War Thunder
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It's a F2P game that's been about for a few years. It's a historical PvP shooter with tanks, planes and combinations of the two. It's grindy as fuck, full of awful decisions made to frustrate players into spending money, spawn camping cuntrags and some of the vehicles are essentially broken. So it's not the game for people looking for a casual shooter.
That said, if the idea of battling Tiger tanks in a T-34 appeals, this is the place to do it. The vehicles are modelled down to the last screw and have accurate armour, guns, speed etc and players have to learn how to angle the tank to increase chance of ricochet as well as where opponents store their ammo for a better chance of a kill. So it's pretty involved if you want it to be.
It's also one of those games that when it's good, it's great. Not long after I first downloaded it, I was in a biplane, climbing like hell to get this bomber that was sitting several thousand feet above me. Took ages to get level with it. Once I caught up to it, he dived straight down with me right behind him. We went from 6,000ft to a few hundred in just a few seconds absolutely vertically with this battle raging all around us. As we started to level out, I was still shooting my shitty little machine guns into his frame as much as I could. Someone swooped in from the side and took him out. 10 minutes of dementedly determined work good it an instant (you do get some points for an 'assist'). I had to laugh at the absurdity of it.
Most games you'll drive to the battle front, only to be taken out by someone before you even fire a shot. But when that doesn't happen the game can be superb.
You can play air battles or ground battles. Arcade, realistic and sim mode are available. German, Russian, USA, UK, France and Japan all have 'tech trees' with Italy coming soon.
Download it here: https://warthunder.com/en
Couple of videos here. This one is best from the 10 min until the end of the dog fight.
Some gameplay vids:
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I have been playing this quite a bit recently. Mostly Brit tanks as the tree is smaller so I managed to get higher up quicker. Wonder if anyone else from here plays it, or has even heard of it?
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I have, and do. Although planes exclusively.
And I haven’t played much recently, it gets to the point where the grind to get to the next plane and modify the one you’re flying becomes hard going. Also, after the 1,000th time you’ve played the same map a touch of ennui begins to set in.
The first few months I played it though, I was borderline obsessed. It can be wonderful, and I grew up with an RAF grandfather who instilled a love of WWII aircraft in me, so the chance to fly them (sort of) is a dream come true.
Some days the spawncamping can just be unbearable though, I’m surprised they haven’t done anything about it. They must lose plenty of potential customers just because the newbies get sick of being stomped by people who’ve been playing for five years+. It’s very unforgiving for new players anyway (especially PS4 players who have far more difficult controls to deal with).
I’ll probably hop back in when the next update comes as they’re adding the He177, one of my fave planes. -
Iv played it and had a few mates who absolutely loved it.
The menus were too difficult for me and didnt really get the menu systems very well. -
The grind and everything that comes with the F2P model is excruciating at times. I can't imagine the numbers of people that must be put off by it. They've just added the Abrams & Challenger 1 era tanks which has thrown the higher tiers into further disarray as there's no balance. Thankfully, I'm not there yet so it doesn't affect where I tend to play.
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This is out on Xbox today, I believe, if anyone is interested.
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Matt_82 wrote:The grind and everything that comes with the F2P model is excruciating at times. I can't imagine the numbers of people that must be put off by it. They've just added the Abrams & Challenger 1 era tanks which has thrown the higher tiers into further disarray as there's no balance. Thankfully, I'm not there yet so it doesn't affect where I tend to play.
Is there not a T80 or T90 to compete? -
If they’re not in already then they soon will be, fleecing punters for money each update by introducing newer and better tanks is part of the business model. Not that I’m arsed, I’m a strictly aircraft man myself.
I can’t really criticise, I’ve spent way too much time researching obscure planes I barely fly (I didn’t know half these French/Italian aircraft even existed) -
A bunch of high tier tanks have been added to the game with this patch. Russian tanks have fallen behind a bit, though, for the moment.
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What's the top aircraft in it now?
And have they not introduced the T14 Armata yet? The survivability of that thing is impressive. -
Armata is probably a bit away yet. And it's still completely classified. 80s tanks is the level they're at right now.
Planes are behind that. They've said that A2A missiles aren't a fun game mechanic so it's unlikely we'll see them soon. So jets are Korean War era. -
That makes sense with the jets. There is enough info about the T14 though for them to stick it in the game. Might be difficult to balance though.
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Unless they change their attitude to air-to-air missiles then jets are never going to progress much beyond the early 50’s. Early MiGS, G91’s, Hunters and Sabre’s are as far as they go.
Which is fine by me as jet combat is pretty tedious tbf and most of the fun is in mid-tier WWII stuff. You have to grind for hours & hours to get your jet to the stage where it’s anything more than cannon fodder anyway, and getting repeatedly shot down before you even make it to the target isn’t very pleasurable. They’ll probably introduce helicopters eventually, and naval battles are definitely coming.
World War 2 is pretty much all I’m interested in though. -
Naval battles are now open beta, whatever that means.
I don't think air to air fits their game engine, tbh. It's all about close quarters combat.
WWII stuff is where the fun is. Once you get to the post war ammo, armour becomes pretty much useless so balance goes out the window. With wartime stuff, you have a rock/papers/scissors thing with armour/mobility/gun. Once HEATFS becomes the norm, it throws the balance a bit. I tend to stick to WWII tanks, myself.
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