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brenainn | 1 year ago

I'll provide some background for people that aren't familiar with the game. It's an online vehicular combat game where you pilot tanks, planes, helicopters and warships. The vehicles range from pre-WW2 to modern. The game aims for realistic vehicle specifications, like armour thickness, penetration values etc.

For older, actually real vehicles, that information is more easily available. For modern, classified vehicles, and vehicles that were never actually produced, they have to make reasonable assumptions. Sometimes players get upset about these assumptions and how they impact the game balance, and post classified design documents on the forums to argue their points.

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raziel2701|1 year ago

Wow so this is the "if you want a good answer from the internet post a wrong answer first" but escalated by a ton!!

That's incredible!

intpx|1 year ago

Ah yes. Dullingshires law

robotnikman|1 year ago

Going to hijack the top comment to provide my own observations as a player

As a War Thunder player myself, here is some insights off the top of my head I can provide from the player base point of view, and as someone who has also submitted documentation to the devs to fix historical inaccuracies of some vehicles in the game...

-Players can submit bug reports for vehicles, reporting incorrect characteristics, missing features etc.

-In order to do so, players must research and compile documentation supporting their cases, from at least 2 primary sources. This means those devoted to such a report can spend hours or even days gathering material for their sources, sometimes going as far as digging through the historical archives of companies or countries for information

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Here's where problems start to arise:

-The bug reports are overseen by a few volunteers who review the bug reports and decide what gets sent to the developers and what does not, who have a track record of arbitrarily choosing what gets passed to the developers for fixing, and what does not. So even a well made bug report with more than enough documents and source materials can be denied, and all the efforts of the reporter are in vain.

-Even if a bug report gets passed to the developers, there is no timeline on when the missing features or inaccuracies of a vehicle will be fixed, and no communication from the developers whatsoever. It may be one month until its fixed, it may be 5 years, it may be never.

-The most heated discussion and reports revolve around modern day vehicles, where source materials may still be classified, or is available but marked as export restricted. The developers are very inconsistent when it comes to which bug fixes the accept or refuse when it comes to modern vehicles. For example, there were multiple reports of the Abrams and Challenger tanks armor being weaker in game than they should be, these reports were declined by the developers despite the multitude of sources. And yet on another occasion, a player submitted a report on the T-90 missing it's spall liners, and they were added by developers with the only source provided being a youtube video.

-The developers recently changed the bug reporting system so that once a bug report is submitted, only the bug report reviewers and the author of the bug report can see the documentation submitted; the lack of transparency leads to lack of trust, some believing some reports which get submitted may be approved and implemented based the personal biases and views of the developers or bug report reviewers

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So basically you have a playerbase of passionate players who like history and military vehicles, who go out of their way to perform the jobs of a historian to provide the correct information to the developers to correct historical inaccuracies in a game, only for their efforts to be disregarded due to arbitrary decision making of the developers or bug report reviewers, even if the compiled reports follow all guidelines.

preisschild|1 year ago

They also hava big bias towards Russian vehicles.

They take wildly inaccurate propaganda numbers and implement them, but nerf the numbers on US vehicles where they exist plenty of actual data from the manufacturer itself in many cases.

See for example 2S38 vs HSTVL & RDF/LT

itronitron|1 year ago

Sounds like this could inspire a simple test as to whether someone should have access to classified information, which would also positively indicate their more mature than a twelve year old.

rincebrain|1 year ago

At least once, someone has reported online that they were asked if their friend played War Thunder when they were doing an interview to explore their friend's getting a clearance, so...

sandworm101|1 year ago

There are also lots of people creating fake classified documents, and people in posession of "classified" stuff that has long ago been declassified. Those two groups, imho, outnumber all the people who leak actual info by 10x.

(Remember too that having a clearance and having access are different things. Only a rare few have unfettered access to download/print/email to/from classified systems. Lots of gamers work at/for the NSA. That doesnt mean they can all browse the f35 flight manual over lunch.)

CamperBob2|1 year ago

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wnevets|1 year ago

> The game aims for realistic vehicle specifications, like armour thickness, penetration values etc.

Yet the gameplay is very arcadey and not very realistic.

Tiberium|1 year ago

Are you playing arcade or realistic battles? There's a huge difference between the two. And there are also simulator battles.

schainks|1 year ago

Wow what a honeypot. Bet every government military loves this game to reverse engineer equipment.