Constructive improvement Ideas for the game

[Obirzoe 1,899]

Since the linked form for feedback was hard to structure, I will reiterate it here and gather as many ideas to improve the aspects of the game for the players and for Gaijin as a company.

 

First of all Gaijin states that 80% of players never pay for playing, which is not uncommon for free to play games, but given the figure and comparing it to the f2p market Gaijin has on average 18% more paying customers than what is usual for free to play titles.

 

Quote

 Only 2.2% of free-to-play users ever pay - Report Swrve research finds 46% of all revenue comes from .22% of player base, two-thirds of people stop playing after one day
Source: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/only-2-2-percent-of-free-to-play-users-ever-pay-report

 

Therefore, there should in no way be a reason to rely on SL purchases with GE to fund the game.

 

The game itself has established itself as one of the big titles on the marked, regardless of genre, it is reliable in the top 20 of all played games on steam, and you need to consider non-steam players to count as well. The playing community steadily increased, and we are able to see 100k+ players online most of the time.

 

Combining all the information above we can assume that the game is generally seen positive and played by a lot of players, even if these games are quiet niche compared to the game of the season like Fortnite, CoD or FIFA.

 

The only thing missing is a healthy community, I have several friends who I introduced to the game only to see them quit because they could not accumulate SL to buy newly researched vehicles. This is frustrating, and the economy changes over the past years made it worse.

 

When I started playing, CBT time of the game, you could have a great game and get a lot of rewards, even without a premium account. You were able to get 100k SL reward for getting 1-2 kills and winning.

 

Back then, I always stated that WT is not pay to play, you were able to enjoy the full game without spending money. Nowadays, you need a premium account and premium vehicles to break even if you are unlucky.

 

Additionally, you have a lot of tech trees, planes, tanks, helicopters, ships and boats in the game to grind. It is generally great to see the game grow but the average player will never max out a tree or even multiple ones without playing for thousands of hours or throwing a lot of money at Gaijin.

 

My ideas for a better economy would be the following:

 

• Increase general reward (without premium account) by 2x.(SL and RP)
• Increase the rewards of a premium account by 4x-5x (SL and RP)

 

The game has enough monetization to be profitable and does not need to rely on GE to SL transfer. This way, you would be able to grind tech trees much faster and enjoy the game without worrying about the SL or RP economy. The game has so many aspects that a player would now have the chance to experience multiple tech trees or nations, instead being locked to one. Happy customers will spend money on the game, you could even consider increasing the premium time cost if you increase its value, reasonably.

 

If your company really struggles to make money, here are some ideas that could be implemented to offer additional monetization without harming the game itself or the community. Most of them being cosmetic items that are enough to fund other games like Valorant or CS:Go etc.

 

• Add calling cards, you are adding all those fancy profile pictures that basically no one sees. When you kill someone display these cards, add icons, maybe even animated ones and let players show them off. You dripped a nuke get a special Icon, you dropped 100 special animated one etc. Show the profile picture title etc. I am sure your design team can put something great together, just take a look at Overwatch, Call of Duty, Counter Strike or Valorant to name a few.
  That way you would be able to add these to packs (preorder bonus), battle passes, events and on special occasions

Spoiler

• Add anime Skins, tag them as fictional so anyone not interested can just hide them. There are already content creator decals and the Dakimakura in game, so I see no reason to be against it.
  The other game that shall not be named is offering these and presumably making a great amount of money with them. If you don't want to get entangled with the licensing, let your art department run wild and be creative, see what they can come up with. I am sure there are quite a few players that are willing to spent money to buy these.
• Add more skins in general, a lot of historical skins are bound to the marketplace and can not directly be bought from Gaijin. Feel free to sell player created skins that way, but offer unique skins and decorators for GE to benefit you the most. Most vehicles have just basic skins, while you are able to create and sell specialized ones. Get ace skins for 200 GE etc.
• Continue to add more smoke effects (special wing smoke for planes, not bound to events but purchasable)
• Add special voice packs, remember when you sold the dog tags and the final reward, which sadly was not reached was funny unique crew voices?
• More community goals/purchase events like the dog tag ones are great, you would pay a small amount and if the community as a whole bought enough you would get increasing rewards. Getting all these (Messerschmitt BF 109-E7/U2, Soviet captured Panther T-5, unique P-51A Mustang with a forced induction engine, M24 Chaffee with T45 APCR rounds and A unique RBT-5 with two 250 kg rockets.) for 3-5 GJN was a great opportunity and the community felt rewarded and valued instead of viewed as a cash cow.
• Increase login bonus, you can log in for thousands of days in a single streak and not receive a single premium vehicle or even the 1 million SL crate. Reward loyalty. Hand out special decorators, titles and vehicles to reward loyal players. You can link this to the login streak, total days logged in (I am sure there is a way to count this) or simply account age. You are playing for 1000 days? Here, get a premium vehicle.
  Feel free to take a look at this, sadly dead game of Star Wars Galaxies there you got, based on your account age, rewards. Simply for rewarding loyalty. In War Thunder you can have a 5000 Days login streak and receive a mere 10% SL booster. That just feels like a slap in the face.

 

Look around on the market, let your devs play other games and get inspired by all the possible ways of monetization that will not harm the community.

 

Most of the players want this game to grow and succeed, there is no need to worsen the economy every year and drive away those players.

 

Maybe this incident can be seen as a start for WT 2.0. Overhaul the game system and economy to generate more happy players who are paying money because they enjoy the game and not because it is not viable to play without spending money.

 

There are many more Ideas, and I am curious what other players would like to see or know from other games that are way better than predatory monetization, worse than most Gatcha games.

 

Let's give Gaijin constructive feedback and good ideas to improve the game.

[Obirzoe 1,899]

Additional things that came to my mind:

 

General Improvements:

• Reduce RP cost of FPE and parts for ships
• Allow ships to repair and extinguish fire while in an allied cap
• Reduce RP cost of countermeasures for planes
• Reduce free repair time (more than a week for a single vehicle is nuts)
• The game itself evolved from an easy free time activity to something like a second 8-5 job due to the increased demands for events and in game activities.
  Think about reducing this, either the general amount or the requirements to finish them. I had great fun playing enlisted and spending money there, which in return goes to Gaijin, but since it is impossible to actively play War Thunder and other games I had to quit, which is a shame.

 

More monetization ideas:

• While doing events, sell a booster for 25 GJN, purchasing this will allow players to receive 2x the event drops and remove the limit.
  Active players therefore can grind all rewards, and players with limited time can participate in these events. You would lose out from some of the market trade, but with the higher amount of vehicles assembled and possibly sold on the marketplace in addition to the sales of the booster should really help everyone.
• Make the Battle passes more attractive again, and use a theme. No, "Her Majesty's Hussars" is not a theme. At least, I am not aware that the S-701 was part of the royal German hussar regiment in WW2.
  Theme it around battles, specific units or vehicle classes. Idea Battle pass "Flattops" Top reward USS Langley (CV-1), 2 other vehicles are specific premium carrier planes. As decorators add themed stuff, just like you do now, the decorators are on point.(Just an example to show the potential instead of throwing random things together and call it a day.
• Offer premium modifications, no I don't mean P2W options, but something like the Abrams Vismod. You can buy it for pure cosmetic. Search for interesting visuals on vehicles and offer it as a paid and unique customization option.

 

Edit: if repair costs are used to prevent naval bots or botting in general, how about banning those accounts instead of tolerating them? Botting is a ToS violation just like cheating, but if someone cheats the account will be banned, if someone uses bots it is fine.

Edited May 25, 2023 by Obirzoe

[Vamilad 238]

The simplest solution allowing Gaijin to continue encouraging purchase of premium / SL for the purpose of grinding without SL costs having an effect on gameplay and discouraging multiple respawns.

[Obirzoe 1,899]

2 hours ago, Vamilad said:

The simplest solution allowing Gaijin to continue encouraging purchase of premium / SL for the purpose of grinding without SL costs having an effect on gameplay and discouraging multiple respawns.

 

So your solution is being stuck at 0 SL if you are unlucky without the ability to buy ammo or new vehicles right?

[Cpt_Bel_V 4,790]

2 hours ago, Vamilad said:

The simplest solution allowing Gaijin to continue encouraging purchase of premium / SL for the purpose of grinding without SL costs having an effect on gameplay and discouraging multiple respawns.

That idea is not possible and you know it,... 

 

Gaijin can't implement a F2P way where you can't loose SL,... simply because of monetization.

[Obirzoe 1,899]

54 minutes ago, Cpt_Bel_V said:

That idea is not possible and you know it,... 

 

Gaijin can't implement a F2P way where you can't loose SL,... simply because of monetization.

 

You guys really think that a) a substantial amount of players is currently spending GE to get SL and b) that this income is big enough so losing it would cripple the company and shutting down the game itself? I have a hard time to believe that.

As you can see above, there are better ways to monetize without scamming the community.

[Cpt_Bel_V 4,790]

5 minutes ago, Obirzoe said:

 

You guys really think that a) a substantial amount of players is currently spending GE to get SL and b) that this income is big enough so losing it would cripple the company and shutting down the game itself? I have a hard time to believe that.

As you can see above, there are better ways to monetize without scamming the community.

Well in fact they do... they do buy Premium aircrafts and premium accounts because of the current economy flaws,... 

[Obirzoe 1,899]

5 minutes ago, Cpt_Bel_V said:

Well in fact they do... they do buy Premium aircrafts and premium accounts because of the current economy flaws,... 

 

Buying premium time or vehicles =/= converting GE into SL.

Also with a more generous economy people would also buy premium time and or vehicles to speed up progress. Imagine x5 SL and RP for your premium account.

Seems worth a buy for me.

[Delta-Wing 13]

4 minutes ago, Obirzoe said:

Buying premium time or vehicles =/= converting GE into SL.

Premium time and vehicles both cost GE and using them earns you more SL, so you pay GE and have more SL as a result... Sounds like converting GE into SL to me

[Obirzoe 1,899]

11 minutes ago, UnknowenPlayer said:

Premium time and vehicles both cost GE and using them earns you more SL, so you pay GE and have more SL as a result... Sounds like converting GE into SL to me

Just to be on the same page here, please see the attachments, one shows premium vehicles the other one GE->SL conversion.

 

If Gaijin wanted to promote premium time or premium vehicles, they would not cut down on the SL earnings of these. In ground, your reward per kill decreases the more kills you achieve. Simple example: if you get 1.000SL for 1 kill you would think you would be rewarded 10.000SL for 10 kills, right? At the moment, you would rather get around 4-5.000SL for that amount of kills. If you, as a company, want to promote premium vehicles or premium time, you would increase the earnings to more than the bare minimum to break even.

Your vehicle can have a 1200% SL bonus, but in the end you will get less due to that mechanic.

 

Therefore, the conclusion is that the economy is not changing to force every player to buy more premium vehicles or premium time to get even after a battle. No sane player would spend money on a game mechanic to just not lose in game currency, we are not talking about gaining it, just achieving +/-0.

This leads to the hypothesis that Gaijin is thinking more players will buy SL directly. I have never heard of players doing that, and I think Gaijin as a company doesn't need to squeeze the community that hard, that you basically force your players to buy SL with real money just to earn SL. Gaijin has enough means to allow progression, a healthy community and good monetization.

 

[Delta-Wing 13]

31 minutes ago, Obirzoe said:

This leads to the hypothesis that Gaijin is thinking more players will buy SL directly.

I disagree, premium time and premium vehicles still earn a lot more SL than TT vehicles without premium time, gaijin knows that very few people are stupid enough to convert GE straight into SL.

Imagine you are a new-ish player, you progress a bit, your having fun and then you start to run out of SL, you arent going to just buy SL, its overpriced and only a shot term solution, instead you are going to look up ways of earning more SL and inevitably find mentions of Premium time and vehicles, which seem like an investment that can print SL forever, and you are going to buy those.

35 minutes ago, Obirzoe said:

If Gaijin wanted to promote premium time or premium vehicles, they would not cut down on the SL earnings of these.

This isnt realy true since relative to normal vehicles the prmium ones are still give just as much of an advantage as the used to do, and making some of the premium vehicles with excessivelyt high SL modifiers earn less is just normal ballencing that if anything would encourage players to buy another premium vehicle.

 

Basically: demand for premium time and vehicles results directly from players stuggling for SL, increase the struggle and more of the active playerbase will buy them (but the playerbase may also shrink due to a less fun game, its a ballencing act for gaijin to try and make as much money as possible)

[Delta-Wing 13]

51 minutes ago, Obirzoe said:

Also its worth noting that this dosent exist because gaijin actually expects you to buy SL with GE, its deliberately overpriced so that a player looking for SL will see that it costs a lot, look for another option, find premium vehicles/time and those will look like a much better deal relative to buying SL, so players will go "premium time is actually pretty cheap, look at how much more it costs just to buy SL" (this is called anchoring)

And as an added bonus if some whale does actually just buy a load of SL with GE then gaijin gets even more money.