- For PC
- For MAC
- For Linux
- OS: Windows 7 SP1/8/10 (64 bit)
- Processor: Dual-Core 2.2 GHz
- Memory: 4GB
- Video Card: DirectX 10.1 level video card: AMD Radeon 77XX / NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660. The minimum supported resolution for the game is 720p.
- Network: Broadband Internet connection
- Hard Drive: 17 GB
- OS: Windows 10/11 (64 bit)
- Processor: Intel Core i5 or Ryzen 5 3600 and better
- Memory: 16 GB and more
- Video Card: DirectX 11 level video card or higher and drivers: Nvidia GeForce 1060 and higher, Radeon RX 570 and higher
- Network: Broadband Internet connection
- Hard Drive: 95 GB
- OS: Mac OS Big Sur 11.0 or newer
- Processor: Core i5, minimum 2.2GHz (Intel Xeon is not supported)
- Memory: 6 GB
- Video Card: Intel Iris Pro 5200 (Mac), or analog from AMD/Nvidia for Mac. Minimum supported resolution for the game is 720p with Metal support.
- Network: Broadband Internet connection
- Hard Drive: 17 GB
- OS: Mac OS Big Sur 11.0 or newer
- Processor: Core i7 (Intel Xeon is not supported)
- Memory: 8 GB
- Video Card: Radeon Vega II or higher with Metal support.
- Network: Broadband Internet connection
- Hard Drive: 95 GB
- OS: Most modern 64bit Linux distributions
- Processor: Dual-Core 2.4 GHz
- Memory: 4 GB
- Video Card: NVIDIA 660 with latest proprietary drivers (not older than 6 months) / similar AMD with latest proprietary drivers (not older than 6 months; the minimum supported resolution for the game is 720p) with Vulkan support.
- Network: Broadband Internet connection
- Hard Drive: 17 GB
- OS: Ubuntu 20.04 64bit
- Processor: Intel Core i7
- Memory: 16 GB
- Video Card: NVIDIA 1060 with latest proprietary drivers (not older than 6 months) / similar AMD (Radeon RX 570) with latest proprietary drivers (not older than 6 months) with Vulkan support.
- Network: Broadband Internet connection
- Hard Drive: 95 GB
Dear players! We see that you have many questions and observations about how the economy and progression work in War Thunder. Kirill Yudintsev, creative director of Gaiijn, is best suited to explain all of this.
Player progression is essential. You can't give a player everything at once, because it will overwhelm and make the game very difficult for them and they will just leave it either immediately or almost immediately. This has been tested by us many times in different ways. When applied to our game, later vehicles are almost always more difficult to learn and play tactically, in the controls and with its capabilities. Progression provides opportunities for gradual learning and engaging the players. Without it, the game will lose players right from the start.
In addition, progression serves as one of the basics of how a game makes money (basically players pay for acceleration of progression).
The fundamental difference between paid games and fair play free-2-play games is that you don't have to pay to play free games, and most players don't actually pay.
Most War Thunder players - about 80% - have never paid a dime into a game, whilst playing for months or years. Many of those players who have paid for something in the game don't pay every month (and sometimes not every year) either. Nevertheless, all of the maintenance to the game, all of its development, servers, and support, is provided by those players who pay.
In any game players play only when they have fun. But in a f2p game, players only pay if the game really entertains them. The player is already playing, already having fun, and pays if they want to support the game, or try something new, which is, at the same time, not necessary to enjoy the game (otherwise they would just quit playing and not pay at all).
Hence the unobvious conclusion: the less you have to pay to play the game, the more differently priced paid options it should have, so that those who can afford it can spend more, and those who can't or don't want to can play for free and have fun.
There are many progression and economy options in F2P games. Not all of them are suitable for our game, because War Thunder is about real combat vehicles, which are not equal, differing in power and capabilities.
To quickly and roughly summarize, the general principles of economy and progression in our game:
- vehicles should be unlocked gradually, from simpler and older to more complex and later
- the total time to get the first "top" vehicle should be a balanced (not too long not too short) number of game hours
- the player should at the beginning of the game route (while mastering the game) get new in-game equipment often enough
- The game has to earn money, otherwise it will be closed. And it must make money without a pay wall, so you can play indefinitely without paying anything (so there is no deception that the game is "free" when in fact it is not). Income should provide everyone the opportunity to play a multiplayer game with multiple modes and features
- Progression and economy should, as far as possible, provide a variety of vehicles encountered in battle, otherwise it's just boring. I.e. there should not be too many "farming" vehicles, and especially if they are statistically stronger in battles (otherwise only the same popular vehicles will appear in battle).
- In a game with so many vehicles and modes it's impossible to manually adjust the in-game economy (it's important that it obeys specific rules, and manual changes to them would skew a vehicle’s effectiveness, making some vehicles "bad" and others much better than average, and thus affecting their occurrence in battles).
On the basis of these theses the economy is “adjusted” (algorithmically based on statistics).
About once every couple of years we revise it globally, as new vehicles are added to the current trees, and the rest of the time, to a lesser degree, "correct" the economy, using accumulated statistics.
The current progression and economy system is not the only possible system for game economy principles. There are also, for example, systems based on randomness or on the exchange of virtual objects between players. However, without even considering the limitations on different platforms associated with these options, any such significant changes are unlikely to be well received. After all, our community is formed of people who accept the current economy and progression in basic principles, or rather they may even like it in general.
So it turns out that the main key parameter that we can change without significant harm to the game and players is a revision of the total time to reach the top and get the whole line (with some smaller tweaks like modification research speed, balance of repair\gain and so on). We have already done this kind of revision three times, and it's probably time for the next one. This work takes many weeks, so we will probably show the planned changes in the second half of the summer.
We are no doubt open to other suggestions (and we have many of our own), but we doubt that a complete transformation of the progression into something completely new will be accepted by many players, no matter how much we would like to do it ourselves. We'll still try to come up with something new in the progression, and we'll definitely consider all of your suggestions.
Separately, a few words about review bombing as a method of communication
Separately, a few words about review bombing as a method of communication. As many of our players know - we've repeatedly reverted both planned and already released large and small changes (including in the economy and progression). Due to threads on reddit (where much of the western English-speaking community communicates) and with threads on the forums and comments to articles on the site. We value our players and our game, not our updates and changes. If we know that the majority of the community doesn't want an update, we cancel or revert it immediately. Even if some part supports and some part opposes - we prefer conservatively the "do no harm" principle - keeping the current status quo.
Of course, a review on Steam is also a platform for expression. However, the majority of new players just look at the score evaluation, and do not read the text of reviews and do not go into what they were left for. So review bombing does damage to the game in that new players simply won't try it, while it doesn't raise their awareness of the problems you've noticed. If your goal is not to hurt the game, please use other, less destructive ways. For example, leave feedback in our forum, and suggestions specifically about the economy we are inviting in the feedback form. Also, review bombing will not cause modifying or nullifying in-game prices - if the game is shut down, no one wins.
Radical, revolutionary changes in games that have been around for years are always very difficult to make, because they will almost certainly break gameplay for a significant part of the players. We try to proceed according to the principle "do no harm" and change the game carefully. However, if a topic receives a lot of support from the community - we do everything possible to support the players. We commit to follow the feedback even more carefully in the future and take it into account when defining our plans for the development of the game.
If you still have questions - ask in the comments, and in the future we will try to clarify all unclear points.
Comments (269)
Comments will be premoderatedI have spent thousands of dollars on this game, have only ever used a premium account and almost exclusively use premium vehicles to grind out tech trees. Because of the absolutely terrible economy in the game, I STILL don’t make any kind of enjoyable progression towards new vehicles and I’m getting really tired of you guys nerfing it even more. Players WILL pay for cool things if you give them the opportunity, but nobody should have to pay to make reasonable progress. The grind just is not fun.
Here is my 2 cents. Crew xp needs to have the same xp per rp gain across all game modes. Repair costs and BR need to be reduced for unpopular vehicles. Parts and fpe should be stock on all ships. The extra modification rp cost for end line vehicles should be removed. Crew skills should be gained faster. The BR spread in the MM needs to be reduced. There are way too many under utilized vehicles because of bad MM. Right now prem account feels like where the F2P should be, and should be addressed.
People aren't asking for a complete change, most players don't want to hop on a game, and lose match after match after match only for them to find out they can't pay for repairs, and I am talking higher tier. Yes one could say just get better, but if you care about ALL your players that includes the "bad" one too. Just spitballing an idea here, repair costs lower themselves after every loss in a row, then climbs or resets after a win. players want to feel progress, not stalling out.
Consider this, Gaijin guys, maybe you are just extremely stubborn and blind drinking coffee in your headquarters while your players are giving their lives out here, grinding absurdly for the next part of their vehicle, being killed in seconds, even paying for all the premiums you offer, GE, Prem Account, Prem Vehicles, etc. Come on, your customers are not stupid, and there is a lot of grown up people here, put your feet on the ground again and redesign this in a way "reasonable to live with".
dear Gaijin, obviouslyyou are not understanding what is happening. let me recap it for you: warthunder is a great game, very loved by the community. your attitude for the player base is not: the community said enough with your pay to win direction because is done in a non transparent way and most importantly is ruining the game experience. I would suggest you to look what happened to WoT, which had a similar attitude. people are addresing a lot of feedback on WT forum and are totally ignored.
Oh Gaijin. This shows how out of touch you are with us. There is no steady and balanced progression. You either have a Premium of Rank VI or VII or you cant expect to go further than rank IV. Premium Vehicles like the F-5C, T-72AV(Turms), KA-50, 2S38, Su-11, Su-25K, MiG-23ML, any High tier Premium really get spammed by people who quit after one death. Its no fun for anyone, especially with many premiums are very broken and straight up overpowered.
For real i think they could do better U would think they would be reasonable in their response yet i will agree that they did roll back some things Cause that was a bad idea and i think most would probably be turned away from how much slower the grind would become. but they Kept pushing it. Understanding the fact that they are a company that they do want to make some form of return from the game.
all that you have said sir is correct, but many of the changes that were made for balancing purpose in the past never been reviewed, for example ka50-52 coz of pvp mode it was nerfed alot it doesnt turn at all while in reality its better turning than any other one, most swedish tanks autoloaders were nerfed and never put back to full auto also automatic italian also nerfed with no full apfsds and never brought back to full auto with full apfsd,hstvl auto but bad post pen while 2s38 is full auto
I have sent my feedback already, but if the concern is player progression is too fast, then what needs to be looked at is the fastest method of progression: premium vehicles. Setting the earning system to time based doesn't exactly address this issue, it will encourage use of premiums more. A reevaluation of premium vehicle earnings should be made.
And cause I have to separate this - I have premium, I can do well in battles, only downed a couple times but shoot down 5, 6 planes, other things hit cause objectives or landing, and barely breaking even, which drastically slows my progression down when I have to go to low tiers to grind credits. To say nothing of some planes with no missiles or CM vs ones with, and having to grind out missiles, CM or even bombs on attackers, or lack of repair/FPE on ships/tanks that is a damn headache grinding.
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