3281

About the feedback, my personal frustration is the zero damage I am doing. I’d love to know why. Why do 6 shots of AP all miss, when they should be able to penetrate? Why does HE give me messages of “it bounced”, “we just dinged him”, “we didn’t even scratch him”. HE should give damage right? Why isn’t it? Is it my angle? Is it my ping? Is it bad mojo?

A lot of shots I don’t get any feedback - well I have detected a blinking in my reticle, which I think may indicate some sort of it but lots of shots (particularly ones where I think I hit it) don’t give me any indication. It might be my colorblindness is preventing me from seeing it, but I definately don’t get audible recognition many times.

Maybe it could be a client-side setting that I could turn on/off?

3282

That’s great. It’d be a pretty boring forum if everyone had agreed with each other. :)

In Clan matches, there are external motivators for teamwork and cooperation, beyond the simple experience/credits calculation. One of those is the fact you’re playing against another group of people working together who also want to win for something more than mere individual advancement. Another is the metagame of clan matches that gives actual meaning to winning and losing per se, rather than as a vehicle for experience and credit gain. In Randoms, none of that applies. The maps themselves, and the flag placement and mission (CTF) design do not in and of themselves do anything to encourage team play, because the rewards or doing so are not commensurate with the costs (as defined by subordinating individual short term gain). Maybe not the geography so much, which I guess is sort of neutral, but certainly the mission design.

In any kind of match (and in any similar kind of game) there is one ultimate goal - make your team win and the enemy team lose. And in every game this goal is supported by some related incentive, be it exp, credits, gold or whatever. Be it WoT, WoW, WAR, Rift, Battlefield, etc. If your team wins you (on average) will receive more points than if it loses. Also, in WOT, if you are high enough, you will actually lose points (credits) if you play bad and your team loses.

As you get more points, you get access to new stuff that allows you to get even more points. :)

There are variations of the above generic goal that might introduce additional incentives - Arena with its ladders, WoT with its caln wars, WAR with its RvR lakes. But you still want your team to win and the enmy to lose. And IMO it’s not fair to say that WoW doesn’t encourage teamplay in battlefields/instances just because it has Arenas/raids. Or WoT doesn’t do it in Random matches just because there are clan wars.

Teamplay wins in all these games. But if some people don’t know what to do in certain situations and how to help their team, it’s really the fault of people, not the game. The game can’t tell you for each of the maps “put 3 tanks to cover the valley, one tank to cover the middle, push with the rest of your team through the city, one arty to cover the valley and another is to cover the city”. The players are supposed to figure it out and play accordingly.

And I disagree strongly about feedback. This isn’t just CounterStrike, for simple reason you have tanks, and enough historical data/detail to make it a reasonable expectation of the player base to view combat through the lens of tank sims and wargames than have gone before, even if ever-so-dimly. And the game gives YOU information in that format–penetrates X mm, has Ymm armor, etc. Yet the feedback you get is essentially “you hit it,” or "you killed it, " or “you hit it but someone else did to and they got the kill.” Very vague, and to me unsatisfying and out of sync with the game’s metastructure.

See, you mention sims but you also mention wargames and I don’t see why would you classify WoT as a wargame. I would agree with the sim part but IL-2 doesn’t provide you with “you penetrated enemy’s wing and hit his right engine and it’s at 70% of power now” kind of feedback. You either see little explosions or not. Neither does (did) WWII Online or any other sims I can remember.

And while we are on the subject of sims, neither does real life provide you with such feedback. Not that WoT is trying to be a sim in this sense.

Instead of the “sim and wargame”, I would classify WOT as “sim and shooter”. Counterstrike on tanks is probably a too dated comparison but Battlefield on tanks is pretty close, only soldiers=tanks in WOT and the damage model is more detailed (hense the +sim part). And certainly Counterstrike, Battlefield, etc. don’t provide you with lots of feedback.

And it wouldn’t take anywhere near “megabytes” of data. Just crappy text is fine, like any combat log in an MMO. Even a bog-standard MMO has a running combat log that tracks exactly who did what damage with what ability to whom, in your immediate area. No reason that couldn’t be in this game. Even Warhammer’s scenarios had decent post-scenario breakdowns of who did what. In WoT, you immediately lose chat ability, get a static and very uninformative screen to look at, and often wind up none the wiser as to just what happened during the match.

A bog-standard MMO only needs to log “you hit the enemy with 35 fire damage” or “your Fire attack missed the enemy” or “Your enemy is slowed down by 30%” events for each of your attacks. And even those are fairly useless to majority of the players. Imagine what WoT would need to communicate on a hit - “you penetrated a left track and did 30 damage to it, you penetrated the hull and did 100 damage to tank’s health, you missed the driver, you kill the loader, you hit the ammo rack and do 70 damage to it, ammo rack explodes and does 50 damage to the tank health and does 30 damage to the commander. As a result, the enemy is slowed down by 30%, reloads 40% slower, drives 50% slower, turns 20% slower, sees 25% closer, the fuel tank is damaged and leaking, aim is 25% worse, radio communication is 10% worse”. I am not even listing the feedback on ricochet calculations, penetration calculation, etc. Also add HE feedback, which is more complicated than a straight AP round and then add arty related stuff and hitting multiple targets with HE. And machine gun kind of guns on lower tier tanks.

Really? The game really needs to send all this stuff on every shot to each of the 30 players? About each player? And do it for all 13,000+ players currently playing (well, 150,000+ players in Russia)? So that one geek (no offense, we are all geeks here :)) out of 1000 would get to savor all the detailed feedback and conclude that that particular hit was pretty good? Like seeing the enemy’s 80% drop in health and “Critical Hit!” voice message is not enough. :)

I really couldn’t care less how many time that particular Joe detracked some other dude on the other end of the map. All I care about is whether that flank is holding or they are all dead within a minute. And I can perfectly see it on the minimap. :)

As for my own end-of-the-match stats the only thing I really care about is my hit/miss ratio, which I currently have. I would only add “Total Damage” to it (per enemy, right in that table that lists who you damaged).

As for the WAR/Rift kind of a post match summary, I would agree. That kind of summary is interesting, however, to be honest, after a little while I started to ignore it in those games. And some stats (like scouting) would be damn hard to track properly.

I really don’t care that much about wins/losses in the sense of ego or my own accomplishments, though I do think there’s a lot to be gained by all players having a more realistic view of what others are doing. This is as much an MMO as it is an FPS, because of the hard-core leveling/grinding aspect, and that means IMO it needs more MMO style data tracking and feedback. It’s also at least 20% a wargame or sim, so it needs some form of grognard-style data as well, IMO.

FPS’s nowadays have as much grinding and leveling as any MMO, so really grind <> data tracking and feedback. :) And as I mentioned, sims don’t really provide us with much data either.

And why do we need it? So that we coudl have dps meters like in all other MMO’s? So that after (or during) a match someone could look at the dps meter and say “yeah, that dude didn’t perform really well”. So what? I hated dps meters it in WoW, I don’t see the need for them in WoT. I don’t need some douche yelling at me for not dps-ing, when I am in my Ferdi scouting an enemy JagdTiger over the ridge so that our arty could take him down.

I just think that you are critisizing the game for some it doesn’t deserve really.

3283

I’d rather they went the opposite direction, and remove kills entirely until the end. As it is now, folks tend to concentrate on weaker tier tanks, just to get the kills. Which isn’t much fun for those tanks.

3284

90% of my shots are using HE. Even when you do no physical damage you may have damaged modules on their tank. Every module damaged will reduce the enemies combat performance even if it doesn’t damage their main armor.

Can I recommend you not focus so much on damage or kills and more on the big picture of the battle. Could you have acted as a spotter? Could you delay the enemy at a choke point or slow them down while other tanks on your team take another route and cap?

Delaying actions can often be the deciding point in a battle. I’ve actually scouted in my T9 Jagdtiger simply by sitting in cover and watching the enemy pass in front of me at range and allowing my arty to take them out. I have not fired a single shot.

I make decisions on what I will do during the battle by analyzing the composition of enemy forces during the countdown screen. I have also pre-planned my route and position based on the map that is selected and the current tank I have selected.

The game is actually balanced well. Most people have a 50% victory rate which is exactly the target the devs were aiming for. After 1929 battles my victory rate is 50%. My point is even in random battles it isn’t just about getting the highest kill count or the most damage.

3285

Lately I feel like I have been getting more of the “hit the enemy, bell ring, box blinks, but no damage.” And it doesn’t even say it was a critical hit. I guess I am damaging components but not destroying them? If so I suppose I am hitting the track, but it is pretty annoying.

3286

I’d estimate there’s maybe a 20% chance of success assaulting through the valley. Victory happens often enough to reinforce the behavior in some players, but poor enough that it generally shouldn’t be done. When it is successful, it’s usually due to poor choices by your enemy. Either they haven’t properly defended it, or they’ve foolishly tried to attack through the valley themselves and have lost the advantage of being on the defense.

The key problems I see on the valley are:

[ul]
[li] You are attacking through a bottleneck. This removes many of the advantages of being the attacker. There’s very limited frontage, which means that you can’t bring superior numbers to bear. You can typically only get 2 tanks in action at once, 3 if you really want to stuff them next to each other.
[/li]
[li] Along the same lines you lose mobility. Fast mediums lose all their benefits, there is no way to flank the enemy and you need to take the defense head on. I suppose if you had a team of all super-heavy TDs, this might be the way to go, but you’ve still got the frontage problem.
[/li]
[li] Enemy is in strong defensive position, particularly attacking North-to-South. They’ve got good hard cover, and attackers will be exposed. This can be ameliorated somewhat with good use of artillery. Also if attackers push through the most constricted point they can find cover in the valley where it turns into a Y, but most PUGs aren’t willing to take the hits to get past the bottleneck so they stall on the ridgeline. Regardless defenders have a pretty good advantage over attackers, more so than in most map positions.
[/li]
South-to-North the defense used to be able to take advantage of the concealment provided by bushes, so a TD could do some good sniping, alas, that’s not the case anymore. So attacks South-to-North are more reasonable. Again there is a bottleneck, which is to the advantage of the defenders, but if you can push past the bottleneck, you may be able to spill out into the broader plain and overwhelm the defense.

If you’ve got really good artillery, I suppose assaulting through the valley might make sense. You’ll need to push to make sure that you get through before the enemy overwhelms your center and town defenses.

Sadly the last two times my team tried to attack through the valley they were attacking North-to-South. It’s like people can’t read maps. They also don’t seem to check the teams. Glancing at a team where we’ve got heavies and they’ve got mediums you can bet things will go badly on the hill in Himmelsdorf. Heading South-to-North on Prohorovka, you can bet the enemy will have tanks on the ridge, particularly if they’ve got mediums.

[li] Terrain is very rough. This makes it slow going particularly for heavies. Even once the defense has been destroyed it’s going to take a while for even mediums to get through. It also makes it relatively slow to move backwards, so if you lose the fight in the town or center (which is likely if you’ve all stuffed into the valley), the enemy is likely to get to your base before you get to theirs, and you’ll be too far in and too slow to get back to your own base to defend (plus because the valley is constricted, it’s difficult to turn around without getting sniped in the rear).
[/li]
PUGs just don’t understand that time is critical. It’s not enough to beat the valley defense, you have to beat them and reach the enemy base before the enemy’s spearhead breaks through the town or center and reaches your base. PUG drivers just aren’t willing to take the hits necessary or sacrifice their tank in order for their armoured spearhead to achieve breakthrough. This is a problem on a number of maps, but is particularly true here in the valley.
[/ul]

I can see some advantages a clan might have when attacking through the valley, but also some problems. A clan should have the discipline to push through the bottleneck, in spite of taking hits. This should provide a big benefit over a PUG, since stalling on that center ridgeline is one of the biggest problems with assaulting the valley. Also a clan can stack their artillery up, knowing that they are planning a valley push. A clan could also combine a valley attack with a center push trying to tie up center defense and prevent it from coming to valley defenses aid.

OTOH the opposing clan should be able to see that the valley is getting pushed and rearrange their defense accordingly bringing tanks from center and town as needed, something that PUGs are extremely bad at. If the opposing clan sees your valley push and responds appropriately the defense still has the advantage. Since advancing through the valley is quite slow, they should have time to rearrange their defenses.

I can also see a smart clan making a feint on the valley with a show of force on that bottleneck ridgeline and then moving some of those forces to center or town for the real attack.

3287

Definitely agree on the importance of delaying action. When faced with overwhelming force, a good delaying action can often result in victory for your team. Remember if you are faced with most of the enemy’s heavies, that means they are weak elsewhere. Hopefully your team’s heavies are chewing up their mediums and will breakthrough and cap. You need to focus on slowing down the enemy spearhead and giving your own spearhead enough time to cap.

It is frustrating on occasion when you do a great job delaying the bulk of the enemy forces and you look up and either (1) somehow your own spearhead managed to get themselves all killed in spite of the fact that the highest tier heavies were attacking you or (2) your own spearhead let themselves stall half-way across the map because of a few wimpy mediums or a heavy that’s 80% dead, so your delaying action was for nought.

I’ve had a lot of successful delaying actions though, and I find it very satisfying when I’m able to hold of the enemy spearhead long enough for my own team to cap via another approach.

3288

I compare WoT to wargames about tanks, which all do have enormous amounts of arcana about ballistics and such, and if a game has historical tanks in it and uses things like armor thickness, angle, and penetration, it should provide data, IMO. But yeah, I can see how not everyone would want that.

And again, I disagree that the game provides sufficient incentive towards team work. Theoretically, yes; you get more if you win, less if you lose. Psychology of gamers doesn’t work that way. It’s all about the individual unless something overarching–a gaming Leviathan, as it were–acts to compel players to play together. A clan or guild, a specific rules set that makes you get dramatically lower rewards for failure (very problematic, not something I’d recommend, really), or other such devices can compel teamplay, perhaps. Left to their own devices, and given comparable (even roughly) rewards for losing or winning as long as your individual performance is solid, players will all be selfish. It’s natural, and rewarded.

I am not a techie, but I can’t imagine there would be much of a burden in providing combat parsing, for thirty people for thirty minutes, when MMOs do it for a lot more people over a longer period of time. Hell, in DAOC we had 100+ person raids over four to six hours, all with damage logs. But I bow to anyone who is technically more adept.

And I’m not so much criticizing the game as I am disagreeing with how the developers have conceptualized what they are doing. In the paradigm they’ve set up, I suppose it’s all working as intended. I disagree with some of the fundamental assumptions of their paradigm, and I think they mix apples and oranges too cavalierly. But I’m still playing, and think overall it’s a good time, most of the time.

3289

I didn’t know what this was either until Stridergg posted a couple weeks ago. It means that you’ve damaged an enemy internal module, but not enough to take it completely out of action.

Listed AP penetration is actually the center of a range of possible values. IIRC there’s a 25% +/- on actual AP penetration value calculated on each shot. Also the angle can make a considerable difference. If you’ve got almost a full-on direct shot at the front of a tank and an oblique angle on the side, you should shoot at the front. Oblique shots will almost always bounce.

Also keep in mind that the armour thickness numbers don’t take the armour sloping of a tank into account, but the penetration calculation does. Don’t shoot at sloped sections of a tank if possible.

As far as the HE goes, I do occasionally get the no damage on HE too. Seems quite infrequent though. No idea what it means.

3290

If you guys haven’t already seen them the Official Tactics page is quite useful and is a very easy read and te Battle Mechanics page is also quite useful, although much denser reading.

3291

Yes both excellent pages.

Also a final point I want to make is that everything in WoT is designed to direct the player to spending real money for gold. Why do those high cost premium’s exist? To soak up gold. Obviously a side benefit is to generate credits but even that can be purchased with gold. Unhappy with your damage? Buy premium shells which again cost real money.

Some members of my clan have spent upwards of $600-$700 on the game since it was released. And that is simply to remain competitive in Ultimate Conquest. Even then we can’t match the clans that field 8-9 tier 10 tanks. Don’t even think of going into a clan war battle without purchasing premium rounds and a full set of consumables. The competitive end of the game is definitely a goldmine for the devs.

3292

8-(

$600-$700! Well I guess I’m not going to play Ultimate Conquest even once I get a tier 9 or 10 tanks! That’s just mind-boggling.

Personally I’ve been running premium since release and will likely get at least one more month worth and then maybe occasional weeks or weekends of premium as desired. Plus I’ve got space for 27 in my tank barn – I’ve got 23 tanks, and bought some extra spots when they were on half-price.

Is that $600-$700 mostly on gold ammo?

3293

You’re right, and I feel like I have been seeing it more of late. I must be hitting them in the tracks.

3294

Sean again makes a cogent point–most of us are playing this game in “amateur” mode, spending maybe fifteen bucks a month or so to maintain premium. There’s a whole 'nother world of WoT that I certainly don’t know much about or care to–too rich for my blood.

With that in mind, I think I’ll just STFU and enjoy the basic drive around and kill things paradigm, because I sure as hell ain’t gonna spend any more money on this sucker.

3295

Not just ammo but things like conversion to free experience to ease the T10 grind, purchase of premium tanks, depot slots, unslotting premium modules, purchase of premium consumables. But most gold is soaked up by premium ammo and free experience conversion.

Plus a typical clan member will be grinding towards a fast T10 and a slow T10 to suit different clan setups. The payoff for clan wars is being able to defend and hold territory. You actually earn gold for each territory you own which can be distributed amongst clan members. We owned 3 territories for about a week. During that time we earned 7000 gold for the clan.

Outside of clan wars though my two most fun tanks are the Loltrakter and the StugIII. And they did not cost me any gold. There’s a whole lot of fun to be had on the lower tiers and you can still make 1000+ experience in a good battle.

3296

Ah yes, forgot the unslotting of permanent modules. Definitely been doing that too. At 4 cents, it’s a pretty clear win on the time vs. money tradeoff – particularly given how much time some of those modules represent – 500,000 credits is a lot of playing time for me.

3297

Fave tank is by far the PzII. Whenever I get pissed off with higher tiers, I hop into that for some fun.

T1/T2 were by far my favourite tiers.

3298

Why do a couple of the Tier 1 tanks make a high-pitched metallic noise when they shoot?

3299

Well, HE rounds do ricochet as well, same as the AP.

Another thing (and probably the reason for 90% of hits with no damage cases) is that in the latest patch, the des have significantly changed the way tracks get modeled/damaged. Before the patch, a whole track used to be one module with pretty wimpy health and no matter where you hit it, it would almost always result in a broken track.

As of 6.4, a track is essentially broken down into 3 modules - front and rear wheels and the “middle”. Front and rear wheels have relatively small health and are pretty sure way to break the track. The middle, on the other hand, has relatively huge health and can soak up a lot of damage before breaking.

So most times, when you hit the enemy, its icon blinks white, you here a ding but the enemy’s health doesn’t decrease, it means that you’ve hit the middle part of its track and the round took away 300 out of its 600 hps (arbitrary numbers) and failed to penetrate the hull.

And yes, all the numbers for armor and penetration are just averages and don’t take lots of things into account. When you shoot, for example, the front of a Ferdi, its armor at the point of contact can range from 120 mm (lower plate) to IIRC about 300 mm (gun mantel), not counting your mutual angles. Similarly, you penetration (let’s say you are sporting IS’s gun with 175 mm pen), can drop down to about IIRC 80 mm due to the randomizer and range.

3300

Great analysis, ydejin. The only thing I would add is that REALLY good arty support, good scouting and coordination is the key to a successful valley attack. First few minutes are spent scouting over the ridge (I even did it on my ferdi without getting hit) and arty’ing the defense there. This decimates their defense and also allows their city force to get stuck fighting the main force in the city. At certain point, 3-4 tanks have to go over the ridge all at once (and yes, no stopping and backnig up there), finish off whoever is not yet killed by the arty and move on to the flag.

You really need only 3-4 tanks in the valley and 1-2 good arty. This leaves a lot of tanks to cover the middle and the city long enough for the valley force to cap the base. But scouting and arty is the key. Well, like almost always in WoT.