Wot The F#$%

[Skywalkre]

Looks like recent forum issues tanked (get it? HAHAHAH... haha... ha... heh...) the old, open WoT thread so if anyone is still playing here's another.

Edited August 11, 2017 by Skywalkre

[Skywalkre]

Here's my own $0.02...

 

I was beyond bored yesterday (I've had zero luck getting into any new games lately) so actually played several hours of WoT. Had some interesting observations from that experience.

 

First... the NA server has major issues across the board. The big thing that jumped out was how much the population has shrunk. I saw no more than 17k online during my several hours of playing which is 1/3 less than the peak I remember and about 1/2 of what the population had dropped to by the time I walked away last time. To add insult to injury WoT threw me on NA W at the start and I was only getting full games about half the time. The only time you saw that years ago was on occasion at 3 in the morning. I was playing mid-late afternoon yesterday.

 

Next was the ping - it was disappointing regardless of server. AW's NA server was on the west coast and I got ping down in the 40s (in WoW, the other game I'm playing now, it's down in the 20s). NA WoT was about 110 W and E almost 200 (which is barely better than what I was getting to AW's EU server ). Coupled to the terrible ping I constantly had spikes while playing where for upwards of 20-30s the game was basically unplayable. I vaguely remember this issue arising when I walked away last time. Sad to see it still exists almost 3 years later.

 

Between the low pop and disappointing connection I was reminded of something FCO mentioned a while back - almost all the good clans have vanished (along with many of their players). I didn't recognize a single clan tag in the several hours I was playing minus the RDDT ones.

 

Second... arty is still cancer. The revamp doesn't change the fact that this is still the stupidest gameplay mechanic I've ever seen implemented in a pvp game.

 

Third... balance is pretty bad right now/P2W premiums are cancer as well. Thankfully I didn't run into too many of the P2W heavies. Still, they were quite frustrating to play against given how restricted WoT maps are. When even gold struggles against the only armor profile you can see wtf are you supposed to do?

 

The one vehicle that pissed me off the most, though, was the Skorpion (almost all my games were on the AMX AC 48). I was seeing that bloody TD in every battle and was hating them more than arty by the time I stopped playing.

 

It was also really weird playing the game because I didn't recognize anything I was fighting.

 

Fourth... I was expecting more changes from everything I've read over the years but didn't notice much. I had heard maps were reworked but didn't really see anything glaring. I also didn't notice the physics rework at all til the one game I flipped my tank on accident. If that had never happened I probably would never have noticed it at all (which makes me wonder if it was even worth the effort they put in to implement it).

 

Fifth... this shouldn't be surprising but WoT is a far better game than AW. I can see why folks play it. Despite all the failings it still has the game works. Maps are functional. The UI in the garage and in-game is simple and makes sense. While balance is bad it's still light years better than what AW has (as bad as the AMX was and as rusty as I was I was still able to top dmg and contribute in a couple games). I wasn't hooked by any means but it wasn't an awful experience playing those few hours. I played some AW about a week ago for the same amount of time and did so only because the gameplay was so horrid I was laughing the whole time (that's not how folks should be enjoying your game).

 

Sixth... AW did get some things right. I didn't have Sixth Sense in my AMX and several games were on new maps I didn't know. That really hurt. I can see now why folks argue something like that should be standard. Also, RNG is still way too influential. In the best example I had I flanked a distracted 110E4 who was a 1-shot to me. I couldn't have been more than... 150-200m away and when I was fully aimed in there were still sizeable gaps on the outside that didn't cover him. My shot flew out into one of them which just left me cursing the game.

 

All in all I can see why the game is slowly dying - greedy choices from WG coupled to issues they still haven't addressed (some since the game launched) are bleeding the playerbase away (slowly). It wasn't a miserable experience yesterday but nothing grabbed me to make me want to come back.

[Colin]

I hate the shot placement RNG, your last movement seems to influence it despite the aiming circle has stopped shrinking

[Colin]

You know they are moving to a "central server" , where that is I don't know

[Skywalkre]

You know they are moving to a "central server" , where that is I don't know

I follow the game but not closely enough as I missed this. It's been so long that I forgot what the issue was specifically years ago. Regardless it's still sad how bad the connection is to both NA servers compared to everything else I've played in recent memory (NA E should not be comparable to AW EU ).

[Skywalkre]

WoW fizzled out and the single player games I have on backlog in Steam have been too easy to keep my interest. Reinstalled WoT not too long ago to fill my gaming fix (I know, I know... the shame...).

 

While I have some comments I have two concerns that stem from moves that likely happened months if not years ago. The first is that I have several vehicles which I KNOW should have had XP built up on them yet now have none. One example is my Jagdtiger. I know I played it quite a bit back when I first played the game though I'm pretty sure I didn't unlock the tier 10. Right now it has zero XP on it as if I've never touched it. My tier 6 German LT is another example. This was a vehicle I was playing before I quit a few years back with the purpose of grabbing the Ace Mastery badge. The vehicle was elited because I used it in SHs on and off back then. Now, just like the Jagdtiger, there was zero XP on it. There are several other examples as well. What did I miss? Where did it go? Was it all rolled over to free XP? That seems... unlikely because I only had like 35k when I reinstalled and in the brief time I've been playing I've bumped that up into the 40s (and spent some). I likely had far more XP across all these vehicles than what I see in the free XP area.

 

The other similar issue is wtf happened with crews? When I reinstalled they were all over the place and often not on the vehicle they were supposed to be. It's been a pain moving crews around and trying to get them back into their original vehicle or into another. Some crews appear to have had their skills reset? Again, what did I miss?

 

Edit: To expand on the vehicle XP conundrum these vehicles have every module unlocked. While it's possible when I last played, such as with the German LT, I may have had extra XP going to crew XP that would mean I would have had the vehicle fully researched.

Edited October 18, 2017 by Skywalkre

[Colin]

There has been a couple of reorgs since you stopped playing and as I recall all the experience and equipment removed, was turned into free xp and credits. I still think they need to reduce the gold usage a bit.

[Skywalkre]

Do you mean gold ammo? If so I'm in full agreement.

 

It's... amusing how the game is talked about and what I've settled on since coming back. In the WoT subreddit you often see players call it 'World of Heavy Tanks' and I can see where they're coming from given the OP premiums at tier 8 that drew some ire a few months ago and with the Maus and those Japanese fantasy tanks being a pain to take on. However, outside of top tier and OP premiums I've found heavies to be frustrating to play at mid-tiers. If you're tiers 6-8 and bottom tier your top tier opponents don't need gold to pen you. If you're at those tiers and top tier enemies simply load gold. That's a problem that's been around since I quit playing last - you can often overcome a heavy tank's sole strength by pressing 2.

 

I've actually been playing mostly light tanks with some mediums. There's no button to push to negate mobility and camo. A low tier medium and especially a low tier light is still faster than almost the entire enemy team (less so with the recent MM changes, though). If armor can be so easily overcome I'm just not seeing the point of playing heavies. From what little I've tried with them since coming back it's just been an experiment in frustration.

[Colin]

I find that WOT sweet spot for me is tier 5-8. I don't enjoy playing tier 9-10 as you have to use gold to survive. Tier 1-5 is always fun

[Rickard N]

It's been a while since I played, I just don't seem to get any good at this so I die so quickly it's not even funny. I'm not really sure what I do wrong, but then again, I'm no ace at first person shooters either.

 

/R

[Skywalkre]

For me the sweet spot is tier 6 with the E8 and 3002M. Both have speed over 3/4 of what they'll see, good dpm, good view range, and can actually bounce some shots in the right situations (I was looking for something that played like the old 50M and settled on those two). I can't go below 6, though, because then it feels too much like clubbing (when I get in one of those 3/5/7 games with the 3002M on top it's just a joke... all I do is press W and rack up a third of the enemy killed in a rout).

 

I still can't play heavies even at mid tiers, though. I bought the 3601 during the recent On Track event to see if it was as good as it was back in the day. Put 20 games in it in a single afternoon and ragequit. Even at those tiers, angled perfectly, you can't bounce shit. A combination of gold rounds and power creep makes the armor on that even in ideal situations garbage (the stats showed I only ended up bouncing just a tad more than I do in the 3002M). If a heavy can't use its armor... why would I want to play it?

 

A testament to how bad it must be to play heavies at those tiers is the fact that my rating on the 3601 after those 20 games was high enough to put me in the top 10 for that tank on the server.

[toysoldier]

The ones i can still play without raging to death is TDs from V to VII. I have a feeling of realism playing glass cannons like the wonderfull SU-85.

Edited October 25, 2017 by toysoldier

[Skywalkre]

Was in a particularly annoying mood today and bought an arty piece given the French line is the On Track focus right now. After playing it for over an hour the conclusion was pretty clear... they actually made arty worse.

 

My winrate in the vehicle from back in the day was 60%. I pulled higher than that today. I simply moved behind the main push on my team (or if angles weren't good moved to slow the main push of the enemy) and kept stunning the target my allies were focusing on. My damage was lower than it was from years ago but they now track "damage done while stunned" and that was way higher than what I did myself back in the day. When friendly arty were also targeting the same vehicle there were several instances of enemies being stunlocked from near full health to death. How is this good, engaging gameplay? How is this good for the game?

[Harold Jones]

Stun and attacking while stealthed, ruining online games since Dark Age of Camelot.

[Skywalkre]

Hehe, yep. My first introduction to both in online gaming came with rogues in vanilla WoW. Good times.

 

Speaking of stealth it's still viable in WoT despite claims by many that said gameplay is dead. You have a smaller area to work with outside of view range (unless you're a light in which case, if you have full camo, you can work inside said range to a degree) but given the UI changes it's actually easy to monitor where you are and when you have to move. That part of the game doesn't bother me as much because it actually takes some skill and game knowledge to pull off. Arty on the other hand... no skill at all needed to ruin a player's day. Just a terrible, terrible game mechanic that needs to be removed.

 

Unfortunately it will never happen. It's a shame because with that gone and maps reworked to be more open I think WoT could take off even in NA (relative to where it is now which isn't much... all of 22k tops which is almost a third of what it was in its prime years ago).

[Skywalkre]

So they have a new feature where you can trade in certain premiums and get half their gold value when buying new ones out of the tech tree. I have several premiums I got back during the old On Track events (which now apparently only reward low tier vehicles... meh) so traded in the PoS Pz IV Schmalturm and grabbed the Panther 88. Put in 13 games on it on a standard account with no boosts, got the Mastery badge already, and made about 400k credits.

 

It's not... a good premium but it's good enough for printing credits. Apparently in my absence the last few years WG went on a tier 8 premium bonanza with most of the new ones released being better than old premiums and far better than tech tree vehicles (just check out win rates on vbaddict for tier 8... you basically won't find a tech tree vehicle anywhere near the top).

 

It's another frustrating aspect of the game. Balance is far worse than it was when I quit a few years ago and the P2W aspect is pretty blatant now. The only thing stopping me from ragequitting is that I'm coming from AW where balance was even worse. All about perspective I guess.

[Skywalkre]

There's an event starting tomorrow where playing German and Swedish vehicles works you towards a free premium as long as they're tier 4+. I figured tonight would be a good time to start up the Swedish TD line...

 

So I'm on the tier 3 and jump into a match. My team melts fairly quickly and I notice one of the enemy that hit me was using gold rounds. Gold... in a tier 3 fight.

 

Afterwards I look up the mouthbreather, RJNorth, and discover he has 15k games on 2 different tier 3s and that's as far as he's gone in the game. Better yet he's not even any good in them. The guy's pulling a sub-500 wn8 and sub-50% win rate. Still... with that many games and the money to burn gold he likely has a crew with several skills (and even on accident he likely has some useful ones with that many games) and likely has real equipment on his vehicle. Even someone with experience like me has a shit crew (75%) and no useful equipment (I would spend the credits... why?). Imagine how bad it would be for a new player still trying to figure things out?

 

Seal clubbing and gold abuse are still, and have been from the start, major issues in WoT. It's a shame the devs don't have the balls or brains to do anything about either.

[Skywalkre]

The P2W nature of the game is starting to get to me...

 

The default UI now shows what type of round you were hit (silver or gold). Since I mostly stick to mid tiers when I see someone spamming gold I tend to whisper them afterwards and give them a hard time. Funny thing is... folks aren't even bothered. One guy just now was bragging about how he can spend the money to fling all gold rounds. Ultimately he doesn't need to at those tiers but it still gives a slight advantage. At mid-high tiers with the new premium tier 8s and at high tiers with the superheavies you basically have to fling gold given the corridor nature of the map.

 

Just... a shame. AW definitely got this part of the equation right (higher pen = lower damage to compensate).

[Rickard N]

Hm, might be time to ditch wot then, I'm not really inclined to use gold ammo.

 

/R

[seahawk]

That is why I stopped about 6 months ago. When low tiers were suddenly seeing Platoons of autocanon armed Pzs spamming Gold, the game was dead to me. I do not pay money to even have a chance.

[Skywalkre]

Given the poor decision made by the balance devs to rework armor to fantasy levels at high tiers where gold is almost required it's hard to get upset when in one of my tier 10 heavies (which I'm having to play for this event) and see I'm getting shot at with gold.

 

When mid tiers, like in my 3002M, it's beyond frustrating to position myself perfectly and continue to get penned only to hit ALT and see the mouthbreather firing at me is loading all gold. When moments like that happen it basically makes me want to log out for the day. It definitely reinforces my decision to never give WG any more money.

Edited November 5, 2017 by Skywalkre

[Colin]

I rarely play tier 9-10, I am finding joy in playing my Black Prince and other oddball tanks. You can generally tell within 30 seconds if you are on the winning team or not, just by watching the Minimap.

[Skywalkre]

So apparently they screwed up HE in the 2-3 years since I last played. The high tier Jap monsters basically fire nothing but it and do way too much damage but everyone seems to know to avoid them, kill the rest of the team, and finish them off last. I figured HE was just a high tier issue...

 

However, I just had a game in my 3002M where a Pz IV with the 105 (back when I last played someone like that would be spamming gold HEAT) fired nothing but HE at my highly angled and barely showing front. He tracked me every time and did over 100 damage! (Keep in mind the 3002M only has like 800 hps.). WTF? After six straight shots from him I was dead. Are you shitting me, WG?

[bojan]

2nd example would have worked same way since a WoT started.

[Skywalkre]

That still seems excessive. He was basically doing as much damage from HE splash against my front armor (which is pretty decent for tier 6) as I would with a pen from my AP round. I don't remember HE being that effective on repeated shots back in the day.

Edited November 12, 2017 by Skywalkre