97 thoughts on “Storm Q&A”

1. Merry X-mas :)

   • Who is X?

     • the person who everybody wants to marry

2. “- another thing that is being worked on is the increase of role of armor in the game. There is no consensus on this issue yet, but it will come soon. This issue concerns mostly only high tiers. The current solution WG is working with is a penetration nerf for guns with too high penetration”

   With most super unicums already rating E-100 the best tank to carry pubs and win, thanks to dumbed down maps – this effectively means World of Heavy Tanks is inevitable, as predicted by many.

   • Well, we definitely need more arty now :)

     • ^ What SS said :)

       • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGNiXGX2nLU
         Circle of nerfs just runs its own course :D

       • Or, use TDs to counter the HTs, Oh, wait….. TDs are shit now. Because of noobs that cry when they get outplayed, by someone who knows the camo machanics, uses cover, and plays to his tank strengths, and does not expose his weaknesses. And they cry when they sit in the open, in the middle of a feild, and keep shooting, and then cry when arty shoots at them. Next it the noobs will cry about unstopable heavy tanks, and then cry about contant swarms of medium tanks, and then about getting out manouvered by light tanks, and now arty is strong again. Yep its just one giant cycle.
         Sigh

         • If only they would get spotted after shooting but noooooo.
           “Nerf the bush – he shot me!”

         • The cycle might stop at World of Heavy tanks, though. Their typical customer is a poor (pathetic even) player grinding the IS-7. And they obviously want to please the majority, so…

           • as long as tds guns still penetrate HTs it won’t be a problem, currently imo medium tanks are a bit too strong. they got camo, dpm, pen, accuracy, mobility and in some cases troll armor. it’s so easy to carry games in mediums, tds are still good but not as strong as they used to be.

     • And artillery should go for low damage = low xp for aiming at high armored tanks, because why?

       I know “they still need to win the game” argument might be used, but no.. Artillery players will not stop aiming for weakly armored tanks, just because the team needs them not to.

   • Armor haters, go back to Counter Strike source.

     • Well, there would be more of a challenge involved. World of Tanks is super easy compared to other stuff.

   • Why don’t they just fucking nerf prem ammo?

     • its their money grab…all they are doing it promoting more gold spamming to fill their pockets with credit packages being purchased

   • There really are two problems, when it comes to heavy armor being meh (or useless, depending on your PoV):
     1) Indeed the penetration of some shells are just too high for the combat ranges in World of Tanks. I don’t see how they can fix this without nerfing Prammo stats and by that, shooting themselves in their own foot (and taking options away from the player – e.g.: seriously, look at some tank’s pen values, they’d have to be downtiered to work without prammo).
     2) Gun Accuracy Proliferation. I was cheering for the changes they implemented a while ago, as aiming in finally seemed to benefit the player. Then I noticed what happened with KV2s. Or ISU-152s. Or T49s. Or even just your plain old D-25-T. Sniping weakspots became way too easy for a majority of the tanks and tanks that were already doing well despite their terrible accuracy, were suddenly doing even better (while tanks that lived from their accuracy, suddenly had no advantage anymore, that’s besides the point). Everyone can snipe everyone’s weakspots relatively reliably now.

     From what happens in lower tier battles, where thick armor riddled with weakspots meets terrible accuracy, I’d know where I’d put my money on to create a fix to the “Heavy Armor = Useless”, before I’d even think about touching prammo stats.

   • “With most super unicums already rating E-100 the best tank to carry pubs and win, thanks to dumbed down maps – this effectively means World of Heavy Tanks is inevitable, as predicted by many.”

     The E-100 gets an OP gold round is one reason, all you can eat gold rounds for silver is another.

   • Everyone knew that after nerfing armor, pen nerf will come sooner or later. Everyone except wg… :/

     • I have a feeling that Serb has been doing more epic rants about this, similar to the one that got leaked about the arty nerf leading to TD nerf. XD

3. Some1 wants to donate su122 44?:(

   • Maybe, I dont know.

   • lol

4. ”- another thing that is being worked on is the increase of role of armor in the game. There is no consensus on this issue yet, but it will come soon. This issue concerns mostly only high tiers. The current solution WG is working with is a penetration nerf for guns with too high penetration”

   Nerf all the tier 10 silver rounds and leave the OP premium rounds alone. Seriously, if you want to nerf penetration and improve the value of armour premium rounds are usually the reason why armour is sometimes useless. Or tier 10 TD’s, tier 10 TD’s make armour useless too. Same with the tier 8 and 9 TD’s for their respective tiers excluding some… ( SU-101, JagtTiger 8.8, AT-15A lol )

   A lot of tanks have good penetration because they are shit otherwise, espeically among the mediums. Centurions, STA-1/Type 61, Germans.

   Soon everyone can suffer the fate of the T-54 ( with historical 100mm plate ) , being OP with HEAT and ”decent” without but wait, they can;t because they have no armour. T-44 / T-34-2 / T-34-3 needs a nerf to penetration too, it can’t bounce the rear of a Maus/E-100 with premium reliably.

   You know what, just improve the penetration of the premium rounds to compensate for the terrible silver rounds, I’m sure that will be fun…

   If you want to nerf any guns penetration, please nerf the premium rounds too and consider leaving those with terrible penetration alone, if you can’t penetrate the flanks of tanks with the faster mediums tanks flanking becomes useless.

   • they better not touch the tier 10 heavy penetration for the most part because most of them hover around 250mms which is a good amount so that they can work but tier 10 tds are retarded in terms of pen. a single tier 10 td can hold an entire advance on its own on the north western part of westfield just by waiting for 1 tank to be brave and try to advance they can then sit and wreck them shot after shot if their in 268 as an example. the fact that people load full gold in the 268 adds insult to injury because they can already pen id say 90% of shots they fire but the have gold to make that number 100% its stupid.

     • imo tds should always pen most targets. back when tier 10 meds/tds didn’t exist, in tier 10 heavy your only fear was other tier 10 heavies or tier 9 tds.

       • Exactly. Back then, in your IS-7 or E-100 you said “Fuck, Obj704 spotted me!”.
         Now the BL10/L61 is nothing special anymore. Every decent player can wreck T10 Heavies in a JT/T95/Obj704 with ease, how come we needed even bigger guns?

5. another thing that is being worked on is the increase of role of armor in the game. There is no consensus on this issue yet, but it will come soon. This issue concerns mostly only high tiers. The current solution WG is working with is a penetration nerf for guns with too high penetration.

   It took them long enough to realize that this was a serious issue like i think tier 10s as a hole shouldnt have access to premium ammo. this would mean removing premium from tanks like the ST-1 and IS-8 along with the E-75 and Waffle PzIV because they can utilize tier 10 cannons.

   • Will never happen. It just wont.

     • Of course it won’t happen, they need to sell premium time and silver for gold rounds helps this.

       What I’d like them to do is something like make gold rounds 50% more expensive across the board and then crunch the stats over a week or something.

6. - the perk overhaul is in progress, documents are ready by now, all that’s left is to implement the agreed changes. As announced earlier, the “lightbulb” (sixth sense) will be a base skill for the radioman. It will be activated when the skill reaches 100 percent. When a radioman is missing, the crewman who fulfills radioman’s role will have it instead.

   This smells and always smelled like the worst case of pay-to-win … get everybody at 75% for credits, and pay for the radio operator to be 100% from day 0 and have the perk that is probably the most important one in the game. Get rekt, those who don’t pay.

   • Protip: Silver gets same class to 90% when you are above it and from there it’s usually a few battles to 100%

     90% of the players will have their crews ready anyway, on their permanent tanks.

   • I dont think it would be a good idea to drive a tank with 75% crew +100% radioman just for the 6th sense… when i want a full 100% crew im waiting for a crew training discount and make the whole crew 100% for half gold amount

   • Actually, if put some thinking in it, it’s more of a moneygrab in its current form: get commander to 100% with gold, get the first skill to 100%, convert it to “lightbulb” with no exp loss for more gold. As it is now, you have to spend more gold for the same result.

     • But after you have Sixth Sense, you will never need to retrain with gold again.

   • I kinda get the feeling that they might make perks and skills similar to the way it is in WoWP, ie you get the crew to 100% and then there are 3-4 base skills (probably camo, firefighting and repairs plus one job specific skill) of which you need to train 1 to 100% to unlock the next tier of skills and perks. So 6th sense will possibly be the job specific skill for the radioman, still need to train him to 100% with it though, hence the ‘will be a base skill for the radioman. It will be activated when the skill reaches 100 percent’

     • shaddap! dont give them retarded ideas

   • Eh, I have Sixth Sense on 1 tank in my garage… not impressed with it. The info it provides can be usefull, but it’s shortcomings greatly reduce it’s use for anything except campers and maybe late game struggle to win.

     Of course, that’s entirely my opinion, coming from my own experience. Your mileage may vary.

7. (lowtier US TD’s, as some TD’s were in real life arty (T18) and T57 arty was actually a TD)

   YES! no more trollbox! (and AFAIK, T82 was an arty too)

   - currently, WG is focusing on new modes, a lot of work is being done on PvE mode

   PVE FTW!

   - another thing that is being worked on is the increase of role of armor in the game. There is no consensus on this issue yet, but it will come soon. This issue concerns mostly only high tiers. The current solution WG is working with is a penetration nerf for guns with too high penetration

   And dont forget to nerf gold ammo damage

   - accuracy will be changed again, specifically the shot distribution within the aim circle. This does NOT mean nerfing the accuracy to the old standard, it means more like “calibration” to separate accurate guns from inaccurate guns, so you don’t get accurate snapshots when moving by a KV-2

   I am awaiting this for a LONG time!

   - in one of the upcoming patches, you will be able to retrain your crewmembers to different role (radioman to driver for example)

   453657836 radiomans idling in the barracks approve this

   • “And dont forget to nerf gold ammo damage”

     Then why pay more for premammo? If they nerf the premammo damage, they’ll need to drop the price as well…

     • Less price for less damage sounds fair.

     • I’d actually be for reducing price and damage at the same time, that’s fine. It will make it more tactical too.

       ( Damage is a balance parameter to start with. It’s bullshit that there’s 40dmg different between tier 10 some 120~ mm and the difference of 70dmg between 100mm and 105mm never was reasonable either. )

     • make the shells like the real life kind. APCR HIGH pen very low damage. as apcr gos in one way gos out the other like 50% damage but a 10-5% pen increese. would feel like a chaffee damage of 90-120 for apcr. Heat hates angles. Hesh makes the screen go as if you pressed V and stayed for 3 to 5 seconds aka it turns off your hud if it hits. after 5-3 secs passes your hud comes back..

       HE yeah return old HE damage for dealing with super heavys least your doing 50 damage instead of nothing.

       • Also make it that HEAT weakens the armor even if it bounces. like 2% and 5% if it pens up to 25% of the armor.

         like track damage red irange to green. same thing here. a skill to heal armor faster or reduce HEATs armor damage

         example. t18 has 50mm frontal. shoot heat at it it reduces armor by 2% then another 2% and a 5% if it pens. deals little damage like 50 but the armor stays damaged and weak for 15 to 10 seconds. depends on the calibur. and you have to hit the same spot or near it with your next shell AP and the shell gos through damaging the target.

         course limiting shells and making each shell cost differently

         APCR – 20% of ammo carried, HEAT 15%, and HESH 10%,

         costs like apcr costs 150 more creds, Heat costs 500 more and Hesh costs 350 more then ap.

         AP would do less damage like 50 less damage and apcr would get 150 to 200 less damage so batchats would only do 100-150 damage but can have 300-350 pen. but for more pen 3x more etc get what im saying?
         This would balance the armor mech and make it fun for everyone ^^

         this opens up crew skills to negate the heat armor damage, heal armor faster, Less knocked out time from hesh etc.

         HE would have 3 more meters splashes depending on the arty or calibur.. 1 meter to 5 etc..
         just putting helpful stuff out there without having everyone cry about world of heavies.

8. No news on the EU tree?

   • It has to be there :)

9. I dont have a problem with gun barrel sticking thu bush thing, but unless they tweak maps to go with it, alot of sniping positions will become unusable. This game really is turning into world of heavies…

   • Its not turning :D Its back to World of HTs :D
     And learn 15m rule, scrub :D

     • BUT MY GUN IS 20m LONG! WHAT DO I DO???? – Panther and wt.Pz.IV drivers

       • Don’t forget the LTTB

10. “- Storm states that when it comes to various circles and such on minimap, it has to be made using vectors and vectors in Scaleform format cause lags and FPS drops. They tested these options, but it’s not viable for the entire playerbase use, because it “eats” FPS on very bad computers. It’s possible this will be reconsidered later on.”

    WTF? You draw a circle by drawing a box (which translates to two triangles) with a texture containing a white circle (or any shape you want) on a transparent background.

    Every answer regarding performance problems, shows that their programmers have no clue what they are doing…

    And also upgrading an renderer from dx9 to 11 doesn’t take months it takes days or weeks (depending how bad the abstraction is) for some one that knows what he is doing..

    “- Havok is ready, but it has one big issue – it drops FPS a lot when the engine is active on too many objects (SS: as in, with too many destroyed buildings for example). Developers are working on it. To implement it only on some maps would be bad, developers want to implement it as complete”

    As to be expected, the “it has almost no impact on perf” at the beginning of this year was a big hope by the devs, a collapsing building generates hundreds of blocks, and with their bad rendering system, this is simply too much, probably even for high end systems.

    “- one of the upcoming patches will also bring bonus for “tanking” (for blocking shells with your armor)”

    Wasn’t this scraped, because it gives too much income for tanking?

    • It gave too much income because it was bugged.

    • ”Wasn’t this scraped, because it gives too much income for tanking?”

      No, the original implemented algorithm was found to be bugged and could give ridiculous EXP bonuses in circumstances unrelated to the actual damaged absorbed.

      • Storms talking about implementing a bonus for “tanking” at the same time he is discussing ways to improve the efficiency of armor. Sounds like another reason to play heavies and assault td’s, Improved armor + bonus for “tanking” = Just another step towards World of Heavy Tanks

    • Re: the range circle. The problem is way more complex than you think. It is not about drawing the circle itself, but about the drawing calls. At 20 FPS, the computer needs to draw that circle 20 times. Since it is a vector drawing it needs to calculate its position every single time it needs to draw it and that takes time. And this is in addition to all the other calculations the processor must do. Start piling on the FPS and soon you will have the processor overstressed and the FPS drops.
      The actual solution is to go multicore so the workload is distributed, but it seems that is not possible with this current version of BigWorld. Let’s hope the new one will be able to fix this.

11. “work on HD models continues. Developers will start implement several dozen HD models per patch, but this number has to be limited with the size of the patch in mind, Storm doesn’t want huge 40-50GB patches”
    @SS: Shouldn’t that be 4-5 GB patches? 40 GB would be the client size after most tanks have been converted to HD.

    Individual Missions will not be limited by time at all. Only from time to time, there will be a new set of missions (and a new vehicle) in addition to the old one. These new ones will come roughly each half a year.
    That is good news  I would be able to play them maybe 4 months from now.

12. So much info! Omnomnom!

    Thanks for taking the time to watch and get this down for us to read SS.
    Best wishes for a merry christmas and a prosperous new year!

13. Honestly this whole Q&A looks like the last year’s promises where they promised everything and delivered only like 10% of all of it. Whole Q&A is we are working on that, and on that and on that, this is being developed, that is being developed and in the end if we get only some of those things we should be lucky.

    • If this 10% includes a solution to the gold rounds having to much pen/dmg for what they cost, i am a very hapy man.

14. OMG! Did hell freeze over or is WG finally listening?

    Not counting the chickens until the eggs hatch.

15. ” new render range is in work, instead of a 1000 meter rectangle, there will be a circle with 565 meter radius. The 1000 meter rectangle is an old Bigworld workaround to be fixed”

    Fuck yea, I was afraid that they will screw this up and intstead of making a render range a circle based on old square (as above, 565 meter radius) they would limit the range and make a circle inside old square (500 meter radius).

    • I’m getting that the radius should be 564.2 – why did they round it up? :)

      • Everybody gets a render range buff!

16. doesnt matter what they will change in the future, 50% of player base will not notice, and rest will whine anyway… unicums will adapt and will be hated by noobs anyway…

    • It does matter, you frag-charge adapter :)

17. “(so players not using the mod have the same advantage as those who do)”

    Now all thats left is to implement n+1 mods too :)

18. KV5: no lightbulb for your. Never. =D

    • Because KV-5 is so much of a TD. And scout. And arty.

      • What ?! I said that because the radioman is in the weakspot and get killed each game. Crew injured = no lightbulb no ?

        • Oh shit I forgot – KV-5 relies on stealth. Man, I have playing all this time WRONG!

          • I don’t own a KV-5 (but do like them), but I’d imagine that it would be alright to know if the enemy arty knows where you are or not..

            • That’s it. Always good to know if you are spot or not.

              • I ram their faces, sidescrap their aces – do I need to know if Im spotted?

19. I see a lot of good changes are being worked on…

    “- developers are working on fixing the “shooting bush” issue as well. The mechanism, that is currently planned is that when shooting, an additional spotting point will be generated at the end of the barrel. If the gun sticks out of the bush, the tank will be spotted. There will be no “helping mechanism” to indicate this, the player will have to rely on his own eyes.”

    And, of course, one bad one.

    • How is this bad? You wouldnt be able to hide your Je100 anymore? :D

      • RIP bush scouts and snipers even more.

        Make way for the heavy front-liners, inferior peasant classes.

20. - when it comes to maps, Wargaming is now focusing on removing bad maps and improving the other maps and bugs on them. There is already a list of maps to be removed, the speed will be roughly one map per patch.

    Finally they got it. The current mappool is big enough. Players will learn how to play them and the gameplay will improve sooner or later.
    Also with the change to the render circle they will have enough work to do with rebalancing the current maps.

    Reworking disappearing tanks on an open field? I never had a problem with but that’s gonna be quite a big change…

    • With a small map pool this game will get very dull very quickly, but i suppose they don’t want the free players playing endless games and having fun they would rather have the paying guys play a few games, keeps costs down and makes them more money

      • well i didnt say i want a small mappool, and i dont think the current one is small either.

21. “Storm states that constant low FPS (like 30) is much more comfortable to play with than various FPS drops (even from much higher FPS).”
    This confims that Storm is a peasant, INB4 24 FPS lock for more “cinematic” experience.

    • One can adapt to constant frame rate – while drops from 120 to 10 is fucking bullshit.

22. Wait my 183 is supposed to have armor now? That’s funny, just seems a lot slower with no other noticeable difference…

    And if they do get around to having gun barrels spot you, I hope that is only for when firing or that light tanks are not included, as that will kill passive scouting.

    • It has more armour on the turret’s flat frontal parts, 252mm that every tier 10 can penetrate with ease. But If a T-54 that is not shooting gold shoots you in the turret it might bounce. But T-54 drivers that are actually ”good” tend to shoot lots of gold and the hull is still shit so they will just shoot you there….

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24. >- the special female crew perk (“sisters in arms”) will not be transferrable to a regular crew, it’s a special perk made to make the girl crews popular

    I am stupid and don’t understand this
    Isn’t Sister in Arms suppose to be just Brother in Arms with a different name? Or it gives a different bonus? Or is because the question was more of the “i have my anime harem as tank crew, can i give them the “SiA” perk to roleplay lovilove?” style?

    • it’s the same thing as bia people just want it for e-peen purposes.

25. How drastic will the changes to the T18 and the T57 be?

    I hope not too big. Hopefully the T57 will play like the T18, and the T18 will play like the T57. This is a big bummer for me, even though I know it was coming.

    • o.O a Pedobear

26. Off topic: SS do you have any new information on the tier 8 russian medium tank(was it the t54 model 1945)?

27. - regarding the XVM solution of minimap icons (multiple layers), Storms states that this eats a LOT of FPS on weak computers and that’s why it was not implemented. The price for making the game work for everybody is that WG cannot implement some functions they’d like to.

    I’m not sure if I follow. What solution exactly is he talking about?

28. what most bothers me with this game: its chat interface sucks ass, personal messages, clan chat, why cant you see these during a fight? it completely blows.

    as for new Brit line, I havent checked all the vehicles, but tier10 one doesnt seem to be worth the effort. Too big of a paper turret. Paper armor issues can be overcome with speed, but it’s not a light or med, so…what’s the point? Not buying Wg, no thanks.

    • I only have up to tier 5 but according to feedback…

      Tier 10 is hilarious/terrible
      Tier 9 is funny/situational
      Tier 8 is good/okay
      Tier 7 is okay/good
      Tier 6′s is the fun/okay/good
      Tier 5′s are both above average.
      Tier 4 is a Lee clone with a slightly better gun. ( i.e. frustrating to play, mostly bad. )
      Tier 3 is mediocre/okay
      Tier 2 is fun/okay

29. “There will be no “helping mechanism” to indicate this, the player will have to rely on his own eyes.”

    does it mean that wouldn’t show in minimap or just saw a fire from bush?

30. “The mechanism that is proposed is that when a tank enters the field and is in direct (unobstructed) field of view and stops (or shoots), it will have no camo coefficient at all (eg. can’t disappear)”

    This will brake more things then it fixes. Lights that rely on spotting damage wil be hit hard by this in 2 ways. One is their *spot* becomes everyones spot so no spotting bonus… plus more tanks that shoot on your spotted target will get shot at thus rendering your spot ineffective because less dmg is dealt on your *spotted* target.
    This mechanism will also promote camping since it will be more dangerous to get out of cover unless they cover the maps with old Murovanka style magic forests… Doing meaningfull flanking manouvers and pushing is getting harder and harder with almost every map change it seems to me and the games seems to be decided by which team more tanks that can sidescrape effectively and players that now how to sidescrape. It is becoming a bit dull with the close quartes duels of sidescraping heavies.

    “- developers are working on fixing the “shooting bush” issue as well. The mechanism, that is currently planned is that when shooting, an additional spotting point will be generated at the end of the barrel. If the gun sticks out of the bush, the tank will be spotted. There will be no “helping mechanism” to indicate this, the player will have to rely on his own eyes.”

    Rely on my own eyes, really? Somebody please tell those developers that what is see in game with my own eyes is not what the game thinks is there… When i get into a bush i can see many parts of my tank beeing not covered by (not gun barell) it to the enemy yet i am still not getting spotted by them. Other times i do not see any parts of the tank through the bush (double check with the camera) yet i am getting spotted from over 100 m distance…

    There is one main problem i would like WG to fix, hitting terrain when aiming at a target in sniper view. Yes, i know that when the red outline is not showing then you do not have a clear shot but in the heat of battle i do not notice…. way too many shots are wasted that way. Second one is directly connected to the main problem, you can shoot through terrain when you see the red outlining of the tank. I abuse this to my advantage but i would not be sad at all if that was dealt with. Shots going in different directions then my gun barrel is pointing while doing manouvers and turning the turret…
    Rely on my eyes huh? Utter nonsense.

31. I wonder how the low tier vehicle swap will be implemented. Will the current T18 holders suddenly find themselves the proud owners of a tier 2 SPG? That would be hilarious and the amount of butthurt will probably reach the moon.

32. “- of all tier 10 MT’s, T-62A is the best in blocking shells with its armor”

    Yeah, that may be, but people really do not have to confuse it with the best overall armour. The E 50M has much better average armour (62A has a better turret and therefore comes out with a lot of bounces).

    Other than that I am starting to get bored of the WG statements about weak computers. They really cannot keep competetive (well, hoping for AW) while keeping the less-than-mobile calculators that lay all over the world alive. At some point they have to let them go, and I think that the point is there when they have to choose to not implement a good feature.

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