UPDATE: War Thunder removed Steam from its Website after Review Bombing

[Guest]

On 5/18/2023 at 9:49 PM, bcredeur97 said:

war thunder would of been so good as a paid game

I was actually thinking about this myself the other day. Older users could be grandfathered in for free but new users would pay a full price like any other game. Progression would still take time to reach top tier but it would be WAY faster instead of literal thousands of hours. Maybe something like Splatoon 3 does with its “Sheldon Licenses?”

[AquaUselessGod]

Even more updates: War Thunder Steam reviews have reached "Overwhelmingly Negative" on the current 5 days streak of review bombing.

 

[Dabombinable]

They really hoped that people would behave as they usually do when Gajin tries to fuck them:

I'm getting the same vibes as I did from EA's "pride and accomplishment".

Last time I played WT was several months ago btw, and even winning and coming top of the team by far, I'd be lucky to make 10k silver lions - without premium time and waiting for free repairs in Tier 1 and Tier 2 tanks. And that was after an absence of nearly a year - the economy wasn't as bad as it is now (especially during the short period before the roll back) even back then.

[Gregorovich97]

As a self proclaimed veteran of War Thunder since the release of ground battles way back when and a general tank enthusiast and service person I can perhaps explain why the recent reviews have switched over to negative, or at least from the perspective of that of my fellow Squadron members and myself.

 

The game is a far cry from how it was in the ground battle beta/release when i played in 2014/15, which it kind of expected for a game approaching it's 10th anniversary of adding ground battles. The grind was there, but if you put in the time you could get most of your way through a faction tree in a few months or so (the top tank at the time was the Maus, so pre cold war era machines) and get the specific tank you might want fairly quickly and in a game that was generally fun.

 

Fast forward a bit to 2020ish and the game has already changed so much, new cold war equipment starts to be added, an emphasis on getting premium paid for vehicles to make researching new vehicles and modules for them "quicker" (despite the fact the game slowed down this progression in the name of letting the grind and earning still take time for the veteran players). The game added top tier premium vehicles to the game after the developers promising that these premium vehicles would only be for the world war 2 eras and not a pay to play for the cold war era.

 

This creeping addition meant that in the early release of a beloved vehicle (XM-1 or T-72 Turms for example) in premium form would out preform the equevalent rank competition with all the benefits of it being a premium piled on top. It meant it would be a no brainer to make use of a new top premium as they often over preformed making the individual have more fun but resulting in those trying to play without paying £50 for a new vehicle pain. The junior players would buy these vehicles either through seeing it preforming well in videos from content creators, or just wanting to get into the cold war since they had little interest in playing through the pre WW2 vehicles to get to the era the want to play, they would play one life per match and then return to the hangar to play their next match. The issue with that is the game regularly gives you multiple spawns and a minimum of 2 per match even if you didnt earn any score on the first life, this meant that in a match with certain countries on the different teams you could see anything from 1-8 people play one life in their paid for tank and then quit leaving the rest of their team without the lives to win the match. At the same time, these premium vehicles in the hands of experienced players would usually out preform the others in the same rating vehicles, they benifited from new equipment not availiable to other vehicles of that level and usually these vehicles started lower in the ratings to boost percived preformance, and therefore the sales, until the next premium is starting to crest the horizon.

 

Another greivance players had was the meme im sure many non players would be familiar with just from hearing it being said so much, Russian Bias.

 

It's the tinfoil hat conspiracy that has been perpetuated since the launch and even on World of Tanks, both games being made by Russian game companies. However there are some truths to this claim and it's often hard to show it unless you actually experience it, however there are documented occurences where a senior modeller for the game had to be fired for adding extra armour to his favorite russian tanks like the T-34 and nerfing the stats of the ones he didnt like like the Panzer III or IV. There have also been various shadow nerfs and buffs that have only been discovered through datamining and comparisons which older preformance of these vehicles. The game also favored the infamous KA-50, a premuim helicopter with greatly exagerated in game effectiveness against both ground and air that only took almost 4 years to finally nerf. There were even a few occurences during the the start of the Russo-Ukraine war where British vehicles saw some shadow nerfs after the shootdown of Russian helicopters using British made Starstreak missiles that were donated to Ukraine. The game claimed to want to distance itself from the war despite proof that they had sponsored a Sepratist Ukrainian youtube channel that was demonstraing tanks on a range in occupied Ukraine.

 

This final straw that broke the community however, was not the imbalance in an "Esports ready" game or the premium vehicle nonsense. It was their attitude towards the players, the way the gaslit us and told us that the changes they made to their game was for our benefit and that the extra grind was necessary to keep the game engaging to us. They would have the cheek to post a poll asking us out of the 4 shitty options for an economy update we would rather have, and when the majority would say neither and to ease up on the grindy economy and let it be a tad easier, they ignored us, or worse, they tried to silence us. In the community post they made about recent backlash and negative reviews over their new economy updates they implied it was our fault for not understanding how a Free to Play game works and admitting that the game is not Free to Play because how else could they possibly make money apart from the in game market, premium account, battle passes, crafting events and premium vehicles. Clearly we need to pay them more for the privilage of playing their game and those filthy F2P players are the leaches making the game worse, if you believe Gaijin's story.

 

They asked us to take the legitimate complaints about the game to their forums, not the Steam page where new people could be detered from playing as that would mean no new players and that the game would shutdown if it had negative reviews. So people did. They made forum posts on the War Thunder website, where are they? Oh yeah, lost to the ether as their forum teams delete as many of the constructive critical complaints as possible to make things look like they are running just fine. Much like the Moskva was, this game is on fire and sinking and the devs are trying to save face over actually investing in making the gameplay better, they would rather blame the faulty playerbase that admit their own mistakes.

 

After the Squadron im a part of began it's boycott of the game we have come to realise that War Thunder (Gaijin) is like an abusive partner, using psycological manipulation and sneaky tactics to keep us with them but not asking for more from them, and I think it's for the best we take a break. If we lose this game it will probably be for the best as it will open the market for a new team to try and do better.

 

Final point:

It's not a review bomb as much as it is a long time comming of built up negative reviews finally being written by players because we tried so hard to look past the game's flaws (telling the devs our issues) and support the game we loved as there didnt seem to be anything quite like it.

 

(WoT is good in it's own ways but comparing the two games would be like comparing mincraft and terraria, they have similarities and crossovers but are fundamentally different)

[AquaUselessGod]

More links added here on War Thunder Content Creator's take on Gaijin's predatory practice:

 

Ash's take: 

 

 

Oddbawz's take: 

Phlydaily's take: 

 

[nurax1337]

On 5/19/2023 at 3:49 AM, bcredeur97 said:

would of

would have*

Sorry to be that guy

[Thaldor]

Have they still even fixed the "air cancer" in ground forces?

 

As in, made the maps to have more cover for tanks against the planes, made the AA actually effective against planes and not just light tank / armed go-kart murder machines, changed the seal clubbing mechanics of plane spawns in arcade battles, added some real punishments for lawn darting or at least removed the "revenge target cam"?

 

Or is their stance on this the same as it was 12 years ago; "Our statistics show that players use the features, so they must like them and we refuse to change something people clearly like"?

 

If they haven't done anything for that top of the iceberg, I think I know exactly why they have made huge changes to the repair costs.

Spoiler

The player numbers are down, especially RU and/or US servers, and they want to condensate the players to the lower tiers to make the game "feel like" more populated than it actually is. At the same time they want to start to milk as much as possible because they know the game won't be profitable to run in the quite near future and instead of giving it a respectable death, they just want to make as much money as possible and set the whole thing on fire.

 

This is at least happening with the World of Tanks (in which I also have 12 years of experience but haven't really played it in couple of years except when completely drunk and playing anything else would have been wasting a good game), thou Wargaming really doesn't have a plan B and they have really set the shit on fire. Like it used to be once a year thing to manage to get the player base hate the company and now I have counted something like 2-4 times only within 6 months and all concerning one huge update.

 

Both are old games which everyone who is even a bit interested have already at least tested them, so, there really isn't much potential for new players. The veterans are leaving one by one after some change makes the game unappealing to them or they just get bored with the grind. And they both really don't have any momentum going on, WG killed WoT epsorts by making the game too P2W for ESL and WG's own try was, well, let's just said it was an impressive try but extremely controversial. Gaijin haven't even tried to make their games esports because that would require them really balancing their games for which they seem to be allergic. And so the only real momentum for the games has been the dwindling player base and the new features which everyone knows mostly just alienates players because that isn't the game they want to play anymore.

 

[Likwid]

I spent 20 Eur on game for some mid tier premiums and are having fun playing.

 

Compared to World of Tanks this is nothing.

[AquaUselessGod]

Updated information

[Mark Kaine]

On 5/19/2023 at 3:42 AM, OhioYJ said:

I got to say as soon as I see "Free to Play" I'm out. These kind of shenanigans are to be expected.

kinda nonsense imo, ex OW2... you can play without ever spending a dime and you can even get a couple of cool skins for *free* (currently if you have prime or just by watching OL streams, ms rewards, etc, or simply just by playing the game)

 

And you get one of the funnest multiplayer games out there for absolutely *free* 

i would say some of the default stuff is even within the best (looking)

 

 

Note, this is just an example,  f2p is absolutely valid as long its not also p2w

 

...

 

 

Spoiler

basically what im saying is you're missing out , some of my fav games are/were actually f2p, like 10k wins in Tekken Revolution,  to day the best fg ever (imho) Especially Alisa and Eliza were so much fun!

 

[jagdtigger]

On 5/19/2023 at 1:25 AM, AquaUselessGod said:

22/05/23 UPDATE: War Thunder removes Steam from its featured page on their website.

Huh, if they dont like getting dumped on maybe they should think twice before making stupid decisions........

[williamcll]

Seems like it's a tug of war between World of Tanks and War thunder (armored warfare is completely irrelevant) on whos worse.

[AquaUselessGod]

1 hour ago, williamcll said:

Seems like it's a tug of war between World of Tanks and War thunder (armored warfare is completely irrelevant) on whos worse.

I will say, this review bomb is just a result of over the years pent up frustration with the monetisation scheme. But at the very least, latest post have the company address and understood the issue and has "pledged" to improve with the community.

 

(I don't exactly have high hopes but we can only see how it goes from here.)

[Stahlmann]

The reviews have gotten so bad that it isn't just the recent reviews, but now the percentage of positive reviews of all time is down to 60%. Recent positive reviews are down to a staggering 7%. From what they did over the years they absolutely had it coming. People won't be happy when they revert the changes from the last patch. They will probably have to set the economy back 5 years or so before the community is happy i'd wager.

[AquaUselessGod]

1 minute ago, Stahlmann said:

The reviews have gotten so bad that it isn't just the recent reviews, but now the percentage of positive reviews of all time is down to 60%. Recent positive reviews are down to a staggering 7%. From what they did over the years they absolutely had it coming. People won't be happy when they revert the changes from the last patch. They will probably have to set the economy back 5 years or so before the community is happy i'd wager.

We can only wait and see what's upcoming, because afaik this scale of review bombing had never happened to any other games before. Usually the review bombs of other games are due to political reasons or some mild frustrations, but this one is just another level.

[AquaUselessGod]

PSA: If any LMG staff researching on this article wants more information, do DM me on the forums and I'll fill you guys up with any burning questions.

[Radium_Angel]

6 hours ago, AquaUselessGod said:

armored warfare is completely irrelevant

AS someone who really loved play AW's PvE section, the main drawback of AW was the lack of maps, and map sizes (rather small for modern tanks)

Ultimately the lack of a playerbase and the limited maps, killed the game.

A shame really, I loved the T-72 Terminator. 

[SaperPL]

As someone who spent a lot of time in this specific game, I'd like to summarise the problem in some reasonable short form:

 

1. The general outrage is about gaijin slowly boiling the frog by making grind harder and harder again, and what lit the fire was the "we know what's better for the game and for the player" approach to damage control in the first place. They have a track record o handling outrages, stepping back for a moment and then introducing those planed changes anyway piece by piece, step by step anyway over time.
    
2. Most of the players are angry about the economy being built in a way that you cannot keep playing the vehicle that you have unlocked because you run out of in-game currency which is spent on ammunition and repairs, and you collect it for good scores in the match. You cannot have good scores in the match when you have a new vehicle that is stripped of the better part of its functionality so you need to "spade it from stock" meaning you need to unlock it's features, so you keep running in circles by running out of in-game currency and having to go back to lower tiered vehicles to farm currency in order to play the best vehicles.
    
3. Their PR responses to this issue states that the reasoning behind it is to make sure players won't progress too fast and they'll progress forward once they got skillful enough with the vehicles of current tier - which would be fine if:
   1. they would actually invest into teaching new players new mechanics at each tier extensively rather than purposely pushing them into frustration
   2. they were not selling premium top tier vehicles which explicitly allow new players to play high tier gameplay right away without the required skill for this level, which effectively destroys the game for others playing at those tiers, and those new players as well if they don't know the mechanics well.
       
4. They are talking about continuously processing the feedback while most of the community is disillusioned about the game forums being way to forward feedback while it's just a facade. There are processes set up on the forums for passing the feedback that leave feedback rotting in the forums for ages with hardly ever getting passed to devs because it's throttled down to one suggestion per category per month. Classic divide and conquer causing players of each game modes argue who's got it worse.

 

Additional notes from me as my personal opinions:

 

1. The game employs F.O.M.O. and Bait & Switch tactics on time-limited events and sales of vehicles.
2. The game network architecture is not really what company stated (although years ago), it runs as peer2peer where clients simulate game state and dedicated servers decide who's right and merge the outcome into what then is stored as server replay.
3. The game updates keep faking upgrading the content every two or three major updates - VFX & SFX by bumping the sounds' power (not a sound guy) and emissive color on flames (so it burns brightly) and explosions to steadily fade them back over time. It's kind of like the endless staircase sound effect…
4. Client replays are not representative of what happens in your game locally and there is some post processing hiding malice and errors before storing a client replays. You could get back to cover and the game would ignore that move and you'd get killed with killcam and client local replay both showing that you were standing there in the open. You have to capture footage live to have a proof of shenanigans happening in the game.
5. The game rigs odds in matchmaking and in-game damage simulation (& few other things) against the tasks for seasons to artificially slow down the progression in them to extend the session play time.
6. Game's PR mostly ignores arcade game mode, supporting mostly realistic mode-oriented content creators, so effectively more vocal realistic battles community is treating players playing arcade as just a small fraction of newbies on training wheels that should jump over to realistic modes, while server replays history proves there's roughly the same amount of both players. The arcade shows the flaws of the game better and having many eyes constantly on it with footage from live game could quickly disillusion too many players about what the game is.
7. I have no idea how this game got certified for consoles and is in the best on deck on steam when the controller support is terrible, moreover the kbm keybinding are cluster to handle.
8. The game could be a best combined arms game on the market if not for predatory monetization strategies and piles of core game issues never being addressed

[Stahlmann]

The game got flagged on Steam for being review bombed. So potential new players get the watered down reviews on the store page (which are significantly more positive). To see the real review statistics they have to scroll down and check the box that allows "off-topic" reviews to be shown. That's very scummy behavior imo, but idk if this is on Steam or on Gaijin.

 

True statistics:

500.251 reviews total, 58% positive

104.646 reviews recently, 7% positive 

 

Watered down statistics:

386.006 reviews total, 75% positive

19.205 reviews recently, 26% positive

[pas008]

On 5/18/2023 at 9:26 PM, DrMacintosh said:

Is this really tech new? WarThunder has always been very difficult to progress in. I stopped playing regularly about 8 years ago, the process of unlocking new aircraft was not fast. 

agreed

On 5/19/2023 at 6:01 AM, Ydfhlx said:

Yeah. The economy is so bad, that you literally loose in-game money just by playing most vehicles. And they made it much worse in this update.

this doesnt affect tech like performance or breaking the game, its economy and user hatred which isnt tech thats preferences

 

we could have this place flooded with game updates on that area,

 

so how is it tech news when game still is playable

[SaperPL]

3 hours ago, Stahlmann said:

The game got flagged on Steam for being review bombed. So potential new players get the watered down reviews on the store page (which are significantly more positive). To see the real review statistics they have to scroll down and check the box that allows "off-topic" reviews to be shown. That's very scummy behavior imo, but idk if this is on Steam or on Gaijin.

Would have to investigate this extensively though to see if the 80% of those negative reviews are set to off-topic unfairly or not, because if those 80% of players just wrote things along the lines of "get rekt gaijin" then probably Steam has to react this way and not count those reviews as proper reviews. And I would expect a lot of people to be lazy and not write much in the review.

[Mark Kaine]

On 5/21/2023 at 1:58 PM, Gregorovich97 said:

As a self proclaimed veteran of War Thunder since

No offense,  and im sure your post is informational,  but i think even without having the slightest interest in the game (precisely because of the monetization scheme) i think we all know why . I also find the term "review bombing " misleading/ unnecessary btw. Steam even made "review bombing " not count towards the overall review score iirc, so there is really only one option here, do not support predatory monetization schemes, and *especially* not pay to win ones.

 

 

Take OW2 for example,  yes, its predatory,  but then again you could become highest rank/ #1 player in the world without ever spending a dime, its pure skill based, and even the starting skins do not suck (they're just ever so slightly worse than the paid ones if that)

 

^and obviously the paid skins don't give you any advantage whatsoever 

 

 

ps: yeah, i already used the OW example,  but point is there *are* free to play games that aren't pay to win (one of my favorite games Tekken Revolution for example,  it had tokens you needed to play, but those where easy to come by, you just needed to win every now and then plus it even had a single player Arcade mode where you could practice if you were new to the franchise,  got around 10k hours in that game easily and all i bought was 3 outfits for 5 bucks each iirc for my main character,  the minute those came out lol)

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

When you thought Destiny 2 Lightfall was a massive dumpster fire.

[Mark Kaine]

The weird part is they removed steam from their website,  but didn't remove their game from steam. So spineless lol.

[GermanRazor11]

Im going to start another "review bombing" if they dont fix the spading on my vehicles. I've spent my own money at times to do it...now, quite a lot of my vehicles are no longer spaded, and im having to do it all over again. The f"ck is this BS??? FIX IT.