Genuine question to the "Veterans"

[Jane Shepard]

so... I have heard time and time again that War Thunder isn't fun... and that's true, it;s not fun. These same people hav stated time and time again that you gotta have played for 100+ Hours just to even be decent at the game, that you should be playing every Nation so you can personally know the exact 10% of the tanke that won't Ricochet or Non-Pen...

So I am genuinely asking you guys, where do you find the fun at? I really want to give the game a honest try, I want to enjoy this. But it's no fun when I spawn in, move for 30 seconds and am immediatly one shot from halfway across the map cause someone who's played for 3000+ hours is on BR 2.7 cause he's got nothing else better to do and saw a single pixel of your tank and because he never touched a woman (or man) before knows exactly where to aim to one shot you without you ever even knowing he existed.

I sound mad, that's cause I am. I want to enjoy this, I want to have fun. But I also don't want to have to dedicate hundreds of hours of my life to "learn each tanks weakness".

What makes it fun for you guys, what about the game keeps you coming back, because right now I am not seeing much fun left in War Thunder, despite my desperate attempts to try and enjoy this game.

EDIT: I'm gonna say this before people chime in. I don't need to win to have fun, I don't need 50 Kills and undefeated. I just want to actually play and have fun and it's just not fun when 95% of the matches are some dude in another tank with 1000 Hours absolutely smoking you without even trying while all your shots bounce or Non-Pen because apparently his Tank is made of Nokias.

[Eftwyrd]

i think to last as long as some of us here have you have to set your own goals

gaijin dangles all sorts of shiny toys in front of peoples noses, events, new top tier vehicles etc. and like the consumers they are most players will put in stupid amounts of time just grinding

the answer to long term sanity in warthunder is just dont, i dont play events, i dont play top tier. I dont even particularly care about winning and will just play what i enjoy,

its entirely possible to derive fun from playing something silly and dying stupidly, make your goal to kill that 40,000 ton battleship in a dinky little torpedo boat. Or some modern MBT in your low BR light tank, or just something more mundane like exclusively using fluffy ww2 lineups even when more modern cold war tech is available at the same BR

[Pure ownage]

this is a 💩 game

[Chaoslink]

Originally posted by Kuma:

I'm honestly done playing this game, it's literally not fun full of tryhards and cheaters.
Everytime i log in to play with friends it just ruins my mood. Terrible game, i've been playing this game since 2013.
2023-2024 have been nothing but awful in my personal experience hence i considered just quitting for good i cannot afford to have a foul mood everytime i play this game.

I dunno about cheaters, in my 2700 hours of play I think I’ve only seen one I was sure was cheating and two maybes.

As for “try hards” I’ve never really liked the term. It implies that trying to win or perform well isn’t what you should be doing. You’d probably call my gameplay “try hard” and yet it’s pretty casual for me honestly. I’m often goofing off more than trying and yet I’ll be 17-0 at the end of the match.

For some of us, doing well in a game like this just comes naturally. If I had to guess, it’s because the game is a bit more of a strategy game than a shooter like many people treat it as. I’ve jumped into BRs I’ve never played, against vehicles I know nothing about, using vehicles I know nothing about and yet my performance would make you believe I’ve been playing that BR for years. And that was with stock tanks even. Point is, I wouldn’t consider myself someone who “tries hard” but my overall performance would lead you to believe otherwise. To me it’s just natural, casual play.

[French Cat]

I play stupid. I play idiotic. I play dumb. If you go in with the intend to be silly, you have fun. The game becomes a clown show, and you get to enjoy it.

[tindus]

Fun is hard to find and not consistent in this game, especially if you're trying to grind events, or battle pass, or just the normal vanilla tech tree slog...

Eventually you'll figure out a lineup at your most enjoyable BR, and use certain vehicles depending on the map or just your mood, and fun will happen a little more often than if you were sweating bullets trying to complete a task or objective, in not enough time....

[jaxjace]

10,000 hours in here, most of the time the gameplay isnt the fun so much as simply unlocking and spading things, vehicle collecting.

[Kuma]

Originally posted by Chaoslink:

Originally posted by Kuma:

I'm honestly done playing this game, it's literally not fun full of tryhards and cheaters.
Everytime i log in to play with friends it just ruins my mood. Terrible game, i've been playing this game since 2013.
2023-2024 have been nothing but awful in my personal experience hence i considered just quitting for good i cannot afford to have a foul mood everytime i play this game.

I dunno about cheaters, in my 2700 hours of play I think I’ve only seen one I was sure was cheating and two maybes.

As for “try hards” I’ve never really liked the term. It implies that trying to win or perform well isn’t what you should be doing. You’d probably call my gameplay “try hard” and yet it’s pretty casual for me honestly. I’m often goofing off more than trying and yet I’ll be 17-0 at the end of the match.

For some of us, doing well in a game like this just comes naturally. If I had to guess, it’s because the game is a bit more of a strategy game than a shooter like many people treat it as. I’ve jumped into BRs I’ve never played, against vehicles I know nothing about, using vehicles I know nothing about and yet my performance would make you believe I’ve been playing that BR for years. And that was with stock tanks even. Point is, I wouldn’t consider myself someone who “tries hard” but my overall performance would lead you to believe otherwise. To me it’s just natural, casual play.

I have a very high score too and usually i generally play well above the average as i said i've played the game for a long time, and yes those who usually play like it's a life and death situation in every match gets on my nerves pretty fast, but i guess some people like playing for fun, others just to ruin other people matches.
In top tier there is at least one cheater as far i'm concerned and i'm really sick and tired to go watch replays to watch an entire match because some guy sniped a person across the map because it was already preaiming them across building, hills, mountains.
This isn't about skill, this is about the game not being fun at all between extremely competitive people over literal nothing, cheaters, and the game it self being terrible in general in terms of balance, economy and vehicles.
It's not a strategy game at all, it's more like rock paper scissors where you don't have the choice of which one being of those three, there is honestly barely any skill involved, all it comes down to is having the better vehicle for the best map and having the luck of taking a good position then the rest will come if either you are lucky or not. The only skill is being able to aim and shoot better than the other and recognize your opponent and then weakpoints quicker.
I have ten of thousands of matches racked up and i'm pretty sure these last years were the lowest point for this game ever.
Obviously this is my personal experience.

[xCrossFaith]

Originally posted by Jane Shepard:

where do you find the fun at?

Stay away from Realistic battles and play either arcade or sim

[korkk]

ive got thousands of hours and i honestly hate this game...help me

[Aleuvian]

I like tanks that operate realistically. War Thunder has tanks that operate realistically.
I like playing games with my friends.

I can do both of those things in War Thunder, and once Gunner, Heat, PC! or Sprocket get multiplayer this game and its ♥♥♥♥♥♥ devs are dead to me.

[RXDimA]

Games that need hundreds of hours to get good at are only fun if you can enjoy the learning experience. If you don't think that analysing what you did wrong, developing new tactics, researching new information about matchups, and other such external to battles activities are fun, then you're going to only suffer throughout your way.

From the limited information from your OP, it seems like you consider playing casually as fun, just spawn, point gun at enemy tank, and click, no more thinking. You can do that with the PvE mode, give it a try.

[Jaes]

Fun is subjective.

I have fun figuring out how to best operate a given vehicle I'm using and if its playstyle doesn't match with me, I move on to the next vehicle. I have line ups in varying BR brackets that I inherently enjoy playing due to the vehicles I have access to being in that bracket.

I learned very early on that "grinding" is not fun. I just play vehicles I enjoy using, then happen to unlock new ones later on. I also like switching between nations to learn how operate their vehicles so I better understand how to kill them easier with my favorite vehicles.

If you're fundamentally struggling to have fun with the gameplay loop that's offered in War Thunder, you're probably not going to have an epiphany where you realize you're now having fun with the game.

It's up to you to figure out if something is fun or not.

[homervp]

Mostly tanker here (UK 8.7, DE 6.7) with extensive naval (US 7.0 and JP 7.0). I have seen a couple of the major youtubers state that the game is designed for the 4.7-5.7 battle rating, which is kinda mid-game. My personal favorite lineup is British 2.7, then British 4.7 which I play for the events.

The game is no more or less fun at high tiers, it's a lot more complicated though as more systems get introduced (because that's how it works IRL): thermals, heat-seekers, different guidance systems, countermeasures, ERA and active kill systems, radars with their various settings, UAVs etc. If you're not having fun at 3.0, you probably never will.

The bad stuff:
The grind concerns events and seasons, some are worse than others. I don't enjoy them so I only do them if I know that A) I have time and B) I really like the reward.
Premium means faster research and cheaper maintenance. This year they fixed the maintenance prices and I have (almost) never made a net loss in a battle, even at 8.7. It can also mean very niche rare vehicles, and I suppose it's fair monetization. It is not an instant win (for each "OP" premium there are 5 non-premiums that are just as OP) and it does not compensate for skill)
THE LEARNING CURVE is the only thing to consider. Try arcade, unless you come from mil-sim multiplayer background, because not having a marker over each enemy means getting one-shotted without even seeing them very, very often. But please go to realistic eventually, once you go realistic you never go back. Simulator is for the select few, don't consider it representative.

And final reminder: newer vehicles might have fancy toys for you, but also for the enemy. It won't get better later, it will get more complex, and not everyone chooses that. You don't play WT for the end-game, you play for the knowledge that you're not being shown flashy HP and damage numbers but instead are getting the most probable result for each action. It's free, try it, it's uncomparable to anything out there, otherwise a lot of us (people who normally only play single player) wouldn't even be here. But it might not be for everyone.

[Chaoslink]

Originally posted by Kuma:

Originally posted by Chaoslink:

I dunno about cheaters, in my 2700 hours of play I think I’ve only seen one I was sure was cheating and two maybes.

As for “try hards” I’ve never really liked the term. It implies that trying to win or perform well isn’t what you should be doing. You’d probably call my gameplay “try hard” and yet it’s pretty casual for me honestly. I’m often goofing off more than trying and yet I’ll be 17-0 at the end of the match.

For some of us, doing well in a game like this just comes naturally. If I had to guess, it’s because the game is a bit more of a strategy game than a shooter like many people treat it as. I’ve jumped into BRs I’ve never played, against vehicles I know nothing about, using vehicles I know nothing about and yet my performance would make you believe I’ve been playing that BR for years. And that was with stock tanks even. Point is, I wouldn’t consider myself someone who “tries hard” but my overall performance would lead you to believe otherwise. To me it’s just natural, casual play.

I have a very high score too and usually i generally play well above the average as i said i've played the game for a long time, and yes those who usually play like it's a life and death situation in every match gets on my nerves pretty fast, but i guess some people like playing for fun, others just to ruin other people matches.
In top tier there is at least one cheater as far i'm concerned and i'm really sick and tired to go watch replays to watch an entire match because some guy sniped a person across the map because it was already preaiming them across building, hills, mountains.
This isn't about skill, this is about the game not being fun at all between extremely competitive people over literal nothing, cheaters, and the game it self being terrible in general in terms of balance, economy and vehicles.
It's not a strategy game at all, it's more like rock paper scissors where you don't have the choice of which one being of those three, there is honestly barely any skill involved, all it comes down to is having the better vehicle for the best map and having the luck of taking a good position then the rest will come if either you are lucky or not. The only skill is being able to aim and shoot better than the other and recognize your opponent and then weakpoints quicker.
I have ten of thousands of matches racked up and i'm pretty sure these last years were the lowest point for this game ever.
Obviously this is my personal experience.

I mean, a pre-aimed long range snipe doesn’t indicate cheating. I do that stuff in lower tier modes. I’ll be looking at a spot a player hasn’t been to yet, already aimed in and zeroed to that location, then I shoot them when they appear. It wasn’t cheating, it was just a player predictably going to a spot anyone with experience could predict they’d go to and I simply got in position to counter them being there before they got there. Happens all the time. I’ve gotten the message saying I’ve been reported for cheating in the past, though not once have I ever done so.

I don’t agree with your rock, paper, scissors comparison either. I can take an Ostwind out first spawn and rampage out a bunch of kills despite it being an SPAA, which you wouldn’t think should be taking out Shermans, T-34s, and other tanks with armor. They should counter me, but I’ve had games where I go 10 kills straight in that thing. The strategy you employ matters more than what vehicle you’re in and what you’re facing. In some cases that matters, but most of the time it doesn’t. How you approach a scenario matters more than what vehicle you have. Though high BR might alter that stuff, given that modern tech kinda ruins stuff.

[Azumgi]

I have maintained enjoyment from this game by almost never coming to the forums, and not ever researching a meta. I play the tanks I think are cool, and enjoy figuring out what each one is good at. War thunder is extremely fun when there isn't a mob outside your house trying to convince you it isn't because of xyz