WoT Vspishka Stream Developer Q&A – 26th April 2020

New for the community is Egor Rodionov (head of the game design department).

• I have been in this position only recently. In many ways, I am responsible for all aspects of game design. But in fact, I have been in Wargaming for a long time, 5 years, even more. I joined the company in the Department that dealt with the global map and clan activities. If you remember Global Map 2.0, which went from a simple interface to a big thing — when a lot of rules changed, new mechanics were added,landing rules changed, territories for different tiers. I took part in it at about this moment. After that, I moved to the Department that deals with the game itself and all its internal elements. I worked there for several years, and as a result, I now hold the position of head of game design.
  From what I did a lot myself, in detail in detail: “Steel hunter”, both Battle of Bloggers And Battle pass. But, generally speaking, lately I have been partly involved in everything that we have in the game.
• top 3 issues that are being solved by me right now:
• equipment 2.0 (the most important, interesting and complex);
• crew 2.0;
  • 7×7 mode from the battle of bloggers 2020 (I really want to make it a cool activity).

The following top 3 issues, but with less priority:
* balance of equipment that will be slightly stretched over time;
• customization
• Many, many different things.

• Spring balance 3.0: we realized that the players were not ready for such a large-scale change in the game. We will introduce it gradually, bit by bit, more accurately and in a different way some of its points.
• Blueprints: Yes, there are certain problems with them now. Changes are planned in two places:

1) in terms of converting existing blueprints, including fragments, because there are those players who have fully researched the nations that do not have too many tanks (Italy, Czechoslovakia, etc.). And the player has national fragments that he just physically cannot apply. This is the main thing we want to fix.
2) we plan to slightly change the logic of issuing blueprints, so that the player has more control over what he gets.
Meaning: the player will be able to see in advance what he is being offered for some activity at the moment, and make a certain choice. But I don’t want to do this, suggest me other options.

• Many edits in features don’t happen as quickly as you would like, like in the next patch, because our QA has to run a huge number of tests. Especially in our client-server game. And such a feature as adding the percentage of wins to the session statistics only seems easy and fast. This is another collection of data after each battle, where a lot of relationships immediately appear. As a result-a lot of testing on our part.
• I personally did not want the official session statistics to have a winning percentage. I believe that this parameter does not show the skill of a player in tanks very well. There are more correct parameters for this, such as WTR WG.
  And if we are not talking about the player’s desire, but about logic, then the percentage of wins at a distance of 10 battles is actually a completely useless parameter, it does not say anything — how well I played these 10 battles as a player.
  We added the winning percentage only because it is part of the tank culture, because this is how the players are used to it and how it has developed.
• The instructions that are currently applied to the equipment will remain relevant when entering Equipment 2.0, but the instructions for the crew will be completely revised.
• We will not remove the current equipment from the game. The system (Equipment 2.0) will only complement and enhance the current one.
• Yes, the light bulb will be built into the 2.0 crew by default. It will default to everyone, but it can be improved with perks. This is one of the key points for the new crew.
• Trophy equipment is a certain step towards players who are ready to play a lot, but are not ready to play competitive and intense gameplay (Global Map etc.). Trophies will appear in a strictly limited number.
• Equipment changes also involve changes in the interface, where the player can read a little more information about what exactly he is installing on the tank.
• Difficulty with equipment will increase gradually for the player: the variability of how many different items of equipment can be installed on low-tier tanks and high-tier tanks will differ.
  Relatively speaking, at tiers 1-4, firstly, there will be fewer slots, and second, the variety of equipment that can be installed on the tank will be significantly less than on tanks of tier 7. That is, the effect on the maximization of some parameter appears at higher tiers.
• The next Sandbox will be entirely dedicated to the new 2.0 Equipment, and that’s coming soon.
• Experience for tanking hits appeared only as a Role-based experience, which is now already used for some in Ranked battles. Role experience — this in the future, in fact, replacing the usual system of experience for random battles. In particular, such an incomprehensible component as experience for active combat operations will disappear (be replaced).
• tanks.gg or other resources that allow you to view the tank armor are out of the game, and the models there are somewhat simplified, compared to those that are used in the game really! All this leads to this unpleasant thing: if we allow the game to be quite simple and pre-show the entire armor, how it works, where to shoot, etc., then this, from the point of view of our tech specialists, will inevitably lead to the appearance of a mod, very native, very well embedded inside the client, which will just allow you to see the same thing in battle. I think all the further consequences are clear to you. Now this information is on the server side, and getting it quickly enough to somehow use it in mods is quite a difficult task. Currently, while this is on the server, it is not possible to use it dynamically. There is just a very serious technical difficulty, how to do it so that it works quickly and cool, but it does not allow you to easily and simply add such a mod to the game.
• Tank fixes: to stabilize some interactions with the new tank, especially if there are mechanics (for example, wheelers), it should take a sufficient amount of time, up to six months.
  “We already have an auto-flipping – we had it in Steel Hunter. We have paid attention to this, and we will now think about how to do it correctly. Whether through a repair kit, with the help of an ally or automatically, but changing the timers — we will discuss. In my opinion, this feature is good.
  Also, we should not forget that when we think about things like auto — flipping, we also consider the following: whether auto-flipping of the tank will not make it very dangerous – psychologically a small problem; whether this will lead to the fact that players will drive even more carelessly. And in the end, the behavior of people in LTs will not change very nicely. But it’s worth checking out. Maybe it will appear on tests, Yes.

• The arms race is a fairly natural process that occurs due to the fact that the game’s audience and people who make tanks want to see new tanks in the game that would be quite attractive, new and give a new feeling. This is the kind of thing that happens in absolutely any game, especially in games involving PvP sessions with a lot of different characters. The only question is that this thing needs to be controlled and not allowed to develop very abruptly.
  We have it in the game, of course, but we control it. We also try very hard to make sure that it does not interfere much with the players. If we have a conditionally strong representative at some tier, we make sure that there are alternatives that will allow us to fight it. It doesn’t always work out perfectly, but in my opinion, in tanks with an arms race everything is quite, quite good, evenly good.

• T95/FV4201 Chieftain is so unbalanced, because initially it was awarded to players who fulfilled absolutely monstrous conditions in clan wars to get this tank. It’s easier now, right. Yes, this tank is very strong. But in random, the presence of a Chieftain due to the total number of its owners is not so strongly felt. In the Ranked Battles, we are now thinking about what to do with it. Perhaps we will somehow solve this at the level of the matchmaker — it’s not a fact that it will be possible to have a lot of them in one battle.
  I personally see the dominance of this tank in Ranked battles; I consider this situation unhealthy, BUT I do not want to offend players who earned a tank by spending a lot of effort on the clan wars, too.
• In fact, the fact that the game, in principle, has stronger, more pronounced tanks — this, from the point of view of performance, is more or less normal as long as we move the other tanks so that they do not sink very much. The ideal balance, where everyone is absolutely equal in efficiency — is utopia. If we take the 430u seriously now, we will have a new and better tank for various reasons, because of the players’ attitude to tanks, real characteristics, and just the perception of it.
  I believe that we have very strong tanks in the game now, and we would like to bring the rest of them up to the level of the others — even if we don’t make them better, but rather to make them more competitive. But the fact that in the game there will always be coveted and generally recognized tanks, it will always be like this.

• About the need for compact (small) maps at tier 10: I’m not sure at all that this is a general opinion that absolutely all players share.
  And if we start removing maps from the roster (selection), the problem with repeating maps for the player will again be relevant.
  In my opinion, the problem here for us is to determine whether a large number of players are really not satisfied with the gameplay on some maps. We have a feature for eliminating maps and their balance, in terms of winning percentage. And the amazing thing is that they are completely uncorrelated and unrelated to each other.

• Edits on the map Mountain Pass — right now in the works (imbalance of the lower respawn on arrival time at the center).

• Increase number of maps that the player can ban — no.

• Fisherman’s Bay:
  The Bush as an object that the player sees in front of him when playing the game, and the Bush, from the point of view of the server, which calculates whether the machine sees one another or not, are very different things. The player sees the world in more detail and artistically than the server does. I. e. at the expense of leaky bushes, I have a suspicion that in the movement and looking at the image of the Bush as such, the player can not always understand whether he is actually, from the point of view of the system, is in hiding. As a rule, these special objects that actually define the visibility system are more massive than the visual bush itself in the client, and these things should not happen.
  For the system, a Bush is a rectangle, i.e. if you draw this Bush closer to the real one, with its real geometry, the server simply can’t process this amount of data, including the client.
  Also, standing in the bushes, do not forget about the overall points for lighting the tank. You could stick out a part of your tank a little, caught the enemy’s observation point and lit up.

• Why Is a Battle Pass so expensive when compared to other games?

• I don’t want to discuss the specific cost, because “expensive” is a rather specific thing. Well, in the vast majority of projects, Battle Pass, even by virtue of its name, is an entrance fee. We tried to make a system that allows any player to progress in general and make a minimum number of restrictions in it.
  For a player who is not ready to pay money, this is an additional value and mechanics. A player who is willing to either speed up their progress or strengthen their skills can take advantage of this.
  Now we are looking at the reaction — at how players go and buy.

• Steel hunter 2020 will be 3 times cooler than the previous one!

• How would you pick up falling projectiles?

• First of all, if this problem bothers you, I would try to disable landscape tessellation in sniper mode, if you often encounter this. It significantly improves the situation – it makes the landscape that the player sees on the screen in the game much closer in its final form to what is calculated on the server. It should happen less often.
  In fact, this is also a problem in part of the physics of objects interacting between them. We have seriously improved this thing in patch 1.8. Now we are checking how it works from the point of view of players, etc. Well, we are working in this direction, yes.

• Stone plus Bush – is it a feature or balance?
  “It’s a philosophical question. I think it’s a feature. It’s always fun to find something like this, and you feel completely safe.

• Magnetic aim – for everyone or no one?
  — Magnetic aim – for those who need it, for whom it makes sense (for wheelers).

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