Good day everyone,
Digest Q&A from around the RU community from several members among the WoT Dev team. The short bit towards the end is from Anton Pankov at the Grand Finals.
* A few people know this, but in your company there is a sort of “Department” for Player Happiness. What is it and what do they do. Are the players really happy?
– Yes there is. This is a fairly new department for us. It unites several teams at once, their task is to monitor and understand in what way and how problems arise among players. This is a new phenomenon that is slowly developing and yielding certain results.
* With the pace of premiums releasing, are you planning on expanding the trade-in? Perhaps with other features such as rentals and the like?
– Trade-ins were recognized as quite successful and will soon be available again in Russia and will remain the main mechanic for related to premiums for the moment. We have rentals, but we use it mainly in Asia and China. There are no other plans yet.
* You have a very good sound department. Are you guys planning on further updating the audio and in-game soundtracks?
– Yes, certainly. The guys are now working on soundtracks, there will probably be made available in albums and tracks.
* Once upon a time they talked about interface 2.0 in the hangar and similarly for chat. The question is: Blizzard Entertainment, for example, has a huge number of emoticons (Emoji) for chat. Some in-game and others for purchase. Can I at least “default” expand or insert one of Emoji’s versions into chat for tanks?
– Well, in general, chat is a sick subject. It is developed on very slowly and has a whole range of problems. Regarding the interface, yes, we’re quietly reworking. The first part will be released with 9.19 and in the future we’ll upgrade bit by bit. As for emoji, this is not a priority.
* Regarding the Rostelecom partnership, will there something similar for the residents of Ukraine?
– At the moment we have no plans for partners in Ukraine, if we find a good partner, then we will do it.
* Regarding the “New Years Boxes” what conclusions did you draw and what will happen next with these boxes and this concept? Can this be on a constant thing? It’s no secret that some games are held up solely on microtransactions for similar things. Another question: Third party services receive tens of millions a month on similar things, surely you don’t like all of that going past your pockets? As you said, it is difficult to fight them.
– Players use third-party services at their own risk and we do not guarantee and will not guarantee that we will continue to support the activities of these comrades and will not punish them at some point. As for the Christmas boxes, in general they performed well. We’re not planning on this being an ongoing thing.Though there is already some thought on the next event. Part of the box functionality will be in Ranked Battles (RB). It was interesting, but not for permanent use.
* There’s been a bit of a decline in the population recently, what is it related to in your opinion?
– Firstly, it’s seasonality. Secondly, was and earlier outflow of the audience. It can not be said that after 9.18 everything has fallen right in front of us. We will try to make a few activities for the summer and autumn. As well as this, we’ll have a few things for out long time target audience, the ones who have been with us for a long time and understand the game.
* We recently heard of some merged functionality with a new app. What can we expect from this, combined mobile chat or the like?
– It’s in testing now. As soon as it’s ready we’ll show it off.
* What are the next set of mods that we can expect to enter the client?
– A couple are now in the works, but I can’t be specific. We need to get the interfaces working and check over the statistics.
* Have you analyzed the black market for accounts? Of course, on your background, it’s a small %, but it still happens.
– We analyze it as far as possible, but there are restrictions keeping us from going further. That said, we stand on the position that you can not transfer accounts to 3rd persons.
* About “Defender” it’s already been asked, but what about sales of the “Scorpio G”?
– Everything is fine with it, the tank will periodically go on sale.
* Is it better to be a 42% win rate super-tester or play WoWP?
-Hmm, from my point of view, it’s better to be a 42% super-test.
* The question of new nations and branches. Wargaming has already taken the tradition of introducing one new nation each year to WoT. In 2015 – Czechoslovakia, in 2016 – Sweden. I wonder whether this tradition will continue and further, should a new nation be expected, or will the WG carefully complement the already existing countries?
– In 2017, you should not wait for new nations.
* Are you planning on introducing the concept of separating heavy tanks from super-heavies, such as the Maus or the Type 5? Mostly for MM reasons, as there are often teams of 5 such things, with an opposing team having 0.
– There are such thoughts, yes, but it’s better to ask someone related to balance.
* Any more planned restrictions on LTs?
– No.
* Will there ever be any improvements on the in-game platoon chat? Getting a bit hold constantly having to press Q.
– Voice Activation has it’s strengths and weaknesses. We’ll look into it though.
* Can you say anything new about Personal Missions 2.0?
– Far from being finished.
* Did you know that now you can bypass the chat restricitons?
– Yes, this is a bug, it’s been fixed with 9.19.
Anton (Evilly) Pankov (World of Tanks Publishing Director) communicates with players in LiveJournal:
* When is the next wave of bans?
– Soon.
* So we should wait until the next patch for the remade Personal Missions?
– Yes, certainly not before then.
-Online in the summer and online in the winter are different things, let’s not compare them.
* Anton, did you do anything to physics?
– No, they did not touch anything. We’ll look over any replays for anomalies though.
– The new MM in 9.18 is only the first iteration, we will refine it based on the collected statistics and reviews. It will take several versions.
Any feedback on MM, bugs, problems, are welcome in any format.
Department for player happiness? Must be located in the basement inside storage B with Milton from Office space.
LOL
Those idiotic morons think they can make WoT players happy. What doofuses.
They’d better spend that money on Vodka and whores and make themselves happy 😀
The department has a total budget of 1 dollar per premium released…..
Oh wait…..that makes them rich….
Fun fact: wargaming also has a department for trollfuckery.
in common parlance, we call him SerB
“Any feedback on MM, bugs, problems, are welcome in any format.”
Well, the MM is far from perfect, still. It certainly had a great improvement, but I have noticed some issues.
First of these is being top tier as a platoon in the “3 top tier” layout. It is practically impossible. Since the rework, it happened to me only 1 time, with a 2 members platoon. it happens more often with the “5 top tier” schema, but being top tier is mostly possible only with 15 same tier tanks like you are. I don’t know if it was supposed to be like this, but I’d like to be on the very top with my friends some times.
The other huge issue is the fact that the MM doesn’t take into account how many times you have been mid/bottom tier. The other day playing the same tank -was farming 3rd gun mark :)- it took 13 rounds for me to finally get my first match as a top tier. I think it’s not that pleasant like this.
Minor bug I noticed, that rarely the MM still puts you to the exact same map, with exact same side even.
I wish I had the influence to report this somehow towards them, so the words finally meet an ear or eyes in this case. 😛
to add…
I believe the problem with the mm is more complicated.
what I do like:
– 3/5/7 concept benefit of actually being able to be competative as bottom tier.
– 5/10 and the 15 of the same tier are to me the most competative.
– no fail platoon
– no full arty platoons
– less arty due to them not being able to platoon
– I personally have issues with the +-2 mm system. How much “fun” is it to play against tier 8 defender/chrysler players in my tier VI medium on lineair maps. Well it does not make me a happy player. And I believe that causes new players to quit as this is not very competative nor fun. Yes, stat pads wont be happy if the mm is more often a +-1 or +-0. But I believe that this would be more fun for the average player.
– no restrictions on equal number of heavies and mediums i.m.o. is a bad thing. Balance commes from having both teams being competative. I rather play a close game then one that is won fast by either side. The current mm system favors heavies or mediums on certain maps. Simple trying to equalize would be a step forward
– I also encounter far more heavies in the latest patches due to them being idiot proof with the new “improved” frontal armor. This also has to do with map design. when the LTs were released the mm flooded with lt tanks for a short period and the game became much more dynamic. Either debuff tanks like the Maus and Type 5 or create diverse maps that will favor fast dynamic play along a linear stalemate. Larger maps would also help
– It would be an idea to have the mm rank tanks with comparable average statistics, instead of tank typ (for the top 3). Some tanks are just terrible, while others are OP. better have the same amount of OP and terrible tanks on each tier.
IMO the MM should take the number o meds and heavies into account, i mean what do you think which team will win?! the team with the tier X heavies or the team with the BC /T50?!
“You have a very good sound department. Are you guys planning on further updating the audio and in-game soundtracks?
– Yes, certainly. The guys are now working on soundtracks, there will probably be made available in albums and tracks.”
Game music is useless. It only makes things worse. Instead of focusing on trying to indentify the caliber of the shell that just hit the ground next to you, you listen to some hardbass.
If they do consider introducing national songs (like Panzerlied for instance), then yeah, that’d be a cool addition. It could play after the battle or just before it starts.
For a positive ‘real world’ actual improvement to the MM that actually “happens” not just more PR hot waffle talk from slippery WG politicians it would involve ~
Most if not all the active EU players ~ say 60% at least, to simply stop playing WOT for a week or more, then you would see “real changes” to WOT
This would alarm and panic WG into actually accepting that there ‘completely out of touch’ at times (many) and something is really wrong with the MM and the players/ customers are badly pissed off.
Income stream cash flow for WOT would be hit hard, and WG have big monthly pay checks to pay out – 2 choices really fix the MM and quick ~ or forced to reduce WG employee numbers aka there jobs, what do you think they would do?
Either way you would 100% see big improvements to WOT almost overnight – instead of 3 years or more of waiting taking, waiting, and talking and etc.