Monday 27 July 2015

27.07.2015 Q&A

 Here it is:

- Storm: there will NOT be +/-1 MM - not in PC and not in Xbox version of WoT
- Some HD model vehicles were not outsourced but were made by WG artists themselves, for example the "Berlin trio";
- Storm doesn't think the new 9.9 shadows are too blurry: "earlier it was even worse";
- When balancing light tanks, Wargaming is analyzing: damage, spotting and spotting damage, assisting damage, popularity, average life span in battle and other variables;
- Premium vehicles are tested more rigorously than regular ones and that's why corrections in their characteristics are rare;
- Shell behavior is simplified for game purposes, various nuances such as APC versus APCBC are not considered;
- The "shaking" of sniper mode after shooting is a client-side feature for "lovers of realism and immersion";
- Tier 8 premium Sturmtiger will not be implemented (yes, someone asked that);
- There is no specific "maximum aim circle size" in WoT. There is gun accuracy, aim time and aim circle size modifiers from turning the turret, hull traverse and movement speed. These modifiers are then applied to the base value.
- Mauschen wasn't introduced because it was too overpowered on tier 7 and 8 due to its armor and gun but completely sucked against 9 and 10. The VK4502B switch was delayed. In the future it's possible the vehicle will be switched to something else entirely.
- Community opinion is relative: the fact that some 100 players on some forum somewhere are angry at certain feature does not mean that the entire community is.


27.07.2015 Stream (ended)

Hello Warriors,

I hope everyone had a relaxing Monday as mine!

Will be streaming for the next couple hours some World of Tanks. Still feeling a bit tired from my last couple days so will have a relaxed night.

Lets do this: http://www.twitch.tv/ritagamer2


Note: Q&A may come later.

Armored Warfare: Developer Q&A #6

Hello Warriors,

AW published their #6 Developer Q&A, if you have any more questions just drop them in the comment section bellow, SilentStalker will be around to answer, even if I have to drag him. :P

How do you determine which tier a vehicle will end up ? It is weird to see a tier 7 Warrior only have autocannon while some tier 5 and 6 vehicles do have ATGM or auto cannon to deal with various threats.
First and foremost, please keep in mind that the tree you are currently seeing in the game is not finished and might be changed at any point during the Early Access stage. With that being said, we are generally trying to match certain eras to certain vehicles. Lower tiers represent the 50’s and 60’s while tier 8 represents for example the 90’s to contemporary vehicles. Using your example of the Warrior, the vehicle was built in very late 80’s while the missile-shooting Soviet BMP-1 production started in mid-60’s.


Will the developers consider faster implementation for less known vehicles if there is a proper thread with enough information (background, sources, suggestions about balancing) to work with in the suggestion sub-forum ?
We would like first to implement the best known and most important vehicles before we start delving into the obscure. On the other hand any and all info provided by the community helps us in implementing the vehicles the players want and if we have to choose between two candidates with one candidate having a full exposition and a support thread on the forums, we will naturally listen to the voice of the community.


Will every tier 10 have its corresponding tier 1?
Not necessarily. Trees can be asymmetrical and one tier 1 can branch into multiple vehicles.


How do you approach the ideas and suggestions that are coming from the community on the forums? I would like to see how you work that through and what your criteria are.
We do carefully read the forum feedback. It might sound like a cliché but it is not. With that being said, there are certainly some criteria we are sticking to. Threads with obscenities calling us names will likely not catch our attention when searching for quality feedback. Threads charged with emotions against a certain feature usually do not contain good feedback. We only ask all players to give the features we are preparing a fair chance – it’s completely possible for some elements or game mechanisms to be completely overhauled based on the community feedback but for that we need honest and unbiased opinions.


How will the retrofit system play out?
It will be a system of upgrades to the vehicle replacing the traditional “equipment” mechanism from other games. Players will be able to modify their tank to boost some of its characteristics.

Czechoslovak army in color

Hello warriors,

check out this film in color of the Czechoslovak army, you can see the LT Vz.35 (upcoming tier 2) at several spots with the famous three color camouflage:


 Cant stop whistling to the music...

Insider Talks: Huge chunk of Q&A (Action X, Gaijin, balance and more)

Hello warriors,

a batch of info from the Insider. What's cooking in Wargaming?

- Future game installers and launchers will now have the option to repair your game installation, in case something goes corrupt or a file is missing or someone messes up on the mods, the game will be downloading only the files needed instead of the entire client
- the new function of WoT installer would be able to tell if your graphics card's drivers are updated or not, this may only work with certain card makers
- Installer can now check if your PC meets the requirements to play the game, and if it does it can calculate and offer you the best client quality (SD or HD)
- following the success of the Xbox "moon battle", a new mode (also for Xbox) will appear, this time on Mars!
- the rumor that +/-1 MM was tested on Xbox is a complete fake according to the Insider
- it seems that the French Sherman Revalorisé will be a regular premium shop vehicle
- it's possible that the players will be able to test the Action X Centurion (FV4202 replacement) in 9.10 test. Whether it will be implemented or not depends on player feedback. If it's very negative, it can happen that the switch won't be implemented yet.
- developers are still trying to rebalance gold ammunition. There will be an internal test of gold ammo nerf (only internal test for now)
- ALL PC devs confirm and agree that its very hard to push changes in the PC version of WoT mostly because players' overall negative reactions to change ("damned if I do, damned if I don't), while Xbox changes and content are easily pushed and much more prone to be accepted, Xbox has not disappointed so far

Insider on the "Gaijin" scandal:

Wargaming legal and advertising dept. paid very close attention to the Youtuber scandal form Gaijin. What came from it was the following memo in abridged details: 
 
We'll let people publish their videos, and we'll simply let the community to decide about them, we'll stick to our official informative videos as usual.
 
Basically they will make sure never to harass youtuber publishers that can criticize the game, and instead will let the players decide if the video is right or wrong - just to give you an example, there are published videos from players where they are being banned, after shooting a teammate repeatedly, and cussing at WG for it, WG will not incur in these videos, because the players fault is evident and are being chewed out by other players. Other times, theres an evident abuse of game's mechanics (refer to Sela's ban due illegal mod usage) and WG will only stick to punish the offender but never beyond the game's jurisdiction.
 
However another "less amicable" side of the memo says that they won't shape the game based on streamers or Youtuber opinions regardless of how "vocal" they can be ie: (some guy who whined to no end when his Yamato got nuked by a barrage of torpedoes, made a page-long text on why carriers were bad, either way he got chewed by players). Another cases of this include Garbad, Murazor, UNICA, etc. but they will simply not perform any kind of action that could harm them, like, for example, delete Youtube channels or so.
 
Balancing vehicles

WG's main balance factor, despite what anyone says is NUMBERS and MORE NUMBERS, not whines (except when they come with fatal errors or crashes, etc) but it has one drawback:

As an example: T-34-85M usage is so low that there isn't enough data to actually process a buff on its gun (just like the Rudy), and it doesn't help the fact that unicums/blues drive the tank mostly, where they completely outperform the usual average, so in this case, the numbers lie because they dont represent a total overall. AMX 40 and Churchill Gun Carriage (tier 6 TD) is another example of this. In this case other balancing factors come to play, but that'll be disclosed in another post :)
 
 Japanese tanks

Dev motto: "Japanese heavy tanks are difficult to drive? Don't drive Japanese heavies, let the unicorns do that then."

Overall the stats of Japanese tanks are "average" and displays that actually more skilled players tend to play them than the usual, this will be expected on the heavy branch: "those who know how to use them will have a Maus at tier 5". However the STA-1 and the STB seem to be doing pretty well even in Clan Wars.
 

- Some devs and admins play WoT on normal accounts in RU/EU/NA, nobody knows it's them and even participate in Clan Wars, they don't have any plans on sharing their names to the world.
- Devs and admins don't get free stuff on their regular accounts, they have to pay for everything they want, but they do, sometimes, get a few freebies for 3 days premium time or small amounts of gold (500g or 1200g bundled, etc) about once a month, even codes for them to give away but wont use on themselves
- A dev used to stream in twitch as a regular player in EU server, nobody knew it was him, can you guess who it was?
 
- apparently, NA houses more purple players than EU/RU but they have a consequently smaller playerbase ratio, the larger it is, the fewer the number becomes, this doesn't reflect that "America is better", in fact RU seems to take the lead on this, despite having the largest number of tomato players out there, they have truly terrifying skilled players. At some point a coalition of 5 clans & subclans in RU almost took over the entire continent in a global map, the only closest to it were players from Sweden or Finland in EU where they managed to make a flag out of the Clan Wars map for a time.
- A dark day for Greece and Italy: seems like their economic situation got reflected ingame too, most of the income WG makes coming from Greek players has been cut in half, and so does their skill
- Darker for Germany and UK: German and British players now took the lead as the players with most ingame reports (insults, racist remarks, etc) in EU, that doesnt mean German/Brit = holocaust, it's mostly reflected by server behavior due vacation period and due some ongoing rifts with German clans against their peers in global maps, or just overall douches, "play fair and leave your holocaust at the door!"
- Polish players? they re STILL the ones with the least reports, now along Switzerland and Sweden, Italy and Spain! rejoice :)
- regarding some strange remarks in EU and NA forums saying ragequits and such: game's not dying, or having less players - if anything, the amount of players keeps increasing specially in NA and some parts of western EU and in a minor way in ASIA (however China reported a staggering increase as well), and doesnt seem to be in decrease anytime soon, "lol game is dying" is just a kids tantrum. And the appearance of AW testing hasn't affected it so far.
- The trend to blame non-americans for game losses in NA server continues to some degree. Insider: "the best I can say to them is: "folks, you are full of crap :), skill isnt relied by geolocation or birthright so stop spewing bullshit"

Oh and G anniversary bundles? Lots of discounts for all clusters are coming, Xbox  is having them on the 15th or so. And it seems theres gonna be the mandatory 5x weekend in all clusters, so be ready!