- Storm admits that even “real” tank characteristics in random battles aren’t always historical
- Storm states that there are almost no bad maps in the game anymore, all of them were fixed so they are playable
- Storm confirms the premium Valentine changes leaked earlier today – the armor will be nerfed to 8.11 level because in 9.0 someone overbuffed it
- roaming has been postponed for now
- tank descriptions on minimap will come “it’s done when it’s done”
- the mod that exists and does the tank descriptions on minimap is “terrible unoptimized – we have to start from scratch”
- dynamic tank characteristics in hangar (based on what modules you have installed) will come this year
- test 9.1 will be in May (SS: possibly this week)

Source: http://world-of-kwg.livejournal.com/293360.html

Hello everyone,

yesterday, you might have noticed a large batch of historical battles answers from Storm. That was because he posted an article, where he asks for your feedback, specifically:

- what did you like?
- what didn’t you like?
- what would you do differently
- what are your expectations for historical battles?

Continue reading →

- there will be new historical battles and balance changes in HB in 9.1, definitely at least one new historical battle
- current maps are made by the same people like the earlier maps, only the map department leadership changed
- developers are considering nerfing FV304
- Q: “Why do you always nerf the vehicle, that is the favourite one of a lot of players?” A: “‘Favourite’ vehicle always means an imbalanced vehicle. Proven numerous times.”
- the idea to have garage battles and alternative hulls was not scrapped

On the topic of historical battles:

- Q: “Change historical battles not by removing hitpoints, but only stop displaying them” A: “Why, so the player doesn’t know what’s going on?”
- apparently some historical battles will be changed, some will stay
- the removed historical battles might return
- special tank stats for historical battles are supposed to solve HB balance issues
- Storm confirms that each tank will have two sets of stats, one for random, one for HB
- Storm admits that the lack of people playing HB is a real problem
- special maps for HB? Storm: “To make special maps only for several percent of players is not very profitable”

Continue reading →

I hope you don’t mind a bit of seriousness first:

As you probably know from the news, there are catastrophic floods in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina (Czech news). From FTR I know that there are great many players from the region of former Yugoslavia, so indirectly, it concerns us as WoT playerbase as well. In case you want to help, the best way probably would be to donate to Red Cross – instructions are here. I did.

Anyway, on to lighter stuff.

- some players on RU forum started spreading rumors that artillery will be removed from the game – it’s BS, won’t happen
- SerB states that generally speaking, WG always compensates the players for XP, when they make changes in any branches
- according to Overlord, World of Tanks Blitz will be released worldwide “with a substantial update” (as in, during a bigger patch)

FTR is not just my translation work or the articles. It’s a ton of little things, going behind the scenes. Usually it’s Edrard fixing a hundred things behind the scenes, this time, special thanks go to Maiorboltach, who told me how to switch off Livejournal’s new shitty interface, that was literally making my eyes hurt and looking for posts was much harder in it. Thank you.

- Christie tanks will come, but not anytime soon
- Storm is not worried about the losses of online player numbers (SS: some tried to put a connection between that and War Thunder open beta, that was released yesterday IMHO) – he states that in summer, player statistics by drop a lot
- Storm states that nothing was changed with FPS in the micropatch, observed FPS losses are placebo
- developers are actively working on serious optimization steps
- Q: “To regulate TD’s you need to remove the sixth sense, it wasn’t there before!” A: “Sixth sense is already very old.”

Continue reading →

- Storm states that the amount of gold ammo fired per battle is usually 10-15 percent, 20-30 percent are separate cases, which are rare, on low tiers there is a lower amount of gold shells fired
- T-54, FV215b (183), T69 – they don’t belong to the tanks, that use massive amounts of gold ammo (80 percent)
- it’s possible FV304 will be nerfed
- Churchill and IS HD models are not ready yet apparently
- Storm states that he will investigate artillery accuracy, there are no guarantees it won’t be touched (SS: earlier it was confirmed that the developers want to nerf tank accuracy a bit)

Continue reading →

Source: http://world-of-ru.livejournal.com/3281269.html

Hello everyone,

there was yet another WG stream and Maiorboltach from the RU LJ community was kind enough to post some tidbits said in it.

- Havok is closed to the end of the year than to today
- there will also be ammo rack special effects for TD’s and SPG’s (flames from crew hatches)
- in 9.1, new engine graphic effect will come (the amount of exhaust smoke will depend on the engine RPM)
- in 9.1, the tank explosion effect will be reworked (more smoke, more flames, new sound)
- the sound will be generally reworked a lot in 9.1
- it’s possible that the Stronghold mode will not appear in 9.1, since WG wants to fix bugs completely first

Hello everyone, in case you are wondering what the hell happened that suddenly in one day, we have so much info on 9.1, it’s because tomorrow, the 9.1 open test was supposed to begin. As far as I know (from WG RU), the test was postponed to next week – the reason for that is the fact the 9.1 test build is bugged (specifically, nasty FPS drops). WG wants to fix that first.

- VK Porsche not buffed while it needs a buff? “It happens”
- Storm states that the nerf of imbalanced tanks WILL come, developers did not decide to leave them
- gold ammo shots make 10-15 percent of all shots fired, sometimes up to 20 percent – there are peaks of more, but they are rare, official statistics won’t be disclosed
- Storm confirms that gold ammo statistics do not show “terrible dominance of gold ammo”
- the gold ammo statistics are about the same for tier 10 and the entire game
- Storm states he could partially agree with the increase of role of armor
- skill MM? Storm: “If it will come, then in a separate mode, such as ‘ranked random’ as an addition to normal random battles”
- normalization will not be further reduced, it’s small as it is
- T18 will still be too strong in 9.1? “You can play on T18″ (Storm states later that T18 will be nerfed)

Continue reading →

Source: http://world-of-kwg.livejournal.com/293097.html

Hello everyone,

Storm posts further details about the CANCELLATION of some changes, planned for Patch 9.1. He states that the developers came to following conclusions:

Storm states that the list of changes is not always systematic and understandeable for the players – it’s not clear why tank X gets buffed and tank Y doesn’t. Developers agreed that rebalance tasks will be handled more systematically and the developers will post explanations as to why tank X was buffed or nerfed

Furthermore, developers decided that in order to fulfill this systematic approach (combining tank buffs/nerfs and for example the TD camo nerf), the planned buffs/nerfs for vehicles are CANCELLED. The only changes that REMAIN in 9.1 are the following (be aware that the EU forums have it wrong, these changes are staying):

- TD camo factor after shooting is nerfed
- LT battletier spread reduction
- MT-25 and VK2801 buff
- Sherman stock turret 105mm derp ROF nerf (this is a leftover form the previous patch, since it wasn’t nerfed by ommission)
- Soviet UBR-354KA 76mm shell damage increased by 5 (also bug fix, gold ammo had 110 damage and AP had 105)

Storm states that this DOES mean the developers decided to remove the Hellcat and Tiger nerf. The rebalances will be made to them, but as a part of complex tasks (in this case, the task of “solving the rebalance of tanks on mid tiers”). Storm adds that the developers will also give out more complex and sophisticated explanations as to why each change has to be made.

Meh. T18 needs nerfing…

Correction for yesterday’s translation – I misunderstood the context in one of the yesterday’s discussion posts. There will be no changes to the Hellcat and Jackson engines, only their sounds will be changed to a historical ones.

Sorry, not really anything useful today.