the gameplay is arguably the best simcade vehicle combat game in existence, but that’s not saying much since there is virtually no competition. In fact the only area that has is the sim experience which has basically died in warthunder with most sim players leaving to games like Il-2 or DCS, and its not that the gameplay of warthunder sim is much worse than these other games, the main difference between warthunder and these other flight combat games is that warthunder has am economy which works to punish the playerbase and the rewards for sim have been nerfed time after time while the cost of playing (repair costs) have only gone up. This isn’t a sim issue alone as all game modes have suffered similar, but sim has become unplayable. The economy in its current state exists sole to get players to spend money by creating frustration, and while that has always been the case and will always be the case with free to play games I remember a time where I could play the game and not have to worry about economy BS, back then paying just made things easier and felt like a worthwhile investment but now it is basically required to keep from losing sliver lions (the in game currency) with every match. This doesn’t even touch on the grind where it takes exceedingly long to get a new vehicle after tier 2 or 3 (which is particularly scummy since all of the marketing focuses on tier 6 modern vehicles), in the past one could pay to grind faster and it was noticeable but now rewards are so low that it doesn’t feel like much changed, and this doesn’t even get into the grind for the money to buy a new vehicle after you finally research it. The devs have also shown no signs of fixing these economy issues as every update they get worse, sometimes they will cross a line and cause outrage (like is currently happening) which will get them to revert a change but that only tells them to introduce the change more slowly so we don’t notice it at the time, this is a well-documented tactic of the devs who will always get their way in the end, even if it makes the game worse.

TL;DR: game has a terrible economy which is designed to force players to pay money to survive and an excruciatingly long grind to entice player to pay for the several methods to “skip it”, which the devs have only made worse as time has gone on and I believe will only make worse.

the gameplay is arguably the best simcade vehicle combat game in existence, but that’s not saying much since there is virtually no competition. In fact the only area that has is the sim experience which has basically died in warthunder with most sim players leaving to games like Il-2 or DCS, and its not that the gameplay of warthunder sim is much worse than these other games, the main difference between warthunder and these other flight combat games is that warthunder has am economy which works to punish the playerbase and the rewards for sim have been nerfed time after time while the cost of playing (repair costs) have only gone up. This isn’t a sim issue alone as all game modes have suffered similar, but sim has become unplayable. The economy in its current state exists sole to get players to spend money by creating frustration, and while that has always been the case and will always be the case with free to play games I remember a time where I could play the game and not have to worry about economy BS, back then paying just made things easier and felt like a worthwhile investment but now it is basically required to keep from losing sliver lions (the in game currency) with every match. This doesn’t even touch on the grind where it takes exceedingly long to get a new vehicle after tier 2 or 3 (which is particularly scummy since all of the marketing focuses on tier 6 modern vehicles), in the past one could pay to grind faster and it was noticeable but now rewards are so low that it doesn’t feel like much changed, and this doesn’t even get into the grind for the money to buy a new vehicle after you finally research it. The devs have also shown no signs of fixing these economy issues as every update they get worse, sometimes they will cross a line and cause outrage (like is currently happening) which will get them to revert a change but that only tells them to introduce the change more slowly so we don’t notice it at the time, this is a well-documented tactic of the devs who will always get their way in the end, even if it makes the game worse. TL;DR: game has a terrible economy which is designed to force players to pay money to survive and an excruciatingly long grind to entice player to pay for the several methods to “skip it”, which the devs have only made worse as time has gone on and I believe will only make worse.