Crew Role Retrain to Cost 500 Gold: Storm Explains

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Hello everyone,

as you probably already know, one of the main features of patch 9.6 will be the retraining of crew members from a different role to another (for example from radioman to gunner). This change is as far as I know available ONLY for gold and on test 1, the price was 600 gold, but it was decided to reduce it to 500 gold.

As you can imagine, the price was not met with much approval from the community and many complained that it’s too high. Here’s Storm’s answer (from the non-public section of RU forum):

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“The most common case during the tanker role retraining: unlocking a new tank, retraining the crew to it from the old one and it turns out that one more tanker is needed (or, opposite, you have one tanker too many). And so, you take a free tanker and you try to put it in this tank (or in the opposite case, you take the free tanker and you retrain it to another tank).

As such:
- you retrain the tanker to another tank
- there’s a skill/perk reset (since you have a different role now)
- the role itself gets changed

At first, we charged 200 gold for each of these operations (as we did earlier), in total we got 600 gold. Then we reduced it to 500. A bulk discount :)”

97 thoughts on “Crew Role Retrain to Cost 500 Gold: Storm Explains”

    • But ppl are still crying and want it for free. ^^
      Because WG is a charity organization….

      • Then why to f*** can we do all other retrains with silver but not this one?
        Would it be so hard to implement it for 50k silver to retrain them with that usual 10% xp loss?
        This is going a bit into Pay to Win side.

        • Not a sympathizet or anything. But nothing obliged them to make retrain for silver or skill reset.
          They gave the possibility to players to acquire camo, gold ammo (even if now they’re everywhere) and gold consumables for credits.
          which represents a loss of money for them but makes the game less P2W.
          Actually, gold only requalification is reasonable from an economic PoV. (WG is here to make money. Otherwise servers would close)
          But ofc I’d be happy to see it for credits.

      • Who the heck said they wanted it for free? Most of us want it to be sensibly priced which this is not. This is like basically saying, “You have a crew eating space in your barracks? Well too bad. Cough up real money or fire that crew member.” I can’t help but agree with evi7stylez here that this game sure as heck is drifting towards pay to win. I got 10 radio guys all from different nations. Definitely not coughing 5000 gold. Might as well pay a bit to get barrack space if I am at my wit’s end.

        *Put Tin Foil On* Me thinks, WG wants every server to pay for the losses they are suffering due to the Russian Economy in Turmoil. *Tin Foil OFF*

        • Pay2Win?

          Are you kidding me?

          It’s a bloody crewmen you twit, not a special consumeable that let’s you win the match.

          Unless your cremen have some special skill that let’s you win the match?

          • @OOPMan If you can’t see the blatant money milking intent behind this move then you my friend are bloody blind and unreasonable. When two out of three aspects of training are already re-trainable by spending credits then why in heck would I pay gold to reset all three? I might as well pay credits for two first and then rest in gold for training from once specialty to another.

      • No, the whine is because it cost 600 gold even though you did not change tank (can be seen in ASAP video – T110E5 commander, no perks, changing for T110E5 gunner I think, 600 gold). That means you paid 200 for perks drop even though that member had no perks or anything, 200 for role training and 200 for nothing. Dunno about 500, did not try it yet.

        • I agree it could be implemented differently (and probably will get changed) but…

          …why would you retrain a crew member for a different role in the same tank?

        • And why the heck would you do this retraining option unless you have perk/perks on the crewmember? Then just buy a brand new member for 200 gold/20000 silver.

        • Well in that case, good luck sticking a radioman in that E5 of yours, see if it works.

          I, for one, just love this new option. It’s kinda funny when I get a new tank and my radioman outranks the damn TC!

    • Sry, corect cost is 400 gold
      In WOT you not train a tanker for tank and then for a role in that tank.
      You train a first day tanker direct for a role in a specific tank in 1 step, it cost 200 gold for complete trainning + 200 gold skills reset = 400 gold

      So WG try a little harder!

      • Did you fail math at school?

        1. Retrain Skill from Tank X to Tank Y, 200 gold
        2. Drop all Skills, 200 gold
        3. Retrain Crewman from Role A to Role B, 200 gold

        200 gold x 3 = 600 gold

        • What he was trying to explain:
          The training from one role to another role should include the skill drop because it makes no sense to take over a loader’s skill to a gunner.
          So 400g are perfectly good and enough.

        • It’s valid for you too, try a little harder to understand
          In WOT when you take a tanker with 0 experince it cost 200 gold for complete train him for a role in a tank, you not train him for tank a then for a role in that tank.
          If you dont understand now then dont talk about other people math skill it will put you in a silly situation

    • I think that 500 gold is entirely reasonable.
      People need to understand that WG is not a charity, rather a business. A BIG BUSINESS. They need to make money.
      So all the players with disposable income will use this awesome option, and all the freeloaders will whine like they always do.

      20 Euro, 5500 gold, u can easily re-gain barrack slots taken by mostly radio operators that have no use.
      It is only money!!! You can’t take any of it with you to the grave.

      • First of all stop defending WG with “They are a business so they need to make money”. That point is already proven. The issue in question is if they are overstepping with their money making schemes or not. I have sunk enough gold in this game to have a year’s worth of premium account and two tier 8 premium vehicles. Even I have disposable income but this move still doesn’t click right to me. Why? Because two out of three aspects of this “Retraining” is already available by spending credits. That is the perk reset and the vehicle type reset. The third, and the new one, is the specialty reset. So why force people to pay gold for all three? It is not about “Not Paying”. It is about being reasonable. Sure money is made to be spent but you wouldn’t throw away your money now would you? After all you can still make more later.

        Point being, this “awesome feature” as you describe it will only be used by people who are either WG fans, truly desperate or people with deep pockets and nothing better to spend on.

        • Lonerprime,
          yes, 2 of the 3 aspects are available for credits.
          And u ask why force people to pay gold for all 3?

          Answer:
          TO MAKE MONEY!!!!!!!!!

          No matter what WG does, ppl will always have butthurt. I have 9 RO’s that are multiple skill sitting in my barracks.
          So, I need to pay 4500 gold so that they can be used elsewhere.
          NO FUCKIN PROBLEMO!!!!
          Thanks WG for finally introducing a role switch!!!!!

          Too bad it doesnt cost 600 gold so that the whiners would be even more butthurt!!!

  2. Meh. Should still cost only 400 gold. Will probably wait for a 50% off discount event before even thinking of using this.

      • But then this post would have said: “Meh. Should still cost only 300 gold. Will probably wait for a 50% off discount event before even thinking of using this.”

        And the follow up would have been: “Yup 300 would be much more reasonable!”

        So yeah, whatever they do they can’t win really.

    • I truly doubt they will offer this option on sale.
      At least not for the 1st 2-3 months, when most of the active paying player base will take advantage of this awesome option. (or the CW clan players who get gold income who can do it for free)

      This is an easy method to get ppl to buy 20-30 euro’s worth of gold.
      If they have any brains, they will figure out more ways to generate similar 20-30 euro spends.

  3. If we ever get a discount offer, 250 gold to change a radio operator into a different tank/role is something worth to consider. Otherwise, far too much.

  4. Excuses, excuses, you can give us the bulk ‘discount’ if you want, but give us the individual crews retrain.
    - 200 gold to retrain crews to different role of the same tanks
    - 20k credits to retrain with 10% exp loss, like always.
    That do:
    - Retrain crew to different role of the same tank.
    - All unusable perks are grayed out.

    Is it that hard to do ? You money grabber, huh ?

    • That’s exactly what I thought. All they should charge gold for is the role change. You can always retrain to another tank and drop skills/perks for credits.

  5. Eh, 500g is so that people that want to buy prem buy the 3k gold pack instead of the 30 days of prem pack..typical.

  6. Welp, I guess my spare radio operators will just keep sitting in the barracks forever – at least they have the training to amuse themselves. 500 gold, that is bonkers. Does he not realize that 2/3 of those operations can be done with silver, and the reason the third one cannot is that it’s not offered at all? It’s possible he does not, I wouldn’t be surprised if WG staffers had access to all the gold they could ever want.

    • Do you actually have any radio operators sat in barracks where it would be worth while switching them even if it was available for credits?

      • Yes, actually. I advanced down all the lines at the same time, and at a certain point the tank tech moves past the need for radio operators everywhere and all of those went to the barracks without new tanks to occupy. Some were on their second perk.

        I’ve reused them as I could when I went back to buy some lower tier tanks back, but there’s still some perfectly usable leftovers.

  7. “A bulk discount :)”

    I am not going to spend even 1 gold on that.
    I’d rather retrain the whole crew or recruit the whole crew fitting all slots. One member does not make a 500 gold difference.
    For 100 gold you get 100% crewmember trained for the position and tank. For credits you get 75% and to get it to 100% is just few games. I don’t know what it is aimed at. Who will pay for training a single crewmember just for gold.

    This has no logic for me. I guess no logic is WG logic. :/

    • Russian logic at play here – you will not use it for your everyday crew. As you clearly stated – its a waste. But lets talk about IM reward crews here for a sec. And I could rant for days about not being able to retrain to 75% or 50% if i dont care about experience/perks acumulated on crew member and just want his/hers position changed. If thats what WG will be charging us (500g only) – we should be able to change nation also.

    • 500g, perhaps on discount 250g. Worth it if you have “highly skilled radio operator army” sitting in the barracks.

    • Well, if you are wiling to pay 100 gold for 100% trained crew member, i guess it’s worthwhile to pay additional 150 gold for 6th sense, and one or two skills/perks if you have them (like situational awareness, recon, mentor…). You need around 200k XP to get 6th sense for example, and it’s painful to play that many battles without it, especially in high tiers. Lets say you want to keep Obj. 416, T-54, Obj. 140, T-62A… That is A LOT of games without 6th sense, and I think it’s helpful to retrain some ratio operator with tons of skills, or even take some TD crew, and retrain everyone except commander, and you can get 6th sense for 3-4 MTs or LTs. I mean, playing without a good crew in a TD is bad, but you are mostly passive, and if you are siting in some bush it doesn’t change that much like if you are in a LT without the bulb, which is a pure pain.

  8. So let it on players and separate to three 200-gold actions.

    Many don’t need the skill/perk reset and retraining to another tank, so they can retrain only for 200g.

    • I think it’s just laziness. They want to just reuse the code they created for assigning the roles to female crew memebers and do as little more as possible.

        • 500 gold isn’t really nickel nor dime, though. I could buy a premium tank (on 50% sale) for that and still have gold left over. I’m pretty sure most people won’t even consider doing it at this price, so surely this isn’t a price that will bring them the most money. Surely…?

  11. where is the free and credit option?
    should have been 20k credits change roll and drop primary skill by 10% or free for 20% drop

  12. The cost of 500 gold is one thing. Being a gold only thing, without a “buy for credits with crew xp loss” option is an entirely different story. And that one is the problem here.

    • Well, with the insane credit gain from the missions (i made 22 mill in 2 weeks) it would make no sense in offer anything special for credits since everyone could easily afford it. Thats the pay element of the game. You can train yourself a new crew member for free, or well, take the shortcut and buy a beer less.

  13. ok maybe this is resonable but still expensive and i don’t get why there is not credit option that is just not fair..i do get that they make money like that but still..WG give us credit option!!!

  14. Still too much IMHO. Sometimes a perk reset is not needed (Camo, Repairs, BIA anyone?) so why charge for it? If someone doesn’t want a commander with useless radio operator skills etc. pp., I’m quite sure he will just reset the perks himself with the existing option. -.-

    The rest I am ok with (gold only, no credits or free option). But the forced skill reset bugs me.

  15. So this really wasn’t really intended for the dedicated long serving veterans then.
    I have 13 useless but well trained radio operators from various nations. I used to have more but I just ended up dismissing those without at least 50% training on their first skill.

    No way am I going to use this feature if it doesn’t have a credit alternative. Is WG just hiking up prices so they can fund their other ill conceived projects?

  16. Why don’t they stop being stubborn and let the players decide if they wanna reset the skills? Many people have BiA, Camo and repairs as skills, so there is no need to force a skill reset.

  17. Just 2 words: Money. Hungry.

    Guess all those Radiomen will still have lots of gay ole fun

  18. Meh, it is their stuff so they can charge what they like. As consumers we make our own choices as to how our money should be spent.

  20. so for 2,25€ i can get a kebap around the corner OR I can change the spezialisation of that radio guy who has been sitting, doing nothing, in my barracks for almost 2 years now? tempting wargaming .. tempting

  21. So, and can you retrain from f.e heavy to med too or just crew role within the vehicle type ?

  22. I think wg should increase role retrain to 1000 gold and also change prices from 200 gold to 400. Things are too cheap in wot, time to make gold ammo useless and invent other credit/gold sinks like in the old days. Also increase prem account price to 120 euros for 360 days and nerf income for standard account players by 35%.

  24. TBVH I prefer making some options for retraining. I dont care if this eats 100K or 200K credits, but please, WoT is F2P not P2P game, so yeah, IMHO I prefer lose lots of creds rather golds.
    and yes, I quote : ” Freemium is Free 2 Play family “

  25. I was hoping for 100-200 gold. I understand the reasoning behind 500, but it fails because you don’t necessarily need to drop skills (or if you do, not always with gold), and you don’t necessarily want to retrain tank classes with gold.

    I guess it is better than not having the option, but I don’t see myself retraining radiomen at 500 a pop.

  26. The amount of butthurt in here is hilarious.

    Are you all paupers or something?

    Or maybe you just failed math?

    Let’s say you take your 5 skill Radioman for Tank X to Tank Y. That’s 200 gold.

    But you want to turn your Radioman into a Gunner!

    But your Radioman has Radioman Skills!!

    So you drop Perks, that’s another 200 gold.

    And then finally you retrain the crewman from Radioman to Gunner, another 200 gold.

    That’s 600 gold and guess what, it makes PERFECT sense mathematically based on the cost of the component operations.

    The fact that WG has given you a 100 gold discount at all surprises me.

    That fact that you’re whining because they didn’t make it 200 gold just boggles the mind.

    • Well said OOPMan – This was such a great comment that I had to register on FTR just to give you a thumbs up.

      The amount of whine and butthurt in this thread IS mindboggling.

      I have waited ages for WG to implement this, and I consider this a good deal, getting some useless 3-skill radiomen back in business.

      Hahhaa, now go on and whine some more.

    • What makes people rage is that they do not give you the option to change a crew member to another role while keeping its perks and tank preference. This is possible, try having 2 gunners with the same skills, one skill will go shady like incomplete BIA.

      This way you could spend 200 gold and use silver for the rest.

    • Good job. You’ve managed to ignore reality marvelously. Protip: there’s a silver retraining option for most of those and that’s the one that most people actually use.

      • Yes yes yes, Silver Retraining is something we all use.

        Maybe you forget that once upon a time various things were Gold only?

        Like Premium Ammo and Premium consumables.

        I’m sure WG are considering whether or not to make this option available for silver. Whether or not they decide to do so probably depends on how popular the gold-only form proves to be and how much they are willing to play with the price.

        For example, they may decide to make it 500 gold to change but the equivalent of 600 gold-as-silver.

        There are many options and right now most people are whining because WG decided not to kiss their asses.

    • Sorry to say that but your math fails this time.
      Consider this simple situation: I’ve researched a WT Pz IV. Got 5/6 crewmembers, from S. Emil and Rhmb. I lack a loader. What do I do?
      By chance, I have an unemployed German gunner, with BiA and some Camo skill, in my barracks. I retrain him (for credits) to WT Pz IV gunner. I work on his main skill to be 100% again, using my Dicker Max, or another German premium TD. So the situation is like that:
      I’ve got a 100% WT Pz IV gunner, with 2 universal skills. I want to make him a WT Pz IV loader with the same skills – SAME vehicle, SAME skills. I DON’T change these things. Still, 200+200+200? Even though I DO NOT use two out of three services you’ve mentioned and thus legitimized charging me for them?
      I’m not whining about the amount of gold itself, for me it could be 100 or 800 or over 9000. Just the explanation “you pay for retraining it for another tank”, while you don’t do that – is bullcrap. Not a perfect sense, just pure NONSENSE.

  27. You know, there is a hole in that thinking: when you have a crewmember who had secondary role(s) on previous tank and got skills/perks for those instead of his main one, and then you want to retrain it for that role on a new tank, such perks would get active without dropping them…
    So, this probably needs some adjusting, as perks/skills do NOT need dropping(1) and he is at least partially trained in that role already(2) ;) – you could get lower price in certain situations because of those.

  29. It is almost like people don’t understand how businesses work (OK, they probably don’t). Someone has to pay to keep Wargaming going. A free to play game that didn’t cost anyone anything wouldn’t last very long. Five hundred gold is about $2 at the 25k Gold/$100 pricing. Assuming this role change is subject to the same (pretty regular) 50% crew training discounts, then at a discount it would cost about $1. Those prices hardly make Wargaming money grubbing fiends, especially when there are multiple posts about 400 being a reasonable price. The difference between 500 gold and 400 gold is about 40 cents. That won’t even buy you a can of soda or a pack of gum in the US.

    Would I be even more excited about the role change if it was cheaper? Sure, who wouldn’t be, but they are hardly price gouging. I have several radio operators with multiple skills that I don’t need for anything. Saving money retraining them all would be nice. Generally I only pay gold for crew training during sales, so I’ll convert them when it is on sale. I’d much rather spend 250 gold per crew member to start a new tank out of the gate with a multi skill crew than 100 gold per crew member and have to start grinding perks again.

  30. All nice and dandy, but I believe a change to 6th sense was announced.
    Every 100% radio operator will get 6th automatically and I think 6th sense (for a commander) would be the prime reason for people to re-train radio operators to another role.

    So now some of us might spend some gold to get nice and shiny commanders on some of their tanks, only to see the gold go to waste in a couple of patches when the 6th goes (back) to the radio operator.

    It might be worthwhile going from a 5 (or 6) crew tank to a 4 (or 5) crew tank and be able to give the 5th wheel a new place, but this will not exactly be common I think……

    Time will tell if I will use it or not.

  31. I don’t know why you assume that in order to have a gold you have to pay for it, gold is a premium value yes, but it can be obtained many, many ways especially when you are a decent player. I play WOT since beta, never paid for more then 2-3 months of premium at the beginning but there was a time when i had over 30k gold on my account, because of 7v7/3v3 tournaments, Mangled, Fun Cups, Clan Wars etc. Your a lonewolf? OK, pay for it, I dont understand how can people play that stupid yet addictive game alone, thats pure masochism :) on the other hand, if you find a nice group of people the gold wont be a problem. Especially that ridiculous amount like 500.

  32. WG….soon you will find in Wikipedia all articles regarding “non-intelligent”, “dumb” etc directly linking to WG homepage. Would be a much easier and better fitting explanation than the current texts….

    It is ok that it is gold only for the role change….the rest is stupid. My radiomen army does not need a skill reset by default, they have the shared skills only (Camo, BiA, Repairs, Firefighting). So leave it up to the players to reset the skills! Make the price 375 without skill reset and 500 incl. skill reset.

  33. LOL!
    There will probably be some changes in patch 9.7….
    Changes in how the crew setups alternates from tank to tank in the same tree..
    Just a new way to make some profit.

  35. I hope this will be one of the least popular things that players will pay for.
    Than they will prabaly give it for credits.
    I wouldnt mind if it cost me 300k credits just to retrain one assface with 10% xp loss.
    Price of retrain == price of vents or something expensive

    500 gold is really unfair. Like prem ammo was – total bullshit (but its credit price should be higher)

  36. The commerce lectures given on this thread are quite amusing. It’s as if some who post on this thread whom, if they needed to go from London to Manchester on a train, would be happy to pay full fare to Glasgow just because that’s where the train terminated and you could go there if you wanted to. If they were to set up a shop selling alcohol, customers wouldn’t be allowed to buy any wine without having to buy a case of wine glasses too. Why? Because you need wine glasses to drink wine from. Of course, it all makes logical sense.

  37. So those times we want to throw a 4 skill crew into a different tank to help grind it or something (who knows why) we have to pay 500 gold each crew member? Why isn’t it just 500g for retraining them to a different class of tank, if its a heavy tank to another heavy tank it costs 200g still. Its not like people will want to redo ALL skills when putting them from a T110E5 to a T57 heavy..

    Maybe I’m not understanding this completely, but don’t they make enough money from people (like myself) buying a premium account or premium tanks? To retrain 6 crew members to another is 3000 gold. So $20 to retrain virtual crew members to another tank seems a bit to much.

  38. I do not mind they set the price at 500 gold, that is their prerogative, but I do mind there is no silver conversion for it. Ah well, at least it is good to have the option to do so. Don’t like the price, don’t use it. I know I won’t.

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  40. IMHO it should only cost 200 gold but only include the role change, if you want to put it on another tank you can still do it manually and if you want to reset skills you can do that as well, but putting it all in 1 payment is just an attempt to get more money out of the user, what if you don’t want to reset skills because you only had camo/repairs on that crew member? or you don’t want to spend the gold for a 100% reset