4501

And then there’s the problem that currently, in Clan Wars, mediums are if not useless then fairly devalued. Every team that wins seems to be ten T10 heavies and five max tier arties. There simply is no reason to run T9 mediums or even TDs, really, with the abilities of IS-7s (essentially a heavy medium), E-100s, and Mauses. T30s get used like TDs mostly, and they seem much rarer.

So, yeah, running mediums is cheaper but if you want to be part of a competitive clan team you’ll need to be running a T10 heavy, and that isn’t cheap. Of course, if you’re just playing for fun, which is what I mostly do (my clan doesn’t do more than one or two clan battles a week), you can have a ball with mid tier tanks and mediums in general.

4502

Clan Wars is a complete and utter failure of game design for encouraging that.

4503

Pretty much.

4504

The devs big copout for the state of Clan Wars is that it is still beta. Problem is it has been beta for 6 months now. The devs have been very slow to release any update except for the usual gold tanks and tank tree changes to encourage people to soak up gold to generate money.

4505

Agreed.

Part of the reason why I never got into Clan Wars was because there was no role for my beloved tier 9 mediums (specifically E-50 and Patton) - aside from playing a glorified scout - 'eff that.

4506

T-54’s are definitely being used in Clan Wars all the time. As scouts, obviously. A more cookie-cutter “build” actually looks like 1 med, 3-4 arty and HT’s.

I really don’t see a way around it, it’s the nature of the games like this. If you have 15 slots, you want to fill them up with tanks that do best at the role you are going to assign them. And there is always “the best” tank for the role, otherwise they are all just copies of each other with different skins.

So there you have it - Maus to push through (although he is a less and less popular choice nowadays, when everyone shoots gold thanks to stupid promotions), T30 or E-100 (with gold rounds) to support and kill stuff, IS-7 to get to places fast and hold there, T-54 to scout (not THAT much needed, really, since everything came down to 1-2 tactics per map now) and to find an arty or two if they are lucky.

Whatever you do, say you bump up the Jagdtiger so it can push so much better than the Maus that even lack of turret doesn’t matter, you will be just replacing one “top” tank with another one. In our example, a whole bunch of Maus drivers will be angry.

TD’s would have to be insanely good to replace the current top damage dealers, which would screw up random fights.

The same goes for meds - in the environment where the maps are static and the tactics on them have been perfected for more than a year, there is not much value in scouting, no room for a surprise attack pretty much, med swarms dont’ work anymore for like 3 months now and meds’ straight damage is irrelevant. Meds are powerful in a chaotic unorganized environment of random fights, where they can exploit tactical mistakes and opportunities. Tactical mistakes and opportunities are pretty rare in CW by its nature, so meds lose their main advantage.

The 7.0 changes to CW are going to stir things up a bit but all they do really is force people into having backup top tanks, which most of the active CW players already do. Except for arty, hehe, people will definitely need to grind up more arty (I wonder what it’s going to do to the random fights) .

The main problem of the CW fights is their predictability. If every CW fight would be fought on a completely randomized map, people wouldn’t be able to develop tactics ahead of time, wouldn’t be able to assign roles and pick tanks ahead of time, there would be a huge need for scouting, etc., all of which would result in more varied team setups. But of course, in this day and age, it’s completely unrealistic to expect dynamically generated random maps in a game like this.

CW is a completely different game. Completely different skills are required. In some cases, for example, you are NOT supposed to try and shoot at the enemy. It’s more about devising a plan, having resources for it and executing it perfectly. This is absolutely NOT what random fights are about. And IMO it’s impossible to balance out these two games so that all tanks are viable and balanced in both.

4507

One approach would be to have limits, sort of like FF Tactics “laws” I guess, or (imagine that!) more realistic tactical limits, such as tier limits, class limits, etc. for each match. Limit you to only bringing X tons of tanks, or Y numbers of each type. Limit certain battles in certain lands to mediums and lights only, or tier 8 and below, or whatever. By making every battle pretty much identical and having effectively no limits on the deployment of heavy vehicles, the game guarantees this sort of concentration of heavy tanks and a small number of options.

4508

I meant more making enough money to advance and buy high tier tanks, not just sustaining their play. I make money off my tier 7 mediums, but I make more money in a round with the type 59 than I make in probably 4 rounds with the other mediums.

Clan wars would easily be solved by having a point value assigned per tank, and having each territory being fought over have a max battle size in X points, and possibly have max tier allowed. It has worked fine in mechwarrior multiplayer leagues in the past with team tonnage limits and max weight allowed restrictions. Even multiplayer battletech 3025 did this well before cancelled.

4509

In addition to tier 7-8 meds being viable credit wise without premium, I would say that tier 7-8 TD’s are as well. While meds are viable because of low ammo cost, TD’s are viable because of their outstanding damage (for their tier). However, as a result, meds’ low cost ammo allows the player the miss (or bounce) a shot here and there. This is not going to work with TD’s - every shot counts. Naturally, it’s more difficult for the Soviet TD’s as their accuracy is a bit worse.

Yesterday, I remembered our discussion about streaks from the last week and I laughed. I bet the devs have read my posts and decided to shut me the fuck off. I logged in yesterday, won a game, lost a game and then proceeded to have a 17-game winning streak. I was in a platoon with my friends but still, I don’t think we ever had a 17-game streak before. We were at 19:1 by the end of the day. I think I am finally learning how to handle my IS-4 now that I am almost done with it. :)

BTW the devs confirmed once again a few days ago that players’ stats are not taken into consideration by the matchmaker in any form.

4510

+1

It doesn’t make any difference whether I’m running tier 7+ tank destroyers tanks or medium or heavy tier 7+ tanks–I can’t come out ahead with a non-Premium account. The only sure way for me to gain credits is to stick with vehicles that are tier VI or below.

4511

If you put the long 88 on the jagdpanther you miss out on a little damage, but you are accurate as hell and will still damage almost anything you shoot at. its a great moneymaker.

4512

That’s assuming clan wars need to be “solved”. There are dozens of thousands people worldwide currently playing clan wars and enjoying the current format. I am not saying their current format is the best for the majority (is there such thing?), who knows, but it’s quite possible that it works for them as is and they want to tweak it a bit instead of scraping the whole thing and developing a brand new thing.

Not to mention a whole bunch of balancing issues and the fact that the outcome of the point based system is not clear. What’s better 3 E-50’s or 2 IS-7’s? How do you assign points to tanks to avoid falling into the same trap of players figuring out the best layout for the points given?

Do you know that a team consisting of 13 SU-26’s and 2 T-54’s has a good chance of beating a regular CW team? It’s not reliable enough to be used all the time but our clan had some fun games with this layout. If you lower the points given to the teams, and they will be able to field only Tiger 2’s instead of Mauses, how do you ensure the above wacky team won’t be THE team?

A typical CW fight nowadays takes team layout out of equation - all teams are mostly the same and it comes down to a plan and execution. By introducing points or forcing certain team composition restrictions, you risk introducing the “rock-paper-scissors” random element, where one team has pretty much no chance of winning just because it has this composition while the other one has that one. There are Random fights for that. :)

Not to mention the logistical nightmares clan commanders will have to go through trying to mix and match the map, the points, the available players, their tanks, available tactics for the map, etc. “Oh fuck, we attacked a province that allows tier 8 tanks only but we have only 10 of those online right now”. This will also force people to have an extensive park of tanks covering all tiers, tonnages, etc.

As a result, Clan Wars will become more like Random fights with Vent and IMO that’s what Company fights are for right now.

Again, Clan Wars is a completely different game.

Well, that’s really how the freemium games work. You can enjoy certain content for free but sooner or later you will have to pay if you want to see more. In your case, it looks like free content is limited to tiers 1-6, with higher tiers being driven once in a while being funded by the lower tier tanks.

4513

Hmm, apparently posts that express displeasure with the clan wars system and give suggestions on how to improve it get deleted from the official forums. :(

As far as figuring out where tanks should fall on a point scale, balance wise? They do say it’s a beta, after all.

4514

In a traditional MMO, raiding is the province of max level characters. That’s pretty common, so I have no issue with Tier X being the norm for clan wars. Makes sense. But in traditional MMOs, you need a mix of classes/capabilities, so you generally have a place for mages, warriors, rogues, clerics, whatever in the end-game content. Or, at least, you have a place/need for tanking, healing, and DPS.

In WoT, the end game not only requires Tier X, but it essentially needs only Tier X heavies. Maybe some arty. But that’s about it. You can use a T-54 (one medium out of all the lines) to scout, but you can just as easily rely on IS-7s and E-100s spotting things. There’s no designed-in need for speed, or mobility, or anything else but huge guns and massive armor. Partly this might be a function of the game concept; after all, tanks fighting tanks does come down to damage vs. protection at some elemental level. But the result, no matter how tolerated by hard-core clans (who after all, are going to adapt to whatever is necessary to win, regardless if it’s enjoyable or not, at least for a while), is homogenized gameplay. Hell, I’m not sure that we won’t soon see teams of 15 Maus each going at it, and neither side will have enough ammo to kill the other side!

4515

That’s the beauty of League of Legends, it’s a f2p game that does not require any sort of purchase to compete in the end game. Granted, I think it would be tough for WoT to incorporate their model, since it depends on being able to buy skins for your characters, with the equivalent being maybe buying paint jobs for your tank?

If they did have something like that, they wouldn’t have to make the experience grind, so tedious.

4516

This reminds me of the bad old days of Ultima Online, and to some extent the early Command & Conquer era where there was really one dominant strategy that everyone used all the time.

4517

shouldn’t a few tier X SPGs destroy an all Maus force?

4518

It kind of depends on how much you enjoy the gameplay. I found League of Legends to be quite tedious (and very very grindy), whereas I enjoy playing World of Tanks every night almost regardless of which tank I am playing.

4519

Eh, I find playing a great majority of the later tier (5+) stock tanks downright painful. I’m on the Panther, and it’s just so pathetic to start with, and the experience needed to just unlock tracks so that I can even equip it with accessories is just depressing. It’s pretty much stopped me from playing. Once a tank opens up a bit, half the upgrades or so? Then I can enjoy myself, and a fully upgraded tank is fun to play.

LoL is nice in that you’re almost only ever fighting folks of the same level, and even then the percentages are quite small, a lvl 15 has a good chance against a lvl 30, while a tier 5 has almost no hope against a tier X. And when you unlock a new character, you immediately can play said character fully, you don’t have to grind out playing a gimped version of the character for 50+ games just to make it feasable.

(I’m not trying to get into a LoL vs WoT debate, but more the mechanics of their f2p models)

4520

No because the reload times are horrific and the accuracy is awful. And I think the top arty is Tier IX anyhow, IIRC.