Garage battles – yay or nay?

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Hello everyone,

today we are going to have a look at the Garage Battle mode in connection with the fact that Veider (one of the developers) stated yesterday (if the translation is correct), that these are not really planned.

First: what IS a garage battle? Well, the basic idea has been around for ages, possibly pre-dating even tier 10 mediums, physics and all the cool WoT stuff. The point of a garage battle is that you enter a battle – and once you die, you enter the same battle with another tank from your garage (effectively your tanks count as “lives”). How exactly would this work in World of Tanks is not known (there have been some developer posts about it, but nothing concrete.

Of course, there are issues with that concept – and some have been discussed in the abovementioned article. But the proverbial elephant in the room is: do we actually NEED such a mode at all?

Well, War Thunder has such a mode. I haven’t checked how it works there (if anyone can describe, please do – in comments), but principially out of its very definition, this mode supports (directly or indirectly) pay to win, as the player with better/bigger “tank deck” has a bigger chance of winning. There are other issues too: how will the tanks be balance against one another for example.

Personally, I believe such a mode is completely redundant. What innovation can it offer that is not in the game already?

- the gameplay wouldn’t differ from random games (the basic principles remain the same, apart from more emphasis on shooting and less on capping)

- uncoordinated player mob, that cannot “build decks”: imagine giving a random player the option of a game mode where he is forced to actually think…

- additional more random element in battle – something along the lines of “lol half of our team selected wrong tank and the team got roflstomped in round two”

- another difficulty is the position of destroyed players: they obviously would have to wait until the end of the “round”, which makes the whole thing tedious, leading to possible AFK’s for subsequent rounds

- what about trolls? Suiciders, idiots and teamkillers can effectively ruin an entire multi-stage round for a team

- and let’s not forget the possibility that (however the victory is defined), there will be battles where the outcome is already given and everyone knows it, the losing team will “throw it”: that won’t be fun for any of the teams

A chapter by itself is the time requirement (that’s an important thing): World of Tanks (and World of Warplanes) are built around the “quick” battles. Anyone can spare 10-15 mins for one round, a “quickie” before you have to do something or go somewhere else. That is one of the essential elements of World of Tanks’ success. Long battles (30 mins for example) would take this away.

This goes for big maps too by the way: if you have 3x3km map (let’s say), you’ll spend half of the time going somewhere (vanilla Warcraft players might remember this well). That is NOT fun.

And for all their flaws, I can’t think of a single benefit such a mode would actually bring. Same gameplay but longer battles and more random element don’t sound appealing. Of course, someone might consider the longer battle time as an advantage – is it?

Under some circumstances, yes. For example, when you have a free evening and you want a nice long World of Tanks session. Fair enough. But this again is spoiled by the random element of deck choosing. It won’t be one long epic battle. As a slight offtopic: imagine vanilla World of Warcraft battlegrounds before the time limit – one battle could rage whole day! You could log off in the morning and log in in the evening to join the very same battle. That was the stuff of legends: I once saw an 8 hour battle being decided in the end by the best PVP player I have ever seen in any game to this date joining and single-handedly deciding the outcome by rallying one of the teams.

Anyway, if you think about such epic clash, forget it: the fact you (and your teammates and enemies) have to “switch” tanks will make the match a fragmented experience, feeling like series of matches one after another. No, thank you, I will rather play series of battles in one tank.

Anyway, that’s just my 2 cents regarding this topic. Feel free to disprove me/comment/add your opinion, looking forward reading them.

132 thoughts on “Garage battles – yay or nay?”

  1. Considering how WG manage to fk up a simple version of something.. I hope they never try…

  2. Im first!

    and I have to agree with you, garage battles (and bigger maps also) are BS

    nuff said

    • Actually I hope WG will not even bother to think about this. Its not worth it, we have Encounter and Assault and guess what? Our random players cannot adapat to this either.

        • IMHO, Assault and Encounter could be fun if the average pubbie stopped to think about what playstyles those battles actually require.

          But then “average pubbie” and “thinking” are like oil and water… If I had a dollar for every top-tier heavy that went valley on Lakeside Encounter, or team who tried to defend with 15 campers I would be a rich man.

          (Aside: Assault mode needs to have a TF2-style “Overtime” mechanic. Nothing’s more frustrating when losing a match because someone tried to cap alone in the last minute, or that one last enemy tank survived a shell that should’ve killed it, or…)

          • It is more to do with map design. Steppes/Himmelsdorf encounter mode are actually very playable and fun for the good balance: There is a real need to cover both flanks and there are not much hard cover in cap circle so speedcap rarely works out. Bad maps like Lakeville, however, are decided by which side the lemming train is headed.

      • Simple: limit the “deck”, so even if you have all or most tier “n” vehicles, you can actually use (let’s say) two or three in garage battles.

  5. I say don’t do it. WoT revolves around the “1 life 1 chance” system, and that is what makes the game fun. Coupled with expensive repairs, you become more weary about your own actions. Yes, WoT is still stuffed with noobs galore, but after a long time playing War Thunder, I can happily say that the WoT noobs are less noobish than the War Thunder noobs.

  6. Garaje battles work ok in Arcade Mode in WarThunder. But it is with planes, with a very different damage model also.

    I think that adding garaje battles to current WoT game mechanism simply will not work. And probably neither with WoWP.

    But WT managed to make it work with planes. Maybe they will find a way with tanks.

    • The only reason War Thunder made it viable is cause the maps arent 1km/1km in WoT and 5km/5km in WoWp

      • Also what makes it viable in WT is actually that all the planes you buy, remain bought. You don’t have a finite amount of slots to put them in so it is easier to make a line up of say 4 tier 6 planes to use in the garage battles.

        In WoT you’d have to change to many core elements to make garage battles viable.

  7. Oops…. posted before rest of my ramblings… (yay first post…!!)

    The only version that “could” work, would need a lot of restrictions on the MM tiers etc to vaguely make teams work, you could have a “party garage” where you can select, say, 5 of your in-garage tanks and put them in the “party garage”. Every player has to have 5 (or whatever number) of tanks. Each tank would be a respawn, die and you choose next tank immediatlely….

    This would be tremendous fun (not) if a big fookoff TD manages to camp your spawn point, he would get mega-XP.. everyone else mega-rage…

    Can you actually imagine WG trying to MM this lot??? Thats a bit more than “pmsl”…

    Warthunder basically works like this, you have x number of slots (like WoT, you can buy more) you select “Germany” and enter battle, all your german slots are now, sort of, counted as respawns. (You own all planes you have previously bought, but can only select one plane for each slot, 4 slots = 4 spawns…) And you do not wait for round end…

  8. Well, i think that if it ‘d work like company battle with selecting not one but three, four, or x tanks from garage, with proper pint limits that would be great, but only if spawn could happen in safe spot.

  9. The wierd thing is that every time WG, categorically deny that something is going to happen, a few months later it’s implemented eg. Two or three weeks ago the Japanese tech tree will not be released until 2014.

    • The only thing that happened that WG repeatedly said would not happen was the massive matchmaking overhaul in 7.5, and the introduction of tier 10 medium and TD tanks.

      Otherwise, the Japanese will not come till 2014. They will most likely come in patch 9.1, and October is almost here. It will take a good 3 months for 8.9 and 9.0 to be released.

        • Considering the pace of the patches lately. I’d say 8.9 is October or early November. And 9.0 will be mid December or thereabouts. After that, we might finally get delicious frenchies :D

  10. Well, in WT you don’t have to wait for some kind of “round” to be over. You get shot, you switch to your next plane. You can choose any from your garage as long as it has the same nation. As for the advantage: You can see what tanks are currently in and actually choose a tank that is useful in this situation instead of being randomly thrown in with any tank.

  11. About how it works in WT? It works simply. You have crews which operate your planes, (you can buy more crews, first for silver, then for gold) just as in WoT, there are tiers. The highest tier aircraft you have in nation you chose (nations are completely separate and have separate daily x2) will determine in what tier you fight. So even if you have just one tier X and 5 tier V at the time, you still will fight with up to tier Xs(or XII, dunno if there is +2/-2 as in WoT).
    And thats pretty much that. You die in one plane, you take another, simple as that. Thats of course only the case in Arcade battles, in Historical ones you choose just one vehicle, you have limited ammo, you fly differently and so on.

    • It must be mentioned that you can change which planes you’ll be flying in the next battle before it. So you don’n’t have to select the highest tier ones. You are matchmade according to the highest tier in your lineup not the highest tier owned plane.

      Also in WT planes are “kind of” cheaper and you can not sell them. Also they repair on thei own in 1h – 1 day.

  12. its sad that we cant have all these games modes because the community are so damn stupid and unintelligent

    simple solution

    GIVE PLAYERS MORE CHOICE
    random teams
    random map
    random game mode (if other game modes enabled)

    why does it have to be so random

  13. you are trying to mix & match mode’s game styles and goals, analyzing garage battles in the eyes of current play mode which is a mistake.

    it’s works very nicely in WT and will probably work nicely in WT ground forces arcade mode (promotes P2W is BS btw, sorry but i don’t have the will power to explain, just go and play WT for a while and judge for yourself ).

    anyhow WoT should keep doing nothing, it still works as there are lots of players in queue’s, once this will start to fall they will need to bring more “stuff” in.

    from what i read, any alteration of current WoT system will be bad, which is why developers should never listen to their fanboys, users are users are users.

    • Allow me to explain how its not Pay2win.

      First and most obviously if you’re loosing that many planes that quickly having more of them isn’t going to save your behind.
      Second there’s other ways to win. So if you are getting Zerged an end run (did I mention maps are bigger without choke points so you can sneak round the flanks?) to achieve one of the other objectives will often pay off. OR failing that you can kill off their airfield.

      What you describe is theoretically possible, and it was my first reaction as well. However in all my months of playing, and however many thousands of games, its yet to happen.

        • You gave me an idea. It might be impossible to implement though…

          Garage battles could be de-selectable just as assault and encounter. You mark vehicles (maximum of “n” tanks) you want to use (similar to marking primary vehicles), all vehicles have to have the overlapping battle tiers and matchmaking depends on the tanks with the worst mm (like platoons work). SGarage battles would have a random chance of happening, but lower than other modes to limit server load (it will still be extensive though).

          Yeah, I know – bad idea… :/

    • Actually MS1 can pen T110E5 frontally, but i got your Point.
      i Think the biggest barrier to the garage battles is the map size 1km*1km is way too Small for tanks 2km*2km would be ideál.

      • E5 have bugged armor? Only t10 tank i know that can be damaged by T1 except paper tanks like batchat is IS4. It has some bugged 0 armor on it’s side bellow the turret. Never knew E5 have it. You have video/ss to confirm it?

  16. afaik garage battle in WT, may be true

    you pick a nation for one whole garage battle,when you die with one plane, you respawn with another one.
    when you have no more plane for chosen nation, you cannot respawn in whole garage battle anymore.

    It has its obvious P2W flaws.
    -you can increase your live count ( aka number of respawn available) for one single airplane for gold
    (you cannot buy this for “credits”)
    - more types of airplanes you have = more respawn chances
    (you are somehow forced to exp arty if i compare it to wot, in case you dont want to play it)

    and dont forget that less respawn chances = less chance to affect battle outcome

    is it still true ?

      • P2W in WT arcade is bullshit, i rarely use more than 2 planes per battle, ~1/4 of my battles i finish the match with the same plane i started it, and i have 6 slots for most nations (7 for germans).
        I’m over tier 10 with every nation, I didn’t judged it after a few nooby battles… those are brrr… rammers everywhere.

        • “Pay 2 Win” is just another “catch phrase” that people latched onto and use it without knowing what it actually means, like “assault weapons” in NA. “Gold Ammo”, acquired only with gold like before was “Pay 2 Win”.

          SS, you should check out WT and see how they handle garage battles first hand, and why it made WG look like idiots saying it’s “impossible to pull off” to “maybe”.

    • I think you have a maximum of 9-10 garage slots, wich you have 3 free, than other 2 can be bought with silver lions and the other 5 with golden eagles. Don’t think that is P2W, because if I go to battle and I lose all 9-10 planes, you can lose a lot of money.

  17. IF there would be a mode like this, I wouldn’t play it because there are enough retarded teams out there in random battles and there you can be lucky to have just one tank. Imaginge how anoyung it would be to know, you’ve got x tanks and all of your x tanks will get destroyed because of incompetent team… too much players would leave in the first minute cause they aren’t in the mood to get pwnt for about 25 min. And then they go on forums and cry for this “skilled MM”. Whole masses would be crying while not recognicing it depends on their playstyle if they lose or win.

  18. Played WT and it’s a complete fucked up game cause of those Garage Battles, not to mention its very strong pay to win system ala Korean MMORPG. If WT with its tailor made GB is bad, how much more with WoT. Forget about the GB idea.

  19. Guys, it would work, if there is a Tier limit like:
    Tier 1-2 battles
    Tier 3-4 battles
    Tier 5-6 battles
    Tier 7-8 battles
    Tier 9-10 battles

  20. I suggest you really play some WT, Frank, even with the low tier planes
    to really get a feeling how Gaijin did it and why it would work with tanks

    • There is no reason whatsoever why it would work with tanks. Planes are FAST, you get straight back in the action. Tanks are SLOW, you will spend most of the time driving back to the battle again.

      Planes being FAST also means you can’t hang around spawn camping. Tanks, being SLOW, will suffer heavily from this, unless you make the maps a lot bigger, which means the SLOW tanks would spend all the time driving to the front.

      Seriously, your entire argument is “It’ll work on tanks as well, because.”

      • WT works yes, but the problem in WOT would be spawn killing, unless they randomized the spawn points. The maps are to small, you would end up in a 15-0 team and the ‘good’ team would just stay next to the spawn and rape. All that has played quake and sutch games has experienced this.

        The most fun and working assault mode i have played was Bad Company 2, where you had like 4x1km map, where you attack a ‘flag’ and when you capture it you unlook the next one. The defender spawn around the flag, and the attackers spawn at a ‘protected’ spawn area.

        This could work with WOT style maps i think, ofc you would design map specifically for that mode so they couldn’t recycle old maps as they did in their present attack/conquest mode.

        • the problem would not be spawn killing because, like in WT you can chose when to spawn and if you want to spawn

          also, the team could have a “commander” like in BattleField series and chose to spawn at his location – problem(s) solved

        • hell .. you can even have a tug of war type of map where you can unlock new spawn points by capturing a flag
          you could also build AI defensive turrets at the spawn points to fortify the position and make it harder for enemy to capture

          there are a lot of options and ideas on how to make it work, but if WG is stubborn to not do it, it’s like talking portughese to eschimos

  21. It works fine in War Thunder arcade battles because lower tier fighters are still effective against higher tier fighters. A tier 2 Hurricane with 8×7.7mm can still shred a tier 6 Bf 109, etc.
    Tier 1 Chaikas, a biplane with 4×7,62mm, can be used by good pilots to troll tier 6 Spitfires.

      • And you think WG care more about historical accuracy?

        The reason it works is because planes in WT are module based and dont rely on a hitpoints bar to keep them alive. And that can make a 7.7mm bullet as hurtfull to a tier 7 as it is to a tier 1 since its more about where it hits and with what kind of bullet (AP, HE, Tracer).

  22. I’ve never seen the appeal in garage battles. The thought of being locked into a game for 30 minutes with a team of 12 complete fuckwits, struggling in vain with the other couple decent players to win…eh.

    Yes, there’s the chance that the other team’s collective IQ turns out to somehow be even lower. Or, your team actually has more than a couple decent players. There’s even the tiny chance of hitting jackpot, where both teams are actually balanced in both skill and firepower and the game turns out to be really fun. But more often or not, it’ll be the example above.

    With some sort of skill-based matchmaking running quality control on the teams, it might work. But with current matchmaking and its strange tendency to lump mostly completely hopeless players on one team, making matches one-sided more than half the time…eh.

    I’m not against garage battles, specifically, since I know that people will enjoy them and that’s the whole point of the game: to have fun. I just personally don’t feel that I could enjoy them myself without some serious work on WG’s part, particularly on making sure teams are actually balanced (not “balanced” as they are now).

  25. Garage battles could work
    1. Select the tier
    2. Select 3 tanks of the respective tier that you want to use in the garage battle.
    3. Play garage battle.

    Example:
    1. I select tier V
    2. I select Pz. IV, M4 Sherman and SU-85.
    3. I play garage battle.

    What needs changed. Capture the base is no longer possible since that area should be restricted for the enemy team in order to avoid spawn killing. Instead, we can have a “king of the hill” style of gameplay, with a central location that needs capturing. Much like Encounter.

    • Diffrent games. WT has a random damage system were the gun doesn’t matter that much, this is totally diffrent then WoT.

  27. I agree with your opinion even though your opinion is useless.

    Why? Because your vision of garage battle is so retarded even WG is not considering it (at least I hope so).

    There’s no point playing 5 separate battles and call them garage battle.

    The idea of garage battle is: you have 5 tanks, the moment you die, you immediately respawn in another tank of your “deck” as you called.

    In WarThunder the pay2win element originates from the fact you can have more tanks in your garage (deck), but if number of tanks used in garage battle is kept constant there is no pay to win element – at least no other then in random battles, where also having better crew gives you an advantage.

    I think I read WG was thinking about forcing you to use all 5 tanks of the same tier or the same class.
    While the same class is stupid – who will decide to play 5 arties? – the idea of choosing 5 ter 6 tanks and enter garage battle is not so bad, especially that more and more tanks of the same tier are balanced to be as close in value as possible. That would solve the balancing problems, if every player ring 5 tanks of the same tier, balancing is as simple as balancing normal random battle.

    It sounds even a bit appealing, to imagine you have a battle where total number of tanks is 150, 30 of them constantly on the map. 2-3 tanks that die fast will not lead to huge disproportion in numbers. If you are able to choose the order in which you play, you can react to the situation and take the tank that will help you best. You can save your scout or autoloader for the late stage when everyone is on low hp and so on.

    Problematic is a situation, when team advancing has to wait more time to resupply – if the fight is close to your spawn point, you will be back to fight after death much faster then your oponent.

    But…. I think it would require completely new maps. Too many chokepoints blocked by smoking wrecks + the risk of spawn killing (you spawn and you are already targeted by 4-5 tanks hidden in bushes around)

    But even if all those problems would be solved… I doubt that garage battles will be succesful. I would very mych like to play them – but I think that after some number of battles I would get bored. 40 minutes long battles… retarded teams that you are stuck with for the whole game…
    even if 5 unlucky dead tanks would not be a problem anymore, but quitters (I will not take another tank, because my team is full of retards).

    Requirement of having 5 tanks of the same tier is not a problem to me. Even if it is for some players – well, they can farm, but lower number of players interested in playing will elad to the situation similar to company mode – were waiting time can really kill the fun.

    So in general garage battle has some appeal and I would love to try them – the same way I really loved trying out assault and encounter mode – but it would be really problematic to implement in a way not leading to shitty gameplay.

    • Even tanks from same tier, without limiting to same class, would be a bad idea. What if I have to play 5 times in a tier 6 against tier 8?

      I dont even mention where`s my fun if the team is red-tarded.

      • Treborn are you a troll or just not understand the concept of say tier 5 Garage battle only playing tier 5 tanks or for all players ????

        • Bad idea, who wants to fight only tier 5s every time? This would be always the same and boring. And think about new players, who do not have many tier xs at the same time. And when I like PzIV, why do I have to play with my hated M4? I hardly have more than 2-3 tanks i like on the same tier. And what about grinding? Cant drive my first tier 6 until all the others are also researched.
          No, this cannot work. Forget it ;)

          • This mode would not replace the current random battles, so if you lack the tanks needed, then you don’t have to play this mode.

  28. and my few ideas how garage battle could work

    1. you are allowed to choose as many tanks as you want as long as they are of the same tier (light tanks are a problem here, but let assume for a moment we will find a solution) – so it’s easy to balance, since every tanks of the same tier has the same balance value (I know, I know, not every one,but that’s solvable)
    2. you can use only 5 of them in a battle (or 3, or 4) – the point is, you can choose 5 out of your 10 tanks to suit the map. Yes it gives advantage to those who have many tanks, but it’s not pay2win since everyone can farm many tanks – slots are obtainable even if it is a slow process.
    3. Spawn point needs to be in a secured position – not neccessarily a force field, but just far away from the main fight areas and easy to defend
    4. cap circle must not be under fire directly from the spawn point and vice versa – so even though it’s easy to defend on spawn point, you have to leave it or you will lose.
    5. Chokepoints should not be easily blocked by destroyed tanks.
    6. XP and cash rewards for it should be a bit more beneficial then in random battle mode, especially for the win.

    Alternatives:
    1. some way of dmination like in WoWp – if you have an advantage if number of tanks (tiers) killed, your doimination rises and when it gets to 100% you win.
    + It forces losing team TO ATTACK
    - It forces LOSING team to attack :D
    2. Spawn points are building, destroying those buildings stops enemies ability to respawn
    + interesting tactical option
    - arty ???

    But…. however garage battles will be implemented, they will not succeed without enough people wanting to play them – and I doubt there will be.

    • 1. Will NEVER work. Tier spread is intentonal. Wont be removed. Boring.
      2. And if i have only 1 or 2? Do I have to wait 20mins until the game finishes to continue driving them? Do not want to farm/drive tanks i do not like
      3. So enforce Camping? Or on the other hand drive 5 minutes to the front?
      4. Encounter mode, already in game. And hardly mastered by most of player base…
      5. Why not, could also be a tactic
      6. A win should be the main goal. In WT a win is totally unimportant and in my opinion a worse gameplay than WoT at the moment

      Alternatives:
      I think most of the ideas around garage battles will encourage massive suicid-rushs. Like i first want to get rid of the bad tanks and then i take the good ones and acutally start fighting.

      Your idea is not thought through. Will never work.

      • @KK “6. A win should be the main goal. In WT a win is totally unimportant and in my opinion a worse gameplay than WoT at the moment”

        Of course that win is important in WT. What is uniportant is Win Ratio cause amount of planes in player disposal in single battle obscures real potential of specific plane (also tiering based on real technical datas is much more better than messing with datas IMO)

      • KK I really don’t agree with you

        1. not really
        there are only tier I battles, there are only tier 10 battles, i played few times in a a battles that have tanks from only 1 tier..
        battle spread is added to shorten queue time, not because there is an added value in sending tiers A against tiers A+2

        and the whole idea of forcing you to choose tanks from the same tier is not to make 1 tier only battle but to reduce the complexity of balancing. If all your tanks are from the same tier the problem is equal to balancing random battle.
        If everyone has different composition, then it becomes much more complicates.
        You can also think about garage battles where you are supposed to take 5 tanks form tier A to tier A+4 and you play them starting from the lowest tier.

        In any way – the trick is to reduce number of possible “deck” combination, so balancing will be similar to balancing random battles as it is now.

        2. If you have only 1 or 2 go farm in random battles.
        It’s a bullshit argument, by your logic we shouldnt have comapnies of tier 10 because some people don’t have them and we shouldn’t have clan wars because not everyone has few tier 10 tanks.
        No one ever suggested to remove random battles mode. So if you don’t want to play garage battles, don’t play them, if you want – farm the tanks you need. As with everything in wot. You want to play esl – farm tier 8 tanks, you want to play CW – farm tier 10 tanks, you want to lay garage battles – buy and keep useful set of appriopriate tier tanks.

        3. It’s complicated matter, but the point is, maps should be designed in a way to make spwan killing impossible or at least difficult.
        that’s all

        4. why so many of the commenters here is so limited in their understanding to assume that spawn point = cap circle? You have many maps where tanks are spawned some distances from the cap circles and it’s not an encounter.
        Imagine erlenberg (normal battle), add some cover and bushes so storming the spawn points will be extremely danger but if fyou are in cap circle you force the other tem to go out of cover and engage you.

        5. Chokepoints should be wider then in normal battle mode, because with 150 tanks total, close to the end all of the chopkepoints could be blocked. Or even if half of them are blocked, but you don’t know which half, you will lose way too much time looking for a passage to the enemies territory.

        6. your response does not really concern my argument. If garage battle are to succeed, they have to offer benefits in farming speed, because they are more complicated to play and requir bigger number of players to be playable…

        yeah, that’s the tricky part with garage battles
        For any matchmaking to work, you have to have enough players wanting to play. But then it will come at the cost of random battles (unless there will be EU1 server garage battles only, EU2 random battles only ;P)

        In general I don’t believe garage battles are possible to be made working – but I would really like to try them out :D

  29. considering how much whining goes on about MM now, how the fck do you think WG could possibly gets this working>??

  31. Maybe a hard cap of 3 vehicles to choose for one battle would solve the issue with Pay to Win ? no matter how much tier 6 vehicles you had, you could only choose 3 and that’s it for that battle
    It would also solve the problem with tanks being locked down while the garage battle is still in process, so if you had 3 tier VI tanks and 3 tier V, you would still be able to play another game while those tier VIs are locked

  32. Whatever your idea is good or bad, those stoneheads can’t get it. Because of their arrogancy and clueless managers..Please stop arguing or giving ideas for their stupid game.They already digging own grave , let them have it.

  33. in warthunder when you’re first plane gets destroyed you can choose any other plane in your hanger from the same country, also the MM is according to the highest tier plane of that country

  34. @SS

    You should play it, it’s lots of fun.

    “- the gameplay wouldn’t differ from random games (the basic principles remain the same, apart from more emphasis on shooting and less on capping)”

    Different planes got different roles so there are different ways to end mission – in Ground strike mode you have to kill all (with fighters) or destroy all ground targets (with bombers), in Domination mode you have to kill all or capture all airfields and hold it till enemy victory points fall to zero. Pretty good system, in WoT only domination could be implemented with 3 bases to capture.

    “- uncoordinated player mob, that cannot “build decks”: imagine giving a random player the option of a game mode where he is forced to actually think…”

    Some unexperienced players will not ruin your battle when you got enough planes to fulfill the gap

    “- additional more random element in battle – something along the lines of “lol half of our team selected wrong tank and the team got roflstomped in round two””

    Four slots are enough to take planes for every occassion – with fighter, heavy fighter, bomber and dive bomber you can fight with at least two planes in each Ground Strike and Domination mode.
    - another difficulty is the position of destroyed players: they obviously would have to wait until the end of the “round”, which makes the whole thing tedious, leading to possible AFK’s for subsequent rounds

    “- what about trolls? Suiciders, idiots and teamkillers can effectively ruin an entire multi-stage round for a team”

    You got several planes you got more chances to fulfill gap in defencies left by trolls

    “- and let’s not forget the possibility that (however the victory is defined), there will be battles where the outcome is already given and everyone knows it, the losing team will “throw it”: that won’t be fun for any of the teams””

    Never saw it there is always fight cause with several mission objectives you can change course of the battle.

    Argument with pay2win is invalid, there is no time to use more than 5 planes in battle and 5 slots are free (I’m not good player, not even average and battles when I lost more than 3 planes are very rare).

    Of course system got some shortcomings, good bombing pack can finish game in less than 5 minutes simply wiping out all ground forces or sometimes battles could take 30 minutes cause there are plenty planes and noone got bomber with bombs efficent to sunk carrier. But these are small things and idea is good (in game like WT with more realistic approach to damage, in HP based game things could look different)

  35. Well, SS. We know you are not a teamplayer and have very limited experience in these areas of the game, so it’s probably hard for you to comprehend.

    The idea of going 5v5 (myself and 4 friends) is nice. 4 close and well coordinated people is much easier to find than 10 or 15 for tank company.

    I would never play garage battles with randoms.

  36. Not hard to implement in fact.

    The devs just had to limit the number of “lives” like in War thunder (3 aircraft max), the tanks chosen must be of the same tier, and eventualy the same type. Time limit set for 20 min max in order to avoid the camping. Seems easy on paper but i agree that teamkiller and bot would be a fucking pain in the ass.

    I still want a game mod like that.

  37. Don’t really care about it until i have option to disable it like i did with assault/encounter.

  38. @ SS, your WoW experiences seem to be limited. I remember one battle which lasted 28 hours, of course back then you actually had different things to do as well…

  39. um, don’t want to sound like a n00b, but could someone tell me what the “vanilla” term means? like “Vanilla WoW players”, “vanilla crosshair”, etc. I have no idea what those terms mean. thanx.

    • When someone says something is vanilla, then it the same as the basic/standard whatever.

      “Vanilla Reticle with reload timer…” = The standard Reticle that comes with WoT, but with the reload timer.

  40. The main reason why Garage Battles aren’t in the game is that it favors players with a lot of tanks, and in some cases becomes pay-to-win. For example, imagine if it’s a tier 8 garage battle, and one guy is able to stay in the battle longer because in addition to a couple of tier 8 heavies he grinded out, he also has a Lowe, IS-6 and a 112. Most players can only afford one tier 8 premium, if that, so somebody who has a lot of disposable income can simply pay for more premium tanks to stay in the battle longer.

    • come on, no one sane ever expected you to be able to field more then reasonable amount of tanks, so no, there will be no “I used 10 tanks and have 4 premiums left, I win”

      the only upside of having a huge garage is being able to select from more variety of vehicles – but having a huge garage is sth connected to farmingm not paying.

  41. 1. Choose a tier

    2. Pick 1 other tank that is 1 tier below.
    For example if i pick…
    Hellcat I could also pick M4 sherman or
    155FOCH i could also pick the OBJ704.

    3. Have a minimum required garage battle players per a side and fill in extras with 1 tank players.
    For example we could have 10 garage players on each side and 5 additional pubbies for each team. Unlock the pubbies’ tank after they are destroyed so the battle doesn’t have to end.

    Notes: Probably only start it at tier 5, start with 2 tanks then figure out 3 later. May want to smooth out light tank tiers or denote them differently as to not confuse players.

  42. –”one battle could rage whole day!”

    you’re missin an ‘s’ at the end of ‘day’. Remember particpating in an alterac valley fight that lasted 3 days at least.

    as for warthunder battles, it is basically just a simple click battle, battle loads, choose plane and spawn. when dead as its planes they crash to ground (don’t think corpses remain but never flew low enough to check), window with remaining planes appears again and u select next plane u want and repeat, There is also of course the points system to limit battle length (killing ground forces etc).

    Wouldn’t say this is pay to win, as like in WoT the number of vehicles you have is down to xp and credits earned/grinded to buy them.

    In warthunder choosing a lower tier plane isn’t as damaging as in WoT as they can still deal damage. It would be a tactical choice to use bombers first to take out anti-air, or low tier to damage enemy high tiers that come in at start to try and mop up with your high tiers later. Though obviously the players with more vehicles would make a bigger contribution, but this could be balanced instead by limiting max number of vehicles/lives to a low amount all are capable with. All you save then is the joining battle time.

    as for it taking too long for some, well it is a battle mode that is a choice, if you only have time for short matches, join normal randoms, if you have time to commit to longer battle and want to do it in one go then choose garage battle. It is still of course limited in length in the current layout by capping.

    Reminds me of old ‘Shattered Galaxy’ days. You would spawn with useable units, fight it out for map control, then if dominating easily players could cycle through their other units they wanted to get xp on as needed saving their best to try and ensure the win near the end timer by capping (known as proccing and only way to win on that game).

    You could also have it just as ‘lives’ rather than multiple tanks allowing you to spawn the same tank to not limit those with only 1 high tier (as they focused on 1 tech tree so far) that they could bring in repeatedly if they wanted to speed up the grind on that specific tank. rather than fighting, being destroyed and having to wait for the battle end before they could use it again.

  43. I dont see anything wrong with adding garage battle. They are still keeping random battles so if u want a quickie u can play that, but at the same time if u want a longer battle u can go for garage battles.

    garage battles are also more noob friendly, if ur 1st tank dies u can easily jump into ur second tank and continue the same battle instead of joining an entire new one.

    Also some of the things u mentioned like trolls, afkers and tkers, they already exist in random battles anyways. 3x3km maps can always be balanced with having more players 30v30 and it tailors towards garage battles.

  44. for those who say its simply p2w, not necessarily if u impose certain rules. so there can be a max and min number of tanks u can pick, lets say 3. Also a min and max tier at a selected battle tier u want to participate in, so say a tier 9 max game, u wont be able to pick anything lower than tier 7. there would also be a min and max for tier points, in this case it can be 25 max and 23 min, so u can only do 2xt9 + 1xt7 or 1xt9 + 2xt8 maximum and u cant go anything lower than 2xt8 + 1xt7.

  45. War thunder’s garage battles:
    You have a certain amount of plane “slots” for every nation for the battle. You can fill up all of them and fly them in the battle. You can only fly the planes of one nation at a time.

    That’s pretty much it

  46. I doubt WG will ever implements GB. Not only it would require to change current maps and solve the spawn problems but it goes against the main advantage of the public battles – the short waiting time. If they would create a mod where a battle would last half an hour or more they would take part of the players away from the queue. And its not desireable. And the bigger maps would create the same problem.

  47. Count me as another who sees garage battles as a bad idea.

    For me, the question is not ‘can it be fun?’, because I’m sure it’s possible to have fun garage battles; the question is ‘what’s the worst that could happen?’.

    In normal WoT, even a terrible camping Malinovka Encounter, the worst that can happen is *one* tank is locked for a maximum of 15 minutes. Garage battles involve more of your tanks over a longer match – thus the worst that can happen is *more* of your tanks locked, for *longer*.

    So no: I don’t have a huge amount of time to play, and I don’t want what time I have wasted because x of my tanks are locked for y minutes because I zoned in with the team of tomatoes.

      • If you think about it. He’s right. In World of Tanks you tank is locked for the entire time the match takes.

        If you get destroyed quickly, or if you are one of the first that gets completely wiped out, your tanks are in the game.

        I think the reason, why a tank is locked for the time the match takes, is that the game is completely server calculated. If your tank is in a game, and it shouldn’t be locked for the entire matchtime, the server needs to make a “temporary copy of your tank”.

        Let’s think the plan, of a non locked tank unlike we have it now.

        So your, let’s say, IS is on a match in Himmelsdorf and you get shot after the 3rd minute. The game takes the whole 15 minutes because of whatever reasons. This means for the actual system you have to wait another 12 minutes until you IS on Himmeldorf gets calculated (What happened in the rest of the time, XP, Credits etc etc).

        How would it be if there wasn’t this lock?

        Without it, you could just again select your IS and go to another battle. This means (because of the server calculated nad rendered system) that the server has to creat a “temporary copy of your specific tank”. Specific why? Because there are crew perks and skills, and gun/track/turret configurations that your IS has, but another player hasn’t.

        So now you finished the second match and in the meantime the other match ended. Now the server calculated your EP, credits, and other stuff from the first match and added it into your “place” in the database. Now it needs to merge the temporary copy to the existing one in the database, and delete the temporary copy, so it doesn’t think you got 2 IS, that hat the same crew/tank setup.

        This would be much more calculations for the server and for each player. Now think about it the player changes the setup of the tank while it’s in a game? This is a huge amount of additional calculation.

        Now think about the amount of players on the server. This would bring it to it’s knees

  48. You just went full SerB. Never go full SerB. The only aspect of p2w in WT battle system is the last garage slot, it costs about 2 euros. You have limited slots, and you can never exceed the amount of them. Like at all. You have 200 tanks/planes? W/e, you only use 6. Research before trashing competition.

  49. Stupid idea. One of the things I HATE about War Thunder is that you get multiple lives and you can in essence pay to win. Also makes noob ramming so much more of a problem because why not ram someone if you have 4 more planes to use.

  50. Working of the Arcade Battles in War Thunder:

    Standard you have I think 3 Slots. 1 Slot counts as a crew. So if you put a Bomber in Slot 1 and level the Gunners of that Crew it is obviously senseless, that you put (if unlocked) a higher tiered Fighter on that slot, because this Slot (Crew) is trained that it’s gunners perform very good. And you normally have no gunners in a fighter.
    I think you can unlock up to 5 Slots with Credits and furthermore with Gold!
    This counts per nation, and not for all nations in the game.

    So much for the basic info.

    So when you start to enter the qeue for a battle you will get matched to the tier your highest plane has in your active selected nation.
    Steps are: 0-1, 2-3, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9, etc etc.

    Let’s look at this example: You have selected the Brits. There you have 6 Crews. Each crew has one plane selected. You have a mixture of different Tiers. Lets say: a Tier1, a Tier7, a Tier4. a Tier2, a Tier12 and a Tier4 again. This means you will be matched in a game according your highest plane in this nation, and this will be a Tier12 in this example, so you are in the qeue for a Match 12-13.

    When you enter the battle you can select one of your planes of the chosen nation (Brits in this example) You fly, you geet killed, you see the Spawn Screen again. You take the next plane. This happens again and again until your british crews are all shot down. At this point you are spectator or leave the match and go for the next one.

    Unlike WoT your Crew or planes aren’t locked, alse if you leave the game early without all Crews being destroyed. You still get EP and Credits right after leaving the game.

    In WoT this wouldn’t work because you don’t have Tank Hangars limited to nations, but one global Hangar.

  51. IMO it’s really stupid to put in such a game mode as new players would be struggling against pro players and the newbies only have low tier tanks but the pros got huge@$$ tanks so it’s pretty messed up

  52. “I once saw an 8 hour battle being decided in the end by the best PVP player I have ever seen in any game to this date joining and single-handedly deciding the outcome by rallying one of the teams.”

    Link or it Never Hapen :)

  54. this is the thing that makes arcade battles unplayable in WT, if you go near their base (in a dive bomber for instance) you will just get PWNed by a plane that just spawned at 2000m/450KPH above you.

  55. “Well, the basic idea has been around for ages, possibly pre-dating even tier 10 mediums, physics and all the cool WoT stuff.”

    Possibly? I still have a leaked supertest screenshot from Karelia garage battle dated 5 Oct 2011.

    “another difficulty is the position of destroyed players: they obviously would have to wait until the end of the “round”, which makes the whole thing tedious, leading to possible AFK’s for subsequent rounds”

    Why do you think there would be waiting involved? Your tank dies, you hop into the next one right away; your last tank dies, you can just go back to garage, just like now.

    “Long battles (30 mins for example) would take this away.”

    I think you overestimate the average time such a battle would take, in said screenshot the battle’s fate is decided after ~19 minutes.

  56. In Warthunder it works because the objective isn’t just to kill other planes. The objective is to destroy the ground targets, or sometimes to capture bases in a King of the Hill sorta way.

    The garage battle works like this: You have a certain number of crews for each country, 4 to start, but you can buy more. Each crew can be in one plane at a time. The tier system is very different, but basically you’re put into a match based on the highest tier plane you have, someone else already said that lower tier planes aren’t as comparatively weak in War Thunder, and they were very right there. Once in the match, when you die you can hop into another plane from the same country and start again.

    You kept mentioning a “second round”, but it doesn’t really work that way. Some people survive a long match in just one plane, others might go through all of their planes before the end of the same match. You come back into an active match when you respawn. The match only sometimes ends with everyone on one team losing all of their planes, more often it ends when the objective is completed by one side or the other.

    Personally I feel that this works better with planes than with tanks, because low tier planes can still damage higher tier ones, because they don’t have 100mm of armor on them.

    However I think this could still work with tanks, but probably not in randoms. In more of a Company Battle or Clan Wars style it could work though, and maybe with an encounter battle style, or maybe a multi-stage encounter or assault sort of thing, where the goal moves. Maybe King of the Hill even. Obviously it wouldn’t work the way it does in War Thunder though.

    You could have a preselected group of 2-4 tanks per person, not your entire garage. You would have a tier cap on the whole thing, and maybe one on each person as well. You also give them classes like Tank Companies do.

    Maybe you could even do an escalation sort of thing, so the first batch is up to tier IV, then tier V, then tier VI. That way when you lose the first tank, you get a higher tier one, and the match is a little more balanced, but as the higher tier tank kills others, they also come back with higher tier tanks.

    There are definitely fun and interesting ways that it could work, IMHO.

    • Oh right, I forgot to mention what is probably THE biggest drawback to garage battles in War Thunder: ram kills.

      Because planes are fairly expendable when you get a few hits, or if you’re not doing so well, or if you find an enemy pilot doing particularly well or nearing something important, it’s almost trivially easy to just ram your plane into his. This doesn’t gain you any points directly, but if you’re not a very good player, of if your plane was nearly dead anyway then you’re very likely doing something that’s good for your team, and what’s good for your team is good for you. However it’s EXTREMELY unfun for the other player, and the more people do it the less fun everyone has, because right when you get your favorite plane out and are about to drop some big bombs on some unsuspecting tanks, BAM, smashed into.

      Obviously this isn’t as big of a problem in World of Tanks, but I could see a lot of people with shot up light tanks suicide scouting so they can pull out their KV-1S that’s next for them in their garage or something, which isn’t a HUGE deal, but I’m sure Wargaming wouldn’t approve of it at all.