4521

Of course, you realise you are overexagerating (sp?), I am not sure if I am supposed to reply tothe 15 Maus thing. But just in case, there is no way a 15 Maus team is going to win a fight against a competent clan and, so far, I don’t see any updates coming that would make it a viable team composition.

The problem with your analogy with “traditional MMOs” is that all those types are already in WoT. Arty is your mages, Maus is your tank, IS-7 is your rogue, E-100 and T30 are dps melee.

Besides, aren’t we all sick of the traditional MMO formula? :)

Also, tanks are not really like fantasy MMO’s. There is no stun class or pet class or dots, etc. - whole bunch of things that make traditional RPG classes different are not there. Like you said, it’s tanks - you either hit hard and have lots of armor.

4522

Yeah precisely; if it is not fun it will seem like a grind. You need a certain mindset; for example I find stock tanks “painful” but I enjoy playing them anyway because it presents a different sort of challenge.

4523

The 15 Maus thing was a joke, something we were kicking around in clan chat, but it’s not that far from true. And I disagree 100% with your idea that we have the equivalent of mages, rogues, etc. because I still stick by my opinion that all you need in clan battles is shitloads of top-tier heavies. Yes, the Maus is different from the IS-7 but essentially if you’re in a clan, and you want to participate in a clan battle that has a chance of winning, you need to not only have a top-tier tank (which is fine) but you essentially have to have a Tier X heavy, because pretty much nothing else is needed beyond a handful of arty and maybe, maybe, one heavy scout.

My objection to this whole lack of variety is twofold. One, it simply flies in the face of the entire rationale for different types of vehicles, which grows out of the need to match abilities to requirements. Without any limitations on the use of heavies, all that gets used is heavies, because neither speed nor maneuverability, ground-crossing nor cost, are factored in; in effect, it’s a fantasy world where the best tank is pretty much the opposite of what emerged on Earth as the best tank. Two, and much more important, it’s simply boring. We have all these wacky lines of heavy tanks, mediums, lights, arty, and TDs, and most of it is worth diddly squat at the end game. It’s like if they took WoW and the only class you could take raiding was a Paladin. You could level up everyone else but you had to bring a 85 pally to the raid.

Look, I like the game, really, I do. But I also think they really pissed away the chance at some killer gameplay by abandoning any sort of nuanced or carefully crafted battle options. If they had maps where speed was of the essence, or where heavies got bogged down or couldn’t use bridges, or where you could only bring so many tons of tank to the battle–just about anything–you’d see a lot more variety and I think a lot more sheer fun being had. Right now, you’re right, clan battles are in some way a chess match, but it’s a damn boring chess match where all the pieces have to be queens.

4524

I feel the same, Soapyfrog. Given the descriptions of clan fights, I’m pretty sure that I’ll never play them. I like to pop on the game, crack a couple of beers and have fun. The whole clan thing smells like work to me.

4525

Let me preface my post by saying that I generally agree with you. :) The game would benefit if they somehow could find a way to create a need for various tanks, not just different kinds of heavies and arty. I just don’t think it’s quite as easy as you seem to think. It’s mostly my fault for being unable to communicate it properly - I have to type all this in between meeetings and other stuff. :)

Depends on a clan, I guess. In my clan, it’s not enough to simply have A tier 10 heavy. Depending on a fight and people currently online and the number of fights today, especially concurrent ones you will hear “Sorry, we don’t need another E-100 (or IS-7 or whatever) in this fight, wait for the next one.”

Just as the availability of different kinds of tanks (and by that I mean “different kinds of heavies” :)) affects the tactics available to you, the tactic you are going to use is going to dictate the kind of tanks you’ll need. It’s possible to play with 15 Mauses but it won’t be very reliable and you will lose a lot. It just happens that the most versatile tactics require versatile team compositions.

Yes, it’s possible to play without a T-54. But then you won’t spot the enemy tanks as early and your arty won’t be able to squeeze in a couple of shots before the main encounter occurs. IS-7 simply can’t get to certain spots as fast as the T-54 can and it can’t scout (for example, over the hills) as effectively as the T-54 can. Since T-54 is not really supposed to shoot (its gun is the arty so to speak), you can outfit it for scouting and speed and no IS-7 will be able to match it.

You need to see what a T-54 with a stealth crew, with a net, scope, optics and speed-oriented consumables can do.

All high profile clans I’ve seen so far use specialized tanks in specialized roles. It’s not just “get 15 tier 10 heavies and push left”.

What I am trying to say is that you are painting an overly homogenized picture. There IS already a need for different kinds of heavies (and a scout or two and arty) and I am not sure how (within the existing game, i.e. no dynamically generated maps that require scouting) they could introduce a need for large numbers of meds or TD’s.

Note how I say “introduce a need for…” because point based system does not do that. All it does is put artificial limitations on who can participate, which introduces a lot of headaches, excessive planning and a huge random variable.

[/QUOTE]
My objection to this whole lack of variety is twofold. One, it simply flies in the face of the entire rationale for different types of vehicles, which grows out of the need to match abilities to requirements. Without any limitations on the use of heavies, all that gets used is heavies, because neither speed nor maneuverability, ground-crossing nor cost, are factored in; in effect, it’s a fantasy world where the best tank is pretty much the opposite of what emerged on Earth as the best tank. Two, and much more important, it’s simply boring. We have all these wacky lines of heavy tanks, mediums, lights, arty, and TDs, and most of it is worth diddly squat at the end game. It’s like if they took WoW and the only class you could take raiding was a Paladin. You could level up everyone else but you had to bring a 85 pally to the raid. [/QUOTE]

Funny that you bring up WoW. Only you have to talk abotu WoW’s Arena, not the PvE raids that are specifically designed to involve many classes’ abilities. And we are to mention WoW arenas it wasn’t uncommon (at least in the days when I was playing it) for some cookie cutter FoTM team composition to be superior. IIRC, specifically Paladins (funny that you mention them) were THE class to duo but my memory might be fuzzy.

But then again, as I mentioned, WoW and other fantasy based games are not good examples anyway simply because of the huge range of abilities available to different classes. Make WoW classes to only deal damage and see how much variety you’ll have in areans.

Although having healers in WoT does sound kinda cool. :)

4526

It is. :)

As most raids and arenas and that kind of stuff in other games.

Only I don’t think Soapyfrog was talking about clanwars. :D

4527

I understand that. My comment was directed at “Yeah precisely; if it is not fun it will seem like a grind.” But I could have made that clearer.

4528

My objection to this whole lack of variety is twofold. One, it simply flies in the face of the entire rationale for different types of vehicles, which grows out of the need to match abilities to requirements. Without any limitations on the use of heavies, all that gets used is heavies, because neither speed nor maneuverability, ground-crossing nor cost, are factored in; in effect, it’s a fantasy world where the best tank is pretty much the opposite of what emerged on Earth as the best tank. Two, and much more important, it’s simply boring. We have all these wacky lines of heavy tanks, mediums, lights, arty, and TDs, and most of it is worth diddly squat at the end game. It’s like if they took WoW and the only class you could take raiding was a Paladin. You could level up everyone else but you had to bring a 85 pally to the raid. [/QUOTE]

Funny that you bring up WoW. Only you have to talk abotu WoW’s Arena, not the PvE raids that are specifically designed to involve many classes’ abilities. And we are to mention WoW arenas it wasn’t uncommon (at least in the days when I was playing it) for some cookie cutter FoTM team composition to be superior. IIRC, specifically Paladins (funny that you mention them) were THE class to duo but my memory might be fuzzy.

But then again, as I mentioned, WoW and other fantasy based games are not good examples anyway simply because of the huge range of abilities available to different classes. Make WoW classes to only deal damage and see how much variety you’ll have in areans.

Although having healers in WoT does sound kinda cool. :)[/QUOTE]

I see your point–and it’s a good one. I think you’re right that all endgame MMO content suffers from similar issues. I actually don’t think it’s necessarily an easy fix, but I do think different types of objective-based matches–where speed, say, would be important–or different and more elaborate terrain rules–where, say, heavies would bog down but mediums would not–would alleviate the problems somewhat, but I also agree those would be hard to implement.

I still can’t shake the feeling that much of this game is one part intention, two part happenstance. The team got lucky in that they created a cool enough game that it works, but they seem to be reaching beyond their grasp in terms of making the whole vision come together.

But compared to a lot of games, WoT is pretty darn solid, I agree.

4529

Well, the problem is that at higher tiers, the amount of experience to get something new unlocked is exponential, so you start to lose the fun of getting something new to experiement with. Even tanks that are fun to play wear out their welcome that way, and I’m ready to move on to the next tank, and if I’m not there yet, I’ll just stop playing.

4530

I feel your pain. What i do in such circumstances makes getting to the next tank even longer: i start on a different tree.

Thats how i ended up with almost twenty tanks in my garage, so I can pick and choose the kind of experience I want from my 30 minutes of gametime.

Once in a while, one of the tanks in the garage says “Ding!” and its like getting an unexpected present (exaggeration because its teh intarwebz)

4531

Man, I forgot how much I loved the IS-3 in beta. I finally unlocked it and just have gone on a tear. 11 games, 10 wins, 8 survived, 22 kills, 81% hit rate. I love this tank. Don’t even have the good gear for it yet but I am sure I will soon. :)

4532

Dang!!! I had an 8 game winning streak once and remember thinking “I am the greatest tanker in the world” until the law of averages re-asserted itself. A 17-game streak is amazing!

4533

IS-4 is even better. ;)

4534

Yeah well it’s a ways off :P I only got german heavies to T9 in beta.

4535

This is how it works for me also though I have 10 or 11 tanks typically, each night I set out to get at least my one victory per tank, and then I play whatever I feel like, or move on to another game. Keeps things fresh, varied and non grindy.

The result is I have E-50, E-75 (halfway to E-100), IS, T-44, KV, KV-13, T-50, T20, T32 and T25 in my garage and I don’t feel I have to work particularly hard to get them… Plus every week pretty much one the lines levels up. And I have yet to really delve into the arty and TD trees which will be a whole other experience.

4536

Would it be a hard thing to have battles with a set number of each tier? Maybe someone has mentioned this before, and if so I apologize. I understand that this is a game and etc. But how about just one tier 9-10 per battle and some reasonable spread for the rest? Or is this just an idea for a serious revamp of the MM which doesn’t seem to be a priority?

4537

In clan battles or regular battles? In regular battles, at least on the US server, I don’t think there are enough players to really do anything but stick everyone in a big pot and try to do as good a job as possible unless you want to induce massive wait times.

4538

Maybe a third version of the game. A MM with certain parameters. I know it wouldn’t go for people that have a lot invested in clan wars. But I’d accept the wait time for more even games.

4539

‘massive wait times’ for the devs seems to be more than 1 second. I’d gladly wait a whole TEN SECONDS per game to get better tiered random matches :P

4540

It’s not that uncommon for our Tier 9 platoon (with a splash of 8 sometimes for double exp) to wait up to 30 seconds in the queue.

Dang!!! I had an 8 game winning streak once and remember thinking “I am the greatest tanker in the world” until the law of averages re-asserted itself. A 17-game streak is amazing!

I know! We couldn’t believe our eyes when we counted fights at the end of the night, never happened to us before.

Yesterday we had the most amazing clan wars fight I have ever seen. I was in our “backup” team that we scrambled real fast from who was available and out team consisted of 1 Maus, 1 IS-7, 5 arties (the last one joined like 5 seconds before the fight or we would have been shorthanded), E-50, my JagdTiger and assortment of IS-4’s and IS-3’s. Yes, we had 2 or 3 IS-3’s. The fight starts and we see our enemy’s regular top team - 4 arties, Mauses, T-30, bunch of IS-7’s, 1 T-54 and 1 Object 704.

Long story short, we won. :) I was amazed by the time we killed half of their team and thought that our team did great. I couldn’t believe it when it started to look that we might have a slight chance of winning. It ended up with me and 3 arties being against a Maus, Object and 3 arties (all damaged to a various degree). We managed to kill the Maus and 2 arties at the end of their attack and then I pushed to their base and the arties spread out to hold strategic positions (we had very little idea were their Object and arty could have been). I spotted an arty, de-tracked it, our arty finished it off. Their Object was trying to help his teammate but I reloaded by the time we met, got the first shot off and killed him with the second. About 40 seconds before the end of the timer.

Amazing fight, everyone was at the top of their game. The enemies made some mistakes, we did as well but we won against all odds. I have no idea how our IS-3’s and IS-4’s stood up against the mass of tier 10 heavies but they did. Fights like this is what makes Clan Wars so addictive and fun - careful planning, working with what you have, great execution, a bit of luck and tons of excitement. :)

I can’t even imagine what our enemies felt by the end of the fight though :)