Hello,
just finished translating with Ctacello‘s help this Q&A:
-Sandbox was born much earlier than’s been available to players, preparations began in January, six months before sharing.
– Now in the sandbox tested a new version of the balance, we know what problems the players mostly concerned about. Gradually, we will be fixing most of the problems – first vehicle balance, then the new MM, the maps and so on.
-Sandbox has other sub-tasks: Solve arty, increase the armor role to make battles more dynamic and reduce player errors.
-SPGs has been the class that received the most changes. Its current state is a very early prototype. Our main task is to completely remove “one shots”.
-Sandbox changes are to be expected every 1.5- 2 weeks.
-The number of Sandbox access applications was huge. Each week we’ve been adding 5 to 6k new players which are the minimum necessary to maintain the numbers online. We will be adding more people in the final stages of the test.
-Most of those who applied for one way or another will be accepted into Sandbox.
-The test will take as long as its necessary until all the changes suit the developers and players.
-The arty rebalance won’t be patched separately on the live server so won’t some other changes because it can break the whole balance out from Sandbox.
-There may be a restriction of 3 arties per team, it all depends on how tests will go.
-Arty’s APCR is missing in Sandbox and we don’t plan to return them.
-On the live server, there are far too many players sniping, we are experimenting with accuracy and penetration decreases from higher distances.
-Sandbox currently is more of a “World of Heavy Tanks”
-MTs will be MTs, they won’t stop from existing and not much will change for them.
– No plans to change the +/- 25% penetration.
-Tier 10 LTs are inevitable and serious revise of their specifications will be done.
-A proper testing requires more online players than there are now in the Sandbox, so a second server will be created.
-We don’t want to balance vehicles under “national characteristics”.
-We assume certain vehicles won’t fit into a role, this most likely will generate into “tank-hybrids” (tanks with multiple roles). E 50M is a good example of it.
-The new role system will fix in most cases overbuffed tanks.
-Accuracy while firing on the move will be nerfed.
-We may introduce bonus EXP for tracked and stunned tanks for SPGs.
-In Sandbox players can only buy premium shells with gold, this is an experiment. We can also give premium shells for credits but we may have to limit their number, only time will tell.
-Premium tanks haven’t become worse. All premium vehicles have become more competitive in the new balance.
-We may still make role changes to certain vehicles on last minute.
-The bonus given for blocking damage had a bad calculation formula so it was removed completely. It will be back once we release the new balance.
– Aim mod “Battle Assistant” will be included in the game.
-In the last Sandbox patch, the arty HE penetration values were nearly doubled. But we don’t want arty to become a damage dealer, we will collect stats and experiment.
-Autumn will be nice, we have some cool surprises awaiting.
“Tier 10 LTs are inevitable and serious revise of their specifications will be done.”
-> well in practice the BatChat25t (both tier 9 and 10) fit a role of LT. Honestly these two should be given that class instead of MT.
“Autumn will be nice, we have some cool surprises awaiting.”
->they said word for word the same thing last year. The big thing was their most failed update ever. Please avoid teasings like that unless you know what you are doing WG 😉
I am kind of concerned about Sandbox because currently gold is very limited (only for gold, and few golds per day) so people do not fire a lot of them. Thus WG’s stats gathered on sandbox, the stats they are using to rebalance, take that inti account. So they may do all the balancing they want, if once on live server they allow gold as it is now on live server : aka unlimited supply and/or for credits, people will just spam them all the time (especialy with all the nerfs, they will feel like they need it even people who usualy dont use it) and the whole rebalance will be ruined. So I really hope WG knows what they are doing with this, and plan on at least hardcapping, if not removing, gold ammo. Because once everything is balanced this shell will have the potential to make many tanks OP/UP.
Well they did say it was an experiment, and that they are going to change to credits and have either a hardcap or unlimited amount.
the bat chat cant be considered a light tank for balance purposes…it wouldnt lose camo during hull movement.
Well, you can’t deny their update last year was a big surprise, so they aren’t lying :P.
They’ve got plenty of time to see how gold ammo will work. Sandbox is going to take a long time.
“Each week we’ve been adding 5 – 6,000 new players” Kappa
Gold shells for gold only sounds very pay-to-win to me, whether or not it was that way up until a couple of years ago, before I started playing. That’s not the kind of game I want to play. In fact, I’ve always thought that WoT has a great freemium model that makes paying useful without giving paying players a significant advantage in individual games. Giving an further advantage to players good enough to win gold in Clan Wars and tournaments can’t be healthy for the game, either.
There are two kinds of complaints on this:
The people who want premium rounds for credits. They claim it would be pay-to-win otherwise. And they would be correct.
The people who DON’T want premium rounds for credits. They claim the premium rounds are now too easily accessible and have severely imbalanced the game. And they are only partially right in my opinion. I don’t see anyone shooting gold rounds at me in most of my rounds. And most of those who do are usually players in top-end clans who would probably use premium rounds anyway, even if it was only for gold, since their clan income is high enough anyway. The number of people who actually would only buy premium rounds for credits is fairly low I think. But I do agree on their argument that premium rounds have too much of an impact on gameplay when used…
The problem with gold ammo is that, if for credits, too much spam, but for gold it’s pay to win. I think the problem is pretty clear: gold ammo is shit and it has to be removed.
I can certainly get behind limiting the number of gold rounds carried.
As do I. In reality, HEAT and APCR tended to be of limited availability due to complexity and the materials required being either rare, or in high demand in other aspects of the military, as such tankers were often handed limited quantities of these high pen shells to sit alongside their stores of AP and HE shells. By giving vehicles a limitation on these shell types, you can create an additional skill barrier for players to figure out by forcing them into making meaningful decisions regarding the ammo that they use for what situation.
It’s blatantly false.
Gold shells had strictly no pay-to-win part in 2010-2012…because NOBODY used them in random battles. Not a single one. Never.
At best, you had gold ammo fired in toptier clanwars battles.
Waow amazing pay-to-win game for 99.9(99)% of the cases. Even WG admitted they earned zero with the gold shells before their genius idea.
Today the game has strictly no interest (hi balance ?), golds shells are the main profit contributor for WG at th epoint they have no possibility to come back even knowing it’s f**cking their game and it’s only because (take no offense) people think like you.
You all hate arty until we save your ass. Seriously, what’s the difference in me one shotting you vs. me stunning you and my team killing you in 1 second?
Exactly. This arty rebalance will change a lot of things, but one thing it will not change is the frequency of whining and complaining. The people who are “victims” of something in the game will always view themselves as “victims”. It does not matter if it is arty, TDs, or whatever. They will always blame their own shortcomings on someone/something else.
I am looking forward to the rebalance and the possibility of being a true support vehicle for my team. That is the reason I play arty.
Agreed. I’m constantly landing shot after shot after shot from my Bishop onto T-150 and Japanese heavies and thinking “I could be one-shotting Mediums…”, but I want to help the team. At present, there is no benefit whatsoever to the player to actually help the team…
how about when you(arty) fire you become spotted for all players for 10 sec… and tanks that have good gun elevation (ex: lowe or flak-bus) can return fire in arty mode on you from any ware on the map ..that can be intresting
Incorrect comparison. When I one-shot a tier X HT in my T92, there is absolutely nothing he can do to counter that. If I stun him and my team (assuming that would even happen, we are talking about randoms here. the amount of teamplay is usually fairly low), he at least still has the chance of shooting back and have his team help him.
You are right…with these changes wg will upset everyone…will upset arty players who can’t deal more than 1500 dmg per match and will upset the players shooted by arty because now arty won’t damage them too match but now they can’t move, they can’t manouvre they tank, they can’t turn the turret and can’t reload the gun as before and they can’t defend themselvs from enemy tanks…
i rather be oneshooted by arty witch is a rare event, or take half of my life and be able to fight efectivly than taking 400 dmg and not being able to fight back to my atackers.
Actualy that’s already what’s happening in live server. Arty players are complaining because they spend minutes reloading and aiming all that for a miss. And when they do finaly hit even if its for 400dmg the target will complain.
The real problem is most people dont understand how arty work and they dont give half a shit that the arty player spent 10 minutes doing nothing if in the end he is hit, and it doesnt matter how much dmg he took, even if he is just tracked he will whine.
-On the live server, there are far too many players sniping, we are experimenting with accuracy and penetration decreases from higher distances.
But there are tanks that are designed to snipe such as the Obj 263 and Obj 268 that now suffer greatly because of the penetration drop off
Theres currently a fairly large section in the closed sandbox forums about the pen drop off. Mainly whats going on is tanks ment to fight at range are having their pen hyper buffed (290-300 standard pen ie: lol pen), to combat the range drop off. What happened instead is the tanks ment to fight at range become worthless at range and are now basically sluggish fragile tanks with easy pen.
The stb and 121 are really hurting in sandbox atm. Combined for a pen, accuracy and shot distribution nerf, both are kinda stuck in a strange place with no real role.
Intrestingly enough the obj430 is the best med in sandbox. As far as ive tested.
Anyway , opposition towards the shot distribution and pen drop is very high currently. expect them to revert the shot distribution, and drop the pen drop off slightly.
Make no mistake though,tanks ment to shoot at range should still be able to. So you can relax.
The problem is just how to make sure only those tanks can. Currently as i said above, its not ready yet.
I still don’t understand why they simply don’t introduce class or role skills, like they did in AW. For example, in AW light tanks have an increased cap rate.
They could very easily have the pen drop off for normal tanks, but introduce a separate role skill for snipers which counters that.
Hopefully the cool surprise waiting in autumn is scraping the sandbox.
Not sure if stuupid or troll.
As if Sandbox had any negative impact.
Its 2 steps away from anything.
You want to scrap the only way players have an actual input, however small, on game development? Good job…
“the besr thing they could do to the game is stop trying to fix it and keep ruining it”
Please uninstall
”please uninstall” thats the thing wg wants to advoid… new players join the game.. they get killed by pz2js they uninstall.. And now wg are taking steps to stop it and your bitching and moaning? wow..
Another thing they can actually do is set up skill based match making. Set it up so people can build their skills up to be more competitive be able to make more of a contribution to teams when they make it to a higher level. That would allow them time to build crews and crew skills as well. It is kind of harsh for new players coming in facing those with maxed out crews and play at a very high skill level. It can be done and in the end it could also help the game further on by keeping people instead of leaving. Also it could make WG more dough as they could retain a higher player base.
-The number of Sandbox access applications was huge. Each week we’ve been adding 5 to 6k new players which are the minimum necessary to maintain the numbers online. We will be adding more people in the final stages of the test.
Sounds like a hell player rotation. Maybe Sandbob sucks?
– On the live server, there are far too many players sniping, we are experimenting with accuracy and penetration decreases from higher distances.
– No plans to change the +/- 25% penetration.
– Accuracy while firing on the move will be nerfed.
This one sounds like a lot of fun, best wishes, WG.
And amazing, how they try to cure the problem by magnifying it.
Sandbox is pretty fun so… despite 1-2 issues general feedback on the closed forums is positive….
Probably because there are players who WANT to be there because of various reasons, most probably because not everyone is allowed.
If such changes would be proposed to players who just want to have fun, reception may be totally different.
Answer to screwed economy and almighty RNG will be even more screwed economy and insaner RNG.
For me – cool, more players in Armored Warfare.
Maybe you should be in the sandbox test, before you judge the changes based on text alone.
And more players in AW? Ha, my waiting queue in there keeps getting longer and longer…
I’m not going to touch Sandbox, because I’m not going to touch WoT. Because of points I’ve mentioned above – 25% RNG and accuracy. Because I like to position my tank well and use my gun in a way that was designed to – to take out targets as far as possible.
Gameplay model that appears from the text seems to be an opposite to that – all-out brawl at point blank. With short battles, crazy randomness, lot of shell spam etc. No skill, no planning.
Maybe on RU server they like it and play like that, but it’s not my taste.
“Sounds like a hell player rotation. Maybe Sandbob sucks?”
No, there are just many people that played a few days or even rounds alone.Go ask you friends, many probably have played btu can’t tell you what happened with the last patch 🙂
I try to play as often as possible, but it is not as important as clan matches or Euro2016….
Well after playing a few battles per day you get bored and log off until next patch because :
-not enough credits to fully equip more than a few tanks. And playing the same tank over and over is boring
-after a few battles you get the general idea of the patch and can already tell if you like it or not. And if you dont you will rather grind your regular account than play a non-rewarding server where you dont have fun. Even if you’re willing to help the devs, you wont waste time on an unfunny and unrewarding game instead of the main one.
If the current state of the sandbox is liked however, players will keep playing it because it’ll be fun. So just by looking at the amount of online players WG can tell if the patch was successful or not
That’s in general a definition of player rotation – playing in Sandbob is boring and brings nothing to the player.
And more and more players seems to notice that, and decide to not waste time.
-On the live server, there are far too many players sniping, we are experimenting with accuracy and penetration decreases from higher distances.
…
-Accuracy while firing on the move will be nerfed.
ok… so we have to hug for shooting in future?
They are going to ruin the game again, but harder…
Only 4 things need to be fixed, not to create “new roles” by nerfing already balanced tanks…
ASAP / Critical
– Remove / Nerf to the ground / Allow to chose play with arty or not, in the same way you pick “Standard” “Assault” “Encounter” battles(my favourite)
Of lesser importance
– Premium rounds, I dont have any problem but if they want to fix the armor role in-game.
– Remove / Nerf that retarded FV 183/4005 HESH
– Minor tweaks on different tanks.
Giving players the option to choose for playing with arty or not would not fix anything at all…
Yes it fixes the problem, there are only 2 groups, people that likes clickers and people who doesn’t. I would give a sh** about arty if I don’t have to play against it… So, problem solved…
That only fixes the problem for you, which doesn’t fix the global problem at all. That only means you have a very narrow point of view.
You are the type of player they wanna avoid in sandbox and who makes fixing the game harder and slower because you are unable to make constructive criticism.
-arty is a needed part of the game and needs to be balanced, playable and fun to play. It wont be removed nor nerfed to a point where its useless
-gold needs to be at least reworked so armor works and people dont just spam it all day long. And 183mm HESH is completely Op but has already been removed from sandbox. Gold is a problem as important as arty
See? People like you could chose “arty enabled”, and for the other 90% “disabled” and everyone would be happy. You need clickers, we don’t. About gold, do whatever you want, I couldn’t care less… Actually it’s the most useful constructive criticism, nothing fancy, I’m talking about the problem and suggesting ideas to solve it FAST and EASY. Not a stupid sandbox server after 4 years of hiding the dirt under the carpet.
PS.: And I forgot to mention the awesome matchmaking, rigged as hell, because as STORM stated: “Players that lose more frequently play more”. Another easy to solve, since they have personal ratings, USE IT.
There you have my pragmatism vs your useless dogma…
Problem with sandbox is that very few people play it. The game is just a medium brawlfest. Arty is terrible (I have 3 marks of excellence on 261, there’s no fun in it though….. and if you like your wn8 then forget it!)
Is SerB still making decisions? Because it doesn’t looks like it. Everything look much better
if any WG employee is reading this, pls put up discounts for equipments in sandbox. it is IMPOSSIBLE for average players in sandbox to TRY ALL THE TANKS available due to lack of credits available to purchase different equipment set ups.
Don’t you get a gold allocation every day? Use it to dismount & move equipment around.
Wargaming pls stop with this Sandbox bullshit pls don’t completely destroy the game just stop this madness!!!
-Sandbox was born much earlier than’s been available to players, preparations began in January, six months before sharing.
Like I suspected.
It smelled too much like a project with a direction which was already more or less crystallized in the direction they want to the game to, months ago.
To me the above statement shows WG had already build, without ACTUALLY listing to it’s users, a vision/route/direction for WoT’s future and are now just fine tuning this said direction. This goes hand in hand with Slava’s earlier statement he didn’t want a simple (read: actually easy) solution to prem ammo: a straight reduction in dmg per shot.
Like a lot of folks said for years, the game does not need a overall 90-180 deg turn in direction.
Only a few major aspects needed a thorough rework, as they induced toxicity in game (arty, prem ammo, mm enhancements) Coupled with tweaks to view range on t9/10 and individual tanks tweaks so that weaker ones get upped and the more op ones tuned down a bit.
No need to hustle with shot distribution, which was adjusted cause it induced too much RNG in the game. But it is good to hear testers are vocal against this on sandbox forum, so I hope it gets scrapped.
So I will say it again Wargaming developers: KISS – Keep It Simple & Stupid.
Overall their is no need to make this as a ‘prestige’ project. It does not need a sharp change in direction, only a few aspects need that, the rest of your product is fine!
I knew something was up by then, for those who played close attention to the EU visit to Cyprus this sandbox testing came to no surprise.
NO, SANDBOX IS TO TEST MANY DIFFERENT IDEAS, THEY WILL DEFINITELY NOT PUSH STUPID THINGS, THEY’RE LISTENING TO PLAYERS
Oh, wait.
The only hope is that they’ll realize that players that have played this game for years and years do not want their “global rebalance” crap where the tanks they’ve been gathering all this time, using their time and MONEY, turned into something that is not fun at all.
Guys, if you want to love World of Tanks’s Devs you should play War thunder for a month. you will see why WoT’s devs are good
This
I don’t understand why peoples have problems with the Sandbox server. I will explain why the server is there ok? There was a patch where they removed a lot of the concealment on all of the maps, when trying to make the Heavy tanks better, and lower the dominance of Light tanks. So, now light tanks cant really hide easily, so they were not happy for that. without trying to do that they basically buffed the Tank Destroyers, because back there, at the back of the map (Kinda) There were the TD’s, which now could see Heavy tanks and get shots on them much better. THATS FROM WHAT I UNDERSTAND OK? Its not really correct. the point is, That if they had something like the SANDBOX server Back then, they would test it there first. and then see if it works the way they wanted it to. ok? So why do SOOOOO many peoples have problems with the Sandbox server… come on its just SerB playing in a sandbox… that’s what it is…. ok ill shut up
Why don’t they make Gold rounds just another type of ammo, instead of just trying to farm on it… Seriously look at AW, they have like all various types of ammo that are given to you basically, and there are only slight differences between them, nothing like 40mm’s of more pen n’ what not… Gold rounds would be abused because it would be a pay to win tactic, and in the game they are over priced by far, like seriously, 4k per shot? are you nuts?
yeh you pay to win but you loose money for it you know
40Mm pen, how cute 🙂
T-54 gains 130mm pen with gold, that’s more than 50 % increase.
JPZ gains enough pen to qimply autoaim and pen anything besides maybe IS7 turret and funny rng angles. Above 500mm pen thanks to rng…
So yeah, if gold was just about 40mm invreases it would be balanced but when your pen increases by so much its just plain “pay premium to affors op ammo to win”.
Are you on crack? JPE pen was nerfed to 253 mm, less than Soviet mediums. Gold round is what, 300 mm? 500 pen? What the hell are you on?
Lies, really all it is. Currently too many snipers? Bullshit. All the good tanks, the ones winning are brawlers. Sniping is not viable considering the current maps. This is why spotting also is a failed mechanic. Soviet mediums have more pen, vastly more DPM than some TDs currently do, and go 65 kph. SB is more brawling, less options, stupidly boring game play. This will crush the mid tier tanks as many are even less able to brawl. Anything armed with the L70, L56 or the open topped German TDs will be even worse than they are (if that is possible). All hail Soviet Russia.
Stun mechanic is stupid. Always has been, always will be. One of the brilliant things about this game is it’s simplicity: go do damage. That’s it. Go kill the other team. Hate to say this, but that’s how tanks work in real life and although there are plenty of things about this game that are not realistic, killing the other team keeps it grounded in a lot of ways. I don’t want to play a fantasy MMO transposed into tank battles where arty can fire stun arrows and the E5 is a paladin. Fuck that shit.
One thing that’s annoying here is that they’re only testing one idea in the Sandbox. The idea is that arty gets to stun people and you will be forced to play the game the way they want you to play it. One of the other great things about this game is you can set your tanks up differently and play them the way YOU want to play. When this gets implemented, you will have to play your tanks the way that WG wants you to play them and if you don’t, it’s going to suck. They are restricting your options rather than expanding them.
So far this is a shit show. I really hope they never implement any of these ideas.
Yay, the voice of reason, and here I thought it was lost.
Good point. I don’t want to be force to charge out and attack a stunned tank, nor do I want to depend on teammates to damage a tank. I think it would be better to set a tank on fire instead of stunning it. Of course, the damage from the fire will have to be balanced.
Roll alot of the game back to the way it was in earlier versions, say 7.5 or 7.9. Yes there were less tanks but at least they were WWII tanks; Not these 1956/58 tanks that we are getting or made up tanks. This game was based on WWII tanks that fought in the war. German tanks had accurracy, Americans had gun depression. Arty was a skill that was learned and while it could do damage, it was not the BullShit it has turned into. Also, you had to learn your tanks well. You could remember how to deal with a particular tank in battle. Know its weak spots. Now, theres so many tanks, its impossible to remember but a few. Also, we didnt have these cheat mods to deal with. Thats one of the reasons people are snipping more. Dont penalize if someone is snipping with a KV-1. They just want to last a bit against the cheaters. Do something about these cheatmods.
it’s hard since the cheat progs are client-wise, which means WG can only detect it from the replays anyone send to them as “proof”
abt made up tanks from SerB’s Design Bureau, WG knows that a lot of us don’t like it (what with them advertising the game as “historical”), and that’s why they’re gradually replacing them with at least blueprinted tank designs. the main reason why WG made fake tanks is mainly due to a lack of a suitable candidate for the position at the time a certain tank line is introduced
and i don’t know bout you, but there aren’t that much known cheaters in SEA (beyond the infamous VPA clan). in fact, we have more problems with goldspammers, which prompted said KVs to camp hard since they’re wussies who can’t rush
I find the claims of ‘Historical Accuracy’ to be laughable while we have Tiger I with 8.8cm L/71 and Churchill I with 75mm (and not even a 75mm that was ever in production!). 99% of all the tanks in WoT are historically Inaccurate by design.
yeah i find that amusing too. you want “historical” tiger, that would be the HT6 because it has the original 88mm L/56. sometimes the devs have to give tanks unhistorical gear just to justify their tier position. another good example would be IS3 with the BL9 , which i heard isn’t historical but absolutely needed for t8 battles
come to think abt it funny how the noobs are whining abt how this tank is weak when it actually performs similar to the VK36.01H but whatever. i welcome the free pen boost
“reduce player errors” … what the hell does that mean?
>solve arty
Limit the number of arties per team (2 per team at most imho), significantly nerf damage and pen on HE, and remove non-HE shells (HEAT, AP, etc.).
>increase the armor role to make battles more dynamic
So long as gold ammo exists, armor will never have a proper role at the higher tiers. Never mind the fact that at Tier 10 we have 40s designs (Maus) against early MBTs (soviet HEAT spammers).
>reduce player errors
Not sure what this means, but rest assured most players won’t simply stick to the roles you’re assigning to tanks in sandbox (assault, cavalry, etc.), even if it is a disadvantage.
Reduce player errors is that even possible
# then the new MM, the maps and so on #
yeah really? will believe that when I see it with my own eyes so more wishful thinking than it happening
# increase the armor role to make battles more dynamic and reduce player errors.#
yeah right! at this time in sandbox 80% of all players are in t10 Heavy tanks where there now almost invincible!
whats that loud noise on my T10 Heavy tank turret and armour? oh its all the MT and TD shells all bouncing off my OP armour like rain drops (how nice just sit here and camp