Storm asks for 9.0 Feedback

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Source: http://world-of-kwg.livejournal.com/279019.html

Hello everyone,

Storm wrote that recently, he returned from a personal trip and wants to know your opinion on test 9.0 What did you like? What didn’t you like? Specifically:

- historical battles
- reworked tanks
- performance (FPS drops)
- new UI
- new post-effect in sniper mode

From the discussion:

- the five empty class slots on the queue screen is a bug
- currently, playing lowtier tanks in historical battles will be stimulated by additional XP and credits, later by the possibility to respawn
- respawn in HB: “when it’s done it’s done”
- dynamic characteristics of tanks in hangar aren’t impossible to implement, the developers just didn’t bother until now
- the fact tiers were removed from the queue screen in 9.0 (SS: see the screenshot in the first answer of today’s post) is not caused by Wargaming wanting to hide that info from players, but by something else (SS: as in, something technical), Storm will tell later why
- it is possible that the ammo rack explosion mechanism will me altered: when a tank burns, each “tick” there will be a small chance of ammo rack explosion (regardless of damage to the ammo rack module itself).
- Confrontation mode will be fixed and will return at some point
- Tiger’s “flat roadwheels” a player complained about are fine, they won’t be reworked
- the amount of smoke in 9.0 (SS: maps are more “hazy”) is “atmospheric” (SS: as in, making the map look better) and allows the maps to be made bigger (SS: I hope they at least make this optional, at longer distances I am getting FPS drops)
- Storm knows about the increased system load of the new hangar: “It’s more complex, it’s logical it will stress the system more”
- new serverside tank motion will most likely come in 9.2
- the T-54 frontal plate mudguard is not a part of the collision model, because it’s made of wood
- T-54 armor in test 9.0 is not yet final
- the appearance of Jagdtiger in historical battles is correct, “it fought there according to some data about the 512. Heavy Anti-Tank Batallion”
- it is not planned to increase test server capacity
- more graphic settings are planned in the future, that’s why graphic setting window was reworked, they wouldn’t fit the old one

And what about you? What did you like, didn’t like? Write in detail, I will send the link for Storm to see (if he chooses to do so).

84 thoughts on “Storm asks for 9.0 Feedback”

  1. I’m having 5.1 surround issues with this test version, only the L and R speakers output audio. Seems that this build is bypassing the Windows speaker fill.

    • I played a couple before I gave up, here’s why..

      When you play a lower tier as a scout normally you can get decent exp by spotting several enemies, but in this scenario there just aren’t enough enemies to spot and of course no art to kill – and hardly any credits to get. Try penetrating a T6 heavy with a T4 light tank sometime…

      This means there is no point being anything else other than a TD or a heavy. The only way to make this work is to up credit scoring for the lights/meds – otherwise they aren’t worth playing.

      It’s a big FAIL imho…

      • I’ve gotten consisten 1.5k-2k spotting damage in T-34 on proko, would have done just the same with a T-70, can’t see the issue there. In regular battles you usually only provide spot over a fraction of the enemy team anyway (unless you’re suiscouting of course).

      • Really? I thought it was kind of useful as it was as a kind of let-off valve for the hordes of over-played, over-powered tanks. I think at the moment it’s actually improving variety in random matches, I’m sad to see it go in its current form.

  6. - Storm knows about the increased system load of the new hangar: “It’s more complex, it’s logical it will stress the system more”

    More than in-game? wtf? we should name it Furmark garage.

  7. the new post effect in sniper mode, should be removed, i find it to be a distraction

  8. HD models suck, new shader system sucks, historical battles also kind of suck, so… This is the WORST major patch of WoT. Goodbye, my hopes for a better game…

  9. ” What did you like, didn’t like?”

    Overall it’s ok.
    The HD models look ok without fucking up my fps even if I keep the same texture detail level.
    The historical battles are funny, especially with low tiers…yesterday I had the most enjoyable day of my WoT career: Trolling around with Pz2/SU-76 and even killing tier 8s with them…that was epic.
    I kind of dislike the new hangar…it’s nice, but too detailed and too complex…it kills my GPU.Thank god there are mods to replace it.
    And one more thing I really dislike…I cannot turn the god damn lightning effects off…The slider works, but there is no difference between Low and OFF option…it keeps showing me the light rays which are fucking my fps…In cloudy maps where there is no sun/sunlight whatsoever I have the same FPS as in 8.11.In sunny maps and maps where the sun is reflected into the ground I’m barely running at 20-30 fps…

    • My computer is showing it’s age, I was running ~25-30 FPS before, in this version, slightly turned down I was still only able to get ~15-20. Turning off shadows and “off” lighting looked like ass. Just said screw it and went back to standard graphics. 50-70 FPs with as much maxed as possible, Not as pretty, but I can’t do smoking hot pretty and playable at the same time.

      • Got a non OC 3GHz AMD Athlon X4 with a Radeon 6570 HD GPU and 4 gigs of RAM.
        I run the game(up to 8.11 with High textures, High Decals, Medium Terrain and Water quality and everything that is tied to effects(shadows, lightning, combat effects, track effects) and to vegetation off.
        The FPS I pull is around 40-50 fps on maps with a lot of vegetation and 50-60 FPS on city maps.

        In 9.0 I run with my proper FPS(using the same graphics setup) only when there is no sun/sun rays…because I cannot fucking turn them off whatsoever…

  10. Since i playing on laptop i always had performance issues…. but on test server i have some serious fps drops as i analyzed…. for some reason at some point in the game, (mostly after couple of matches) it stops using my videocard at max. but at about 70-80% and thanks to this the fps drops to 10-18….

    I overcame thie issue on live server patches ago.

    Also an important note… when current graphics was new the test server back then was also terrible for me but on live its nice :)

    Plus what i did not like was the historical battles layout, it should have a fixed layout and dont start a match with 6 hellcats on 1 side and 2 tigers on the other…. this is just stupid and unbalanced pertty much

  11. Apart from the colour filter that is applied when zoomed, if you set the fov more than 105 you get grass in sniper mode even if it’s disabled. Ammorack explosions and fires disappear if you turn off extra effects in sniper and turrets are visible after they reach mid air.

  12. Historical battles – really HUGE problem with forming of the teams. Long crowds of Tigers, Ferdinands and Jagdtigers, few SUs, ISUs and ISs. And NO T-34s, T-34/85s, no light tanks.

    Historically absolute disaster.

    Yes, we all expect that, but reality looks even worse. Give some wonder bonuses to players, driving unpopular tanks, not only achievements, but credits. For example – Balaton – every T-34/85 will obtain 3x more credits for every battle.

    • There should be some incentive for players that don’t want to play low tiers, to make them play them…
      Maybe I’ll sound retarded, but they’re damn funny and also can pull up some beast scores.
      SU-76 can even kill KTs/JTs. 0.0

    • Yeah, and unlike the normal issues on the test server this is a systemic problem which doesn’t seem like it will resolve on the live server (unlike tier 10 TD spam in earlier tests, etc.). Very few players will elect to play weaker tanks, but for sides to field large teams this needs to happen, otherwise you get half-sized or worse full of high tier tanks, even on the Soviet/USA sides.

      With random battles, people have to grind through the tiers (generally speaking), so there is naturally going to be people to fill up the battles, but nobody is going to grind a tank in a historical battle where it is at the bottom. I am doubtful profit incentives will do much, unless they are mission-like rewards.

      • It might only take a few of the really good players to dominate some HB matches in faster medium tanks to make people want to play them. This could be a wait and see item or maybe some posts to the higher rated players to field these tanks to make this mode more enjoyable. Personally i enjoyed my HBs and hope this mode will become something fun to do outside of the grind.

        • Yeah it’ll just take people learning (slowly) what it is that makes HBs balanced. Take Balaton: the ISU is pointless, the IS has a better gun, turret, more armour, more health and is lighter in MM weight. Also the SU100 has such a good gun for a tier 6, the T-34-85 is so quick and nimble. If you manage to fall in a battle with 0-1 ISUs you’ll make up for it with 3-4 extra tier 6s and just dominate the german team.

          Kursk is also wonky for the Russians because in the first few days you had swarms of KV1Ss that can’t even pen the Panther frontally taking up precious MM points that could go to the T-34 or SU85/152.

          And the Ardennes one, jesus its so easy to chew through a Tiger 2 with Jacksons but all the tomatos love their Hellcats and don’t realise they have little pop guns. A full team of Jacksons really can’t lose against any make up of German tanks unless they’re truly terrible.

            • as I just unlocked the Wolverine, I’m really looking forwards to that. Also, I don’t get why everybody thinks that Hellcat is better, it’s just faster, thus makes you rush a bit too much sometimes.

              The Jackson gets to have the 90mm M3 gun on it’s stock turret, so the grind is easier, it won’t get you thinking that you can scout, it has a bit trollish armor (poor tier 4′s trying to shoot the “lower plate” … I’ve seen a 2 man platoon get 3 tier 4′s and 2 tier 6′s killed in two minutes

              You up for the devastating ‘Toon of death once the 9.0 comes live?

  13. While not my main area of expertise, I did some basic skim reading.

    [- the appearance of Jagdtiger in historical battles is correct, “it fought there according to some data about the 512. Heavy Anti-Tank Batallion”]

    I assume he means on the lake Balaton map?

    That would require the battalion, including logistical support elements to be deployed from one front to the other in about 5 days.
    While not impossible, it seems somewhat tricky? Especially considering the state of German transport at the time.

    I wonder what the sources are? As its often the case to have enemy accounts to utterly miss identify tanks shooting at them, often picking the tank of legend (EG: Ambrose talking about a “Battalion of Tigers” attacking the 506st PIR in Normandy).

    • “I assume he means on the lake Balaton map?”
      yes, he does.

      Jagdtigers (12 of them or something) were a part of Danube defense operations, one was actually destroyed in southern Slovakia, I think they fought in battles of Vienna and/or Budapest. Damn, I can’t think of a source right now.

      Somebody?

  15. Of course WG finally hid the tier table, the match rigging was (again) fucking obvious… There were numerous instances when you had wait 2-3 minutes for a match in your tier 8 tank with 900+ other t8s in the waiting line. A long wait like this is a sure sign of an upcoming totally bullshit match (rigged win or loss).

      • it’s completely justified to be pissed if people have to wait in the queue when there’s enough players to start a battle because the MM system has to create some arbitrary averages. The moron is you who assumes people don’t know understand how it works when in fact we do, we just disagree with it.

        If there were some beneficial restrictions to the MM, I could live with it, for example “don’t match 1 tier 6 with 14 tier 8s.” but no, can’t have that.

            • No, the MM is not fair atm. A simple restriction that the number of top tiers can’t outmatch the number of lower tier tanks per battle and side would mean a lot and would be a huge step to balancing.
              Imagine a t10 game with 12 X’s per side, two 9′s and one 8, none of them being scouts. You call that fair? I think not.
              And the stupid mechanic of the average MM sucks, too. It is completely pointless to wait several minutes in your tier 8 just because there aren’t enough tier 10s to fill the matches because of that. Last seen on the wonderful tier 8 weekend special.

                • Actually, the OP said it was rigged:

                  “Of course WG finally hid the tier table, the MATCH RIGGING was (again) fucking obvious”

                  *Emphasis mine

  16. Also don’t believe in hiding tiers in queue for technical reasons – till now it worked, and suddenly can’t?
    1:40 waiting in tier VIII while there are few hundreds up to few thousands tier VIII vehicles in queue? It’s a joke and a big clue that matchmaker does something under the rug (like predicting a battle result way better than XVM can).

    I’d like to have a possibility to get a simpler, not so resource consuming hangar. Ok, it’s pretty, but I don’t give a crap about that. Tank in hangar helps in looking for possible weakspots, vertical armor and stuff, all other is irrelevant.
    I hope that simple hangar mods will appear really fast.

    Historical battle really should have higher credit/exp income, otherwise it will be a play for few and noobs – what would be the reason for a grinding player to waste time in such battle while he can grind in randoms with better tank configuration?

    • “Historical battle really should have higher credit/exp income, otherwise it will be a play for few and noobs…”

      I guess it’s exactly the other way round – if historical battles would provide low income, both XP and credits, noobs are least likely to play it.

      And the tier table hidden due to matched being rigged – I haven’t loled so hard lately… I keep records of my battles (5000 till now) and I cant see any rigging patterns in it (few day ago I won 11 battles in a row and I have 52%+ winrate, it should be rigged for me lose, shouldn’t it?). Probably WG loves me for some unknown reason and all other matches except my own ones are rigged. Wow, how happy I must be that WG programmed special algorithm only for me… or there is no rigging. I leave the answer for every one of you…

      • Well.
        I observe sinusoidal pattern in my WR – one day it goes great, the other – regardless what I do, it’s fail after fail, suddenly from day to day I forget how to play, and after few days I know how to play again.
        The best way to trigger such thing for me is to play clan company or platoon and then next day to play alone. Especially on EU2.

        Good indicator is time of waiting – battles that I don’t wait long are more or less normal, battles when I wait over a minute (regardless of number of players) are more often than those with short waiting period 15 to few.
        It isn’t only my feeling.

        Reading official matchmaker description there is nothing that would justify so long waiting times, which obviously leads to a conclusion that there is something that WG doesn’t tell.

    • Matchmaker will always lock up in circumstances where there is a disproportionate amount of one tier in the queue, I think its because it has to fill quotas of types of matches so that on average a tier 8 will see like 40% tier 6′s and 20% tier 10′s and the rest spread evenly. My observations anyway. When it happens, platoon with an arty and you’ll get a match instantly because there are never enough arty for the type of tank quotas. Worked a treat to get my 350,000 silver without falling asleep xD

  17. There is an bug on the reworked map severogorsk. Sometimes when you drive over a house or an car my fps drops by 50% from 60 to 30 fps. This gives a lagg spike.

  18. + german tanks look more “metallic”
    + rocks, stones look much better
    + flying turrets
    + independed suspension
    + T54 HD model

    +/- Tiger HD shapes are ok, but texture need more ” metal noise ”
    +/- Sherman shapes are ok, metallic texture is ok, but is too brighter and glowing too much

    - small FPS drop on old render, BIG fps drop on new render.
    - some american tanks look like… ( texture look like “caffè latte” with too much milk ) for example: T32, T57, but Pershing look good ( more metallic )
    - all french tanks are ugly, too brighter and the contrast between bright armor and black traks is totaly ugly !!! ( same situation with STB-1, too bright, traks, but it armor is more metallic )
    - IS7 is too dark and ugly now, but changes on IS6 are ok
    - Churchil III is too bright

    Tested with new and old render (C2D 3GHz, 4GB RAM, Radeon 4870 and i3 3,6 GHz, 4GB RAM, Intel HD 4600, on new render [ all low or disabled ]game on Intel GPU it isn’t playable in 8.11 and 9.0 but in 9.0 FPS drop is big.

    • - some american tanks look like… ( texture look like “caffè latte” with too much milk ) for example: T32, T57, but Pershing look good ( more metallic )
      - all french tanks are ugly, too brighter and the contrast between bright armor and black traks is totaly ugly !!!

      This. Most of the Americans and Frenchies look awful now.

  19. Wouldn’t it be faster to select a tank and let the MM randomly choose a historical battle for them? Like the Pzkpfw IV H for example, which can appear in all three maps?

    • this is a really, really good suggestion.

      Many game developers just fail to understand that sometimes we just want to play SOMETHING.

    • There is however a problem with this. As you would need to drastically increase the number of tank options per map to increase the spread of tanks over several maps. Also some tanks would need different modules for different maps.

      But I think it could be done. Also ammo load outs do change as the war dragged on especially for the American tanks. IE Tungsten round availability increased over time.

    • This is just as it is now, when you drive on top of another tank, both of you will get damage over time. This was introduced to prevent situations like ELC driving on top of a Maus :D

  22. Here’s my feedback (Test rig, gamer laptop i7 2670, Nvidia GTX560, 16 GB RAM, 1080p display):

    + HD models look amazing
    + tanks rendered with the new shaders but not yet HD also look much improved
    + Maps look much more beautiful now – all the textures are more detailed and vivid, vegetation quality is improved
    + The effects are much better
    + The game in general look completely overhauled, there will be some getting used to it.

    - General FPS decrease, despite f the decent hardware and despite a lot of people are reporting same or improved performance. I need solid 40+, but most of the time I am in the low 30s, dropping to 20s from time to time, almost regardless of the settings. I experimented how most settings affect FPS (it is similar like before). FPS is completely independent of the base settings – “Texture quality” and “Terrain quality” in my configuration. Most other setting also have relatively minor effect on FPS (apart from the shadows, which are inappropriately taxing as usual). All in all, I cannot achieve decently balanced configuration.
    - Overclocking (of GPU that is) is still incompatible with WoT. It simply crashes sooner or later, no matter how mild it is, no matter that there is no heat issue whatsoever. Otherwise, it extracts a very useful FPS gain, but it cannot be used due to crashes.
    - Tracks look too shiny and somewhat strange both in garage and in battle
    - Track traces are absent (I think), no matter if the setting is on or off
    - The green filter while zooming is annoying

    • Yeahh I agree with this. I’m having the same issues with the fps. I have the same graphics card, it ran 8.11 at least in the 40+ now i’m dropping to the 20′s, I need 40+ and I know my graphics card can handle it.

      • I agree, 8.11 felt more soild in terms of fps, in 9.0 the fps differ more and I get more fps drops, despite same settings as mentioned before. Overall, there are little differance in fps between different settings though. The improved graphic shaders and textures etc on tanks and objects do look nice, but they seem to affect some peóple more then others though. I have AMD videocard if that makes any differance.

        BTW, green zooming can be removed by no “shadow scope” mod, go look official forums for it if you wanna. But thats a minor issue according to me. The major issue is those despite decent systems getting lower fps and less smooth gaming.

  24. + HD tanks look simply beautiful, maybe the tracks are too shiny
    + tanks overall look better now
    + new hangar, it’s great
    + new effects
    + new UI, especially messages in hangar
    - some of the tanks look awful, especially French and American ones, they look like someone splashed them with hectoliters of pastel paint
    - Tiger is too dark, got in a shadow on Karelia and it was just a black box
    - historical battles need serious tweaking, no balance whatsoever
    - German tech tree looks really bad and weird with that stretched tier 4, especially when it’s double tier 4 grind for tier 5, vertical stretch would be alot better
    Didn’t notice any FPS drops, but tests always run better for me for some reason.

    • “- German tech tree looks really bad and weird with that stretched tier 4, especially when it’s double tier 4 grind for tier 5, vertical stretch would be alot better” man you don’t know how much i agree with you. That stretch make me feel bad :/

  25. Install the no shadow scope mod for 8.11 to remove the green tint. Its freaking annoying to have green tint, specially since tanks far away is getting more faded than before.

  28. - the T-54 frontal plate mudguard is not a part of the collision model, because it’s made of wood

    Ha ha, what?

  31. Wow i can’t believe not more people in here are complaining about historical battles. Its a disaster!!! i tried low tier (3-5) a couple of times only to get in games where the next lowest tier tank is 3-4 tiers above me. Completely unplayable if you don’t choose a big tank like every other idiot out there do. This is very sad as i hoped this would be awesome. I have no doubt that WG will look at the test server stats and disband all data because no “real” historical battles were fought. Only idiots in tigers, and a lot of hellcats.

    The 3rd historical battle is the most playable as one side is all tier6 americans. Trouble is i’ve played this many many times and USA always wins because the german side is a couple of higtiers and some lowtiers and noone go low tier so only a couple of hightiers…. this equals USA wins everygodamntime.

    Green tint annoying.
    New models are awesome really awesome.
    Game looks like shit on new renderer as i had to turn lightning and shadows off. Colors are messed up bad (very very much oversaturated colours), and i will go back to old renderer if it wasnt for the queue time :/ this is no doubt my crappy laptop showings its age tho, and i do need to upgrade soon anyway :P When i turn setting up it looks gorgeues so maybe just optimize low settings as it really got a hell of a lot uglier from my point of view

    Other stuff:
    Chosen resupply funds (gold/silver) reset back to gold under service when you tick “resupply automatically” (this is a re-appearing test error)
    One of the new german low tier tanks is all messed up with camo on (cant remember the exact tank)
    UI changes (ie. fading transactions) are very welcome and looks good. Forgot to test the mouse-scrollspeed of the notifications list… it has always been a crappy scroller moving 1inch when scrollwheeling a full motion.
    New hangar looks good. But it runs lower fps there than ingame!!! simply not acceptable in a UI to have 10fps. Takes me ages to select tanks etc.

    Last minute additions.
    Bring back the t50-2, ban the motionblur effect in all games period….. and peace on earth for all!!! D:

  32. - historical battles
    >>>>are ok, nothing mindbreaking but much better than confrontation

    - reworked tanks
    >>> as i have camo on all tanks i can’t comment on the “naked” textures, the models themselves are awesome!

    - performance (FPS drops)
    >>> did not notice any drops, still 80-120fps (my sys: http://www.sysprofile.de/id182010 ) (1920×1200, all settings maxed out, dynamic change of options (or however this think is called) deactived).

    - new UI
    >>> a bit too much “little children candy style”, but the hangar (premium) itself great.

    - new post-effect in sniper mode
    >>>this is the typical view/”green” as if you would look through the FLIR of Leo/Leo2/modern Airplane/Heli, not fitting to the times from which most of the tanks you can play within WoT origin. First mod i would install is getting right of that shitty green and get back the real sniper view (zoomed area normal colours, outside black, as if you would look through a sniperrifles bino…hey, it is SNIPERmode! ;))

  33. Historical battle mode: played a few. It seems to me that it’s just not worth it playing low tiers because you get killed easily. Also, the game doesn’t last long. Hopefully they will make respawn possible in the future, that way we could get a longer battle and low tiers would have a better experience. Also, Tiger IIs seems still too strong, its MM weight should be raised a bit. And why does Easy Eight have the 75mm? Give back its 76mm! I hope Jagdpanzer IVs and KV-2s could appear in these battles in the next round.

    Tank changes: Nice change with the Chaffee. The 75mm howitzer on the M5 Stuart is floating in the front of its turret. This gun should be replaced with another gun. Since .50cal and 15mm BESA got thier buff, the russian 12.7mm DShK should also get a penetration buff to 27mm. Also the camo on my Pz. III is weird.

    Graphic: Very good. Great new hangar. I like the green in sniper view, but I don’t think it’s historical. I hope they could switch back to the old sniper view and give it a color filter to simulate the coated optics.

    • Respawn…. Really? i mean… really? Omg that stuff should be for arcade battles if anything. If you want respawn, historical is probably not the way to go bro.

      About getting killed easily in lowtiers. well yeah you tend to get that treatment right now on the test-server because no-one has any balls, and if you do go low tier the mm can’t do nothing but give you shit to play!
      As it is now the MM appears to be strugling. Every time i press queue it tells me ALOT of heavies and td’s in queue. 0 in medium 0 in light. If you choose a heavy = prepare to wait for fail mm. Choose a light tank = insta game and also instadeath as you realize the mm is much much worse than it should be.

      Am sorry if my tone sounds harsh, just really irritates me that you actually evaluated and took the test serious, as it is clearly broken (new gamemode part that is)

      I really really really hope wg don’t release historical battles as it is now, its a face. Then its team battles all over again. There you could choose every tank you like and get raped if it’s not a certain “unwritten” set of tanks. Thanks WG

      Now at least we have a tank restriction – which is accurate and seems like fun. Only the big tanks join as there is no spot-fillers on low tier tho so new kinda error.

      • WG said they will made low tier tanks respawn later, so I was kinda looking forward to that.

        • You mean you respawn AGAIN later right? Like multiple respawns… No fun in just arriving late to the game in a low tier :P

          So all right. Not a bad idea,… kinda like that actually, but personally i think little will change because of that, players will still mass up the queue in a uneven scale cuz they want that one-sided game of “sealbashing” in their jagdtiger. But i am a pessimist so i hope i get proven wrong XD