So, building on a post I made earlier, I just spent a couple days on War Thunder. These are my observations:
PROS
It goes without saying, the game is GORGEOUS. Imagine to start with if all the aircraft in Aces High were remodeled to the standards of the Wildcats. However it goes beyond simply the meshes. The material system is considerably more advanced, and the terrain, weather, and environment modeling is visually superior to the Aces High graphics engine. The biggest surprise to me is that it doesn't come at a steep price for performance, even in VR. At 4K resolution and with high detail levels I was getting no loss of frame rate, even when the action was busy or there was a lot of terrain clutter in view. By contrast, Aces High has always had problems, particularly around the cities, but anywhere large amounts of ground objects were visible.
The game strikes a good balance between complexity and ease of access. One feature that I've often seen asked for in Aces High was complex engine management. War Thunder has it, and it's implemented in much the same way as the stall limiter and engine governor in Aces High: Automatic controls are enabled for players who can't or don't want to handle it, but more experienced players can shut it off and control engine performance manually. Much as with the stall limiter and engine governor, it gives players who opt to use the higher difficulty settings more control they can use to maximize their aircraft's performance at the cost of more to control (IE, maybe you risk redlining your engine for an extra 1-3 mph with a higher prop pitch and shutting your cowl flaps).
Additionally to the above, the damage model is much more robust. While Aces High uses an "All or Nothing" damage system, (with the exception of fuel, oil, and pilot wounds, which can vary in severity) where either your plane's surfaces are present or they're not, in War Thunder damage degrades components. It's entirely possibly to have your wing shot up...and then lose it because the damaged wing fails under G loads.
SOME of the upgrades I actually like in concept, particularly being able to tweak your ammunition belt with different loadouts (IE, the F4U-1A can load a belt of API-API-API-Tracer-Incendiary). This is something the Perked Ordinance system that had been discussed for Aces High could make a lot of use of (TBH, I've been gone so long I can't recall if it was ever actually implemented). Additionally, War Thunder offers a lot more variety for airplane subvariants (again, using the Corsair, there's a "Marine" F4U-1A option based on the lighter, denavalized FG-1A, with corresponding changes in performance) to increase the number of aircraft, which is something else that could be worked with the perk system (imagine being able to spend 5 or so perks to drop 1500lbs off an F4U-1A by removing the naval gear).
It's free. While you can use real cash to some extent, TBH it's not worth it (supposedly there's a way you can buy aircraft rather than have to research them, but I've yet to figure out how to actually do that, beyond certain premium packs which may not have aircraft you want).
CONS
The game model all around is War Thunder's single biggest problem. There's no persistent arena, and some play modes require grinding to even access (specifically, by unlocking particular aircraft tiers). This pretty much limits the game to CoD-style death matches, which limits the usefulness of bombers and attack craft since matches are ultimately decided by shooting down all of your opponent's aircraft, so may as well take a fighter, anyway. It also means waiting in queue, sometimes for as long as 5 minutes, while waiting for a match in which you might only get one or two minutes in the air. And if there's no respawn for that match, well...sorry. I find the persistent arena offers far more and better opportunities to learn and develop, since if you get shot down you can jump right back in again.
While there's training modes that let you putter around, there's no proper practice area (whether shooting drones offline, or the Training Arena available in Aces High). There is some solo mission play, but this appears to be rather clunky to use.
Additionally, the game is far too focused on grinding. You grind to unlock aircraft. You grind to unlock modifications. You grind to improve your pilot. You grind to gain access to alternate play modes THROUGH unlocking aircraft. Have a favorite plane? Well, strap yourself in for a couple hours to DAYS of grinding until you've unlocked the 10 other planes you have to unlock (AND purchase with in-game currency) FIRST before you can fly the plane you want. It's not that Aces High doesn't have that through the perk system, but the difference is that this is reserved for only a very few aircraft, many of which have a free variant (IE the F4U-1/A/D vs. the F4U-1C and 4).
Also, you can't NOT research an aircraft. The game literally forces you to select a new plane to research whenever you've completed the current one, even if you'd rather devote all your Research Points to upgrades.
The upgrades also come across as a fake way of increasing content by forcing players to unlock the actual written specs of the aircraft (IE, the F4U-1A was rated at 420mph at altitude, but you need to purchase something like 5 different upgrades to GET it).
The actual aircraft and damage modeling, and flight engine, is often suspect at times. Once again using the Corsairs as an example, the game only models three four flap positions (up, and three lowered positions) while also giving it a fully manual mixture control under manual engine settings (the Corsair only had four mixture settings: Idle/Cutoff, Auto Lean, Auto Rich, and Emergency Rich). I've also noticed strange behavior such as aircraft icons simply disappearing for no apparent reason. The sensation of flight also seems odd. I often feel like aircraft have no actual weight to them, with it being very easy to bounce them around.
This may seem like a minor thing, but there's apparently NO TEAM VOICE CHAT. I know, some of you will claim this is a bonus, but it makes properly coordinating incredibly difficult. For example, the other night I was trying to clear a friendly, but every time I tried to get guns on target my shot was cheated because the guy I was helping kept pulling the bandit in directions that denied me an angle. With voice chat, I could have asked him to ease up, or pull the bad guy in a direction that would have actually gotten me a shot.
It's been crashing for me. A LOT. Like almost every time I try to go to the Research menu after a flight, back to the desktop I go.
It's hard to really get a judge of the community, but I've found there's far more of a "Every Man For Himself" mentality in War Thunder. Maybe the lack of easy voice communication contributes to that, but there seems to be very little coordination.
The bottom line is, when it comes to actual GAMEPLAY, Aces High is the vastly superior title. It offers far more variety for game modes, and you don't even have to work to get them. The persistent arena is much more conducive to getting MEANINGFUL stick time, and players of a favorite aircraft don't have to jump through hoops to get them. Additionally, the base flight model is also superior, and gives a better feel of actual flight.
War Thunder does have its positive features, but these are mainly cosmetic or ancillary (although you can argue that the more robust damage model and availability of complex engine management are features it's WELL past time Aces High added). However the cosmetic advantage for War Thunder is going to be a significant one; players are often drawn to graphics first. And while I object to most of their business structure, there's no denying that people are going to gravitate to a free game over one with a steep monthly subscription.
Honestly, I DON'T have much desire to continue playing War Thunder. It's pretty, but the limited gameplay options are just to frustrating. However I think there's a good bit that Aces High could learn. To make some suggestions about the future of the game based on my observations of its main competitor:
1) I think HTC should bite the bullet and start work on Aces High IV as a complete ground-up rebuild. They've done great things upgrading Aces High II to Aces High III, but even those improvements aren't covering up how old the game is any longer. Most of the audience these days is looking for higher-fidelity graphics, and if that means giving up on making the game playable on lower-tier hardware, that may be the direction they need to go to attract a modern audience. However don't release it piecemeal, with one new aircraft appearing every few months (or longer). Have everything (or at least a substantial number of key aircraft) prepared and ready to release on launch date.
2) Consider adding more robust damage and systems modeling. The latter can be implemented in a manner similar to the Stall Limiter and Engine Governor in that players who don't want manual engine operation can leave it on automatic, but may not get the full level of performance that manual control would offer. The former would contribute to the fidelity of the flight modeling.
3) Reconsider the pricing model. I'm not saying it needs to go free to play, but to perhaps consider reducing the subscription to being competitive with other subscription-based MMO games, or perhaps move to a "buy the game up front, play it for free" model.
