[robotnikman]

Going to hijack the top comment to provide my own observations as a player

As a War Thunder player myself, here is some insights off the top of my head I can provide from the player base point of view, and as someone who has also submitted documentation to the devs to fix historical inaccuracies of some vehicles in the game...

-Players can submit bug reports for vehicles, reporting incorrect characteristics, missing features etc.

-In order to do so, players must research and compile documentation supporting their cases, from at least 2 primary sources. This means those devoted to such a report can spend hours or even days gathering material for their sources, sometimes going as far as digging through the historical archives of companies or countries for information

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Here's where problems start to arise:

-The bug reports are overseen by a few volunteers who review the bug reports and decide what gets sent to the developers and what does not, who have a track record of arbitrarily choosing what gets passed to the developers for fixing, and what does not. So even a well made bug report with more than enough documents and source materials can be denied, and all the efforts of the reporter are in vain.

-Even if a bug report gets passed to the developers, there is no timeline on when the missing features or inaccuracies of a vehicle will be fixed, and no communication from the developers whatsoever. It may be one month until its fixed, it may be 5 years, it may be never.

-The most heated discussion and reports revolve around modern day vehicles, where source materials may still be classified, or is available but marked as export restricted. The developers are very inconsistent when it comes to which bug fixes the accept or refuse when it comes to modern vehicles. For example, there were multiple reports of the Abrams and Challenger tanks armor being weaker in game than they should be, these reports were declined by the developers despite the multitude of sources. And yet on another occasion, a player submitted a report on the T-90 missing it's spall liners, and they were added by developers with the only source provided being a youtube video.

-The developers recently changed the bug reporting system so that once a bug report is submitted, only the bug report reviewers and the author of the bug report can see the documentation submitted; the lack of transparency leads to lack of trust, some believing some reports which get submitted may be approved and implemented based the personal biases and views of the developers or bug report reviewers

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So basically you have a playerbase of passionate players who like history and military vehicles, who go out of their way to perform the jobs of a historian to provide the correct information to the developers to correct historical inaccuracies in a game, only for their efforts to be disregarded due to arbitrary decision making of the developers or bug report reviewers, even if the compiled reports follow all guidelines.

[preisschild]

They also hava big bias towards Russian vehicles.

They take wildly inaccurate propaganda numbers and implement them, but nerf the numbers on US vehicles where they exist plenty of actual data from the manufacturer itself in many cases.

See for example 2S38 vs HSTVL & RDF/LT

[snapcaster]

I don't know the game, but wouldn't this make sense as a game balancing aspect? In real life some vehicles might be "strictly better" than others but doesn't make for very interesting gameplay

[CrimsonCape]

If I were to characterize your statement, you would agree that J.R.R. Tolkien should have written the hobbits as massive muscular warriors who can stand against the Uruk-hai as equally competent fighters. The Uruk-hai were "strictly better" weren't they?

[zardo]

You're going to have to do something to buff the hobbits or everyone is going to want to play as Uruk-hai.

[snapcaster]

No, because J.R.R tolkien isn't a game designer? Also even if it was a game you're misusing "strictly better". If their food consumption, costs to equip, costs to train are different even if in a 1v1 combat situation the uruk-hai would win that doesn't translate to strictly better

edit: also, the point of a game is to be fun not to accurately characterize the real world (i.e. how many games have you played where you have to urinate or poop for the character?)

[preisschild]

Matches are so made that you will only fight vehicles with a similar strength. Each vehicle has its own rating and a a slight (dis)advantage is tolerated to more easily find a match.

Problem is, nerfed vehicles like the HSTV-L have a higher rating than OP stuff like the 2S38, even though the HSTV-L is worse than it actually should be IRL.

The higher BR a vehicle has the more capable vehicles it has to fight.

[Tarq0n]

Apparently the game divides the various vehicles into tiers based on their performance. Within a match, only vehicles from a certain "band" of performance may be played, meaning either those vehicles are similar in power or have playerbases that manages a similar output.

[Philadelphia]

So these people are sending classified specs on American military vehicles to people who just happen to have a bias toward Russian vehicles?

[preisschild]

Most of it is more or less easily already leaked information that someone found on the internet and posted it on the WT bug tracker.