The team behind War Thunder, the popular combat vehicle simulation game, has shared their extensive plans for a major revamp of the game’s economy. After a period of concentrated internal work and analysis, this overhaul of the economic structure signifies the developer’s continuous commitment to enhancing the player experience and ensuring the game’s enduring success.
Having engaged in numerous experimental tests with various economic models over the past several years, the developer team has sought to strike a delicate equilibrium between engaging gameplay and maintaining the game’s long-term economic sustainability. These efforts have been especially targeted at ensuring fair monetization, enabling the continuous development and expansion of War Thunder.
Related: War Thunder is Being Review Bombed on Steam
In developing these new models, the developers have taken into account a diversity of gaming preferences and tested various player progression speeds on thousands of randomly selected players. The forthcoming changes are the direct result of these comprehensive tests and detailed statistical analysis.
One of the central points of focus in the upcoming changes is the Silver Lion economy. Many players expressed concerns over the balance of SL, as earning capacities have not kept pace with the increasing number of opportunities to spend SL or the constant addition of new vehicle types and ranks.
In response, the developers are introducing a significant revision to the SL economy. This revision aims to increase the SL earnings from each battle and simultaneously reduce the SL cost required for repairing destroyed vehicles. The changes are particularly targeted at medium to high rank vehicles, with the intention to ensure a positive or at least neutral SL balance for average players, regardless of whether they have an active Premium account.
The new economy will significantly change the way vehicle repair costs are calculated. Instead of being balanced individually for each vehicle based on its performance or rank, the new system will calculate economic parameters for all vehicles of the same class and Battle Rating. This change is designed to offer more consistency in repair costs among similar vehicles, reducing the need for frequent adjustments and the magnitude of those that remain necessary.
However, these changes may result in some individual vehicles earning more SL than others at the same Battle Rating. In such cases, the developers will consider adjusting the vehicle’s Battle Rating, tweaking its technical and combat characteristics, or applying general balancing factors to all vehicles in that class. Not all vehicles will be affected significantly, with the alterations being less noticeable for vehicles such as helicopters in Arcade Battles.
One of the more radical changes in the pipeline is the enhancement of the Premium account feature to include an ‘Income Insurance.’ In scenarios where multiple vehicles are lost without achieving kills or any team contributions, this new feature ensures that players do not accumulate a negative balance, compensating them if their total repair cost exceeds their income. The new feature will be automatically included with all Premium accounts and requires no separate purchase.
The game’s developers also plan on implementing a new mechanic relating to the calculation of repair costs. Currently determined by the average lifespan of a vehicle, the new system will correlate repair costs directly to the actual lifespan of vehicles in battle. The shorter a vehicle’s operational time in a battle, the lower its repair cost will be, aiming to lessen the economic impact of unsuccessful battles.
This is just scratching the surface of the developer’s plans for the future of the game. There are a ton more details, which you can find on the full Steam blog for the proposed changes.
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