26.3.2014

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Hey everyone, you can leave your 9.0 feedback to Overlord on his blog.

Also, new (micropatch compatible) version of Gnomefather’s sound mod is out, you can get it right here.

Please note that 9.0 test, round 2 will start tomorrow (confirmed by WG)

- T-54′s assymetrical turrect is correct, WG checked
- in test round 2, there will be probably 8 HD tank models
- it’s not yet known, how long will the entire conversion of all models to HD take, because the developers haven’t reached the “mass production” speed of remodelling yet
- there will be (at least) two more 9.0 test rounds
- from 9.0, it will not be possible to switch triple buffering off, it will always be turned on apparently
- apparently, US player Lynnette_JJW M6A2E1 info (SS: probably this thread) made its way to Storm personally (he’s aware of it)


- “there is certain probability” of having female crews in the game
- it’s possible that even the new T-54 model is incorrect, the turret seems to be too far to the back
- there will be the option to download HD models, but play with the old render
- dirt on tracks will appear after 9.0
- apparently (if I understand it correctly), TXAA anti-aliasing is connected with implementing Dx11 support
- it’s complicated to give Sherman really realistically-looking tracks (SS: the issue was that on real Sherman, the tracks are having pin covers (whatever that is) and in the game they don’t)
- regarding the respawn in historical battles, Storm states that they took the lessons from War Thunder to heart, that’s why only some (lowtier) tanks will respawn
- supertesters in the past actually tested historical “hardcore” battles without tank hitpoints, according to Storm, only cca 4 out of 100 supertesters actually liked it, this idea was scrapped
- World of Tanks has net problems, when there are more than 30 tanks in battle, Battlefield series don’t have such limitations, because a lot the game is calculated client-side

And finally…

Storm: “Brace yourselves, a storm of tank rebalance is coming soon”

127 thoughts on “26.3.2014”

  1. “Brace yourselves, a storm of tank rebalance is coming soon”
    - Ofc it does because havoc will bring “new” physics. Unless they are planning to buff and nerf tanks just because they want people to grind new ones and spend money on free xp.

    • Well the T-54 got a nerf in the Turret armor.
      The current trend is that the Russians are getting nerfed.

      This would be interesting.

        • Unless you spam gold it’s a very skill heavy tank as it can’t rely on gun depression or silly high standard penetration to save it. In the current meta of the game where getting hit is almost certain death because TD’s take about half its health each hit it can be very challenging to do well in because it needs to be aggressive to get damage out. The newer support mediums kind of over shadow the T-54 on a one to one basis as they can generally do more damage and survive longer because they don’t need to actively aggress at the enemy like the T-54 does. The T-54′s greatest strengths tend to come out when you have two or three actively attacking with some support behind them and in late battle where its mobility and flex can be used effectively against scattered enemies.

          The Fattons and the Jap tanks can just peek-a-boo over hills to keep damage rolling at much lower risk throughout the battle. Which due to WarGaming’s map team never actually going outside is a pretty viable tactic due to the unnaturally hilly nature of the maps in game.

    • Will the Tiger II finally get the Love it deserves????? 235 penn/ 360 alpha………plz WG god, aka, Da Serb ;)

      • Dude, the King Tiger is just fine in game already; it’s probably one of the best balanced tanks in game. The last thing it needs is a buff, it’s already awesome.

        • Lol its perfectly fine with the gun stats, dont see why it needs a buff. Why would you need 235mm pen on a heavy tenk at tier 8 anyways? I say balance the other tanks if you think they “overperform”. If you cant play the tiger II and make 1800+ avr dmg solo, AP ammo only, then you are not entitled to complain.

      • The Tiger 2 is already one of the best T8 heavies. If anything, it is going to get nerfed a little.

          • Tiger II could still use a front turret armor buff. That would make it “good”, by any standard. The KT is slower, but the armor weakspots dont really give it a front armor advantage either. You cant just hide your LFP and expect to be okay.

            The 180ish mm flat armor plate on the turret isnt going to cut it on a tier 8 heavy. At closer ranges its rather easy to just shoot around the mantlet, plus the same weakness also partially negates the Tiger II’s sidescraping ability.. since anyone can just try a shot at the front turret armor plate. This alone puts it far back in the line of the “better tier 8 heavies” ingame.

            Tiger II could use a buff, by any means.

    • I really hope the rebalance is directed towards nerfing that awful cheat tank WTFE100, nerfing gold ammo pen by a lot, so that it stops being autopen on high caliber guns and I hope it means KV-1S and Hellcat go to hell where they belong, even if I do have a KV-1S myself (reason being I like to have a tank from each tier to play with). Maybe we can rebalance the Deathstar with more pen, less damage and buff the MAUS with some nice ROF. Seeing the MAUS in its current state is just awful. Fuck power creep.

  2. “- “there is certain probability” of having female crews in the game”

    There are mods for this and I already use one of them, a family-friendly version too. Would be great to have in-game as well, like so many other interesting and helpful mods which could be easily incorporated into the game.

    • Another great opportunity for encouraging players to buy gold. Don’t like your crew to look like women (using a mod) but still have male names? Pay to have them changed.

      Most tankers won’t care, but there will be some that do. And certainly having female crewmembers isn’t pay to win.

    • Irina Nikolaevna Levchenko (1924-1973), lieutenant colonel and author. Levchenko was the daughter of a former minister of transportation and victim of Stalin’s terror. Appointed as a noncommissioned officer (NCO) at the age of seventeen, senior lieutenant at twenty-one, and major at twenty-eight, Levchenko became lieutenant colonel at thirty-one. She was skilled in tank driving, firing the tank gun, handling small arms, and dispensing first aid. Levchenko received her basic tank training with the 39th Tank Brigade in the Crimea, where she served as a medical NCO. After graduating from the Stalingrad Tank School in July 1942, Levchenko became a tank platoon commander. She also served as assistant tank battalion chief of staff and was liaison officer of the 41st Tank Brigade of the 7th Mechanized Corps. Levchenko ended her army career as a tank corps liaison officer, an appointment granted to the bravest, most resourceful, and most proven in combat. A participant in a reunion of Soviet and U.S. soldiers on the Elbe in 1945, Levchenko graduated from the Moscow Academy of Armored and Mechanized Troops in 1952. The first Soviet recipient of the Florence Nightingale Medal, she was decorated twelve times. She was awarded the HSU on May 6, 1965.

      Mariia Vasil’ievna Oktiabrskaya (1905-1944), Guards sergeant. Oktiabrskaya served as tank driver-mechanic with the 26th Tank Brigade of the 2nd Tatsinsky Guards Tank Corps on the 3rd Belorussian front. As the wife of the political commissar of an infantry regiment before the war, Oktiabrskaya became an expert driver and Voroshilov sharpshooter. After evacuation to Tomsk, Siberia, and on learning that her husband, parents, and two sons had been killed, Oktiabrskaya sent all her savings to the authorities in Moscow to cover the cost of manufacturing a tank she wished to drive. Eventually, the authorities complied with her wishes. After training in tank driving, she distinguished herself in her first battle by maneuvering her tank onto enemy positions. Mortally wounded in the head while repairing a damaged track on January 17, 1944, Ok-tiabrskaya was buried in Kutuzov Gardens in Smolensk with other famous war heroes. She became a posthumous HSU recipient on August 2, 1944.

      BTW SS you should write an article about female tankers :) (good hunting on this topic :D)

      • PS: i would imagine that there will be a checkbox for “women crew” in the tank purchase window and female voiceovers.
        “We’ve hit them hard girls!”
        “Unser Fahrerin hat getötet!”
        Naming would be funny tho… 5 Joan d’Arc in every french tonk :)

          • My fv4202 crew
            Bruce Willis: commander
            Ryan Reynolds: gunner
            Abraham Lincoln: driver
            Lance Armstrong: loader
            And yes, i got bored and spent gold on it xD its my pimp tank

            • Lance Armstrong fully loaded too :-)

              Does that give you improved reloading time ???? XD

            • My american crew rocks then… all african-american (and the same face) and all named “John Smith”. :D

    • FMA, HELL YEAH MOTHERFUCKER!!! :D

      Also, maybe they will make M48 good againgive it its old 6,75s reload!!!!) :D would absolutely love to see it in CW’s :3

  4. ‘- from 9.0, it will not be possible to switch triple buffering off, it will always be turned on apparently’

    Triple buffering enabled means more vram usage even without v-sync enabled. I don’t understand the logic behind this since WG wants the game to perform on low-end PCs…

    ‘Storm: “Brace yourselves, a storm of tank rebalance is coming soon”’

    Blood and tears incoming.

    • Most graphics card drivers allow to disable/overwrite triple buffering.
      Plus GPUs have a whole lot of VRAM so this might be the last thing they will take care of.

      • It is still dumb since most russian PC are wooden made and steampowered. And most people just do not know what a driver is.
        This is supposed to be a casual game for family dad. WG words.

  5. “- supertesters in the past actually tested historical “hardcore” battles without tank hitpoints, according to Storm, only cca 4 out of 100 supertesters actually liked it, this idea was scrapped”

    Well, I remember when the Aufklärungspanzer Panther was supertested and something like 3 out 4 supertesters liked it. It was said most of them would grind that stronk tenk.

    I would make a public test of these hardcore battles. Those supertesters are total “scrub shitlords”, and their opinion is “worthless” as the progamerers @ wot-labs would say. :D

      • Agreed; I don’t have it myself but a friend of mine does. He basically described it as (in his own words) “a tank with a lot of potential but a steep learning curve. There’s nothing else quite like it in the game, and thus it requires a whole new play style of its own compared to other light tanks of the previous few tiers and of the same tier on other trees.”

        • It is a good machine, no doubt about it. But it is far from a scout, too big, you can’t hide reliably.
          It’s however a pretty good counter scout and at harassing.

    • “Those supertesters are total “scrub shitlords”, and their opinion is “worthless” as the progamerers @ wot-labs would say. :D”

      agreed, sane players would not allowed the 8.6 arty nerf being that big… seriously, you need zoom out mod to see your aiming circle after turning… *facepalm*

      • Sane players agreed that spg needed to be nerfed to current state.

        The ones complaining are the ones whose easy left-click-to-win button has been nerfed.

        • They nerfed T10 TDs? Not really. The moment a Obj268 or WTF100 driver complains about the recent “”””nerf”””””, I laugh in his face. Arty is the most team-dependent class, apart from pre-HE nerf (so about 2-3yrs ago) SU-26, arty never was “I win”. That is the domain of the OP T10 TDs – camp in bush, eat some popcorn, click the left mouse button, win.

    • I call bullshit on this one.
      Supertesters said the tank was viable only by ramming and that was on tests made using it only VS other lights.

      OTOH supertesters have a pretty limited influence on tank balace.

  6. What’s the bullshit with the Sherman tracks? The area marked on the pictures looks damn near identical (except for the track pads of course), what were the people saying this smoking? I’m a big “realistic appearance” buff but here even I think it’s perfectly modelled.

    • the pin is on wrong place. in real the pin connects two track parts. at WG’s model its in the middle of one track part. what’s complete bs.

      • IRL, as Sleipnir says, the pincovers “connect” the different sections of track together…

        For WG to recreate this properly, that means double the number of moving parts for the model to to render and work as per IRL…

        Simply laziness or keeping “moving parts” numbers down…

        • *while moving to the hill*
          Damn! those tracks are just hideous!
          *shooting to the HD modeled Tiger*
          I need more polygon to kill my computer!

        • Moving parts numbers is definitely a factor. It still looks pretty okay, and I can “unsee” the whole mistake so no problem :)

          • Nope, the tracks don’t have any moving parts, at all. It’s still just a strip with moving textures, albeit it’s done pretty clever this time.

            If it’s not fixed with a minipatch, I expect me and at least another couple folks will be posting minimods fixing this the moment it goes live.

      • The wooden log on the T-54 is 1mm too far to the left.
        This is complete bullshit WG.

        War Thunder wont make such a stupid mistake. Im going to quit WoT because of this glaring unhistorical mistake.

        I dont have any measurements to prove why its 1mm too far to the left.
        You are going to have to trust my word.

      • Yeah, the problem probably being that the tracks are modelled from parts, and separate pins would mean extra stuff needed to by synchronized with tracks. Still looks weird, but in battle… meh.

        • The fact I didn’t notice means it’s okay. And I don’t even notice it now, it’s definitely NOT the “cannot unsee” situation.

  7. Tank rebalance, great news. As long as they don’t tactically make some tanks OP on purpose.

  8. - regarding the respawn in historical battles, Storm states that they took the lessons from War Thunder to heart, that’s why only some (lowtier) tanks will respawn

    LOL, now they start copying War Thunder. Next up is WOWP. Its just to show how good War Thunder is compared to WOT.

    • It would be stupid of them not to look at the competition and take lessons from both what is good and bad over there, it’s part of how you achieve success.
      You can tell Gaijin has been doing exactly the same for the past few years when WoT was live and WT GF was not even in development yet. Just goes to show youy how good WoT is compared to WT!

    • keep dreaming about it :)

      srsly now, both games are good in their own way. no need to compare them

  9. “- World of Tanks has net problems, when there are more than 30 tanks in battle, Battlefield series don’t have such limitations, because a lot the game is calculated client-side”

    So if they ditched RNG for something easier to compute they could have more than 30 tanks in a battle?!

    I LIKE THIS IDEA!

    EDIT-also this is proof that WG controls the outcome of the battles not the players.

    • Admit it, you didn’t understand a single bit of what is being said there. This was nothing to do with RNG or the grand WG conspiracy to make you lose, it’s all to do with the server-side centric nature of the game, to make sure nobody’s cheating, as opposed to the almost entirely decentralized, P2P nature of most twitch shooters, which opens the door wide open for wide scale cheating.

    • RNG is actually one of the easiest systems out of those mentioned. The spotting checks are the most hogging ones, and they increase exponentially with added tanks (30 tanks in a battle with three spots per tank in a small group need 2610 spot checks every half a second or so, 40 tanks need 4680, 50 tanks need 7350 – and that’s a single battle.

      IIRC they said that 75-80% of the server power is used only for spotting checks.

      • IIRC they said that 75-80% of the server power is used only for spotting checks.

        How many server power is needed when a platoon of Pz I C start shooting? :)

    • The problem with a game that’s run client-side is the major thing that WoT has managed to avoid so far: genuine hacking.

  10. Storm: “Brace yourselves, a storm of tank rebalance is coming soon”

    Winter is coming…

  14. I’m still waiting for some epic & bespoke voice mods from the community. Can’t believe they are taking so long. Need more passionate voice acting and perhaps some swearing pls. At the least some regional variants, particularly for UK/US (since I only speak English :-P).

  15. Lynnettes info? a large majorty of it is mine ;p She just mushed my posts all together and likes to keep the topic up top.

  16. - apparently, US player Lynnette_JJW M6A2E1 info (SS: probably this thread) made its way to Storm personally (he’s aware of it)

    Nice, I’ve been waiting for a buff for months, since the introduction of gold ammo for credits and high-pen guns.

  17. - there will be the option to download HD models, but play with the old render

    GUESS WHO’S GONNA MAKE USE OF THAT ?

    OLD RENDER BEST RENDER
    OLD RENDER BEST RENDER
    OLD RENDER BEST RENDER
    OLD RENDER BEST RENDER
    OLD RENDER BEST RENDER
    OLD RENDER BEST RENDER
    OLD RENDER BEST RENDER
    OLD RENDER BEST RENDER
    OLD RENDER BEST RENDER
    OLD RENDER BEST RENDER
    OLD RENDER BEST RENDER
    OLD RENDER BEST RENDER

    • WG graphical designers practically fucked up the 3D model system. The HD models are…nice, but they LITERALLY rammed their dicks into the game and cummed so hard that their cum created a lot more files for re-work.

      I want my old Tiger 3D model back. ;n;

      • DAT FEEL WHEN NO OLD GLORIOUS PZ IV MODEL AND NEW SHIT TIER PZ IV WITH SHURTZEN AND MADE OF JUNK METAL ;__;

        Y U DO DIS 2 ME WG ? Y U MAKE PZ IV SO SHIT LOOKING NAO ?!

  18. Female crews……Japanese school girls anyone?

    Anyway, I smell balance for my little Chaffee.

  19. - apparently, US player Lynnette_JJW M6A2E1 info (SS: probably this thread) made its way to Storm personally (he’s aware of it)

    Until this is available to the masses – this effects a paltry minority of the community at least on the NA server, so unless the changes happen to appease the RU players who were able to buy them for nearly 3 years – it probably won’t get much attention.

    - World of Tanks has net problems, when there are more than 30 tanks in battle, Battlefield series don’t have such limitations, because a lot the game is calculated client-side

    File this under “Duh” …. WG – you still have so much to learn…

  20. - supertesters in the past actually tested historical “hardcore” battles without tank hitpoints, according to Storm, only cca 4 out of 100 supertesters actually liked it, this idea was scrapped

    96 out of 100 super-testers are probably scrubs anyways

  21. Storm: “Brace yourselves, a storm of tank rebalance is coming soon”

    I see what you did there. I will make sure he gets nerfed last as well

  25. Very informative post from Lynnette_JJW about my old favorite, M6A2E1. It is very lacking in its tier but its always nice to hear newer players wonder what monstrosity this is, as they see it in their tier 6 tanks, yet to encounter other huge but much deadlier beasts like Maus and the E-100 family.

  27. Pingback: World of Tanks News 26 03 2014

  28. Ah, so to be heard by WG HQ in Belarus, from the NA forums, you have to belong to a USSR-themed clan.