Wargaming decided to end with the Expedition event, opting in favor of yearly Frontline and Steel Hunter stages, however, without any tokens or other currency, which could be exchanged for a IX tier reward tank.
The decision was made after the players complained that the event was too long, and if they missed one part, they forfeited their chances to get a tank. In response to criticism, WG removed both tokens, and reward tanks from two of the modes, and as an alternative, they merged it with the Battle Pass, enabling the players to get their points faster.
That’s not all, however. The players will be able to get points for the BP to make progress faster, which doesn’t mean the BP won’t receive any changes.
The 4th season of the Battle Pass will be announced soon, and here are some details:
• Increased the stage amount from 45 to 150, and divided it into three chapters. Each chapter will have 50 stages, and its own hero, specifically a commander tied to a specific tank.
• Seasons One to Three encompassed 45 stages, which the players had to finish to get all the rewards, and 100 optional stages, for those who wanted Bonds. In Season Four, the players will have to complete 50 stages in one chapter to get all the rewards.
• Another change is the possibility to pick blueprints for any nation, instead of predetermined ones.
Season 2021 of Steel Hunter is already available as part of the public test of Update 1.12, and in it you can find all the info about how the Battle Pass points will be obtainable. The displayed values are preliminary, and will be different in the official 1.12 update release.
Could these changes potentially kill Steel Hunter and Frontline for most players? While Frontline is still enticing, thanks to the credit grind, Steel Hunter certainly lost some reason of existence. Combining these modes with the Battle Pass, thus increasing the grind, looks like a bad change for the players. More rewards will be available, but at the cost of more time invested in the game.
Somehow wargaming needs to amplify the required time a player has to spend with the game. Seems to be the only way wot can keep/chain its remaining players
I can only speak for myself. But it has the opposite effect on me. Whenever i estimate that event is going to be grindy, i just skip it altogether. There are many other games to play.
An example can be 2019 Frontline. We had a choice of 3 premium (not just “reward”, like in 2020) tanks. At first i intended to go for Emil. I completed the first stage with ease. But during second stage games, for some reason, went just awful. So i decided – i will somehow complete second stage in 3 remaining weeks and at least get the STA. But i just wasn’t having fun, in contrast to the first stage. So i decided to simply quit FL. I ignored remaining stages altogether, ended up short on tokens even for the STA. But i stopped myself from being involved into grindfest just because “i’m already invested, need to suffer to the end”. No i don’t.
So far, this year’s Steel Boredom and Front Grind seem like good events to ignore.
there was one premium tank ever for frontline and steel hunter that was the emil. That is the point they should care about players who play tons of other games.
Yeah this indeed. Personally for me it gone as far as even not being bothering with ‘personal missions’, never finished even the first PM xD
All these evens, marathons and their rewards are designed to trigger player FOMO response. Players fear they will miss out on a good looking reward, marketed to look like a cheap yet “grind able opportunity” to get a premium/reward vehicle/reward xyz.
A lot of player are lured into such events through how they are designed and how they are marketed.
Because they feel like, if they do not attend the daily missions/etc, they will be loosing out on xyz and this generates stress by negative emotions. It is well known that stress, especially prolonged stress, affects cognitive capabilities, behavior and most important decision making skills.
This then, at least what I know about this subject, explains why evens/marathons with certain rewards &and 4x/5x weekends have a real negative side effect on the average player behavior in battles.
So I fully understand why people choose to skip events/marathons! Too bad those are a minority so it seems.
How the fuck did they decide those complaints were valid? You only had to play half of the expedition event to get a tier 9 reward, of course if you want every reward you need to play a lot!
Why the fuck does wargaming listen to autistic players who cry that they can’t get everything for free and don’t listen to players who spend years saying ammo needs rebalancing instead.
The playerbase did this to themselves. Spoiled crybabies. Everyone and their dog could get Expedition rewards if they played the gamemode for one afternoon each week but no, they want everything for just showing up.
^this. It wasn’t hard at all to get one of the two reward tanks. Though I gotta say, getting both would’ve been a huge pain because of SH; I’m willing to bet not many people liked that one
Sad to see that the same people who kept shitting on WG for making WoT bad now ruin it themselves 🙁
Only the Char Futur was worth getting anyway because the 777 is a POS same as that other one. There is a reason why you never see the other two in battle because they both suck in comparison to the char futur.
Seethe more, please. Some of those complaints have merit, not everyone is able to be glued to their computer 24/7. I personally was unable to play for a week and missed out on one of the Frontline stages, preventing me from receiving the second Expedition reward. Would have been to great to have been given an opportunity to make it up given the insane amount of time I already spend on the game.
In general these changes seem nice, especially the fact that they are no longer chaining rewards behind a certain game mode (ie SH) and will be allowing players to progress through their preferred mode.
That’s why they made it so that you can still get 1 reward tank even if you missed half the event. If you can’t play all the stages then be satisfied with 1 tank and you can skip half the stages, easy.
Well, if that’s how it is, then that was it for me for Steel Hunter and Frontline. Tbh Steel Hunter was really not my cup of tea, and Frontline has been pretty much killed by EBR’s as far as I was concerned. Shame about the reward tanks, but somehow I’m relieved as well that the only thing that kept me going has gone. I’ll spend my time playing something that is more fun instead and have a better time for it.
Frontline killed by EBRs? I dunno, seems that a lot of people are using the cars as scapegoats these days
Sure, they’re not easy to snipe, but that’s kinda the intended advantage. Superior mobility, but zero armour AND somewhat crappy guns
If you play at least like a half-decent player, EBRs alone can’t do much against you. But if you rush in alone and get circled by one, don’t rage; it’s your fault in that situation
Tl;dr git gud scrub
Bad guns on EBRs? Godly gun handling and OP HE shells, what else do you want lol?
What he means is that he sucks when using them so the guns must be to blame lol
Next time you bait someone, at least try to make it less obvious :/
Or dunno, maybe you were being serious…in which case all I can say is – gather info before you make claims
Oh look it worked lol
Well, I’m not gonna deny that the gun handling is indeed outstanding, and that does give them an edge against lightly armoured targets, as do the high-pen and high-velocity HE shells.
BUT
As I always say to everyone who complains about these, there are no identical engagements in WoT. Next time you come against an EBR, use the map to your advantage and don’t stay in the open. If you know the enemy has EBRs and you overextend, you’re just a poor planner
Besides, EBRs can’t reliably deal with well-armoured targets, so that’s also worth thinking about before you bash ’em for being uber OP
Finally – learn to aim a little better, and you’ll find that you can take them on pretty easily. If they get hit once and don’t retreat it’s even better for you, as that usually means they’re running in to their doom
lol…..in FL you either fight in main group or you play catchup after taking 2nd tank …… if you get caught by ebr(or ebrs) you are pretty much dead…if you are damaged you are dead-you will probably land one hit(50-50 on it being absorbed by wheels) while he will circle you, pump 2 HE clips in your ass and you are done…….if you are full hp he will pump 2 clips in you(taking some dmg in the process) than he will zip to the nearest repair circle, repair and come back to finish you
A good EBR driver won’t let you get an easy shot unless you risk your whole tank to the gun line behind him. As for heavily armored targets, EBR can just flank. And the cherry on top is that they are untrackable. Even the original OP t-50-2 before physics could be tracked….EBRs basically force everybody to play passively until they die, problem is, a good EBR driver will seldomly make that mistake.
But that’s beside the point of the original comment. You said that they have bad guns and I corrected you.
EBR 75 is not the only thing that made Frontline bad, Progetto 46 was there before as well. And less mentioned, but LT 432 and Bourrasque also deserve to be on the list.
Agreed. Frontline exposes the massive performance gap within Tier VIII. Honestly, I won’t miss it.
Yep, when I played FL F2P, I averaged Major rank, when I got a few prem tanks like the 432 and the prog46, I often got General. That was a real eye open for me just how much better many prem tanks are than the tech tree ones (I knew before but that was the first time I truly felt it in my face lol).
Your continued swearing and going off topic means I have to moderate your posts.
~ Homo_J (Forum Moderator)
If they’re gonna remove the ability to get cool reward tanks from frontline at least have it be around all year, and maybe put the reward tanks in the bond shop so people still have a chance to get the phase 1/futur/777 instead of just dicking everyone over, same with any reward tanks for the event they were testing like the lorr. 50t and the STRV k. Price them at like 12k bonds and boom, ez.
So basically no way aside from Ranked for tier IX reward tanks, all the tier IX’s in ST are just in tank purgatory. I hope they have something planned at least for earning or at least selling tier IX’s like in WoWs, that or attach the reward tanks to the new stupidly long Battle Pass stages.
“Another change is the possibility to pick blueprints for any nation, instead of predetermined ones.”
I love this idea, i dont care for the other mods anyway, neither frontline neither steel hunter.
The real reason behind this is because they will Sell tier 9 premiums
this is a theory that sounds true. all these marathons were probably here to test how easily players would fork over €60+ for a tonk.
My advice: Don’t.
Wouldn’t be surprising really, Tier 9 premiums have been sold in World of Warships for years by now, and no one bats an eye anymore.
If it happens in WoT, expect the “skilled players” to raise a ruckus while everyone else opens their wallet real fast, and then it will become another accepted aspect of the game like gold ammo spam.
Depends on the tank. The stuff that wins more will, as usual, sell more.
Yep it sounds like WG is mostly getting empty of new tier 8 to sell.
Yea €60+ its a lot
If we’re going to have noobs with 20 battles running around in tier 8 premiums, we may as well have them in tier 9 tanks as well….
In a way I’m happy because I won’t loose so much time on grind. Play some random for fun an that’s it.
So reward vehicles will be available through battle pass now instead through tokens ins SH and FL. Which begs the question: which version of the battle pass will we need? Will we be able to get reward vehicles with the regular pass or will we have to shell out real money for the improved pass to get the rewards?
The bigger rewards have always been tied to the “improved” Battle Pass, just compare what you can earn for free to what you can earn with the improved pass unlocked.
I understand people are focused on the reward Tier 9 tanks, but with the merging of Battle Pass and Frontline/Steel Hunter it will also be more frustrating to grind bonds.
Progression via random battles was easy, just pick your favourite tanks and away we go. With FL/SH being the only way you can progress, that means nonstop tryharding for God knows how long. I’m not sure everyone is ready for that kind of commitment (I sure as hell am not).
no one said you cant progress in randoms
Then I have misunderstood something because to me what was being said about Battle Pass was that “to progress in BP you have to play FL/SH”, and if WG wants people to play those, I doubt they’d leave grinding through randoms as an option.
Wish this was explained a bit better tbh, I have zero interest in FL/SH so if BP progression is 100% determined by FL/SH progression, that means no more BP for me.
I don’t think you fully read it because those two modes will merely help speed up progress. That means you can progress the BP normally in randoms but you effectively get a multiplier for playing in Frontline or Shithunter modes.
The ingame description of Steel Hunter in the test server includes this text: “Battle Pass is an event in which players progress from Stage to Stage by earning Points. Each completed Stage nets them valuable rewards. Upon completing several Stages, players can receive Battle Pass Tokens – a special currency that can be used to PURCHASE UNIQUE VEHICLES and other valuable rewards in the corresponding section of the Store”.
Doesn’t sound like there won’t be any reward vehicles this year ..
This is bc wargaming dont want to give away tanks anymore. So they will use any excuse to not do so. Go to the forums and start complaining. Love how they didnt take away the top clanner tanks like for ranked and clan wars nope they keeping those.
The delay in releasing tier 9 premium tonks is because the russian player base has such a huge gap between social classes, few will afford to buy a tier 9 premium tonk, while the masses of lower classes that make up the bulk of their customers won’t be able to afford one, and they are scared of losing many players.
The selling or tier 9s is more for the “western” servers. Which explains why it hasn’t happened, coz you are all red headed step child compared to mighty russian important servers.
But please, send us more money.
“The decision was made after the players complained that the event was too long”
Said nobody
Got the tokens from Frontline but will never have Char Futur because Steel Hunter is shit and I simply can’t play that.
It is completely rigged against solo players, platoons are just seal clubbing them. So I am wondering where are my due bonds from the tokens.