Warbond and Battle Pass #

Summary: integrate the battle pass and warbond shop better.

The primary idea is to move existing Battle pass season rewards, such as vehicle coupons, from being specific level unlocks to being purchasable rewards within the Warbond shop. In addition to the normal offering of rank 1-3 vehicles, each season there will be 1 or 2 season unique vehicles and some other limited availability items.

The season unique vehicles are advertised as things that can be returned as GE premiums at later dates or brought back in future BP seasons. This will help mitigate the “fear of missing out” factor, spur ongoing GE sales, and provide opportunities for limited-time/holiday/event type sales.

Changes #

Battle Pass Levels #

• Convert season pass levels which currently grant event-style vehicle coupons/gifts or warbonds into additional wagers, SL and RP boosters and raw SL rewards
• Every season pass level now additionally grants a fixed amount (100?) of warbonds.

Warbond Shop #

• Increase the availability of reward boosters in the warbond shop.
  • Remove/Increase limit on number of RP boosters allowed per season (to match longer seasons)
  • Offer SL boosters in matching form to RP boosters
  • Offer boosters with lower ratings but more battles (20% for 10 battles, etc) as rewarded from logins/battles.
• Increase the warbond cap; at least 5,000 or even 10,000.

Season Rewards #

• Offer additional “special” warbond vehicles, with a higher than usual cost (~5k warbonds). There should be roughly 5 per season, 2 ground forces, 2 air, and 1 naval.
  • 1 or 2 new unique vehicles based on the season theme
  • 1 to 3 primarily rank 4 or 5 GE premium vehicles
    • ideally, these cover the game modes the Season Pass uniques do not
    • if they can fit the season theme, so much the better
    • previously would not have been in the warbond shop due to rank
  • Optionally up to 1 GE vehicle that is limited-availability, such as Porkyrshkin’s P-39 or Black Prince.
  • Optionally up to 1 previous special event or season pass vehicle
    • a way to return out of circulation event vehicles
    • if on marketplace should not have activity for at least 3-6(?) months
    • use different equipment mod version, new skin, or similar to ensure collector uniqueness
• Increase the number of available rank 1 to 3 vehicles
  • More options to match longer seasons and ensure there’s items available for most players
  • Provide coverage of game modes and BRs that the “special” vehicles do not
• Add themed skins and decorations
  • These must be non-random direct purchases; not trophy box style.
  • The focus should be on the special vehicles for the season, but also include other vehicles that might be theme-appropriate
  • These skins/decorations should be unique and non-returning
    • this gives a permanent and visible trophy effect for the player to show off
    • not game play affecting, so being unavailable in the future does not stratify players
    • the cosmetics should tie to the season’s theme

Rationale #

This reward system helps incentivize players to login and play consistently, which is part of the purpose of a season pass system for any game. The previously monthly warbond shop system was largely usurped by the new longer battle pass seasons.

By moving much of the Battle Pass reward system into the warbond shop, several benefits apply:

• An existing, well liked, system gets re-used.
• Players gain control over their prizes, increasing their investment.
• Reducing the number of unique season vehicles decreases the amount of ongoing dev investment.
• The additional high rank/rare vehicles is an incentive for players who already have the lower rank premiums or who don’t like/want the season unique vehicles.
• It becomes easier to reuse existing rewards as they are limited availability “purchases” not unique event “gifts”.
  • decreased FOMO anxiety from new/returning players
  • lower distress from enfranchised players whose “rare and unique” items are now less special.
  • decrease number of vehicles that should be in tech trees but are instead gated as event vehicles (such as M8, Sd.Kfz, etc).
• Eliminating the season vehicle coupons helps minimize unintended impact on the marketplace.
  • also increases the “specialness” of event vehicle coupons, relative to season pass.
• Unique skins/decorations can be commissioned via War Thunder Live program
  • reduce dev time
  • increase content creator investment

The overall goal is to give players choices in their rewards, while also minimizing dev effort.

Further Development #

Season rewards all via Warbond #

It’s possible to go one step further; all BP levels reward only warbonds and all other rewards, including boosters, cosmetics, avatars, titles, etc are now purchased with warbonds once certain levels have been achieved. Thus if a player does not value a prize they can simply not purchase it, and apply their warbonds to prizes they do value.

This would decrease the SL being introduced into the economy; to compensate, SL boosters would have to available for purchase, possibly at a low cost, or SL economics such as module and repair costs would decrease accordingly.

This also decreases the difference between free to play and purchasers of the pass. Purchasers would only have more warbond income, for purchasing boosters, season vehicles, etc. Eventually this might lead to folding premium time and season pass purchase together.

Warbond Rewards #

Warbonds could be awarded via various additional methods.

• Random drops from login or battle reward crates.
• Wagers that reward warbonds instead of SL.
• GE (directly, or via Battle pass levels purchased)

Marketplace Coupons #

Each season a single upgrade coupon, similar to the ones used in Season 3 and beyond, could be purchased with warbonds. Said upgrade would allow an existing coupon to be used on the marketplace, “unbinding” it from the account. At first this would be only usable on the unique season vehicle coupons purchased from the shop. In the future, it could be expanded to work with any warbond shop vehicle coupons, which opens up the possibility of players using the marketplace to purchase warbond vehicles not available in the current season.

Unified Shop #

Move the existing Item Shop items into the Warbond shop, giving players a single unified place from which to purchase in game upgrade items. This allows simplifying the UI some by condensing to a single shop. The Warbond shop can have categories, like the existing item shop, and would replace the existing item shop interface when accessed from the hangar, etc.

Since these items are now available for warbonds, and warbonds are granted via the season pass, these purchasing these items is effectively done by increasing the season pass level. A small, but nice, bonus to encourage players to spend GE on levels, which gives them access to more things they can buy from the warbond store, not just the item shop crates and boosters.