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World of Tanks – Developers & Community Contributors Q&A

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Wargaming promised Community Contributors to improve communication, we keep this secret for a while, but we are now allowed to talk about it.

At Tankfest we proposed to have a Q&A session with the Developers before a new update was about to hit the server, and we have been having these sessions for a while now. Last week we had another Q&A session and we are now allwed to share the contents with all of you.

A big thanks to Artem Safronov, Executive Producer, Olga Fadeeva, Product Manager and Paul Barnett, Game Director for making time to have these Q&A’s with us.

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Customization

  • More customization options for tanks are on their way and will be shown soon. It’s an entirely new system, new interface, and new way to interact with elements that will allow players to further personalize the looks of their tanks.
  • We will have Styles sets, which basically consist of a set of camos that you can quickly apply to your tank if you don’t want to spend too much time with the feature but still want to change your tanks visual aspects.
  • We’re going to test the new effects, paints and styles on tier 8 premium and tier 10 tanks at first. It’s a complete overhaul of the texturing system on the game engine side, and we’re only getting started – we will be releasing the whole feature in phases, with each one adding more features to allow players to really make their tanks look unique.
  • There will be all sorts of crazy options, including non-historical ones, but we will provide players with the option to hide all non-historical things with a check-box for those who want to keep the game as authentic as it is right now.
  • Players who have purchased current camouflages, emblems and inscriptions using gold before the release of new customization system will get to keep them. For players who have used credits, compensation will be provided with the release of the new customization feature.
  • The camo bonuses will remain unchanged with this new customization system – they will only apply to the hull of your tanks.
  • Customization options will be purchasable for gold, but we will also make them available for rent in exchange of credits. The rental system will be based on battles, not real time, as we experiment to find out what players like the most between rental per battles or per time period.
  • We’re still working on the pricing for new customization elements. We’re taking the time to get it right and ensure players will enjoy the new feature, and we’ll communicate the final prices as we get closer to release.
  • Regarding styles sets, we also plan for the future to release different themed styles, like themed after historical events. There are not coming right away though as we first want to focus on making the system work for everyone.
  • Some camos, like the historical ones, will be limited to certain nations. Others, however, will be applicable across nations.

Maps

  • Working on upgrading maps to HD is very heavy on resources and time-consuming. When we switch the client to HD maps, it will be for all maps, as we can’t run a mix of old, SD maps with the new HD one’s side by side.
  • Currently, we’re working to make sure we have enough maps turned to HD for their release – but we’re not willing to commit to a release date just now. We’re almost there though, and we’re definitely looking at months, not years when talking about a release window. We do not want to upset players by announcing a date and then having to postpone it.
  • We are also very happy that we’ve made enough progress with HD maps to now start thinking about creating new ones or bringing back old ones. We could, for example, consider new maps with an Asian theme, or getting inspired by some maps available on World of Tanks for the console. Diversification of maps is very important to us, and while we’re not making any promise, locations are something we’re working on.
  • We are also aware the current map selection system is not perfect, and we’re working on improving it. We like the idea of allowing players to veto some maps, but we need to take into consideration the core gameplay of the game when thinking about such features, making sure it’s not breaking any core game mechanics. It sounds a lot easier than it actually is to implement when listing all the things such a feature could potentially break. Because of this we’re not really considering a veto system for maps at the moment. Our developers are however tackling the question of how our servers are putting maps that our players want to play up first, and we’re not discarding any option on how to do that. We just need to figure out the challenges posed by our tech first.
  • When moving maps to HD, our priority was to make sure the core gameplay of these maps remains unchanged, maintaining the sidelines, the covers etc. We did, however, change some items so that they better fit the HD improvements of the maps, but we have people spending a lot of time checking everything out carefully to ensure consistency. Some things will change, but we aim for nothing game breaking to happen. If you do notice any change impacting the gameplay negatively, please let us know! We want to make the game look beautiful without breaking it.
  • We also switched off hundreds of climbs already, but our players are very creative and continue to find new ones. We can’t promise we’ll ever get them all, but please let us know when you find some as they are definitely not intended by our map designers.
  • We are not considering implementing gun collision on tanks, we believe there are loads of reasons why this is a bad idea from a pure gameplay perspective.

Tank Balancing

  • Looking at Japanese Heavy tanks, and in particular, at the statistics, we don’t think they are crazy or overpowered, but we do know that they hurt skilled players the most, as they are easy to play for more inexperienced players. There is certainly an emotional weight to it, and we’re looking at it very carefully. We’re currently thinking that we need to tackle the question of shell types globally, better understand how they are used.
  • We have a lot of ideas and plans for new tanks, but nothing we can share with you today, unfortunately. Expect great stuff on this next year!
  • We have made a whole bunch of changes to tank lines over the year in order to try to make each line make more sense. We are always considering all options when retiring or replacing tanks in a line, and we always vote internally for our favourite solution. Sometimes we split the tree in two and allow all players to choose to unlock either the old tank, or the new one, but it also happens that we just decide to make some tanks a relic for various reasons.
  • We are going to continue our work on this of course, and we hope at some point we will also revisit some tanks that have been left alone so far, such as CW rewards tanks for example. This will require some time before we get to these though.

Matchmaking

  • Current data shows the matchmaking is working as we expected, but still has some issues. We’re very aware it requires more work, and we’re looking at tweaking and polishing it further.
  • The system is very complex and because of that, we need to be extremely careful when changing the way it works.

New Year’s Event

  • This year again we will have the in-game event to celebrate the end of the year with all our players. For those who have played it last year, it will be similar, with some significant improvements we hope players will enjoy.
  • One big change is the fact that the entire garage will be customizable this year, with different styles and effects which can be applied to the snowman, the tree, the house…etc.
  • We also made some changes to the way the crafting system works and replaced the recipes with a machine that creates toys from the rewards obtained through the crates.

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15,466 thoughts on “World of Tanks – Developers & Community Contributors Q&A

  1. There is, but can’t share it ATM. Don’t worry, the tank will be replaced but it wont go away for ever 🙂

  2. “Current data shows the matchmaking is working as we expected…..”

    I´m somehow very very very upset about this particular developer comment.

    Thanks for this Q&A Article, love it!

  3. Jap heavys are not crazy or OP..are just ******ED DESIGNED !
    Why?
    Because NO WEAKPOINTS !
    Due to this entire balance is broken
    After that is that stupid premium ammo wich have 0 DRAWBACKS except costs, and this is nothing else thant P2W !

    fix this and game will be much much better

  4. A tad disappointed about the new year’s event being the same, but seemingly “on steroids” compared to last year… Same old cottage garage with Santa flying overhead every now and then, which we’ve been having the past 3 years now… I’m not saying it’s a bad garage design but it’s getting stale.

  5. “The rental system will be based on battles, not real time, as we experiment to find out what players like the most between rental per battles or per time period.”

    I hope this goes to premium time as well. Not everyone can play constantly and might only get 5 games a week in, so a 300 battle premium time would be more appealing to them then a 30 day premium time

  6. “Looking at Japanese Heavy tanks, and in particular, at the statistics, we don’t think they are crazy or overpowered,”

    Did I time travel to April 1st? This is a joke right? Seriously, just remove the derp guns off them and buff up the normal guns ffs. The Type 4/5 should never have been given the 15cm to start with

    “We’re currently thinking that we need to tackle the question of shell types globally, better understand how they are used.”

    About time. Hopefully premium ammo gets the re-balance people have been asking for

  7. Is not the 907 a reward tank. Thus not a premium. Thus they can nerf and buff it like a normal tank. And considering how it preforms vs other CW tanks. I don’t see the issue why they are not doing something to it. They were fast on the T-22 back in the day.

  8. Grind the line to tier X. And you might change your mind. Armor only works half the time if that past tier 7. And most of the things that kill you are either AP or HE. Not HEAT or APCR. You would be amazed on how few times my Type 4 got wrecked by those. AP guns are a joke. And since they are, they promote the derp use more. They really should make those more a viable option vs just derp like now. And they are crappy mul***askers. Just get up on their side with an LT even when it’s distracted and you will take it out. As many did with mine in a 1 vs 3. If it’s a 1 vs 1.. then open ground is not his ally. Like the Lowe… even a tier 6 could take you out then if he has binoculars and you side.

  9. Depends… if there are female crews or not. And if they are locked to a tier 1 for a nation etc. Then the event might be more interesting. As for the garage cottage? Well true it’s been used for years. And has the same woman screaming every 10 seconds. But.. it’s not the worst garage either.

  10. I seriously hope 2018 is the year we get the Chieftain Mk 6. I’ve been waiting for 2+years since they first revealed their renders for it back in 2015.

  11. Maybe we would like to custommize our tanks, even if we previously already have done that for gold. It would be nice if WG would delete all cammos and return the gold to your deposit, so you can decide if u want the new custommization. It would be stupid if we spent lots of gold for cutommization already, read cammos, and we would have to spend gold again for the same thing.

  12. Wait what? Unlike previous changes the T-10 will just disappear rather than us getting the replacement and T-10 both in our garage? What a rip off

  13. i already got this line and i know what armor means on those tanks.
    Yes, standard ammo can pen them but only for higher tier. Same tier or lower have no chance without gold and thats a ****** design. (Or High pen TDs, of course…but in talking about an equal enemy).
    Agree, guns are a problem too…because are p2w new ones and old ones doenst fit in current p2w system of ****** high pen gold ammo.
    But armor without weakpoints is a even bigger problem !
    Thats a problem for all others not only for these tanks.

  14. *not tanks are crazy…developers are !
    Or just greedy liars…im not sure yet..

  15. I think that you may be mistaken there – your info seems to be outdated. While it is OP on Asia server its mostly because it became $$$ item but can be balanced for other servers easiby by modifying soft stats.
    Than there was information that it can create tech branch using some Excelsior variants (33, 37 I think), than some Vickers MBTs and ending vith Chieftain. Than in one of last QNA was “Wargaming doesn’t want to Chieftain Mk. 6 as a simple straight research from the Conqueror. If enough lower tiers are found to fit in a similar playstyle to the Chieftain, then it will be considered to be introduced as an alternative branch.” So it seems previous idea was scraped/frozen maybe due to new “line consistency policy”

  16. Its not a rip off, just trust me, players will like the changes coming up for it. Just can’t disclose more info ATM.

  17. I am seriously wondering how they think that match making is working? They should have had tier 9-10 in their own battles. 3 tier 9s in a tier 8 battle is acceptable, but 3 tier 10s and 5 tier 9s is just utter lunacy. Just seal clubbing to try to push players to purchase gold rounds, and nothing more!

  18. “The system is very complex and because of that, we need to be extremely careful when changing the way it works.”
    Because you have made it overly complex. You didn’t need to change to the new MM format, just balance the team based on tank types/tier and do tiering of players based on their rating. Players with a 1000 PR should not be playing against a player with a 7000 PR, even if they were in the same exact tank.

    I have a few questions:
    1) Are they going to size maps appropriately based on the tiers? It is insane that tiers 7-10 are playing maps like MInes in any format other than maybe esports. No tanks view range should cover more than 1/4 of a map.
    2) Any word on Obj 430 line changes, such as approximate time frame and what is going to happen with the 416 if a player has it? Will it become a “premium” like the FV215b, deathstar, etc?
    3) In the garage, you can filter things like premium and elite tanks but you can’t filter non-elite tanks unless you have a mod. Are they going to add that filter to the garage?

  19. The thing with the Japanese heavies is that yes, they CAN block a lot of shots… but only against normal ammo, premium goes straight through. And you don’t actually get anything for blocking damage, so you just sit there slowly dying (or quickly dying if they load gold) mostly unable to do anything in return, unless using the 15cm with premium ammo, and even then you have to hope it hits.

  20. Oh come on, stop with the “they can’t touch premium tanks” urban myth already. They nerfed premium tanks plenty of times in the past and I doubt they will stop here.

  21. Yes working as expected to punish platoons in every way. So they never see a top tier battle. Thanks WG for making us play alone, just the way you want it.

  22. there are Weakpoints…. but you need gold to pen the weakpoints in most t10 heavy tanks….

  23. The M60 seriously needs some love after the M48 was buffed it became just a better version of the M60 taking away every reasons to still play the M60.

  24. “plenty of times” is quite an overstatement. To my knowledge there were 3 premium nerfs:
    -Type 59 (which was buffed again recently)
    -T26E4 Super Pershing (which was also buffed later and had a full refund option)
    -E-25 (can barely even be considered a nerf since they only increased the hull size a couple percent for historical accuracy)

  25. The Type59 was nerfed several times (three, I think?), and there have been several ‘hidden’ nerfs when other tanks received buffs and the premiums didn’t.

  26. of course there are weakpoints..
    ENTIRE HULL IS WEAK WHEN YOU PRES 2 !!

    f***ing WG ****** balance

  27. I think that they should make camo act like a consumable (you pay credits per battle for your camouflage, with a resuply cost).

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