How Right SerB Was in 2013 about 2014?

Hello everyone,

everyone’s doing this lately, so I guess I have to do it as well. In late 2013, Wargaming made a video, that was released on 31.12.2013, with SerB explaining how World of Tanks will look in 2014. So, how right was SerB a year ago?

 

 

- “massive rework of the graphics” – that didn’t work very well.
– HD tanks – instead of “all of the tanks” SerB mentioned, we got how much? 30? Plus, as the HD models rolled in, WG decided to reduce the texture quality from the earlier ones. No ultra HD texture packs for us either. How terrible.
- HD environment? Maybe in SerB’s dreams.
– independent suspension on HD models – this was successfully implemented, on HD models. All 30 (out of 300 or so) of them.
– Havok – right, maybe in 2015, maybe (WG ran into performance issues – surprisingly, making a physics engine run on the junk Russian players use doesn’t work so well)
- turrets blown off – that was successfully implemented
– improvement of clanwars – was CW improved? I don’t think so… there were campaigns though
- historical battles – ended in complete failure, awaiting massive (PvE) overhaul

- strongholds – implemented successfully
– garage battles – nope, nothing. SerB mentioned respawning in historical battles or tier 10 garage mode, neither of which was implemented
– Japanese heavy tank – nope and won’t likely come in 2015 either. SerB sure was right about the
– alternative hulls – nope (plus, this idea is strange anyway and useful only for a couple of tanks with shitloads of variants, like Panzer III, IV, Sherman, T-34 and so on)
- 9.0 “optimization” – well, we all know how well THAT went

You know, something tells me that SerB will not be making another such a video for 2015…

83 thoughts on “How Right SerB Was in 2013 about 2014?

    • You know what….Wargaming is a lot like Italian politicians (Not all, but a very big part of them)… a lot of promises and…you know, only a few of the things listed get done…
      And to all Italians in this forum I am making some healthy autocriticism as I am Italian as well.
      So, Wargaming, for how long do you think we are going to believe to you promises ?

      • Trust me, it isn’t just Italian politicians. I think all politicians go to class to learn how to promise anything and deliver nothing.

      • Fry: “Besides, it’s not like one vote ever made a difference.”

        Leela: “That’s not true; the first robot president won by exactly one vote.”

        Bender: “Ah, yes, John Quincy Adding Machine. He struck a chord with the voters when he pledged not to go on a killing spree.”

        Farnsworth: “But, like most politicians, he promised more than he could deliver…”

  1. The almighty, all knowing, all powerfull SerB. Guys a tool, sorry but some of the shit he’s done to the game in the last 1 1/2 years is going to be the end of it.

        • Premium ammo for credits was REALLY good for the game – Now it’s all about balance and not who gets most gold from CW or has the best job to pay for it. Granted premium ammo spam makes certain tanks cry but it also makes many tanks able to operate in shitty MM situations.
          If anything this move just highlighted some premium ammo imbalance but the move to buy it for credits was awesome for the game.

          • Premium ammo for credits was really good for the game? I think you are stupid, or a gold ammo spamming noob if you say this was good for the game

          • when i started playing this game, i faced the vk_B while in my sturmpanzer2, and when kv faced maus,..
            noone used gold ammo back in those days exept for cw sometimes. yet the game was playable.
            do i use gold ammo nowdays outside of cw? yes, about one gold shell a week. and that is when i try to make a shot witch shouldnt be possible.
            99% of players who use gold ammo are either to lame to aim properly, to stupid to flank, or most importantly, dont realize they are trying to atack a tank wich they shouldnt attack in that way. Most players think that if they get engaged with one tank, they have to continue to fight tath tank. Eaven if they obviously are loosing, and that is when they grab gold shells.

            i admit hoever that cw is a bit of a difrent storry, tanks to goldshells for credits, it became easier for clans to enter the map.
            but then again, gold shells rendered a high number of tanks obsolete, wich is why they suck now, and wich is why the maps got reworked in this way

            • Gold ammo just should be rebalanced, either to give a fixed percentage bonus to penetration (eg. 20 – 25% fo APCR, 30 – 35% for HEAT) or give it load limit just as it was in HBs (which were fine IMHO, they just should change hitpoint pools just for the purpose of these battles – 15 penetrating shots to kill a Tiger in T-34/Sherman? stupid)…
              Or both.
              Curent system is pretty bad, SerB admitted they care only about AP pen while they balance tanks (in other words – gold IS imbalanced), premium shell prices are not related to their effectiveness at all and increase in gun performance is just gamebreaking in some cases (soviet mediums, some murrican guns) while other tanks have almost useless gold shells (AMX 40, long 88, Obj. 263)…

              And just one man with a bit of common sense could type all these numbers (price and pen) in 2 – 3 hours to balance it somehow. Even without testing I’m pretty damn sure it would be done better in that way. But noooo, let’s pretend everything is fine, let those evil facist superheavies suffer.

            • depends on the machine I guess.

              JpzIV is obsolete in tier 8 matches. 132pen just doesnt do the trick. I had to use Stugs L70 to finish the grind on Jpz4 without gold ammo. 150mm pen was fair enough though.

              there is tier 7 soviet med with 144mm pen on top gun. that must be pain in almsot half the games it plays in..

              spamming gold is stupid, but nobody can do this forever… you need to run standard ammo to get credits back… the fact some of them has 350+mm penetration is another story… armor oriented tanks are losing their main property. Mobility oriented paper tanks dont care…

              • But it is different on the NA server, where you can spend real money to get credits. I know plenty of people that just fork over $100 every month or when they run out of credits to get 10,000 gold and 10,000,000 credits. So people on the NA server just spam gold rounds all day and don’t really have to worry about making credits.

                They made the excuse they were not going to do any more credit missions because of the inflation going on in the game but won’t do anything about the ability to just buy credits. Which just proves the point they are not interested in balancing the game as long as they can make a profit off it.

  2. “You know, something tells me that SerB will not be making another such a video for 2015…”

    I hope SerB (Or any of the other devs) does, because these are just estimates to begin with.
    It’s very nice to see the road map, and what “could” happen.

    And it’s not like SerB’s the first one to do it, either~
    http://overlord-wot.blogspot.de/2011/09/2012-mystery-revealed.html

    “Garage battle – players can use several tanks (one after another) in one battle (“limited respawn”). Q1 2012″

    Soon guys… Q1 2015… maybe Q2… or… ;)

  3. Well…

    “– Havok – right, maybe in 2015, maybe (WG ran into performance issues – surprisingly, making a physics engine run on the junk Russian players use doesn’t work so well)”

    Hey, at least those Russians are PC gamers. Even if they game on overclocked toasters, they are still not on the shit that are consoles…

    Still *Looks at Metro and STALKER* those games ran on both toasters and NASA hardware… and looked great on both.

    • True. But as SerB said, if 40 percent playerbase uses worse-than-minimal computers (will probably be less by now, possibly 20 percent?), it is a huge obstacle in the game development.

      • Question is how many from this 40% pay any money for WG, if you can’t buy better PC u pay for game?
        I don’t think so.
        For WG is better calculate who pay for game, and support them, not % of shit.

          • Considering the ‘next gen’ consoles has worse hardware than the PC I had two years ago, yeah, they are pretty bad. Not flaming (I have a 3DS and I love it), but PC is a whole different level – and sad fact that PC game looks suffer on multiplatform games (GTA5, W_D vs W3 for example).

            On topic that looks a lot like my premium objectives every year – out of 20 stuff 3 are done rest postponed to next year. That’s company management for you, shit tends to happen more often than not. It sucks.

        • @Sędziwój
          Nah bruh, you forgot a very important concept…
          Every player is or could be a possible payer.
          That’s why the old harware users aren’t dropped by Wargaming probably…
          40% is a pretty big part of the community if you ask me, and a lot of them could be potential customers.
          Your point of view lacks rationality and who are you anyway to tell them what to do and what not?

          • @beert
            customer without money… yeah great.
            u ready what WG do, and u write about community? lol
            WoT is like WoW, good time to comeout, bigges fall slower, only it hold wow, wot is anyway better do something. But they can do more.
            Now they dont have enemy (warthunder gf is not idiotproof like wot) so they can do stupid think, and not see diff, but it not be forever.

  4. New motion physics is also nowhere to be seen. Im so tired of getting my tank slowed down by a minuscule piece of land, rock, wall, etc.

    • also the destructions make me cry sometimes…
      especialy the stalingrad map…

      You just dont know what can be destroyed and what cannot….

      Two IDENTICAL (same model, same texture) pillars in the map, yet one can be destroyed by ELC running over it, another will stop my E50 @ 60km/h …

  5. And behind it all?, the money keeps pouring in, and promises keep pouring out. The micropayment dopamine junkies are hooked.

    • Yeah. Micro. Tanks for 40 euros or bundles for 100 for “one time and only (until the next month ofc) stronk tenks”.
      WG keeps sucking huge money and the only things they were able to give through the year were bugs, fucked up optimization, broken maps, couple of models, some absurd or shit tanks and trolling in Q&A.
      WG as a company is a joke.

      • I had the same thoughts. I am not that expert in tanks as you guys but a whole new, complete branch seems like a bit unreal. But I will wait for Daigensui to tell me that I am soooo wrong. :)

        • WG must be running out of things to implement eventually. when there’s nothing else left or when they’ve failed at anything else, then we’ll get Japanese heavies, French TDs and Chinese SPGs.
          that’s sad. IMO grindable trees and new tanks to unlock are a bit more important than “endgame content” and far more motivating than CW/SH/ESL-stuff.

  6. Broken promises… One after another…

    GJ for this fucking bastard, I wish he’ll have many who will hunt and crush his grave… I’m saying because I will.

  7. - 9.0 “optimization” – well, we all know how well THAT went

    well, this optimization came in later patches, I have a weak computer (all settings on low/off) and since 9.3(or 9.2) the game runs slightly better than pre 9.0

    At least I don’t remember having the game as smooth as it is now.
    (only windstrom and karkov gives me fps drops)

    • But no support for Grundig quantum parallel processers or full body immersive gameplay- Serb estimates delivery first quarter 2032.

      Serb is a sci fi writer after all.

      WTF am I (not) paying for.

    • Their version of multicore is maikng Havok run on a separate core and the rest of the game on 1 , so no use in having 8 core procesor if the game will “use only 2″
      This is not multicore pupport, and they said that Havok will be made optional to run

      • Oh that kind of multi core support. Well it’s WG so i should not be suprised.
        Maybe we get a proper one after 5 Years testing.

  8. For me, the best improvement of 2014 is the HD models, but not what you would expect. The best of HD models is the independant suspension, because for me it massively improved the stationary aiming. While normal models get buggy over edges of terraint, i can depend on HD suspension much better. Other than that im driving from Beta so basicly im happy because i remember dark muddy graphics with invisible barriers and no physics. So actually im quite happy.

  9. – HD tanks – instead of “all of the tanks” SerB mentioned, we got how much? 30? Plus, as the HD models rolled in, WG decided to reduce the texture quality from the earlier ones. No ultra HD texture packs for us either. How terrible.
    45 if you count 9.5. I am actually happy about removing improved textures (even while modding I couldn’t really tell the difference), but I wish there were more HD vehicles. For example there’s still no French HD model.

    – improvement of clanwars – was CW improved? I don’t think so… there were campaigns though
    They were improved in minor things (for example now you can get list of landings easily, and some other stuff). Still not CW 2.0, though.

    - 9.0 “optimization” – well, we all know how well THAT went
    Well, apart of 9.0 screw-up, I think the optimization has improved a lot – I don’t see that many threads on forums anymore

  10. – alternative hulls – nope (plus, this idea is strange anyway and useful only for a couple of tanks with shitloads of variants, like Panzer III, IV, Sherman, T-34 and so on)

    For once, i strongly disagree with you SS. Bougnas on the French section is doing a nice job to list all the alternative hulls he could identify, and there is quite a lot ! It often corresponds to slightly uparmored hulls, but slower.
    –> http://forum.worldoftanks.eu/index.php?/topic/357885-les-caisses-optionnelles/

  11. To be fair, there should be another article where SerB had not promised at all or would have come later than 2014, but implemented this year.

  12. ” You know, something tells me that SerB will not be making another such a video for 2015…”

    Well, he can remake that video. He can remove the already implemented stuff, keep the ones that weren’t and voila! You have a prediction for 2015!

  13. Especially the issue with the high res HD textures is an absolute nobrainer. The difference is clearly visible, at least if you dont play on a calculator with “ultralow” settings and have at least average working eyes.

  14. Why the fucking Eu server players like like to whiners,their whine on graphics hit 40% of wot players very hard,now they whine on the fking gameplay things like havok,arty,and fucking more!If you don’t like this game,just don’t play it, no one forced you.ThOSe fucking whiners always thinking they are the only players of this game,and if you want those things,don’t be a keyboard warrior, go to WG Minsk and be the developer!

    • And who the fuck u are to say what we can whine and what we can’t. WG is big company, have one of the biggest game project, and still, in one year, they give us 3 of 13 !!! promise thinks. OK if they did half of them, but no, 3. Havok is far away, HD…. etc. WE paid real cash for WG, and WG dont respect player, never did. So STFU, go to your russian, or wahever.

  15. No Serb Video? Not even one with him surrounded by cash laughing at all the idiots. hmmm Thankfully no SERB video. Go fix the game!

  16. This is literally the same video from ASAP 2013. Maybe a few new parts, but the Havok, suspension and graphical bit are from ages ago.

  17. This game probably “die” in 2016/17
    why srly fix/upgrade/ feature it ? “c’est juste la torture par l’espérance”
    update /update correction
    (But the french radioman still have a quantic brain “yes /no /perhaps” you gonna have a spot)


    Commercal rape all the 3 month …for compensate the leavings