82 thoughts on “14.1.2014”

1. - there is no universal conversion formula for the penetration conversion between “German” and “Soviet” penetration system (SS: while the “Soviet” system is used in general, sometimes the numbers are intentionally changed, so the fact a gun has a different penetration in real life matters very little to developers)

   could someone translate it to be easier to understand please?

   and, what is the (Erlenberg) ford? i didnt see a car

   • According to German penetration tables, Russian PaK 36(r) has 130mm penetration. Soviets list it at 96mm penetration. That however does not mean that RU number = GER number * 1,354 (130/96) – the corellation is not linear. Furthermore, some guns in game are intentionally unhistorically buffed or underpowered (90mm US guns, T-25′s A18), so it doesn’t matter anyway what penetration the gun had in real life, because WG will do whatever they want.

     • “According to German penetration tables, Russian PaK 36(r) has 130mm penetration. Soviets list it at 96mm penetration. ”

       More like German penetration tables has 98mm penetration at 100m. US has it as 98mm at 500yd. (both 30° to the vertical)

       And yes it is possible (though not easy) to normalize data.

   • ford as in a river crossing not a car ;)

   • Soviets and Germans had different ways to determine how much penetration guns and specific ammo have.
     There is no formula like “73 penetration in the soviet system means 63 penetration in the german one”

     Some guns have unhistorically penetration-values. That’s for balencing-reasons. So the developers don’t realy care about differences to real-life penetration-values.

     Edit: Ninja’d

     • “So the developers don’t realy care about differences to real-life penetration-values.”

       Yet they keep mentioning “historical accuracy” all the time when they change something, like Lowe’s size or E-series frontal transmission, and recently they justified penetration buff of some tank by saying they found out about “better ammo”. It seems that WG suffers from schizophrenia.

       • They have to remain historical in places that don’t matter to gameplay as much, auch as how a tank looks. If it looks as historical as possible it doesn’t affect gameplay. But the penetration of the gun is a very serious gameplay changer, too much and the gun goes through everything, too less and it p’s underpowered.

         • They don’t have to remain historical. If i want historicity I’ll go do a PHD on military history and rebuild a WW2 tank. Historical values should just give an idea of what strong and weak attributes a particular tank should have. Balance is the most important factor.

       • well the problem is the frontal transmission can make a tank catch fire. That’s not real. I don’t understand why they can’t seperate it from the engine, so we never see the ridiculous fire when taking a shot from frontal

2. “- US light line might be reworked more like sooner than later…”

   Goodbye Chaffee

   • Be assured, how could they possibly screw this up? I mean, it’s a scout, so they would not nerf it’s mobility, so this thing will still be playable after the rework *sarcasm off*

     • *Mimimi* T-50 *Mimimi*

       • *mimimi* MT-25 *mimimi*

         R.i.P T-50-2 †††

         • R.i.P. VK 28 01…
           aaaaand our new addition: R.i.P. Chaffee :’(

           now all the Ancestor-Scouts are gone T_T

   • TBH, chaffee’s golden age has ended already. Too many highly performing higher tier light tanks that do its job as well or better, too high buff to accuracy in 8.6, to few arty (and all of them heavily nerfed). It’s still fun and rather good at dealing damage on its own, but that’s only until a higher tiered autoloader light takes a little too much interest in you.

     • The erra of many tanks have ended and begun ever since the beginning of the game and the reason for that is all the “balances”. By that said, if you really like a tank and want to invest time and money into it, you can succedd fairly well. This has been proven with artys, where some players perform really well in them despite the nerfs. The same goes with other low WR tanks, if you have the intrest, patience, and time you can make it work. By that said, if you lack any kind of intrest you better change tank.

       And this is what has happened lately, the buffs to camo net and paint and accuracy as well as income and XP for TDs has made alot of people intrested in playing TDs, which in return makes even more people intrested in playing those because they dont want to be “keeled” by invisible TDs. Nothing else.

       Same as heavys were overpopulated before and still are according to stats, because people are intrested in playing them.

       Its all about intrest, majority of tanks can be made competitive if the player has good crew skills, personal skill and equipment.

       I feel though some classes are particularly “funny” because there are many people playing scouts dont know what they are doing, as well as TDs lately, alot of TD noobs thinking the TDs job is only to sit and snipe. Artys I believe have the most skilled players now days because it takes patience and map awareness to frag. Also medium (with AP ammo ofc) tanks I believe have one of the best skill base as well. TDs, light and heavys have the worst skill base now days and are an embarrassment for wot.

       • I play Chaffee a lot for fun, it can be effective assassin and super effective scout in tier 7 battles, but I’m trying to play anything as a scout and lot of tanks are almost as effective scouts and more versatile (T20, E-25 due to insane camo, T32 for it’s strong turret armor and great view range with optics – it’s able to spot TDs shooting the turret and survive, Patton – quite risky, but at least it is able to survive one shot from anything except FV215, RhmB – great passive scout and even camo on the move is very close to Chaffee’s plus it can snipe unspotted unlike Chaffee, same with Hellcat – sit and kill anything within 445-330m).
         There’s no place for Chaffee in Tier X-XII battles when any medium is far superior, it can only flank, snipe and spot in later stale-mate situations imho, but the role of LTs in high tier battles is marginal. Same with tier IV scouts that are useless – 75% percent crew, view range inferior to TDs and usually no chance to spot TD that kills them. You can’t expect 2 skill crew on Pz38nA. Agree that 2/3 of LT drivers are not even trying to play scouts properly and even if they are trying, no HT will stop and shoot spotted tanks and no TD (or HT) will relocate from the save forest in the corner.

         • I agree that low tier scouts can be less effective in high tier games. But this is a problem tied with LT tanks. But as you say the huge amount of people who dont play this class proper or dont want to invest in crew skills/equipment will make the whole class look even worse. But I will say in a tier 8 game (I play only tier 8 tenk) even a low tier scout with proper crew and equipment is really crucial. On that level the scouts have as good or better view range as heavys and TDs as well as much better camo rating. But I agree, if heavys and TDs dont push, scouts benefit very little from running around.

           One of the core problems of wot is that people wont want to push flanks because they are scared to get hit. But you can succeed, I do it all time in a slow and big object like the tiger II, so theres no really any excuse to not push. Sure you get blasted some times but if you make it to a corner, the contribution you and your team mates can make is crucial.

           I still think medium and light tanks are important, because its proven that a game with only heavys and TDs will be kinda boring. The only sad thing now days is that rarely do mediums and even light help out when you get ambushed because they feel its much better sitting back and snipe, and they can really do that thanks to buffed accuracy in 8.6 and gold ammo.

   • i hope the walker bulldog will be implemented

3. Storm agrees that on the maps leaked, the (Erlenberg) ford looks weird (unrealistic), but adds that this is a gameplay decision to add it
   Ford on Erlenberg? I tought it was a BMW =D
   It was mentioned before about the night battles but if I remember right – a whole new spotting system had to be made.Any comments on that? Cause it seems to me we’ll not be seeing night battles at least before Q4 2014
   And one more thing – is it confirmed that the season change in maps would be correlated to actual seasons? I think it’s better to be like the way they want to implement winter Himmelsdorf.

   • If they would add some logs leaning towards that ford, it could look like an beaver dam. I don’t know if that map area could qualify as an beaver habitat but it would look more realistic than now.

   • you can find a BMW motorcycle at siegfried line^^

   • I’m thinking Q4 2014 for night battles is a pretty early guess. I think the only news I’ve ever read about it, usually on this site, is that it’s low priority and/or not planned. Hopefully someone will correct me if I’m wrong.

4. “- some vehicles (like the FCM 50t) have visibly lower quality of some parts of the model (in this case, tracks). The reason for that is that currently, the maximum amount of polygons per model is limited and sometimes there’s just not enough”

   Huh? Looking at it, the FCM 50t seems to have one of the simplest shapes in the game, how could they run out of polygons on that box?

   • its french, they had to model a bunch of baguettes inside :D

     • LOL

       Indeed, i own a fcm 50t and i ve always wondered why it looks so simple compared to other vehicles

       now we know

       perhaps the most obvious one is the t-25 whose clearly lacks polygons

       • What about D.W.2?

5. - regarding more desert maps, Storm states desert maps are bleak and monotonous

   I beg to differ:
   Sand River and El Halouf seem to be “monotonous” because of that horrible map layout and both being the only desert maps for quite some time, and thus came: desert = boring campfest

   Airfield kinda was the first “good” desert map

   A citymap featuring a port resembling Tunis or Tobruk would be pretty interesting tho. The north african campaign featured quite a lot of nice landmarks for potential maps.

   Hell… even good old BF1942 featured more Desert maps than WoT and they were playable, immersive and thus simply amazing.

   • Yeah I grew up in a desert, all I can think is Storm has never left green Belarus and explored beyond his home climate. There are as many ways to model/depict a desert as there are grasslands, from the yellow-sanded dunes we’ve already got to shrubland, rocky mesas/mountains, red sanded flatland… think of the valley floor of El Halluf and how “monotonous” that is.

     And to expand on your BF1942 point, Desert Combat mod and Forgotten Hope added their own interesting and fun desert maps.

     • FH on desert maps is a lot of fun.

   • They could make some open, slightly hilly oasis map with areas with lush vegetation as well as some buildings, rocks, and open land. They could put a cliff or even a river there.

     • I agree. I like look of desert maps and i think there can be many interesting layouts and objects in the desert. What about desert map with high sand dunes and huge oasis in the middle covered with vegetation? Maybe some ruins of ancient temple can provide some cover for tanks..

6. So much dynamic shit inspired from real life… why not earthquakes…
   Better buried…than to die for a team full of tomatoes/siema fucks…

7. - the new Prokhorovka is not made for HD-client yet

   Such Scenery, much detail, very pretty…wow…

   Not even HD cliented yet – kinda excited to see what the HD version is going to look like then.

   • If it works for your supercomputer

8. SS can you get someone to ask why the american .50 M2 Browining machinegun ingame found on T7 Combat Car and M2 Light Tank has a penetration of 22mm instead of 28mm, 22mm its the penetration of Ball ( Lead Bullet ) while 28mm its the penetration of AP ( Armor Piercing ). You can see those values here http://www.tarrif.net/cgi/production/all_penetration_adv.php

   • American penetration standards were lower than German/Soviet, at least at the time of the tests.

   • Same reason 100mm D-54 AP penetrates 219mm while it should penetrate 235mm and 100mm U-8 APDS penetrates ~260mm vs 330mm – someone was thinking it is a good balance decision.

   • The tarrif table is also very problematic, developers already specifically stated that this table is not reliable.

   • There were also several developmental stages of the .50 round. Plus American penn =/= German penn or even Russian penn. as everyone (country) uses their own system.

   • So basically its a lot better to give T7 Combat Car a penetration that forces it to be nothing but meat for T18s…. so mutch fun in that! Historical accuracy over fun any time.

9. “dynamic seasons changes on maps (SS: like, winter/autumn/spring etc. on one map) depending on what season is there in real life are planned, but not anytime soon”

   That would be awesome,I hope they own`t scrap the idea.

10. - “regarding more desert maps, Storm states desert maps are bleak and monotonous”

    and snow maps are not monotonous? they’re all white!

    • I like snow maps :3
      But I get your point :)

11. “- some vehicles (like the FCM 50t) have visibly lower quality of some parts of the model (in this case, tracks). The reason for that is that currently, the maximum amount of polygons per model is limited and sometimes there’s just not enough”

    That doesn’t sound right. I’m pretty sure I managed to at least double the polycount of the FCM on one project or another and it worked fine. Unless the limit is specificaly imposed just on the tracks part because of the shitty system they use for animating those.

12. “US light line might be reworked more like sooner than later…”

    Sooner = Last patch in 2014 (around Christmas)

    Later = 2015

13. “- regarding more desert maps, Storm states desert maps are bleak and monotonous”
    I really hope that is official WG stance, desert maps are awful.
    “- US light line might be reworked more like sooner than later…”
    And how about making French light line playable, dammit?

    • They are playable, but they’re not typical scouts. And that rework means splitting Chaffee into two vehicles and adding 2 more to make full branch, not just changing stats. Rework and rebalance are two different things.

14. “- there will not be more details added to the Himmelsdorf inner yards that only arty can see in arty view”

    I’m very curious what will happen to those areas once destructible buildings appear. Will they be accessible or there will be some sort of debris blocking them? Also, Ruinberg has a lot of inner yards that are not used and I think that’s a shame. I hope those parts of the maps will become playable after Havoc.

    • “I hope those parts of the maps will become playable after Havoc.”
      They won’t. WG (or SerB rather, IIRC) stated not so long ago that you won’t be able to destroy big buildings completely. You will be able to make some walls collapse, but the overall structure will remain there. Also, Havoc won’t be necessary to play, for the sake of people with wooden computers. It’s just an eyecandy, not a gameplay change.

      • You dont have to have a wooden pc to not wanna play havoc. Those with 120/144hz screens will value fps more than eye candy.

      • It will be gameplay change. It was said you’ll be able to shoot through holes and over collapsed buildings as arty, but you won’t be able to drive through

        • And for those dont wanna have havoc “on”, what about them do they get less features?

          • This won’t be a part of havoc

15. Yay, more Himmelsdorf!

    • There is absolutely NO POINT in having a Himmelsdorf clone in the game and calling it a new map. Himmelsdorf is in my opinion the WORST map in the game and NOW I have to put up with it AND a clone in rotation. PLEASE WG reconsider your thoughts on allowing players to take maps out of rotation that they do not like so I NEVER have to see Himmelsdorf or it’s clone EVER again.

16. “So the developers don’t realy care about differences to real-life penetration-values.”

    Yet they keep mentioning “historical accuracy” all the time when they change something, like Lowe’s size or E-series frontal transmission, and recently they justified penetration buff of some tank by saying they found out about “better ammo”. It seems that WG suffers from schizophrenia.
    ___________
    I’m just gonna c/p comment from Schlomo Shekelstein because this is basically what i think about their historical accuracy/balance horseshit.

    • Historical accuracy is just a gimmick, a word they have learned to prevent whine on the forums. How ever any sane person will understand that it is nothing historical with wot, or any online game for that part. Too bad WG are too stupid to not realize that nobody takes their historical balances for real. I mean how the hell is it historicaly accurate to fight tanks from the 70s with tanks from the early 40s? Or why did they nerf the german engines claiming it was historical and later on changed the is3 model? That was pure balance, nothing to do with history, even though I have a hard time understanding why they made those balances.

      Or autloaders running full speel while loading, is that another historical “accurate” feature. BS leave the history shit out of this WG, if I wanna educate myself I read a fucking program at the university.

      • “Historical accuracy is just a gimmick”

        I’m so glad to read this more often. Balance > historicity.

        • It is, historical balance and “balance” is the same thing in wot. Only problem is majority of players cant understand certan balances, and I surely cant because WG decided to balance important aspect of german tanks, having one of the lowest WR of all tanks in WOT. I understand the IS3 remodel which can be seen as a nerf, because the IS3 has a very good WR compared to other tier 8 heavys. But im not sure about the tiger II balance at all, and if it is going to be considered as a buff or nerf.

17. More himmelsdorf is ALLWAYS a good thing

    - for now, the map option where light tanks could cross the river over ice while heavies would break through the ice and drown is not planned

    This is actually a pretty good idea, having a map with features that can only be crossed by lighter tanks, while heavies would break it and die. Thus forcing heavies to go for the chokepoints, while llighter tanks have more freedom of movement.

    • If we assume that the only valid strategy for heavys is to go for chokepoints. I dont think any map should force any certan tank to take a special route. Alternative paths im all for it, but not restricted by tank type. Imo, the fun beginns when tanks you would not expect pop up in places nobody else would go. As far as light tanks go, the future for most of them are dark because they get shoved into too high tier games and/or players are generally noobs and no dedicated scout players.

      • Well, there already exists such “railroading” in Komarin, so the precedent is there (you must have a heavy to enter the middle island through the obstacles),

        On one hand, i think it would be good for the general public to play their roles a bit (seen too many scouting IS or tanking Flakbuses), but every time i go there i remember my Tiger… a heavy that doesn’t really brawl that well… and I hate being told to go front line with the heavies…

        • Its true some tanks are better than others doing tasks, despite beeing in the same class. The problem is though, there are too many camping spots on the maps and or chokepoints, which makes the game very statis if nobody wanna push, or into a deathtrap because everybody goes to the same spot and hoping for kills.

    • More Himmelsdorf is ALWAYS a BAD thing.

18. super pershing gun…ap round pen…over nerfed.

    • Well actually it has only a little bit less pen with AP compared to the other regular tier 8 mediums, and that is fine considering its a freaking medium tank. Premium russians and chinese heavys have like 175mm pen by the way.

    • Say that to KV-5

      • Its the same ting there, nobody force you to play kv5. In fact if you want a similar heavily armored tank theres always the kv4 which has excelent armor and gun.

        • Ye, I know. I just don’t get people whining about SP’s gun.

          • lol KV5 is prem tank, not regular. It was balanced long time ago, and now people who buy it for real money are fucked becouse game since then changed a lot. Normalisation nerf made KV5 gun obsolate, even gold ammo dont help it, long time ago KV5 was balanced on +3 tier spred, most of the time you you was in the top of the list with few tiers 8 tanks, now wtf to do in tier 9 fight? even tier 8 fights are shit becouse half team is tiers 8 only. Why do you think KV5 was 2nd worst tank in poll of “worst shit tanks”?

            • Well game has changed alot, but not only to the worst. What people fail to realise is that making money in wot is simple once you have premium account and play decent. Using gold ammo on premium tanks with stock account wont make money any more and that is actually a good idea, because it should be penalties to use cheater ammo and tanks which makes more money, have better MM and cheaper ammo/repair.

              I have said it before and I say it again, you will have most success playing few tanks with good crews and with premium account. Doing this you will earn good amount of credits and XP. In the long run a regular tanks will serve you better because they are in theory better then premium tanks, despite som premium tanks are really strong like the t34 and löwe (not great but not really worse if you play to their strenghts).

              The kv5 with gold ammo has what 220mm pen? Thats pretty decent and with the monster rof of 7, it is dangerouns. With 167mm pen you can go thru the sides on tanks or weakspots so that isnt really a issue.

              But again, play the kv4 if you want the real thing and add premium account and you will have milions of credits in a couple of months.

              Premium account is a better investment than a premium tank i believe, if your goal is to make money. Sure it cost like 40 euros for 6 months, but is is “worth”.

19. What is “HD client” anyways? How is the 1080p I’m currently playing at not HD? Feels a lot like the stupidity of calling a car without a combustion engine like the Prius a “full hybrid”

    • I think they will model all objects with more polygons, thats all. Maybe other visual differances that will make the game neater. How ever I dont know their defention of HD, because many are alreaddy playing at 1080 res.

    • I think they’re referring to the havoc (client side physics) engine that they’ve been working on implementing. Should be a pretty significant change graphically.

      • In other words, “HD” is a marketing term, not a technical term, and it doesn’t really mean anything.

        It just serves to sell more tv’s and help differentiate between two graphical versions of a game.

        You guys are like Buddy in the movie Elf where he congratulates a crappy diner for having “the world’s best cup of coffee.”

20. Hey silent stalker what about the fv42o2 and the British mediums? No buff or Vickers replacement?

    • Replacement = work in progress. See article on it from last week.
      http://ftr.wot-news.com/2014/01/11/historical-candidates-for-fv4202-replacement/

21. Any gossips about predicted date of 8.11 testserver? I am looking forward to rebalance of tier X eagerly.

22. - some vehicles (like the FCM 50t) have visibly lower quality of some parts of the model (in this case, tracks). The reason for that is that currently, the maximum amount of polygons per model is limited and sometimes there’s just not enough

    Are they shitting us in our face? They run out of polygons on FCM which is a super plain looking tank with not many curves and angles and not on the IS4 which its back has every god damn bolt modeled? Maybe the limited polygons are more limited in non Russian tanks…

    • They talking bullshit of course.

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