WoT Lesta Q&A

WG EU completely forgot about their promised Q&A. It was delayed more than a year ago.

The questions of “Jove” – (YT video link) were answered by:
• Andrey Lysak aka “WelIDone” (product director of Мир танков) – chief. Formerly director of development for WoWS.
• Anton Butrimov (Мир танков development team leader). Formerly Lead system designer.
• Artyom Dovgilev (Live Producer of Мир танков). Formerly Product Manager.

The developers’ responses only apply to World of Tanks (Lesta) in the RUBY region.

• Taboo on adding features that WG does.
  Dynamic Events on the map in World of Tanks.
  This is a thing that changes the structure of the battle very much, it generally affects the battle very much. At the moment, we are NOT ready for such experiments at random. Within modes/events, it can appear as a separate item.
  Europe has a game balance department and a map department, and they think that in their case this is a good solution. Regions may differ from each other, both in the behavior of players and their preferences. At the moment, we believe that within our region, this thing will not be very good if we add all this to random battles right now.

• There are more and more players with 2/4k monitors and this number has been growing strongly for the last 2 years. Yes, everything looks bad for them and they want to help. But if we talk about this task, it is necessary to redraw almost all the interfaces that were originally planned for a maximum of 2k, and this HUGE amount of resources (temporary) will be needed.
• Anton Butrimov: Crew 2.0 concept 2021 was very good! There are some nuances that should be changed, but in general Crew 2.0, as it was originally made, in my opinion, was made quite interesting.
  In general, the concept is great.
• The Call of Mars fan mode did not appear for us, because there was nowhere to add it to our plan of events. Choosing between ‘May 9 and ‘Mars, we chose ‘May 9.
• I would like not only premium tanks but also all tanks at the same contribution level, in principle, to have the same contribution to the battle – an acceptable spread in efficiency.
  The most powerful tanks will be nerfed one way or another, including premiums, if we are talking about the weakest tanks, then they will be buffed.
• Since the beginning of the existence of the game, a lot of mechanisms have appeared that help players level up faster (we are talking about researchable tanks). Progressing just accelerated many times over. According to the developers, this needs to be slowed down, all this is not very good. But you don’t need to play for months to reach Tier 10 (as it was in the old days). It’s just not interesting for the player.
• I really want Personal Missions 3.0. We wanted to do it this year, but more priority things appeared.
  Which tanks… for Personal Missions…? hmm..
  There are several concepts of what exactly Personal Missions 3.0 will be. I would like the new Personal Missions to take more time, but be available to a larger number of players. I don’t want exotic tasks, especially those that were in the first Personal Missions campaign.
• We want to develop eSports in tanks and we will.
• Maps of the current quality are made in total for almost 2 years.
• The 4th mark on the barrel is quite an interesting thing. For some of the players it can give extra motivation. Would you like to do this, yes. This is one of the features that we were ready to release in 2023 but decided that it is not necessary yet. There are more priority things.
  We are concerned about the health of the game as a whole.
  “The Art of Strategy mode is a niche thing. Almost the entire audience of ‘Tanks won’t play it.
  Now it is very, very expensive to resurrect it and try to restart it. At the same time, there is interest in it, it was definitely a very fresh stream for the group of people who played it. Right now, spending resources on raising it for the sake of conditionally that 10% of players is unrealistic. It’s pointless to start waiting for it.
• The next “Marathon” is in the summer.
• About the development of main groups/clans in the World of Tanks.
  The Global Map is responsible for a very important aspect of the game, where our most engaged players can compete against other highly engaged players and there are definitely some changes that we want to make. Again, since these are complex changes, I don’t want to chop with a sword there. Frankly speaking, we won’t get there this year. Clan activities this whole thing is currently under support. Now we have created a separate team and recruited people there. It will be occupied by ALL competitive aspects and high-involvement modes. But all this is not instantaneous and the results of the activities of this team will not noticeable this year.
  Actually, it’s worth noting that there will be a slowdown in activities/modes for the Global Map now because the guys will just be focused on doing mass things further.
• Reward tanks on a permanent basis for free experience like in WoWS – YES, it’s possible!
  The question is whether it should be something interesting, or justified. You can just make tanks for free, but why.
• There will be no imbalanced/broken tanks for bonds – do not accumulate bonds! The balance and health of the game is the most important thing for us now! If some kind of imba appears and we accidentally sell it, we will nerf such a tank.
  Hoarding is a road to nowhere.
• Experimental equipment at the moment is some easily accessible analog in order to compare with bond equipment. Will the experimenter be distributed – so be it, in those activities that are available to EVERYONE.
  We can also distribute the components, we can, for example, someday sell for silver, but definitely not for gold!
  The current concept is as follows: we either distribute them, or we give them in events that are long-term / can be performed by all players without changing their game mode, conditionally. In Onslaught – no (it’s for highly engaged players), in the Battle Pass – yes.
  IMPORTANT: This is specifically our concept (World of Tanks LESTA), the concept in WG can differ very much.
• WoT Classic – has a number of advantages and disadvantages. Yes, this is very interesting for some players, but this is a fragmentation of the audience / online (which is a big risk, for example, the player will not go to the main tanks after leaving the Classic version, but simply leave). This is a separate game, all this is technologically very difficult. So far there are no such plans.
• About the old fan modes and in general.
  We recently compiled a catalog of old fan modes that have ever run and looked at how much it costs to restart and how interesting it is, so very rough estimate. Fan modes in general are very expensive, so don’t expect them in a month or two or three. We allocated 2 slots for such events: autumn and spring. What will come into this time frame, either nothing, or something old, or something new, will have to be decided each time.
  Why exactly did this time frame (spring/autumn) – the structure of the online game of this period?
  Now I really want to make fan modes that we can restart, and more than once in my life I saw this mode and that’s it, I forgot. Return once every couple of years, re-play these feelings, and so on.
• At the moment we are creating a new game balance department (tuning the performance characteristics of tanks), which we are building from scratch.
  The same applies to the map department, it is also created from 0.
  – Ranked battles may appear in the future, we have not completely abandoned them.
• “I want to progress in Onslaught.” Why aren’t chevrons saved in Onslaught?
  — The concept of this mode is different from the Ranked ones. I want players to be unable to complete Onslaught by simply playing battles (grinding). The more you allow to save chevrons and make proof milestones, the more players who just play a lot of battles can get higher.
  Now this is such a barrier that does not allow the vast majority of people to go upstairs if the player cannot play well.
  + Many players like the fact that the result, which is very difficult to achieve, is still achieved.
• Offtopic about girls in the gaming industry.
  Some girls do very well. Many of the 3D styles that we drew were made by girls.
  Fun fact: girls who go as far as joining these types of companies achieve ODD. level. They are usually very stubborn and fight because in such a process the strongest survive. There is a huge pressure on them initially and those girls who come, are very strong in skills. For example hangar on May 9, 2023. There was a lot of work done by girls there.
• Why did you make almost all 3D styles more expensive?
  – Show-offs are more expensive than money. This is a “luxury” item. And we remind you that making a 3D style for resources = making an almost new tank. At the same time, far fewer people will buy the 3D style, and for us it turns out to be a much more unprofitable story. It’s more profitable to just customize tanks, but we’ll do 3D styles anyway. 3D styles should be interesting to players, but they shouldn’t cost too little.

main source: WOT Express