Recent reviews by 一个沉默的战士观察春天里平静的湖水

I refunded the game after following its release for a few months. I was never made aware through any of the promotional materials that progression in the game would be locked to online only mode. In addition, on release day, the multiplayer just didn't work. I'm sure that will improve, but why does this game have to be a live service AAA wannabe product? Don't buy this garbage, it will eventually have its source code posted online when it goes under in a few years.

This game is a fever dream

Planes go brrrrr

Let me start by saying there are very few games even remotely close to War Thunder on the market. I started playing this game in 2013-2014 and for its time, it was amazing. The combined arms aspect of this game is amazing, the component based damage models and penetration models of the different shells, rockets, missiles and bullets is awesome. This is so close to being my ideal vehicle combat game. The models are very high quality and textures are gorgeous. The game is very pretty when you max out the graphics. Now to the problems:

You cannot progress in this game without playing it for literal years, or spending money. I am aware that free to play games need to have some source of income to fund development and server costs, but there are less predatory ways to do it. This game has a market, just like CS:GO or TF2, but because Gaijin doesn't understand what made those ingame economies successful (depth of items and customization, rarities, etc.), they fail to generate any Valve-level revenue from the market. This has caused them to try to make up the money somewhere else, and they chose to do that by making the grind so unbearable that you are forced to play the same vehicles on the same maps for years, or spend money. Now, back when I started the game, if you bought premium to unlock the extra silver lions (ingame free currency you earn by playing) and research points (in game experience that unlocks different vehicles and components), and you grinded the game, you could progress at a reasonable pace. Another option was to pay a one time amount to get a medallion on a vehicle, and this was basically a multiplier for SL/RP earnings on that vehicle. As of now, in order to progress, you have to not only have a premium account, but you also have to buy premium vehicles/medallions (real money vehicles that are basically the same as the free vehicles you can get, but in some cases are insanely overpowered for the tier they fight at.)

Because of this, many free-to-play or new players are turned off from continuing to play the game and Gaijin are shooting themselves in the foot by culling the potential player base. For comparison, DCS World is a free flight simulator with PVP combat. In that game, spending $60 gets you a full fidelity aircraft with professionally developed flight models that very closely resemble real life. You can buy one of these planes and have 100s of hours of things to learn and do. In war thunder, $60 gets you an arcade level aircraft with a much lower barrier of entry, but the cost doesn't stop there. You have to pay (SL) to refill the ammo of your aircraft every time you die or shoot, you have to pay to repair the aircraft if you die. And because gaijin balances the game around a negative SL income for the average player (they admitted this), you can end up in a downward negative spiral of money where you can't afford to use the $60 plane or tank you just bought to try to earn more money, and have to start playing in a different country or battle rating just to be able to play the game. This is simply unacceptable.

Now to recent drama: Players got fed up with the state of the economy in this game, and started leaving negative reviews on steam because Gaijin refused to listen to players on the forums or in discord. They will delete messages from players that they don't agree with, etc. For example, Gaijin claims they try to balance the game according to real life and that realism is one of their goals. A major content creator for WarThunder, Spookston, paid $800 to purchase declassified documents on a vehicle to prove to gaijin that the stats that they had for said vehicle were wrong in game, and gaijin flat out ignored it and said no that it wouldn't be changed.

In response to the negative reviews, Gaijin threatened to shut down the game all together, saying that no one will win. The only problem here is, no one needs War Thunder to survive, but war thunder pays Gaijn's salary. Until Gaijin changes their attitude towards their playbase and respects the players that put money in their pockets every month, I cannot recommend this game to anyone.

Edit: 9/9/2023
The game has received some changes to the economy that fix many of the problems that are mentioned in this review. The whole "get stuck in a downward spiral of not being able to afford to play" problems are gone, but the game is still a slog. Just be prepared to play the game for several months to get any nation to top tier modern vehicles. You'll still need premium time/premium vehicles/medallions to get anywhere meaningful before the heat death of the universe.

Do not buy this game, even if you are a huge fan of Warhammer/Fatshark. This game is not finished. It will not be finished in a few months. The updates prove they don't care about user retention. They only care about their FOMO Cash shop when half of the features promised on launch still aren't implemented and the game has been officially released for over half of a month now. The game runs like crap and the devs basically said "Haha but it's pretty!" Worst of all, there are people who will defend Fatshark because they like their previous games. 2/10, Overhyped 4k version of L4D without any of the things that made their (fatshark) previous games successful.


Edit 1/25/2023:

Fatshark releases a statement to the players after a month of radio silence. It's your typical "sorry we scammed you." Still do not recommend.

Want to do something that may be morally objectionable? You can do it in this game.

Visceral Shooter that is well worth the price. Devs are active and the game is a lot of fun!

Soccer, but with cars. You probably know what this game is. Competitive ladder reminds me of my days grinding counter strike. Very fun!

It's autochess from valve. It's fun, reasonably balanced, etc. They update it pretty regularly, and it's on mobile. :)