The problem:
Essentialy, if you want to be effective in certain campaigns, you pretty much NEED to have certain squads always active (or as backup). For example snipers for US (D-day effectivity), engineers because of the planes or rally points, automatic weapon squad in Moscow (because of the SMG meta in Moscow)…
Thus, purchasing active squad slots is not just a convenience, it is outright P2W because of how much advantages you are given (taking pretty much any squad you might want or need) in comparison to default F2P account.
The following idea is rather simple one and inspired by WT (monetization is in its nature clone to WT… only made worse, so why not copy something that can actually do something somewhat good for a change)
Possible bandage solution:
My proposition is, to have certain amount of active squad slots unlockable for free. In WT, you can use silver lions (not premium currency) to unlock certain amount of slots for your vehicles, if you want any more, then those have to be purchased through premium currency.
Of course, I personaly would still prefer complete removal of purchasing active slots (including in premium account time, but I can´t see developers doing that anytime soon)
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Any player should be able to unlock 2 slots for infantry, and 1 vehicle slot.
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Unlocking active squad slots would be possible either by grinding, or as addition together with certain campaign levels.
1. Grind option
This option is tied to the total amount of kills player achieved. I can imagine first free infantry slot to be relatively easy to unlock (total 500 kills), while second slot should be harder (around 3000 kills total). The vehicle slot should be unlockable somewhere in the middle (around 1500 kills total).
This unlock will apply for both nations in the campaign.
(numbers are just to give you idea how hard/easy unlocking should be, and can be adjusted)
2. Campaign level unlock
This option would give us ability to unlock active squad slot together with unlock of certain campaign level.
Vehicle slot should be unlockable at campaign level 4 (first plane).
First infantry slot should be unlockable with engineer squad, but considering it is just level 3, first infantry slot should be unlockable somewhere around level 6 (flametroopers in Normandy or radio operators in Moscow).
Second infantry slot should be unlockable somewhere around level 11-12 (where things are getting harder to unlock for F2P).
However, this unlock would not be campaign-wide, only nation-wide in the said campaign.
(again, campaign levels are not meant to be final)
Pros:
- F2P accounts will be less limited in comparison to paying player who can purchase active slots on top of the premium account bonus.
- Ability to take “necessary” squads to be able to fight in the sky and ground, and being less affected by map design. Thus, being more viable overall.
- Sky will be more contested, which might have effect of stopping possible domination of one player/team over the sky. However, it would also increase amount of bombs falling on the battlefield, thus measures should be taken to prevent planes from mass-spawnkilling and being main players on the field… that is job for infantry.
Cons:
- Being forced to choose your playstyle, or using more tactics while playing in party is being thrown out of the window (but honestly, non F2P players already did that, this is just attempt to lower the damage that has already been done). So this is further embracing horrible (but it seems by devs accepted) idea of braindead gameplay of unlimited options.
- When implemented, this might be either too easy or too grindy (knowing gaijin, we know which option is it going to be)
- F2P account will still be limited, premium time with active slots will only continue enhancing this problem.
If such suggestion already appeared and I missed it somehow, please link it, so I can include it in the main post.