Player Questions & Developer Answers

Tempest_au, on 17 June 2011 - 09:25 PM, said:
Dear Overlord,
I have a question regarding the forthcoming changes to the tech trees.
The question itself is simple - "Why did the developers decide to utilise the controversial method of rewarding players who have certain tanks in their garage at the time the tech tree changes are implemented?”
This may seem like rather an odd question to ask at this juncture, so I hope you will forgive me for recapping some of the issues which have been raised about the tech tree implementation for the benefit of clarity.
While the expansion of the tech trees is universally regarded as a good thing, many people feel they will be disadvantaged by the implementation for a wide variety of reasons. Some people feel that they are being disadvantaged for not pursuing a particular line of “bonus entitled” research (e.g. the Russian Heavy line). Some feel that they are being disadvantaged because they no longer have the vehicles that entitle them to the “bonus tanks/slots” and don’t have the spare slots and/or credits to re-purchase them. Some feel that they are disadvantaged because they have chosen to follow a particular path of research as they felt it was the best “fit” for them out of what was available, when in fact a new path may be soon opened that would have been more preferable (e.g.researching/grinding to get a Maus, when instead they would have preferred an E100 if that option had been available). There are even some bizarre people like myself who are annoyed that their tech tree will have unresearched “holes” in it when the new trees are implemented!
While they have yet to protest, there is another group ofplayers who will ultimately be disadvantaged – those who have yet to start playing WoT, or who begin playing too late to take advantage of the tech tree changes. These players will feel that bybeing unable to “skip steps” in the tech trees as “earlier” players have, they are being forced to take longer to research and obtain the “end game” Tiers effectively required for participation in Clan Wars.
Whatever the particular reason or combination of reasons, it boils down to people having “spent” experience and credits in a manner that they may not have done if the entire tree had been available at the start. This problem is now compounded by the fact that a great many players have invested considerable time since the announcement of the new tech trees to ensure that they have the “correct tanks”in their garage to maximise the benefits of the tech tree changes.
Some people have suggested a “wipe” to force everyone to start afresh with the new tech tables. As someone who has invested an unholy amount of time and several hundred dollars into this game already, I know what the reaction would be if this occurred – a large group of players would leave in disgust!
Personally, I feel that there is a far more universally equitable solution that would resolve ALL the problems (both real and imagined) of implementing the new tech trees – by “refunding” the experience and credits spent and allowing them to be “re-spent” as desired.
This would actually be very easy to implement:Remove all crew from all tanks in the garage and place them into the barracks. This may require the barracks to be expanded to cope with the amount of crew unless the WoT application can be made to “ignore” the capacity of a barracks if the excess crew were added programmatically as part of this update.Go through the barracks and perform the following for each crew member:- For each crewmember at 100%, set the “tank competency” to being the starter tank for that nation and credit the player with 200 Gold (so that the crewmember can be returned to 100% competency in the vehicle of the player’s choice).
- For all crewmembers with 51% to 99% competency I would suggest setting the “tank competency” to being the starter tank for that nation and crediting the player with 20000 credits, plus 5 gold for every % above 75%. This will provide funds for “Regimental School” retraining to return competency back to 75% or more (which will be a bonus if the original competency was less than 75%), and a suitable “compensation” for any competency lost if they were above 75%.
Sell all non-premium tanks, equipment, ammo, etc back “at cost” (i.e. so that they can be re-purchased without a net loss in credits).Sell all premium consumables and ammo back at their “gold cost” (i.e. so that they can be re-purchased without a net loss in gold).Transfer all experience already spent back to the player as “free experience” (i.e. “unresearch” the tree and credit the XP cost).Transfer all experience accumulated but not spent on NON-ELITE vehicles in the tech tree back to the player as “free experience”.Experience currently accumulated on “Elite” status vehicles in the tech tree needs to be handled carefully, so that those who have not converted this into “Free Experience” by expenditure of gold are not “rewarded”. This is actually insanely easy to accomplish! Simply transfer all experience accumulated on Elite status vehicles to the starter tank appropriate to that nation! At best only about 600XP will be able to be utilised before that starter tank becomes Elite and renders the remainder unusable without gold conversion to Free Experience – and 600XP is an amount so small as to be inconsequential in the scheme of things.Once this is done, EVERYONE can choose how they want to invest their experience within the new tech tree structure, and EVERYONE can purchase whatever tanks they want (subject to research in the new tech tree) without either detriment or reward and move their experienced crew back to the “new” tanks with the same (or at worst case much the same) competency as before.
This to me seems to be a much fairer method, and hence my question to the developers is why wasn’t something like this considered.