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This game isn't bad. In fact, it's almost good. Unfortunately it seems to be stuck in a negative feedback loop. Wargaming doesn't want to invest time and money because it doesn't make enough revenue to be worth it. Many players don't want to invest time or money because it's unbalanced and buggy as hell. Plus the documentation is horrible and the interface, while I understand the intentions, has some issues. I'm a bit buzzed so going to type to much, so I will section this out to hopefully make an easier read.
Why I feel my opinion is valid
I've been gaming since the 80's staring with an Amiga 500 and then an NES. As the consoles came out, either me or one of my friends on the block up to my military room mates owned every single one up to PS2. I'm not the best gamer ever, but I've experienced all types. My first internet experience was in 1992 Prodigy followed quickly by dial up AOL. I've got history with these things. I've played a little bit of everything. From F/A-18 Interceptor to Blades of Steel. Monkey Island to PUBG. If its a game I'll give it a try. Except Fortnight. Tried it once... never again.
I'm a new player to WOWP. Of my 1236 battle played, about 1200 are within the last 60 days. I played when it was new as well as Warthunder. They both started around the same time. Warthunder only had planes while Wargaming was coming from tanks. As for aircraft, Warthunder was the better game by far so I played the hell out of that. Now Wargaming's World of series vs Warthunder is just arcade vs simulation gameplay. One isn't better than the other, jsut for different types of gamers. Like Need for Speed/Crazy Taxi vs Gran Turismo/Dirt.
Ships tried the CV rework gambit to try to get more players. I think their metrics for success are stupid, but I don't know the final numbers. The clan I played with pretty much died with that. Many already played WOT but most decided to give WOWP a try. They mostly liked WOWP and some even spent decent money (one with less than 500 battles has 2 T8, 2 T5, a T4, a T3, and a T2 Premium aircraft. He has money to spend and is definitely a whale in WOT and WOWS. He was on his way to being a whale in WOWP, but like almost everyone else associated with that clan, could only stand the imbalance and bugs for so long. now he only plays WOT. You need to fix this to make more money WG. Many of the people I currently play with don't want to invest the money because of this. They find it fun but. because of bugs, inconsistent and won't spend money.
Fix Bugs and Reliability
This is the number one thing that needs to happen in this game. I reported a few bugs I had in this forum and was quickly told by another player that those are already known. The problem is that there a too many known bugs that too many people have. Most new player aren't going to research fixes for these(e.g press enter twice to fix spawning with your camera following the another aircraft) and many you just have to live with (e.g. Daily Missions not updating properly, Weekly crate days changing at inconsistent times).
Not being able to connect to the Hangar server after a battle is another major one. Don't take players out of the game involuntarily. No one likes that.
Fix the Interface
This is the second thing that needs work. I understand the minimalist interface. It's good for new players as to not overwhelm them with numbers and icons all over the screen. But even with this interface there are a lot of things that are counter intuitive. Progress bars for ordinance that reset when EMPTY? That's just confusing. The more useful numbers being hidden behind a button you have to hold with default bindings. Minor annoyance. To change that that to a toggle you have to to try to rebind the key to get the option to switch from Hold to Toggle. Stupidly hidden useful feature. Having the default binding for a useful feature be set to Alt while other useful features are set to F-keys. Very dumb idea. Alt + F4 should NEVER be a key combination the player wants to press for any reason except to rage quit.
This paragraph mostly not very high priority, but needs some real consideration. Especially the Alt+ F4 thing. You have a (not very easy to find {not hard either}) option to change what is shown on the alternative interface. But there's not much point. Every option there are things that players will either always want to see, or never want to see. What should be there are all the things that alternative interface enables such as Enemy Aircraft Heading vs Enemy Aircraft type. Having to spam through to get all the information to make good decisions is bad. Give players more chose of what shows on what interface.
Fix Balance
The is the third thing that needs fixing, but parts should be done with the first list of bug fixing. Because of low-mid tier bot matches, average win rate should be above %50, but I see far too many players around %40 as well as far too many above %60. Some planes are OP. Specialization makes them even more OP That should be addressed. My favorite so far is the T5 Hurricane II. It has guns that are the same (except over heat time) as the T6. The T6 can kill T7's with little difficulty. But my Hurricane 2 could dominate games before it was Specialized. There's way too much balance on Aircraft ability and not player skill. I know WG can see this in their games since the WOWS CV rework status video showed the winrate balance metrics and they talked about balancing the game to narrow the player skill gap. Right now it feels like WOWP is unbalanced in multiple ways. Too many players don't know what to do with thier aircraft (like focusing on to shoot ground targets at a mining plant in a fighter). As well as some aircraft are just bad while others will just destroy everything.
Match-making balance Also, take a poll of your players. Not just on the forums because plenty of players don't use them. But take a poll of you players on matchmaking times. I wouldn't mind waiting longer for a more balanced game. Most games are insanely one sided. It's just not fun if you keep ending up on the destroyed side of bad matchmaking. It's also pretty annoying trying to grind up a line, but you can't score very highly because you won too quickly. Even certain classes (Bombers and GAA) and medals (cough... EFIMOV) require a balanced game to be successful. I understand having some things be difficult. But having them be difficult after hoping RNG match-making give you chance at difficult is just frustrating.
Conclusion
If you read through this whole buzzed rant, thank you and I'm sorry. WG and WOWP staff. Fix the bugs and interface please. New features are nice, but they don't matter if leading to them are broken. When you get new players, they're not going to stick around very long to play a buggy game that they can't understand. Fix the balance. The new players won't stick around if they always lose. Here's a quick fix once you start getting more new players after the bug/interface fix. Reduce the daily requirements for low tiers. If the bug didn't discourage new players, losing to seal clubbers with specialized planes and 15 point pilots will. Don't encourage that kind of play by making it a requirement. This game is almost good. It doesn't have that big of a market share, but it looks like it can grow. There are plenty of people that don't like this game's highly successful competitor's one burst kills and overly complex loadout options. Give them a reliable alternative. Give players a reason to stay with the game once they get here. Then find more ways to get them here.
