this little story comes from Belarus. Apparently, the “tanks game” (World of Tanks) caused their marriage to divorce.
Apparently, a woman named “Ekaterina” (there is a photo too, but somehow, I don’t think it’s the woman the article is about) married a guy, they moved to a village and apart from some small issues, everything was just peachy, until the villainous husband started playing the evil addictive game World of Tanks! He started spending all his free time in the game and spent also quite a lot of money on it, came home at 15-16PM, started playing and played until midnight every day, even on weekends. He ignored the wife’s pleas to go out or even to have a walk, stating “it’s just a hobby”. He became cruel, aggressive, stopped paying attention to what he was doing and saying (at this point, the woman admits it might have been a little bit her fault, because she started screaming straight away). In the end, she got fed up with it and moved out.
How terrible.
To be quite honest, given the fact it comes from a “lady portal”, the stock nature of photos and everything, I think the story is made up, wouldn’t be the first time. One thing is however interesting about it – even IF it is made up, it shows that in Belarus (and I do believe this can be applied to Russia as well), WoT became such a cultural phenomenon that even woman magazines started to notice. That is not exactly easy to do – only a few games achieved such a status that even non-related media took notice – Counterstrike, World of Warcraft, Call of Duty (related to various controversies such as “No Russian”) and now, World of Tanks. Quite an achievement.
recently, Storm openly confirmed that the Sturmtiger will not be implemented. From what I heard on Russian server – it’s connected to an incident, where on the supertest, Storm took a Sturmtiger for a spin and out of three shots, he oneshotted IS-7, Maus and E-100. Whether that’s true – well, that’s not confirmed, but it would certainly explain his distaste for such a gamebreaking vehicle.
Regardless, it’s true that a 380mm rocket mortar cannot effectively be balanced in the game, at least using “regular” rules. Sure, you could just give it a small alpha (on 183mm level), but that would be strange and illogical. Plus, it seems that’s already decided, so now the real question is, what to do with the rest of the line?
Well… for starters, it has to be realized that by getting rid of the Sturmtiger, you are most likely getting rid of tier 8 and 9 as well. Early Wargaming thoughts, confirmed by Storm, were along the lines of:
Tier 8 – Sturmpanzer Ferdinand (basically a Ferdinand with 210mm mortar)
Tier 9 – Sturmpanzer Bär
Tier 10 – Sturmtiger
All three have massive guns, starting with the 210mm, that, while a derp, would likely be just as hard to balance on its tier (imagine a 210mm shell landing on your tier 6). The Bär has a 305mm howitzer/mortar (good luck balancing that against tier 7 vehicles), so it’s likely that these candidates took a trip to the “scrapped” folder along with their tier 10 brother.
Lower tiers however are entirely salvageable. Tier 5,6 and 7 would likely be SIG33, Sturmpanzer IV (incorrectly known as Brummbär, that name was apparently not used historically) and Sturmpanzer Panther, which is basically a Panther with a 150mm short howitzer in the turret, it looks like this:
And yes, that is actually a historical project. The 150mm gun itself does not have exactly stellar properties (do not be fooled by the caliber, the gun was not that powerful – the HEAT shell could only penetrate some 150mm of armor) – in fact, the Brummbär was confirmed to be “fine” with it, so we can assume everything from the line up to tier 7 is useable and we are now missing only tier 8,9 and 10.
in 9.3, Wargaming is introducing new system to punish suiciders early quitters from battle and AFKers. According to the post, linked above, this is done specifically to punish players, who quit early, depriving the enemy team of one kill for example.
The anti-leaver system
If you try to quit the battle prematurely, you’ll get the following screen
It says “Your team needs you. Quitting the battle until it’s over or until your vehicle is destroyed is considered to be a desertion and can be punished”
After a certain number of these quits (Storm mentioned the number 3), the player will stop getting any XP/credits or medals until he starts playing fair (exact conditions are not known). This system will not be applied to complete newbies.
AFK checks
A new AFK check system is implemented. If the game recognizes you were inactive in battle, you will – just like above – after a warning, stop recieving XP and credits. This system does however take newbies and situations where for example you lose internet in account.
Suicide checks
Practically the same goes for intentional suicides as for the matters described above. First a warning if you suicide and if it repeats itself, 0 creds/XP/medals for you. Random accidental suicides will not be punished.
Basically, if you see the warning window, you aren’t getting anything for the battle. Next battle will be okay, but your account will be flagged If the behavior as described above persists (a flagged account gets punished), you’ll get fined for longer time.
a lot of people think that Wargaming doesn’t realize problems and balance – but they do. Thanks to the “Insider”, who in the past provided us with reliable info, a copy of internal WG chain e-mail found its way to my mailbox. Here it is – I deleted the names of course as per request of the Insider, but I do know them and I confirmed they are legit.
There is a part where SerB is raging – in Russian. Some of the developers write in Russian as well, the translation however is not mine, it’s the Insider who translated it as such and I dare not correct it. The chain mail involves several mid- to low-tier developers and SerB and it concerns everyone’s favourite topic, artillery.
The first part of the mail conversation takes place many months ago around the time before the Great Arty Nerf (8.6 was it? Can’t remember). The chain mail structure was modified by me to resemble a conversation (I threw out the “re: re: re:” etc)
Developer 1 (RU): So, what are the Data feeds on the “Arty problem?
Developer 2 (RU): What arty problems?
Developer 3 (RU): Artywhiners.
Developer 4 (RU) posts some artillery statistics and copies of whine on forums
Developer 1 (RU): *reacting on Developer 4* Is this even correct?
Developer 5 (RU): Afraid so 95% players play arty, 14 clusters accounted in EU/US/RU most vocal ones are forum speakers estimated not even 5% of them are actually accounted for, most problematics come from the US cluster
Developer 5 (RU): *posts US server artillery statistics*
Developer 2 (RU): so, why are we even considering a nerf? since when this is a democracy?
Developer 6 (US): There are obviously some artillery that needs a remodel on their damage physics, SU-26 is taken for granted the French bagels too.. but all? Most artillery will become nearly unplayable unless we fix the Sigma, whats the word of kruta? (SS: kruta = Storm)
Developer 2 (RU) in English: *REMOVES BRAIN*
Several weeks later… Wargaming is working on artillery nerf
Developer 5 (RU): “Please send the supertesters 116 the new feed on the damage model, we estimated a 25% and upwards decrease on all artillery model damage, can it be confirmed?”
Developer 4 (RU): “Confirmed, playing Obj 212 makes onions cry, how is this even fun now?”
A few mails later, developers argue about the artillery nerf and wild SerB appears in what is allegedly one of his most famous tirades amongst the developers. The translation is the Insider’s, I left it as it is (the picture was a part of the e-mail apparently). Please pay attention to what SerB predicts.
Sergey Burkatovskiy *redacted*@wargaming.net
>>>Attention
>Remember this is a business Model, not a democracy, despite what players whine about over 90% of the database owns artillery at low to mid tiers and 83% owns an end-tier piece, this is contrary to the actual statistics of “arty sucks” and hear, these little krayfish dont even know what they want, all they want is win, win, win, and when they dont win they blame anything that can be accounted for, once we Nerf artillery, Tank Destroyers will come, they are blind and only see what they have the most immediate benefit of their wins, and then we will have a Tank Destroyer problem – too strong to be maintained in check! and the cycle will repeat, the new statistics are meant to define less damage per game as solution and it seems to be working. and noting else will be ever moved from now on unless a new model is approached. we must focus on what statistics form server tells not some Arty vocals, artillery is a piece of the game that is instrumental to our models, it will NEVER be removed and even if kraulf was to bring a second homecoming id rather make him drink piss.
>
>>
>Map wars statistics shows use of SPG just fine, the “pros” may whine on it on forums, but are held accountable for using it as well to maintain their map provinces. their logic is wicked. Numbers dont lie
>
>Start ignoring at your discretions, we ignore artillery talks form now on, focus on what the numbers tell us, they never lie, whenever the model increments from win ratio of 50.1 its candidate to review, and nothing else.
>
>The priority of the review is now on the low, some artillery will be an all time low winrate due the changes, review and fix so their roles adapt properly in line with the win ratio, dont move damage expectations per battle nor accuracy with the new model.
>
>>
>>>
>Where is my drink
according to the site linked above, the ETA for the Android version of Blitz is “a couple of weeks“, so I guess it’s not that far. Meanwhile, the success of Blitz attracted other companies. A clone was already presented, called “Wild Tanks Online” – see for yourself how (if) it’s different than Blitz.
once again it’s the time to thank the contributors, it’s you who keep FTR running after all! This time, following people donated via Paypal:
anonymous (United States)
Robert I. (United States) – thank you for your continuous support, I remember your name already
Kosala A. (Sri Lanka)
Incub (Germany) – another special thank you for large contribution
David K. (Germany)
anonymous (Swirtzerland) – keeping your wish, another special thank you :)
Wremise (Germany) – another special thank you for the wish as well
Andreas K. (Germany)
Ferdinand W. (Germany)
Mandy G. (Germany) – special thank you for contributing
T-28 (Austria)
Gary W. (United Kingdom)
Raul A. (United States) – another special thank you for very generous contribution
Allan R. (New Zealand) – special thank you for a very generous contribution
Oliver S. (Finland)
Thank you all, guys. I really appreciate it, especially during this shitty time for me. It’s an enormous support – not just with the money, but with the fact that you care.
The Patreon service is oddly delayed again, that’s why there is no Patreon review.
In any case, this is the For the Record Patreon account
These changes are based on SUPERTEST 9.3, might be a bit different in test 9.3
- all light tanks (except for Type 62, strangely enough) got their suspensions buffed by cca 10 percent (10-20 hitpoints)
- Jagdpanther 88mm L/56 depression nerfed from -8 to -5
- repair costs for VK3601 lowered by 25 percent
- T49 tank destroyer renamed to T67
- T71 light tank and T69 medium T185 gun made more expensive (63k to 73k credits)
- interestingly enough, SU-76I was buffed, which implies this vehicle might be implemented into the game
FV304:
- stock tracks terrain resistance nerfed from 1,2/1,4/2,3 to 1,2/1,5/2,3, traverse nerfed from 22 to 20
- elite tracks terrain resistance nerfed from 1,1/1,3/2,1 to 1,1/1,4/2,1, traverse nerfed from 24 to 22
- accuracy loss after moving nerfed from 0,36 to 0,38
- Q.F. 25-Pr. Gun/How. reload nerfed from 8,6 to 8,9s, aimtime nerfed from 4,5 to 4,8s, shot dispersion factor after moving the gun and after shot nerfed from 0,36/5 to 0,42/6
- 4.5in Howitzer reload nerfed from 12 to 13,5s, aimtime nerfed from 4,5 to 4,8s, shot dispersion factor after turret rotation and after shot nerfed from 0,36/5 to 0,42/6
as you probably already realized, the French tree is possibly the most neglected tree in World of Tanks. Of course, there is a reason for that and we’ll get to that, but for now, we have some good news: the AMX-30 branch (or “branch”, you’ll see) is scheduled to come in 2015, as was previously confirmed by Storm.
So, the will to improve the French is there, but the real question is: is it even possible?
There is a reason the French branch was neglected. The reason is: “insufficient data”. While it might seem odd to you, considering the French were very active in their armor research after the war, there are very few candidates for the hightier medium tank positions – and by very few, I mean none at all. Let’s have a look at the branch itself then.
This above is the first (and last) concept of the AMX-30 branch, as it was disclosed two years ago. Most AMX-30 branch player proposals incorporate this sort of line in them. I asked around how viable this concept is now, two years later and the answer was – not at all. This will simply not happen. The main reasons for that is that G1P on tier 7 would have to be overbuffed and that AMX-45 is a heavy tank, not a medium. As a “bonus”, very little is known about it and generally noone really likes this kind of setup.
