Wot The F#$%

[Stefan Fredriksson]

Heavy - IS.

When I stopped playing it was ridiculously good.

[bojan]

I recently got back IS with 100mm and it is quite decent. T29 is good as ever also.

Light - LTG, LTTB, 2801, autoloader T71, M41, WZ-131 (better for it's tier than WZ-132 is for own).

Meds - 3001P, E2, E8, T20 (basically whole US med line is great), A-43, T-34-85, Pershing

TD - Jackson with 90mm, SU-100 (both 100 and 122mm), JagdPanther II

Edited December 22, 2017 by bojan

[TonyE]

/sigh...

 

Hit rank 8 with the holiday event and used the discount to finally get the Borsig. First game in it do 4k dmg... but killed at the end from successive clicker fire (all of whom are under 50% w/r after tens of thousands of games) once I was spotted. Once I was gone team falls apart.

 

Arty iz gud dezined!

 

The best cure against the Clickerati would propably be if all teams at the start of each battle just teamkill their own clickers and then play the battle, it would propably make the battles way more enjoyable for all.

Edited December 23, 2017 by TonyE

[FlyingCanOpener]

Firefly should have good pen at Tier 6 with silver and the 17 pdr, but I spammed so much gold when I was having to carry in Tier 8 matches my memory might be fuzzy.

[Skywalkre]

Firefly was one of the vehicles I tried when first coming back two months ago. I had started playing it right around the time I quit so it had a crew and equipment still on it. Sadly it was a fairly big letdown. Mobility is awful for a medium and almost across the board the VK3002M is superior. The Achilles has the 17-pdr as well while having better mobility than the Firefly and far better camo than both the Firefly and VK.

 

Looking over the Firefly it's kind of odd how it's left as is. Balance in this game still needs a lot of work. I guess the plus side is it's not AW levels of bad... yet.

Edited December 23, 2017 by Skywalkre

[Skywalkre]

I recently got back IS with 100mm and it is quite decent. T29 is good as ever also.

Light - LTG, LTTB, 2801, autoloader T71, M41, WZ-131 (better for it's tier than WZ-132 is for own).

Meds - 3001P, E2, E8, T20 (basically whole US med line is great), A-43, T-34-85, Pershing

TD - Jackson with 90mm, SU-100 (both 100 and 122mm), JagdPanther II

The JP2 has me puzzled. First, I had thought I had played it back in the day but the tech tree is showing it unresearched and it's not in my service record. Second, my understanding was its 'niche' was that it was fairly mobile but tanks.gg seems to show it really only had better top speed (which is big, don't get me wrong). Third, vbaddict is showing the Ferdinand as having a significantly better w/r than both the JP2 and ISU. Did the Ferdi get buffed in recent years? My understanding was all the powercreep left it a fairly easy pen and it doesn't really have any advantages over the JP2 per tanks.gg comparison tool.

[bojan]

Ferdi feels like a tractor and still a lot of things pen you. JP II superstructure is surprisingly bouncy and it has pretty good gun handling - wiggle a bit and if you are hull down even tier 10 bounce sometimes.

[Colin]

I actually taken a liking to the Type 4 Chi-To, it's fairly bouncy, decent gun, decent aiming, a bit slow, but played to it's strengths it does quite nicely. the WZ-131 is a awesome light. KV 1 is a great tier V heavy.

[Colin]

 

I recently got back IS with 100mm and it is quite decent. T29 is good as ever also.

Light - LTG, LTTB, 2801, autoloader T71, M41, WZ-131 (better for it's tier than WZ-132 is for own).

Meds - 3001P, E2, E8, T20 (basically whole US med line is great), A-43, T-34-85, Pershing

TD - Jackson with 90mm, SU-100 (both 100 and 122mm), JagdPanther II

The JP2 has me puzzled. First, I had thought I had played it back in the day but the tech tree is showing it unresearched and it's not in my service record. Second, my understanding was its 'niche' was that it was fairly mobile but tanks.gg seems to show it really only had better top speed (which is big, don't get me wrong). Third, vbaddict is showing the Ferdinand as having a significantly better w/r than both the JP2 and ISU. Did the Ferdi get buffed in recent years? My understanding was all the powercreep left it a fairly easy pen and it doesn't really have any advantages over the JP2 per tanks.gg comparison tool.

 

The JP II was my favorite TD, big gun, possibility of surviving a hit and able to move fast.

[toysoldier]

The JP is a world of fun still. Bouncy like you wouldn't believe, very agile, which helps with angling&wiggling, and it packs a punch.

The T8s i also have a lot of fun with yet are surprisingly hated and maligned are the TVP-VTU and the STA-1.

[Skywalkre]

Honest question. Ehh, make that two. How is low tier gameplay... good? Why should any new player stick around with this game unless they have an interest in tanks and just want to see pixel WW2 vehicles on screen?

 

I ask because with the holiday event I decided to play some low tier vehicles in new branches that came out while I was away (Swedish and Czech lines). I've just played 5 straight games in the ST vz. 39 and lost them all (and averaged maybe 150ish damage a game). It's mostly stock but I do have a female commander so at least I have Sixth Sense (a new player wouldn't and probably wouldn't even know what it meant when it went off). My gun has pen of all of 62mm. I refuse to spam gold (and a new player likely couldn't afford gold). I can't do shit.

 

Seriously... how is this fun? How is this engaging gameplay? How is it anything but annoying? I know how to play. Settling back down in the mid tiers recently my wn8 was in the 2400-2700 the last week or so. Knowing how to play is meaningless when even when doing the right thing I can't pen anything (insult to injury was bouncing every shot off a tier 6 light a few games ago).

 

WG isn't completely stupid. Have they just given up trying to make WoT an enjoyable game at all tiers? Have they simply honed in on the older, WW2-nostalgia crowd and are simply milking them dry while they can? What other explanations are there?

[toysoldier]

IMHO the OP prems they keep selling allow new players to enjoy the game and free-exp through low tiers.

[Skywalkre]

So there business model is simply 'milk the folks who only care about seeing pixel tanks on screen'? That seems to be the only logical explanation. Low tier gameplay is not fun.

 

Along the lines of this I have to second the idea being pushed fairly often on the WoT subreddit recently that WG needs to kill off 3/5/7 MM. I didn't mind it at first but I was mostly playing mid tiers where it probably works best. Playing high tiers and now some low tier battles... in those situations that mode is entirely dependent on what the top tiers do.

 

I, foolishly, jumped back into the ST vz. 39 just now. Got a 3/5/7 game as bottom tier (again, I'm only partially upgraded). What hope do I have against an M4A3E2, T-34-85, or heaven forbid a KV variant? I have nothing on them in any way. I'm so outclassed that even if I miraculously get behind them my gun will bounce if it even manages to connect in the first place.

 

When I've gotten said games as top tier in one of mid tiers or higher, even in something as bad as the Panther 88, all I basically have to do is press W and I win and win big. That was a huge problem with AW and 3/5/7 basically brings that (bad) experience to WoT.

 

The 5/10 and same tier games are by far the best. Unfortunately I wonder if 3/5/7 will stick around because it plays to that trollish nature of the RU playerbase that WG focuses on.

[Skywalkre]

It took 9 games to finally get a win on the ST. Not that I contributed or anything to it. I simply finally lucked out and got a team that carried me. This whole experience is so awful it's actually rather comical to behold.

[Stefan Fredriksson]

"3/5/7"? Are you referring to the spread, or are there new modes?

 

Re: playing lower tiers. A hypothesis.

It sucks, just as you say. But you will constantly see other players commenting how good this or that tank is. Tanks you haven't reached yet. Inspiring you to stick with it, and probably pay cash in the process.

Ie, bad design by design. Because if tiers 1-4 were fun and good, why any rush to advance.

I may also give devs too much credit.

Edited December 26, 2017 by Stefan Fredriksson

[seahawk]

I think when it comes to nudging people to spent extra cash the developers are quite good at it. At the beginning you could play for free and advanced reasonably fast or buy premium and advance fast and have little other extra points to spent money. But when gold ammo became available for silver this changed and you preferably needed a premium tank to farm silver and over time more and more ways to spent money ware introduced.

[Skywalkre]

"3/5/7"? Are you referring to the spread, or are there new modes?

 

Re: playing lower tiers. A hypothesis.

It sucks, just as you say. But you will constantly see other players commenting how good this or that tank is. Tanks you haven't reached yet. Inspiring you to stick with it, and probably pay cash in the process.

Ie, bad design by design. Because if tiers 1-4 were fun and good, why any rush to advance.

I may also give devs too much credit.

They overhauled the MM a few months back. A 3/5/7 spread is apparently now the most common one where there's only 3 x top tier tanks, 5 x one tier below, and 7 x two tier below. The other combinations you'll see are 5/10 and same tier though you see the two of those combined less than you see 3/5/7. The 5/10 and same tier battles are great... 3/5/7 not so much (at the extremes of the tier spread).

 

As for the bad design by design I imagine there's more truth to it than not. I mean WG basically came out a few years back and admitted some new tanks were left purposefully awful so players would be inclined to spend money to free XP past them. Where I'd say you're giving them too much credit is that it was designed like this from the start. With so many aspects of the game I think it kind of ended up this way, they didn't know how to fix it, and they're just going with it for now since it may lead to players spending more money like you mentioned.

Edited December 26, 2017 by Skywalkre

[Skywalkre]

I think when it comes to nudging people to spent extra cash the developers are quite good at it. At the beginning you could play for free and advanced reasonably fast or buy premium and advance fast and have little other extra points to spent money. But when gold ammo became available for silver this changed and you preferably needed a premium tank to farm silver and over time more and more ways to spent money ware introduced.

Whether it was intentional or not all the armor reworks that throw out historical data for adamantium levels of protection on high tiers coupled to the rise of the super heavies and P2WOP premiums in some games you have no choice but to throw gold or be effectively worthless. As such that leaves players only a few options - buy premium time, buy gold and use it directly on ammo, buy the P2WOP premiums yourself, or quit. The population of the game is down a solid third from when I quit about 2 years ago. Apparently everyone left playing are more than making up for those losses with the money they're spending on the first three options.

[Colin]

Yes but is there a another WWII tank game out there?

[Skywalkre]

Nope, which just reinforces their business model is gouge the folks who only care about seeing pixel tanks at the expense of decent gameplay.

[Skywalkre]

Today I was contemplating uninstalling again.

 

In basically every mid tier game I played I ran into enemies spamming gold. I play mid tiers to avoid that shit. In one game in my T34, bottom tier in a 3/5/7 match, I ran into a high tier spamming gold which penned my mantlet while hull down. If a T34 can't even hull down there's zero reason to take the thing into a game.

 

What's more frustrating is how the playerbase seems ok with this. I make a point to message these folks after and they just shrug. It's an option, it's better 99% of the time, so why not use it is what they say. I also know from their stats they can't be doing this without throwing money at the game constantly.

 

Fuck... if this is the new reality just throw a monthly subscription into the game, take out ammo costs, and let it be.

[seahawk]

In the end it is logical. At the beginning the idea was a monthly subscription to make full use of the game, but this did not work out, because a group of good players where owning the bad and average players, who then saw little motivation to pay a monthly fee just to be owned. The new system is much more clever. A top tier spamming gold will have its success every now and then, even if he completely sucks and uses auto aim. The feedback to the player is, buy more gold ammo -> have more success.

[Skywalkre]

It's logical from a perspective of making money but terrible from the gameplay side of things. My frustration is how so many games seem to be shifting this way.

 

I was playing WoW before this and they still have the subscription model. The problem with them was they couldn't put out content fast enough (content being mostly PvE, so no being owned by better players directly in WoW) so folks would apparently take a break and not come back thus they'd lose out on the subscription income. Instead of working on ways of getting out more content, or making the content they have out last longer or be more engaging, they shifted how the game plays and put in a massive grind that was required to get your character to max level. So when content was finished and it was still months til the next release if you wanted your character to be at max level you still needed to grind away in the meantime. It was mind-numbing and frustrating... but most players didn't complain. (The reason I walked away from that game again was I tried to switch classes to help out my guild. The problem is with this grind now in the game I effectively set myself back 18 months of progression. I could have caught up, in theory, if I put in about 40h of gameplay a week doing mind-numbing grinds... but instead said 'fuck it' and quit.)

 

I guess my problem, in short, is that players don't seem to want a good experience but rather seem more than content with being used as an ATM by gaming companies.

Edited December 28, 2017 by Skywalkre

[bojan]

If I was so frustrated by something I would not touch it with a 10 feet pole. Really.

[Skywalkre]

Oh, I'm probably getting close to uninstalling again.

 

The playerbase is just... bizarre. There's a post over on reddit about capping and most posters are saying anyone who caps when you could still get more damage and kills is in the wrong. That's just asinine. All that should matter is winning. Extending games needlessly so a few players can boost their wn8 a fraction of a point is ridiculous. Sadly that seems to be what most are ok with now in WoT.