Big differences:
- you get points from
playing frontlines, which is awesome steel hunter, which is fucking terrible why would you do this WG
- main progression is much longer but elite progression is removed, which means probably more bonds for casuals but far less for tryhards who used to finish the main progression in a few weeks and spend most of the event grinding them bonds
- you get jack shit unless you spend 7500 gold for improved pass (basically the equivalent of buying premium account for 3 months). As an F2P I can do this if I get a decent amount of successful tourneys but it's real work to make this happen and still pay for premium.
- They've gone a long way towards making battle pass worthless unless you give them money. Additionally, I feel that the amount of grind (see below) is designed to make you say "might as well get premium account too while I'm at it"
- No more bounty equipment for F2P. You get nothing.
- Oh but wait, there's more! You get 2 tokens per chapter as F2P for a total of 6 per season vs 18 per season with improved pass (enough for one of the new tanks). The cheapest thing you can buy for tokens is 9 tokens. So F2P literally gets nothing from tokens.
Let's assume you are going for improved pass and review the effort required to complete this and earn a vehicle in (checks notes) 90 days.
- 150 stages, 50 points each means 7500 points total to get all the prizes
- let's also assume you play every day or nearly every day and always complete your three missions (I usually do). The bonus mission gives no points so we'll ignore it. 7+10+15 = 32 points per day * 90 = 2880 points. So you're a over third of the way there just from daily missions, which are usually easy.
- That leaves 4620 points remaining to earn via the 7/5/5/3 point system for win/win/loss/loss over 90 days, for about 52 points per day. I'm going to assume a hypothetical player with roughly 50 percent winrate who places in the top 3 50 percent of the time. Let's say he gets in the top 10 about 90 percent of the time, which means he really averages about 4 points a game instead of 5. Which means he needs to play about 13 games a night to stay afloat. Its probably more if you are losing a lot or not landing in the top 3 a lot. 20 games a night is a lot.
- The entire battle pass grind can just barely be done with tier 8 premiums if you have 11 of them and rotate regularly between them.
- Subtract a few points if you do steel hunter without slitting your wrists
That doesn't sound like a super enjoyable grind, to be honest. And you have to pay to participate in it.