Source: EU Portal
We appreciate that many of you took an active part in testing and discussing the New Balance on the Sandbox server! The main thing we want to emphasize now is that the changes tested on Sandbox will not end up on the live servers in their current state.
For these ten days, we have been watching your reactions and feedback on forums, social media, and other online platforms. Your active discussions suggest that the key idea of Sandbox works: you have the opportunity to test, discuss, and assess possible changes before they find their way to the main version of the game.
Feedback, Questions, Doubts
The complex rebalance that was subjected to testing consisted of many parts, and several reasonable doubts and questions were brought up to us by the community.
The main questions that we received from you during the test are as follows:
Shell and HP Pool Rebalance
- How will this affect gameplay?
- Will the vehicles have an even harder time playing in the bottom tier position? Will Tier VIII vehicles fight against Tier X opponents with the same level of performance?
- Which vehicles will become more relevant in the new system, and which less?
- What will happen to vehicles that have low penetration values for standard shells in the first place?
- How will everything affect Premium vehicles?
We understand and share your concerns about these issues. The main purpose was to check how increasing the vehicles’ lifetime in battle and enhancing the role of the armor may affect the game balance before introducing any changes to specific vehicles. Thanks to Sandbox testing, we now have the necessary data to keep making progress with our research and future development.
Changes to HE Shells
You quite rightly noted that the new mechanics of causing damage with HE shells did not become more understandable and predictable, which means that the implementation of this idea did not work as intended. Also, it was a mistake to remove penetration from the parameters of HE shells.
We wanted to rework not only the mechanics of causing damage with HE shells but also specific parameters of this shell type.
SPG Rebalance
Our goal when testing artillery was to add more diversity to gameplay and decrease the overall duration of the stun effect. The tested SPG rework makes sense only in conjunction with the shell rebalance. We will get back to the SPG rebalance once a new solution for the shell rebalance has been designed.
One thing can be said for sure, armor-piercing shells turned out to be ineffective and undesirable in the shell paradigm currently tested on Sandbox.
It is already clear that the new paradigm of shells and the reworked HP pool of vehicles, together with the mechanics of HE shells and SPG rebalance, require further improvements and are not ready for release in their current shape.
Confirmed Hypotheses
Tech Tree Changes and the Collectors’ Vehicles
The Tech Tree interface became more user-friendly and transparent. There is now a universal layout for vehicle types inside the Tech Tree. You don’t have to start researching a new branch from low-tier vehicles, which will spare the time, experience, and effort, especially of players primarily interested in high-tier vehicles.
Your concerns were mainly related to the vehicles moved from the Tech Tree to the Collectors’ Vehicles section of the in-game Store and the assumption that they would disappear from the game for good. However, we’d like to assure you that is not going to happen.
If these changes go into the main version, these vehicles, including those of Tier VI–X, will be accessible and available for purchase with credits. There’s no need to rush into researching these vehicles as you will be able to buy them at any time after the potential update goes live.
Durability Increase for Low-Tier Vehicles
On the Sandbox server, we additionally increased HP of all Tier I–VI vehicles, which made the power progression from tier to tier smoother and more consistent. The results fully justified our expectations. Your feedback showed us that the cost of mistakes in battles was reduced, and low-tier vehicles now survive for a longer time. The average duration of battles also increased together with the overall comfort of playing in these vehicles.
What’s Next?
Today, the Sandbox server will shut down. Now we have plenty of statistics and your feedback, and we are waiting for the results of the questionnaire. Thank you for filling it in by the way. We hope you like the reward for helping us out!
We will not release the new balance as you saw it on Sandbox. We need some time to conduct a complex analysis and understand what kind of adjustments are needed.
Several solutions implemented on the Sandbox server were successful, but some of them still need to be adjusted. As a result:
- We will proceed with the HP increase for low-tier vehicles, the rework of the Tech Tree, and the implementation of Collectors’ Vehicles, at which point we will share more details in the near future.
- Other changes, including the shell type rebalance, HE mechanics, and SPGs rework require a thorough review, and will not be released anytime soon.
We will also keep in mind the vehicles that were supposed to be checked when the new balance test occurs. We’ll be ready to talk about our future steps and potential updates for all features and vehicles around mid-March.
We would like to emphasize one important message once again: any global changes will not go into release without being tested by the players first.
Thank you again for your participation and all the feedback that is so important for us to keep moving in the right direction and for us to make the right decisions.
Sooo… No HE nerf? No 1-shot killer arty?
is it possible that WG actualkly listened to its crowd? Good news then. But… I don’t buy it… there must be something hidden, like buffs to the OBJ 430U or something like that.
Now I can dream of a day where they’ll test only 1 arty MM and nerfed clown cars
1 shot killer arty no they wouldn’t have been able to one shot anything anyways
No HE “rework” aka screw-up. Nice.
Glad to also see they see the problem with the “rebalance” with SPG. The AP shell are simply too weak and inconsistent for it to be ever considered over the normal stun HE shell. All that was going to happen is that everyone stick to the stunning HE shell and the other 2 get completely ignored.
Don’t understand Wargame
This Sandbox was really to test WARGAME own personnel ideas of how WOT should become
WHEN all WG dam well need do is read the “endless I mean endless” replies/ threads from there players all about what we do like/ don’t like/ hate in WOT
WOT Homepage Forums pages/ topics ~ why do they even exist WG?
WOT/ Homepage/ Forums ~ 10’s x 1000’s player responses/ threads/ discussions etc
all readily available in there Own WOT forums WHY have these Forums if there useless?
none of what they tested was from there own WOT Homepage players/ feedback/ Forums
We the PLAYERS all gave massive feedback as requested by WG for them to read and seriously think about
WarGame!
you really need to wake up comrades and LISTEN much MUCH more, it saves you wasting everyone’s time making you also look kinda dumb
If you’re seriously considering forums as a form of constructive feedback then there is something wrong with you. Who is going to skip through stupid posts made by complete brainlets to find something worthwhile? And who decides what’s worthwhile and what’s not? Sandbox gave WG exactly what they needed, DATA. Feedback here only supports data which means data is useful.
I agree that forums should not be used as the main feedback. Some topics are hilarious.
But I also have to agree that when the Forums are overflooded with the same topics over and over again for years (Rus BIAS / Wheled cars too OP / bad, few and way too small maps, etc.) it means something about the state of your product and what your community demands and playerbase expects. You cannot simply ignore all of it.
4Real ~ you must be a somewhat new player I guess year or 2 maybe?
to reiterate
Wargame asked ‘us all’ for Feedback THEY asked us, ok?
after Rubicon 1.0 WG epic disaster
my point you muppet
WHY ask us if they are never going to READ or RESPOND with anything to our feedback
WG have a long History of Ignoring everything we say BUT pretending to be interested
Rubicon 1.0
was there big wake up call ~ which was why they asked us for feedback and info
Sandbox after Sandbox servers testing
MOST of which over the years gave us NOTHING back into WOT
I like how you’re trying to sit on a high horse while knowing nothing about the game you’ve been allegedly playing for years. Judging from your comments I imagine you never experienced Rubicon first-hand as you have no idea what exactly happened.
About Sandbox. WG asked for specific sandbox related feedback, not ramblings of an idiot. That’s why if you played this sandbox you receive a special form that you should fill up and answer some questions. Plus as I said WG received a lot of data that corresponded with the feedback they got. And pretty much everything we’ve seen on Sandbox servers went into the game in the end: Frontlines and artillery stun for example.
On one hand I agree with your statement, however, WG should’ve figured all this out after the previous versions of the sandbox they did last year. I don’t understand why they wasted all this time when they already had enough data to know it wouldn’t work. This whole “new balance” they are trying to force through is holding hostage all the other things that need attention in the game which is contributing to its current decline. They need to figure this out quickly before it is too late at which point nobody will care about any re-balancing anymore.
Rubicon 2.0 mostly avoided? Gr8 job, WG. Nice.
Can I have my WTE100 back now? If so, bygones be bygones, promise.
This was Rubicon 3.0. Rubicon 2.0 was when they’ve tried to remove the overmatch mechanics.
Glad they’re reconsidering the HE change. Not sure how worried I should be since they sound pretty convinved that they NEED to rework HE instead of just nerfing gold ammo but at least we delayed that
HE does need a rework. As it stands it is basically worthless for guns 100mm and smaller, while it is stupidly powerful for guns 150mm+ plus. Add in the fact that HE is wildly inconsistent, and it is clear that something should be done to it.
It is not the case at all. Small caliber HE has tactical use (ie. resetting cap, taking tracks off, shooting paper tanks) which is exactly what WG was saying they were trying to do with this HE rework. There is no need to change it as it already does exactly what they want it to do. And large caliber HE SHOULD be a lot more powerful! It makes sense. There is a threshold for when an explosion becomes effective against armor. That’s one of the reasons you sacrifice accuracy and gun handling you get with small caliber otherwise what’s the point of having high caliber guns at all?!
As for HE being inconsistent, obviously you don’t use HE very much because it is as consistent as it needs to be. I play a lot of t49 derp and I can predict how much my shell will do most of the time considering the target tank, how much aim time I have and the distance to the target. Sure sometimes I’ll get lucky and sometimes I’ll get trolled but that’s part of what makes HE fun! The nature of the shell dictates that RNG is more of a factor but, in reality, it is pretty consistent most of the time as long as you know how it works. Basically the HE mechanic is just fine as it is, you just don’t know how to use it effectively.
At least they listened !
FEBRUARY 17th,4.54 AM
TAP article: ”Sandbox Ending Date + 3rd 1.8 Test Launch Date”:
My comment there:
”Do you REALLY think,that if 90% of the feedback about HE rework,or gold ammo rebalance is negative,WG will give a juicy brown turd about it?…….
I cant even stop thinking,that WG never wanted gold ammo rebalance,thats why this HE and gold rework is so bad,so they can scrap the idea,and tell us they’ve listened to player feedback,and will postpone ammo rebalance for sometime in the future……”
CALLED IT.
I see they centered the criticism to the simplication of the tech tree to a no-issue but completly avoided answer to actual issues like lack of interconnections between branches (example: going Piger->Elephant), how low tiers are going to get monotone with the same tanks over and over instead of the current variety.
Curious…. They don’t mention anything in regard the “special ammo” aka “gold ammo”! The “special ammo” spam is an issue on the game and even on test server everyone was using apcr all the time.
WG just decided to ignore that?