Developers posts on forum

Ectar:

Ectar:   Well, the obvious answer to me ignoring any topic on the forum, regardless of the content/title is because of this.  I don't work for Wargaming anymore. I work at ESL now.  I'm just a player like everyone else with regards to this forum so I can pick and choose which topics I reply to. 

Ectar:  

Ectar:   On the flip side, would you be happen or sad if they said they banned 280,000 or 28,000?

Ectar:   You're using the term "game" very loosely there.   Digital games do have a limited lifespan, especially ones that are multiplayer ones.  Every game peaks and then comes down. It's inevitable. Some will trundle along longer than others (pacman, asteroids, super mario)  but where they are now is utterly nothing like their peak.  Technology advances and player demands and interest moves on. What was taxing and new to you 5 years ago becomes generic and frustrating, or same old, same old.   Every MMO peaks and then trailers off.  Some have additional spikes during the lifetime but they will never maintain their peak for a consistent period. No game is immune to that. World of Warcraft at it's peak had over 12 million active accounts, now it's down to about 5 million.  Realistically the doomsayers would be like "OMG, you've lost half your playerbase!"  - The game is 12 years old however and 5 million current subs is still 4 million higher than it's nearest rival (for a sub based game) SWTOR was able to achieve on it's peak.  - Any developer making an MMO now would kill to have 5 million subs yet that is a "dying" game.    If you want to compare World of Tanks to another game, compare it to any other online multiplayer pvp game.  Don't look for bad comparisons that are easy to twist to suit when they've got pretty much zero relationship.

Ectar: Every game has a limited life time.  If negative naysayers want to say WoT is dying then that means any "competition" are dead on arrival as they still have no where near the player base of this "dying" game.  Yes numbers might not be as high as previous years, but in reflection a lot of the stuff which bothered players then, still bother players now.  The game needs a refresh/reboot in someway that isn't just a new branch/tech tree distraction.   Fix the gripes players have and players will return, it's easily recoverable and I'm sure will happen in time.  I have faith in Thain having spoken to him directly in NYC last weekend.  The guy knows what needs done, it's just doing it the right way.

Ectar:   If there is no news articles yet, any discounts/events would be active in the premium shop/client

Ectar:    Sometimes you're the big fish, other times you're the little fish.  If you had set match making based on tiers each time, then people would only play certain tanks knowing they'd be top tier all the time. 

Ectar:   But they're Clan Wars reward tanks. That is their sole purpose.  They are a prize for a specific objective.  If they were for everyone then why would anyone be encouraged or willing to play Clan Wars? ​​

Ectar:   I think it's perfectly fair as it is.  I think it's good some players feel it's unfair because it's not intended to be fair. It's not intended to be commonly available to anyone for little effort.  Heck even for the Clan Wars players it's not a walk in the park.   Not everything in a game is intended to be commonly available for anyone and everyone. Some things are behind skill walls, some behind timed gates, some require intense solo play and others require group play.  There is something to cater to different types of players. - If you make "rare" content commonly available, it's no longer rare, it's no longer special and no one looks forward to it or uses it.

Ectar:   You've completed the mission once already (otherwise you couldn't have completed the 2nd mission).  You can't just repeat primary objectives over and over for easy credits. If you try a mission again the only reason to do that is because you still have to do the secondary objective    You failed the secondary objective (survive the battle) so the mission will still show as incomplete.  You don't get any notification to say you failed a mission.

Ectar:   If you really believe this, then in the interest of science, call Wargamings bluff and see where that gets you.

Ectar: Like it or not, justification or not, the naming rule are there for all to see and have been there since the game was created. No exceptions.   Now before rushing off to say "what about this name?" and linking accounts - report those names to customer support as they're the only people who will do anything.  Names are not periodically checked, like another other major MMO it's reliant on players reporting names which are not picked up by the blacklist when creating accounts.

Ectar:   Then maybe don't rush to buy premium tanks when they're first released? As I said you can try the ones which are available. For the others try checking out contributor reviews as the generally offer multiple different opinions.  Owning a new premium within the first week or 2nd week won't change much for you.

Ectar:   A demand isn't simply a request -  http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/demand  "to ask for something forcefully, in a way that shows that you do not expect to be refused"   Next time you ask someone a favor, or you'd like someone to help you with something. Start your sentence with "I demand that you...." and see how far it gets you.​  

Ectar:   You're going to get a lot of people trying to give you help and advice, which I guess you'll dismiss as you seem set in your ways.   for my part I'll just say I feel that the Jagdtiger 8.8 is a credit farmer. Protect that lower plate and go to town.     After over 5 years of premium tanks not being sold for gold, I doubt it's going to happen now.  Next time a test server is up I'd recommend trying out some premiums before you buy.  Starting a sentence with "I demand" when trying to put a point across, is never going to be well received.

Ectar:   So do you feel player scores should only be taken from 10am to 1:59am?   Why not 9am or 3am?  Or why not just 1pm to 10pm?

Ectar:

Ectar:   ​Pretty much yes.  He was ripped off the tank with the shell like the commander in Fury who gets wiped out by the Tiger

Ectar:   WN8 and WN9 are player created tools for measuring epeens.  WG has nothing to do with either stats just like they have nothing to do with XVM (which is another player created tool to measure epeens). I can never get my head around people who use XVM (to see the stats of other players) and at the same time complain that other people use XVM against them.      XVM has turned into a plague for this community and the sooner it's disabled the better. 

Ectar:   Halloween garage has been added in the past. And in the past everyone complained about it and complained about not being able to disable it.    What contributes "Constantly paying customers?"  Just players who have premium accounts, players who buy gold packages once a month, or players who buy premiums?  If I have a subscription for a year do I have more say that someone who buys a tier 8 premium? How do you know what all the "constantly paying customers" really want? What's your source for other player's desires?   We had a weekend special but because it's wasn't promoted as a "Halloween Special or had a fancy garage for 4-5 days that's really what bothers you? I mean tbh, an arty focused special scared the crap out of me and most other players     

Ectar:   4 year old data from a google search is irrelevant.  WG's operating costs it's investments and the company's fortunes are considerably different now in 2016 than they were in 2012.  Their operating costs alone have probably doubled since that time.  If you think that revenue = profit then I worry about how you balance your books.   The time an average players spends in WoW compared the time someone spends in WoT is also very different.  Warcraft is a virtual world  so it's only natural it would have seasonal holidays. It would be kinda weird to have a fantasy setting that had no holiday events.   Halloween makes sense in that environment in the same way that having an "End of World War 2" event in World of Warcraft would make utterly zero sense..   Fun holiday events are not something which are compulsory for games.  No game "has" to have a Halloween event, or a Christmas event or any other event. When you have global audiences picking and choosing holiday events isn't easy and no matter what events/dates are marked, people always get pissy for some reason.   ​

Ectar:   For EU it's actually from before the KV-1S split. It was most popular when it was tier 6 and not nerfed. The amount you see in battles has dropped off significantly. As with the Hellcat which is a shadow of it's former self.

Ectar:   Yes and No.   In matches without arty good luck trying to get any TD's to move. Some maps become impossible to move on certain areas as TD's will sit there for 7-8 mins unspotted waiting to get that 1 shot off.  Cliff west side of the map is a perfect example, as is Abbey, Prokhorovka, El Halluf.  Arty at least makes tanks think about repositioning.  Without arty unless you then nerf TD armour then welcome to World of Heavies and TD's as the meta changes to frontal armour and alpha damage (because you can just camp/sit on corners and trade).

Ectar: Batchat 25t not number 1 French tank? Fatton as number 1 USA tank?   Well I guess in any top list it will come down to personal opinion unless there is a set standard (such as highest potential damage, influence on a battle, ease to play etc etc).   

Ectar:   To summarize.   You're playing on Ruinberg in an SP1C.  You go to the corner where heavies always brawl, and for whatever reason, you stay there in your light tank in the middle of the heavies.  The heavies are trying to position for shots and you're moving in between them.  Your spotting is redundant as the heavies will re-spot anything themselves.  In short, it's a terrible position for a light tank to stay (rush for initial spots I can understand, but you don't just stay there afterwards getting in everyone's way as you're contributing nothing).   You then decide to try and peak to get a shot in front of the heavies. An IS who's most likely in sniper view hits you when you roll out in front of him.  Rather than wait for an apology or accept that you getting shot was your own fault, you instead shoot the IS.  So the heavy tank in your team who's brawling, now has less health.  GG you're contributing to your team losing now.  The IS is obviously unhappy at you shooting him so he pins you against the wall. You eventually flip and the IS gets destroyed by you. The IS basically kills himself and you which was dumb from him (but the provocation/frustration was understandable).   If you want to look back on this in hindsight, please take the following from it.  - The ban was just, you team damaged someone in frustration due to your own mistake, not his. It would be impossible to avoid that from the IS and most accidental team damage comes from that exact scenario (someone moves in front of someone about to take a shot when they're in sniper mode).  - You can avoid those situations by waiting for teammates to shoot, or simply not being in the wrong place with the wrong vehicle. Yes, accidents will happen and there is no way to 100% avoid them. In this situation however, you have to accept your positioning was totally wrong and was the main contributing factor to what happened.   The fact you instantly shot him back without waiting for a sorry or waiting to see if he was blue, shows you have no qualms in shooting a team mate (accident or not). With you killing his tank due to the grinding, that and the single shot are not enough to get you banned.  You've done team damage before and likely recently.   In the past 2 weeks, I've shot 3 players by accident.  2 were team kills. Each time I was in the wrong and apologized. I haven't turned blue yet.  1 was a bad/risky shot with a dead gunner and 2 were shots where team mates moved when I was in sniper mode into the recticle (one long range, one close range as I was aiming for a weakspot).    Accidents happen. If a teammate isn't blue, you don't shoot them. I don't know how many times this needs to be said but I'm sure we'll be having this same conversation again next week with someone else. At nearly 6k battles there is no excuse for not knowing how team damage works or when it's ok to shoot back.

Ectar: Platoons.  Also MM won't always give you 100% equal tier for tier. That's not how it works.

Ectar:   I could walk to work, or get a taxi.  I don't see where you're coming from either.     You asked why I think it's worthwhile? I've given you a reason but we're going round and round in circles because you disagree and won't take a different opnion as answer.  I don't have to agree with you. I don't have to see it your way. I think it's worthwhile because some people seem to think the enemy team is there to satisfy their needs "Things like I have a mission therefore the enemy team will play along and let me get it". They're not. They're there to win, cause you to lose, or be as disruptive to your win as possible.    If the enemy team does something you don't like which denies you glory. Tough crap really. They're not there to do you favors.  I personally couldn't care less if people want to team kill, drown, suicide rush, whatever. I'll likely never see that player again.  If someone is going to be a [edited]in-game, they're going to be a [edited].  At least with drowning they get punished for it and if that makes them feel better about themselves in some messed up way, then good for them.  I won't let that 1 battle haunt my dreams or mull it over not stop.   If people want to do something to disrupt the enemy team, fine, go ahead.   Would I do? Not really.    Disrupting their own team with something like team killing? Well that's a totally different discussion but nice misdirection.

Ectar:   A player should incur a penalty because otherwise, it's a free pass to garage with no repercussions. I think it's worthwhile because why would I do something to help you as an enemy player? I haver a choice to drown and it depends on the map. I know I'll get cost associated with that. Do I think it's dickish? Yes. Does it really matter? Not really. So you didn't get a kill. Boo hoo.    I think it's worthwhile specifically because there is a penalty for it.  People are doing it to be [edited]and there is a repercussion for it.  I'm all for people getting repair costs for their own stupid actions.

Ectar:    You can either die normally, or you can do something else where you die and will likely upset/frustrate someone in the other team.  I thought that's the way people wanted things to be?  Bring back cross team chat so I can see their frustrations and all that? Let me show you a screenshot of a guy being frustrated with me?  Lets troll this player/thread who is upset at something in-game?      Isn't being a troll and doing stuff to antagonise other players how things work here?  I mean, why you try to be the voice of reason, people don't like that do they? So if you go with the flow that's wrong too?   Players should get a penalty because there should be no free passes to garage or ways to quit battles without suffering penalties.  If they want to drown themselves they can go ahead and do that. I'm not going to get upset by it. Personally, I don't do it myself although I might make it seem like I'm doing that to see who I can bait into killing themselves needlessly at the end of the battle as they're obsessed with that final kill.    If I'm in a fast tank and it's 5-1 left, you can be sure as hell I'm hiding. Why would I as an enemy player, do something to benefit you? I don't want your team to win, and I don't want my team to lose.  A draw is as bad as a win so it will change nothing for my team, but it will deny your team the win.   Me hiding isn't unfair, it's your team's fault for not just capping or killing me earlier in the battle.   Arty or any tank drowning doesn't have an impact on your game. You still win. They get penalised regardless and count as vehicle destroyed.  I still don't see how this is an issue other than "I didn't get some credits/exp" from the kill which isn't a high amount, and for the "I didn't get my mission" - that's not the only chance you had for this mission before now, and it won't be the only chance you have after now.   Blame the RNG for that.  

Ectar:   Before physics, if you wanted to leave the battle you could either drive towards enemy team and die, park your arty against a wall and splash damage yourself to death, or just quit to garage.  All 3 had penalties. After physics, you could still do all 3, or you could also drown and drowing didn't give you vehicle damage or crew damage. - That was an unintentional mistake as it allowed people to quit to garage with no penalty.    What's so hard to understand about that?  It has a penalty because due to fairly big changes in gameplay, a loophole was discovered and people abused it.  That loophole was closed.   However players chose to die at the end of the battle, be it drowning, flipping their tank on their roof, driving out into enemy fire, or just giving up and going back to garage - all have intended penalties.  Why?  So no one can just bugger off out the game with no repercussions.

Ectar:   And I took something like 25-30 attempts to do LT-15  each time competing with at least 2-3 other light tanks.   You can't expect the enemy team to do you favors. What about all the times where a team mate shot the arty before you did. Was that unfair? Do you have zero respect for the team mates? 

Ectar:   Drowning is something that can happen. Same if you tipped your tank.  The issue is that people were drowning to get out a battle quickly without facing a penalty (as drowning destroyed your tank).  It was simply something overlooked with physics was added so the penalty was added as it counts a vehicle destroyed. There are countless FPS games that won't allow you to shoot yourself, yet you can die to your own grenade (and you can choose to commit suicide in-game by doing that)  just like in countless FPS games you can jump off high buildings.   So the guy in the enemy denied you kill. Big deal. It's like complaining someone else in your team shot someone first. You and you alone getting a medal isn't something 29 other guys in a game are going to help you with.

Ectar:   Might want to show sources for that. I mean, server populations for AW (which as I understand is still in Beta) have never been announced and were never shown in game on the UI anywhere. I admit it's been ages since I played it myself.  A quick glance at Twitch on any given day shows you which games people are streaming and AW is never anywhere near World of Tanks, heck it's never near World of Warships.   Both AW and WT are good games on their own merits and have different attractions to them. But let's not pretend they're knocking on World of Tanks door just because they have tanks. You have can your opinion on which game you like more, but don't confuse opinion with facts. Unless you can show me server population numbers to back up the claims.  - Last I checked War Thunder's server pop you see in the client includes NA, EU and RU - The EU World of Tanks server alone tops that without including the NA, RU regions and without including World of Warplanes servers for EU, RU and NA. I've never seen AW server figures and any glance at their forums is telling regarding how many players are available for higher tier PvP matches.   Sources.  Sources always make compelling arguments and discussions something people can get behind and enjoy. Otherwise, it's incoherent ranting and agendas.   Also just because someone doesn't agree with you, doesn't make them a WG fanboy. It could just be that people have different opinions.  If you can't accept that people might disagree with you, then you're not looking for a discussion, you're just looking to rant/vent and most people can't be arsed reading/replying to that... Or the forum regulars will troll you because they can see this topic is going nowhere.  I know which of those 2 likely outcomes will happen based on experience 

Ectar:   After physics changed and drowning became a thing, initially there was no penalty. I and various other staff pushed for a penalty and now any vehicle that drowns counts as having all crew and modules killed/destroyed which equals maximum repair cost.   The fact you don't get to kill that player doesn't really make a massive difference to your battle outcome. The fact they kill themselves only works out worse for them. The system is fine as it is.   At the end of the day, anything you can do to deny the enemy team a win or deny them glory is worthwhile. You're not there to do the enemy team favors and help them get medals. If an SPG kills himself rather than me spending 7 mins trying to hunt him down, I'm cool with that.  If my team are dumb enough to try and hunt someone down instead of capping, I'm cool with that.  Sometimes you have smart people on your team, sometimes you don't.

Ectar:   Nothing. It was an accident and events like that are rare. If it happens on rare occasions it's nothing to worry about and people should take more care when crossing the guns of a teammate.  Personally, I prefer games with friendly damage if it's slow paced (like World of Tanks). For faster paced games where the combat is hectic, friendly fire on takes too much out of the game.

Ectar:   I completely agree with this. It's the most simplistic and easy to do method of addressing, somewhat, the problem of how unbalanced premium rounds are at the moment. More pen for less damage; a pro and a con and, not just a straight pro.   This is what I'd like to see also myself.  It should be a choice/situational call to switch to another ammo type. In it's current format most premium shells trump standard shells in every situation and there is no choice. One of my first experiences of watching someone play the game was a colleague at Blizzard playing the game, with someone else giving him advice and I can always remember him yelling to switch shells as he's behind him.  It's rare you see people switch to HE and I admit I forget to do it all the time. I'm so used to standard shells and their penetration. Heck the only time I load a premium shell or two is when I'm a tier IV in a tier VIII game, or a tier VIII in a tier X game. ​

Ectar:

Ectar:   How can you claim something is "pay to win" when you don't have to pay a dime to obtain it, and it doesn't = automatic wins?   How is premium ammo only "pay to win" and not all the other perks like consumables, crew skills, crew/free exp also considered pay to win?

Ectar:   True, but you can't control "banter" like that in football and tbh, football grounds are full of vile and venom all under the banner of "it's just banter".  This is why comparing games to real life situations/sports like this are not a good example as anyone can twist things to suit.   In football, the comparison would be preventing teams from talking to each other. Ofc they can do that but really what do they say? "Nice header mate?"  "Well tackled my friend" - No they might say hello at the start if they know each other and the rest of the match they're doing everything they can to unsettle and wind up each other.  - Again easy to twist it in your favor and tbh what happens in a football match is irrelevant to how things should be done in a computer game.  

Ectar:   You're not removing the entire sport here though. You're removing something from the sport that creates a mainly negative aspect.  Football has harsher penalties now for players abusing the referee. Players used to surround referees, be abusive to them and pretty much try to intimidate them into reversing a decision.  - A negative element of the game which has now been removed.     All other sports where there has been instances of negativity or unsportsmanlike behaviour between teams generally has stuff either with harsher penalties now, or it's banned/stamped out altogether.  they don't just end the sport same way that removing cross team chat isn't cancelling World of Tanks.

Ectar:   So you feel that premium consumables (purchasable with credits or gold)  crew exp (boostable by gold) crew skills (boostable via free exp/gold) equipment (purchasable with credits, can't be removed without gold) are not an advantage over a player who would have none of them? If the entire point of removing premium ammo from a contest is because of "pay to win" claims for something purchasable for in-game credits. Then surely all other "boostable" features have to be removed too.   Why just remove premium ammo when all the other things listed above create an unfair advantage also.