Recent reviews by Simon, the suicidal sandwich

DO NOT PLAY THIS GAME! IF YOU ALREADY DO, DON'T BUY ANYTHING AT ALL! FOR IN GAME MONEY OR REAL MONEY! WE NEED TO MAKE OURSELVES HEARD!

The developers are all scum, ALL OF THEM. You can say whatever you want about there being some "good ones that don't want things like these", but if a change goes through, THEY WANT IT TO. PERIOD. They are all bottom feeders that do not care for ANYTHING other than the money going into their wallets.

The recent changes to the game's economy and also grind (by forcing players to needlessly grind through even more vehicles to progress) are absolute PROOF of that and have made this game absolutely unplayable for anyone that doesn't give in and spend IRL money for premium vehicles or time. Do not waste your time with this ♥♥♥♥. I've been playing since 2012, had my current account since 2013, this is the worst that this game has ever been.

Wallet warriors and chinese bots are RUINING THIS GAME AND GAIJIN DOES NOTHING BUT KEEP ADDING MORE PREMIUMS AND MAKING THE GRIND WORSE TO FORCE YOU TO SPEND YOUR MONEY.

I loved this game. I really did. It was so incredible when it first started. And now it's going down the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, straight to it's own death. I hope things change.

Edit: 15:05 GMT - 18/05/2023
AS OF THE LAST HOUR, THEY HAVE REVERTED THE HORRIBLE ECONOMY CHANGES. THIS CHANGES NOTHING. THEY ARE STILL THE GREEDY BASTARDS THAT TRY THEIR BEST TO MAKE THE GAME AS UNPLAYABLE AS POSSIBLE FOR REGULAR FOLK THAT DON'T WANT TO SPEND MONEY ON IT. WE NEED MORE. WE NEED TO MAKE THEM TRULY UNDERSTAND THAT THEIR PREDATORY PRACTICES ARE NOT OKAY (they know it, but they don't care).

Edit: 21/05/2023 - 18:33

Have you heard us, Gaijin? Have you really, honestly, heard us? Because your response so far has been, to put it very politely, absolutely horrible. I don’t know how many people that reply went through until it got approval, because there clearly weren’t enough of them to stop you from putting it up on your site. You spoke to us in such a condescending tone, as if we were children, who didn’t even know how a F2P game is supposed to work and make money. I assure you, we do know. We know it better than you seem to, at the very least. For that very reason, we are angry. Angrier now than ever before. So, let’s go over some of the things that we have been angry about FOR A WHILE NOW.

First and foremost, the grind (or as you like to call it “progress”, even though it is so slow that using that word feels wrong). To call it “excessive” is an understatement of the highest order. Everyone knows it, even you guys. I have over 4.5k hours of gametime in total, been a player since 2013, and I have not completed a SINGLE TECH TREE, and not just the whole tree, but a single subdivision. I have reached Top Tier in USSR Ground and Air, and US Air. I have reached 7.0 in the German ground tree, 4.7 in the UK Air and Ground trees, 5.0 in Japanese Air tree, 4.0 in the Swedish Ground tree, and NOTHING ELSE. Think about it, that with almost 5k hours in this game, I’m not even close to being halfway done researching everything I could get in game. 5 THOUSAND HOURS, Gaijin. 5 THOUSAND HOURS in ANY OTHER GAME would mean I likely know EVERYTHING that there is to know about it, but in War Thunder? Not even near halfway finished with all the vehicles. I should not be FORCED to buy premium time or vehicles just to be able to progress at a relatively OK pace, not quick, just decente pace. Not to mention all of the overpowered/undertiered premiums you have added over these last few years, like the Su-11, XP-50 (this one is so much better than anything at it’s BR its not even funny). Even if you DOUBLED the rewards and multipliers for EVERY vehicle currently in game and KEPT ALL OF THE PRICES AND RP REQUIREMENTS THE SAME, it would still not be enough to consider it “okay”.
Second, the economy. It is my personal belief that you have either no playtesters on your team, or you willfully ignore any of the bad things they bring up just so you can continue to act like they don’t exist (this doesn’t apply Only to the economy). So many tanks and aircraft in game have such bad modifiers, or ridiculously high repair costs, that it makes playing them inviable. The perfect example is Top Tier Air RB, where the average repair cost for a plane is almost 15k SL for a single repair, meaning a F2P player needs, on average, 4 kills to not lose SL in case he dies. Why does it need to be that high? Why can’t I play the vehicles I want to without going bankrupt from a single death? And I’m sure you know that Simulator is even worse, with those same aircraft costing between 20-25k to SPAWN, not even repair (that mechanic should be changed or abolished, to make it like the other gamemodes. I should not need to pay BEFORE I spawn, especially in a gamemode that is so much more difficult and complex than the other ones). Another example, the E-100, a very rare 7.7-8.0 event vehicle, that has the same SL multiplier as the StuG III F while it costs over 9k SL. Is that something you seriously believe is okay? Or the Maus, at the same BR, that has the same SL multiplier as the first Panther at 5.3-5.7. Explain how that works. Explain why a High Tier vehicle that faces Cold War vehicles has the same rewards as a Mid Tier one.

Third, premiums, and more specifically, the top tier stuff. Why? Why add Top Tier premiums? You once said you didn’t want people to buy their way to the top, so why? If you play any number of matches above BR 9.0, chances are most, if not all of them, will be FILLED with premiums, bought by players that are not even CLOSE to that Battle Rating in the regular tech tree, with account levels varying from 3 to 30 and with about 10 other vehicles unlocked. A few examples are F-5C, A-10, A-6, MiG-23ML and MiG-21 “Lazur-M”, F-4S and the EJ(UK), the A-5C, T-72AV, 2S38, M1128 Wolfpack, Premium Leopards in the German tech tree, ZTZ96A, Challenger DS, and more that I can’t remember at this time. Anything above Battle Rating 9.0 is already considered Top Tier, because you have almost everything that Top Tier has, like stabilized guns, thermal sights, composite armor and ERA, laser rangefinders, modern shells (APDS-FS and HEAT-FS, HE-VT or proximity fuse, ATGMS, etc). Top Tier is not just over 11.0, and we all know it.

And finally, your actions, Gaijin.
As much as you try to spin that change you tried to implement as "beneficial to the playerbase", it is more than obvious that it was not, and it's clear that, at least the leadership of, Gaijin sees us players as nothing but a fat cow that you can milk for all you could possibly want. You have been milking this game for over 10 years now, and we have grown tired of it. Of the increased repair costs, the nerfed rewards and multipliers and also all of the ridiculous things that happen in game. I mean, we even have created an expression for moments when we get screwed over: “Getting Gaijin’d”, and that shows just how often it happens. Remember how you said you would not introduce top tier premiums, because you didn't want players to buy their way to the top? Remember when you said you weren't "the greedy bastards"? What happened to that statement? What happened to the Gaijin that wanted to offer a great game, instead of a " technically F2P, but if you don't spend money you will not progress at all" game. I've been playing since 2013, and even with all of the good that came to the game in this time, I've seen it fall farther and farther, still, with every bad or idiotic choice you have made. I wish the Gaijin I knew back then still existed.

And, even with this wall of text, it still wasn’t enough to bring up all of the bad things you have done over the years. I do wish we didn’t have to reach this point. Review bombing and the whole community up in Arms because of all of your bad decisions and the way you’ve been treating us, but it was inevitable. I hope things get better.

Edit - 01/11/2024
Greedy ♥♥♥♥♥ are back, so another neg

Devs are useless, and somehow more incompetent than EA and DICE.
BF2042 isn't as bad as this game, at least you can get past the initial loading screen.

"Open Beta" (also known as "The 53%", "USER TOKEN EXPIRED. RESTART THE GAME", "USER AUTHENTICATION EXPIRED" and "Servers Are Down For Maintenance" Era), which was already 7 MONTHS LATE since they promised it would happen at the start of the year, is complete ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

Let's all go over the ♥♥♥♥ that has been happening and maybe then Farm53% will understand the monumental ♥♥♥♥ up that this is.

1. 3 day headstart - Yeah, no. No one managed to play this ♥♥♥♥ for any meaningful amount of time. 3 day headstart, more like 3 hour, at most. Wow, double XP, pretty useful when you CAN'T PLAY THE GAME, EH?

2. Horrible, just horrible errors that not even the incompetent ♥♥♥♥♥ at DICE managed to ♥♥♥♥ up this bad, yet - Examples:
- Initial loading for everything just stopped at 53% and would simply not do anything when you try to reload again. You're forever stuck at that screen until the "User Authentication Ticket" expires and the game tells you to go ♥♥♥♥ yourself and go back to the sometimes 2k+ person queue in the launcher by closing itself, which would take another 10 minutes, at least.
- Zombie lobbies (game loaded you into a lobby and when the match started, you were booted to another one by yourself, alone and could not enter another game unless you went and manually changed your game selection, which made "Quick Play" pretty much useless.
- "Error 151: Something went wrong" Yeah, no ♥♥♥♥, tell us WHAT WENT WRONG AND WHAT YOU ARE DOING TO FIX IT.
- Constant "timeouts", even while in matches, which would sometimes crash the game, AND GUESS WHAT? THERE YOU GO, TO THE BACK OF THAT LINE AGAIN, SUCKER!
- Abnormal stuttering. I don't know if this was a problem with anyone else, but the game would sometimes stutter at the weirdest times. Walking around the map, stutters. Entering an objective, stutter. Got a kill? Well, after the text vanishes, stutter. Bruh, is this game a downloadable memory leak?
- Many other smaller/less common errors that happen all the time.

3. Servers were crashing constantly - Seriously, if you managed to get more than like 5 hours in during the headstart, congratu-♥♥♥♥♥♥-lations. Servers were down constantly, either because of crashes or "Maintenance" (which I seriously believe they used as an excuse to mask how much crashing there really was, judging by how incompetent they seem to be at EVERYTHING). And after the headstart, it somehow got even worse. Even the inventory servers were down. IT'S NOT EVEN THE GAME SERVERS!


Like, c'mon, guys, admit it. Tarkov on WIPE DAY has like 100k+ players all trying to download and play the game at the same time, and it's not even 5% of the level of awful that this is.

If they don't fix this monumental ♥♥♥♥ up, the industry will shun all of these developers, or at least they should, because they showed they don't give a ♥♥♥♥ about the game, or the players. OH, YEAH, AND THE SHOP IS STILL UP! YOU CAN BUY ♥♥♥♥ IN A GAME YOU CAN'T EVEN ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ PLAY! Talk about money hungry devs, huh? Oh, yeah, and if you bought ♥♥♥♥ on the shop, it won't show up in your inventory because, remember, the inventory system is ALSO ♥♥♥♥♥♥.

And yes, I did pay for Early Access before this ♥♥♥♥ game became even more ♥♥♥♥ in these last few days, regretting it more every day that passes. Oh, have I also mentioned they didn't even offer any sort of compensation for this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥? Yeah, none, zilch, nada.

If you think I'm being too hard or exaggerating, go to their Twitter or Discord server. There's even more ♥♥♥♥ there than I covered here.

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Here is an edit, made around 2 hours after the original review went up.

Game is "playable". Still has errors, still has infinite loading in lobbies, menus and matches. Error 151 and 53% is still a thing. BUT you can indeed log in. Sometimes. Still ♥♥♥♥, hope that changes.

_____________________________

Another edit, made 30 minutes after the previous edit.
Servers are ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ themselves, all errors are back, 53% is our Lord and Saviour, all Hail Error 151 [SOMETHING WENT WRONG], and the Holy [AUTHENTICATION TICKET EXPIRED], the Holy Trinity, amen.

Somehow even more ♥♥♥♥. Devs are more incompetent than previously thought.
0/10
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Another edit, made 07/10/2022, a couple days after the last edit.

Congratulations to the developer team. The game is now what I could classify as "Playable", though performance seems rather decreased. Could be just because of the last maintenance, needs a few days to see if it'll remain like this or return to normal.

Errors still happen somewhat often (still way too often by any real industry standards), game still doesn't let you log in sometimes (often cites "too many players", doubtful, and likely means they haven't really improved the servers in any real capacity), simply allowing your "user token" to expire and then kicks you back out forcing you to relaunch their horrible launcher that they should have ditched the moment after they started using it and it became clear it was ♥♥♥♥.

Still very little communication from the devs, resuming simply to "Server Maintenance at XX:XX time" and "Servers are back online", sometimes with a short list of what they fixed. 1/10 on that front. Better than zero communication, but still completely unacceptable.

You can get a few matches in before an Error possibly kicks you out of the game.

Congratulations, score increased to a 2/10; polished turd for now. Still no trust left in Farm53%.
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Well, look at that! Today is October 9th, 2022.

The game is not only playable, but they have managed to lower the frequency that the errors show up! Performance is still a bit... eh? It's still somewhat lower than before the Open Beta, and now the servers themselves seem to be having slight latency problems, with many people experiencing unstable connections, but that seems to be a mostly temporary problem that can be fixed with the existence of more servers in more locations, something which has been a thing since the game entered Alpha and Beta all those years ago, so it can't be blamed on the latest ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Farm53% still seems to be at a standstill on that front.

Still little to no communication, mostly, as their social media is still only about Maintenance times and durations, but I've seen them being more active in the comments, responding to users, so... That's good!

Hope this upwards trajectory continues until this game is genuinely good, and the devs honor their promises. But my trust in them is still zero. 4 years to fix problems that they knew existed, and they fixed nothing in that time, only added and changed the contents of the game, basically. They only got to fixing them once they realized they were up to their neck in ♥♥♥♥ and the fans made their hatred for their ♥♥♥♥♥♥ actions known.

In summary:
Connection to the game seems to be somewhat unstable, still little communication from devs, but is an improvement, as they do respond to comments on social media, you can now log in most times and enter matches relatively quickly, suffering little with errors and crashes, though performance still seems a little laggy sometimes.

4/10, not a turd! On the way to become a good game worth the time. Still no Twitch Drops or compensating the people who paid for this game and couldn't play because of this whole ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, but I hope they do make it right.