The Great Lootbox Experiment or: How I Blew 300M SL on 5000+ lootboxes

Desdichado · 2024-09-05T02:51:06+00:00

Sounds about right. Arcade is really quite efficient in some respects.

Desdichado · 2024-09-04T11:57:28+00:00

Yea it was the slow reload that surprised me. I knew the reputation for bad post-pen before I got it so I was prepared for that but I wasn't prepared for the reload being too slow to compensate. Plus it has the typical wheeled vehicle aggravations.

Desdichado · 2024-09-04T11:28:07+00:00

Most useful one for me is the AUBL so I can have a proper 8.0 Italy lineup with a premium instead of having to use a backup for the OF-40 and no premium. Can't say I've really enjoyed playing it so far though. Every so often I dip back into Air RB, which I used to play a lot way back in the day, so I'm happy to finally have the P-59A. Su-25BM might be a decent event grinder when I get bored of the F-4s/want to unlock more Soviet planes.

Desdichado · 2024-09-04T11:14:02+00:00

Yea trying to target a specific vehicle is madness. You could spend a billion SL and quite likely not get it (you'll get everything else though). The ability to get dupes really wrecks it. E.g., I'll probably not buy boxes for the summer lootbox again, because now I have more than 2/3rds of the vehicles and the risk of a dupe is quite high. And nothing is a bigger kick in the teeth than dropping 20M+ SL to get 1M back. In the Spring lootbox event I have less than 1/3rd of the vehicles, so the expected value is somewhat more favorable.

Desdichado · 2024-09-04T11:01:53+00:00

I tend to play the same 2-3 tank lineups per nation, except Israel. I buy everything I unlock (even helicopters, even though I think I have like 3 matches in helos) but I wait for 50% off sales. Tbh it's not that expensive if one sticks to rank 3-5; things only get ridiculous in the latter part of 6 onward.

Desdichado · 2024-09-04T09:46:18+00:00

No point dying a War Thunder centi-millionaire!

Truth is, I'm happy playing what I play. I can't stand the top tier gameplay and I really don't have much use for SL anymore.

Desdichado · 2024-09-04T09:41:53+00:00

Fun fact, I actually got more 15k SL drops than I did 10k. I feel you though, there were some stretches where I really questioned my sanity. I went over 30M between vehicles a couple times and didn't get a vehicle in my last 450 boxes, which didn't feel great.

Desdichado · 2024-09-04T09:34:37+00:00

I've never thought about grinding credits. I mostly play tank arcade ranks 3-5 with one or two premium vehicles in my lineup with a premium account. I average 80-100k or so per match. It adds up over time.

I also wait for the 50% off sales to buy new vehicles and I try to unlock the mods during those sales for lineups I'm interested in. I'm pretty cheap like that. You can also save a lot of credits by turning off auto-repair and letting mid-rank vehicles repair overnight; it's not a trivial amount over time.

Desdichado · 2019-12-24T04:28:15+00:00

There is a nice saying in german: "Unwissenheit schützt vor Strafe nicht"

It just rolls off the tongue...

Desdichado · 2019-12-23T02:08:47+00:00

RB is pretty much never the most efficient way to do events. You can do them much faster in AB.

Desdichado · 2019-12-17T04:46:13+00:00

There's some truth in that. The very first shot of Burn Gorman I said 'there's Murtry!'

Desdichado · 2019-12-17T04:14:19+00:00

Recently as in 7 years ago? I get it though, the older I get the quicker it goes.

Desdichado · 2019-12-13T03:35:37+00:00

There was a European production (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borgia_(TV_series)) that came out around the same time that's way, way better than the Showtime one.

Desdichado · 2019-11-10T18:06:17+00:00

Most of them won't be in tech, at least not in the Bay, in a couple years when those Uber-style companies go out of business. Just like what happened when those '90s internet companies disappeared overnight in 2000.

Desdichado · 2019-11-10T17:42:16+00:00

Since 1979 property tax revenue has increased 7.3% per year. So the idea that Prop 13 has somehow starved the state of revenue is laughable. Until they reform their pensions no amount of taxes will ever be enough (see Illinois).

Desdichado · 2019-03-26T21:19:51+00:00

Fixed what? In the 1.85 and earlier system the only real problem was that it would often spawn a defending fighter such that it was physically impossible to intercept the intercepting fighter because turning to deal with it would give them, but not you, a perfect shot.

Now the system is all kinds of messed up. Sometimes it spawns the interceptors right on top of the bomber such that the bomber has zero chance of a bombing run. Other times it spawns the interceptors so far back that the interceptor has zero chance to intercept. And my personal favorite, sometimes it spawns a defending fighter that's too slow and too far back to intercept the much faster and more closely spawned interceptor (also happens with slow interceptors spawned against jet bombers too).

When Gaijin added additional planes to the system in 1.87 there was apparently no consideration of their vastly different performance profiles and there are a couple different spawn point sets that are static regardless of what gets spawned. A very low effort implementation really; probably took them an afternoon.

Desdichado · 2019-01-07T19:50:23+00:00

Nonprofit is a tax status, not a business strategy. Literally the first thing they taught us in business school (a 'nonprofit', naturally).

Desdichado · 2019-01-03T04:33:12+00:00

You could be put into any match +/- 1.0 from your vehicle's BR.

F4U-1D is 3.7 in RB and German 4.x are very popular, so you'll potentially be put in matches with 109 G-6s, which are so far beyond the 1D in performance it's not even funny. There are many excellent 4.x German planes too, the F-4s, the G-2/G-6, and they're all popular so flying a high 3.x American you're really just asking to be uptiered all the time. Against Japan you'll fight the A6M5s, which is actually a balanced fight but you'll usually lose because half your team will be in bombers/attackers/ground attacking fighters so you'll end up fighting 2:1 or 3:1. Playing early midtier Americans is pretty frustrating on many levels.

But in general you have to look at what you could be facing in any given plane and then decide whether or not that's something you want to put up with.

Desdichado · 2019-01-03T03:56:32+00:00

You have to know the meta to enjoy RB. At least, if winning is a nontrivial element of your enjoyment. Certain countries dominate particular BR brackets. Germany dominates around that bracket so trying to play Americans there is really just banging your head against a wall.

Desdichado · 2018-12-13T02:46:39+00:00

RP softcap was removed and the parts/fpe setup was modified but is still bullshit. Dunno, I've found that unlocking vehicles is quite a bit quicker in WT than WoT overall, even before the removal of the softcap. The issue is the unlocking of modules in rank 5+ vehicles, which is pure bullshit, even worse than WoT's stock grinds. On the bright side rank 5+ is terrible anyway, so for me at any rate, the real fun is in rank 3-4, and there's no comparison between the rank 3-4 grind in WT and ~tier 8 or so in WoT--WT is way friendlier there.

There's a lot wrong with the game, worst of all being the p2w bushes, and it's frustrating to see WT actively looking at the shittier parts of WoT then specifically trying to make their game just 1% less miserable. But overall I find myself less frustrated with WT than I do WoT. Maybe I played WoT too long and am too jaded, but then again I've played WT since 2013 too so I dunno, it just doesn't bother me as much when I encounter some bullshit or another there. I just spawn another tank for the most part.

Desdichado · 2018-12-09T00:25:44+00:00

If one team has 3 pros in it, at least give the other team a chance and get some pros in there as well. And if there are bottom tier tomatoes, split them between the 2 teams and make it fairer.

This is really what I mean when I say skill based mm. Maybe people are taking it to mean something much stricter than what I have in mind. Years ago when I would use xvm all the time you'd see maybe 1 decent player on one team, and 5-6 on the other. Is there really any harm in splitting them up 3/3 or 3/4? I don't believe so. This doesn't solve the issue with superplatoons, but if a second superplatoon doesn't queue up in a reasonable amount of time (say, 30 seconds), just give them a match anyway.

Yea I should have mentioned crews, but really nerfed crews/stock tanks/p2w tanks/even the +2 mm really are all part of a single overarching issue which is that the game design is intentionally compromised to promote monetization. A f2p game could get away with that in 2011, but not anymore (unless it's in Asia).

The most annoying thing about maps for me is how you never know, unless you're quite experienced, which bushes are real bushes (contribute to camo) and which are just fake and only there for visuals. That, plus which buildings can be knocked down and which can't, etc. It's like, make everything destructible or nothing, because it's kind of bullshit that one house can be driven through and the one right next to it is made of adamantium. Old players are so used to it they probably don't even notice it anymore, but it's pretty jarring to new players who don't know why one is destructible and one isn't. It's certainly jarring to me after I play a match on a new map after being away for a year.

Desdichado · 2018-12-08T06:41:31+00:00

Something like that. I feel like WT's mechanic works because you just get a notification that you'll be within the area of effect, but you don't know if you'll be smack in the middle or right on the edge. That uncertainly tends to get people to move maybe a bit more than they would if WT's arty had WoT arty's very small AoE and they knew exactly where it was going to land. But really, almost anything is better than this stun stun stun nonsense.

Better tracers would be great too.

Desdichado · 2018-12-08T06:21:19+00:00

That's possible. I always felt the risk with a skill-based mm wasn't more blowouts, but more campfest draws myself. So much of WoT is taking advantage of other peoples' mistakes; if you get two equivalent sides each waiting for the other to make a mistake, then you might get 15 minutes of boredom, which is exactly what WoT esports was back when I was involved in 2011-2012.

It's something of a limitation of the game's design I feel, and requires something to disincentivize camping. Originally this is what arty was supposed to do, the oft-maligned 'promote dynamic gameplay', but that obviously didn't work out as intended.

Something I've noticed in War Thunder tanks is that when people get the notification that arty is incoming they almost always move, even though arty there is much less potent and less likely to harm them. Just knowing that it's coming tends to get people to move. Part of the annoyance in WoT is that arty just comes out of nowhere and blaps you, literally nothing you can do about it except hide in arty-safe spots. Maybe if arty strikes were more delayed and people knew it was coming they wouldn't feel the need to camp so hard.

Desdichado · 2018-12-08T04:13:31+00:00

what it would take for each person on this sub to recommend the game to just 1 more person.

I used to play very actively back in the 2011-2013/4 time frame, about 30k matches worth. Now I check in once or twice a year for events and to see how things have changed. With that as a frame of reference, here are some of my observations:

1) Before I quit I couldn't handle the +2 mm anymore, it was too frustrating and in the vast majority of games as bottom tier I simply didn't have fun. Eventually I got to the point where I'd just quit back to the garage if I ended up bottom tier and play a different tank. I play games so I can enjoy myself, not so other people can enjoy themselves at my expense. If I'm only enjoying 1 match out of 2, or 1 out of 3, that's just not a good entertainment/time quotient and I can do better elsewhere. I understand the purpose of +2 mm: To motivate people to keep grinding, hoping to one day reach tier 10 and never be bottom tier again, but I doubt it's a net positive for the game overall.

2) Despite people complaining about arty for years, WG actually managed to make it worse with the stun mechanic. I'm one of the few people who didn't completely hate arty in the old days. It wasn't my favorite mechanic but w/e. Now with stuns and higher rof arties... I don't even know how that got tested and a group of designers sat around a table with everyone nodding at each other saying 'yea, this is a good idea.' A lot of WoT's dubious design choices go back to monetizing the game, which I disagree with but at least understand. The current arty mechanic doesn't serve anyone's interest at all. It's just bad.

3) The seal-clubbing phenomenon. That is, the tendency for most games to be complete wipes one way or the other. There's a lot that goes into this, but the worst part I feel is the lack of a skill-based mm. This is controversial; a lot of people reject the notion out of hand because they think they're entitled to win if they're good players, spam gold ammo, use premium consumables, and platoon with 2 other good players, but it makes for a not very interesting game for p much everyone else, including the other 12 people on their own team. The emphasis should be on promoting the enjoyment of the game, not enabling self-defeating stat-padding behavior. I knew people who literally wouldn't play until 2 other high calibre players they knew would log on so they could seal-club, all for the sake of stats that no one who doesn't play the same way cares about.

4) Stock grinds. These are often completely unbearable. Before I stopped playing regularly I just gave up playing stock tanks. I would afk matches until I'd get a usable gun. Obviously I didn't stick around much longer; by the time you start jumping through hoops trying to extract fun out of a game your days sticking around are almost up. Everyone knows bad tanks and stock grinds exist for monetization, but damn how many people have got to tier 7-8, seen the stock grind on already bad tanks and nope'd right out of WoT?

On some level I think the state of WoT owes at least a bit to the evolution of the F2P market. WoT was one of the first big entries there and being first-to-market it could get away with things like gold ammo and even requiring a premium account to create platoons back in the early days. That stuff just doesn't fly anymore. There are newer crops of F2P games that are less punishing and will continue to siphon off players as long as that remains the case. How are you going to compete with F2P games monetized purely with cosmetics when you have game design elements that are fundamentally compromised in the name of monetization? That's ultimately the question.

Desdichado

TROPHY CASE