WoT Blitz Q&A – 16th November 2015

More posts will come later, luckily this is freshly translated by Alex.

Just wanted to add that just a day before the Paris attacks, other terrorists killed 43 people in Beirut, the capital of Lebanon (this small country is located between Syria and Israel, and has access to the Mediterranean Sea). I do not know why the maistream media does not cover those, at least around here. Every life matters.

Back to the q&a:

Q: Why do some maps get remade and others don’t? I think there are maps more in need of reworking than “El-Alamein”, for example “Canal”.

A: There are enough problems on “El-Alamein” The hills on this map were not originally conceived as comfortable positions for TDs, but it turned out that they started to use these points to control almost the entire map. There was also an “imbabalcony” (imbalanced balcony) and control of it often ensured victory. There was also a slight imbalance in the starting points of the teams. All this led to a lack of diversity in the tactical actions on the map. The same can be said of other reworked maps.

We haven’t forgotten about “Canal” – one of the next maps to be reworked.

Q: Why did “Baltic Shield” become unavailable for high tier vehicles?

A: We have removed the tanks of high tier from “Baltic Shield” because of the small size of the map and the “cleansing” of the bushes. During the 2.2 update tanks of all the levels could play on this map, since it was temporarily redone in the style of Halloween.

Q: When are new maps coming? How many are coming before New Years?

A: We have 2 maps planned for release before the middle of spring, one of them will come before the end of 2015.

Q: When will hills with bushes for TDs get removed from the red line?

A: We are not quite fighting the phenomenon of “TDs on the red line in a bush”, and with the excessive efficiency of such positions. When many of the maps were created, most of the places that have become the favourites among TDs, were not considered as the position for this class of vehicles. When we identify such imbalanced positions, we decide to change the map. This work has been done on the “El-Alamein”, “Baltic Shield,” “Echelon” and “Burning Sands.”

Q: Will there ever be optimisation for the bushes?

A: Optimisation of vegetation has, largely, already happened, but we are constantly making small improvements. If your device can’t cope with rendering the bushes, try lowering the graphics settings.

Q: Will “Mines” be reworked? I think that too big an advantage is given to the team that has the most medium tanks.

A: The map is already planned to be changed. We will take into account comments of players, statistics, and explore unbalanced positions. (Seb: Dora the Map Explorer :D)

Q: Do you plan to increase the size of maps and teams to make them large locations?

A: Increases in the size of maps and teams are not planned.

Q: Will there be multilevel maps?

A: These locations are planned. Testing has shown that this is an interesting and promising variant of maps, but revealed a lot of controversial issues and challenges. At the moment we are looking for solutions to these problems. If we can prove playability of multilevel maps for all classes of vehicles, these kind of maps will go through development. However, we can’t give out any dates.

Q: Why are developers reworking old maps so that playing TDs becomes impossible?

A: Because TDs shouldn’t be able to shoot the whole map, instead, they should only be able to shoot down a select direction. Otherwise the battle turns into a stalemate.

Q: When will we get city maps?

A: Soon, however, devices of past generations don’t always have enough performance and memory to run such maps. These maps require more time for testing and optimization, hence the increased development time.

Q: Why does the spawn-point for heavy tanks appear to be a more convenient spawn for medium tanks? This happens often on “Winter Malinovka”.

A: This will be fixed when the map is reworked.

Q: Will we be able to shoot through walls/fences/cars without losing the shell?

A: Right now shells disappear as soon as it hits anything. There are plans to change to the WoT PC system, but it’s a bit early to talk about when this mechanic will come.

Q: You went through a lot of work redeveloping “Burning Sands” and “El-Alamein” – these maps seem brand new. Why not bring back the original versions of these maps alongside the new ones?

A: You need to understand that we don’t start digging up a map just because we want a new version. We look at what needs fixing on those maps, that’s why there is no point in bringing back the old maps.

Q: Is there a limit on maps due to size of game client?

A: Every new map brings us closer to the limit, this doesn’t mean there won’t be new maps and tanks. We are trying to vary the battle locations and, at the same time, control the client size.

Steel Ocean – WoWS clone available on Steam

On the 12th of November this year, a new game appeared on Steam, as a competitor to World of Warships. It’s called Steel Ocean, and developed by ICE Entertainment  (no idea who this is).

It’s been impossible to test it properly because the only available server is in South America. No indication of more servers coming. Playing with a 2k ping is not so comfortable.

This is some info that came from screen shots and a bit of play time (Seb: will make a post with the pictures later):

– the player can control the entire spectrum of weapons on the vessel and can choose how to fire it
– you can unlock officers for the ship which seem to give some bonuses
– there are 6 classes
– the cruiser class is separated in to light and heavy cruisers
– there is a submarine class
– there are premium aircraft carriers
– top ships are mostly different from one another

In general, a competitor to Wargaming is there and appeared quite quickly. It might do ok in USA, but we’ll need to wait and see if it fits in to a niche in Europe and Asia. 

Some WG Economic Info

A bit of off-topic about economy and finances of Cyprus.

– During the Cyprus bank crisis in November 2013 Wargmaing and hedge-fund, Third Point, each acquired 30% of shares in the Cypriot Hellenic Bank paying 40mil Euro each. Before the acquisitions the main shareholder was the Church of Cyprus. A year later, both investors spent 45mil Euro each to purchase additional shares.

– We can’t exclude that Wargaming has professional economists and financiers. But from what is written above, it’s very likely that the appearance of the office in Nicosia, Cyprus, isn’t just because of the purchase, but from a complicated financial operation on the basis of the financial crisis in Cyprus. It’s likely Wargaming has invested in Cypriot economy and, as a result, has got an office.

WoT Blitz Patch 2.3 – A subjective assessment of the update.

This is WOTExpress (russian vk page)’s opinion, not mine. (in case you wonder why it is a bit biased).

Translated by Alex.

We’ll start with innovations:

-There’s none.

Bug fixes:

– Yes, some bugs, and client crashes we’re definitely fixed, also no more getting stuck on the damned monument on Castilla.

Minor fixes and improvements:

– Track links have been added to the LFP of the IS-4, no armour changes.

– A cable has been added on the IS-7 UFP. Pretty, but why?

New quick command icons:

-This patch was meant for bug fixes, but also brought many bugs.

New loading icon:

– It looks good, if they removed the black texture behind it, that they forgot about. How does such an obvious, unprofessional, bug got through development, preliminary test and super test – I don’t understand.
– It’s now possible to shoot through some houses and rocks, this didn’t happen before.

Now about the new map. After driving around on it, I understood one thing, it is a map for MTs. It’s too early to judge if this map is worthwhile for gameplay. Let’s talk about FPS, there are drops, not huge ones, mainly because of grass and pretty lighting. The rain doesn’t affect it much, maximum 1-2 frames (possibly because I never got in to a downpour, but I’m inclined to believe mobile WG).

Atmosphere:

The map is beautiful, overcast sky, greenery, when the sun pokes out from behind the clouds it looks amazing. All new maps that have come out since the rework of Sand River look different, much prettier and alive, no muddled textures, good lighting, a nice picture in general. Atmosphere 10/10.

Blog Sharing Day – November

It is time to spam other people with links to this blog 🙂 Anywhere would do. Forums, Steam, other blogs/sites WoT/WoWS related, social networks. Thanks if you participate!

I have a very difficult test today. Hope I will be lucky and pass it. I am not that happy since yesterday because of that AND the fact I posted the news late (believe it or not, the life of the blog depends on posting first!). So yeah. You would help me a lot if you bring new readers (even more than donating).

I think about disabling donations or merging all the donation banners into a single, smaller one with links to everything. What do you think? I will certainly do that if the future income from ads will be good enough to buy the expensive books I need (and other stuff, I will inform you of the shopping list for sure). See you in the comments section!

Storm Q&A – 11 Nov 2015

Q: Storm I want this tank in place of the 215b. Look how beautiful it is.

A: This is a Conqueror with added 14-15mm armour screens. Are you sure you want this?

Q: Are there any options/variants/possibilities?

A: Hull of this model + project turret with massive armour.

– WG is considering/discussing plans on how to deal with troll platoons. Storm won’t announce anything because there is no final decision.

– No comments about when DirectX 11/12 is coming. There was talk of it coming with HD maps at the start of 2016, Storm: Work is going to plan, I just don’t want to confirm anything too early.

Q: The render circle is too small. Put the old square in the new circle and everything will be ok. What’s happening with solving the problem of microfreezes upon a tank lighting up (drawing in)?

A: We can’t for technical reasons.
Microfreezes are being fixed by rewriting the code for rendering tanks and its effects.

Q: “We can’t for technical reasons.” Well are there any thoughts about rebalancing some personal missions for LTs and TDs?

A: I can’t comment.

Q: From Cyprus interview with Vyacheslav Makarov:
Murazor: What’s the story with single-core processors?
Makarov: It’s all bullsh*t! (laughs)
So the excuse of “sounds threaten single-cores” is invalid, what’s the real reason for delaying them (we know that you want to bring them with physics)?

A: More trash, more uproar!

Q: Top question of the year: Is Rubicon coming?

A: Wait for official announcements.

Vyacheslav Makarov Interview

Here is some information from an interview between some streamers/youtubers and Vyacheslav Makarov, the man behind the idea of World of Tanks, from Cypress GODDAMN CYPRUS. They talked about WoT, global fixes of problems in WoT, new Wargaming projects, Master of Orion, cybersports, and other things.

These are personal opinions of Vyacheslav Makarov.

– A lot has happened with tanks, first of all – the game grew rapidly.

– Our thoughts on how to develop the game haven’t corresponded with player expectations – this is where we have a sea of problems right now, since the new year.

– Right now the game doesn’t need any expanding, right now it needs fixing and returning, in some aspects returning to the original, other aspects changed completely (arty, perks, sounds, vehicle classes).

– The problem with arty, in my opinion, is its diversity and speed, remember how it use to be! The class that was originally conceived has been broken. Strange artillery has since appeared. The problem is in certain vehicles and balance of arty + moving to tier 10. Engagements between arty and LTs has broken, before, when an LT/MT got to an arty the arty was guaranteed dead, now it’s different.

– TDs – they were conceived differently. TDs were a mixture of all tanks without turrets, unique gameplay for that moment, they were a completely different class. They were modified HTs with a long range gun, which felt good at long distance, and TDs didn’t have a chance at survival in close range combat. But the same thing happened, as to SPGs. The problem has accumulated with different changes.
How to fix them? – Take every class and rewrite it to make it it’s own. Right now everything is mixed together. Right now, with the amount of vehicles in the game, we should have 10 different classes.

– Every class needs to be rebalanced.

– The fixing of arty would be just a piece of the solution. You would need to separate it in to 2 sub-classes, moving and stationary, reformulate their roles, and then resolve the problem of balance – but this is huge work. I strongly oppose the removal of artillery.

– If we remove artillery, the owners will go nuts.

– Pz.Kpfw. V/IV Alpha needs reworking, it’s the worst tank.

– Right now, if we pull too many levers – the game will break completely.

– How I would fix the problems of tanks. First of all, collect lots of feedback from players, then start fixing Randoms, since that’s where most people play, balance and maps. Just have to sit down and start solving problems. Start at patch 8.0 and work forward.
Tell the players what we want, roll out all the big changes to a test server and, again, collect feedback.
Balance, physics, maps – first of all. Sound is a separate topic, but it’s needed.

– To be honest, the crew system needs a complete rework. In ships, the skill system is much more interesting. But it’s important not to take anything away from players and change over to the WoWs crew.

World of Tanks:

– I think Victor’s involvement will help the future fate of tanks.

– I don’t think the current WoT developers will enjoy running over rakes (problems and mistakes).

– The WoT team has changed a lot, they’re trying to speed up, some things are now done much faster.

– It took 6 months to develop the controls for Xbox, it was a super-quest, there was a mass of variants and changed many times.

World of Warships:

– I like the the game of ships more. I love the Lesta studio, the people that work there are amazing.

– WoWs is meant for the western market, it was well received.

World of Tanks Blitz:

– I didn’t believe that WoT Blitz would be popular. But the game found it’s players. The development team lives with their idea.

– Don’t like arty? This is for you.

Master of Orion:

– If the Master of Orion team stops listening to players, I’ll nail their feet.

– MoO will release next year, the date will be announced in December 2015.

– The game looks good already.

– The game will release to Early Access complete. Our first task will be balance, and that’s what we will be doing in Steam Early Access.

– There will be DLC (new races aren’t excluded from DLC).

– The pre-order bonus will be an extra race. There will be 10 basic races at release.

– Tactical battles will come. But they won’t 2 hours long.

Cyber Sport:

– With Cyber Sports in tanks, we put the cart before the horse.
Competitions and tournaments appeared but we rushed the big cyber sport arena. Cyber sport should of evolved with the game, but when it was introduced the game was not ready. It would of been worth growing cyber sport gently, now we are thinking of how to bridge the gap. Right now, I can’t say how it will be done, but it’s most important to connect the game and cyber sport and eliminate the gap.

P.S.

– We are currently working on an interesting project in Seattle with Chris Taylor.

– There are 2 more unannounced projects being worked on, one of them might become a start to a long history… Announcements will come next year.

– One more thing, I think that I’ve thought of a game more interesting than tanks…

Some 9.12 “insider” info from EU

– 9.12 will release in the next 3 weeks.

– The gas attack was removed from Rampage because of FPS drops.

– Personal missions for T-22cp. might change before release.

– All HD tanks announced for 10.0 will come in 9.12.

– Skoda T 40, Centurion Action X will come in 9.12, M4A1 Revalorisé will appear for purchase in the client.

– Czech branch should come in the next patch after 9.12 (likely 9.13).

– The Chieftains fate is undecided. They’re searching for a more fitting candidate to replace the FV215b.

– All technical changes from 10.0 will come in 9.12.

Yuri Pasholok Q&A – 09 Nov 2015

Translated by Alex.

Q: Do you know anything about the SU-152P?

A: In short, this is a Soviet style Waffentrager. In 1945 Waffentrager Ardelt schematics were sent to Sverdlovsk, and a project was started to make an analogue. The results were a family of self propelled guns, with a different exterior look to the German ones, but analogues by concept.

Q: What can you tell us about the state of work related to searching for old schematics, in terms of how complete is this work? How much is still uncovered? Which European country is the least researched?

A: United Kingdom. The birthplace of tank building is very undervalued, and this is confirmed by the findings of our English friends. Other countries also have a lot that hasn’t been worked over.

Q: Pz IX and Pz X – what are these? A myth. concept works by Krupp, or something else?

A: These are no more than fantasies from a German magazine called Signal, from March 1944.

Q: Yuri, what do you know anything about mounting of 88mm KwK43 L/71 on a Pz.Kpfw. III chassis, was it a redeveloped StuG or a new design, and what kind of frontal armour did it have?

A: Yes. This is called a Nashorn. But it is not a pure Pz.Kpfw. III chassis, but mixed with elements of the Pz.Kpfw. IV.
If someone is waiting for a StuG III analogue, unfortunately they’ll be disappointed. There are some images of such a machine, but no characteristics. If I understand correctly, this is what we’re talking about.

Q: Can you share some information about the names, IS-9 and IS-10. What we’re they used for, how are they different from an IS-8. Because any details about those names are very murky.

A: Are you sure that these indexes we’re actually used? Personally, I don’t have any information about the use of IS-9 and IS-10 as indexes. Actually IS-9 was used, but not for a tank. This is an IS-9. Tank-related, but a starter.

Q: Is the Conqueror Gun Carriage a real project? If so, why does it have Ordnance BL 9.2-inch howitzer, which was used between 1914-1945, how was a gun that went out of service in ’45 planned for a 50s SPG?

A: Wasn’t a real project, WG design and from some schematics. Made as an analogue to SPGs on the Centurion chassis. My favourite arty in the game currently.

Q: How many KV-5 projects were there in reality?

A: One, headed by Nikoli V. Tseits.

Q: Do you know anything about the T-29 Soviet medium tank, and the evolution – T-29C. Can you tell us anything interesting, because there isn’t much information about them. Is it possible to have this vehicle in-game?

A: There was also a T-29CN. In regards to the tank, I’m sure that we will get it in-game.

Q: What chassis were used for development of Soviet autoloader and/or oscillating turret tanks?

A: The Object 752 was definitely planned with an oscillating turret.

Q: Where did the T28 Prototype come from? Hull is obviously from a T28, but where did the turret come from? And why do the T28 and Prototype have different suspension?

A: The “Prot” was reconstructed from a single sketch out of a book by Hunnicutt. That’s where the suspension came from, the turret was made as an analogue to other American TDs.

Q: Is anything known about the Tiger P’s arrangement and type of engine cooling? We’re they the same as Ferdinands?

A: They were rebuilt like the Ferdinands. It’s known that air cooled engines didn’t “take off” so they we’re changed for HL120TRM water-cooled Maybachs.

Q: Was it possible to build Mendeleev’s Tank?

A: Yes, it was a fairly finished and not such a bad project for its time.

Q: Could the IS-4 hull withstand a 12.8cm Pak 44, or was the IS-7 still the first tank to withstand it?

A: The first tank required to withstand the Pak 44 was the IS-7. This didn’t happen straight away, but in the fall of 1945.

Q: Was there a project for TD or SPG based on the IS-4?

A: Unfortunately there are no concrete details about an IS-4 based SPG. There was this project at factory No 172. I can’t confirm it is based on the IS-4, but it’s a post-war project and “neighbours” with the Object 705. There were requirements for a SPG based on the Object 701 towards the end of 1945. Anything can happen, and I’m inclined to think that such projects existed.