I mean… Compared to war thunder, this game’s progression is pretty quick IMO. Actually, it’s pretty quick for really any free to play FPS. I just got to level 10 in axis, and decided to switch to allies to get that sherman jumbo, because I think it’ll be a better deal than the PZ IV, and I don’t mind this grind. I have some cards grinded out on axis already, which I’m now spending on the allies. That’s more cross tree interaction than you get in war thunder where you need to spend money just to use the free RP you’ve racked up. Now I can use my decent squads in the axis to get cards to unlock gear for my allies that are struggling.
War thunder however… Christ that game has slow progression, I’ve basically quit that game for that reason, after years and years of playing. They really don’t want new players to ever reach the end of a tree in that game, at least not without spending real cash. Like, I understand criticizing excessive grind in a free to play game, and sympathize with it… I just think this aint it chief, there’s far worse games, including other games under the Gaijin umbrella. Meanwhile, this is the first game I’ve felt it was a reasonable pace for a free to play game.
… Now that I think about it though, not to brag, but maybe I have a very biased view of this game’s progression because I’m weirdly good at it… Like… Weirdly weirdly good. Normally I suck at first person shooters. I’m decent in Halo and that’s about it. I was OK in Destiny, I suck in battlefield, I suck in COD, I suck in counterstrike, I suck in hell let loose, I suck in post scriptum… Like… I REALLY suck dude. For whatever reason though, I’m getting top 4 in this game nearly every game, I get first place regularly, sometimes by a wide margin. Like, I’m addicted to this game because it’s the first first person shooter I feel like a try hard god in. The result is I get through a campaign level about once every 4-6 games I think? It’s good progress IMO, it’s only been a few days and I’m already almost half way through one out of 4 campaigns? That’s not bad. If I just did 1 level a day, that’s probably about 2 hours of playing a day… For like 3-4 months to complete the entire game as it stands now? That’s quality content my friend, about 200 hours of gaming to unlock everything currently in the game from the campaigns? That’s awesome for a free to play game.
But… I do occasionally have bad games, often times when I’m trying to get a really dumb task knocked out. Then I see progress after a game drop to like a quarter to half as much, and that I could see starting to become frustratingly slow progress. That being said, I just like unlocking stuff. Unlike war thunder where I finally got to Sabers only to be roflstomped by F-100s, mig-19s, etc, this game doesn’t feel like end game items are really needed immediately to play well. For example, I was underwhelmed by the PZ-IIIN’s HE shells so much I’m seriously considering going back to my Puma, and after I managed to kill a sherman Jumbo from the front with a PZ III N, I’m convinced that the end game stuff isn’t particularly overpowered enough to make fast tracking campaigns even that big a deal or important. Now I feel like I can go play other games for a while and come back to enlisted, and not feel some FOMO for not grinding out the campaigns asap. Like, they give you engineers with AT guns, det packs, attacker planes, tanks etc early on, and you can easily deal with late game enemies with those if you’re good. Even the stock guns aren’t bad, I’m liking my Kar98 snipers and MP-34s, they’re solid guns.
And you know what man, that’s how I like it. Part of the enjoyment in this game IS the progression system, and I think allies and axis should have distinct progression. So too different eras and military campaigns, which is why they broke things up the way they did… So personally, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with how they broke it up. I’m just glad I can spend requisition cards on any army, earned from any army. Now I can rack up cards on my best army, and then spend them on my weaker ones.
Now, if there is anything to criticize, I think it would be the specific unlocks… I question the reasoning behind making the PZ-IV vs Sherman Jumbo the final tanks on Normandy. I question making the sten gun instead of the thompson the top allied SMG, considering the sten was british. Hell, while the M3A1 was produced in 1943, it didn’t really FULLY replace the thompson until 1945… Which means that in the Normandy campaign, you should probably get a thompson unlocked before the M3A1 towards the end. Also, I think the Piat and Sturmpistole are ridiculously weak, I think they should’ve added the bazooka and panzerfaust shoulda been the main infantry anti tank weapon. Or at least, be added as late game unlocks. And greater differentiation between allied units and weaponry would be nice, like, it would be nice if only british and canadian units could use the british weapons, and only american units use american weapons (except in cases where they plausibly could’ve used each other’s equipment, like lend lease).
Furthermore, if I were to pick ONE thing I think is excessive, and rightly could be called “job-like”, it’s that silver req cards are, after completing all the one time achievements, are ONLY unlocked in the battlepass… This means if you are a free to play player, you at best can only get silver cards once daily. And, there’s imo only one logical option to spend those on: Vehicle parts. Vehicle parts dont drop in the brown cards, while all the weapons do drop randomly in the brown cards… I could see this being a long term issue, where whales can get serious upgraded tank advantages over free to play players. I think a small amount of the tasks should be silver card rewards. Namely, the harder ones, like get first on the team 3 times. That’s hard enough I think a good player deserves a silver card reward. And finally, my biggest issue with the battlepass is that to get even just ONE gold card, you NEED to complete every single battle pass item… If you are a free to play player… Well… You can only get one battle pass item per day, and there are 60 items… And the current battlepass when I started ends in like 64 days… Which means I get like, 4 days where I dont HAVE to play this game for at least like, an hour, if I want to get even 1 gold card… And I’m in the middle of moving and getting out of the military… WTF… I feel like they need a much bigger margin than that if they want to keep free to play players even remotely interested in playing daily for that gold card, and give the whales more targets, because the biggest turnoff to me right now is the idea of having to play daily for that stupid gold card grind. Or even just the silver card grind, like I said, battlepass is basically the only renewable source of silver cards.
