4.7.2014

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- FV4202 replacement confirmed (“when it’s done it’s done”)
- currently, TD hardcap is not planned
- during a recent Wargaming HQ meeting, it was cleared for some people (SS: in this case Tanitha) to discuss the global development and issues more at their own discretion (SS: the last part is important)
- too many people AFKing in battles (on ASIA server)? “People believe in a lot of things. You are free to continue to believe what you wish.”
- captcha for botting suspects? “End of the year is probably more realistic for a final implementation, all going to plan and plans not changing.” (SS: players suspected of botting will have to fill captcha every time they want to go to battle)
- regarding the blocking of bots: “…they cant really be blocked. All attempts I’ve seen from all other software companies blocking bots in the past, resulted in bots being blocked for about ~4 hours. 4 hours later the altered bot was back out in circulation, with no effect.”

82 thoughts on “4.7.2014”

      • Nah, I don’t see a problem, just nerf the camo more and It’ll sort out by itself.

        Oh and btw, Arty hard cap is currently at 3 or 4 per team ?

        • 5 per team max, but the matchmaker is tweaked so it will put as less as he can (chances to get 5 are way lower than 0), they have posted it in their video about MM.

        • Let’s all have the same tank then it will be fair…. NO!

          Seriously though, do people want all tanks to be the same? Destroy TDs again by nerfing their class bonus? People are playing TDs because they were grinding those lines or because of their differing playstyles. Are people going to start moaning about the amount of Heavies or the amount of Mediums or LTs? This is just more Butthurt whinging and complaining from people getting smashed in pubs where co-ordination of teams is non-existent compared to company/CW.

          • Too much TD and SPG on a team is not a good thing… it’s going to turn into a campfest(or charge into open with TD and SPG and lose horribly) which is toxic for gameplay.

            And when all TD camp…they tend to all shoot the same target, wasting at least half of the shots, then get lit and sniped by rest of enemy team.

      • what next, a med hardcap, a heavy hardcap? we dont need such bullshit, everything is fine with TDs. Only noobs whine about too many TDs, i never had a problem with that (or arty btw)

        • No one would complain about battles with too many mediums or heavys because those games can still be pushed with skill. People complain about arty and TD’s because they lead to the correct route being to camp until the other side has lost patience, then blasting forward with superior numbers

          • Well, the people who call others noobs for complaining about td’s are greens while some purples hate playing mediums against a full team of tier 10 td’s.

            definitely just noobs complaining, if something results into camping for 12 minutes of the 15 minute game then it needs adjusting, td’s and artillery cause people to hide behind rocks all game.

    • There isn’t a heavy or medium hard cap despite me seeing teams filled mostly with heavies or mediums so why should TDs get a hardcap?

      • Because it’s not heavy or medium tanks that are overperforming (In the late tiers)? :P.

        • Overperforming or people expressing their complaints about being unable to beat TDs? FlavioB, are you driving HTs? The map changes have “leveled” the battlefields in so many ways, do you complain about TDs in Himmelsdorf, Ruinberg, Karkov?

          • TD’s cause most of the power creep: Foch, 183, Wt e-100, etc. If they weren’t such standouts it would be different

          • Well, a tier VIII medium with no armor and no mobility with a 20 pdr sounds a bit lackluster to me, so it should work fine as a premium as long as Wargaming would allow another premium tier VIII tank that doesn’t sell premium ammo for them (like the T34). Looking at the new German premium medium with the Tiger gun, I’d say they might allow it.

      • Its real configuration isn’t though. It will make a perfectly good Tier VIII Premium using its real stats. Remember Wargaming didn’t do the measurements right the first time around.

        • The second time it was thought to be better than even in the game and the third it revealed to be even worse than the first time :o

          Anyway, I think it’s going to be a great premium once it gets historically accurate :D

          Even now it’s such a boring tank, Centurion Action X variant or Chieftain would make a much more interesting tier X for brits imo

          • for med the Centurion Action X cause well brits are famous for there cents
            and Chieftain as a heavy cause right now the british has the one and only issue that you grind up until tier 9 and stop cause Cent 7/1 and Conqueror are better then there tier 10′s :P

              • Quite serious. They share a playstyle (FV can hull down a bit better, but thats it), have very similar gun stats, and the hull armor is identical on both. All things being equal Id take the chance of being on a tier where 400 alpha is a bit more reasonable.

      • has better armor than cent 1, fcm 50t panther 2 and indien and the gun is also better than the dca and 88l71.

        • by concept prem tanks are week then regular one if he get hes real gun the 20 pdr hes armor gonna go below even some lights :) and btw now hes over buffed to make in t10 so don’t worry if he becomes prem hes gonna get balanced … for t8 prem

  3. - captcha for botting suspects? “End of the year is probably more realistic for a final implementation, all going to plan and plans not changing.” (SS: players suspected of botting will have to fill captcha every time they want to go to battle)

    I think I remember reading that captcha can be bypassed too…by program typing correct words/numbers.

    • It is more difficult since they have to machine read an image with a lot of junk that foils computer recognition. This is why in Asia there is employment as a captcha key typist.

      • It can be bypassed easily if the program that runs the captcha “knows” the answer.
        If they put the source picture and the answer on the server, you can bypass it only by a image processing algorithm, which is not that easy to make.

        • Of course, that is the achilles heel of the captcha system. Somebody must know the answer. But that still means that you must “hack” into the system to get the answer. If you do there is no need to recognize the image.

          • On WoT CN server, captcha system was implemented before patch 8.0, and it didn’t have any effect on reducing botting, so the system is abandoned now. How bots bypass captchas (in case you may wonder)?
            Every time a botting program meets a captcha, it uploads the image to a server hosted by people maintaining the bot. There one (or more) person(s) fill in the captchas manually. These guys are payed with the money from the people who buy the botting program.

            • the funny thing is that this actually attests that captcha works defeating automated system and you have to put humans into it.

              Also it only works with alpha numeric captchas, things like keycaptcha or ASIRRA can’t be solved remotely (well they could but you basically would have allow a remote connection to your pc)

    • Operation NIGGER , that was last time I heard something to work against captcha but it’s obsolete, other than that, if you don’t have a bunch of chinese slaves filling your captcha, there’s no way to bypass it. I only hope that once they implement it, it won’t be trigger happy and pop out like every battle or so.

  5. WG came up with the Captcha idea themselves, or did they actually, if eventually, listen to the customers?

    • I suggested that on different occasions, for a longer time. But that doesn’t mean anything. If you think about the problem, that kinda is the obvious solution (or at least a simple and effective step forward to solving it – depending on the actual implementation, and on the wages for slave labor in China).

  6. Not my Fv4202 my poor beloved I’ll miss you I shall play you a few more times until you are replaced

      • I havent played this tank, nor i saw many in randoms. Whats actually wrong with this vechicle :D ?

        • It’s slow, has basically no armour and its L7 is the worst of the available ones. Its frontal slope CAN bounce…but if they can see your frontal slope then you’re already dead anyway as your turret has no armour to speak of. it also suffers from the rear axle issue and double normalisation penalty from sideplates, so it can’t sidescrape.

          Also, no high pen gold round.

        • There is little that’s exceptional about it, that’s all – DPM 2nd lowest of the t10 meds, slowest tier 10 medium, little armor to speak of, just occasional bounces on the sloped hull and turret BUT it’s got excellent gun handling, wonderful terrain resistance and power-to-weight ratio better than Leo IIRC (gives it excellent hill climbing ability, only beaten by BC25t). It’s an excellent sniper and hill fighter and a damn good tank for random battles but of very limited use in organised battles.

          I sincerely hope they will replace it with Action X Centurion because Cent 7 was pretty awesome.

        • Doesn’t stand out, it’s playstyle is in between E-50M and Patton III but has a max speed of 40km/h even though it has a decent engine. It simply is too slow to do MT stuff.

          It’s gun can actually snipe becasue it has excellent handling and accuracy but gold ammo is actually a HE wiith 210mm penetration, it’s very unpredictable in damage dealt. Also, if you really want to snipe, you get either Leopard or E50M, both are better at this while first is faster and second has an actual protection (if you know how to use it)

          Another thing is its own armor… Weirdly shaped, 120mm front bounces everything right in to turret… that’s all I know about armor, didn’t played it much as I only tried it several times during various test servers.

          I didn’t find this tank interesting to play, it’s a jack of all trades but… yeah, it doesn’t have the mobility to compensate unreliable armor and vice versa. The gold shell is unreliable as well, the gun is very mediocre for a tier X MT. Well, maybe except that it has good accuracy on the move but that’s because you’re not moving faster than 40km/h

          Though that’s just my personal opinion, it might be fun for you :)

          • I actually like this tank very much, one of most fun tanks to play in randoms for me.
            Amazing depression. Aim time great. Excelent climber. What else do you need?

        • The problem is power creep secondly what exactly is gonna be solved with a replacing it the other suggested tanks are as slow same gun fires hesh and action x will have the same turret concept not much will be changed

  7. - during a recent Wargaming HQ meeting, it was cleared for some people (SS: in this case Tanitha) to discuss the global development and issues more at their own discretion (SS: the last part is important)

    So, Tanitha was gagged then ?

    • Not sure if trolling or miisunderstood. It’s the opposite, the gag order was lifted somewhat, he can discuss more about it.

      • The gag order has been lifted for selected people. Tanitha is probably one of those authorized to speak.

        • This doesnt look like wargaming :-X She was actually giving us correct and somehow interesting info…

  8. I think the FV4202 will be premium tank. Now if you’ll excuse me i’m gonna go start my way to the brit tier X medium. I sense a free premium tank. Sadly I don’t have premium account so it will be 50% slower. I’m not really sure if I can do it without it, but it’s 50€ or 20€(?) for free so must try to get it. I hope I will not fail, but it’s an option

    • high five dude, me too.
      but one question, i can’t remember, was there a discount top tree for them? hm..

    • They’re not gonna do that again. WG gave away too many T34s for their own taste, it’s unlikely there will be a repeat.

  9. There is little that’s exceptional about it, that’s all – DPM 2nd lowest of the t10 meds, slowest tier 10 medium, little armor to speak of, just occasional bounces on the sloped hull and turret BUT it’s got excellent gun handling, wonderful terrain resistance and power-to-weight ratio better than Leo IIRC (gives it excellent hill climbing ability, only beaten by BC25t). It’s an excellent sniper and hill fighter and a damn good tank for random battles but of very limited use in organised battles.

    I sincerely hope they will replace it with Action X Centurion because Cent 7 was pretty awesome.

  10. I think even if the FV4202 is going to be a premium we won’t have it for free. Wargaming was clear about that “no free stuff like that in the futur” so at least we could have the futur tier X replacement for “free” but no other tank.

    • i cant say
      they first said that they dont replace, then they said that they replace, then again they dont replace, then they again changed minds etc…
      i have mixed feelings about FV215b replacement.
      I actually kinda like that tank, both in gamestyle and design, but also its being WG’s creation. However, thinking that there is already so many those WG’s creations, i doubt that they will replace it atleast for while.

  12. Their solution to bots is to use captchas? LMMFAO fail.

    1) They’ve often shown a complete lack of technical ability when it comes to programming or even understanding basic software concepts. My guess is they will end up trying to use a third party solution then fail to implement it securely.
    2) You don’t need to actually get the bot to read the characters in the captcha themselves. The captcha system doesn’t care what characters you see. It only cares that the hash it calculates based on the captcha matches the hash it calculates from the answer you type in. If you start collecting the resulting hashes as they leave the client and head to the server, you can do a couple interesting things with them.
    3) You can “cache” the hashes in a database with their captchas and reuse the correct answer every time that captcha shows up again. This technique has been used against a lot of online games that have a problem with people running bots to play for them. You can even share the results across bots using this method. When I played Omerta back in the day, the bot creators would give “credits” to humans to type in captcha answers so they could use the bot for free too. WoT has a much, much larger user base than that game did so I imagine it will just be even easier to run a similar setup in this game.
    4) Those third party companies I mentioned in point #1, not only do they provide captcha implementations, but they also provide captcha breaking implementations. Kinda hard to rely on someones security tool when they sell a workaround to anyone with cash.
    5) Optical Character Recognition software can be used to read a lot of captchas without much trouble. In just the past five years they’ve advanced by several orders of magnitude in their capabilities, especially since they can now use GPU power to do filtering and sorting operations.

    Once again Wargaming proves they should have stuck to being a card game company as they seem to be stuck in the early 2000s knowledge wise.

  14. Please, tell me why the Centu7/1 is better than the FV. FV is superior in all aspects to the Centu 7/1. TBH, I like my FV better than Centu7/1.
    I will miss my FV, and its pretty unfair that she will be replaced because:
    a, donkeys WANT HISTORICAL VALUES in an ARCADE”ish” game (interesting, tell me more about this…phenomenon…)
    b, donkeys DON’T UNDERSTAND that this tank is not a frontliner, and they expect her to be invulnerable to shots, and other ridiculous things….

    Anyways, if you really want the Action Centurion and the Chieftain, BEG FOR EXTRA LINES, not for replacements.. FV215b is a unique (and a good) tank, rear mounted turret, awesome gun, quite good turret armor etc… (FV4202 is also a beast once you mastered her)
    I like variety, diversity, please let this be the main GOAL!

    • I presume you’re talking about the FV4202?
      The problem with it is that it’s basically a pointless tank – it doesn’t have a role among tier 10 mediums; it’s slow, badly armoured, the gun isn’t particularly special either and it doesn’t have a high-pen premium round, unlike almost every other tier 10 tank.
      So it’s not really useful for anything :/
      (also last time I checked its stats it had the lowest ‘rating’ of all the tier 10 meds (i.e. the lowest ratio of winrate to actual player winrate, so it doesn’t really seem capable of turning games)

  15. Typical BS from WG. How about you perma ban all of these bots with 10K+ battles who did less than 300 damage per battle?

  17. So, if I have the FV4202 researched (but not purchased) I won’t have to research its replacement? I would hate to have wasted all that XP!

    • They will just remove your 4202 and give you a new tank , you wont loose anyting like equipment crew etc, so dont worry :P

  19. I kind of like my 4202…. well i can live with replacement. Maybe

    I don’t understand whining about mm or hardcaps. Do you really want this to be yolo game. I rather camp 14 mins and wait for right time to flank someone etc. than play 3min adhd yolos..

  20. I love my 4202 even though the turret is totally nerfed compared to the real thing. The british tanks have always in my view been over nerferfed as far as armour is concerned, the ‘front on’ hit to tracks causes way more damage than any other country. If it is replaced I hoe they substantially improve its current nerfed capabilities.

    Any idea what with yet SS????

    • lol
      Quite on the contrary…
      The FV4202 is actually very buffed compared to reality.

      The people who took the armor measurement at Bovington even joked about not giving WG the numbers to not give them a reason to nerf it.

  21. If you want to see how bad a problem AFK really is, play soccer. When it is only 3 on 3, the number of TKers becomes rapidly apparent. It is a HUGE problem in World of Tanks. Wargaming needs to stop denying and start fixing.

  22. TD number is not main problem. Every single day i play i get several matches where e.g. 1 tier 9 TD is balanced against 3 tier 9 TDs. 9 TDs of all tier on one team vs 3 on the other. All this because TDs are weighted same as other machines. But WG chooses to ignore this issue altogether.