World of Tanks VS War Thunder

[Huntn]

I’ve got mixed feelings about this. I have a lot of experience with WoT, have many tanks, quit about 3 years ago, but recently restarted playing it mostly to use as comparison with WT. I recently started WT and am at the bottom tier of tanks. I have about 100 tanks in WoT up to the top tier 10. The difference between these games is drastic.

World of Tanks​

• Damage- Damage results mostly in a health loss, with infrequent mechanicals, injured crew members, and onboard fires. You can supply your tank with mechanical, crew, and anti-fire aides.
• Map Size- Generally, WoT has smaller maps with a few prevalent collision-conflict chokeholds that can be relatively learned quickly.
• View Distance- WoT has a view distance which beyond a certain distance tanks disappear, where in reality you would still be able to see them.
• WOT has a single difficulty setting which is arcade-like tank handling, tanks are much more maneuverable than real tanks.
• Aiming- Lead is on you, but there is elevation assistance showing you where your round will hit.
• Mods- The game also allows mods that provide hit zone skins, indicating where a likely penetration can occur.
• Minimal fog of war- Tank locations are displayed on the minimap when they are sighted by anyone on your team and for a short period of time after they go back into hiding.
• War Gaming, WoT’s parent company offer single arena games, tanks, ships, and airplanes.

War Thunder​

• Damage- Damage frequently involves serious damage, one shot kills, and incapacitation, with lengthy repairs, while you sit there and are unmovable. Fast Death is somewhat mitigated by allowing you 3 lives during the fight, cycling through 3 different tanks. There are tank repairs, a fire extinguisher, and incapacitated crew members can be replaced if you are content to sit somewhere out of harms way for a minute timer to complete.
• Map size- WT’s maps are huge in comparison to WoT and take longer to learn where the good spots are.
• View Distance- WT has no artificial view distance, so tanks can shoot you from a longer distance away, even if they are a little dot.
• WT has 3 modes arcade, realistic, and simulation.
• Arcade mode offers even more slippery tank handling than WoT at least it seems that way to me. In addition tanks are faster, with faster rotating turrets than in the other modes. It has elevation assist and the cursor actually lights up green where penetration will occur. Minimal fog of war. When a tank is spotted and for a brief period of time after it gets out of sight, it will appear on the minimap for all to see.
• Realism mode has more realistic clunky tank handling with slow turning turrets. The fog of war is pronounced. You’ll hardly ever see an enemy tank icon on the mini-map, just when an enemy dies. Aiming is done manually with an elevation scale you manually set After estimating distance to a target.
• Simulation mode is for hard core players. I’ve not checked it out.
• WT offers combined arms battles with some combo of tanks, aircraft, and boats

I’m a casual player, not a realism zealot although I’ve had a love affair with tanks in these games and including Planetside. Because of my many years of WoT, and I had briefly checked out WT when it first came out, (but at the time thought the maps were too big), started this comparison thinking that World of Tanks would be the more fun, faster moving game. However that might not be the case, the more fun part. Each game has advantages.

Here is the thing, World of Tanks battles are faster moving affairs more like arena combat. War Thunder by virtue of being on substantially larger maps allow you more ways to skin the cat, but the downside as a new player, it takes longer to figure out where the good spots are for sniping and ambush. In WoT, within a minute of the battle starting you can be shooting someone or be shot. A complaint I’ve heard about WT, is that the game frequently involves long drives to be sniped and/or 1-shot and becomes sniping duels against people who know the maps and where the good spots are.

From a damage standpoint in WoT, generally speaking, 1-shots don’t happen although you can lose 50% of your health on the receiving end of a bad hit. You can be incapacitated but not as frequently as in WT and repairs in WoT don’t take nearly as long. I think it’s fair to say once you start taking damage in WT, your lifespan is substantially shorter compared to WoT, however this is mitigated by having 3 tanks you can cycle though in a single battle.

Both of these games can be frustrating. last night I had some good and bad matches in WT. Then I switched to WoT, and on the maps I was familiar with, had an immediate sense of deja vu. Rush to the pass/choke point and then play peak and shoot with enemy tanks or sit at the established sniping spot and wait for a pigeon to show itself. Even though I can get very frustrated with WT, but maybe because I'm new to it, it does not feel like the same routine I am more than familiar with in WoT.

Will I stick with a tank game? Unknown,, but at this point WT is appealing to me more than my established routine in WoT.
Will I ever play WT in Realism Mode? Very unlikely, too much work.

I’ve mentioned World of Warships before, and War Thunder has boats, but I have yet to try WT’s version for a comparison. But I’ll say as a tank and boat veteran, these types of combat are very different, and if tanks don’t appeal to you, boats might, not that boats won’t be any less frustrating.

To summarize the two types of games, tanks are more tactical, ships are more strategic. Tanks require faster reactions (no nothing like an Unreal Tournament) but faster than ships. Ships are much more about numbers 1v1 or 3v1, never 1v3 if you can help it, smart engagements, and staying on the edge of groups of enemnies firing range while applying damage to enemy ships. It’s a completely different vibe, and as a rule you won’t be able to tear through enemy ships like a good tank driver can against tanks, which often become a series of 1v1 encounters. In ships, that does not happen as often and if you drive your lone ship into a group of enemies, you will be destroyed.

 

[Huntn]

Where I am today: I got a hankering for tank battles and installed War Thunder. There is another thread here in the forum. I played it for 3 week and decided it was not for me.

To summarize the tank part, it was frustrating, and it took me a couple of weeks to decide I hated the ”realistic“ damage modeling, 1 shot kills on a regular basis (me being killed ?), being sniped by tanks that were basically a dot on the horizon, and on “Realism” mode, a game that asked more than I wanted to put into it. Don’t mistake this for bad mouthing WT, it is a worthy game, just not my cup of tea. In the end, I bailed on WT and rediscovered WoT.

One thing that might really appeal to some for WT are the combine armed aspect of the game. You have to start with a tank or a boat, you get 3 lives in a typical battle, and on one of the respawns you can jump in a fighter or bomber and attack other aircraft or ground/sea units.

If you are looking for ship battles, World of Warships is vastly superior than the boat element in WT imo.

 

[Plutonius]

@Huntn , I just saw a pretty good comparison video on YouTube comparing World of Tanks to War Thunder.

 

[Huntn]

@Huntn , I just saw a pretty good comparison video on YouTube comparing World of Tanks to War Thunder.

I’ll check this out tomorrow and report back.

 

[Huntn]

@Plutonius excellent video. As the author says, personal preference. Two things I disagree with or will clarify.

Although I hate the idea of “premium shells” in WoT, (which is not in World of Warships), at some point WarGamimg changed them from gold ($) to silver (in game currency), but they are still 10x expensive as regular shells and many players only use them at tiers 9-10 and only use a couple because at 2400-4800 each , you can wipe out any profits you make in a match. But some shoot 100% premium.

You may ask, and I’ll answer yes, you can play without premium ammo at T9-10, but it’s more difficult to pen many tanks when nose to nose, making game play more challenging.

The other day I was playing in a mid range tank with a derp on it (big damage, low pen gun) and accidentally loaded it with all premium rounds. It was a decent match, I made 65k silver, but after the adjustments for premium rounds at 4800 each, and tank repair I only netted 18k silver. At the t9-10 level it’s easy to lose money shooting premium, but many players consider it a must, and use their lower tier vehicles (not using premium ammo) or premium vehicles (bought) which make more money in a match To cover their premium rounds at tier 9-10. This is also why people subscribe, to get a 50% boost in progress in the game.

Secondly, WoT has ballistic rounds, but also has an auto sight adjust feature (Like I imagine a modern aiming system) which shows you how much height adjust you have to use to hit the target. WT has this only in arcade mode.

What makes WoT my choice is that I consider myself a casual player. I don’t want to have to learn where to shoot every tank. So I just load up a ”hit skin” mod which puts markers on the tanks and is legal and in the heat of battle I don’t have to remember which of the hundreds of tanks I am fighting to remember where to shoot them. From the front, some tanks have stronger turret armor and others have stronger hull armor. Usually I assume the hull is weaker, but is not always the case.

And as a casual player, I much prefer WoTs HP damage system versus penning and hitting crew members or components in the tank. So although WoT maybe considered easier than WT, it is still plenty challenging and will find your ass being handed to you frequently.

The main troubling feature of WoT is the attraction of premium tanks, (WT has them too) and when you get used to paying $15-80 for a Premium tank, You can end up spending a lot of money and not think this is Ridiculously expensive for a game.

 

[Alex Johnson]

War Thunder is a muuuuuch better game than WoT. While the WoT is a usual arcade game, War Thunder is much more complicated game imitating reality. For sure you can get one shotted there, but this is closer to reality. Also I like that there you can play modern tanks and aircrafts. It's harder, but you get more possibilities to develop yourself in the game.

 

[Huntn]

War Thunder is a muuuuuch better game than WoT. While the WoT is a usual arcade game, War Thunder is much more complicated game imitating reality. For sure you can get one shotted there, but this is closer to reality. Also I like that there you can play modern tanks and aircrafts. It's harder, but you get more possibilities to develop yourself in the game.

In War Thunder I hated that almost every time I'm shot I lost something major. There is something to be said for playability. Personally I've decided that losing hit points, with occasional loss of components, is a better way to go.

That said, for WarGaming, I do not like the hot rod tanks. If you've ever looked at how battles, especially WII tank battles go , there is none of this peaking around the rock going on. This is what would draw me to the next tank game. Something closer to reality in this area.