Developers Q&A: Preferential Matchmaking Premium Vehicles
3 min readToday, World of Tanks developers meet up with Russian Community Contributors and streamed a Q&A where they talked about Update 1.0, Matchmaking, Game Balance, etc. I’ve decided to split this information into several articles, each dedicated to a topic because the amount of information I’ve currently have, would make a huge article and more difficult to read.
But before I start, I would like to say thank you to Bolnoj for translating and transcribing the whole Q&A for me. Without his dedication and time, we wouldn’t have as much information available in English.
Source: World of Tanks Q&A Stream
Preferential Matchmaking Premium Vehicles
- There are two solutions for preferential matchmaking Premium vehicles. They can be changing their MM or changing their characteristics. Wargaming already tested the MM changes (on internal testing servers) but didn’t like it the changes. Currently, they are testing changing the characteristics and see how it works. The first vehicle will be the KV-5, but there are a lot of problems with how to do it, compensation and things like that.
- Changes will be tested on Sandbox and Supertest by owners of KV-5. After the results, Wargaming will be decided what to do and if there will be compensations or offer a choice, etc.
- The reason why KV-5 was selected as the first test it’s because it was the most notorious case. After will probably be the IS-6.
- The easiest way to balance it is to buff the small turret (Radio Operator won’t die anymore lol) and/or buff the penetration, or even removing the weaker side armour.
- Changes to preferential matchmaking Premium vehicles won’t be postponed anymore.
- M6A2E1 used to feel amazing in the old MM, now players think it feels horrible, but giving it better MM will make it “OP” again.
- There are two sides of the pref. MM: Players who play MM vehicles and players who get matched against it. In short, that’s why the MM changes for pref. MM vehicles don’t work that well.
- Wargaming doesn’t plan to buff a lot of Premium vehicles in one go.
- Wargaming will keep these vehicles in the game, no matter what the compensation, “don’t just sell your vehicles just yet”.
- There will be fair compensations for owners of the pref. MM vehicles that won’t like the changes.
- If the KV-5 rebalance goes well, Wargaming will be able to rebalance other vehicles faster.
- IS-6 is special because of its penetration, FCM 50t its interesting because of mobility and gun.
- Each vehicle will be looked at specifically.
- The worse way to balance them is to make them one by one, the best way would be to find a good solution for all and speed up the process.
- One way of compensation could be to offer players to choose a new Premium vehicle of the same tier and trade it, like for like.
- Wargaming wants to completely remove preferential matchmaking.
- Lower Tier tanks with pref. MM will be done entirely differently.
About Author
If we look at the pref vehicles in game, both performance-wise and historically, a good amount were made to achieve one goal. The IS-6 was made in response to German heavies, and to some extent, so was the “mutant”. With these extremely specific roles comes limited battlefield capability, and why i still believe a sort of “preferential” matchmaking would work, as that would tailor to their intended use. The IS-6, mutant, super Pershing, type 59, etc. would need to undergo extensive reworks that would make them seem even more so works of fiction if they were to be slotted in with their tier 8 counterparts. I believe that if preferential vehicles were only limited to being top tier in 3-5-8, 5-10, and full tier 8 matches, while buffing them to make them relevant and compe***ive again (@IS-6), the problem would be solved. Honestly just give my IS-6 200mm of pen and better side armor and I’ll be fine
Don’t you dare touch mu panther m10/t14/churchill 3/etc
All wg needs to do is look at the guns that already are in the game, like the KV-4’s 107mm for the KV-5 or the IS-M’s 122 for the IS-6 and so on, can’t be that hard.
About time too! Perhaps my KV-5 will finally be semi-functional!
I bet they will forgot about tanks like Pz IV Hydrostat etc
I forsee a lot of angry players if they remove pref mm on tanks people paid money for.
To me fix seems very simple – buff penetration, like give is 6 something like 220, that makes it compe***ive vs equal and higher tiers and low tiers dont care if you pen them with 175 pen or 220. Armour is alright, could be too good some time ago but with all powercreep and goldspam its alright now.
Also fcm fix seems easy – change it to medium so it has medium mm and if you want to make it bit better, buff gun handling.
Oh please. You’re thinking of the IS-2 not the IS-6 The IS6’s only purpose in development was to test an electric transmission (The obj .253) which sucked so they scrapped it entirely. The non electric variant was the obj 252 which still wasnt better than the IS2 so it was scrapped also.
Yeah, I will be a sad panda if they change panther m10. Hopefully if it gets changed it will get better…
Faire compensation will be to give my money back and to let me do whatever i want with them. I don,t want to be ****ed with personal reservs or credits or other useless stuff.
I have all other premiums that i want so a trade solution is not an option for me.
I bought superpershing, is 6, wz111 for their great armor backthen and in compensation they had bad or week guns. Giving them good penetration won’t solve the problem because their armor will be useless in tier 10 games where noobs are on full premium ammo mode. I bought this tanks to bounce something with their armor and not to make happy ****** tier 10 players.
The problem is in their new mm system.
3_5_9 system is way to often met. It should be otherwise.
Now in 10 games with a tier 8 tank you get in a tier 10 fight in 6 or 7 games. With tier 9, 2 games, and 1 game with full tier 8 and if you are lucky 1 with tier 6 when you are top dog.
I thing it should be otherwise.
Let the tier 10 boys to fight moore often between them. In 10 games 7 games should be only in tier 10. 2 games with tier 9 and 1 with tier 8.
But wg will never be agree with that.
Anyway limited mm premium tanks are the last oasis of joy playing a tier 8 premium tanks and now wg want to kill our last resort of joy.
Wg want us to make less and less credits with our premium tanks and to force us to buy credits with real money.
In order to do that they ninja nerf the income of premium tanks with 30_40% they increases the role of armor in the game, they change the mm in order to put you in matches witj bigger tiers with bigger armor in order to force you to shoot premium ammo.
Limited mm premium vehicles are less and less met on the battlefield why are them such a big problem?
Put them out of shop and they will dissaper naturally without any problems in 1 or 2 years.
KV-5 with the KV-4’s gun would be devastating. It’s already faster than the KV-4, and if they were to buff the frontal turrets, it would surp*** the KV-4 completely.
When did they nerf income of premium tanks? If they did that, they screwed paying customers…
That’s more just the fact that the KV-4 and KV-5 are both ****, seriously you can pierce their turret fronts with 200mm of pen. And don’t say “angle it” because if you check the KV-4’s armour model, you will see that by angling the turret enough to make the front hard to pen, it exposed the angled side to be penned.
For the KV-5 they have said players will be able to either keep the tank, exchange it for a different premium, or get its full value in gold. So they will likely do that for others too.
R.I.P. good Old Pz. B2.
My pref. MM tanks are currently my favorite Tier 8 premiums because they fix the horrible MM for Tier 8. Never seeing Tier 10 is such a relief. Instead of removing pref. MM, they should make pref. MM the norm.
You couldn’t have said it better. Unfortunately WG doesn’t want the game to be fun or balanced. They know how to do it they just refuse to.
Oh you mean like all the big fat slow German heavies that can be penned straight though the front of the turret?
Bad idea all around in my opinion. They are slightly weaker yes. But they have special mm. I don’t play these for any other reason than the special mm. Well worth the trade in the current mm system.
There is no tier 8 prem you can take and not get absolutely farmed game after game in tier 10 matches.
The whole reason why the pref mm tanks are so good now is because you are almost always top tier. And if someone argues is6 is not good. **** off with your bs. I play it constantly to grind credits and farm everyone in every game. The only thing that is actually hard to deal with is the is3 and defender. Same goes for the 112. The wz111 is a bit weaker but still more than useable.
Kv5 is weaker than it should be. But at the same time when top tier you are impervious. The rear armour is ******ed. Also the pen might be bad but you have insane dpm. This tank is too punishing for you against higher tiers but way too powerful against lower tiers. Same for the t54 mod 1 btw.
FCM 50t….. It’s a better AMX CDC? Maybe just change it to a med and increase RoF and gun handling a bit and that’s pretty much it?
Super persh is still garbage. But similar to the kv5 against lower tiers it can really farm. Higher pen to be able to deal with higher tiers. A bit more mobility to be able to turn and angle it’s front faster.
Type 59. Increase RoF and gun handling. Maybe a slight increase in mobility too so it is more on par with something like t44 100.
There WG. I fixed your broken **** in 5 minutes. You are welcome.
P.s leave pref mm for now. Until you fix tier 8 mm there is no way you can buff these enough to justify them meeting tier 10 in every single game.
I think it’s high time for +-1mm, the longer waits would be worth it for the sake of game balance.
Front of turret of German heavies is still smaller and better armoured, oh and you can angle the turret without exposing the sides.
They just need to nerf the reload to compen sate for the 20 extra alpha
Remember, those are replies from RU region. On RU with its loads of players, pref MM vehicles are a ig problem. Most of RU CCs agree on pref MM vehicles being absolutely unplayable. One test made by them shows regular T8 tanks get top tiered T6 more often than the pref MM ones. Just imagine how good must it feel to get constantly matched with 3-5 tier 9s and loads of proper, strong tier 9s in the IS-6 when it’s supposed to be this sort of tier 7.5 tank. So on RU the overwhelming majority of the community DEMANDS something to be done with them.
strong tier 8s* (if only I knew how to edit comments)
+1/-1 mm problem solved.
The problem with current premium mm tanks are they are too punishing to lower tiers and useless against higher tier. Solution: nerf armour buff utility and gun.
If they remove premium MM, they are going to face quite a few very angry customers.
dude, read everything
“Lower Tier tanks with pref. MM will be done entirely differently.”
As someone that bought the KV-5 on release day, I completely agree with the money-back option. if you change preferential MM and remove it from the game entirely, you better ****ing offer a complete refund option. I don’t care how long I’ve owned the tank for, I better be compensated or there WILL be hell to pay.
Good luck getting a dime back from WG. You agreed to WGs terms of service with them stating any fees are not refundable.
Matilda IV penetration buff?
Best joke i heared this year so far
this should have been response to ROMBATs comment, but I accidentaly pushed wrong buttons 😀
Only thing I want from FMC50 to make snapshot capable, at the moment, being no armor gl*** cannon with that aim time kills, it needs aiming characteristics like Löwe….
A few years ago they change the mechanic of credit and xp. As a rezult we get fewer xp and credit income.
When they made t 34 heavy tank premium the net income for a bad game was 80k and for a good game around 120_130k. For outstanding game it was above 200k. Now is 30_40% less. So to the xp. My best result as base xp is 2500 now althogh i play better is not moore than 1500 xp.
hahahahahhaha
have you ever played with german heavy tank?
traded FCM to revalorise. BEST DECISION EVER
I foresee WG not caring at all. Prem MM is pretty balance breaking and prem MM tanks can’t compete with the new wave of T8 tanks since most of them lack the penetration without gold rounds so hopefully there will be a general penetration buff.
Also I hope that WG take the chance to hit the E25’s camo with the nerfbat because that tank is so stupid.
**** you WG. Don’t even think about removing preferential MM. I have no interest in playing against ****ing tier 10 tanks with tier 8 tanks. T-34-3 is my most played tank for a reason… Just make +/-1 MM for all tanks = problem solved.
So…. the E 25 will have some buff in the future?
cue camo buff overload.
XD
I would like to ask a very simple question if war gaming have been talking about removing preferential MM, and they have been for quite some time, then why the hell are there 6 preferential tanks in the premium right now??
Surely you must first remove from sale and then try to fix the so called problem any thing else is just a rip of
exactly!
I have almost all the tier 8 pref mm vehicles and i bought the for the sole purpose of not having to play against tier 10. +-2mm is the worst **** ever.
I don’t say that i don’t play in +-2mm, but the pref mm were my go to tanks to relax from the grind in bottom tier games. That was the entire advertised idea with those tanks.
Most of those tanks have been collecting dust in the garage for a while now, because of the new mm screwing over the pref mm.
to not fix it – even worse to remove it after everyone and their dog has bought all of them is just the biggest scam ever.
I say scam because the have sold them for ages without addressing the issue and continue to sell them even now, even the tanks they removed from shop, they sell from time to time for their rarity and pref. mm, raking in the gold and cash to then remove the main feature of those vehicles without offering a proper refund.
My situation (and surely others as well) i also own almost all the other non-pref. premium tanks, have gold leftover from bundles for which there is no use anymore – what is a fair compensation for taking away the reason someone bought the tanks?
offer gold compensation? i cannot really use that due to the devaluation of gold (all the new premium tanks are only available for cash)
offer trade-in? there is no tanks that i am interested in, which i haven’t already bought…
offer buffs? i do not want to play tier 8 vs tier 10, that’s why i bought the god damn things…
the only fair thing would be to offer full money refund… and that is not going to happen…
Whatever they will do with these tanks will only make the situation worse. I don’t want to see tier ten tanks in my tier 8 premiums I paid money for. I simply don’t want to face 907s, Types and whatever unbalanced crap they come up with in the future. Have fun playing your giant FCM when there’s a tier ten derp gun in the enemy team. Good luck not getting one shot by 4005s. I’d rather drown myself straight away.
The whole thing is a scam. They could just remove them from the shop and just leave them untouched. But they are still selling these tanks at this very moment although they already know the new owners will get screwed in a few months. I hope there’s is a country where this stuff is illegal so they have to offer a full refund.
Actually this RU/EU server comparison has to stop. RU has a bigger population BUT it is spread over more servers. There are two RU servers that have around 100k players at peak but the others are way less populated. Why should the MM on RU server with 50k playing on it be worse or better than on an EU server with 50k? RU10 and RU9 have numbers that are more similar to NA. And btw Russian players are complaining about the state of tier 8 MM as much as European players.
The biggest difference to me seems that RU contrubitors speak with one voice while EU contributors don’t. EUs biggest contributor doesn’t give a **** what others think and is just milking his viewerbase as long as this game is popular (or have you ever seen him hosting other or promoting anything else than his own YT videos?) There simply isn’t a EU community. There are Polish, German, English, etc. communities with their own contributors but there isn’t such thing as EU community that can speak with one voice. And Because of this WG simply doesn’t care and will never give as much attention to the EU players than they give to the Russian playerbase (recent example Q&A for Polish players). The only time WG listened their EU base was when basically every contributor told his viewers how overpowered the Defender is.
Does anyone think WG will buff these tanks so much that they can penetrate a Maus or a Type 5? Just check the normal Tier 8s. They all get CONSTANTLY TRASHED by Tier 10s in this horrible matchmaking. Tier 8s are just cannon fodder for Tier 10s. WG already confirmed that there are just too many players playing Tier 10s to give Tier 8 tanks better MM. They simply can’t. And now they will just add the PrefMM Tier 8s to the pool so they can get farmed.
There were times when people played NORMAL Tier 8 tanks for fun. I don’t know anyone who does this anymore. Aside from getting MOEs or grinding to the next tier noone is playing normal Tier 8s. It is just not fun and it even COSTS lots of credits because you are constantly facing fake tanks with fake armor and no weak spots. Especially bad players have absolutely NO incentive to stay at lower tiers because they can’t penetrate ****/get outspotted/derped etc. So it’s like a spiral in which bad MM leads to even worse MM. Why would you play Tier 8s and lose credits if you can play Tier 10s, lose money but have way more fun farming lower tier tanks.
my Lor 40t laughs at you while carrying t10 matches routinely.