I've realized that for the past months it has become difficult to enter a Tier 1 battle without a 2 minute wait, at least. Most are even launched with less than the usual players.

Also, one thing that leads me to think that the game has plateaued is that new maps releases have become a rarity and we old players have seen decent maps come and gone, never to be seen again. There were a lot of maps and thy have vanished.
We're forced to play maybe 20% or less of the maps ever released. Believe we can play them eyes closed having been there hundreds of times.

What is going on?

Do we need more new tanks or should they focus on giving us some battle grounds variety for a change?

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Actually on the WOT website they show a video of the graphics / map revamping that they are currently working on. Some pretty impressive visuals with what looks like some changes to the actual map layouts in some cases too.

I haven't tried a Tier I recently as I'm trying to take advantage of some of the mid Tier "March of Tanks" discounts as the different weeks are for different countries. I have noticed though that even with my high speed connection where my ping would rarely go higher than mid to high 40s with heavy action and usually hovered around mid 20s to mid 30s in most other cases, I am now seeing ping spikes in the 60s and 70s with even a bit higher on rare occasions. It has to be the servers on their side because I've run several different speed tests and trace routes and it doesn't seem to be my carrier or connection. Let's see what happens. I hope they aren't putting off hardware upgrades as it looks like the online players, especially during the busy times are already over 20K.

All the cool kids are playing World of Warships now.

But seriously, I saw the map revamp video, and it looks badass. It's not just reskinning the maps, it's a whole new graphics engine: http://www.pcgamer.com/wargami...tchmaking-new-games/

Wargaming is still pumping time and effort into the game, and their Super Bowl ads probably got them some new players as well. It's far from dead.

...come play WoWS anyway. We have cake, which may or may not be, a lie.

I split my time between ships and tanks. I ODed on ships over the holidays chasing the free GRAF SPEE. It was worth it, but I needed a break once earned.

I've played a few rounds of tanks and forgot some of the joys there. Both good and bad.

As for the maps, hell yeah, I miss the ones that they removed. I just saw someone put out a top 6 maps they want returned. All but one (dragon ridge) I miss. Ports was a favorite. yes, it was imbalanced, but I don't think it was unsalvageable.

Map making isn't WGs strong suit. But yeah, I would love to see more maps, especially historically based ones. Maybe two every 3-4 months would be nice. And a bump in rotation for new maps when released. I think I've played the Paris map 4 times since release.

And what are you doing down in tier 1 anyway? Hoping to club seals? LOL

I wonder if my account is still there?

I played yesterday and had a ping rate of 70-90 and was VERY happy. Usually runs 120-200. Gotten some pretty good shots on moving tanks, just have to adjust the lead.

quote:

Originally posted by AllenInWV:
I wonder if my account is still there?

Likely yes. My kids dropped out for a year and are now back in the game.

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Yeah, reloaded it and got back on. Just seems so "cartoony". I think WarThunder handles armored combat better.

Many people buy their way into higher tiers as opposed to putzing around in beginning tiers. They want their T54 and Loewe NOW, not a tier two light tank.

Plus, never underestimate the amount of whiny bitches complaining of cheating, bots, or insulting players because they got killified fair and square.

There was an interview (Paragon?) with the CEO of WG where he takes responsibility of tanks failures. Still gets a lot of it wrong but he wasn't speaking from a NA server point of view.

WG did try to kill the game for NA by eliminating top tier endgame. That's changed with the new Strong Holds Advances. Been having a lot of fun running SHA. There are still problems with it tho. Even though the SHA MM is skill based we've had a few clans just drop if we steamroll them after the first battle. I understand not wanting to lose credits for T10 battles *AND* not lose any boxes, but c'mon and stick it out. All our SHA battles have been within 2 - 2.5K clan rating of ourselves. Only had one clan with a lower clan rating. Still a lot of fun and guys are coming back to run their tier 10 in a competitive way.

Also, WG have made playing low tiers unnecessary as of late. Lots would call it a cash grab, but they've hedged their income by making available a lot of premium T8 tanks. With that, a lot of occasional free to play guys can run and earn credits without having to have a premium account. These guys can also run T8 Skirmishes for credits and to scratch that competitive itch. The T8 prems have allowed a lot of NA players to switch to EU. It also means that a small investment in gold can convert free EXP for tanks in their weekly tournaments where you can earn gold.

I think the maps where 30%+ of the map was unplayable space was their biggest problem. 1k x 1K maps with 6 grids in each corner make for maps that are no fun. Some call those corridor maps but I think that's just low hanging fruit phrase. Open maps still have bad players running for the 1/A and 0/J lines. Yeah, the new heavy meta has made corridors a thing again. Then again, I seem to be one of the weirdos that likes the Paris map. That graphics/map rework video shows a lot of what I think they are moving toward in design: more arty safe positions. All the towers shown on Cliffs make for some great arty safe brawling spots.

What happened in South America for the last couple of years influx of players? Doesn't CABRA have something like 73 subclans? Kinda surprised they didn't start a SA server. I also swear that I heard the Korean server is getting merged into the SEA server, but not sure.

It's also funny how you can tell what industries are doing well or poorly by WoT. A lot of guys I played with in beta from the US and Canadian oil industry vanished and then reappeared in the game.

Can't help you with the South American scene. I've done my best to stay away from south american players. They're way too chaotic and loud for my delicate ears.

I even ran with Canadian clans for a while. Just loved their (weird to me) french accent and they mostly also run bilingual comms. What is there not to love?

Trying to get all my tanks to Elite level makes my grinding boring. Same maps over and over time and again. Just discovered that I enjoy taking my Swedish T1 tank for a spin in between higher tier battles. But it takes way to long to gather enough players... Most times, not worth it.

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Mostly on WoWS these days, now and then pop into WoT.

The problem is not with arty (learn to do the dance, people) and the problem is not with how the game looks. The issues they have are more fundamental. Matchmaking is my current hotbutton, but there are others.

I'm in the sandbox to see what they are experimenting on/with for next gen. It's not bad, but it's not going to fix things, IMO.

What grabs and keeps people is new content. New tanks, after a few hundred, is sorta 'meh' content. I'm not even going to bother trying for the T8 US medium. They need new maps, and new/randomized spawn locations on the existing ones.

The heartaches are:
1) MM sending in completely unbalanced teams (city map with 8 heavies on one side, zero on another, e.g.)
It used to be decent but a few patches ago it went completely south.

2) No new maps, no changes to spawn locations = no brain cells to engage at the start.
See the map, look at the team compositions, figure out where folks are likely to go. Now head where your tank will make a difference.

For example - game loads, here's the situation: "In a heavy, top tier. Tank mix is balanced and there's an equal balance of good players on both sides. Highway map....OK, off to town."

That takes about a tenth of a second. It's all on autopilot. To be fair, I have 30K plus battles. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.

One thing I think will help is changing the mix of tiers in a battle. It would be simpler if they just went to +/1 tier battles, but they have religious problems with that. But the proposed upcoming change so there are fewer top-tiers in a game mean that the lower tiers will have useful work to do, rather than just hanging back and bouncing rounds.

Had to share this one folks....check out this replay! The description says it all...needless to say it was a cardio workout and I got some team mate congratulation messages after the match about cheering me on and the victory!

http://wotreplays.eu/site/3443...tech114-amx_13_f3_am

I'm not sure why they thought killing the NA server was a good idea. By killing the tier 13 battles (all tier 10 tanks) they did fuck up high tier fights. Tier 8 vehicles became a pain to drive because many battles I was the token tier 8 facing 13-14 tier 9s and 10s.

What has me angry at MM is the unbalance in matching players. To many games get one sided blow outs victories, like one team wiping out the other and only losing one or two in the process. It happens way too much in WoT. I would love to see a break down of the players in terms of how much money they spend on the game for premium, gold, and premium tanks vs players who don't invest whole paychecks in the game.

quote:

Originally posted by IrishWind:
What has me angry at MM is the unbalance in matching players. To many games get one sided blow outs victories, like one team wiping out the other and only losing one or two in the process. It happens way too much in WoT. I would love to see a break down of the players in terms of how much money they spend on the game for premium, gold, and premium tanks vs players who don't invest whole paychecks in the game.

It's funny that you mention that because aside from looking at individual player ratings after the matches from time to time, I also look at their wotlabs.net stats and more often then I expected I find that some players may have tried / played a very select number of lower tier tanks but most of their tanks are actually mostly premium tanks. Some players even show virtually no lower tier tank stats yet they have mid to upper tier regular tanks there is no way they could have gotten to without either using a HUGE amount of free experience or not sure if there is a way for them to gift tanks to other accounts. There are a lot of things about the stats that leave you scratching your head sometimes and I agree that MM could be better in some cases.

Since WG looks like they are cracking down more and more on the illegal mods and cheaters, one thing I would like to see is them disallowing any mod that shows color coded stats of all the players during the battle. It gives them a distinct "intelligence" upper hand because I have frequently seen during the battle and after the fact when checking stats that they used that information to concentrate on the more skilled players with tank and artillery fire when they would otherwise not know up front who the better players were.

XVM sniping is a real thing.

For the record...I use zero mods...never have...never will. In either case, it sounds like WG is going to continue to limit them and may even implement some of their less intrusive functionality as time goes on to further level the playing field. Personally, I think it takes away from the game to try and gain what in most cases is an unfair advantage over other players. I play the best that I can with what is provided and my stats are what they are. Even if others choose to use them, I'm content knowing that I'm beating other players without them and that's good enough for me.

I use Aslain's mod. The UI changes are too useful to ignore. Worth it for the 5 row tank carousel alone. I can see all of my 60 some tanks on one screen in the garage.

I like the fact that WG is incorporating mod features intothe base game because most of the mod features are things that should already exist in game. Multi Row Carousel. More info easily seen in hangar or barracks. Etc.

With such a small player base, I keep wondering how the wait times for battles will be impacted by the proposed MM changes.

One thing they need to change is a stiffer penalty for drowning. x3 cost and/or count it as team damage would be good a start.

Speaking of XVM and XVM sniping. Watch this guy's stream for examples of people who can't handle ratings, MoE grinding, clan tag sniping, and WGLNA player sniping. lol Especially when arty knows the reaction they'll get on his stream.

WARNING: Shrieking, screaming, tantrums, language and lots of impotent rage at a very high level of WoT play.

https://www.twitch.tv/socialflaws

He has gotten better. He used to go through his "spectrum" of issues every few days.