Good day everyone,
Here is a quick Q&A with the Global Head of WGL Mohamed Fadle, as well as WGL APAC Head Jini Jun . This was during WG’s APAC Season 2 Finals in Taipei, Taiwan. It covers the response to the APAC competitive gaming scene as well as the future of WG’s eSports as a whole. From the Taiwanese site Game Watch.
– It’s not finished yet, but what’s the response of Season 2 so far?
Mr. Fadl: From a global point of view, the strong professional team has won and has steadily participated in the season final, but this year the professional team did not come to the finals, the semi-professional, the amateur team reached the season final. Also, this year, we’re getting inquiries about sponsorships from major companies such as Russian and American telecommunications companies. I think that’s a testament that we have interest in general corporations.
– The pros aren’t winning, but what do you think is the reason?
Mr. Fadl: Personally I do not change generations, but the professional team well studied and the new generation of players have more flexibility, leading to ingenious plays and ideas, and it ends up changing the professional’s way of thinking. So, in the future, I think there is a possibility that the current winning team will be replaced with another new team.
– What teams and players are paying attention at the moment?
Mr. Fadl: Although there are no specific teams, Russia and Europe fight in a very textbook manner, so actually they do not feel interesting, but North America and APAC constantly bring new tactics, things I had never seen, so I like watching the game.
– What are some of these “crazy strategies” that you speak of?
Mr. Fadl: In the game two weeks ago, the WGL game adopted and attack/defense mode, but the defense side abandoned the defense, walked away from the defense point and surprised the other team from behind, It was an interesting battle specializing in annihilating the opponent, ignoring the basic rule of protecting bases. I publish the top 5 video in each region, introducing interesting places, favorable play, rare play of each game, but I am looking forward to seeing it every week.
– About rule change after the FGF, it is said that we will announce the contents during the GF, but what is the general aim? Would you like to increase your interest in the tournament as well?
Mr. Fadl: Basically, that’s right. Tournament participants and watching hours have increased three times as much as last year. However, since I get tired of just repeating the same thing, I would like to create new charm by adding changes.
– Why did you return the APAC FINAL venue to Taiwan?
Mr. Fadl: Because rice is delicious (laugh). That was a joke, but since I had plans to do WGL here originally, I also thought that doing it together with APAC FINAL made it possible to provide new events of an unprecedented scale. Secondly, in collaboration with the Taiwan government that has been continuing since then, full cooperation has been obtained for the venue Good day everyone,
This is a Q&A from the gaming site Game Watch, with the head of WarGaming’s Competitive this time, it’s being co-sponsored by the Taiwanese government.
– In the sense that it can be said that it was good that the Taiwanese team could participate in APAC FINAL this time?
Jungwon Hahn: I think that not only we but also the players and the team think so. As the government, players, and teams are supporting us, we are pleased to be able to bring big events –
What is your next plan? How about Japan?
Mr. Fadl: The next venue has not been decided yet, but I personally think that I can do it in Japan or China. Because there are many fans in Japan and China, and the food is delicious (lol). Many people have enjoyed Pacific Rumble which was held in Japan before, and they want to do Pacific Rumble from other areas as well. We have not been able to hold APAC FINAL yet in Japan, but I like Japan and I think that GF in the future can be done in Japan.
– That GF will be held in Moscow this year, why?
Mr. Fadl: Every formal GF has been held in Poland so far, it will be the first time to hold in Moscow. Russia has the largest community. They had a strong request from me that they wanted the world ‘s best to battle in Russia. This time it was finally possible to provide the first GF in Russia.
– What kind of event will be the first Russian GF?
Fadl: Wargaming.net will definitely become the biggest event ever in history. We are preparing a venue that will add at least 30,000 people, at least as much as last year. Viewing time for online distribution is very long, and viewers are watching for an average of two hours. Since Russia is prominent with the numbers and it is popular over there, we are very much looking forward to seeing how many customers will come when we’re actually holding the GF.
– Reason for selection of GF’s wild card this year
Mr. Fadl: There are two basic rules in the selection, one giving one to the venue. The other is to target all the regions to the most unique or talented team. This year we will be given to Challenger Rumble’s champion team, so there are all three wildcards.
– What will be the impact of changing specifications of Tier X’s light tanks and self-propelled guns on WGL in the new version?
Mr. Fadl: I think the impact is great. Pros are sensitive to the latest information, and some of them are already testing things. A big change in tactics will come next season. Early teams also started training with new tactics. If we have major changes, we’ll prepare an environment to touch and contact in advance, so I think that you’ll see a big different battle from the beginning in the next season.
【Update 9.18 Common Test Review – World of Tanks PC】
– In the coming season, is not the new rule applied in GF?
Mr. Fadl: Since the update timing is not yet announced, I do not know when it will change, but I think that there are many teams that will adopt Tier X light tanks and self-propelled guns if they’re implemented before GF. There are many things I can not say yet, but the professional teams are preparing to update.
– Will WGL’s tier point after the new version was adopted remain at 68? Or will it be 70 in line with Tier X adoption of light tanks?
Mr. Fadl: (laugh). I am just discussing about that now. I was going to draw a conclusion within the next two weeks, so I was surprised that the question came out now. Personally I think that 70 is better, but there are opinions that 68 is good, so I’d like to talk over two weeks considering which one can be balanced.
– What are the plans to expand WGL to console and mobile?
Mr. Fadl: I have plans. Since F2P titles do not have a set lifetime, I would like to continue to grow in the future. Since WoT Blitz has all the tournament and observer modes, I’d like to prepare for the tournament in order of Blitz, WoWS, and World of Tanks Console in turn.
– I think that the console version is quite strong in Japan with many users?
Mr. Fadl: If you are planning to start e-sports at the console, I definitely want to start from Japan. The reason is that many console players have bad manners and attitudes, but there are many polite people in Japan, so I’m thinking of raising the image of e sports so I will cultivate it carefully.
– What is the ultimate goal, personal ambition of WGL?
Mr. Fadl: For the whole of WGL, I always want to offer what the players are looking for. At the moment there is the most need to compete, so I would like to respond to it. Also, since players not only play but also like to watch as spectators, I personally want to establish a new entertainment that follows Hollywood movies and watching traditional sports. Many people are watching TV and sports, but I would like to make such a world that looks at e sports on the Internet by repainting it.
– What are the specific medium-term and long-term measures for that?
Mr. Fadl: There are various things to think about in the long span. In such a case, I think that I am going to see a big dream or just see reality without having a dream at all, but for me I want to have a big dream. For example, we want to make content that allows viewers to participate as well as participating in and participating in players. I would like to make content that is being experienced together so that those who are viewing it actually vote or can take some action on the content. Incidentally, although I briefly explained now, in fact the plan of 68 pages has just been completed last week, and if I have time I would like to explain it for several days (laugh).
– I would like to ask about WGL’s website operation. WGL has a bronze league and a silver league along with gold league at the top, with the aim of increasing the number players in competitive World of Tanks, but honestly, I do not know well where information other than the gold league can be seen. I do not even know who is participating and winning or losing, but are you planning to improve it?
Jini Jun: For the WGL page, we only cover the Gold Series. The reason is that bronze, silver, semi-professional and amateurs are participating, so we are trying to integrate it with the official website of “World of Tanks” separately so as not to show the threshold high. Silver and bronze understand that it is difficult to confirm, but I am adjusting it so that it will be easier to participate in the future.
– I like WGL very much and I am watching it every week, but I am concerned that the updates for the APAC page is always late. There are many delays, and sometimes things aren’t updated even after one day after the match, and there are many mistakes in fighting cards and scores. Many people are concerned not only viewers like myself, but also by players participating. What do you think of this as a representative of APAC?
Mr. Jun: At the moment there are also parts that APAC partners that have been changed, and partners to manage. Some of these errors, I believe, are from partners not knowing how to do big updates like this. However, I am grasping the problem and trying to improve things as much as possible. I think that such errors will decrease in the coming season. One of the other main causes is that APAC is involved in various countries and a lot of languages, English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Philippines, Vietnam etc. so it’s pretty easy for mistakes to happen.
Mr. Fadl: I would like to apologize from myself, this should not happen as much as possible, I do not want to show you, but I think I’m very sorry as I actually got up to speed . With the increased size in management, hopefully these errors become less frequent.
– I want to know what is happening to the Korean WoT community. GOLD BASS, who also had GF participation experience, was sluggish from the beginning, MELTDOWN abstained on the way and DarkWolves also finished 7th. Is there no revival of Korea’s “WoT” community which is an eSports power country?
Mr. Jun: First of all, the Korean team will surely come back. Things have been like this for many years. EL Gaming is the only professional to say, they can live only by the game and are always prepared. Other teams, including those outside of Korea, are semi-professional, amateur teams. After, for example, entering university, I am addicted to “World of Tanks” and I will participate in WGL for four years, but if I get a job after that I will not be able to continue that as part of my life. As a result, the team is broken up and members are missing. That is true for the Korean team this season.
– So what does WarGaming have planned for solving one of the major problems in eSports: that players are unable to devote the necessary time for practices do to personal and professional lives, and things like that?
Mr. Fadl: The solution to that problem is one of the ultimate goals for us. For many people e-sports is a hobby, not even professionals are dedicating everything to professional life, there are players who have it as sort of a part-time job, even among the professionals as well. I think that this will depend on future growth as time passes, as e sports grows and grows, it will be sponsored and the perception from the public will change. We also want to support them, and the other aspects that support them. Actually, building that support is part of GF’s announcement.
Pro matches are such a joke. You watch as a garbage team ammo racks a full hp tank on the better team and wins the match that way. Or how one tanks fires 7 shots fully aimed and they all go sideways while the guy getting shot at snap shots back and sets the other guy on fire.
because who needs skill in a RNG dominated game?
It’s even worth when you realize shells have a 50% damage spread (+/- 25%), 50% penetration spread, and a dispersion spread. If wargaming actually wanted a e-sports scene that didn’t resemble dice they would low spread to +/- 10%, add crew caps like crew can only be up to 3 skill thus you don’t have to play 6k games with one crew to have an edge over another team. I would disable fires/ammo racks for e-sports games even and then maybe the better teams will actually win more games and not lose every tournament. Games like Hearthstone which is riddled with RNG at least have Pros win to qualify for the tournaments and when the skill difference is little RNG decides not like World of Tanks where even if there is a large skill difference RNG can compensate for that. If you have played just normal tourneys or strongholds/clan wars you can randomly lose a game from one or your tanks getting ammo racked from full hp to a far worse team as its now 6v7.
Deadarashi, I expect better of you than to give such shallow thought to RNG.
Lucas: I was speaking more in sarcasm. RNG is a rather important balance element. However too much RNG can take away from the experience which, in some cases, does happen in WoT. I wouldn’t go as far as limiting crew skills as to 3 or disabling ammo racks or engine fires. As for damage and penetration spread, I would say a 30% spread would be better (+/- 15%)
It’s something that should be tested but it won’t make an overal difference to the gameplay. To make any form of difference a rework to how different ammo types work in terms of damage and penetration values
Pixywing, you must never heard of reducing abnormalties over repetition. These problems you speak of would be very random if the games were one match and only one shot were fired. By creating multiple instances of randomness, the randomness becomes normal and the degrees of skill show through. This is the same working behind games like poker and to a degree, physical sports where rain and wind can be a factor. There are far better arguments against pro matches but randomness is not a valid point.
You can mitigate randomness, but not remove it. You can’t mitigate the RNG of dice as the RNG is everything, with poker you can fold, bluff, etc to get around this. If WoT made shells have 1000% damage spread then it becomes more like dice whereas reducing RNG makes the game more like Poker. If you watched any of WGLNA you would see far too many games decided by RNG rather than skill. A poker game you play dozens of hands whereas in a match it might be best of 3. If poker was only three hands, and had the RNG of WoT no one would watch it either.
Oh my god. Then people shouldn’t play poker or soccer because that random gust of wind could completely throw everything off. If the damage spread were 1000% then matches would have to be played 100 times instead pf 10 times to balance things out. You can make RNG negligible and thus irrelevant. Have you never had to do sig figs in a chem class??? Some numbers just don’t matter.
I have watched the last two WGL’s and I would like to disagree! Numbers man, have you never taken a statistics class in your life? This is the basic of probability. Okay okay, you probably did not read my last reply, it’s okay. You’re probably on a rampage but just think about this in coin flips or dice rolls. There is normalization as you roll a dice 100 times ie like the number of shots one might fire. Chemistry teachers will fail you if you don’t understand this concept so take your time to take it in.
Yes they do a lot of showey things but that’s only a surface perception. If you’re new to watching soccer, all you might see are guys bouncing their balls between their legs as they try and trip each other.
This is why WoT “e-sports” is flawed as they don’t play 200 games they play a couple. Soccer doesn’t have a goal is worth 1-3 points its always worth 1, you don’t have a player get injured and now you are down one, you get a replacement so comparing Soccer “RNG” to world of tanks RNG is absurd. The RNG WoT has is far closer to Dice than it ever will be poker and the fact that you still try to play RNG off is dishonest as again a few games are played not a few thousand.
65 games is not a bad pool of games to gauge skill in. Certainly can be more but 200 games is a bit absurd. Look at your own winrate and check out how much of a difference there is between how you play in 65 games and 200 games. And in soccer, sometimes the breeze is just right, the goalie blinks at the wrong moment, and the point goes in. I never said anything about 1-3 points for soccer, please reread my reply.
It is not absurd to compare soccer to world of tanks or to baseball or to foot ball. RNG is there as world of tanks own form of rain, wind, that bad cough, or a bad ray of solar radiation. Soccer isn’t about players getting replaced but if you must go there, sometimes gamers catch a cold and that’s why WGL teams have secondaries. Just stop being so closed minded. Soccer doesn’t work on clock work. That’s why it is possible to score several goals to win a game. Could you imagine how RNG soccer would be if the game was decided on a single goal? The repetition stands to minimize randomness and to improve the chances of the better team winning.
You perception of RNG in wot is purely perspective based. Not logically placed. Maybe you need to try some fantasy gaming. Competitive people there have worked out entire hosts of statistics that show which player is the best through all the complicated calculations that is a crazy computer managed fight.
Additionally on the matter of critical hits on tanks. There is something called aiming for module weak points. I do it myself when hunting fire missions for my medium tanks. Memorize and aim for internal modules especially when you can ambush your opponent from a vulnerable angle. This is the fundamental of competitive play. The difference between a player that relies on luck and a player who increases their chances of critical hits can be enormous especially over 10 or more games.
This does not defeat my original point that RNG is an irrelevant factor over multiple instances. This is essentially why you can have a player with 45% win rate and a player with over 55% winrate over 50 games. I understand this might be very complicated for you but great excersizes for understanding statistics is taking a 6 sided dice in sets of 10-50 in place for a player in a game. One player scores a point every time the dice lands on 4-6 and another player scores a point every time a dice lands between 2-6. You will notice the player with the greater skill ie the 2-6 player will consistently score more due to in game choices he/she makes.
If you disagree and believe every player is the same. I will return to the example of hitting fuel tanks to cause fires example. The better player can get the edge and angle needed to have a better chance for causing fires or ammo racks. There is no magic.
Again its still a chance of a fire a better player will win more games on AVERAGE, but not necessarily when it matters ie. Tournaments due to the small number of games played.
You have also seemed to disregard crew skills as there is no cap currently so a player with only 1000 games played with that crew is at a disadvantage over a player with 5k battles with that crew.
Again, the chance of the fire is consistent over 50 games. You’re not listening to me. If over the course of 50 games you play in WGL and a team sets 3-4 fires in the course of all those battles, what difference does it make that the player sets a fire in the first round or the last round? statistically both teams are bound to cause 3-4 fires anyways.
You don’t seem to understand that WGL is over the course of multiple battles. When you talk about one fire on one team, you do not acknowledge all the other fires that equalize this. If one team gets more fires, chances are, this is because they got the rear of more tanks and shot their fuel tanks more. A team that only shoots their enemy from the front will have less of a chance of starting fires.
WGL gives fully trained crews with every crew skill to their players. Other game modes are not WGL. This is why I said you were barking up the wrong tree before.
What you’re asking is for WGL to be no fires, no module damage, no damage variation, no chance to bounce that nail biting shell, there can’t even be a fucking breeze in the trees because you only think of yourself. Damn fucker, the game isn’t about you and how you feel cheated every moment of your life, grow a fucking spine and learn to count.
You want machines to play your fights, no heart break, no spirit, no hurrah for that last second brawl. The fight is a fight because it is exciting. If you believe everything should be blander than white bread then fucking cut off one of your balls and shove it down your fucking throat you ass.
How many fucking times do I have to beat it through your thick skull the basic rules of probability. Jesus christ. Examples like poker players use probability every time when gauging to call or fold their hand and the natural spin of the fucking earth isn’t enough to say to you that soccer is a sport with its own form of luck. Jesus fucking christ you’re so dense that you’re a retarded glacier in a fucking ocean of depth. Too fucking stubborn to melt and see the bigger picture around you.
Damn ass, go back to fucking grade school before you argue with someone on probability. That’s the greatest fucking joke. I tell you the facts and then you don’t even give a counter fact and just say I’m wrong. Like “oh no, bluffing in poker has no chance involved” “oh no, soccer is the purest and most non-random game because random players get their fucking legs broken” WTF do you even read what you type or do you just project from the penis on your forehead?
Same fucking problem happened when people invent any new game. “It’s too random” It’s too random my fucking ass. That’s why there is repetition. You’re a fucking just a fucking pussy afraid of change. Can’t wrap your head around god damn probability and normalization and you continue to argue with me. The fucking proof in your stupidity is that you haven’t proven me wrong that things average out over the course of multiple games you fucking turd waffle.
Tell you what, you and me, let’s duke it out. I want to see how fucking hard you cry about RNG when I rape your sorry ass 10 times in a row.
Alright, had to take a little walk to cool off there. I apologize for losing my temper. If you believe that there are too few matches played in WGL, I believe I said it before, that is a valid argument.
If I had wargaming’s statistics on wot. Then I am fairly confident that I could make a deductive conclusion of a statistically sufficient number of games that might be needed in accordance to the game’s randomness so the best player wins.
Let’s say with every game, the winner needs a 13% chance to win. This can be scoring like 7-6 in a 13 game match up. If in every match a team is statistically averaging 2% chance to gain the advantage then in 6 games with a slight positive variation they may get the 13% chance to win. If for instance they have a 3×2%, 2×1%, and a horrible 0% game with respective counter gains to the opposing side of 3×0%, 2×1%, and 1×2% then the respective 6 games played the victory chance would be 8% vs 4% and up to 7 more games will be played to find a decisive winner with exception to a tie breaker. First team to 13% would get the 7 points needed to win but I think it is pretty clear as to which team is the better in this match up already.
I would like to point out the points system is more of an easy to understand winning counter for the audience. If you’re a person designing a game, you almost never work with small, clunky numbers except in finalizing an easy to interpret game.
I do suppose it is entirely possible that the entire system is thrown together by a chimpanzee. But calculating probability has been something done from board games since the conception of flipping rocks with clearly determined sides.
A team in esl will play a certain number of games per season. The number of games played, shells fired etc doesn’t come even close to how much you would need to even out the rng from individual games.
Pixy is right. Rng decides way too many games in esports for wot.
The same goes for random battles. The amount of games a single player plays doesn’t really allow the dice to roll enough times to create a more balanced result.
Also not all rng is equal. Missing a fully aimed shot on the last enemy while your entire team is hunting him down is much less important than if you miss a fully aimed shot on a 1 shot enemy top tier at the beginning of the battle.
Hitting a snapshot and detonating the ammo rack of a bottom tier tank is much less valuable than if you did to the top tier tank.
Add that into the equation and the fact that certain tanks go to certain areas, What tanks you most played, which maps you get, what the enemies do, where they go, what tanks they are in etc etc. The list is endless. There are so many variables that it is simply impossible to get the same situation twice or the exact opposite situation of something either.
Take that into account and you can easily see that rng is not equal at all. Statistics also show this.
On top of that it is absolute rage inducing in individual games and makes no sense. You simply cannot expect everyone to accept ‘well rng is going your way half the time’. Other than arty (better now since 9.18) it is the single most rage inducing thing in this game and clearly one of the biggest sources of toxicity.
What the worst thing about rng is that it can punish you hard even if you do everything right.
On the other hand it can reward you for doing things wrong.
How often it does or doesn’t is irrelevant. The fact that it even can is just silly in a competitive envuronment.
The entire system is flawed.
This is a major issue that has plagued WoT since the beginning.
As I said, if your argument that far too few games being played to balance out the randomness is the case, then that is a very valid point to be had. I simply do not have any statistics to crunch out the perfect numbers of games needed to determine a true and absolute winner. We’re just speculating from our rear ends what is the necessary number of games from our interpretations of the game. What I got so up in arms about was the stubbornness to ignore randomness as a tool for competitive play despite not denying any of the facts that I presented.
I have come to the conclusion that none of you are listening to me anymore. There are problems with WGL that are far more important that addressing the statistical insignificance a fire or module damage is. Havoc, if you must, I will happily fight you as a practical demonstration of statistics. but if you are too busy, a cute little youtube video that might bring a more easy understanding of professional gaming for you to stomach.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9ZI9kMsvRQ
Additional video, just realized i gave you the wrong video that concerns more with the fundamental issues of pro gaming, this one is specific on randomness
There are a lot of videos like this to help you understand the matter.
There is a reason why Europe and Russia always beat NA and APAC…
yeah APAC doesn’t exactly have a standing E-sport team for WoT beside EL. e-sports is still a foreign concept to south east asia, where most of the view is still “that can’t feed you”
” Rng decides way too many games…” No truer words have ever been spoken. WG could even drop the RNG to 20% and that would help the game so much. Everyone has had days / weeks where they can not win a single game no mater how well they play. log out wait 1/2 an hour and go back in and POOF you are almost always in a better “block” of players and your RNG “luck” will jump right up.
i mean if they wanna hold the next one in China i dont mind, because that means WG needs to finally sort out the shithole that everyone knows is the Chinese server.