Suggestions to "fix the game"

[_YellowJacket_ 230]

So in the eyes of recent events its probably a good time to try to actually make (serious) suggestions, instead of just spamming "fix the economy" over and over without any constructive means, or making stupid suggestions like "just remove the grind completely lol".

I'm aware that the chances of this ever getting seen by a dev are very low, but in the light of what's happening currently they're definitely higher than ever. 

Suggestions for economy related stuff:
 

1. The SL economy
   I generally am of the opinion that repair costs should stay, however in a different manner. 
   They should be there to simply prevent things like botting/ scripts that do stuff like bombing to grind, to prevent people from randomly just going AFK in matches (because that negatively impacts their whole team) and to prevent people just actively throwing/ suiciding their vehicle. 
   Repairs should be just high enough to prevent people from actively throwing in any way; you go afk mid match? You should lose SL. However you should not be losing SL if you have actually played out the match and did something meaningful. 
   Especially in lower tiers (like sub tier 5) the average player should always be gaining SL at the end of the day, unless they were AFK every match. However the rewards should accordingly also be a bit lower.
   Low tier = low risk, low reward 
   In higher tiers (like top tier) I'm fine with a higher risk/ reward ratio; e.g. a top tier jet could cost 20k to repair, but you should make those 20k back to not lose SL if you get 1 kill, even if you lose without premium. The reward multiplier should be high enough to make you break even if you go 1:1; but if you "dont even try" and do nothing every match you will lose SL, but that would be a sign that you probably shouldnt play at that tier yet. Generally though having high repairs + high rewards is a combination that rewards playing well. 
   Currently theres a weird mishmash of some vehicles that are super cheap to repair and have high multipliers, and vehicles that have terrible multpliers but are still expensive to repair.
   The whole goal is it to make reaching the top less of a pain, but having the absolute top dogs do indeed be a high risk, high reward situation, as palyers that managed ot get all the way there can reasonably be expected to have a decent skill level. 
   I also generally think that repairs and rewards being based on the average player's performance needs to be tuned back a bit; this creates issues with vehicles that are objectively not even good, but just very easy to play having pretty high repairs. Personally I think there should be a base standard depending on the battle rating of the vehicle (like e.g. 10k for a 10.0 plane and 3-5k for a 10.0 tank, no matter what nation or tree it is in, as those vehicles should be balanced against each other based on their BRs). Generally repairs shouldnt be sued as a balancing factor except for the VERY FEW absolute nieche vehicles that are extremely effective or ineffective depending on the situation that cant be solved well by just BR alone.
2. The RP economy
   Currently while SL gains depend A LOT on your actions in battle (kills, caps etc) your RP gains are kind of mostly determined by your active time spent in battle. This results in a guy that gets like 10 kills and a cap getting maybe 10-20% more RP than a guy that gets 1 kill and 1 cap if they spent the same time in the battle. Instead, Id suggest keeping the rp per time rewards the same as they are now but rewarding players that actually do a lot in battles. 
3. Rework "less useful" vehicle classes
   I'm sure this will **** a bunch of people off, but some vehicles classes in this game are just useless inherently by their irl design philosophy or purpose making them bad for PvP scenarios, and that is "good". A bomber shouldn't be effective in a PvP game mode (which, lets be real here, RB at its core is). Im aware a lot of people still liek to play those vehciles because of their historical value, or because they just think they're cool vehicles. I think for that purpose these vehicles (and the PvE/ bombing rewards) should just be tuned to be very low risk, but low reward vehicles. Currently how bombers essentially work they're a vehicle class that has an extremely low skill floor (and even ceiling) with relatively high rewards for successfully bombing, but also very high repair costs. They have little influence over the match outcome (unless every enemy is literally clueless), but this factor cannot really be changed without making the mode more PvE heavy (which I personally dont think is a good idea at all). Generally a very low repair cost (so they're essentially "free" to repair) combined with low rewards (so they aren't very effective at grinding to just be spammed out constantly; like exhibit A the Ju288 breaking the whole 6.0 MM) would let fans of those vehicles play and enjoy them, but would make the whole base rush bombing not a real effective way of grinding. Attackers should be somewhere in between. This would also discourage carrying bombs on fighters, because fighters would get the same lower PvE/ bombing rewards, but would retain the higher repairs that fighters have due to them being designed around PvP.
4. Increase the multipliers for winning again
   For real, I'm aware that the community voted on that change, but that was one of the worst economy changes ever in this game. I think keeping the loss multipliers the same as they are now, but increasing the ones for winning would be a good change.

 

Obviously, these changes would all make the grind faster by a significant margin, but I don't think that they would speed up the grind by so much that it would disincentivize people from spending money to speed the process up. This can obviously be balanced out by Gaijins statistics to a point 

However, while this whole outrage thats currently going on was induced by the economy and everyone is crying about "fix the economy" I don't really think that it is the biggest issue. If the gameplay loop of the game itself was more enjoyable to most players, and people would be incentivised more to do well in their matches (which currently really is not the case, most players right now just do whatever is the easiest/ most hands-off way to grind, not necessarily the "best" way, because the difference between the easiest way and the best way is not very large) the gridn would be more of a "background" thing; think MMOs that have hundreds of hours of grinding, but people enoy their time, because they play for the gameplay itself.

This conecpt results in my next points; suggestions related to gameplay:
 

1. Fix or revert mechanics that are either too heavily rng, too heavily dependent on connectivity to the server, or outright just broken
   Things that come to mind are volumetric shells (Im sure every GRB player is aware of the issue of hitting e.g. in between 2 ERA plates (that should easily be panned) with a dart, and the dart just disappearing to Narnia), RNG fuel tanks (fuel in GRB either eats the whole shell, or makes the target instantly die, just depends on your luck), aircraft cannon "realshatter" mechanic making HE shells only create VERY small amounts of fragments, thus not properly dealing damage, and mechanics like airfield AAA in lower tiers (the tiers before SAMs; as the SAM AA can be "outplayed" but prop hitscan AA is just broken) and I'm sure other people can come up with more on this topic
2. Actually at least consider suggestions from the community (ideally filtered in some way trough more experienced players such as CCs, so we don't get the most stupid things implemented)
   The CC discord has a feedback channel. Actually read it. Recently I have been told that for example for volumetric there was over 900 messages from CCs in the offical CC discords feedback channel complaining about the volumetric shell mechanic being broken/ bad for gameplay with how it is implemented currently, and even that feedback has flat out been ignored. Im not aksign to listent o every single stupid suggestion made on the forums or reddit, but please at least don't ignore feedback from experienced players that are affiliated with the company trough a CC program.
   Theres also literally 2 people working for the company in marketing that have like 20k hours in the game each; idk maybe it might be a good idea to talk to those people aswell when theres a mechanic that is widely complained about to get an educated opinion on the topic. I'm aware that its not their job, but having people work for the company that have an unreal amount of experience in the game and not using that asset is a bit of a waste.
3. Actually balance the game
   Self explanatory theres a million complaints abotu BR compression and certain lineups/ vehicles being disgustingly OP (like almost every nation has some absolutely broken ****...why?)
4. Rework game modes and/ or provide new game modes
   Really thats it. Theres like infinite amounts of suggestions for this; I personally would say making the basic Ground RB and Air RB essentially be pure PvP modes (well GRB already is) and adding PvPvE EC for both modes with less rewards (but still enough to be worth playing, just less rewards per time played as you would get in pure PvP) would be appreciated by most of the palyerbase, and I don't think that this would cause a severe split in the community, given how many players this game has nowdays, especially if the PvP mode would still be the "main" mode for rewards, the PvPvE mode would be more of a "relaxing" experience, that still gives the players a few rewards so they dont completely waste their time like they would by setting up a custom mission.
5. "Teach" players the most basic things
   Since high/ top tier premiums are definitely here to stay, at lease give ANY player a MANDATORY interactive tutorial on the most basic mechanics needed for gameplay at higher tiers, whenever the player first unlocks a vehicle of say rank 5 or above (including if you "unlock" a premium or event vehicle at that tier)
   Something that explains to you how to launch an IR missile at a target, and then makes you launch one at a bot. Next step is how to switch weapons. Next step explaining that some planes have radars and radar missiles, explaining how to radar lock a target, then makes you radar lock some bot in front of you and launch a radar missile at the bot. Last step, launching a missile at a target bot that gets chased by a friendly bot, where the player has to wait until the friendly bot gets out of the way (it restarts when theres a teamkill). Likewise for ground RB high-.tier only mechnics like laser rangefinding, thermals, and smoke launchers. This would just be the most basic thing ever, only has to be designed once, and would MASSIVELY improve the situation for both the player that just got a vehicle and everyone on those players teams. Its the least you can do if you sell premiums that you can buy without having played the game for a single minute. No one would mind going trough a 5 min tutorial explaining the most basic stuff in game, instead of having to go to YouTube and having to look up "how to not teamkill with IR missiles" or "How to radar lock someone in WarThunder". More advanced videos (maybe even created by reputable CCs on the topic) could even be directly linked to the players at the end of the tutorial trough the in-game browser function (since that functionaility is literally there).
6. Don't only advertise top tier
   A lot of the players currently play purely with the goal to reach top tier, and I think a lot of that is due to how the game gets advertised most of the time. People see the F14 or Abrams in a trailer or ad and want that. I think if lower tier vehicles would also get advertised more again, people that are interested in those would join th egame and then later on develop an interest in the higher tier stuff too, as they reached their "goal" vehicles quickly, played them and then decided to look into more vehicles. Obviously I have no insight on how much better marketing top tier vehicles may be for the number of new joining players, so this may be a terrible idea. 

 

Obviously I know not everyone will like all (or any of these suggestions) but from someone that has played this game for a long time I think solutions can be found for most of these points in a way that makes both the players and Gaijin happy. I just thought instead of just crying for 1 extreme that Gaijin will completely ignore (e.g. "remove the grind completely lol") I'd try to give some constructive suggestions that still have some leeway in both directions. 

Edited May 23, 2023 by _YellowJacket_

[Tarmok 38]

You should NEVER lose SLs on a win. That should simply be not possible. Remove repair cost or half it for the winning team, that way winning is rewarded, players once again would have an insentive to try and win, not just camp and get kills and 1 spawn quitting would be discouraged.