I bought into the closed beta (I know, booo hiissss) but I wanted a idea of what ground forces wanted to establish itself as. Abit of background, I'm a ex-WoT player who was pretty high up there on statistics. I played most of the time as a unicum (this is a term for players who calc'ed up statistics are equivilent to the top 20% of the playerbase) and I had most of the tanks. Thankfully I wasn't one of the unicum type players who is a complete arse to the rest of his team so I just played for fun but the quality of teamwork pretty much dropped from last summer onwards and I ended up quitting just prior to the 9.0 patch and 9.0 sealed the deal with its poor performance.
So ground forces and warthunder in general. I've played warthunder before on the aircraft side and I do really enjoy that as it reminds me of the old microsoft combat flight simulator which I played to utter death (4 broken sidewinder joysticks attest to this feat) and really enjoyed dogfighting aswell as bomber activity. I've recently come back to the aircraft side after doing the CBT of Ground forces as quite frankly I got a bit burnt out after playing so much ground forces.
I'm going to be strictly talking from the realistic battles and simulator battle point of view for ground forces as I found arcade mode chronically easy to play. Ground forces I find is quite fun, abeit quite intensive at times. What GF does better than WoT I find is the historicial varients of the tanks aswell as accuracy in general, as for example the Tiger and its long 88mm is actually the feared monster gun it was in world war 2. It also is a slow lumbering bethemoth in GF and feels like a heavy tank. Equivilent in WoT is a 6sec firing 88mm armed combustable tank which feels like a med rather than the iconic tiger tank.
In general the aspects of ground forces playstyle and gameplay is infinitely more enjoying to me from a game/simulation standpoint as you require to learn the gun scope when aiming at long ranges in both realistic and simulator battles and you have to know where to shoot. There is a strict difference in combat tactics between WoT vs GF. WoT consists of de-tracking a enemy tank to kill him easier, in ground forces the better option is to aim for the turret and hope for ammo rack but most times get the guranteed gunner, reloader and damage to the gun/horizontal stablizers. This is where I really do enjoy GF over WoT.
Tactically speaking you have to use your head when your driving the tank and its not just a matter of ramming a enemy tank and doing aload of damage like in WoT. Ground forces is if you ram a tank at speed, expect your tranmission to be blown out your arse and your track half way across the field aswell potentially being set on fire by the impact (yes I've had this happen in a t-50 ram) with another tank. Another factor is angling the amour, in ground forces a 45 degree angle will constitute to invinciblity which was dubbed the "tiger stance" by the germans when they utilised it with the Tiger. WoT on the other hand has that but a thing called "sidescrapping" which is where you angle at around a 30 degree angle with your front on a solid object and poke out backward and take pop shots but bounce or be de-tracked in return with no damage.
Realism and tank characteristics are also heaven and earth type of difference between the two titles. Every tank in Ground forces bar the tier 1s is useful and a threat to you, same can't be said for WoT you wouldn't have a tier 3 tank killing a tier 10 Maus for example, but if the equivilent was in GF a tier 2 t-34 could potentially kill the Maus's crew with HE rounds. Driving the tanks is also more about gearing and torque rather than performance supercars which WoT consists of. The meaty weight to tanks and the fact they feel metallic rather than RC models gives ground forces another enjoyment factor (ignoring arcade mode's drifting tanks)
Teamwork: In ground forces I'm surprised to just see how much better it is, granted you still get the donkeys who absolutely don't know what they are doing but not as bad as WoT where 14 out of 15 players can be so stupid you question if they are bots or just window licking their way to victory.
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Aircraft side of Warthunder I've come back to with quite abit of progress more lately. I've moved into the german, US and got abit deeper into the Brit line and have most in tier 3 now bar the german tree which is a mix of tier 2 and 3. I have to say it feels alot more different since they changed the ranking and how vehicles parts ar researched out. Its certainly stretches out the grind but at the same time it gives abit of sense of achievement when you are done with a aircraft. One thing I do miss however from WoT in this regards is cross vehicle weapons being researched and then being usable on the next as you can end up researching the same weapons again on the next aicraft even though the only real difference is a new turret or new pair of machine guns.
If anyone is interested, I follow a fella by the name of MightyJingles on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpnjlv ... JuGNo_TxkQ he covers WT and WoT but he speaks from the point of a average player point of view, he's somewhat that type of uncle/grandpa you always wanted and is ex-Royal Navy and if your interested in stories his mingles with jingles are worth watching/listening to aswell. He gives a good account of both games and his warthunder GF videos are quite entertaining, especially the KV-2 ones.