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Mar 3, 2013

SerB answers questions on Reddit

Source: http://www.reddit.com/r/WorldofTanks/comments/19jkdo/i_am_sergey_burkatovskiy_vp_of_game_design_at/?sort=old

As always, the questions and answers are redacted. I picked out the most interesting ones. Actually, we really need something like this on the EU server. SerB, Storm... whoever has time. Not sure why only Reddit gets the attention like this, can't the EU community organizers organize something like this for once? Still, it's very much appreciated.

Q: What are your thoughts on tier 10 medium balance? I know the majority of the community (myself included) condsiders the T-62A to be extremely powerful relative to other nations tier 10 mediums. Are there any major balance changes planned to bring all the tier 10 mediums in line with eachother?
A: The T-62A is second to last in terms of effectiveness. The most effective is the Patton 3, then the Batchat. Do you really want us to buff the T-62A?


Q: I am under the impression that Serene Coast will be removed from the game following 8.4. What will wargaming be doing to make this map balanced and playable?
A: There are several different ideas, for example to add another route to the map, which would follow the sand coast. However, this is something which is handled by our level-designers.

Q: Is the recent Batchat 155 patch regarding the removal of vents historically accurate?
A: This is accurate.

Q: Are there plans to make the T-25 have its historically accurate autoloader?
A: In a premium configuration, no. However, if we include it as part of a European Tree this may happen.

Q: Will there ever be skill-based match-making?
A: No, our view is that if you become a skilled player then you should be able to use that skill to full advantage in all battles.

Q: New chat system?
A: We are currently in the process of implementing a new chat system and are experimenting with it in World of Warplanes. The new chat system will not have a lot of the current restrictions.

Q: In relation to WoT becoming in e-sport what are your thoughts about dialing down the RNG? Do you feel that the randomness is an essential part of the game?
A: All games have some sort of RNG in them, including those that have been a part of esports for a while.

Q: Will you expand all of the scout branches to tier 8?
A: Some of them, yes, others no.

Q: Will you implement the T-62 tank destroyer?
A: I am not sure that this exact vehicle would be a good candidate for a premium TD. As far as the photo, we considered it but felt that it was too modern.

Q: Hi SerB, I'd like to know what Wargaming intends to do against AFK players/bots and idlers.
A: We will ban the bots. We analyze the battle statistics and see if players are botting. If we determine that they are, then their entire account is wiped and all accomplishments are removed.
One of the patches this year will contain a major upgrade to the Platoon/Company interface. We call it the "Dating Agency" interface.

Q: Any plans for a premium american TD?
A: In the near future, there are no plans for a Premium American TD, however as soon as The_Chieftain finds something appropriate, we may reconsider. (at that point, The_Chieftain joins the thread with "
Eh? Hang on, let me send you an email... :P"

Q: Alternative French lines?
A: We have plans to add a new French heavy tank line and a French medium tank tree, however when it comes to timing all I can say is "stay tuned."

Q: Is there any plans for making more cosmetic add-ons (like how camouflage works now) for gold that adds a slight benefit? Such as much asked for shurzen for german tanks, sandbag armour for M4-variants etc.
A: This would require a global change for all of our content, however we already have first-stage plans for this sort of change. However, this will probably not happen in the next year or the following year. Stay tuned.

Q: How much work happens during the supertesting and whatever goes on before a tank/patch is released to the test server?
A: Around 1.5 months per batch of tanks (5-10).

Q: Is there any intent to buff the IS-7 which is the under performing tier 10?
A: I am against buffing the IS-7, however my colleagues who are responsible for game balance have won the argument that it is necessary in improve the speed of the tank to make it more closely resemble its real-life speed. Let's see what happens ;)

Q: Will we ever see the Pz B2 on sale again?
A: I don't determine what's placed in the gift shop, but I doubt that these two tanks will be widely available as these two tanks do not conform to our new philosophy regarding premium tanks.

Q: Multi-core support?
A: We are reliant on a middle-ware supplier. When they release a new version of the software, there should be no problems.

Q: Was the JagdPanzer E-50 not considered, missed or just not wanted?
A: The E series is a paper tank, which we are introducing only because we have a dire need for it. This does not apply to the E-50 TD.

Q: Are there many tanks that were in supertesting that never made it to the game?
A: There were some, such as the SU-85I, which did not make it into the game because of marketing reasons.

Q: Any plans on offering different games than the 15 vs 15 standard?
A: The 7v7 mode will be available in one of our upcoming patches. 30v30 and higher are still up in the air.

Q: Nation vs Nation, any plans?
A: Yes

Q: Remove premium ammo completely?
A:  Never.

Q: When will there be Clan War functions such as mercenaries, revolts, taxes, etc.
A: Mercenaries are being reworked because in the current iteration, they are simply like extra people for clans.

Q: Will German tanks such as the PzIV, PzIII and StuG get an option to be fitted with full sideskirts?
A: In due time.

Q: How about implementing a way to get experience other than pure damage? I can spend a match protecting the SPG and easily be a factor in the match by allowing my SPG to survive and do damage, but I get nothing for it. You need to offer rewards for doing things that help the team other than direct damage.
A: Experience is not given for damage directly. Experience is given for active actions in battle, if you are active in close encounter battles you will receive what you should.

Q: Is there any chance of an ETA for WoW or at least a rough time frame?
A: You should ask Blizzard about WoW. As far as WoWP, there is only a bit of time left before a formal announcement is made. WoWS is a bit further out.

Q: Any plans on the T25/2 getting a gun that will make it worth playing?
A: The T25/2 is fine as is.

Q: Any plans on making the AMX 12t and AMX 13 90 useful? Again, its a pretty long grind through these and they can't do much.
A: French light tanks are very effective already. But only in the hands of a competent player.

Q: What is your opinion on premium ammo?
A: It helps. Sometimes.

Q: Do you consider giving the B1 is 75mm instead of the 37mm?
A: A 75mm gun on the B1 would not even be able to move horizontally within the body of the tank. Are you really sure that you want to suffer that?

Q: Plans to remove trollplatoons?
A: No

Q: Is there any plans to fix the size of the model of the Matilda Black Prince? Currently it is considerably larger than every other Matilda in the game, and the turret weight is another issue, why is it so much heavier than the turret on the Cromwell? It is currently 3 tons heavier, is it not supposed to be the same turret?
A: I can't track everything. If the people responsible for that find an inconsistency, they will correct it.

Q: MBT's?
A: Not in this game.

Q: Why don't we have post-battle chat along with the battle results?
A: We are not really interested in implementing that because we feel that the losing team will only post insults. Perhaps we should only implement this feature for the winning team? ;)

Q: What design decision had the most unexpected result, such as a tank being unusually popular or a gameplay change not working as intended?
A: The introduction of the IS-7 at the earliest stages. We still suffer from this, but fixing the problem by removing the tank is now impossible.

Q: Sometimes rebalancing completely changes a tank's playstyle. How do you feel when that happens?
A: First of all, we monitor the statistics and second of all forums. And after seeing the crying on the forums, we go back to the statistics.

Q: Night battles - will we see them in the next year or two?
A: We'll try implementing this in the next 2 years.

Q: Weather Effects - why have we only seen fog on Dragon Ridge?
A: It was an experimen. It looks great, but it lags the client.

Q:  Will we see more weather effects soon and will they effect directly? Ex. Dust storm at the bottom of the valley in El Halluf, could lower visibility and increase camo of those tanks within.
A: From a game design perspective, we are trying to implement this. BigWorld is currently working on making this possible.

Q:  Mods - Overlord recently announced an upcoming policy change regarding mods, care to elaborate in more detail?
A: Not yet. We have to form our policies in such a way that we are able to resolve mods which do not unfairly give an advantage and insure that there is no form of minor cheating. Major cheating is not a problem because everything is on our servers.

Q: Why not put on hold deciding on what mods need to be disabled, and just disable mods for CW and tournaments completely, until you can come up with the best method for disabling particular mods and what they mods will be?
A: Because there are millions(well...thousands) of players working against us. Unless we develop specific tools for every conceivable situation, we will be dealing with a situation of trying to put locks on the barn after the horses have already been stolen.

(SS: here, SerB wrote a lot of "no comment" on how exactly the anti-cheating measures will work)

Q: Now that the speed limit of 72 km/h is removed from the game, are there any plans to give tanks historically accurate speed limits?
A: While the speed limitation has been removed from the game, the question of being able to actually achieve such a speed with the current engines remains to be answered.

Q: Are there any plans for a 5 crew British Medium Premium tank?
A: We haven't found such a tank yet.

Q (this one's mine): Dear SerB, is there (even a small) chance for Czechoslovakia to have its own (mini)tree? There seem to be enough vehicles for it... thank you
A: Surely. But it is most likely to be included in the European tree.

Q: Was the US T93 considered as an alternate tier 8 artillery or gun?
A: It is a downgrade to the T92, so if we decide to create a Tier 10 which isn't the top tank at the very beginning, then it would be an option.

And that's all. Let's hope something like this appears for the EU players also :)


























30 comments:

  1. SerB is a load of fucking bullshit when he says the M48 Patton is the best tier 10 medium, and T-62A is second to last. Absolute bullshit.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. All time win rate / last 2 weeks win rate:

      EU
      Patton: 50,56% / 49,45%
      Bat Chat: 51,25% / 50,77%
      T-62A: 50,67% / 50,34%

      RU
      Patton: 52,9% / 51,19%
      Bat Chat: 51,06% / 50,12%
      T-62A: 49,19% / 48,75%

      On the RU server, the T-62A performes really bad, and that's the server that counts for WG (understandably)

      Delete
    2. Ofc it performs bad couse every goddamn idiot who made into tier 10 has one of it and they fail with it really hard. Just check the numbers how many of them has it.

      Delete
    3. T62-A on russian server is like E-100 on EU-Server, every fucking wannabe Rommel/Shukov goes for it and fails. The only difference is that the E100 isnt that great to begin with. It requires a good player and the right circumstances to really shine.

      Delete
    4. It's true. The M48 performs well because it is used only by good players (and consequently there are fewer of them). The T62, as has been said, is played by every n00b and his brother (thousands of them), resulting in poor performance statistics.

      WG don't seem to actually take into account usage statistics, or the WR of a tank relative to the WR of the player.

      Delete
    5. love it how whiners/noobs always pick the argument they like...

      if the want a german tank to be buffed that has a bad winrate they say:"Oh it has bad winrate u need to buff it"

      if the want a german tank to be buffed that has already a good winrate they say:"Oh it has good winrate but only because it's palyed by pr0s (like me(!!!))" or "Winrate doesnt matter"

      if they want a russian tank to be nerfed that already performced bad by every statistics:"Its OP... it just performce so bad because its played by n00bs only" or "Stats don't matter its OP because I(!!!) say so!"

      PS: dont forget the fact that most played tanks on EU server are German tanks... so according to your "logic" most noobs are playing German tanks and then are whining about them being UP and others being OP...

      Delete
    6. You certainly got the point, however it is true as well that because of sheer number of russian top tiers they have worse WR than other tanks. Let's take IS-7 for example - it has low WR and still is the most widely used tank in CW. And I really doubt pr0-clans would use UP tank...

      Delete
    7. lol which (noob) clan is still using Is-7(s)?
      The tanks u see most in cw are E5, e4, batchat and some arys (even the just recently introduced T57 is used more frequently). There are even more Mäuse and E-100s in CW then IS-7s. Only for some extrem rush tactics on maps like El-halluf IS-7 is usefull(and there only because of his high max speed he never reaches without falling down a cliff).

      Seriously start accepting that IS-7 isn't king of the hill anymore( to be correct he's not since the introduction of the E5).

      Delete
    8. Hey above. It's simple logic that as the number of games played by a tank increases then it's win rate will tend to the average, 50%... You can understand this by imagining that if one tank became so popular as to be the only tank played, then eventually it's win rate and the global win rate would become equivalent.
      Therefore it stands to reason that the smaller the sample size (battles played on a particular tank) then the more chance there is for these tanks to have win rates that are not necessarily indicative of their true performance.
      I have constructed a graph from some data provided by noobmeter. It plots the number of battles played by each Tier 7 to 10 tank against it's win rate for a period of time after Christmas:
      http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y205/spartiate/tanks_zps5966ad08.png
      Notice anything? The tanks with the largest amounts played have win rates very close to 50%, in fact the most popular tank is the IS-3. This tank is considered very strong yet it's win rate is merely average. So either my hypothesis holds, or the tank is perfectly balanced.

      Delete
    9. Also note that the greatest deviation from a 50% win rate comes at the smallest of sample sizes, <10k battles. ERGO: Tanks which aren't played much are prone to having wild win rates.

      Delete
    10. And how does this prove that the whiners are right or that T62a, is-7 are Op? The only thing that u proved is that u have to look at more statistical dates than just winrate.. somethink that I thought every normal thinking person should have already known...(cmon even WG knows this :P )

      Little word: "Law of large numbers" ;)
      Just for an example if there are not much of a tank on the server and lets say theres one per Battle. If this one is OP his team always wins -> he has 100% winrate.

      Now if there are more of this one totally OP tank and u have always 3 of them per game, 2 at one side 1 at the other, the team with more will win( 2 wins; 1 lose for that tank)-> 66% winrate

      Now if there are even more of that one tank, for example 29 per battle 15 in one team 14 in the other -> 15 will win 14 will lose ->51.7% winrate

      so the more u have the closer the winrate will be to 50% (or in wot 48% cause of draw) and thats why WG has to considere more then just winrate when they are balancing tanks.

      PS. Who consideres IS-3 strong? The "crying babys" or any statistical proof?

      Delete
    11. Patton 3 in the data I used had only 10k games played, compared to BatChat with 55k or T-62A with 30k. Whereas the IS-3 has something like 275k games.

      I'm not trying to prove anything about the T-62A or IS-7, I'm merely trying to present a more effective argument than "this tank only has good win rate because only pros like me play it."

      What I'm saying is that the reason some of these tanks have good win rates is merely because they have a comparably low number of battles played when compared to others. E.G Patton 3 vs BatChat.

      I would be genuinely interested to know exactly what stats WG.net use.
      P.S. I consider IS-3 strong for it's combination of mobility, alpha and bouncy armour. But this is irrelevant, my point is that do you just consider the IS-3 well balanced, or is it more likely that its 50% win rate is a result of a really large sample size when compared to its peers?

      Delete
  2. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  3. "All games have some sort of RNG in them, including those that have been a part of esports for a while."
    Fuking bullshit.
    League of Legends: no RNG
    Starcraft 2: no RNG

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Nope, you are way wrong. Both of those games have pretty big RNG, about 15-20% difference in values.

      Delete
    2. Especially proc chances, 20% chance to snare/root on hit? Critical hits?

      I am merely guessing that LoL has this stuff though to be honest

      Delete
  4. Q: Are there any plans for a 5 crew British Medium Premium tank?
    A: We haven't found such a tank yet.

    If they actually read the British tank section of the forums, they would see that this issue has been discussed many, many times. Several valid suggestions have been put forward. So we are now basically waiting for WG to get around and actually look for a candidate tank... which they will do when hell freezes over.

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  5. I won't miss this opportunity to be a whiny cunt and say

    STOP IGNORING THE FACTS AND BUFF MY POOR M48A1 ;_;

    ReplyDelete
  6. hey frank..this is approved? http://forum.worldoftanks.eu/index.php?/topic/217458-some-interesting-stuff/page__hl__%2Bsomething+%2Binteresting__fromsearch__1

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Nope, but whatever, not that big of a deal

      Delete
    2. sad anyway...at least some edit or credit will be nice..thats just copy/paste :|...

      Delete
  7. Enlightning... And SerB actually gains a lot when he's professionally discussing the game instead of just trolling.

    "Q: Are there plans to make the T-25 have its historically accurate autoloader?
    A: In a premium configuration, no. However, if we include it as part of a European Tree this may happen."

    So now we have to go to our local Shamans for them to put the T-25 into the tree.

    "Q: Will there ever be skill-based match-making?
    A: No, our view is that if you become a skilled player then you should be able to use that skill to full advantage in all battles."

    Kind of makes sense. Until You'll end up in a team, which You're the only player with 8k battles (the next most experienced has 1,5k) and WR above 50% and facing several players with 10k battles (nevermind their WR, sheer experience matters).

    "Q: Was the JagdPanzer E-50 not considered, missed or just not wanted?
    A: The E series is a paper tank, which we are introducing only because we have a dire need for it. This does not apply to the E-50 TD."

    Now this is interesting. But if SerB means E-100 Waffenträger as the reason for not needing the E-50 TD, than... http://i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/006/512/DoubleFacePalm.jpg

    "Q: Nation vs Nation, any plans?
    A: Yes"

    YAY!!! This is the reason I started playing this game. Hopefully it's not "Historical Battles" what he's talking about.

    "Q: Plans to remove trollplatoons?
    A: No"

    Hm... I wish SerB would elaborate why?

    "Q: Is there any plans to fix the size of the model of the Matilda Black Prince? Currently it is considerably larger than every other Matilda in the game, and the turret weight is another issue, why is it so much heavier than the turret on the Cromwell? It is currently 3 tons heavier, is it not supposed to be the same turret?
    A: I can't track everything. If the people responsible for that find an inconsistency, they will correct it."

    Speaks volumes about competency of certain WG employees.

    "Q: MBT's?
    A: Not in this game."

    World of Tanks 2? World of Tanks: Modern (Armoured) Warfare?

    "Q (this one's mine): Dear SerB, is there (even a small) chance for Czechoslovakia to have its own (mini)tree? There seem to be enough vehicles for it... thank you
    A: Surely. But it is most likely to be included in the European tree."

    Well, as much as I understand Your wish for a separate Czechoslovakian tree, I believe that European tree without the solid core of Your Nations designs does not make sense. After all development of Swedish and Hungarian tanks was directly influenced by Czech engineers. And having a tree similar in shape to Your modification of the one Tuccy has made with separate branches for Magyars (Lights/Meds and TDs) and Vikings would be a solid proposal.






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  8. Any idea what is going to lead to the VK7201?

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  9. Q: Is there any plans for making more cosmetic add-ons (like how camouflage works now) for gold that adds a slight benefit? Such as much asked for shurzen for german tanks, sandbag armour for M4-variants etc.
    A: This would require a global change for all of our content, however we already have first-stage plans for this sort of change. However, this will probably not happen in the next year or the following year. Stay tuned.

    Cosmetics that add benefits, eh? They better be purchasable with credits as well. Last thing WoT needs is a pay2win play-style. Even the main dev. said that pay2win was bad.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thats why they made camouflage add 5% I guess...

      Delete
    2. But you can buy any cammo with credits as well, so it is not pay2win.

      Delete
  10. Stop trollplatoons once and for all, ban all the bots and forbidden-mod-users forever and at least try to do something with all those kids. At least put equal number of noobs on both teams. Getting defeated 15-3 several times in a row ain't funny at all, even if you score Top Guns...

    Denial_of_God

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. And don't even try to tell me "learn to play", "adapt" blah blah blah bullshit. If you get steamrolled 'cause of lemming train and losing 12-3 after 4 minutes, there's no way to adapt.

      Denial_of_God once more

      Delete
  11. Q: How about implementing a way to get experience other than pure damage?

    I would like see for example spoted kill bonus xp :-) If there is spoted dmg why not kill. But I know it will need many rebalancing (f.e. experience factor of arty)

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  12. Could someone explain about multi-core, more precise about what is middle-ware supplier?

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