Balance..

Rati_Festa, on 14 January 2019 - 09:59 AM, said:   Does research/information for this subject exist?   I'm puzzled how even if it did exist it could be applied to something as unique as WOT that you could use the data to form actions/plans from it.   You could collate player data on previous MMO games ( I would imagine this data is pretty sketchin as it will be protected as business intelligence with more forward thinking companies ) and look at decisions made and the results. That would be very hard to transpose that information into a different gaming environment.   The nuances of individual game mechanices would be very difficult to mirror across games. For example I recall a star wars game where there was 0.001% chance of a character being able to be a Jedi and then they changed it so you could pick to be one. That had consequences of balance in the game But if you transposed the Star war game changes to its balance mechanics to WOT... I'm not sure what that would tell you anything useful at all with regards to WOT.   I'm intreged please enlighten me.     ​​


Noo_Noo, on 14 January 2019 - 10:13 AM, said:   The view that the player base is shrinking because of a "natural game life cycle" is just plain ignorant in my opinion.    Wot was growing before things started to go down. There was no slowing in the growth rate or plateauing of player numbers. It was growing and then started to fall off a cliff. Not asking yourself (and the players) why that has happened is entirely representative of WG's attitude on these things. 

WG have been trading for far too long on what is an utterly fantastic idea for a game. The way they have developed it and monetised it has been given a free ride on this idea. Any other game where the initial idea was perhaps not so strong would have fallen a long long time ago. The reason that people still play this game is testament to that initial idea but unless you nurture and mange that idea people will leave and they have been!    


Noo_Noo, on 14 January 2019 - 10:41 AM, said:   But there was no flat spot.   An oak grows for 100 years, lives for 100 years and dies for 100 years.   Wot grows for 8 years (or whatever it was), dies for 3 years (maybe??) 10:44 Added after 2 minutes   Thanks yes. I think you'd expect a plateauing of players for a while not a sharp decline after a period of growth as we have seen. But to simply chalk it off without questioning it is.............................I have no words


Rati_Festa, on 14 January 2019 - 12:46 PM, said:   You could even theoretically suggest that if they introduced Frontline permanently, resolved some of the bad balance issues and amend the mm that the game would have a second life and survive for the next 10 years on a plateau of consistent players. No one really knows a game as complex as WOT can't possibly have its life cycle mapped out as it is an unprecedented game as it has plugged into the over 30's market.   Over 30's as we can clearly see with WOT's longevity are quite set in their ways, they know what they like and aren't as easy to distract away. Keep changing the game at the extremes is a very risky game for WG to play, as this is essentially changing what we all psychologically signed up for. The core game of randoms that they have messed up with +2 templates and the crazy armour/jap heavies needs to a stable environment, just throwing in untested ideas that mess up the balance will as we can see have a negative effect.   By all means try new modes like Frontline etc, but randoms should be insulated from extreme change. Basically, it worked, revert back as best you can to before it started to go wrong/decline ( the actual data they do have, not imaginary game life cycle data ) and then just polish/tweak it lightly.   Then focus efforts on other game modes, don't kill the golden goose.


Noo_Noo, on 14 January 2019 - 02:32 PM, said:   No. What I am saying is that WG are extremely arrogant for suggesting that is the case without actually considering other things first. Such things like player satisfaction. Satisfied players dont walk away. Pi**ed off one's do!    


Noo_Noo, on 14 January 2019 - 03:07 PM, said:   Please.  I was responding to the very same comment you replied to by the mod eekawhatever on that the player down turn was natural. 
I don't know why the player base is smaller. I never said I did. I suggested that it would be a good idea for WG to understand why rather than having mods just brush it off as a natural decline. If I was losing 20% of my business I would certainly like to know why.

Would you like my personal opinion on the matter? 


Element6, on 14 January 2019 - 03:22 PM, said: You can provide it if you want to, but it will just be pure speculation.   Did you consider what I wrote? Getting a high number of new players for more than 8 years is a hard task, for any game, unless we are talking games like chess etc. If the main reason your payerbase/customerbase is getting smaller is down to lack of new players/customers, and the rate at which players/customers leave is more or less the same during the 8 years you have been on the market, you can be fairly certain that it is not the changes you have done that has made the players leave, since they have been leaving at the same rate no matter what you have done. When the game was launched there was a very high number of potential customers, and as years have gone by a high number of players have talked about the game to people they know, like I have, I have probably talked about the game to something like 15 people. There are something like 21 million accounts in EU so we can assume that many times that number has heard of the game. Sure there are coming new gamers on the market each year, but only a portion of those will be interested in playing WoT, for a number of different reasons, and the number of new potential customers that come around each year doe to growing old enough is never going to reach the number of potential customers available when the game launched.   That would be one aspect of a natural life cycle. The sea of potential customers has all but dried up, and there is only a small stream left to fill it back up.   Due to the data they have, they already know if they are losing 20% because more people are leaving, or if there are simply less players joining. WoT has been in quite a lot of configurations over the years, and if none of them has managed to recruit more players then you can be fairly certain that there doesn't exist an untried version that would dramatically increase the flow of new players.   It's very unlikely to be WG just brushing it off, it is more than likely that it is the conclusion after years of playerbase study.  


Noo_Noo, on 14 January 2019 - 04:11 PM, said:   Speculation? I thought it was my opinion? 

Going purely by the data presented by QB people playing the game has dropped by 20%. These are server stats as far as I know. How trustworthy they are if they are from a second party is open to some debate but I think they are representative. Before this player numbers were increasing. So you've got more players playing and then a big chunk of them decide not to. That would immediately catch my attention. Secondly players on the Russian server are also down. That is their home crowd / core customer and again still that is down. 

While i certainly concede that there will be some natural fall off and there are huge challenges in bringing in and then keeping new players into what is an old game (seal clubbing protection for example) and attractors my gut tells me that WG did something to catch the eye (players went up) and then failed to keep these players and its been a rapid decline ever since. So lots of people (new and old) had a good look at what WG were doing at the time and decided over the following period that this game was no longer or not for them. the speed of the decline is the main eye catcher for me. It feels too fast. 

Lastly I don't for one minute think that balance is the sole reason for this but I do think its a big part of it especially if we lump many of WoT's "most Moaned" into that one category which is entirely possible. ie Premium tanks, premium ammo, arty etc. 


LordMuffin, on 14 January 2019 - 09:32 AM, said:   Changes is not independent from buffs/nerfs. It is perfectly possible to change a class and make the version that it is changed into overall stronger then the version it was changed from. Just like with arty.   Physics changed in 1.0? Only soapstone rocks. No other physical engine changes since 2017. Auto-reloaders is hardly a mechanical change,  only a new type of gun. Also, only at T8+. Autoloaders existed before 2017, so that is not a change.  Armour changes or not game mechanical changes, they are just changing of figures. No changes have been made to how armour works or how AP/APCR/HEAT etc interacts with armour since 2017.   You still haven't put up a single reason to why the powerrlevrl between T6 and T8 tanks haven't changed since 2017. You claim mechanical changes,yet doesn't produce any argument as to why these mechanical changes effect the difference. You claim MM changes, yet not produce any argument to why these changes effect the difference. You claim map changes, but don't produce any argument to why these map changes effect the difference.   This discussion is pointless if you refuse to come up with an atgument supporting your view.    Heavies can work very well, and do work well on open maps.   WG have gone from 1 or maybe 2 to strong T8 premium tanks (Type 59 and KV-220) above T5 in the first 6 years to almost only release premium tanks which are to strong in the last 2 years. But I assume this is not a change at all. T34, Löwe, FCM50t, CDC, Jgtig 8.8, IS-6, KV-5, T-54 mod.1, FV4202, WZ-111, 112, T-34-3, STA-2,Indien Panzer premium, Panther II premium, T-4-100, Type 59 (after nerf), Super Pershing, Mutant, Revalorise (all pre buff) where indeed all considered OP or to strong T8 premium tanks, right? I can't remember any other pre Skorpion G premium tanks at T8.   I have searched for "natural game cycle" more hits on Google, no articles found, no wiki page found. Some diagrams without any explanation nor clarification about what they are supposed to show,  nor why they are to be assumed to be correct.  Churn rate is not a computer game based term, that term includes so much more.   And I am pretty certain that a 10-20% loss in playerbase can not be attributed to "old players leaving".   Yes, by not knowing the skill level of the player, i think is harder/impossible to have team work. By adding more players it is harder/impossible. And I would claim WOT has more mechanics, only different mechanics. With team play being harder/impossible to have, the general team work in WOT is lower then in Dota. The only instance of teamwork between more then 2-3 players in WOT can be found in SH/CW.   You can't get a 8000+ PR by playing T6 or below while getting carried to high winrate. You can most probably don't even achieve a 8000+ PR by playing only T6 at all. And for giving a rough estimation of skill, that is enough. If you are really interesting in getting a better then rough image of someone's skill, you just look at the same players score in his individual tanks. But I am not interested in a precise skill measurement of a player. I know that a 45% WR 3000 PR is worse then a 50% WR 5500 PR is worse then a 55% WR 7500 PR is worse then a 60% WR 10000PR player, and that is enough.     I have never ever won or lost a game on Overlord due to a beach rush. If you have, please give me the replay. Current map design have specific 'engagement zones' where WG thinks engagements should take place,this is a way of shaping meta game or forcing the engagements to certain areas of the map. WG in their map design tells the players where they should fight, where they should camp bush etc. Also, WG in their map design punish plays which are outside of their intended design. In general, if you go to an area which are not a WG predetermined engagement zone, you are very likely to get into a crossfire and/or killed by the TDs camping in their WG designated bushes.   If my team camp bush, so do I, the battle is lost anyway in that case (unless the enemy team are terribly bad) so I just try to maximize my damage for most possible credits.   High HE damage shells is a stupid idea. And there is a huge difference between being able to do damage frontally with a E8 and a KV-2. The E8 have to hit a certain spot, like a cupola/other weakspot to have a chance, something that will not always happen, depending on range and size of weakspot. A KV-2 just have to hit somewhere on the tank and will also do 2 times to 3 times the damage.   Just because an E8 can pen a T8 heavy frontally, it doesn't mean it always will. The chance is enough, especially on current maps where frontal engagements are what the maps are designed for?      I have never stated balance is to make it easier to get good outcome. In many ways, WOT is way to easy, it is way to easy to get a 'good' outcome in WoT. The Arty, Japanese heavy lines, some of the new heavies are prime example of tanks that are 'maximum outcome for no effort'.   Balance is to give every player in a game the possibility of having an impact on the outcome of the battle regardless of which tanks he/she plays (this is not the case in WoT). Balance is giving both starting points on a map equal chances of winning that battle (this is not the case on many maps in WoT).   Games in WoT should be decided on the skill of the players and not which tank they picked for battle or how much premium ammo/premium consumables they use.      In next patch,  Obj 279 will get buffed after just a few weeks. I guess some data is gathered faster then other.