Corridors – Really Such a Problem?

Hello everyone,

today, we’re going to talk about maps and corridors. As you might have noticed, the “corridors” issue is the latest amongst the series of “flavour of the month” whine topics. The essence of the complaint is that maps (sometimes new ones on reworked ones, sometimes even the older ones) funnel players into a corridor, leaving them no room to maneuver.

From what I know, this whine started (as these trends usually do) on Russian forums, where Murazor (I think it was), one of the best known Russian video makers, made a video complaining about that. From there, I assume it infected various 3rd party sites and from them it got on the regular EU forums. This complaint is generally limited to more experienced and skilled players and generally is not taken too seriously by Wargaming (and for a good reason) – because certain degree of corridors is very beneficial, even practically essential for the gameplay as it is. Here’s why.

Logical map segmenting (of which “corridorness” is a sub-group) is essential for basic gameplay, especially when it comes to non-hardcore players. Like it or not, World of Tanks is a game aimed at casual players. That was always the truth and always will be. Now, imagine being in a skin of a player, who is not so good, new to games or simply has no experience. You see a map, that is clear divided somehow and you usually have to choose from several directions, that are defined by several methods, but the creation of clear and readable segment is perhaps the most important one.

This choice is there to make the gameplay easier for most players. Choosing between three obvious routes of approach is much quicker than if you for example had a map, that’s basically flat or filled with buildings, that do not follow clear geometric patterns. There is more to it, but I’ll get to that. In short, corridors help new or less experienced players choose where to go. Again, many consider that a bad thing, but it is not. Certainly, clear map segments support the tendecy of players to start “lemming trains”, but think about it – a “lemming train” is a very bad thing only if it gets stopped by a handful of enemy tanks. If you manage to keep the attack going, it can be a very powerful tactic. Now, consider the opposite. What if you had a map, that was more or less flat (no “artificial” segmentation), filled only with obstacles, such as buildings?

Such a map has two major flaws.

First – and obvious one – is that new players would not be able to decide quickly where to go and they would run around like headless chickens (becoming even easier prey for the skilled ones), or they would simply dug in and camp. This is an important element, so let me repeat again: incomprehensible maps support camping. Effectively, introducing a map without clear directions of attack would introduce either a campfest, or it would allow skilled players to use the map to a ridiculous extent. To some degree (although not critically), we can see exactly this happening on the Kharkov map. Once the basic pattern of attack is formed, if you wait a bit, you will have no trouble slipping through the middle part of the map to the enemy base, wiping out their artillery. That map, while generally pretty and arguably well-designed, is not easy to comprehend or learn for new players. I have a suspicion that this is the real motive behind the “corridor” whine – the desire of various skilled players to further increase the gap between them and less skilled ones by having the maps changed to suit them.

Second major flaw of a map without artificial corridors is the way World of Tanks camera and spotting system operate. This might seem a bit strange at first, but let me elaborate. We all hate the Hidden Village due to the blatant way it forces the opposing teams into head to head clashes (that map is terrible and I have no doubt it will be removed at some point in the future) – and yet, the village part of the map is the perfect example of what would happen, if you had a map without “corridors”, only with – say – building cover.

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Take a look here. In each of these cases, my SU-100 was spotted (and thus hit by the fire from the center, were it a real battle). And in each case, I had no idea where the fire is coming from, despite the fact it was – as you can see – a heavy tank opposing me, possibly the least camouflaged target in the game. What I am trying to say: maps without segments, but filled with obstacles, are very hard to orientate on. This is – as I wrote – due to two reasons. First is the way the camera works – it’s placed somewhat above the vehicle, but not too far and if you want to aim properly, you can’t zoom out too much. What that means is that your field of view is obstructed by the buildings and you can’t see shit. For a new player, it’s really hard to make sense of these close quarters. Second – even bigger issue – is the way the spotting system works. You see, you have spot check points all around your tank, including the back of the vehicle (points that are checked against when calculating the visibility of the tank). The problem is, you only have two view range ports (one for the gunner, one for the commander). In effect, it’s perfectly possible not to be able to spot the shooting vehicle, because both of your view range ports have blocked line of sight by a building, but you have your rear exposed, so you get spotted, but you can’t see anything. A person, who knows how exactly this works – skilled players, again – can abuse this to no end and it can be very frustrating to new players.

As a result, players tend to avoid such areas (unless they are skilled and know exactly what they are doing), which in turn means… you guessed right, camping.

The short version is that maps without inherent “corridors” but only with obstacles would be a disaster and currently, there is no map in the game without some ways of attack, obvious at first glance.

“Catering to noobs”?

At this point, you are probably thinking “why should the map help new players this way”? Well, it’s really simple again. The game relies on massive playerbase for its economic system to work. If you have a look at my account, I am an above average player. I have 52 percent winrate or something, which is typically not something to be proud of and yet, according to Wargaming Hall of Fame, my winrate is better than 94,30 percent players. Thus, there are a LOT of players, that play worse than me. What I am trying to say is – the wishes of the whiners are often the wishes of the top 1 percent of the players, reflecting their needs, not the needs of the other 99 percent. As such, it is only logical Wargaming disregards them, catering to elitists would only lead to the breakdown of the Wargaming economy model through the frustration of the “99 percent”.

Corridor maps

Possibly the most criticized corridor maps are El Halluf, Hidden Village, North-West, Abbey and Severogorsk. People whined about Murovanka as well. Oddly enough, I see noone whining at Himmelsdorf, despite this map being a city map and streets are pretty much the essence of corridors. In any case, yes, Hidden Village is terrible in general (there’s enough material there for a separate article) and will likely go in time, it’s extremely unpopular and Storm already announced WG is considering removing the worst maps from the game.

But El Halluf, Severogorsk? There, the corridors were added to actually support the map dynamics and from what I gathered, they succeeded in that – both (along with the Sacred Valley) are the “bowl” type of maps, which is generally not very good (it seduces you into camping, shooting those “down below”) and addid a few corridors, that are “safe” from flanking attack of invisible tanks (especially TD’s) from the opposite side of the map was only good (goes for both maps).

A good example to see what happens with “open” maps are the Steppes – where 70 percent of the map is not used – everyone goes either through the stone corridor (!) in the west, the central (corridor) road, or the corridor in the east – and all of those approaches are only logical – if you dash through the field, you will get fucked up by base defenders. Because that’s what happens on open maps.

Also, pretty much ALL the maps in the game have some sort of flanking route available. Noone forces you to drive through the Lakeville valley in a scout. Noone forces you to drive into the Karelian corridor. There are many routes on El Halluf to flank. There are several routes on the Severogorsk map. It’s definitely not as bad as some players claim it to be.

Summary

To me, the “corridor” whine seems like a pointless flood of complaints without any real merit. The only really extreme case is the Hidden Village of course, but overall, corridors are not only needed, they are also quite useful, when it comes to new players.

233 thoughts on “Corridors – Really Such a Problem?

  1. One problem games like WoT have is that with time, the more experienced gamers learn the maps and know how to use them. Changing them, breaks their game knowledge and forces them to relearn everything. Their previous tactics do not work and many times they get easily killed by a threat that did not exist before.

    I like the map changes for one thing: It keeps the game from going stale. If you continuously played the game for at least a year you already know all the maps and have an idea where to go. A map that changes and puts an obstacle where none was before, or open an area that was closed makes for a more interesting game.

    • I must agree with Zeus. For a long time i ve been derp-spotting with lights on certain maps to a point where i could leave the computer for a a cup of coffe, come back and have a patrol duty. By doing nothing basically but knowing which bush to get in at the beginning of the game. Same goes for TD spots.

      Most of those maps have been changed so i find it harder just because the maps are less familiar/more of them and i play less then i did when i started so i do not get a real grip on them. Derping with lights have become in general more challenging with the latest map changes.

      • But what is the point of playing a game when you dont even have to play it and you get awarded for that.
        Or camping in the very same bush countless amount of times and doing the same old thing over and over again.

        New changes (like EL Haluf one) make the game much more interesting.
        No more camping edge… you go there to fight, flank, circle them.

      • I don’t have a complaint with all corridor maps, my complaint is that some corridor maps have too few corridors worth fighting for – some only has one, the rest are only worth camping in, or worse yet, keeping an eye on.

        if we had maps with many corridors, it can be made into a constantly changing map – there will always be some closed corridors (to reduce it’s number down to at least 3), but as for which ones are closed should be random. same thing with obstacles/bushes – obstacles/bushes should be placed in random from preset locations.

    • +1 Zeus & rabiesdog ^^

      Adaptability is the key, and doing same thing every battle could be boring….

        • @nixxxie,

          can you elaborate? I do not understand what you mean by procedurally genereated maps.

          • Procedurally generated maps would mean that every time you play, the game system would randomly generate a new map. For example, Minecraft has procedurally generated maps.

            • that would be nice, but extremely demanding, both on the server and on the client… maybe proceduraly generated covers (bushes, houses, rocks, trees), and switching between several types of (generic) landscape, bu truly procedural map like in Minecraft would be nearly impossible to do… just imagine the loading times…

              • All they need do is make the map selection better, how many times do we see the same few maps over and over again. Map selection should be random, but also maybe a counter, so you don’t see the same map at least once every ten games or so.

              • Not as much as you think. You just need libraries of bushes, trees, rocks, houses etc and once you generated terrain, you put them on it.
                And you can make such libraries form existing maps, then work on expanding them.

    • You are complaining about having to leave your comfort zone and re-learn some maps? Come on! Shame on you, even more if you are a good player. Everybody will have to re-learn such maps, and you should be one of the fastest to know it well again, which is giving you an edge over the others.

      Your comment is totally in line with the kind of high skill player whines SS mentions in his (very good, this time) article.

        • Even we complain to re-learn the map, we can’t deny that avg. or above avg to unicum players will still able to apply their skills and knowledge of the game and able to adapt to the changes of the maps and will soon dominate again in these new maps, for those who don’t want to learn, well, will still become stat farm of those above players. Then WG will then find a new method to cater to those majority but still, good players will adapt and cycles repeat

  2. “Without any real merit”
    Sorry, strongly disagree.

    “Support the map dynamics”.
    Who needs that? WoT definitely is NOT and has NOT to be a Counter Strike.

    But question is what is corridor and what is not…

      • Arty, and heaveies have wet dreams about this map. All other classes, especially all lightly armoured stuff are just dragging their team down on it.
        It was (almost) perfect example from SS.

        That doesn’t mean I agree with his post. No, I think he smoked pot before writing it.

    • True… Hidden Village is not a real corridor map. HImmelsdorf as well. Corridors in general are not bad, if meant to direct the movement of the players (Himmelsdorf case – you can still find a way around and get the enemy). The corridors experienced players are whining about are bad for newbies as well. On Severegorsk for example are places, where if I stand in IS-7 or T110E3 noone can get me out. From front they won’t come unless they have advantage 3 to 1, arty has extremely difficult shot and there is no way around untill you kill the rest of the team. That is the case of bad corridors and corriddors which are really bad for new players. A pro seeing me in that place will go somewhere else, a casual player will stand there and bounce for whole battle doing nothing and getting frustrated.

  3. I get that wargaming must cater to the average retard, not that I like it, but the game became hugely successful without these extremely corridor like maps such as Severogorsk and North-West, so why do they have to add this kind of shit now?

    • There is no more extreme corridor map than Malinovka yet it never gets any complaints. Until the recent changes it only had 1 viable route, up over the hill past the windmill. All else were suicide except for the occasional scout rushing across the field.

      WoT map design has always been about corridors, I don’t know why the whine just recently.

      • Are you kidding me, malinovka just separated the wheat from the chaff, the retards would either camp the base or go to the windmill. good players either exploit vision, support from the swamp or strategically push a flank. NOT a corridor map.

    • That average “retard” could also be a much more successful person than you IRL.
      For all you know the person you are calling an “average retard” could be a doctor who has saved many peoples lives.

    • actually. for me. its not.

      corridors…. obstacles….. we can always see and get some in real life. so why we need to complain about such? fragile covers? then look for other. after all I think 75-85% of players of WoT are using stronk Russian tanks and auto-faggets. so mobility is not a problem. as what always being said in online games. a good opponent is a sitting duck opponent.

      but well. the thing I really want WG to fix is the bug. despite getting hit by an unexpected one by 1 out of 200 plays. it still annoying when you get one.

  4. Himmelsdorf isn’t really a corridor map. I mean, it does have corridors, but it has a lot of them. I think most of the maps that are getting the whine are the ones that just have three blatant corridors and no real room to do anything interesting. With Himmelsdorf you do still have the corridors but, because there are so many of them, you still have a lot of options at your disposal as going down one corridor doesn’t lock you into that one chunk of the map the way it does on “three corridor” maps. Also, because it’s more broken up like that, it doesn’t really share anything in common with other maps.

    Now, some of those other maps, because of the way they are ALL broken into three corridors in mostly the same way, they pretty much just end up being more or less the same. If none of the corridors resembled each other, or broke the map into three pieces of roughly the same size and shape, then there probably wouldn’t be as much of an issue about it.

    I think what most people really want isn’t a corridor-less map as much as for the map team to just go out and experiment with all kinds of wild and crazy map shapes, just to see what would happen.

    • as in 100×100 m map where the teams start in the same circle facing aways from each other. :-) Or a battle royale – once enemy team is defeated you get additional 10 min to turn on each other. Last man standing gets all the xp and cred. MADNESS!!!

      • :D I’ve always wondered why they did not implement a simple FFA mode with several spawn points on existing maps. If they ever implement a respawn system, it could be kinda fun, and even reds would love it.

      • Battle royale? I can already see the base camping TDs waiting for the rest of the team to have wiped out the enemy … easy prey for the campers who are still at full HP.

  5. “so, pretty much ALL the maps in the game have some sort of flanking route available…. ….There are several routes on the Severogorsk map. It’s definitely not as bad as some players claim it to be.”

    So tell me why are the light tanks needed on these maps? If the only mission of a light tank in a map is to flank an enemy, why not remove light tanks completely from those maps and replace with mediums.

    The art of spotting is to win a match by good scouting / spotting even against superior team, not flank your enemies.
    1/5 article…

    • Because every tank plays every map – basic rule.

      Arty plays Himmelsdorf, Heavies play Steppes, Lights play Hidden Village.

      Every tank has a map that’s dangerous for it – it’s what improves your play, getting to play as well as you can even on the bad maps.

      • yeah, true. But how many maps suited for light tanks remained in the game? Malinovka, Murovanka (maybe, not so much after the rework), Steppes, Sand river maybe. Its all about balance in numbers of each type of map.

          • Seriously please please post your stats…..Without them a guy cannot say “Lights are fine right now”

            Unless you are good and grasp game mechanics, sorry but you cannot talk.

            • What kind of elementary school bullshit logic is this?
              It’s called knowledge mate. I think you might want to wise up a bit on how to make a proper argument.

              • Knowledge from someone about a game they are bad at is not useful.

                Sorry but its true that guys who win a ton and are great players know infinitely more about use and abuse of maps and game mechanics.

                To argue that is retarded. This is a argument about technical side of WOT and if your eve na bad gamer but know mechanics well your at least a green with 52% winrate…AT LEAST.

                If you dont win 52% and have a 1500 wn8, im sorry but you dont know shit about game mechanics or the meta.

                Also most players can be good twitch players and if a person is good at reacting and they still are only green then they are even worse at tactics aka game knowledge.

      • Uhh, Heavy is great in steppes and lights are fine in Hidden Village…..Also Himmelsdorf arty has gotten much better as meta has changed and hill is a bomb zone.

    • Well, i usually end up in top 5 dmg dealers in my team with mine lights, no matter what spotting dmg i do. Especially easy with the AMX 13 90

            • “Because every tank plays every map – basic rule.
              Arty plays Himmelsdorf, Heavies play Steppes, Lights play Hidden Village.”

              There is no single map where you do not have a significant role with td/heavy/med, but there are plenty of maps where arty & light tanks are just hanging around and trying to be useful. Why? -because the map designing sucks, how terrible, but true.

              “Well, i usually end up in top 5 dmg dealers in my team with mine lights, no matter what spotting dmg i do. Especially easy with the AMX 13 90″
              Yeah amx 13 90 is a classical spotting tank. Believe me, I can play pretty well with 1390 (2.mark of excel. before this patch) considering dmg dealing, but my point was not if I can do dmg with a light tank in a map or not, but do I have a ROLE in a map with a light tank or not.

          • My last clip is gold for the end-game. :-) The rest is regular ammo. No trouble penning when i manage to do what i am supposed to do, get in close on their backs and then you do not need that x-tra gold pen. No matter how much goldspamming you do it will not account to more dmg then your hitpoints if you try to go head-on with other non-lights, the only circumstance in which you might actually need some gold ammo.

            @nixxxie
            Doing it in my ELC.

            • … and the current situation can be viewed pretty well when playing the kv-220 mission with light tanks. I have completed the daily light tank mission now 21 times and only 1. I had the spotting dmg dealed meter full before the dmg dealed.

              It is harder to get the patrol duty medal than the high caliber medal with a light tank nowadays…

              • Then you must be doing something wrong. I have spotting dmg completed before anything else (except 5 kills which is tooooo easy) every time i think. Duing it almost exclusevily with 13 90

                • So you do more dmg and more spot dmg with your amx 13 90 and still end up having lower avg. dmg, lower wn8, and lower win rate with it. Yes, I must be doing something wrong…

                  You know, you dont have to always agree everything that ftr posts…

  6. “Oddly enough, I see noone whining at Himmelsdorf, despite this map being a city map and streets are pretty much the essence of corridors.”

    Nope, you are wrong. While city maps tend to have corridors, they are intersected by other corridors, thus you can flank, snipe and stuff. Himmelsdorf – bottom can snipe hill and vice versa, lights are a little bit limited at first, but once enemies’ positions are revealed, they can speed through streets and flank. Ruinsberg – there’s that street in the middle where north and south parts of the city connect, it’s beatifully exposed to sniping from east.

  7. “But El Halluf, Severogorsk? There, the corridors were added to actually support the map dynamics and from what I gathered, they succeeded in that”

    SS, I respect you, but this is a joke – Severogorsk is the worst map in the game because you’re either a top tier HT, or irrelevant.

    • Why joke? My personal favourite tactic is wait around until like 3 mins into the game and then dash through the center. By then, campers usually lost their patience and I can sometimes catch everyone off guard.

      • Wastes 3 mins doing nothing so you can go kill some retards who are contributing nothing to their team anyway. Instead of taking those key 3 mins to inflict damage on the enemy’s good tanks. So confirming you are a baddie trying to teach us about map design…lel. Yeah, think I’m done with FTR, you have become like American media now, more (wrong) opinion and less fact.

      • Waiting till the battle is practically over, in other words. This can only work on extremely tight 14v15 games (assuming you do nothing 3 mins) which will net you 45% WR or so, at best.

  8. With heavies it’s no such a big deals…. but on certain maps where you can’t hide quickly with for eg. scouts or can’t hidden as a paper TD (some of them are just really not designed to be in 1st line…..) it’s usually really boring to play those tanks on this kind of maps……

  9. Going by what a map looks like is a horrible idea. The fact that a map has a huge amount of open space doesn’t mean it gives any freedom and having a lots of roads doesn’t mean it’s constricting. Himmelsdorf is not a “corridor map” because it has several advancing and flanking options. Steppes on the other hand forces players to follow limited avenues.

  10. The thing i hate about the new corridor’s they made in last patches is that they ruined the maps for TD’s they are destroying that class

    • I agree and thats because wargaming is trying to reduce camping. Someone who is more active and able to flank is in my humble opinion benefiting way more from the new map changes. And I think its a good thing since I didn’t like the campfests as they used to happen on Malinovka. The biggest problem occurse therefore for glass cannon TD’s which rely on firing from behind. They are way less effective than they used to be.

        • yes that would be a solution. Even though it will not happen. But i guess its a question of which game you want to have. A fast game? A campy game? A realistic game? Wg decided to have a faster game which is right now colliding with the realistic idea of tank destroyers. In the long term they have to change something with the TD’s if they want to keep up with the fast game maps.

            • These maps reward people who fight as flanks and that is how it should be. Just because you dont have armor doesnt mean you can brawl and flank. Flank can basicly mean shooting enemy when he reload or looking away. Flank does not neccersarly mean running out in the open and circle a enemy. Flank can be shooting a tank at a corner and keep him tracked, etc. There are many ways to flank and brawl, but yeah it will take some reflexes and thought, other than just sit behind a bush and point.

  11. >> From what I know, this whine started (as these trends usually do) on Russian forums, where Murazor (I think it was), one of the best known Russian video makers, made a video complaining about that.

    SS, maybe major RU whine started there, but the issue had been noticed much earlier independently by many players – and you give too much credit to RU streamers/youtubers.

    For me it was with tundra rework of western water part – it was the first rework i did NOT like and that’s where “World of Canyons” came from.

  12. SS yes this game is for those 94% players. Lets take Severogorsk in my opinion:
    Heavy/med tank easy to play when you are top tier, clear one side fast and you win(is-6 platoon). When driving td or scout its not so easy to get good xp or creds in this map. In Severogorsk its really easy to kill new players, but it gives disadvantage to td and scout drivers.
    Himmelsdorf has lot of options routes and td/scout spots. Hidden Village is ok map it has scout/td spots.

    PS: I dont drive only td-s and scouts, mostly heavy or med, but every map should have some option for all types of tanks. And for me as new player it was really hard to play himmelsdorf as arty, now i know places(so it its harder for new players?)

    Every one has their freedom of speech so whining is good, when its done in cultured manner.

  13. You completely forgot to add one major point here, SS.

    Corridor maps such as Severogorsk or (my probably most hated map) North West completely negate role of scouts or paper mediums in the game. You are almost obsolete on the battlefield while sitting in Leopard 1 for example (tank that mostly skilled players drive). You got no armor and you almost always face the enemy face to face. There are possibilities to flank, but only in the late-game, no real routes to use view range, or camo.

    Your article basically says that these things (view range, camo) are useless, because new players dont know how they work, thus its better to remove their efectiveness by making noob friendly maps. Which I really dont agree with. Those mechanics are there for a reason and even the super unicum players (apart from pathetic 2nd accounters) had to learn them at some point by themselves. Thats part of what makes them so good, after all. My impression from your article is that you see removing the differences between skilled and non-skilled players as a good thing. I dont. I can see your point that it helps the game grow, but I cannot agree with it.

    As somebody stated above, the original maps made 2+ years ago were not corridors at all and still people liked the game.

    And another point. On the corridor maps, at least in my experience, average lenght of a game is 4 minutes approximately. That completely removes the factor of excitement from long lasting, tense battles ending 15:13 or something. Usually, on the new reworked maps one side just crushes the other and then stomp into the base. Again, not good imho.

    TL;DR – I dont mind having some corridor maps in the game. But there needs to be variety. And if every map is sooner or later gonna be reworked to extend that the games there gonna last 3-4 minutes and all you have to do is just press W and click left mouse button without any usage of brain, I will quit the game for sure. (not that anybody cares though, but still :D)

    • Most people that complain are butthurt TD campers. Spotting and camo makes perfect sense, but that doesnt mean that only those who has better camo and view range should out spot and kill all others. The old maps favoured bushwanker and TDs too much because they could basicly just sit behind a bush and spot everything that moved and then profit. That is wrong.

    • +9000

      You can say how the battle is going to develop in 10-20 seconds, the result is decided in 3 minutes tops.

      On those “new” maps, in order to flank you have to achieve breakthrough in at least one corridor, until then you’re forced to either wait or peek-a-boo with a tank that might not be suited for this (high dps tank with paper armor). Also – even if you can get into 1 on 1 situation, most of those corridors are too narrow to effectively circle the enemy.

      And there’s one more thing: map don’t really need corridors, people will find out which map segments have tactical value naturally over time, hell – some will just go to those important segments and fight over them simply because there are enemies there (coz dem orkz?).

      • And there’s one more thing that is not much related to corridors, but was changed to fit the same purpose I guess – hill on mines(1), balcony on arctic(2) and new murovanka(3).

        1 – sniping anything that went into town is a suicide – there’s just no room for that and unless you have like 20 degrees of gun depression you have to stick half of your tank out. Also – it’s impossible to snipe anything that tries to climb the hill from the island on the west. So, yeah – mines was turned into peek-a-boo fest too in a way.
        2 – try sniping from it… This position is so useless now, I don’t know why map designers decided to leave it. Only idiots drive there now – no concealment, no line of sight on anything, you have to stick half of your tank to shoot anything.
        3 – I didn’t even bother to go to the “forest” now, since I know what it looks like without even looking – CORRIDOR, am I right? I bet I am. Anyway – try to support the “forest” with some fire from the hill on the west. Ooooops – the new “forest” is the low ground, no LOS on it…

        As I said earlier: peek-a-boo ftw, there’s no need for anything else and you’re punished if you play tanks not suited for it.

        /THREAD.

  14. SS whining about good players. What else is new. The change from informative/historical articles to being a jelly dick is really amazing.

    These are exactly the articles where you prove being a skilless potato protector. I understand you need those retards to read FTR as well WG needs them to play WoT and feel comfortable but this article is beyond stupidity.

    One corridor /a map for heavies to brawl is more than alright and fully understandable but North West? Severgorsk? Hidden Valley? Kharkov? Artificial horizonts on every other map? You kidding me? If this game becomes a “go forward and click” for braindead monkeys you will have your share of blame.

    All these maps/corridors negate camo, vision, light tanks, sniping skills, different angles of fire, advancing to new/different positions etc. Everything is reduced now to three lemming trains going blindly forward.

    If you try to convince tomatoes this is a good thing then you are just plain retarded as them.

    Btw. only true retard will go with SU-100 where you went on those pictures. Even worst siemka tomato in this game is not that stupid to go there with TD. The only thing you proved with those screens is your own dementia and not the fact that corridors are good.

    All potatoes please clap for SS as he did great job again.

  15. SS, have you played scouts ? Pls tell me how a scout to be effective on a map with corridors ? Scout is the most useless class in the game and devs do not care. Tundra and Severogorsk are the most useless maps for scouts and i play on them 70% of the games. Playing a scout on maps with corridors is same like playing an arty on Himmelsdorf.

    • Yes. I am not too good a scout person, but I have some battles on the Chaffee. And yet I haven’t seen a single map, that would under all circumstances force you to go head on with the heavies.

      • As i wrote above, one of the maps is Severogorsk. And for now 3 out of 6 battles i played with scouts for today was on that map. 2 of the times i gor from the same spawn.

        • No, it doesn’t force you to. It has 3 ways on side and middle that is covered from both sides and you can flank heavy being a few metres from him. It’s a perfect map for ninja scout.

          Of course, most lights are: “Hurrdurr, must scout corridor! Oh, heavies and TDs, let’s shoot them! Oh, Imma ded!”

          • Have you played that map with SCOUT ? Cos every time enemy meds are at the mid corridor camping the houses and you’re telling me to go between them and scout ? You mad ?

      • SS – Stick to news, historic articels, HoS if you must … but please leave gameplay and tank reviews alone. What you are displaying here with your article and especally comments is a lack of understanding the gameplay of epic proportions.

      • The moment you say that you are not good at scout, you lose all credibility when talking about how to play as a scout. So don’t.
        Scouting is a role, not a class fyi.

    • search for my nick on wotreplays. There will be plenty of scoutgames on various maps… Even himmelsdorf derp.

  16. Bullshit.

    First, Murazor didn’t start the whine. I am an editor of his social network community, so I’m aware of what’s going on. He’s already debunked starting the talk in his last video (www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KzWqdk5F4I). So please, try to review your sources before posting. Murazor is ok with new maps. As his editor, I demand a refutation.

    Second, “corridor maps” is not some sort of virus WoT meme, but a legitimate complaint emerged in the community amongst skilled players.

    Third, the problem is in drastically reduced gameplay complexity and variety on new maps. Most of degrees of gameplay freedom are absent there, leaving skilled players unable to turn the tide of a battle and influence it the way they used to. Basically, new maps make players equal by removing the factor of vision/spotting system, as average distance of engaging is far less than viewrange of most “blind” tanks like Soviet ones. Skilled players must engage noobs in close quarter encounters where skill doesn’t matter. While it may prevent unskilled players from getting frustrated, whales (players that are interested in the result and therefore donating) will leave the game. No skilled player wants to lose to schoolboys and drunk workers.

    • You “demand”? :)

      Also, given your previous comments on this site (HURR DURR SS EVUL FASCIST), I am sure you’ll forgive me if I don’t take you seriously, mate.

      • Will you take seriously a legal action from Wargaming after its community managers and subsequently lawyers have informed about you posting leaked content, politics and false accusations?

        Murazor is one of the “official” WG youtubers and is often invited to WG events and his videos are posted on WG website. Do you know what’s gonna happen if you spreading of all sorts of rumors about him?

    • I couldnt agree moar.
      But cmon. SS is jelly that he is so bad at this game. He needs to justify corridors so schoolboys and drunk workers read this and send him money so he can write more of this bullshit instead of great historical stuff like before. I guess wide range of retards will rather read this nonsense crap than historical info. Tabloid transformation is complete.

      • Why are you even reading his blog then ? Both of you ? It’s okay to express your disagreement, it’s not to insult and try to discredit the author and its community. If you consider all non-unicorn players worthless, maybe you should stick to other games, and get the hell out of this bad evul polak-friendly place FTR is. :)
        I’ll add on a legal standpoint that if you want a “warning” to have any value in court, you have to sent it as a recommended regular mail with delivery confirmation. As said before, a WP comment posted under an alias means nothing.

      • The superiority complex is stronk in this one. Congrats, you play good tanks – you win life.

        • Pubbies always say this argument.

          You are wasting just as much “Life” on the game as we are….So since we are both “Wasting Life” I might as well be good at the game.

          You act like being bad at the game means you have more of a life….
          You are just a no life loser, im a no life winner.

    • And your proof is? Because I could argument that a lot of skilled players plays CW, which means gold income. Big Boss Kislyi stated that the income comes from 20 to 25 percent of ALL players (and not the top 0,5 pecent)

      • Didn’t Storm or some other Wargaming employee said most of the income comes from good players? Or something along the lines that bad players don’t usually spend a cent in the game. I think I read something like that in one of your translations.
        Not saying that they are not needed from a business point of view or anything like that, just saying that I remember WG saying that good players are the ones paying. (Then again, the American server is filled with T34s with sub 45% wr).

    • Most skilled players I know (and I know a few in “top” clans) don’t spend anything on WoT because they are rolling in CW gold.

    • wow, so everybody should just accept what WG does and should not even talk about what they dont like about the game? Thats not how any of this work.

  17. El halluf is fine, with the new corner, more tanks fit there than 4 heavies… abbey is also an ok map, and we get it rarely anyway
    the other 3 is really junk
    what if arty players are whining, because they want open maps like prokhorovka, so they can clickfest in every battle? :P

    • What about none turretless td’s except JP E100 they cant bounce cant sidescrape cant peek a boom and cant snipe anymore becouse of these corridors

      • Easy, shoot when enemies are looking away/focusing on other tanks and shoot when they reload. That is how you charge the enemy, a forgotten skill it seems. That is how I have played my 3k games in ferdinand TD and 4k games in Tiger II, it always works. Beeing in close quarter battles does not mean you have to stand there taking shots, you can back off.

  18. This article is just absolute drivel. Corridors ruin the gameplay. Not only do they make light tanks, TD’s and other lightly armoured vehicles useless, but they also ruin potential player development.

    Instead of making the newbies learn situational awareness, you’re hand-holding to a degree where a new player is not forced to think for themselves. Here is a tunnel, drive there, click at bad guys and win.

    Let’s make already a bad game worse. GG

  19. Steppes? Really?
    East “corridor” is like 1/3 of the map and gives oportunities to all classes. West is more like a heavy-noob area, being 1/4 of the map. And even center road is a safety zone for daring light drivers, who ocassionaly take the field.

    El Hallouf is not only corridor now and it’s actually quite playable.

    Hidden Village (and Sacred Valley before rework) are examples of what happens when you get TOO MUCH cover which is DESTRUCTABLE. Half of map cluttered with trash which only slows you down, doesn’t give proper cover form shooting and spotting and prevents you from effective shooting yourself. That’s why they added the castle in the middle of the village but it didn’t help much.

    • Worst map i played was the old Pearl River… now THAT was corridor fighting, light always had to fight enemy light+meds in the west, because east was the superheavy+TD flank.

      I’m so glad they changed it, now i like Pearl River a lot :)

      Worst maps for me are now :Mountain Pass (because south side is at a disadvantage)

      and Northwest (because the entire south region is toxit to scout in, next meter, BOOM dead…)

      And… am I the only one to see that Erlenberg and Severogorsk have pretty much the same gameplay in SH? (East vs West) Like… always?

  20. It started when they re-did severogorsk? Also the problem is very real when noobs lemmingtrain and players being unable to relocate from their “corridor” to a place under threat or just get back to defend the base.
    Also corridors are bad for many vehicles, as they are specifically designed at NOT facing the enemy frontally.

  21. There’s some maps that are massively corridor…Severogorsk is, IMHO, the biggest offender here. The old version had its issues (whoever took the east side had the real power, since that hill could snipe most of the map), but now the games devolve into 3 isolated brawls with no chance of the flanks supporting the brawl (they blocked off all chance to shoot from the flanks to the mid, other than the entrances to those flanks…so, for example, the fight on the west flank is an isolated battle from the mid, and the mid is pretty isolated from east and west (there’s chances to snipe from east to mid, but only in a VERY narrow area). I think what a lot of people want is maps more like new Murovanka…some corridor action (the new woods will take some getting used to, but I can see where they could end up a lot of fun), some open areas, some town areas. That gives the scouts some areas to do their work, some long range lanes for the TDs, arty safe zones along with killzones getting to them, etc). I actually think the new Murovanka is the most balanced map of all the redos…new El Haluf is ok as well, but not as fun as the old El Haluf (they kinda corridored the ridgelines, cutting down on the chance for TDs to set up & snipe across the map at each other, by either adding lots of blocking cover on each side, or removing a good chunk of the concealment…the north is really corridors, but also gives those chances to flank if you can get some halfway intelligent teammates…I’ve been killed multiple times by teammates allowing 3-4 heavies to drive around into our area and pin me against the heavies I was fighting on the other end of the corridor I was in). Sev? It sucks. New Sacred Valley isn’t too much fun either, since they took it from being a map with lots of long range engagements and brawling areas into a map with 2 massive brawling areas and only long range engagements on the southern side (which makes going south from north deadly, since the south spawn can clean off the temple area pretty easily).

    • Yes I agree with these map assessments… In my post below I lumped all corridors together. But El Halluf I think improved because that one corner was already a corridor of sorts. A single path with a hard slope. Now it’s still corridors but more options. Went from bad to “ok.”

      Murovanka was helped by the minor corridors on the hill because the map was originally basically a giant arena in that most of the map was exposed. They are also not hard wall corridors, and they are on 2 levels making them vaguely natural feeling.

      The re-work of the magic forest area is good. It is more old-style with cleaner clumps of trees, no hard corridor walls and no debris field of objects like Sacred Valley. It is the opposite of this corridor trend. Yet it offers cover, some hiding, some channels. Need more like this and less of the laser tag arena crap.

  22. Well generally I agree with your opinion articles to some degree. But I had to log in to actually reply on this one.

    I thought long and hard about what I remember from playing the game early on.

    I have to totally disagree with all the reasoning here. The “natural terrain” maps are where I learned far more about how the game actually worked. I was no fan of Himmelsdorf, but I didn’t hate it. It basically taught me very little about the game except that giant clumps of lemmings can form on corners.

    I actually learned the game when there was time, space, variation of terrain and I had to actually THINK to decide how I was going to use my tank.

    Furthermore your example of Hidden Village shows some of the worst of the WoT newer “natural map” designs. This is the real problem that is happening IMO.

    The original “natural maps” had bushes, houses, cover in generally cleanly defined areas, clumps, lines etc. A strand of trees. A cluster of bushes. Let’s say 2 grid squares of houses. Open space in between. They also had some kind of natural terrain flow.

    Recent “natural maps” that WG makes – they get crammed and crammed with tons of objects – but all over the place. And most of them don’t actually block line of site. And the objects, trees, bushes, huts, etc – they also drop the FPS. Those are the worst maps for my rig and it is a strong one. Hidden Village… Sacred Valley… FPS nosedives on those.

    These are the factors that make these maps hard for noobies to work because the get spotted from who knows where across a field of 10k doo-dad objects and boom, they are dead. All while FPC dropped to 16 frames per second.

    These maps are sloppy. Spraying doo-dads all over a map confuses sighting possibilities, slows the machine, is overall not good. They are not “too open” they are just very poorly designed. Hidden Valley is a real gem because it has both the newer open & overcluttered style AND a fake looking corridor section.

    Furthermore the new corridors are partially disliked (by me at least) because they are unnatural as hell. They look like someone took a brush tool in photoshop, drew some corridor areas, flattened the bottom and then slapped a heighmap on the walls. It’s 100% clear where the walls were drawn extra high. They look like some kind of laser tag arena.

    Severogorsk is exactly this on both sides. Oh yea they sprayed butt tons of doo-dads in the middle there as well.

  23. Currently in game there are 2 actually bad corridor maps. Severogorsk and Himmelsdorf with first being the worst. I dont get why people whine about El Haluf, it is SO much better then previous version of it (complete oposite of Severogorsk).

  24. http://forum.worldoftanks.eu/index.php?/topic/407334-stop-making-more-tunnels-and-extreme-slopes-please/page__st__20__pid__8479585#entry8479585

    This is what I posted about the recent map changes and the “Corridor” issue a while ago. And I still think its mostly relevant to this.
    SS the problem I have with such maps is that they all end up having the same gameplay. I don’t mind having city maps like Kharkov and Himmelsdorf in the game but let there also be open/half open and hybrid maps. With the recent changes to Severogorsk they made that map into two big funnels and one giant no mans land in the middle(that will sometimes work but not always). It gives heavy tanks a huge advantage over other tank classes and makes tanks with no armor(light tanks) next to useless.
    I’m all for making the game more playable for new players but dumping down maps is not the way to go. Instead of dumping down maps, they should encourage people to learn the maps and get better at the game. You wont be able to do that if all your doing is funneling people into direct routes. Severogorsk is a good example as to why such map design is bad. As I’ve said in my forum post, I really think WG should take a long at some of these map changes and map maps viable for all types of tanks(and classes) and stop trying to add in “unrealistic” corridors to semi-opened maps.
    At the same time such changes ruin the map variety. I’m all for having city maps but… it would also be a nice thing if they had open or semi-open maps that don’t just force brawling.

    Regardless that is my opinion on these recent map changes and why I understand some people are upset with them.
    Just to also point out I do love some of them (Mirovanka, El Haluuf) but the problem is maps like Severogorsk and the left side of Tundra. (I do actually thing the change to El Haluuf was nice, tho I wish they kept the south part like it was before).

    Anyway I apologize if this is a bit of a mess but I’m not really that good at writing stuff like this.

  25. One point, if corridor maps help new players, why most of the maps they play are not the new ones? I find bad having tier 7-11 matches in small maps. We should get those 1500 mts maps for high tier maps.

  26. I have no problem with corridors per se, but severogorsk is a good example of how to ruin light tanks.

    With few obvious corridors, all of them full of obstacles and cover light tank is essentially useless.
    It can’t really flank, cause on every route it will meet someone with better gun and armor, it can really spot for a team, because to be able to shoot his teammates have to be close enough to enemy to spot it himself.

    Look at remaked swamp or malinovka – new corridors added that allow to close up to enemy without being sniped on the way. Mediums and fast heavies use those so there is no point of going there wth scout (unless as a support for those mediums/heavies)

    Of course there are some bushes left, but “active spotting” with more and more corridory maps is less and less efficient.

    Arty doesnt just need a non city map to be useful, heavies, mediums and tds can go to this part of map that suits their strengths, lights not only need part of map that is useful for them, they need teammates in proper place and enemies coming to their preferred terrain.

    It doesnt mean I am enemy of corridors – but lights need connections between those corridors – some passable – to run away/flank – and some only shootable so they can stay in 1 corridor, spot enemy in the other corridor so their teammates can snipe them.

  27. You missed the biggest point in your thread. A tank with low alpha relying on stealth is completely useless in corridor maps (Try SU101m1 in Sververrosk: it is next to Komarin the worst map in game atm, the old version of sververosk was 200 times better). When you get into a corridor map and you see that team 2 has 5 heavily armored hulldown vehicles and your team has nothing comparable you can just give up at these crappy maps. You mentioned earlier that 95% of the players are worse than you – let us say they are noobs. These 95% define whether a map is popular or not. And if a noob is forced into a close combat vs a blue E75, IS3, or E100 that takes him out without being hit a single time it is frustrating for them. In maps like Himmelsdorf (which is a small map btw) these noobs just avoid areas where they are shot, they climb hill or drive west to strike some lowtiers and mediums or lights out. They also can flank very easily. None says something against corridors. They have to be open – thats all. If you have 4 Corridor Tanks and 4 NonCorridor tanks and you fight against 2Corridor, 6 NonCorridor, or 6Corridor and 2NonCorridor you will always lose. Once you get out of the Corridor your getting shot from the real world and in Corridors numbers worth more than skill. With the nerf of KV-1S corridor maps finally got a little bit weakened.

  28. Because the new maps and other recent changes, I dont play TDs anymore, driving TDs in cities or corridors is not fun at all. I keep driving the lights but I only really enjoy driving those in a small bunch of maps — the open ones. In corridor maps, I just become the weakest medium around.

  29. Recent map reworks are a pain for TD’s. Therefore, for someone that plays TD’s almost exclusively, the joy of the game has diminished to a handful of maps out of the ~40 that are there. TD’s require a different style of play and the “corridor” maps are not conducive. Also, maps where good sniping spots have “convenient” obstacles that block LOS into logic lines of approach ruin it for me.

    The rationale for these types of maps is to give new players an easier time learning the game. If that is the case, then restrict the maps to low tier or, better yet, low game count players. Tier restriction isn’t going to prevent seal-clubbers from trolling these maps, but at least it’ll give more experienced players some relief.

    One of the things that is sorely missing is the ability to vote on a map. In some older FPS’s that I played many years ago, you’d get a choice from two maps for the next game. Players would vote and the winning map was loaded. Why not have that? At least you will quickly get data on which maps are hated…

    • Great idea re voting between two maps, add the function to the first 10 secs or less on loading and have the first map checked by default. Make the most unpopular maps the default one and see if people change to the second option.

  30. The options available to WG when it comes to map design are not 2 and 3 corridor maps versus open maps with no cover and/or no corridors. A good map should offer opportunities to all vehicle classes, something which current map design trends are definitely moving away from. Personally I think the complaints are valid.

  31. Sorry SS, but in my opinion you miss something important here:
    I totally understand that having clear routes of attack is a good thing (learned that from making WiC maps by myself). But the problem is the way these routes are designed, especially on my most-hated map – Severogorsk. Unnatural steep mountains with Grand Canyon-like valleys, no chance to escape if your side is overrun, no chance to get out if you need to help the other flank. Game is decided by who goes to which corridor in the beginning, even faster tanks like meds can hardly help when one side is falling. Knowledge of spotting mechanics is not needed, sniping becomes impossible, everyone is communist-like equalized (if you want to put it that way).

    The difference is: on maps like Himmelsdorf or Steppes, it is obvious which roads lead to the enemy. But you can shoot sideways, help each other and change the flank quickly if necessary. On Severogorsk, everyone is stuck where he went at the beginning, goes forward and either dies or succeeds. In order to have a fun game with some tactical options, the “corridors” need to be broken up to an extend so that tanks can actually move.

    No offence, but I’d recommend you to take down that article and think about it again.

    Btw I don’t think Hidden Village is that bad: It has some corridors for heavies and TDs, and some open room for meds and lights. If you don’t sit still where you sit on the screenies, you can move pretty well there.

      • That means, everyone pushes R twice and just shoots. Thats not what a tactical combat game should be about exclusively.

        What do you recommend e.g. a Leopard 1 driver? or a Rhm-Borsig? Or a light tank?, Rush in, fire one shot, die?

        • You shoot and dont get shot back? I play Tiger II and Panther II, and I do the same, use accuracy and aimtime to shoot and then back off in close quarters and I do pretty damn well. Even in tier 10 games where I can easily get penetrated. So for me, who like the more agressive playstyle, medium to close range brawling on these maps are very good. There are many ways to not get shot even in close range, use hills, slopes, corners, rock etc. pre aim where you think the enemy will be moving so you can get a track shot, what ever to make sure you can shoot and enemies cant shoot back that easily.

          RHM is still OP as fuck it has turret and there ares till many places TDs can sit and wank.

          Tactical, what exaclty was tactical after 8.6 patch where all people played TDs and where high tiers games were utter campfest`s? Brawling in medium to close range tankes alot of skill in terms of tank movement, aiming, reflex, etc. Even a leopard can use the fast aimtime, accuracy and pen to damage enemies and not get shot back, the key is to know when to push and when to retreat. Watch some of the unicum streams and you will see. Almost all of them play agressive and are in the front line of the battle, that is why they get so much XP and damage done. Passive play is for beginners that yet havent learned to play agressive and effective, and here corridor maps are less forgiving because if you show your side, you will get tracked to death.

  32. To be fair, having open maps with some small extreme choke points like most of the older maps were are totally bullshit, because that forces all tanks who do not want to get outspotted and killed by campers to go those these narrow choke points. Now, there are more corridors, more places to choose from, and former open places has been redone to make people move safely. Its not fun getting outspotted and blasted by arty and TDs just because theres no cover.

  33. SS should stick to historical articles. At least in US forums, the major complaints about corridors are from sub-average players, not the elite. These maps make medium and light useless (as well as some TDs). Why would any non-elite player pick a light tank (even the new ones) if the scout role itself became useless? The maps are favoring heavies and SPGs only. How is this good for the game? At the very best, the new tier 8 light tanks are gonna replace tier 8 mediums in TCs and Stronkholds, because the worse MM trying to force them to scout for tier X tanks is nothing but a punishment.
    By the way, don’t fool yourself. Hidden Village is a corridor map, even the village part of the map. And while Himmelsdorf also is a corridor map, it has a lot of them, with many options to move around targets and flank them, not just two or three.
    Also, blaming Murazor for this is pointless. I don’t even know who is, never seen any of his videos and yet I (and many others) probably share his concerns.
    Fact is: The game has mechanics which are extremely hard to master, certainly not for casuals, and even without corridors it became very successful. Now the playerbase seems to be in decline.

    • I don’t think they favor arty. Most of the corridors (especially Severogorsk) have such steep walls you can’t hit the enemies there. Playing arty is way easier when TDs sit in their obvious camp spots.

  34. Corridor maps are bad for light tanks, there is no place for maneuvring or to runaway from heavier opponents. Open maps like prokhorovka, malinovka and steppes are great for spotting and fast base/ arty runs. Only downside of such maps is increased amount of base campers, but it can be eliminated by removing part of base cover and building slight ridges that make shooting thru whole map impossible

  35. SS, if you don’t mind, I’d like to add another point to the list of reasons corridor maps are necessary. You kinda touched on this issue when explaining that on “bowl maps,” its a good thing that there are corridors to protect against sniping TDs or Meds. I would like to go a step further and state that corridors are absolutely essential in this game because Wargaming gave us slow heavy tanks and some assault gun TDs. These tanks (I’m thinking most non-IS-line heavies and TDs like the T28, T95, etc) need these corridors so that they can contribute effectively to the fight by keeping their heavy armor towards the enemy and not necessarily having to worry about automatically getting flanked. Their lack of speed and their heavy frontal armor make them almost exclusively corridor fighting tanks. If there were more “open maps” like the complainers want, then these tanks would either be practically impossible to play, or so frustrating that 90% of the players would stop playing them, and there goes your diversity.

    Ironically, I’m neither a heavy nor TD player myself, i prefer lights and mediums, specifically because I prefer mobility to armor and the ability to flank and do unexpected things. But I understand and appreciate the need for “corridors” on maps, even if they make my job harder. And for all those people out there in their lights and mediums who complain that they’re useless on “corridor maps,” you’re either lazy or you have no clue how to play lights and mediums. Yes, corridors make your job harder, but there’s always something for you to do, even if you (God forbid) have to wait a few minutes into the game and (oh Lordy) have to actually THINK about what you’re going to have to do in a STRATEGIC manner.

    Thank you for the article, SS. Its about time someone finally debunked the whole corridor whine.

    • Waiting 12 minutes to leech some low-hp kills doesn’t sound exactly fun to me.

      Slow, well-armored tanks on open maps can still camp and shoot at what their faster teammates scout. On the other hand, scouts on maps that don’t need scouting are somewhat obsolete.

    • Whats your winrate? Whats your Wn8?

      I want to see if the guy calling good players “Lazy” is even in the same league.

      No one is saying corridors are bad. We are saying bad corridors are like lakeville valley where there is NO flanking, and only camping and praying the other guy peeks over or the other arty doesn`t kill you.

      Most you guys who talk about us “Whining” are usually yellow or reds who dont get that better players can own in any tanks we play. Infact murdering reds by the basket load has never been easier, its why we see soooo many 14-0 13-0 games now.

  36. Stuff like the S-35CA and ISU-152 adore these map changes too, it allows them to brawl to their heart’s content without ever using their main strengths. It’s a bundle of fun.

    • Well, my su-100 also rejoices, anything that relies on camo and doesn’t have big alpha is crap.

  37. Ok, I’ve never ever found anything to disagree more about WoT than this post. Corridor maps share many issues and generally make the whole gamplay much more shallow. It’s completely wrong approch to solve issues of unskilled (casual gamers) and too slow pace of the game (camping). What’s the problem then?

    - Corridor maps promote lemming train tactic. In fact, it’s frustrating even for low skill players, because there is not much you can do agaist higher tier vehicles if you are at the bottom of list. It’s not learing anything except for hiding and doing nothing, while being agressive is highly punished = more camping.

    - You can’t do much in paper tanks, most maps won’t let you use your camo UNLESS you stay in some very limited places and camp. Even more camping.

    - Corridor maps doesn’t promote being good arty player. Despite the fact I hate 1 shot satelite miracles, open maps give me much more opportunity to avoid artylery. For SPG players, it gives more opportunity to do better while being a better player. Corridor map gives you obvious spots where brawlers will face each other, which means every monkey can preaim on proper place. There is no worry that tanks will change possitions, because there is nowhere else to go. Doing great dmg is mostly about having lucky rng.

    - Steppes having 70% of the map not used? Are #$%^ kidding me? What’ve you been smoking lately? It’s imo one of the best maps in game, it has a corridor, so most bad players will go there, there are some bushes you can use to hide (there could be more tbh), there is huge open space that can be used to relocate quickly if you have proper situational awareness and you know you won’t be spotted while crossing the field (doable when most players are dead).

    - Himmelsdorf is quite fine as it is, there should be more bushes somewhere, so paper TDs have more options to play, but w/e, I don’t mind this map and I don’t concider it as a bad level design example. It has some (not too few [corridor] or not too many [kharkov]) possibilities to flank, therefore it’s even playable for non-brawling tanks. Sure, it’s not the perfect map, but you have some options.

    Possible solutions?
    1) Provide more open and maybe bigger maps for higher tiers than low tiers. Game getting harder towards tier 10 is something I wouldn’t mind, not only because more skilled players are playing on endgame tiers, but also because of the game promoting skill and game knowledge on that stage.

    2) Give players possibility to not play at maps of their choice, up to 5 for instance. To prevent abuses, let’s give it a week delay – chosen map will not be picked for a next week, which basically means that if you disable city maps, because you wanted to play arty, you won’t see them until next week. It might be another gold sink, I don’t really care.

    As a game designer (yes it’s my actuall profession) I’m aware of problems of totally open maps for every player, but as I said, I don’t think that current corridor trend is solving any of gamplay issues.

    • i stopped reading your comment after the first few paragraphs.
      why? well your “arguments” are technically lacking much.
      - “corridor maps promote lemming train [...which leads to...] more camping”? Lemming train /= camping. Successful lemming trains are called rushs and if they work, they are great. It’s a risky tactic, that is sometimes used in competitive play too, but there people say “rush is risky, didnt work this time” not “lemming train noobs” when it fails. Oh and it has nothing to do with camping.
      - “most maps won’t let you use your camo”? “most maps” is bad style. use examples. or try to. i drive paper tanks quite a lot lately and the ONLY situation i wonder what to do is Borsig on Severogorsk (and i usually still find a place to go and play well). No problem in Leopard though.

      I stopped there – i disagreed with all of it until then and could not see any well proven argument so stfu.

      • Want to get examples? Here you have. Let’s assume you are playing any tier 7 in tier 9 match, for example t-43. You have to fight against t54, e75, t30 and lorraine and it happens on the map that promotes lemming train tactic. What you can do? Rushing in corridior is stupid as hell, you will end up with 0 dmg. Maps are not offering much flank possibilities, so no, you won’t be able to do that for a some time, you will be forced to face other tank, probably higher tier than you are. You can also go behind higher tiers, but still, you will be useless trying to pen frontal armor of t9s and some t8s. Scounting is also not an option, most maps won’t provide bushes and ranges for passive scouting, you view range is also meh. THE ONLY REASONABLE THING YOU CAN DO IS CAMPING. Even if you are top tier, but with not reliable armor, rushing into corridor is also not a best option, because on such brawling fight, the side that has better armor+dpm capabilities will win, your skill doesn’t matter at all.

        Second paragraph – I don’t say there are no places to use camo. There are some, but in general, there are only few maps where I can use my view range/camo advantage on my leopard 1 over, let’s say, IS7. In most cases the range is too short to make a difference, were are both spotted. I’m either forced to run away (corridor with no flanking option) or circle him, which russian meds are much better at. It makes driving a paper tank less enjoyable than it could be on better maps.

    • Bigger and more open maps are highly disadvantageous of anything but tier 10 mediums and TDs. Even today on some maps, heavys has to move too long in open areas to get to important palces.

      Corridor maps are perfect to solve most problems, its just that the majooryt of players are too dumb to use the maps, they still trying to camp in their old spots or lemming because thet dont know how to high in close to medium range, Since 8.6 there has been so much “non active” gameplay that people have forgotten how to brawl.

      • Bear in mind though, that “open” doesn’t necessarily mean “without tactically important location(s) that should be won and then exploited or re-taken if lost” or “flat terrain without concealment, hard cover or terrain features that can mask your approach.”

      • That perfect solution is causing gamplay being even more biased, giving you even more advantage being top tier and having proper armor, than problems it solves. I would rather drive E100 on malinovka than leopard 1 on severogorsk or kharkov. Open maps doesn’t have to be totally open, corridors and places with cover can still be there. siegfried line is one of those examples, there is open field for meds and city for heavies. Steppes, the same – right and middle is quite open, left side provide much cover for close combat. The whole rant is all about most maps being bulid to have close combat option only.

  38. Even if corridor maps so make it easier for inexperienced players to know what to do (something I am pretty sure I don’t agree with), they are the wrong solution to the problem. The game would be greatly improved if WG would just invest a little effort into developing the resources to help players actually learn to play.

    Not only would this improve the gaming experience for *everybody*, it would help WG make money because more players would stick around and get addicted enough to start spending. Is it really that hard to create a few more tutorials and give more players a clue?

  39. I don’t think all maps are corridors but some maps really are just corridors and theyre very difficult to play in a light tank or mediums which i like to mostly play. The best maps to me are the ones with a varied amount of terrain.

  40. I think you are generally quite right SS.
    It’s fun to read the whine in the comments, so special thanks for this article :)

    I don’t grind tanks much – i drive all research branches.
    Lately my ranking for “vehicle types with most maps i consider heavy to play” is:
    1. Arty
    2. Lightly armored tanks (TDs, Meds, LTs, all different issues but more or less same amount of “hard” maps)
    3. Heavily Armored TDs
    4. Heavys
    And i don’t have much to complain in arty so i don’t really get the whine.

    • I bet you are yellow or worse. If you agree and think good players are just whining rather than us wanting a balanced game its your loss.

      You dont think us “Good” players can`t just go in our E100`s and own still? Of course we can. But we also know a key to a healthy game is variety.

  41. I’m not a super skilled player (55% ovr WR and 1800 WN8) but i don’t like the recent map changes, mainly because of two reasons.

    With obvious corridors on maps there is really no need for spotting or scouting. You know where the enemy is going to be which makes the game very static and repetitive. The light tank class become pretty much useless on these maps and since there’s only short distance brawl there’s really no reason to use coated optics on a med. From my point of view i’d like a good mixture of everything, as it is now all the maps WG change turn out to be pretty much the same which hurts the flavour of the game. Old Sacred Valley was one of my favourite maps and I quite like what they’ve done with the village part on Hidden Village. The classic heavy line is just way to static and you can’t reallt affect the map control from it. The village as it is know is great since u can snipe the TD locations on heavy line, counter spot the mid and even push into the enemy base. I prefer soft cover from hard cover anyday of the week since it makes it harder to camp a corner for 15 mins.

    My other concern with the map changes going on is that it makes certain vehicles unnecessary. Especially the paper tanks with good camo value is hurt in these kind of environments, and it’s really frustrating when I end up on closed maps every single match with my Leo1. The way that tank is balanced just doesn’t work on the rebalanced corridor-maps. As in my first point different kind of vehicles add to the flavour of the game and some of the tanks should be used for stealthy sniping over long distanced. By the looks of WG changes to maps they want everyone to drive an IS-7 and no engagements over 100m. For me the most satisfying games is when I can use the distance between spotting distance and draw distance to dish out damage without being spotted. The more closed flank WG add the less opportunites we will see to even shoot someone at those kind of ranges.

    To sum things up, I don’t really have a problem with corridor maps per se, the problem is that the gaming experience is starting to be a bit monotonous. I want a varity of maps, brawling on city maps, sniping on open and bushy maps or med rushing on open maps with good medium tank terrain. Some map changes have been good, Hidden Village for example and I haven’t quite made up my mind about El Halluf. Severogorsk and Sacred Valley are worse than before in my opinon, they have no unique features anymore. As a result of this I don’t really see the point of queing up with my Leo1 anymore, i’d rather take my E50M which I know I can perform in on any maps due too it’s allround qualities.

    My 2 cents.

    • Problem is most former maps were sniping maps after 8.6, if maps did not get rebalanced we would see 10 TDs per side because older maps favoured TDs. Who do you think there are less TDs now, when maps have been changed?

      • The T10 TD nerf was necessary, but taking away the TD-class special camo feature made the game even more mainstream. Myself I do not mind getting punished by a TD if I make a mistake (i.e. go to the wrong spot of a map). Rather than rebalancing all the maps I would like WG to investigate a TD hard cap, just like arty. In most games i really enjoy there are a good mix of all differend kinds of tanks.

        I do agree that some maps did need rebalancing, Redshire became much better after the reworks, my point is that all the maps don’t have to be the same brawling kind of maps.

          • Other tanks never had camo bonus after firing.

            Also the TD nerf was plenty, Foch and 268 was what was ruining T10 games.

            Even with corridors if the Foch had its old Armor and speed it would still be the most OP tank there is. It used to brawl and while a enemy could do 1-2 shots he could unload 2500 DMG.

            T10 was infested by them.

            Also TD camo nerf didnt affect good players who bushed up, but it made bad TD players who used to sit in open [with a Hellcat or Romba] get lit up as soon as they shot.

            • All tenk has camo bonus after shooting, just that TDs had a bigger one. And all tiers was infested by TDs, thats why I stopped playing my ferdinand 7-10 TDs all time in tier 8. I decided I didnt want to be a part of a clicker community anylonger, it felt so fucking wrong do shoot a med and heavy taking off 1/3 of their health.

              • No, only TDs had a special camo bonus after firing before the nerf (the bonus is added on to the initial camo value after firing). There’s a reason why you can’t see the E-25 shooting at you 300m away (it still can), while you can see a same-camo elc amx doing that 320m away in the same tank.

                • Didn’t mean for this to turn out to a discussion about TD’s camo value after firing or not. The main point is still that I like diversity, both in maps and tanks and WG in my opinion should try to develop gameplay in both ways. Both brawling and sniping can be fun.

                • Yep this is the truth.

                  All tanks have a After firing stat, but TD`s had a bonus on top of that in there camo equation.

                  They should have just made TD`s have 250m view range and 350m com range…. make the TD`s ALWAYS stay in the fight and it would have fixed them.

                  Problem with TD`s was newbs in 500m firing lanes getting spots from suicide scouts and shooting the enemy for 30 secs before the enemy was in 400m range and then the TD outspotting that tank, so the dual began with the Med or HEavy at 1/3rd health.

  42. “I have a suspicion that this is the real motive behind the “corridor” whine – the desire of various skilled players to further increase the gap between them and less skilled ones by having the maps changed to suit them.”

    With all the respect to SS opinion, I had to stop reading after this sentence. I have no patience for such bs today.

    The game already artificially reduces the gap between good and bad players by a lot, by means of random teams, random maps and RNG factor. This is why even as little deviation from 49% as 5% points, up or down, is a lot. 44% wr player is either mentally incapable of actual competitive gaming or is a botter, and 54% wr represents quite competent player.

    I wanted to write some arguments here … but fuck it, I can’t even be bothered to reason with such logic. But since I’ve already started typing I’ll just post what I typed before I gave up. >.<

  43. Sure. The corridors are definitely annoying since only tanks with heavy armor and perhaps arty can be really effective in it, while tanks without turrets and lights are pretty much screwed.

    But your point is also true; WoT was, is, and will always be a game directed to “casual” gamers, so just people like you and me who don’t play 24/7 because they just can’t due to a job. (Yes, I know, it might sound terrible to you, but earning money is only possible if you have a job). That means the noob-friendly corridors do have their role in the game. This leads me to the question: Why not make heavily corridored maps only available up to Tier 5 maximum? And every Tier above has more difficult maps where you always have to be alerted to prevent a big hole in your tank due to TD/Arty fire? Would make the game more balanced in my opinion.

  44. It’s probably better if you don’t refer to players of the game who raise a concern as “whiners”. Just a thought.

    This “argument” smacks of post-facto justification. WG isn’t making corridor based maps to cater to casual players. They make them because their level design vision is poor and using casual players as an excuse to justify their results.

    And corridors isn’t even the correct argument. It’s not corridors that are the problem. It’s the complete lack of cross corridor access that’s the problem. There IS a middle ground between Severogorsk and Kharkov. Take Prok, or Steppe, or Murovanka, or Malinovka. They all still exhibit corridor style but it’s not an overwhelming chore to move from corridor to corridor. And I don’t see casual players all running around like chickens on those maps.

    The arguments proposed in the OP just don’t make any sense. Hyper-aggressive funnelling of play by corridor MAY (and I say MAY, not does) help casual players, but it also completely undermines at least two of the five tank streams in the game: mediums and light tanks. If WG were truly only concerned with casual players, perhaps they should consider streamlining the game to include heavy tanks, tank destroyers, and artillery. Casual players rejoice.

    Finally, WG has already proven that they don’t particularly care enough about new players to customize content for them. They’ve already demonstrated that they can limit maps to lower tiers, but they have never bothered to deliberately design maps for specific tiers. And don’t mention Province. That map only got relegated to lower tiers after it failed miserably in actual play. If WG really wanted to cater to casual players, they’d be well advised to start early, with newb friendly maps at the lower tiers and more open maps at higher tiers.

    I’ve worked on games myself and I understand the frustrations caused by a player community. But I’ve never witnessed a developer corps like WG who are so ready to deride their customers as “whiners”. WG doesn’t need a shill to explain why their broken map design philosophy “works”.

    • That is a good point concerning the Provence map. If WG honestly believed that corridors were the best way to make the game easier for new players (Not all noobs are new players but all new players are noobs), then why do they have a map like Provence in the game which entirely relies on a diverse range of information regarding camouflage, view range, positioning, and cover?

      They did try to design that “pit” map for lower tiers, but that never worked out, and is a wide open map – ironically the maps WG is intending for “noobs” have less corridors, negating their statements in other ways. Although given the expected size of that map, view ranges would be near-impossible to exploit.

      • Beside map choice, the low tier fights are the place where I can trully use spotting system for my own benefit. Just take some super high view range tank with good camo and gun (su85b for instance) and I can pew pew enemy team staying invisible. I have no idea how is it newbie friendly, spotting system is getting less relevant on random games towards the higher tiers, which is also quite sad thing.

  45. Who wrote this BULLSHIT?

    WGing is forming corridors on all maps. Himmels does NOT have corridors. Corridors are BAD for noobs because u have games where 12 players go down one coorridor and the enemy in that corridor die or run and enemies in other corridors race forward and then u have a LAME race to cap. The corridors are so long its hard to flanks around behind them.

    ElHalluf was completely ruined. Now, all 15 tanks should go NW. The rest of the map is completely useless. The teams that push the NW win easy, but a lot of noobs still camp. Elhalluf causes more rage than lakeview now.

  46. I have no problem with corridors on maps as long as there are other open features for snipers and scouts. On Severogorsk, where is your average Nashorn supposed to go? Might as well camp the base and wait for a flank to fail, because you CAN’T be a sniper in the east and west corridors.

        • Arty didnt get removed, they nerfed them. Instead of nerfing TDs, they made changes to all maps to reduce the camping of all vehicles. TDs are support vehicles, not main damage dealers like heavys and mediums who take more risk and therfore should be rewarded more.

      • Because the snipers cannot do anything… might as well play 14v15, because if your nashorn tries to damage an opponent in the corridor it will die before even aiming on the target…

        Lights are there to spot the snipers that are far back, so the other tanks can return fire. But Lights are normally dead first, because WG forces them to go up against meds because the map design is poor on the new(ish) maps.

        What about Panther? Leo 1? Centurion? JP IV?
        Might as well play 10 vs 15 then… because these tanks are just going to explode in corridors :)

  47. Well, imagine what happens if you found yourself in AT15 or T95 and climbing for the corridors in Severogorsk for 2 minutes. You find few enemies and manage to kill them.

    Two scenarios: 1) your team lost the entire other part of the map and you are already outnumbered by two or three times. You are not going to make it on time if they cap, or you die in misery attacked from three directions.

    2) Your team already killed 8-10 enemies and you are rushing with 17 km/h to the last hidden artillery, but you fail!!!

    We don’t talk about camping and having Steppes-like maps everywhere, but they ruined the gameplay by destroying 1/3 of the vehicles in the game. This is why I like Sand River and Karelia.

        • tell me how severosk and tundra are not identical now? corridors on right and left and no mans land in middle. Just like elhalluf and sacred valley r identical. all 15 tanks should drive NW to brawl. the rest of both maps r useless

  48. I have no problem with corridors. What I hate is an overabundance of choke points. Successful maps have multiple paths and a varied terrain (open areas vs. closed areas), and cannot be easily controlled/camped by either team, which leads to unbalanced action across the map (e.g. team A sends more tanks hill on Himmelsdorf, team B sends more tanks to the tracks). Poor maps either have an abundance of choke points (Komarin is probably the worst offender) or are too open (e.g. Steppes). One choke point is good (assuming there are alternate paths/open areas). Funneling everyone through two or three choke points makes the game boring. Corridors obviously lead to choke points, so if a map has too many corridors, it is likely to lead to too many choke points.

    Choke points are bad because they favor heavy tanks, and possibly TDs or arty. Mediums have limited utility, because they can’t soak damage and they can’t cause damage like the other classes. Lights are useless near choke points.

    Open maps are bad, as SS explained re: Steppes.

    Maps with poor choke point balance include, in my opinion; Komarin, Fisherman’s Bay, Karelia, Live Oaks, Malinovka, Murovanka (haven’t played the new one), Redshire, Sand River, Steppes, Westfield, and Widepark. I don’t think those maps are all terrible, but I do think they could be improved. The worst offenders are Komarin, the “ridge maps” (Widepark is the worst of these, Fisherman’s Bay is not nearly as bad), open maps (e.g. Steppes), and old Murovanka. Some of these maps I enjoy quite a bit (e.g. Live Oaks), but offer very little variation for battles.

    tl;dr
    There is a balance any map needs between having choke points/corridors and not having choke points/corridors, and erring too far either way can make the map less fun.

  49. Normally SS I agree with but in this he is mostly wrong.

    Good players don`t want bad corridors with no flanking or exposure like lakeville. These bad ones do promote hard camping where newbs face off with no way to flank them and they sit there until one enemy pokes while there team loses the game.

    Good players dont want wide open maps, we want flanking abilities and sideshots on the tanks in those corridors.

    Best example of what we want is West Abbey, it has a high and low road semi arty safe unless arty commits to that side, it has openings from abbey to be sniped or counter sniped and it has 2 crossroads to flank. That is what we want so all tank classes can work well.

    Look at how many bad corridors are i game now where a Leo 1 will get murdered…
    Severgosk west, Lakeville valley, Abbey east, Southcoast Beach and tons and tons more.

    Sorry SS but I think its hard for a player to know what “Good Players” want without being a good player.

  50. Biggest load of bullshit since FTR started. “Today we are going to talk about….?” Wtf? u promoted yourself teacher or what? Chesus! Please keep your brainfarts in the drawer.

  51. The thing is that light tanks RELY on being able to exploit certain spots to their advantage – and the new maps effectively ruin that.

    WG’s solution – bigger guns for LT. That’s simply not the way to go.

    And I disagree about corridors helping Newbies – Province IS currently the easiest map to exploit by experienced players and it’s limited to low tiers only – WG is actively trying to insulate HT from any threat that isn’t a head on assault – effectively rendering LTs more and more obsolete on new maps and limiting all TDs that rely on camo.

    • Thats WGs answer to reduce the TD popularity to every game roughly consist of 1-2 TDs per team, just like it was before 8.6. I played 3k games in my feride and rarely did I see more then 3 TDs per side, but after 8.6 wholy shit 7-10 TDs in every fucking game, making it a living hell for mediums, heavys and lights.

      • Why exactly should there be only 2 TD per battle? I totally agree that the situation after 8.6 with 10 TD per battle was bullshit, but there are 5 classes. Shouldn’t we have somwhat equal numbers of tanks from each class in a battle?

      • Yes it was broken then – and it does kinda limit amount of TDs, at least those that need good sniping positions to work. But LT class is actively pointless as a side effect too. And giving them (at least the new ones) better guns isn’t a solution.

  52. Just because a horde of tomatoes follow SS around now, it seems the fame has gone to his head. Sad that he couldn’t just stick to the things he actually knows about, i.e. getting insider info and translating it, don’t forget that is what made FTR popular. Now he seems deluded into thinking he knows more about game play and map design than the players who have mastered the game, or who knows maybe this is the price he has to pay to get his insider info, has to show support for WG no matter how ridiculous.

  53. to the jackass who wrote this article:

    tell me how elhalluf and sacred valley r not identical? all 15 tanks and most good players should go to NW corridor to brawl. on both maps its easy to defend base. the rest of both maps r useless.

    tell me how tundra and severgosk r not identical corridor maps? both maps have long similar corridors on both sides and no-mans land in middle. only noobs go up the middle on these maps.

    in all these cases, i liked the original maps better rather than the new corridor maps. if i had a choice, i would rather play on the 4 old versions of these maps.

    • elhalluf in particular used to be a fun map for lt and mt but now it sucks. u cant active or passive scout on thus map anymore AT ALL!

    • Starting with “to the jackass” – ignore the rest. Please please please introduce comment rating and auto hide those with low rating, it could help keep the discussion useful and informative. :-)

  54. The basis for your article is “shoot the messenger” which is one of the most blatant logical fallacies out there.

    It doesn’t matter “who started” the train of complaints, because it doesn’t invalidate that there is a train of complaints about the 3 lane corridor maps that appear over and over.

    Noobs are going to struggle with any game, that’s why they’re called noobs. Once a player reaches a basic level of competence (one would hope this is WG ideal player base) they can clearly see the common problems in map design.

  55. You pull those articles out of your ass ? Really stick to the history and facts, because things you construct out of your mind are utter shit.
    You already spoiled EU gameplay to the point any red player that see´s EFE member starts yelling: “how does it feel to be in the worst clan ever ?”
    So stop playing god, stop giving your shit opinions and stick to being neutral leak translator, because you might impress some noobs and kids, but you don´t impress people with their own conscience.

  56. It is not automatically “whining”, when players complain. This time I must say that the “whiners” are correct. They are killing every single map with that corridor crap. Even classics like Malinovka (my favorite until this patch). There is almost no map left where you can scout properly. And then they wonder why noone drives light tanks.
    Simple, because they are useless in corridors.

        • I must disagree. I play this line now, and it is the most enjoyable line I have ever played in this game yet. The hills in the corridors make it perfect for tanks with good gun depression (and turrets).

          • Yeah, good turrets… Maybe from cent1 onwards you can try your luck, imo they don’t have reliable turret armor.

      • But these were.

        SS normally you are solid, but you framed the argument to make the guys driving this to sound insane. And made them sound like they just love to farm opponents.

        Think about it man, Purps are great and adapt to whatever is thrown at them. Guys are now just driving E100`s and pwning, but this is boring.

        You took the wrong approach IMO and should have asked some of us on WOTLABS or some others good players why they hate tyhe new maps rather than assume you know why.

        It sounds like you interviewed a anti Purple who thinks he knows why Purps hate new maps.

        Good players want…
        Game to succeed, so there investment isnt gone
        Want new players to get better so they dont ruin our teams
        Want a challenge
        Want diversity

        They want these things because to be a great WOT player you have to be smart and being smart you know the games life depends on these things, and your enjoyment depends on players getting better as good players dont like steamrolling 14-0, we like close games that WE win.

  57. “I have a suspicion that this is the real motive behind the “corridor” whine – the desire of various skilled players to further increase the gap between them and less skilled ones by having the maps changed to suit them.”

    I agree with that.
    But I also think, that corridors is one of the ways WG uses to “nerf” TDs – by discouraging people of camping. And yet, there are tanks in this game that are pretty much made for camping, long range shooting and bush-wanking. Yes, it does encourage passive gameplay, but only when most of the team does that.

    • Not really, those tanks that have thin armor have other traits. Many new mediums tanks have thin armor but they are still played actively. Look at unicum streams, and you see that players even with paper tenks use the guns aimtime and accuracy in close quarters. If tanks were balanced around beeing snipers because thet have thin armor, then they should not have other positive treats that outweights the thin armor.

      My panther II always sees close quarter battles, 2nd line support, shoot and dont get shot back and gtfo behind a slope/hill/corner if you feel the heat. Easy.

      Old maps were balanced when majority of players played heavys and mediums and not alot of TDs, so the amount of “sniper/bushwankers” was much less, not to mention the old accuracy mechanic motivated people to get closer to make dmg. 8.6 changed all that. Better accuracy + fixed value from camo net and paint and camo skill + old maps were as made for TDs. Why do you think TDs increased so fucking much? Still today there are as many or more TDs in MM queue as heavys and mediums. So I dont really see the issue that “TDs are UP” because of map changes. In fact in the old says, even TD players moved around on the battlefield supported heavys and mediums from 2nd line. Its just bullshit that “all TDs suppose to camp”.

      • There are major differences between fast and mobile mediums with little armor and TDs. Such mediums are explicitly designed for flanking and action at close range, while TDs are designed for the inverse – long range sniping primarily, although there are exceptions. Using their camouflage primarily. Which is substantially more difficult to do with just 1-2 hundred meters of terrain available. It gets even harder without a turreted TD. Why not try to execute brief pop-up scenarios in a TD with narrow gun traverse, bad bloom, and long aiming time? Your enemies will simply shoot you once, then retreat behind the nearest walls. TDs fundamentally lack the capability to fight in such environments, with casemate ones being the worst offenders.

        I’m not commenting on the actual balancing of the tanks though.

      • Maybe you are right, I don’t know. I have started playing only in 8.7, so I have no experience of those ‘old times’.
        About unicums – I don’t think it is a correct comparison. The game is mostly played by bad/mediocre players. If a TD can be played well in some way, that is not the usual implied way for a TD, it is ok – but it should not be expected of all players to use it that way.
        I just don’t think that ‘camping’ is always bad. I think it is bad when it is done by tanks that can be played better in other roles. And if a tank that is best played as a camper cannot be played in such a way on a certain map – it gives it a disadvantage.

  58. Why nobody whines about Himmelsdorf… simple its a city map and why everybody whines about other maps… well because you don’t see a mountain of dirt as thin as a lamp post going up high to the heavens like a skyscraper in real life. Simple as that.

  59. “Corridor” problem is not maps that made out of corridor, we have that a long time (Himmersdolf), But those which render most of the map useless and a single path with no way to support or very long/dangerous flank…first is Old Abbey, the new one all more tank flow along east but west is now a separate map. Sacred Valley change is similar.

    Steppes is where it started, as you said, 70% of the map not used, then El Halluf change into the same type of map;

    new Murovanka suffer the another problem with Hidden Village or now Fire Salient : King of the Hill.

    And the problem with Corridors? It favors tanks with armour, high alpha and okay mobility. In short, Soviet/Chinese Heavies, maybe E75.

    The non-corridor maps are Himmersdolf (unless you are trying to do Light Tanks Daily), Severgorsk (even a bigger middle finger to light tanks), Airfield (some people hate all the tugging?), Erlenberg ( like North West), Karelia (I love how they fuck up north an became a butcher house), Komarin (tank speed is more or less irrelevant), Malinovka (hill is a corridor, but are games won in north often?), Sandriver (since arty can shoot everywhere), Westfield (only if they will ever change that strip of totally fake centre village), Ensk (should make a bigger version of this), Live Oaks (but people play like it is), Highway (same), Province (lol), Ruinberg (but super camp the middle map), Siegfried Line , Wide Park (an expanded version can work)

  60. The reason that nobody complains about Himmelsdorf corridors is that 1: it has been in the game for a very long time with little/no changes 2: you have 5 “corridors” (five if you include the back edge of the railyard) between the bases, which creates lots of options for flanking. Also, there are several “corridors” going sideways. Having interconnected “corridors” allows for diversity of team strategy and plenty of opportunity to flank, and makes the map seem less determined by firm directions to take.

    Another example of this is Windstorm’s city, there is a lot of hard cover to break LoS and many choices for flanking. If the city had one or two more bridges, it would become the most liked part of any map in the community of non-camp players.

  61. To answer the original question in the title: they are, if you’re driving anything other than a heavy tank or something else with a lot of armor that can afford to slug it out in said corridors (or TDs that can snipe from the back of them). Corridors stifle any attempt at flanking maneuvers by medium tanks and light tanks, thus removing a major element of maneuver warfare and forcing the fight into static battles of attrition.

    Some maps like this? Fine, I can live with that, since they at least give the slower, more heavily-armored tanks a place to shine. Most maps like this? No, there’s just too many of them.

  62. I voted for few maps are too corridorsy, but I think they need to redesign their entire approach to map design. Currently, I think it takes them too long to post new maps, and the current designs leave something to be desired. If at all possible, it would be great to start introducing 1100^2 or 1200^2 maps, although I remember hearing the engine had some disappointing limitations in that respect.

    I do have to say, my opinion may change as I start learning how to drive my RU251. One of my chief concerns with maps pre-9.3 was that there was limited room to maneuver gun carrier type vehicles (Nashorn, for example), for attack forces to flexibly approach/bypass an enemy position, and scouts to flank early/midway through the match.

    Instead of having a more natural game where the particulars and scale of the fight make for a looser, unpredictable game, World of Tanks has thrown fast vehicles with moderate agility and precise killing capabilities into a ring the size of a shoebox. Hitting most moving vehicles isn’t difficult to achieve, limiting the amount of options players have in a game on a map like Pearl River. It’s not like WOT has no dynamic decision making, but the primary determinant of decision making is the map’s design over the player’s mobility, followed by force strength.

    What I would love to see, either in part or in whole, is to keep positions of importance, but which are made in such a way as to make first contact harder to predict and give players more options, such as withdrawing or continuing to circle around the objective for a better approach. Maps from, for example, battlefield, may be something to draw a little inspiration from. Another cheap way to mix up gameplay would be to introduce quite a few more variants of maps with different spawn locations, such as moving the spawns on highway down by the river.

  63. Not that anyone is even gonna read this, but here goes:

    SS youve got the wrong end of the stick. Among the higher echelon players the problem isnt so much that the maps tend to funnel players into the smae points. Thats accepted, and as youve mentioned improves play. The real problem is on maps such as Karelia and Severogorsk where what WG have done is to effectively create 3 separate lanes or corridors that have no ability to quickly reinforce one another, minimal ability to support one another (because theres no cross map firing lines) and the win normally goes to the team that commits the most tanks to a push.

    Thats not good game design, it fosters an essentially random experience, skilled players are hindered in their ability to flex, the maps dont tend to have any firing lines longer than 100 meters or so, so if you dont have strong frontal armor you lose effeciveness and it causes lots of frustration. Ever led a push down the 2 or 8 lines in Severogorsk, fighting hard the entire time, only to find the other team has roflstomped the other lane so fast that you dont even have the ability to disengage and delay them?

    There is a reason why the successful corrridor maps (Kharkov and Himmel for example) are on smaller maps, its to give players the opportunity to react to things like this. Its why Sacred Valley and Hidden village are effectively crap.

    TL:DR, WG need to stop thinking in terms of the 3 disparate corridors model, and a little more about the way those corridors interplay with one another.

  64. Pingback: Of Basic World of Tanks Principles | For the Record

  65. That’s cool and all, but some tanks rely on sniping and have no foothold in the corridors.

    Leopard PTA and tanks like it are suffering and they have no place in some of the maps. Just getting into the Severogorsk makes me cry out in pain. Now imagine when an “above average” player gets his hands on the PTA? It’s already a very hard tank to play and for a complete newcomer it will be just an exp pinata for the enemy.

    So yeah please buff the tanks to fit more into the “World of Corridors”. I’m not that interested in the evolving “World of OP Russian meds”.

    Again this is not for all maps, but Severogorsk is definitely one of the worst. At least in Hidden Village I can still safely snipe in my PTA without going face to face with enemies all the time.

    • So yeah I don’t agree with corridors being a good thing. They only limit the tank usage even more. It’s not like the game was filled with same shitty vehicles dominating the games already. Soon the “great” people will just stop playing altogether or switch to playing only a handful of tanks.

      If that’s the way it’s gonna be then I will quit playing. I enjoy variety.