I played this game for a thousand hour on epic games. I played mostly competetively as a tanker. Here are my 2 cents.
[b]The developers are actively killing the game by infrequent and buggy updates.[/b] They mostly have the right focus, but poor execution overall. They introduce new changes in a half assed manner and expect us to be happy. The changes they make introduces many bugs but those bugs take weeks to fix. They usually wait for the next big update to introduce fixes. They make ridicilously stupid balancing changes to the tanks that I'm certain that not only they play their own game, but they also ignore the community feedback.
[b]Balancing and updates aside. The game has a really bad problem of player retention.[/b] It's not entirely the developer's fault, but the gunplay they developed allows experienced shooters to mow down inexperienced players until they quit. I introduced many people to the game, only for them to quit frustrated. Even if they play really good in more hardcore milsims. This causes the servers to be filled with two extremes: 90% of the game is clueless because they are mostly day 1 players because you can't keep them in the game longer than that, and the rest 10% are cracked level competetive players who don't want to bother talking with the inexperienced players. This results in silent squads, which was the most fun part of the game when I started playing.
[b]The gameplay loop is extremely simple. Yet no one knows or wants to do the required thing to win.[/b] Because the benefits are indirect and the execution is boring. Are you a squad leader and need to build a garrison? You have ask one of your teammates to switch to support class to bring you supplies. Now, who would want to stop killin people, spend 20 seconds in death screen, run with you for 2 minutes and drop the supplies, Stay in death screen for 20 more seconds, then finally, hopefully switch back to their prefered class if it's not taken by others. Meanwhile you could get killed from gunfire, tanks, artillery. This is assuming the SL and the helping player are experienced and willing enough. Most of the time they are not. This is not a fun gameplay for anyone. And usually the team that goes through this process few more times than other team wins. This makes the games entirely dependent on player competency. But like I mentioned, Competetive shooters want to kill only, inexperienced players don't know what to do. Only few people who wants to make the games more balanced and equal, usually the server owners and the few volunteers from the community, trying to make the dirty work but it's exhausing. I'm not even mentioning how pointless is the node and resource system for average player. Only incentive is extra xp for 5 minutes of your life. Not worth it for anyone.
[b]Server management is hard and tools are limited.[/b] The game is unmoddable, servers are locked behind proprietary hosting services. Now the tools are not bad for usual operations of the servers, but it's abysmal for the seeding. Not having any seeding tools is actively harming to the smaller communities. Because usually it requires tremendous amounts of efford to keep them afloat. Usually requiring engineering that no other games need. I'm not saying that the developers should make the game moddable. This is a significant change to the game and also opens a whole other can of worms like security. But at least give us some tools to change the gamemodes. Make a seed mode. make a tank only mode. make a better skirmish mode for 15v15 mathces for example. Currenly if anyone wants to make any unorthodox events, they need to come up with tons of rules and maybe do some preparations both as a bot and in the match before it starts.
In conclusion, despite the shortcomings, when you play with a coordinated team with experienced players, it's really fun. I still think this is the most fun I had tanking in any milsim games since stakes are not as high as other games at least in casual games. But lack of new players also puts this in jeopardy. Infequent and bad updates make the seasoned players quit. I see many competitive clans closing (including mine) and weekly events dyring up. With the release of Vietnam. I think this game is done. Don't get tricked into buying this game. This game will be dead in few months.
