Cancel the Uptier Mechanic
Foreword
The uptier debate has been raging on this forum for five years. Over those five years, the community has put forward at least three proposals — ±0 matchmaking, isolating BR V, and adding BR VI — and they’ve been tearing each other apart ever since. Each has its loyal supporters, yet not a single one has ever actually landed.
I don’t want to rehash the “which proposal is better” argument here. I want to ask a more fundamental question: why hasn’t a feature that’s already live on the Chinese server — with a player base this healthy — ever made it to the international server? The answer probably isn’t “they can’t.” It’s “they won’t.”
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I. The ones who get “drafted” don’t even realize they’re hurting their own team
There’s another long-ignored harm of uptiering: the lack of transparency.
When a player gets dragged up into a high-BR lobby, the game never explicitly tells them, “You are being uptiered.” Most of the time, they only get a vague feeling — “why are the enemy vehicles so tanky,” “why are their rilfe so accurate” — without ever realizing they’ve been drafted.
And so a vicious cycle begins. That player rolls out in a low-tier vehicle, because as far as they know, that’s the gear they’re supposed to bring. What they don’t know is that in this high-BR lobby, that low-tier vehicle can’t scratch a single enemy — and it’s also burning a precious vehicle spawn slot. The teammates who could actually field high-tier vehicles just sit there, helpless, watching. And none of this is that player’s fault. They didn’t know. They had no choice.
So from a game-design standpoint, uptiering is simply illogical. A player picks a low-tier weapon — why should they be forced to face high-tier ones? In any sane game design, your gear should correspond to your opponents. You pick BR II, you play BR II matches. But uptiering creates this absurd rule: you bring low-tier gear, and the system throws you into an even higher-tier fight — making you miserable while dragging your innocent teammates down with you.
Let me repeat: “I brought a low-tier weapon, so I deserve to get farmed by high-tier weapons” — that logic makes zero sense from any design perspective. It punishes the player themselves, and their completely unaware teammates.
Maybe from the devs’ perspective, that’s exactly the point — you take a low-tier weapon, you get farmed by high-tier weapons, so you’d better hurry up and grind the tech tree. Spend the time, claw your way to the top, reach BR V, and only then can you stand on the invincible ground of “no longer being beaten by higher tiers.” But honestly — why don’t the devs take a look at how far this game’s power creep has gone? Every BR V match feels like hell on earth. At least, I don’t find it fun.
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II. Uptiering is killing BR IV
The fact is, BR IV currently has the fewest players of all the BRs. And nowadays, BR IV isn’t being dragged down to fight BR III — it’s being dragged up to feed BR V.
The gear gap is right there in the open: propeller planes against jets; 76mm/85mm guns against the King Tiger (H) and the Ho-Ri; semi-auto rifles against full-auto rifles and assault rifles.
Compared to the old BR I–III bracket, where it was just “occasional bad luck,” BR IV’s gameplay has evolved into structural burnout. A BR IV player queues for two or three minutes, gets in, and gets used as a punching bag by BR V. A few matches later, they quit — yeah, that’s me. BR IV is underpopulated not because it’s not fun, but because uptiering has turned it into sparring fodder.
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III. Player count is not an excuse
The most common rebuttal is: “There aren’t enough players to sustain ±0 matchmaking; queues would die.”
But the data doesn’t back that up. enlistedrollcall.com shows Enlisted has over 500,000 unique players. More importantly — the Chinese server, with far fewer players than the international one, has already had ±0 matchmaking for ages, and its popularity hasn’t dropped.
If a much smaller server can do ±0, then the international server’s “we can’t” simply doesn’t hold water.
So the conclusion is clear: this isn’t a technical issue, and it isn’t a population issue. As for what it actually is — I think you all know.
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IV. monetization
So here’s the question: if the tech works and the player count is there, why has the international server kept uptiering for five years?
One possible answer: uptiering itself is the monetization driver.
The essence of uptiering is feeding low-BR players into stomp lobbies against high-BR players. The low-BR players get beaten with no chance to fight back, and naturally start thinking — “My gear sucks, I need to upgrade.” And what’s the way to “upgrade”? Buying premium squads. Buying premium weapons.
In other words, uptiering converts “gear gap” into “spending incentive.” You get stomped by BR V while playing BR IV, and you think it’s because you’re bad — but really, the system is telling you: time to spend. Except reality is another story: even if you pay up, you won’t get a good experience out of this game. In the end, the only beneficiary is Gaijin, who cashes in.
Flip it around: if ±0 matchmaking were implemented, and players could actually enjoy low BR, how many would still feel pressured to spend on “upgrading”? No stomping, no anxiety. No anxiety, no urge to pay.
So the most reasonable explanation for why ±0 hasn’t —— it would cut into a revenue stream. And please note: this isn’t an accusation, just a logical deduction of business incentives. If that deduction holds, then we have to face a fact: uptiering may never have been a game flaw at all. It’s clearly a deliberately preserved feature — as you can plainly see in War Thunder.
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V. Why the international server won’t, but the Chinese server did
If the deduction in Section III is still just speculation, then the double standard between the international and Chinese servers is the most direct evidence against it.
The Chinese server has fewer players and weaker spending power. For Gaijin, it was never a major revenue source anyway — the publisher funnels them money. So they dared to implement ±0 there, because there was nothing to lose.
The international server has more players and stronger spending power. There, uptiering is a genuine revenue engine — so it’s been kept for five years.
Same feature, two servers, two treatments. I’ve always believed ±0 was never about tech or population. It’s purely a business decision across all of Gaijin’s games.
And this issue has always been packaged as “not enough players” — an excuse used for years to divide the community, and to make us self-censor our own demands. It’s time we understood what we actually need: a better, fairer game environment.
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VI. ±0 is withheld option
±0 is technically feasible — the Chinese server already proved it. ±0 is population-feasible — 500,000 players, and a much smaller Chinese server, already proved it. Actually implementing ±0? The only thing missing is Gaijin’s willingness.
So what I’m saying is: instead of continuing to tear each other apart over “isolate BR V / add BR VI / ±0,” we should first unite behind one consensus — uptiering must be abolished, no matter which step we start from.
Isolating BR V can be the first step. Adding BR VI can be a pressure valve. But all of them should point toward the same destination: ±0. The three proposals aren’t enemies — they’re three stops on the same road. What’s really turned them into a “you-or-me” deathmatch is five years of nothing happening. Everyone’s afraid their proposal will get brushed off in favor of another, so they attack each other — and the ones stalling get to sit back and enjoy the show.
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One last line for everyone still waiting: if a change that’s been proven feasible — and demanded for five years — still hasn’t landed, then what needs to be questioned was never the players. It’s the “we can’t do it” excuse itself. We need to understand what we’re truly asking for. Relying on endlessly shaving down our own demands in hopes of being granted someone else’s “mercy” — everyone, you need to understand that will never happen.
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POLL
- Yes, uptiering must be abolished
- Yes, but we can start by isolating BR V as a transition
- No, keep the current ±1 matchmaking
