[Feedback] War Thunder Changes Roadmap

[Stona_WT 72,761]

After your feedback and suggestions, we would like to show you the development roadmap of War Thunder for the next few months.

These are not all the changes and suggestions that we would like to introduce to the game according to your wishes and comments, but, as it seems to us, the main ones. We will not be able to do more in the near future, and most likely, after the implementation of the roadmap, you may have other suggestions, comments, and priorities that may change in general. Therefore, we plan to have another session of collecting feedback in the fall, after the work is completed.

This is a really large roadmap and we probably won’t be able to complete some points in time.

Besides the proposed changes being significant, this is the most essential change to the game's economy in 9 years. Additionally, it is being rolled-out at a radically expedited pace in light of the current circumstances.

Therefore, please perceive this roadmap as an experimental and exploratory endeavor. In the interest of transparency: Should it turn out that the changes outlined herein, whether in part or in their entirety, cause damage to the economic well-being of War Thunder that poses a risk to the further development of the game, we may decide to modify or roll back some or all of those changes.

On the other hand, some things may be completed before time. In these cases, we won’t wait for the scheduled dates and deploy improvements as soon as they are ready.

Please note that the roadmap points might be subject to change.

Economy Revision - Our Plan in Detail

Changes to Silver Lions mechanics

• Improved the balance of Silver Lions (SL). Increasing the reward multiplier and reducing the cost of repairing vehicles to make all vehicles break even for the average player, including without a Premium account. Update June 2023.
• Calculation of the economic parameters of each vehicle from average indicators instead of vehicle statistics. For all vehicles of the same type and one Battle Rating (BR), the average statistical indicators will be calculated, after which they will be used to calculate rewards and repair costs for each vehicle in accordance with its economic rank (rank and position in the rank). Update June 2023.
• Improvements to Premium accounts, if your total repair cost exceeds your income, you will be compensated after the battle, ensuring that your SL tally for the match remains at zero, unless you have teamkilled. Summer updates 2023.
• Adding free back-ups to newly purchased Premium vehicles. Summer updates 2023.
• Dynamic repair costs reduction. The shorter the lifetime, the cheaper the repair (without changing the max repair cost by the date of feature introduction). Summer updates 2023.
• Capture point reward for vehicles that failed to survive until capture completion. Summer updates 2023.
• Free repair if destroyed by an ally. Summer updates 2023.
• Detailed calculation of the reward in the mission results window, as well as in the private message window after the battle ends. Next Major Update.

Changes to progression and Research points

• Condensing of tech trees by grouping of vehicles and decreasing required Research points (RP) to research vehicles in groups by two times. Summer updates 2023.
• Reduction of research and purchase costs of rank VI-VII aircraft. Summer updates 2023.
• Skill bonuses in RP. Extra reward for a certain number of kills in a session. The required kill number, as well as the bonus value are determined by the game mode and vehicle rank. For example, the approximate values for rank III arcade ground vehicle battles are: 3 kills +15%, 6 kills +30%, 9 kills +50%) . Next Major Update.
• Detailed calculation of the reward in the mission results window, as well as in the private message after the battle ends. Next Major Update.
• Research bonuses for new nations. After obtaining a top vehicle of one nation (such a vehicle will be clearly marked in the research tree), a bonus is added to the research of vehicles of this type in other nations, where the top-tier vehicles have not yet been received. The bonus is given for three battles every day for each nation separately and depends on the rank of the researched vehicle. Approximate values are: rank IV +15%, rank V +25%, rank VI +35%, ranks VII-VIII +50%. Fourth update of the year (October-November 2023).
• Revision of the naval progression. Next Major Update/ Fourth update of the year (October-November 2023).

Other progression updates

• Revision of the use and obtaining of the fire prevention equipment, repair sets for tanks and ships, as well as countermeasures for aircraft. Update June 2023.
  • FPE of ground vehicles will be split into default for single use fire extinguishing, and an improved type, which requires module research and is capable of extinguishing fire twice.
  • FPE of naval vessels will also be split into default and improved. The default one will take longer to put out the fire, with no limit on the number of uses.
  • “Parts” in ground vehicles and “Tool Sets” of naval vessels will also be split into default and improved. Default tools available without modification research will field repair of all modules, not only mobility ones, until partial functionality, similar to Arcade battles repair mechanics.
  • Standard countermeasures will become available immediately to researched aircraft. Options such as “chaff only”, “improved flares”, “mixed”, “flares priority”, will be available by researching the module. Additional options, such as BOL pods or additional chaff pods will remain available by module research.
• Mission points reward for repair and fire extinguishing assists of allies. Summer updates 2023
• Helicopter research progression by playing ground vehicles. A player will be able to select either tank, or helicopter, to channel the research points in ground battles. Summer updates 2023.
• Addition of the limited list of Battle Tasks and some Battle Pass tasks to existing Aviation Simulator battles. Exact approach can be refined later. Next Major Update.
• Battle tasks and Battle Pass tasks available in ground Simulator Battles. Next Major Update.
• Keeping progress of the daily login reward in the PC version by collecting daily rewards in WT Mobile. Next Major Update.

Matchmaking

• Night battles are temporarily disabled with the “La Royale” Major Update. In the future, they can be optionally enabled. Next Major Update.
• Changing the matching settings for high-rank battles in order to collect more complete battles at the cost of a minimal increase in waiting time. “La Royale” Major Update.
• Display of BR ranges in the map filter. Update June 2023.
• Revision of the set of maps available to piston and jet aircraft for more eventful battles, transferring some of the large maps to higher BRs. Update June 2023
• Improving the balance of late Cold War era vehicles, when the homogeneous steel and full-caliber shells to APDS, ATGM, gun stabilizers, etc., by changing the BR of certain vehicles. Summer updates 2023.

Locations and missions

• Strike UAV moved to higher ranks (vehicle BR above 9.7, matching BR above 10.7) to allow players to have SAM systems capable of countering them. “La Royale” Major Update.
• Hydroplane respawn points moved to the map center, allowing them to spawn over the friendly airfield. “La Royale” Major Update.
• Reduction of the effectiveness of AI anti aircraft guns located on fields and convoys in all aircraft modes. “La Royale” Major Update.
• Special winter trees for winter versions of locations. “La Royale” Major Update.
• Fixing issues with bushes when shot-through or after a collision. “La Royale” Major Update.
• Locations "Poland" and "Eastern Europe": changing the landscape outside the towns in order to get rid of large forests and hills, introduction of fields with small interspersed forest/hills instead. This will get rid of the massive problems of standing in forests where no one is visible, and will lead to more active gameplay. Summer updates 2023.
• Changes to the landscape/design of locations in “El Alamein”, “Aral Sea”, “American Desert”, “Japan”, “Sinai”, “Normandy” based on player feedback: removing places from which one can control most of the map and encouraging fights at closer range. Summer updates 2023.
• Changing the landscape/design of locations “Alaska”, “Seversk”, “Vietnam”, “Maginot Line”, “38th parallel”, “Stalingrad”, “Karelia” based on player feedback. Planned to remove the places from which one can control most of the map. Summer updates 2023.
• Massive revision of asset collision in ground vehicle locations in order to get rid of inconsistencies of visual and physical models. Summer updates 2023.
• Improvement of “Jungles” by reducing the number of positions camouflaged by vegetation, which will improve visibility and reduce the number of shots from ambushes. Next Major Update.

Gameplay

• Refinement of the damage model for small-caliber HEAT rounds. Fragments of the shaped charge jet along the flight axis will be capable of inflicting damage to the crew in the dimensions of the fighting compartment of any tank, if they are not stopped by more massive obstacles. “La Royale” Major Update.
• Improved indication for spawn zone protection. First is a more obvious indication of hits on players protected by the spawn zone, so that the shooter understands why their shots went through the protected vehicles. The second is an indication of players firing at the spawn zone: such shooters will be additionally marked in the game world and on the mini-map, similar to being scouted.Summer updates 2023.
• Finalization of the mechanics of the commander's sight in tanks. Adding a short delay to hunter-killer mechanics. Summer updates 2023.
• The ability to accept an apology for a teamkill. When accepting an apology, the apologizing player is not awarded penalty points, followed by a possible kick from the session and a ban for this teamkill. Next Major update.
• Destructible 3D decorations, adding the ability to shoot down or destroy (taking into account the settings of damage to allies in the selected game mode). At the same time, we do not plan to add the effect of the decoration on the projectile to simplify the vehicle damage model. Next Major Update.
• Reworking of network logic to solve one of the problems of ghost shells (“disappearing shells”) - the favored killer mechanic (“killer advantage”). In the case of a small difference in time within the player's ping, limited, for example, by 120 ms, between receiving damage blocking their shot on the server and the player's own shot, consider that the player managed to shoot. At the moment, the player sees their shot, which did not happen on the server, and believes that their shell has disappeared.Next Major Update.
• Refinement of the tank and landscape collision solver in order to fix situations when a tank that has flipped on its turret top is almost impossible to turn over. “La Royale” Major Update.
• Improved target hit alert in the aircraft battles. For an air target that is considered shot down under current conditions, but still has the ability to hit its offender, or if there are munitions on fire, we are going to add a delay on reporting the frag, possibly blocking the control of the shot aircraft after some time. Next Major Update.

Others

• Making it easier to report hate speech in a chat, adding a separate category of complaints, as well as showing the chat log that is attached to the complaint. Summer updates 2023.

For your convenience, you can also find the above mentioned topics presented in the planned timeline:

 

[Acid_Burn9 51]

Not too happy about this one.

• It will make securing the reward for the kill more annoying and will add more possibilities for the kill to be stolen.
• Blocking the control is a horrible idea. If the aircraft can still fly and fire - let it fly and fire. Blocking control goes against whole "beast deep inside you that will not die and will fight back" idea. If you dont want to be killed by a "dead" enemy - kill it better and stay aware.

Otherwise a lot of good changes. Happy to see the game improving.

Edited June 13, 2023 by Acid_Burn9

[Noir89 2,578]

Great changes so far - i would have 2 Ideas:

 

1) Replenishable FPE on CAP points (would highly encourage to use them on teammates)

 

2) Destroyable 3D Decorations -> Chemical Rounds (HE, HESH, HEAT) should have a bigger impact (wider area of effect) then normal AP.

 

[KB_Martinsen 582]

1. I do wish they would fix buildings so you can shoot though them again.

[SaperPL 446]

A great plan for an improvement when (or IF) delivered, and if those numbers that are changed here will be kept and won't keep raising back to where they were over time.

 

With that said, despite the aircraft problem in ground AB being noted in one of the previous news updates, there's nothing here about it.

Edited June 13, 2023 by SaperPL

[_TigaMafia 1,039]

Overall very promising, but a few points I'd like to bring up:

Will vehicles be getting foldered to make better use of the new foldered RP mechanics? IE the massive ammounts of Challengers for Britain, the Centurions for Sweeden, and the Magachs for Israel, to name a few?

An activation threshold for the 3 times a day RP boost from having a higher tier vehicle in another nation. This would prevent the use from being consumed if you have a poor game, disconnect, poor team, teamkilling, griefing, etc. Example: Only if you score above a certain amount of RP, you have the option to use the boost post battle, or it is automatically applied if you clear the RP threshold.

 

I know night battles aren't very popular, but why not make NVD/Thermals stock instead of reducing the amount of night battles?

 

Edit: While I know this is a modification to economy focus, some damage model updates in the future would be highly welcome.

Edited June 13, 2023 by _TigaMafia
sad plea for damage model changes.

[soontodie 2]

its got some promising details, especially lowering the rp costs of foldered vehicles and making more vehicles foldered to make grinding to a specific rank easier, i.e. if you enjoy early cold war vehicles more than WWII then you dont have to grind as many vehicles to reach the tier you want to play but would still have the option of playing the foldered vehicles at that rank. The promised changes to SL are long overdue and glad to see coming. The addition of a single use FPE to stock vehicles will be much appreciated as it is so annoying to survive a tank shot with minimal damage but then burn out. unsure if the map changes will be beneficial but i guess we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. glad to see some care put forward by gaijin to player complaints but dang it took a lot to get here. 

EDIT

I also prefer killed vehicles still able to fire weaponry until finally "dead", if you want to fix the issue of helicopters being able to spam rockets when the tails get shot off i suggest a change to the in-game model of tailless helicopters so that they aren't flying straight especially considering the torque of those rotors. 

but still, i appreciate most of the proposed changes. 

Edited June 13, 2023 by soontodie

[UnderRedSkies66 5]

Very excited for what I see. I'm a GRB exclusive player so many of the things such as teamkilling being reworked excite me. Overall, I think these changes are great and I can't wait to see them in game.

 

The only thing I would add would be the possibility to replenish Fire Extinguishers on Cap Points. Other than that, everything looks fine at a glance.

[TenPoundsOfSalt 649]

Changes for the economy looks solid, bit worried about naval, but the map changes, and increase in player count at top tier are gonna be bad for people that don't like knife fights.

It's fine that some people like close quarter maps, and some like long range maps.

So far we have seven maps that have the size to give you long range options : Fulda, Maginot, Red Desert, Fields of Poland, Surroundings of Volokolamsk, European Province, and Fire Arc.

Realistically, you are still doing short to mid range fighting on these maps due to the way they are broken up in distinct sections wich mostly don't interact with one another. Only European Province, Fire Arc, and Maginot in a limited capacity aren't too restrictive in that department. And still for Fire Arc you win by controlling the center point wich is a close range hellhole of visual clutter and third person corner peeking.

 Out of soon to be 53 maps, 46 are close range and/or urban focused maps that give you no options whatsoever to do any long range fighting. 35 of these 46 maps are sub 2*2km, and I'm not talking about the size of the zone we actually play onto, but the overall size of the entire map. If you factor in all the useless/forbidden zones, you mostly get sub 1.5*1.5km.

It's also not taking into consideration map variations that will overwhelmingly stack the map rotation against long range maps with most long range maps having close range variations of themselves, while close range maps offer you absolutely no options to have long range gameplay (except Mozdok's SB variation that isn't in the map pool for RB for some reason).

 

As someone that really doesn't like close range maps, that doesn't have any interest in playing the close range style, it's really painful to read that you have more close range maps planned, and are open on the idea of butchering the existing somewhat long range maps to better enable close range fighting on them when they already all have small variations of themselves in the map pool.

 

I get that you prioritise queue time, I get that the majority of players prefer close range gameplay, I get that an actually good long range map would be a lot more work than a close range one.

But at this point i'd really like to get a dedicated queue, where the map rotation is only comprised of the full variations of the seven large maps, and the SB variations of the small ones like Mozdok. You just need to make it an opt-in queue, that explicitly warns you that it might take longer to find a match than on the regular queue. Since the overwhelming majority of players are fine with small maps it won't impact the main queue time, but it'll give me and other people like me an option to actually play the game rather than get a sub 1 minute queue that'll lead to 9 minutes of crew lock because the game thought I'd like to play the Stryker on Finland.

[RideTheTiger 13]

Many excellent changes. One notable bug affecting air battles, specifically aircraft cannons, is how real shatter is not working correctly.

1. Fix/adjust how the real shatter mechanic works on aircraft cannons so that damage is high and consistent (essentially, 20mm to 30mm air target belts should not be doing poorly against aircraft)

[Insanerobert 307]

One question about AI Anti-Air: will they become less precise in Helicopter PVE as well?

[StiXWasHere 49]

A rework of the real-shatter mechanic would be amazing to see. 

[House_of_Schmidt 115]

I would love to see some work on the game modes for the top tiers of Air RB -specifically tiers 6 through 8.

 

At a minimum, the 16 vs 16 matchmaker for non-EC maps should have their player counts reduced to 10 vs 10. 16 vs 16 is far too crowded for these smaller maps.

 

The EC maps should get an additional airfield to spawn into and the AI troops should be more spread out along the front of the battle so players arent encouraged to get into one furball.

 

^These are really temporary fixes though. The Top tiers of Air RB really need to be split into 2 modes: Team Deathmatch (non-EC maps, no respawns, smaller teams, no objectives) and a proper Enduring Confrontation (EC maps, respawns, larger teams, rolling objectives). 

 

The need for a split of upper tier Air RB is because Air AB isn't very fun for top tier players. The infinite reloads and infinite fuel really encourages the worst gameplay.

 

A split of the upper tier Air RB would give players the choice of what kind of game they want to play. The current gamemode for top tier Air RB feels very out-of-date with the modern aircraft. This split would also open up top tier Aviation to recieve additional vehicles that aren't feasible right now.

 

 

[MDC5000 69]

For air simulator mode you haven't done any major changes that the playerbase asked:

1)Remove pay to spawn

2)Remove "Useful action"mechanic.

3)Reward planes that come back home or try to come back home instead of suiciding runs .

Edited June 13, 2023 by MDC5000

[CTX501 91]

I'm very excited for what I see. You give me hope that you listen to players. If you fulfill these promises I will support this game spending money for a very long time. 

[Anime_Thighs_OwO 140]

I really like the changes overall and I think it's something that the game very much needed, however.

 

''Helicopter research progression by playing ground vehicles. A player will be able to select either tank, or helicopter, to channel the research points in ground battles. Summer updates 2023.''

 

This change is just a quick and poor way to ''fix'' the massive problem that is Heli grind which is by far the worst in the entire game, even with a premium helicopter and premium account it would take more then 40 hours of straight up battle time to get a top tier Heli.

 

Averaging 30000rp for a 1 hour battle compared to ground or air where you can get 10000 in 10 to 15 minutes.

 

I feel that the RP changes that are going to be applied to Aircrafts should also be applied to Helicopters, as well as the foldering changes, because having to research the Mi-24V costing 380000 RP and then being forced to research the Mi-24P that is basically copy paste makes no sense.

 

It would also make more people research helicopters like the Mi-28NM that with the recent addition of MTI to the Ka-52 is just a sidegrade at most.

 

Not taking into account that Heli EC is on itself a horrible gamemode 

 

Rewards for using helicopters in ground battles and heli EC should be massively increased instead of just being abled to use ground vehicles to research them, that's how you end up with idiots hovering in the spawn while climbing just to eat a missile.

Edited June 13, 2023 by Anime_Thighs_OwO

[ruthoJG 13]

I am genuinely happy about this roadmap and the future changes it contains. Especially about the teamkill apology acceptance option. Although, there are 2 more issues that i would like you to address. First, lately, the number of grindbots in air and naval battles increased so significantly, that their numbers heavily affect and handicap their team. The other issue is the failsquading, especially in AirRB, predominantly in top/high tiers. This (frequently malicious) behaviour also significantly handicaps a team in the same way as the grindbots do, by occupying valuable slots from players who could be useful and effective in the battle. In this case, i am worried that some of the players feel encouraged to do failsquading, as War Thunder even rewards their insignificantly low chance of eliminating an enemy player, by giving them the "God Mode" award.

 

Again, i am pleased by the promises of the roadmap, but the mentioned issues are also needed to be addressed shortly.

[Warboss1443 4]

This is a massive improvement to the game overall. The silver lion improvements were desperately needed, and it is good to see that such improvements were made without making a premium account obsolete. The free back-ups for newly purchased premium vehicles is a huge improvement. This will stop one-kill-wonders from ruining top-tier games. The free FPE and Parts is a great decision, although the ability to replenish FPE at cap circles would be great. Getting rewards for helping teammates repair and extinguish fires should have been implemented when the ability to help out was first introduced so I am happy to see it come in now. This will help make teamplay a priority. Allowing players to have more control over what maps they want to play is great. Although be careful with adding more players into games, after that changed happened in air battles, the games seem way longer and often boring.

 

There are some changes that I am not totally sure about. I am not sure about researching another nation by just playing a nation you have fully unlocked. Although that may be because the wording is a bit confusing on how this will work, so I will not shun it until more information is given about it. I strongly disagree with the decision to research helicopters by playing ground vehicles. I understand that the grind for helicopters is insane, but I don't think this is the way to fix the issue. Maybe rewards for helicopters should just be increased since it is somewhat difficult to do well in them now, unless playing a Ka-50 or Ka-52. For the changes in maps, getting rid of locations that control the whole map might take away some strategy, unless these locations are spawn camping or cross mapping. I would have like to have seen some changes in how spawn protection works for ground battles. Those issues did not seem to be addressed, just spotting them on the map does not help all that much.

 

Overall, I see this as a huge improvement. I can't wait to see how this plays out in the long run. I have been playing the game for almost 10 years now and these improvements were much needed. Well done listening to the community.

[hyvlärn 5]

This is one of the best updates I have ever seen so far on a roadmap, I have found everything to be amazing changes. I am waiting to see them all implemented but can we also have the turret dsync issue fixed please?

[SorenOakenshield 7]

I very much agree with almost all of these changes. I do think that not being able to lose silver lions while using a premium account with the exception of teamkilling is a bit much though. Given that another one of the points is the general reduction of Repair costs and making the average player break even with their vehicles, I'm not sure that this is necessary. To me, losing SL every once in a while is part of the game. To me, balancing the economy is more about the average player being able to afford the next tank in their progression. Just straight up not being able to lose SL as a premium player seems like a bit too much to me. Great changes overall though, much more positive for the players than I anticipated.

[lipino5 6]

Great changes, or roadmap of changes. I especially like the helicopter research with tanks and free FPE, Parts (somewhat on that parts) and countermeasures. Premium account thing also looks solid.

[NanashiAnjin 69]

Thank you for the communication! I hope there will be more often communication like this, obv it doesnt have to be this big, but small updates from time to time would be nice!

Roadmap has plenty of good ideas, will have to wait to see how it plays out.
One thing that Im still missing, is more ways to gain score in air battles, sometimes you are defending vs maybe 4 enemies, dodging their missiles and bullets all over, your teammates might get the kills, but that is not without your fair share of work! yet in the game there is no score gained because of it, leaving you strangely with low activity! A while a go there was score gained when in proximity near enemies, please bring this back, even a little, and maybe improve it the closer you are to enemies, and multiply it by how many enemies are around you. So that going into a furball would be worth more than chasing a single plane on the edge of the map!

[LyfHax420 45]

These changes actually look promising, but there is one bug or "feature" that has been in the game since almost day 1 and is barely spoken about: The fact that in GRB, when 2 players shoot each other at the same time, usually the one with the less ping gets the kill, and the other one will just die, with his shell dissapearing, even if he clearly fired it's gun and you cna even see the shell going through the other player.

[Type10BestGirl 137]

I don't want larger maps to shrink, though. I think top tier NEEDS more larger maps for tanks. Will we see more bigger maps going forward? Sick and tired of playing tiny maps with modern MBTs where the spawn to spawn distance is only 1km

[ZE4L0T 14]

Great changes, at least superficially. I'm looking forward to seeing how these play out in-game. Sadly, there are still no plans to bring back the removed German vehicles like the Panther II, Tiger 10'5, or Coellian, or to bring back old event vehicles, or plans to give top tier tanks stock APFS-DS rounds.

Edited June 13, 2023 by ZE4L0T