Balance..

N00BT00B, on 14 January 2019 - 08:30 PM, said: The most popular and balanced (vehicles at least) game mode in years has been Frontlines.   Wonder why eekaboo?   Tier8 only, operating within some reasonable parameters re armour and firepower. Big open maps with options to choose a tank for a particular objective. People get to choose their destiny and their play style. One or two persons do not determine the outcome of the match, good or bad.  unlike randoms.   The issue isn't whether a E8 gets into a team vs a Defender, it's whether the tier8s in his team are idiots. The other issue is the constant stream of idiot top tiers in your team that the matchmaker gives out while the opponents don't get them. Its not even balanced per day or even per week. 'Random' they call it, but just how many days or weeks does a person have to put up with bottom tiers, noob top tiers and rollover no-hope games before they are allowed to have fun?


Rati_Festa, on 14 January 2019 - 09:31 PM, said:   There may well be an insane amount of data on the general subject, but how much of its relevant. For example if I was the CEO of wallmart and I wanted to make changes to yhe website, I would have very little interest in the customer behaviour of the BBC news website. Just because a game is a game doesnt mean the consumers do the same thing, just like a website is a website each one is individual. Attempting to transpose customer behaviour across platforms with only a few points of commonality.... just wouldnt work at all.    Using WOW as an example is interesting... first guess I would have at that is a gap in the age demographic, which then raises questions about the avg disposable income.   As for Frontline, I agree it might plateau, but it might implode, it might also bring lots of customers back. Your point is slightly irrelevant you could say the same about wheeled vehicles or any other patch. What I was pointing out is WG didnt need to mess with the core of the game randoms, they should try new things in new modes. It seems rather a risky practise to shake up what is essentially a gold mine.


Noo_Noo, on 15 January 2019 - 08:38 AM, said:   Er....my opinion is based on the fact that Wot has lost over 20% of its players on the EU server and also a fair percentage on the Russian server, all servers in fact and we have a WG representative simply putting that down to natural decline. Firstly, I'm not convinced by that argument and secondly any business that shrinks by that amount in that shorter time should be looking into it and not have its representatives just passing it off as natural / normal. That sounds like a head in the sand attitude to me and moreover it is typical of WG that you have people within the organisation that simply don't know what the other side is thinking / doing. Refer to Foch gate for a prime example of that if you like. 

The peaks in the player numbers correspond to new content. That to me suggests that people are interested in having a look but as it declines immediately after they're obviously not staying. Each will have their own individual reasons but ultimately they will feel that there's nothing here to keep them, and, to me that's where balance plays a major role. If you have new content and the fundamental issues remain then people will get fed up quickly and leave. And I think that is what is happening.   My point here is that WG have made lots of changes that have slowly but surely alienated sections of the player base and that has lead to an accelerated decline. OP premiums, OP/ broken tech tree tanks, Premium ammo, match maker, Artlliery all things which create grievances and while its a personal view of each player these are pretty commonly talked about issues and yet despite all the shiny new maps and tanks and what have you these fundamental issues are still there. 

You know QB started a new free to play account right? Yes he has all the map knowledge etc. but he's been forced to physically grind tanks etc. and to him its proved an extremely frustrating experience. I agree lower tier balance is a mess and it could be argued that at lower tiers its should be at its best to actually encourage new players to stay and learn rather than getting owned, felling lost and pi**ed off and leaving.


Gkirmathal, on 15 January 2019 - 09:42 AM, said:   I share your opinion on this. I can underline this, only anecdotally though, by looking at my (former) clan's FB page. Each patch, until recent patches, some members always came back to see if the things that drove them away (things you, Tajj and others have listed) from the game had improved. Only to be given a reality check a few weeks in before they decided to leave again due to nothing fundamental for them had been changed. I know for certain that if the thing listed here, which have been discussed to heel and back, were addressed a major influx of older player will occur. At least in regards to my old clan 1VTD.   A bit off topic, but I just needed to say this. (Btw, I do not mean the following to be disrespectful of other opinions. I can relate to most pov's here and or where they come from) Quite some forum folk have always seemed a-okay about the direction of where the product is being taken, with little objections or criticism shown on said direction and development choices. Most showed a similar content attitude as far back when SerB and Storm were at the helm. So attitude seems independent regardless who is at the helm. Also vise versa of those (my included) who are more prone to be more critical. I don't mean to say 'you should', that's up to you, but take this into consideration if you want an endless back and forth argument driven conversation to refute/persuade the other of ones pov in an endless loop that leads nowhere. Sometimes it is better knowing just to agree you don't agree, leave it at that and no go into lengthy discussion to nowhere.  


Rati_Festa, on 15 January 2019 - 11:22 AM, said: So you are basically suggesting they have done an indepth study why people leave and concluded its nothing to do with balance.   While ignoring we have a forum full of players screaming about balance...   logically conclusion... I think not. Head in the sand already suggested looks a lot more likely.    Not to mention they are actively trying to "fix" balance why spend time an effort on something if there is nothing wrong? So many gaping holes in your logic... its all looking a rather blinkered view of the situation.   No matter how much speculating any of us do, its very clear balance is a community concern, so to rule that out as a reason for player decline, seems rather a ridiculous response.


Kejoz, on 15 January 2019 - 12:12 PM, said:   MMO's are a new thing (when you compare them with other genres), companies rarely share their data about player, monetization and other business related stuff. Successful MMO's are unicorns, there are only few examples that are relevant in this discussion and all of them are still alive (WoW, DOtA, EVE, Warthunder and others).    WoT success in its initial years was based on word of mouth marketing, i found out about this game from my friend and dragged 6 other friends into the game, most of them are playing it to this day. 2015-2016 rapid growth was based on a heavy marketing campaign, WoT was popping out everywhere, media, ads, merchandise, affinity campaigns. This is the exact moment that the game started to change, large investment had to pay itself back. Game had to become more opened to new and younger customers (back in the day, wot was the slow "old man's game" ), monetization had to by cranked up, game had to be faster and game mechanics "dumbed down". Having this in mind, we can point to an exact moment in which player numbers started to fall for the first time in WoT history, can we call it "natural" or rather "forced" game life cycle? Of course, without the data about playerbase i can rely on my marketing knowledge and speculate, but WoT and its balance became a victim of businessmen not developers.


Rati_Festa, on 15 January 2019 - 12:42 PM, said:   I had a suspicion you would go down that path. So lets for a minute agree that they have a lot of data they have sourced it from the wilds of the internet collating all knowledge currently known to man regarding mmos and video games across all age cross-referenced referenced it with the vast quantity they have accrued themselves. Giving them one huge database of information the big data of video gaming lifecycles. They can now query this to their hearts content, garnering gems of insight to the end of days.   What have they achieved with it?   A drop in customers numbers, and they have generally ignored the fact they have a forum full of concerns about balance from all level of skill players on the forum. Even the forum moderator doesn't think balance is an issue, the forum he moderates.... selective reading????????? Its that bad that they have to on a daily basis delete forum posts about MM and arty...... does that sound like an issue the community has with balance, it sure does to me?   This sweeping masterstroke of marketing masterclass analysis we are witnessing has ended up with considerably fewer players.... a reputation for being money grabbers and very little to be found positive about them on their own forums. Even the people that play their game, have very little good to say about them, that is a damning verdict for any company actions.   So here are some logical conclusions to this scenario   They don't have the data  They do have the data and don't read it They do have the data and don't know how to read They do have the data and misread it ( 1.0 hints at this to me ) They do have the data know how to read it and ignore it and do what makes the most money. ( This is screaming out at me as the real answer )   We can't add they had the data and used it well as they have lower customer numbers, the reason why they have lower customers is staring them in the face...... BALANCE and the fact it isn't a priority over profit. Short term gains simple as that.   Its all over the forum, the perception is the game is unbalanced. There are complaints about arty, complaints about OP prems, complaints about armour, complaints about +2 these are all issues with people concerned that when they play the game they aren't given a fair game to play ie balance.   So to dismiss balance as not a reason for people to leave is just well scary to be honest.