Good day eveybody,

Quick roundup of dev answers from various weekly Q&As (when they’re relevant to development, and not another “When is X premium coming to the store) and statements through the forums for the month of October:

So it seems that Swedish tanks are coming soon… sweet. What about the tier X light tanks? When can we expect those?

The current plan is for early next year.

Why don’t we get the buffs World of Tanks PC gets at the same time and how exactly do you decide what you bring over from PC?

We consider each change PC makes when we move up versions and take the ones we feel are appropriate for the console game. Many times by the time we get changes from a new server version they’ve already been changed again on PC. We probably take more buffs than nerfs on average due to the changes we made to tank responsiveness when we launched. We have a very large number of data hooks and reports on how all the tanks perform and make our decisions using that data as well as the data from PC.

Any updates on the alternate artillery view?

That comes in a future version of the server we haven’t received yet. Sometime next year, we’ll start upgrading to it and see how we want to implement it.

Any updates on the “Mercenary tree” that was hinted at months ago?

It’s an exciting concept, but there’s nothing currently to announce.

Do you think we’ll see TOG Sea again?

Very likely.

Have you all figured out what, if any, changes to artillery to implement? When might we see these changes?

All significant artillery changes will happen at the same time that we upgrade to the server version that has the new artillery changes from World of Tanks PC.

Will we get the new graphics that PC is testing on the Sandbox server?

We’ll certainly get the new map assets, just like we get the tanks from PC. As for the FX, those don’t translate over directly but we’re certainly looking at the great work they did on PC and seeing what we can take or emulate.

Why doesn’t Console have a Public test server?

First party console manufacturers only allow final code that passes certification to run on retail console. While we do have a Supertest program, it’s considered a closed beta, which allows only limited access and still has to pass certification.

We’re thinking of creating a Premium Tech Tree for all the premium tanks we’ve sold that are not in the normal tech tree and are not on sale.  That way you can view them in the garage and armor view and some of us can use it as our own Hot Wheel type garage (got a get them all).  Hopefully that also help keep tanks unreleased more in the forefront and give us another avenue for specials.

These next questions come from TJ Wagner during a bit of a Q&A session on the WoT Console forums:

Could you look into the War Stories silver earnings potential? After the first run through it isn’t really worth playing the mode, as some have found little to no silver earning capability to warrant continuing to play the mode.

We are actively discussing it now.  I’d like to transition players from Proving Grounds to War Stories by making Challenge mode a lot more exciting reward wise and with random bonus drops.  It would be great to focus on only one PvE CoOp mode testing and bug fixing wise.

The closure of all the other language forums – can you acknowledge at least that this was badly handled, and offer some reassurances to our non-English friends?

I feel most things could be handled better in hindsight, I know I’ve had more than a few.  We’re not removing languages from the game or portal

Missing maps – everyone has been remarkably coy about the reasons for this, but curious minds remain curious? Also, are you aware that many of us see the relaxing of tier limits on small maps as being a cure that is worse than the disease? Releasing the Stark at the same time as flooding MM with tier X Widepark, Liberty Falls etc. was far from ideal!

I’ve been pretty straight in my answers.  We were facing size limit restrictions and needed to add more content so we pulled out maps that had issues, were unpopular and ones that shared assets with them… Yes, although I see great disagreement on many of them.  A bit to hasty of a choice for sure.  We’re creating a map rating survey now to get out to players and will cull or return based on that

That balance pass was a bit of an unsung hero since so many tanks got some much deserved attention.  There’s always more tanks that need some refreshing and we’d like to know when we can expect another balance pass or possibly what tanks may be receiving some buffs soon?  The hull traverse of the HMH FV305 comes to mind……

Next big one will be when we add tier X light tanks.  We have to make changes to hundreds of tanks for that alone so another big review\change will happen then.

Pain, any chance that we can get clan emblems on our tanks like PC has?

Do you mean ones you submit yourself?  Consoles don’t allow user generated content, everything has to be checked and go through certification.  You could submit emblems we could add to the game but anyone could use them. (DN Note: Not strictly true. Games such as Call of Duty and Battlefield have use generated emblems visible, and have for years)

How soon can we expect more than 15 enemy tanks to be possible? I understand this is probably difficult from a technical standpoint but I think the longevity of war stories/proving grounds depends heavily on this. (Regarding PvE)

Already possible but way overwhelming.  Maybe we need a difficulty mode that adds tanks or makes them tougher.  Very hard to adapt to the full range of players.

We’ve seen the bot AI improve a ton since proving grounds was released, how are future improvements looking?

Good, better and more natural pathing, more roles.  Our goal is AI we could put in a random battle and you wouldn’t know the difference.

Will we ever see a German point of view based war story? I have a few ideas that would be non-offensive. The battle for castle Itter for example (not really an armored battle but did feature a US armored rescue attempt).

German PoV for WS is very tricky indeed and your suggestions are welcome.

Historical battle war stories, any plans?

Historical WS are certainly possible and in discussion.

Are the black tanks or tanks like them (ones with higher multipliers than the TT/standard premium) going to be sold again. If the answer to this is no, I’ll buy a nice gold package to spend this month. (I’d be okay if these kind of tanks were given away as rare prizes as long as they are never sold.)

No Black Tanks or anything like them this year.

Just wondering pain will we ever see 30v30 or is the answer 360

30v30 is unlikely as it would kill matchmaker and certainly not possible while 360 is still around.

There’ll be more to War Stories and some significant additions to Random Battles next year.  Hopefully ones you’ll like.  If you’re looking for a strict adherence to history I think we’re past that since we won’t be removing tanks.  Tank suggestions are always welcome as well as corrections to descriptions.