World of Tanks: Developers Q&A Digest & Other Info
4 min readLast week, World of Tanks developers have held a big Q&A with the Russian community Bloggers and YouTubers, and an official transcript has been released and published. But if you aren’t into reading big chunks of text, our always trustworthy reader Bolnoj, kindly has translated and created a digest of the whole Q&A, including some information missed by Wargaming.
I highly recommend you read both posts about the Q&A, as there is a lot of information about what is planned for 2019. You wouldn’t want to miss anything, would you?
- One of the first prototypes of stun used to have the effect stun has on a tank’s characteristics diminishing over its duration, but in order for that to work as intended, the initial debuff had to be much more severe compared to what it is now, which is why it’s not considered as an option.
- In the devs’ eyes, one-shots are more toxic than stun, but they admit they have probably underestimated the damage potential of new arty.
- There will be a cooldown on blacklisting – after you ban a map, you won’t be able to reselect a different map for some time. The duration of the cooldown is not yet determined.
- At first, you will only have an option to blacklist one map. Later there may be ways to blacklist more maps, perhaps 2 or 3.
- Blacklist for more maps is hard to do technically, can let the repeating maps problem resurface and can also cause problems for regions with a lower player base such as NA.
- Blacklist doesn’t work for the same map in different modes (Assault and Encounter). There’s already not that many maps in those modes, and WG is afraid allowing blacklist to extend to them may well kill off those modes completely.
- In a platoon, only the Commander map will be blacklisted, not the other two platoon members, meaning only one map will be blocked and not three.
- The work on the maps is not only focused on Frontline but also something unannounced that will be “close in spirit to Frontline”.
- In order to fix the problems with poor interaction of shells and map collision a rework for the Havok algorithms calculating the map collision is being worked on. This should fix all of the cases of “being able to shoot through landscape” or “invisible textures preventing the shot” once and for all.
- Unnaturally slippery surfaces such as rocks are a known problem and will be addressed after fixes to Havok.
- Before implementing an anonymizing feature, a lot of potential problems have to be studied – too many people choosing to be anonymous, too little people choosing to be anonymous (will just make players focus the anons), it being significantly harder for the support team to respond to tickets about anonymous players breaking game rules etc.
- If and when WG succeeds at fully closing the client from prohibited mods, they will likely unban a lot of players that were banned for using those mods, even those banned permanently.
- A new iteration of physics is already in the dev builds. It’s supposed to fix a number of problems, potentially including problems with wheeled vehicles.
- A project of “cleaning up” the tech trees – standardizing modules, removing excessive modules, and perhaps unnecessary tanks (like some lower tier Germans) is planned for somewhere between near and far future.
- Certain seemingly underperforming vehicles are very hard to balance due to there being little to no statistics of them available because of how rarely played they are.
- It’s possible that certain barely played CW-only tanks could be sold for bonds to regular players (partially to fix the statistics problem).
- Rewards for Merit aren’t a step towards full-time loot boxes. There are no plans for that.
- The logic of dropping of the random rewards may be changed.
- The whole system of achievements and medals is planned to be reworked, but not in 2019.
- Minimap pinging for Random Battles is being worked on to become similar to Frontline.
- No penalty for arty drowning itself planned.
- STB-1 will possibly receive a suspension similar to the Swedish MTs after their release.
- Changes for lower tiers will be done from bottom to top. This is due to the issue of the power gap between the lower and the higher tier being much larger than needed from Tier 7 downwards. That approach will not allow for simply shifting that gap to a tier lower that would be the case if it were to be done the other way round.
- Overall, the balance changes will touch more than half of all tanks in the game.
- No plans for garage choices WoWS-style.
- Despite there being no plans for a rework of chat and friend lists in the current year, it needs to be done and will possibly come later.
- Frontline is currently much higher priority for development and new content than Grand Battles, which were essentially a mode to test 30×30 made with pieces of technologies from Frontline.
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STB-1 will possibly receive a suspension similar to the Swedish MTs after their release.
I hope I can keep version without this feature as reward vehicle.
Why would you? Irl stb had only the advanced suspension.
So stupid to ask it.
“At first, you will only have an option to blacklist one map. Later there may be ways to blacklist more maps, perhaps 2 or 3.”
So Paris will be tank-free forwver then.
“and perhaps unnecessary tanks (like some lower tier Germans)”
Why would you remove tanks instead of adding more into the game?
Some tanks simply can’t be salvaged by buffs. Tanks like Leopard1, STB1, AMX30B, 121, Type5, E100, IS4, Cranvagn, Obj 268, Pzkpf German tier X heavy, goes something like that), Chinese TD’s need to be scrapped and replaced with new lines at least from tier IX upwards. No one plays them anymore, why to bother with them? Your replacement of Brithish hevy line was a example of good thinking. S. Conq is great, fun, balanced tank. Why don’t you follow that succesful example? I’m sure there are many other good, historicaly accurate tanks out there from USA, Japan (especcially because they have 0 good tanks), China, Germany wich can be introduced in game…Or wich existed only in blueprints (heck this is arcade game, right)? What about stoping printing new premium 8 wehicles for a while and print some good, compe***ive tier 9, 10 tanks? We saw your team is more than capable of doing so (every month new prem wehicle or two). Tanks that can be easily salvaged are E5 (make them S. Conq style, harder turret, weaker hull), destroyers like JgpzE100 and E3 need buff in speed, traverse and accuracy (not much), Patton and E50M (a bit of dpm enhancement, not much). Grille supposed to be accurate sniper? So make it accurate (not some false, only on paper stats). T57 only a small buff in speed so it can be comparable with 50B (wich is great). Maybe I forgot some tanks, but nevermind. Almost all new lines are good, compe***ive and fun. Skoda 50/51, new French AMX heavy line, S. Conq, 60TP, 5A, Progetto, Strv, even Badger is pretty compe***ive. For a long time, Russians were borring, dull non versatile line ( same old guns, no autoloaders, no gun depression, derpy guns mostly). While others had multiple different choices (Patton, E50M, 50B, BC, Waffentreger autoloader destroyer, autoloader french arty, Foch 155, 113, tortoise, fast nimble, tough E5, used in clan wars etc). But recently, after introduction of some new Russian tanks and other new lines too, wich resulted in powercreep(let’s say last 2 yrs) everybody forgot those days and are whining about ‘Russian bias’. Maybe they are right nowdays (not as much as they whine). Others need a bit of love too. But also this game is not only tier 9, 10. T29 is still king among hevies in tier 7. Hellcat is still king among tier 6 TD’s. CDA 71 shiat american spotter is a king among spotters tier 7. Best premium tanks in current MM are Scorp, progetto, Lorr, WZ-120 FT etc. Make MM better, introduce/replace new lines starting with tier 9, add new maps, voila, everybody happy.
How can you believe anything wg says.
“Certain seemingly underperforming vehicles are very hard to balance due to there being little to no statistics of them available because of how rarely played they are.”
And yet their data shows obj 279e needs a buff
I didnt bother to read anything after “super conq is good and balanced” just lol at balanced 😀 and even up to this point you have no idea what are you talking, leo is still quite popular and just one buff can make it good and fun tank – buff gun handling , so it doesnt have to aim for 5 days
Well that’s my opinion about Leo. Can’t hull down, can’t side scrape, angle, paper thin armour, large silouete for spotting…hmm what can it do? Maybe just snipe? You have E50M wich can all of that + ramming people. Seems to me you have no idea, but heck everybody is allowed to have oppinion, right? And I forgot, in case someone likes the tank, like you Leo thingy, should be allowed to keep it. But I wouldn’t give him new one. Not right. Someone like me 30+ tier X would have like 50 instantly. Not fair to those joined latter. And concerning S. Conq, agree, it’s borderline OP, on hilly maps, 4k+ damage guaranteed, but hey, can’t sidescrape, lower alpha to trade hit for hit (in some occasions that’s only possible when you see a tank for like 2-3 sec and vice versa), soft hull, weak sides….
Also forgot to say for S. Conq it’s pretty slow compared to IS7, 5A, 277, 113, new French AMX heavy, so not so much OP, as I said only situationaly, when on hilly map, and when there are no 3 or so sky cra pers so you can actually abuse those hills. And even then, gold through turret just under gun works pretty fine, or HE fom 705A or 60TP to mess your gun, crew, lock turret and 300 even 400 dmg. See? There are no ‘magic’ tanks. But cra py? Sure yes. You could be 6000WN player in E100 and you are pretty helpless in most of the games.
After that much pain and commitment, to get it (and I doubt I will ever unlock it, as most of the other players won’t) people deserve to get flying saucer not a tank. Why does that bothers you? You run onto one every 300 games or so…I know why, to push the narrative about ‘Russian bias’…keep whining…
Why wouldn’t you want the new suspension?
You are missing my point, I dont really care about how good is 279, or how good russian tanks are, it is like you say, that you run in to in once in 300 games. my point is about how wg is lying and bull****ting people straight in to their faces. Instead of saying ok we want to buff 279 because its russian or we feel it shoud be better or whatever, they are making up some **** about data shows its under performing and bla bla bla and now they state they cant balance CLEARLY underpowered tanks like 121 because its hard to gather data, its been in the game forever for **** sake and is clearly worse than other counterparts and they just refuse to make it compe***ive
actually, the suspension in the Swedish MT is designed to not affect the overall stats of the tank unlike the TD line, so the STB-1 wouldn’t change much other than the depression and elevation of the gun…
“It’s possible that certain barely played CW-only tanks could be sold for bonds to regular players” – It looks like Wargaming gave in to the whiners and crybabies if they are considering that. I see it on a regular basis on the forums, “I tried hard in the clan wars campaign,, but I’m a below average player. I should get a clan wars campaign reward tank because I tried hard!”
Everyone wants a trophy for participating. We might as well hand out superbowl rings to every NFL player every season of a Stanley Cup to every NHL team if we are going to follow that logic.
I think they want to remove tanks that are fake and make the game more historical