Facebook livestream Q&A with Thaine Lyman, Andrey Biletskiy and MeatheadMilitia

– New German branch was neccessary to equalize German heavies to other nations; for the developers, this was a means to create a common playstyle, where players have an idea about the branch which results in the Maus;
– Light tanks and MM are tied to each other, the decision to introduce tier 10 LT is mainly motivated by the MM changes;
– The next update will introduce the LT changes (tier 9-10) and the new MM (3-5-7);
– Tier 10 LT will perform the role of medium tanks, and also have their individual roles on the battlefield;
– WG wants to fix the balancer/MM and make it simpler, to save the role of scouts in the game;
– Tier 10 LT should always be at the front line, close to the enemy, due to their maneuverability;
– The Sandbox was developed by WG to have a possibility to try out bigger changes and see how it changes the game, without introducing them to the live server. As such, devs can try out more and collect more various feedback;
– The LT’s will be a bit worse than MT’s, they have less HP and will have a scouting role. In a 1vs1 against MT’s, they should not have a chance. MT’s are a “jack of all trades”, LT’s have the main role of spotting;
– The devs still think about the fate of the AMX ELC bis. But before changing something, they’ll think whether this is the right way or not;
– WG has a historical office which is working on something that will be a huge surprise;
The devs intentionally made some premium tanks weaker than others, but now plan to make them on par. The devs never wanted to make premium tanks weaker than researchable ones so as not to create a “pay-to-win” environment, but this was a wrong step;
– The dev team plans to fix the repeating maps problem during 2017;


– The new MM will track which maps the player was on as to not repeat them as often [TN: not quite sure if the map tracker is part of the 3-5-7 MM or not];
– The devs do not plan to introduce +-1 MM for balancing on higher tiers, but said that it’s possible to try it on lower tiers;
– The devs do not think that the 252U is too strong of an enemy in tier 8;
– Sandbox offers players to take up on more active roles influencing the tests;
– There are some minor changes to the stun mechanic left, the devs think that they’re going in the right direction while relying on player feedback;
– Supertest and public test are good to get a huge amount of information on new possibilities, but in the end some things are introduced and some are scrapped. Sandbox complements these two to collect information more efficiently;
– The devs read player feedback on the Sandbox forums, they have a team dealing with this information;
– The devs think that maximum of 3 SPG’s per team is a key to balancing;
– Devs do realize that the stun effect can be quite annoying, but they introduced multiple consumable usage per battle to combat this;
– WG works on “old/classic” maps, they might re-introduce, for example, Port or Dragon’s Ridge;
– Night battles, weather effects and transparency are not a priority at the moment;
– Skill-based MM is not a good idea for random battles, but will be realized in Ranked battles;
– Ranked battles will have a ladder system, each time a player ranks up, he will meet players equal to his skill. Ranked battles are not only for clans, but also for solo players which play tier 10 tanks. Players who are defeated but end up in the top 3 of their team will also receive a “reward”. Players taking up the last 3 positions in the team will not receive rewards;
– Ranked battles will most likely be tested on Sandbox first, no ETA yet, the first season will be an alpha version;
– Currently, new graphics are being worked on, WG plans to convert all maps to HD in a short time;
– Regarding performance: players currently playing on minimum settings will be able to play on new maps and have the same performance;
– Ranked battles will not be available 24/7, there will be timeframes (talking about seasons);
– No ETA on new graphics yet, but some news should appear in the coming weeks;
– Devs are discussing large maps, some news might appear soon;
– In 2017, there will be new (multiple) branches;
– WG uses a new graphics engine called Core 5.0;
– Multi-core support won’t be introduced for now;
– Female crew voiceover is being worked on;