Source: Wot-News.com

Hello everyone,

some quick answers from Veider:

- Veider confirms that the new top French mediums (AMX-30 Prototype and AMX-30) will be unlocked from AMX-13/90
- it’s possible that the RU251 view range will be changed, full analysis is needed in order to make a decision
- T-54 Light would be really boring as a premium tier 8 medium tank, that’s why another tank will be picked for that slot instead. Veider likes it as a top tier LT8, it’s possible there will be some characteristics fixes
- Object 906 is an interesting tank, but without swimming, it’s very unlikely it will appear in the game

Thanks to Maiorboltach for the transcript.

Hello everyone,

the faster of you noticed that there was a video published, containing some information about the upcoming game changes. Then it was taken down and apparently, it will appear tomorrow. It’s nothing really new, it’s just a summary of the stream with Storm, which I already covered before. Just to sum up what was said in this video then:

- a definition of Havok: it will be used to model client-side beautiful destruction
- Havok will use a separate core thread, which will satisfy multicore PC owners, it will be optional
- the technology is ready, but now maps and objects have to be reworked for it, it’s a lot of work and it will take some time
- multicore support: right now, developers are working on transferring some client and graphic calculations to separate threads. It takes a lot of work, devs are working on it for quite some time and the work will not be finished anytime soon.
- multicore support will not be a magical solution to all performance problems, even though it might increase the performance by dozens of percent
- FV4202 will be made premium, it is not yet decided whether players will get it for free
- new motion physics will bring realistic tank movement, tanks will be able to perform “controlled drift”, it will be possible either to turn like now, or to make an U turn, but by doing that, you will lose speed
- tank “swinging” (when stopping or starting) was moved serverside and now it will be possible to shoot below or above your depression/elevation by sharply braking or accelerating (the gun will “jerk” upwards above the elevation for example)
- tanks will lose much less speed when going over small obstacles such as stones
- no ETA (when it’s done it’s done), but much of the work was finished already, currently the developers are actively testing, fixing bugs and polishing the model
- there will be a SD and HD texture split in the future the way it was made in 9.3 – SD textures have half the resolution and will be supplied as “standard” for everyone, while HD textures will be available for optional download. This was decided because there is very little difference between the ways HD and SD textures look.
- in the future, not only tanks, but maps as well will be reworked to HD model, for them, the HD textures will also be optional like for tanks
- crew skills/perks will be reworked in order to make all of them attractive, so players don’t have such an easy choice
- sixth sense will be removed as a perk and everyone will get it automatically, it will be tied to the radioman (or crewman with radioman’s role)
- it will be possible to retrain crewmen from one role to another

Nothing much today, developers are slowly getting ready for 9.4, which will bring just some small things.

- Q: “Why did you decide to reward damage blocked by armor (“tanking”) with XP and not credits, how will for example Maus benefit from this?” A: “Crew levelling”

Otherwise not much.

- apparently, it’s possible to get a teamdamage/teamkill punishment from the race mode (or rather to damage your allies at all). According to developers, this (the ability to teamdamage) is not intended, it’s possible this will be removed
- some mods interfere with the new racing mod. Specifically, older versions of Gnomefather’s sounds cause the game to crash
- locked equipment on your Chaffee Sport tank will be (when the Chaffee Sport is removed) automatically and for free (no gold will be charged) removed and put to your depot at the end of the event
- the 50k XP reward is not a “free XP” reward, it will be transferred to the T1
- the Chaffee race mode is checked for bots strictly (on RU server at least), inactive players and bots will be banned
- the fact that exploding barrels do not deal damage in the Chaffee race is intentional – developers tested it, it wasn’t good with damage
- the fact the crew gets moved to the barracks does NOT mean you will get extra free barracks slots, if your barracks are full, the crew will simply stay as “extra” and as soon as a space frees itself by moving the barracks crew to a tank for example, the crew will occupy it

And a couple of interesting points from today’s leak about skill MM (for those who did not read it):

- on RU server, only 7 percent of players has below 47 percent winrate, 77 percent of players has winrate between 48 and 52 percent
- the “do you want skill MM” poll was sent to 200k players in total, results will apparently be known in November
- Hidden Village is scheduled for a rework (SS: told you so)
- map Stalingrad is planned
- the Bigworld engine is in apparently for an overhaul (SS: they call it “engine upgrade”, it’s possible that the developers here refer to Havok or new motion physics, but maybe other graphic features as well)
- apparently, something called “Black Forest” is planned (likely a new map, sounds interesting)

You can check Listy’s new article about bombers over Italy. Also, Overlord is collecting feedback on the new AFK/leaver punishment system, be sure to write your opinion under his post.

- it’s not planned to split the gun caliber and the shell actual caliber (for subcaliber shells, for the purposes of overmatch for example) because such a mechanism would be incomprehensible to players
- there will not be any “anti-medals” for bad behavior in game in order not to provoke idiots, who would collect them on purpose
- oddly enough, Storm and Yuri Pasholok are publically arguing (wut?) about sending/not sending some small things about the vehicle HD models (postwar lights on ISU-152 if I see correctly), apparently there is not a very good chain of communication between the HD modellers and historians (SS: as in, modellers ignoring feedback – I wonder if this is connected to the fact that “there might be no HD models in 9.4″)
- Veider on general LT class buff: “We didn’t scrap that. We will change the view ranges. We simply have to have a look at (new) LT’s on main servers. How did they fit in the game, if we need to fix anything and so on. Everything according to plan.”

Interested in winning a DVD with historical materials about the Panther? Check out how!

- as Storm mentioned in his stream, the developers have an internal map, on which they are testing various new technologies. This map is based on Abbey – it was selected because it is a mixed type, it has a city part and three clear directions of attack. This map is however internal (a testbed) and will not be implemented.
- new map features (new landscape render, improved water render, completely reworked tree render, changed lighting, new texturing techniques, new textures) ETA? “Everything depends on how the tests will go and how they will reflect on performance.”
- the fact you can destroy enemy tanks in the upcoming Chaffee races is intentional (SS: as in, fighting is as important as racing)
- the Chaffee SPORT XP will not turn into free XP, it will be tied to T1 Cunningham
- the Chaffee SPORT crew will be transferred at the end to the barracks even if there are not enough slots (free slots won’t be given however)

- the loss of penetration depends on actual distance the shell travels in the game. If you are aiming at a vehicle 500 meters from you and another tanks drives in your line of fire less than 100 meters from you and you hit him, the shell will use the 100 meter penetration for the check.
- crew “memory” (keeping the training for the tanks the crew was trained for before) is not planned
- since 0.8.6 (its introduction), the accuracy mechanism was not changed
- Yurko2F on shell flight velocity: “The shell velocity is calculated along the trajectory line from the start to the impact point. Nothing is calculated in advance.”
- Yuri Pasholok states that some models (specifically the SU-100, ISU-152) have some historically small incorrect features (like some features that appeared only in 50′s during the modernization) – really small stuff, but it makes the models slightly unhistorical
- Storm states that the HD models look much better than the old ones (SS: some player was whining that the HD tanks look terrible)
- apparently, there is a bug on RU server where CW players can use (under certain circumstances) frozen vehicles in battle, Storm will investigate
- one player reported extremely long battle loading time in WoT, Storm replied it’s due to disk fragmentation
- Storm about future LT buff: “We will add viewrange. Or, to be more specific, we will nerf it on other tanks.”
- fire in both WoT and WoWs is rendered through the use of sprites. There are no 3D models of fire, there are simply sets of particles and each particle is a small sprite

- Storm states now that the HD textures option in the launcher is missing intentionally (HD textures have to be installed manually), because “many people will leave it enabled ‘just so’ and not because they actually need it” – he adds that the reason for this is saving traffic and also preventing FPS loss on computers with low amount of GPU memory
- about Wargaming having hidden parameters in the game and officially disclosing them: “Let me say it simply – noone needs that. It wouldn’t make the game more interesting for anyone, apart from a few bean counters, it would only introduce complications in understanding the game.”
- if you quit a 9.3 replay early and you will see the “commissar” screen about leaving the battle, you won’t get any punishment for that, because when watching replays, there isn’t even a connection with the server
- Storm states that some players have predispositions to certain vehicles and for example can suck on vehicles, that are considered good and vice versa
- Storm states that the idea to let players re-buy once-purchased and sold premium tanks back for credits didn’t move anywhere for now
- IS-8 won’t be buffed

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Hello everyone,

what follows is the summary of Storm’s stream, that ended literally minutes ago. Holy crap, Storm talks FAST. I think it should be mostly correct, some things I didn’t hear properly or am not sure for, but that’s all in the text. Please note that if I made any mistakes, I will fix them later after I compare my text to the one of a Russian author.

- XP for tanking temporarily removed, will be tested and will return
- 9.4 – hopefully more vehicles will recieve split of transmission
- there have been many problematic cases where various accidents were considered “suicide”, that’s why the suicider punishment was removed for rework
- the bug where “early leaving” is punished when leaving a replay will be fixed
- the HD texture split only includes textures in maximum quality, they are almost needlessly detailed, they can be viewed only in hangar during zoom, therefore these were split for players who don’t need them not to download them
- developers will monitor the popularity of the HD textures
- EVERYONE will have HD models (as in, high polygon models), the only difference will be the texture quality and resolution

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First and foremost – regarding the “new bot ban system” – I was apparently wrong in accusing WG EU of inaction. Ectar posted that this system is in fact in operation for over a month. He wrote the following:

We didn’t want to do a new article as we didn’t want to warn naughty players that we were coming for them. We’ve had this new system active since the start of the month and 9.3 will bring an additional system to deal with AFK players and those players who leave a battle early. What we have active on EU atm is the same as what is active on RU. You don’t hear much about players being banned because no one wants to admit they got caught doing something they shouldn’t have.

So, I guess that’s that. Personally, I do not understand why keep such a thing secret – after all, the point of such a system is not only to punish, but also to deter (that’s why WG RU made actual portal posts about it). Make no mistake, the system is effective on RU forums (yes, I am paranoid, so I manually checked the list of players announced to be banned for botting – RU does that – and indeed, they were banned). I am actually impressed, it’s time WG as a whole took the issue of bots seriously.

- the LTTB turret is actually historical. Sort of. It’s a regular T-34/85 turret with slightly enlarged turret ring (1600 to 1660mm). It was however not designed for LTTB, it’s completely independent on that.
- the next gift tank (Panzer II Ausf.D) having too low penetration? “It’s still supertest” and “No comment on leaks”
- no tank will be buffed just because some developers don’t play well with it
- German 37mm and 50mm subcaliber rounds lose a lot of penetration over distance (more than others apparently). Veider states this is historical, based on some documents. In the future, this will be reworked so all the subcaliber shells of that respective caliber lose the same percentage of their penetration

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