have 100 hours you need to come talk about this game being "Pay to win" when you have over 500 hours on the game. I have a friend that has top tier America and Top tier Germany and he plays the game completely free without any premium and he is 10x better than me. The first 3 weeks that I played with him he got 5 nukes so it comes to show that Warthunder is pay to progress not pay to win because buying a premium does not give you an advantage over anyone except for faster vehicle unlock.

[Donnie]

When he realizes he can buy bushes for free... I'm guesin you're talkin about bushes cause camo doesn't even do anything. Skill issue

[ErickaUnlimited]

Don't necro old threads.

Locked.