Recent reviews by FailBro

Great factory builder game with realistic terrain deformation. Watching trucks create desire paths is incredibly satisfying

Oh boy...it's a long one, buckle up.

I'll start by saying War Thunder is an amazing game, I love it, I play almost every day and I have a 500 day and counting login streak. If you want a reason why this particlar review should be taken seriously please look at how many reviews I have written, what detail they contained (none), and how many hours I have had in this game. I hope this shows I don't leave reviews for no reason, and I have taken a decent portion of my day to specifcally write this one.

I have been playing on and off since 2014 and have probably spent in the region of £500 to £1000 on premium time and (only recently) a few premiums. If you are looking for a realistic but still fun miliarty combat vechicle game then this is absolutely the game for you. It's World of Tanks, World of Warships and World of Planes all in one game (the reason i was attracted to the game in the first place is I used to play all three of the afformentioned. Now just War Thunder) The graphics are stunning on high end rigs, and it will even play on your Nan's laptop if you don't mind N64 style graphics (the point is it'll run). However Gaijin (the developers) are toxic and are milking their cash cow dry.

I won't go into much details as many other comments have covered it over and over. I'm now just adding my vote to the record. however here are a few things I'd like to address:

The grind in the game has always been hell, but that is what you sign up for in a free to play game. I was fortunate enough to join the game before the explosion of content it has had in the last couple of years. I started playing just before British tanks were added, I ground most of the British air and tank trees before jets were even rumoured, so when jets were added the grind wasnt so bad for me. However new players, starting from scratch with 0 experience are unlikely to play with Jets until they either hand over their card details or spend close to 1,000 hours of grinding, however long that takes you in real time will depend on your desire to have stable employment or a social life.

I mentioned that I have spent money on War Thunder. In no way does a new player absolutely have to spend money on this game, and I would previously say "it just speeds things up", in truth its the only way to make your experience profitable *above teir 3* (early WWII tanks). Without premium, rewards are pathetic, and research for critial modifications takes too long. The few things you do unlock only so marginally improve the performance of your vehicle you have to wonder if theres any point at all. I'd wager 50% of players who've ever tried War Thunder never progressed past teir III because thats where the grind really starts.
Premium time + premium vehicles is the only real way currently to earn the in game currency reliably, effectively locking your free-to-play currency behind a pay-to-win wall. Sure you can profit in start vehicles with a basic account, but you'd need to be better than every single Youtuber and Twitch streamer you've ever watched, drop a nuke every game and wait for your free repair before playing again when you die (which can take days)

Naval at rank 4.7 i find is best for grinding SL, but I have 3 premium ships (Candiz, Jervis, Valhalla) and of course premium time which does bolster my reward. But the game mode is filled with AI AFK bots that grind SL in a single premium ship and leave as soon as they die. These accounts are likely sold on for a profit by these exploiters, highlighting that the issues with the ecconmy are so dramatic people would rather spend money on fake accounts than actually play the game.

When you die in this game you have to repair your vehicle. This at low teirs doesnt seem like an issue. You get a few thousand SL for a win and your reserves and low teirs are free/a couple hundred to repair, excellent. On a few vehicles you may even unlock the next one in the tree before using all of your 10 free repairs, brilliant! But then you hit teir 3, and just like British wages for the last decade you'll realise your rewards aren't going up as fast as that repair cost number. And every new modification you add to your vehicle to make it better adds even more cost to your vehicle. Soon you'll get to a stage where you're earning 20,000SL a game and spending 30,000 on repair cost.
A certain amount of this i understand, they are attempting to encorage players to play different teirs, trees, and nations and use the free repair to bring the costs down. If for example you did one game of every tech tree and rank by the time you got back to your start it would likely be repaired (up to teir 4 at least). However many players have joined this game with the explicit purpose of playing one particular vehicle, nation, or class of vehicles. For those players expecting them to grind every tree just so they can have the pleasure of playing their chosen vehicle once every 2 weeks isn't reasonable. And reasearching multple trees only increases your overall SL spending on new vehicles.

Balancing of vehciles is questionable at best, blatantly ignorant at worst. Russia is so biased it's just become a joke now (have a look at the repair cost of a russian MBT versus a British or American one), and their claim of historical accuracy is questionable. Several "paper" projects that never even left concept are fully in game with their theoritical statistics per blueprint (not based on any real performace, and therefore are OP, Krondstadt i'm looking at you) while other vehicles that have full concepts, prototypes, or full scale mockups have been refused.

Gaijin have also been contradictory with where they add vehicles into the trees:

M1A1 AIM - Tank built in america, fielded by the Australians (a British Commonwealth), put in American tree

Hunter F.58 - build in England, fielded by Switzerland, Put in German tree (because *some* of the Swiss speak a *version* of german)

Gaijin stated the Hunter was added to the German tree because it was feidled by the swiss who are more closely related to Germany than England, so by that logic the M1A1 AIM should absolutely be in the british tree as Australia is definteily more closely related to England that America.
Gaijin also stated that the M1A1 AIM was added to the American tree because it doesnt matter where a tank was used, just were it was made.
These are clearly contradictory. Either the M1A1 AIM should be British and keep with the Hunter F.58 rule, or the Hunter should be British to allign with the M1A1 rule.

My suggestions on how I would improve the game at the moment:

Bring the free reward SL up to the level of the premium reward bonus, then multiply the current premium rewards by 1.5.
Reduce research speed (take more time) for new vehicles up to rank 6, leave everything above rank 6 as is
increase research speed (take less time) for new modiciations
increase SL output for medals by 2. IE first strike is now worth 1,000 lions. Add RP rewards to any medals mising one. SL reward = RP reward for medals.
Folder MORE vehicles OR reduce research cost for duplicated vehicles immediately after eachother in the tech tree. The 5 different varients of the Challenger 2 shouldn't be comepletely unique research Items. The 2F and TES, and 2E should be folder items for the Challenger 2. The next big reasearch item should be Black Knight at the top. An easier to related to example is the numerous Shermans after Shermans after Shermans in nearly all tech trees (with more Shermans planned! how exciting)


Gaijin really nailed their own coffin by releasing a statment saying leaving reviews isn't a valid method of comunication, having previously point blank ignored and out right deleted valid feedback on their forums, reddit, and community discords, etc. If this is the end of War Thunder as we know it so be it, but sending a message to Game developers that exploiting their users is unacceptable is more important.

Brilliant game, really fun to play, but kills it when players rush (although usually easily countered).