WoT – Reddit Mega QnA with WG developers

Reddit Ask Me Anything  with Creative Director Andrey Bitletsky and Publishing Director Max Chuvalov.

Question:

Why were the changes for 30B scrapped and can we ever expect a buff for it? The long-awaited buff for the statistically worst T10 medium has disappeared without a trace and WG is strangely silent about it. Obviously, the 430 line changes needed to be postponed, and I can’t complain that you take your time with them, but 30B was uncalled for at best.

We decided to go with a different plan for 30B after reviewing initial tests outcomes. It is a bit early to give you guys any details on it though, sorry

Additional artillery nerfs when? The mechanic is still broken and overpowered, especially at lower tiers.

How is a new player supposed to deal with an LEFH or M44 stat padder at tier 4/5/6 etc?

I’m pretty sure M44 has the highest win rate of any tier 6 tech tree tank, AND highest DPG… and it does it from across the map, and did I mention it stuns???

Thanks

Yes, we want to rebalance low levels. As the rest of the levels =) At the moment a series of Sandbox tests are running, where we are checking a different take on balance in the game. If that happens to be a good idea and community likes that, we will definitely make huge changes on low-mid-high levels. That will touch many aspects of the game if it proofs to be the right way.

Any plans for RHM Panzerwagen?

Nothing in particular at the moment. All plans are on hold until we will figure out the fate of the grand rebalance AKA shells rebalance that we are toying with right now

Any news on getting rid of the “soap rock” physics?

Will there be more wheeled light tank lines in the future?

Is the “bond shop” still in the works or did it get cancelled after all?

Please feel free to check out the QnA post linked here and above.

The bond shop has had some technical issues and being worked on.

“Definitely yes. There is a problem with matching Havoc body with our terrain. We are working with Havoc team to solve it.”

When is the next tank marathon going to be?

The game is taking rest after so many marathons it run 😉 Also, we wish to offer you something entirely different for the back to school period. Marathons are supposed to return right after.

The hydropneumatic suspension on the STB-1 is a feature many people have asked for and I am thankfull that you implemented it. However currently the STB-1 in game can only tilt to the front and back, while the real live counterpart can tilt sideways as well.

Has it not been considered implementing the STB-1 with the ability to tilt sideways? Or did this funktionality just turn out to be too difficult to implement?

Bonus question:

Aufkl.Panther available in the future? Yes, No ,Maybe , I don’t know?

• It leads to lots of weird behaviors with auto suspension; on the other hand, using a manual ON/OFF switch like in SW TDs was, well, turning a tank in a TD so we cast this idea away.

• Maybe

Hello, some questions regarding Japanese tech tree:

• Are you happy with the way the Type 4/5 Heavies (tier 9 and 10 Japanese heavies) got changed in patch 1.5? How are they performing now and in general, are you satisfied with their current performance?

• You already mentioned the situation of the Japanese TDs (as someone who has wanted them for 6 years now, I am so excited!), but any idea when we might be able to see a Japanese TD branch in the game? And will the branch feature Ho-Ris (Chi-Ri based TDs with 10.5 cm guns) or some kind of fictional super-heavy based TDs?

• Have you ever considered inclusion of the 10.5 cm medium tank Chi-Se? There’s extremely limited information of it, but a vehicle loosely based on this obscure project could work as a tier VIII heavy premium (something Japan doesn’t have yet).

• Have you considered other possible Japanese branches or premium vehicles, such as a LT branch?

1. We are pretty much ok with it so far. We are carefully watching their performance both with derp and AP guns.

2. No details on the release dates. Please forgive us for that, but we had already plenty of bad experience announcing release dates in the past.

3. To be honest, both of us here are not 100% sure about that. We’ll check it back with an owner of JP tree. Thanks.

4. Not yet, one branch at a time! =))

My question is regarding the upcoming British light branch. As we know the current branch was announced from Tier VII to Tier X. I know that modelling a tank is expensive, it takes time and there is a saying that the branches start at Tier V+ since many players just skip the lower tier tanks but the Brits could easily make a full branch of light tanks from Tier 2 to Tier 10.

The branch would be more historical than some of the Italian or Polish tanks and it would also solve the issue that some of the most iconic and somewhat mass produced light tanks are missing from the branch. My branch suggestion would be the following:

• Tier 2: Vickers M1937

• Tier 3: Light Tank Mk.VII Tetrarch

• Tier 4: Light Tank Mk.VIII Harry Hopkins

• Tier 5: A46 LT

• Tier 6: FV301

• Tier7: GSR 3301 Setter

• Tier 8: LHMTV

• Tier 9: GSOR3301 AVR FS

• Tier 10: Manticore

Is there any chance of WG considering the aforementioned problems before releasing the light line? They would fit the theme of the line as well with their small dimensions, good view ranges and outstanding guns.

I’m afraid once the original line from Tier VII is released the chance of the Tetrarch or Harry Hopkins appearing in the game as researchable British tanks would be pretty much zero since there would be minimal incentive to research them if players already have the higher tier lights and considering how iconic they are it would be a shame.

I know the Tetrarch is already in the game as a Soviet gift tank but it’s like if the T-34-85 would be missing from the Soviet tech tree and it would only be a Chinese premium tank in the game. In the end the name of the game is World of Tanks, not World of Some Tanks.

Thanks for your thoughts on this line. Honestly speaking, we will unlikely change it now, it’s too late. However, we have a plan in our sleeves how to give you guys access to some vehicles that didn’t made it into the regular trees, for all nations not only UK. We are supposed to announce it soon, and hope military history / armor fans like you will like our idea as much as we do 🙂

However, we have a plan in our sleeves how to give you guys access to some vehicles that didn’t made it into the regular trees

aka even more premiums

Its becoming a meme at this point with how fast premiums are being released.

Nope. Not premiums this time

Ranked replacement for the NA server? When, what, rewards? Im bored out of my mind without competitive stuff (after clan wars ends).

We have a plan, it is going through approvals.

With Ranked battles being, not great, because of the new system of multiple 15 rank divisions and the time requied

Can we have more player involvement in larger scale game events?

Because sometimes the event just starts with rules being released just days before, with no time to change anything that might be broken/no-fun for the event

Well, just like it happened with the latest instance of RB, some designs look much better on paper or during simulation than when they are going live. So instead of discussing things that do not exist, we think it might be much more beneficial to talk about something real that we developers and you players have experienced together.

Community feedback on RB this spring was clear, we are making changes now for the next season to make everything slick.

Thats great to hear that changes are comming, is there any info about when is the 2nd part of 2019 season comming?

Another question, How many people WG expected to reach gold league rewards in EU?

Well, we expected more people there than we’ve got, but not much more.

The right question is, what is a skill req to be there? If we’d design it so anybody who put enough effort could reach GL it’d lead to a whole bunch of other concerns we already faced in previous years. Like, why people with average skill are making it on top? The harsher threshold we are setting the less people can get there, obviously. So the challenge here is to find the right ratio.

We are not happy with the one we used for the last installment and will improve.

Question:

It is still planned to have a rework of the crew skill/system? I really hope to have a new one, with more deep customization.

Answer:

Yes, in progress

Are there plans to undo the additional pen drop off for T10 lights?

I asked this last q&a and your guys weren’t aware of this mechanic…

We checked it in the game code, and we are still not aware 😉

Any hints (or a range) on how much tanks in the bonds shop will probably cost?

Vehicles we considering for the bonds shop at the moment are priced up to 20k. However, this is a subject to change closer to release. Thanks for the question!

Yikes, that does sound like a lot. I’d be more comfortable paying like 12,000 for a Tier VIII tank, maybe 15,000 for a Tier X. Bonds are rather slow to accumulate even for the best of us.

Answer 2:

That’s what “up to” might mean as well 😉

What has been your greatest achievement/ contribution to the development of the game in the last 12 months and why?

A.B.: Saving Christmas in CIS. Day 1 of the Holidays Ops the whole infrastructure went down under the load in roughly 20 minutes after the event’s started. Was working with the team for around 40 hours straight to find and implement the solution that included some out of the box designs combined with technomagic. In 24 hours everything was live again, 16 more hours later we were sure it is all good for now, went home on auto 😉

MC: I’m not a developer myself and do not code. But quite proud of some projects my team worked hard lately. To name few of those: Twitch package which all players can enjoy at the moment and Black Market feature that was live not long ago. Definitely, it was build by our Dev team, however the design originates from Publisher. So a good #oneteam example =)

Why can some of the older maps not be re-introduced into the current version of the game? I appreciate a lot of them need HD upgrading, but it seems like a waste of resources to try and re-invent content you already have. A lot of us longer term players would love to see the older maps brought back, imbalanced or not. The meta has changed a lot in the past 5-6 years, the maps that were pulled for one reason or another would probably play way differently now.

Doing that albeit slower than it could be expected. Hopefully in the next few months you guys will see what our LD/Level Art teams were busy with.

You can find a lot of answers on old maps and reintroduction in the QnA thread linked above, found here.

Such as:

” Right now, we are looking at what maps should be next, Pearl River is one of the candidates. “

There are many proposals and reworks and a lot of testing taking place on maps.

Will we ever be able set our profiles as private, as you can on WoWS?

Wasn’t this even promised in the 2019 changes?

If that’s the case: When will we be able to?

https://www.reddit.com/r/WorldofTanks/comments/c09l4j/ask_your_questions_to_the_wot_developers_until/

Yes, it is coming VERY soon

With the addition of wheeled vehicles to the French light line, would you ever consider adding gunned half-tracked vehicles (most likely as a low-tier)?

Not in plans so far

Will you start selling more skins for popular tanks and decals/camos?

Yes, definitely. Not only selling, but give away as well.

Question:

Why is Front-line a defend or attack only style map? Has other style been considered? Will we see other Styles of maps? Could it be possible to have teams start mid map and push and pull the the flanks and each team have a side to defend or attack depending on how game plays out. Being able to fight back and reclaim a lost flank. Example each side have Turrets to defend. Also, wouldn’t it be better to have each line for different play styles suited so everyone can have fun. Example for City Line for heavy, while another be more open, and one being a mix. That way all tanks can be fun in this game mode not just the faster ones.

We tried a lot of the above while the team was working on Frontline. Doesn’t mean that any new variations (symmetrical, different kind of asymmetry) would never appear in the game.

Can we get a feature where crew member nationalities can be changed, for a gold cost, to assign them to tanks in different tech trees?

Nope. Not in a way you described it.

Any news on 3D customization? (not the 3d skins like from lootboxes, but the option of adding sandbags, etc to your tank).

As you’ve probably mentioned, we are working towards 3d skins now. Full 3d customization functionality turned out to be quite a heavy load on performance for the most of our players’ specs.

With the new Ammorebalance on Sandboxserver I have noted that sadly the variety of shells is still rather small. Will there be a test where for example a leopard 1 has APCR, HEATS and AP’s? Where for example heat does the lowest dmg but has the least RNG in penetration and damage, APCRs still being speedy but having more RNG and more dmg while AP’s do the most dmg but also have the most RNG in DMG and Penetration?

It could even be implemented with national traits where like the 121’s AP does more damage then a 430U’s one

This is a conception test iteration 2. This gibberish means, that nothing there except the idea itself is in its final form.

A.B.: To the best of my knowledge we’ll need at least 2 more shots to prove the concept (one for HE in general, one for SPG) before we will actually get to real numbers

Does the WG development team reference non-premium tank usage statistics when considering buff/nerf/balancing? For instance, the massive spike in players using the Obj 468 v4 was indicative of the obvious overpowered nature of that tank at the time. So when WG sees tanks that are rarely fielded, does this draw attention to those tanks for balance reconsideration OR is WG okay with some tanks being relegated to moth-ball status?

We do.

At the same time, many of those poor beasts more often than not are victims of the bad (or good) perception rather than poor balance if one will believe math.

Are we going to be seeing any changes to the way technical victories / defeats are handled on the clan global map? Sure the opposing clan get a penalty and we would continue to the next round, but that clan’s actions [or lack of] just cost us potentially hundreds of fame points through no fault of our own

AFAIK, yes.

Why with recent patches has frame rate been prioritized over ping? With the most recent patch I have gone from averaging 110 ping to 190….

Well, FPS is a function of the client part of the app and your PC computing power, while ping is essentially not. Just to be clear, it is impossible to prioritize one over the other while building the game. If something like that is happening to you, please double-check with your ISP, they are much more likely responsible for what’s going on then we do. Peace 🙂

Would Wargaming ever consider implementing high tier autocannons, such as those that were in Armoured Warfare? There was a pretty interesting discussion in one of my servers in regards to this, and it sounds like a really interesting idea; it would pave the way for vehicles such as the FV721 Fox AFV, if there was interest in adding such machines.

Not at this point, there is some tech ceiling we are trying to keep so far and this kind of weaponry is above it. Will we ever consider lifting it? Who knows, never say never 😉

With the introduction of wheeled light tanks, can there be wheeled TD’s?

There are quite a few of them, and would be a interesting addition to the game, and not have the effect that wheeled lights had.

Won’t happen soon, we still have to digest all the lessons on wheeled LTs first )

There seems to be no information on wheeled vehicles, yet the impact on clan wars and tier 8 Frontline cannot be discounted.

1. Will they continue as-is?

2. Will the current light tanks continue as-is, considering obvious role displacement caused by wheeled vehicles.

3. Will British Light Tanks have a meaningful impact on this? Clearly the state of the game strongly favors wheeled vehicles and russian light tanks, with everything else performing much much worse.

Answer:

1. Most people who play WLT up top date are much more skilled than average still, so the data is somewhat distorted. Once or twice in the past we were provoked to react too early and regret that deeply afterwards. This time we prefer to wait few more months. Any way, WLT are under 24h surveillance. If it would be needed to act, we will.

2. At least until we will make our minds on shells rebalance. If it will go live someday, the impact of it on all the aspects of the game including LT-WLT placement will be bigger than it looks like.

2A. One of the biggest reasons for us to even consider WLT was the previous state of the game when LT role started to drift much more towards MT than we believe was safe.

3. British LT are a part of a different plan.

Light tanks do not effectively counter wheeled vehicles 1v1, and you clearly unambiguously stated the complete opposite when introducing wheeled vehicles. Do you have any intentions to remedy this. Do you have any intentions of using the British light tanks to remedy this? You have chosen the name Senlac 1066 for a reason, right….i mean did the guy who named that tank not share the meaning with the rest of wargaming staff?

The general idea is that the Wheeled line does not seem to actually be imbalancing things as much as players may think at this point in time. If in the future it seems to throw off the balance once they settle, the assumption is that they will be changed then.

There’s not really any other way to say this except the wheeled vehicles will stay as such and nothing is being created to ‘counter’ them as you put it.

To specify answers to individual questions:

Will they continue as-is?

Yes

Will the current light tanks continue as-is, considering obvious role displacement caused by wheeled vehicles.

Yes

Will British Light Tanks have a meaningful impact on this? Clearly the state of the game strongly favors wheeled vehicles and russian light tanks, with everything else performing much much worse.

No, they aren’t being used as a ‘counter’ in the way you’ve put it.

You softballed the Object 268-4 nerfs. You have completely stopped working on balancing the Object 430u, despite it being a huge pain in the butt op tank.

When are you going to follow through with the 430 and 430u nerfs. For an unbiased game, this really doesnt look very good.

The 440U balancing was not stopped, it was delayed to ensure the changes do what they’re intended to do 🙂

Could you please specify the difference between cancelling “balance changes” and postponing them indefinitely? It very much appears that you are just letting it continue in broken fashion and are doing nothing.

Cancelling will usually imply that we will not look further into data about the tank and how it fits into the meta. Postponing means that there are more pressing issues at hand to solve before we can revisit the data and see how it fits into the game after the other changes that were made.

 If proposed changes don’t come up to the desired level then it is better to wait until other changes (like the HP and shell rebalance) are in place and then look at how the changes work once those are in place. If that helps?