I've been thinking about this, and theres no one real reason that I've been playing this game a lot less. Its a whole pile of different reasons that have added up to make the game as a whole much less fun, and I thought Id share my own thoughts and opinions on what these problems are. Spoiler alert: Artillery isn't one of them, yeah its annoying but Its been in the game since launch and I still found the game plenty fun despite it over the last 8 years I've been playing.
NOTE: EVERYTHING HERE IS MY OWN PERSONAL OPINION, YOUR OPINION MAY DIFFER
WARNING: MEGA GIANT WALL OF TEXT
Vehicle Balance:
Im going to start off with The biggest elephant in the room, and my biggest reason. Overall vehicle balance. IMO, balance between vehicles was at its peak around late 2015-mid 2016ish. Its been downhill from there really. Yeah back then the overbuffed E5 existed and the WTE100 was cancer. but those were two outliers, these days the whole game is out of whack. Each new patch consists of new tanks that seem more stupid than the last. (this section may not be in correct chronological order)
The Type 5 Heavy with the derp gun was, in my eyes, one of the beginnings of this. Along with the mass removal of weakspots from everything.
They Nerfed the E5 and then released the Super conq which was, and still is, as good or better in every single way to the overbuffed E5. the overbuffed E5 would still be considered pretty bad in the current meta. Now then, what could possibly be better than the Super conq? I know! A tank that is literally better than the super conq at everything, except It also does all the things the E5 could of possibly hoped to do better than the super conq even better than that! (like mobility) Enter the Chieftain. It being a CW reward is both good and bad. good because every mouthbreather can't get one and thus theres less of them. bad because it instantly became the meta in CW, pushed the SC out, and you have to have one in a top clan now.
They then released the 268v4, which single handedly completely destroyed my desire to play this game. It has never returned to the levels it was before the V4 was released. Im sure everyone remembers, but clan wars became "whoever has the most 268v4s wins, regardless of strategy" it was the most cancer period I've ever seen in this game in my life. And then they nerfed it. barely. they gave it a slap on the wrist. Thankfully it stopped that retarded clan wars meta, however the tank is still grossly Overpowered and needs far more extensive nerfs. Fuck that thing.
Meanwhile, I have a special hate for the entire swedish line. the entire fucking line is the most cancer, horrible to play against, gimmick tree they have ever released, and honestly IMO the game would be better if they just flat out deleted the entire nations tree. The Kranvagn is the least cancer, but is still more cancer than most other autoloaders. the STRVs are all absolute cancer tanks that can't do anything except camp and punish people for daring to be aggressive and try and push with their fuck you DPM, fuck you camo, and fuck anyone with a sub 120mm gun armour. They are still my most despised tank in the game. And now the new medium line is out. all of which are completely fucking flat, you can't hit them to save your live, and regardless of how objectively good or bad they are to play, they are just, so far in my experience, completely unfun to play AGAINST.
The Wheeled vehicles. I knew, before any stats had even been released, just from WGs first ever description of what they were planned to be, they would be cancer. And they are. they flat out destroy the game IMO. they're disgusting. they're double disgusting for me, who has to try and hit the fucking things with 200 ping. destroying a wheel doesn't even slow them down. They may be fun to play but they're absolutely destructive for gameplay. They never should of been added. They're too fast, they get their own Autoaim+ (a banned mod lol) I've seen them regularly pull off shots doing 70kph that even in a 140/62A would never been possible, from ranges you'd almost never even bother taking on the move shots at. They're a pain in the ass.
Lets add to this other honourable mentions, like the 430U/430 which both are stupid with heavy tank armour and medium mobility. The 257 which is unpennable from the side for no reason, the IS-3A and Progettos which are just annoying as fuck to fight. Its a running thing now, regardless of how objectively good or bad the tank is, none of these things are fun to actually play against.
Premiums! Now, WG seems to have one or two stances on prems these days. Either its an extremely boring, meh tank, or its fucking OP as shit. its disgusting. the T26E5 was the start, the defender was the turning point. and nowadays, If you see a prem or any tank that has had supertest stats released, theres a 95% chance that tank is coming to live, with little to no changes. Its like the super testers aren't even testing these things. This doesn't even apply only to prems, its applying to everything, which is made even more ridiculous because any person can take one look at the prelimentary stats and immediately deduce that said tank will be OP as shit without even playing it.
Which leads me on to my next topic... Rebalancing. Yeah, Im extra salty about this part for reasons Im sure you guess.
WG can't just slightly buff or nerf a tank (but mainly buff it seems) they have to try and completely redesign how the tank plays. pointlessly. yes, you know what im talking about. the STB-1. Its already been said, but all it needed was some small buffs to make it more comfortable to play. a turret buff, a gun handling buff. boom done. but instead they had to completely redesign it. Right now, regardless of whether it is actually objectively more capable as a tank, what it is now is just more complicated, and less fun to play. This alone has killed off a large portion of my remaining desire to play the game, the STB was always my fun tank. Playing it for me was always just an enjoyable experience. (which is why I didnt bother 3 marking it for ages because 3 marking is for me, extremely frustrating and completely unfun, in a tank that I normally used to destress) The Currrent STB doesn't do that now. its slower and more complicated. Way less fun.
Anyway, back to rebalancing. the STB isn't the only tank they've done this to. They keep revisiting older tanks that just need a small amount of love (although in reality is all the new OP tanks need nerfs) and instead try to needlessly redesign how they play completely. Which makes the game less fun because everything keeps getting changed.
And then they bring out new tanks like that ST-II on supertest. that thing is gonna be disgusting, at least it will be to play against. I hope to god it doesn't come out remotely close to that, if at all, but with WGs track record over the last few years Im not optimistic.
Maps
Maps have gotten less fun as well. Each time they redesign a map It feels worse IMO. for example pilsen, which needed some work but wasn't bad, got redesigned and its current design is absolutely terrible. the entire field is a complete shitshow and is utterly pathetic, while it used to be a pretty fun place to fight. so more than a third of the map is now worthless ground. the middle area was already worthless and still is, so thats another third of the map useless ground. and now we have the 1-2 line in the factories, which isn't useless but they've made it way harder to push or be effective in it. So now its not a remotely fun place to fight. the entire map is a shit show. its one of my banned maps (along with paris)
Along with this, Highway, a map I always liked, is now worse. the redesign in the NW corner with the field is worse and now massively favours the north, with souths defensive positions all being way more exposed to fire and getting lit than before, with norths not being changed. the buildings around the north aren't exactly fun places to fight, terrain based fighting is more interesting than building peekaboom wars.
New Maps all suck as well. Studzikani needs no introduction, Minsk is like 80% unusable ground with only a few areas being pushable. Neither of them are very fun to play.
Ghost town worked in CW, but doesn't work in pubs. Its not a very fun map to play in pubs IMO, mainly because of the coordination required to win it that just doesn't exist in pubs.
along with this, the 1.0 redesign of a lot of maps just made them worse or less fun to play on. TD camping bushes or ridges added where they can easily punish anyone trying to actually push or do anything other than camp. Routes that used to be possible are now impossible. (things like dropping off hills and such which now just kill you) - I always hated boosts that allowed you into areas meant to be inaccessible. but going from one accessible area to another is okay IMO, It removed a lot of escape routes and made risk taking far more punishing. thus no one wants to take risks anymore.
Clan Wars
I can give you the tank comp for 90% of the maps we play in the next campaign right here: 260, Chieftain, 907, EBR, CGC. Sprinkle on the occasional STRV or T100, maybe an IS-7 or a 268v4.
Theres little variation, or creativity any more. I mean of course there isn't those tanks are all the best and using any other will just cause you to lose. But its not very fun. This isn't the fault of the clans, its the fault of WG for making tanks so much better than the others. I can't even use my 140 in CW unless there are literally no more unlocked 907s because the 907 is just that much better than the 140 (needlessly I might add) WG was talking about changing CW. This is, IMO, the biggest change it needs. make creative tank comps great again. Even the batchat has been out metad, a tank at one point I never thought would be outmetad.
Personal
There is the next problem, because I don't play as often any more, I get rusty. so Im playing worse, which frustrates me, which makes me want to play less because Im getting annoyed that I can't play at a level I know I am capable of. Which makes me play even worse on tilt. I need to get over this just by playing more and un rusting but its a vicious cycle, and all the other aforementioned issues are also making me frustrated. so bleh.
Thats about it for now. All of these things are, individually, fairly small. but together they just create a pile of compounding issues that generally make the game much less fun than it was. And the problem is, Even if WG started fixing them all right now. and fixed them how (for simplicity sake) I personally would like to see them fixed, It would take them years to get the game back into a good position. New Patches these days don't bring me excitement. they bring me dread as to what they've fucked up this time.
So yeah. wall of text. This took me like 45 mins to write, I have an exam tomorrow, and I should be studying. go me.
I don't mind one bit. In fact, I'll cheer and sing praises if they nerf Defenders and IS3As and I own these things, because I am a fucking stupid idiot, like everyone who got these things.
For a long time one of the big complaints about low tier play was the low HP pool and high alpha meant a lot of tier 5s got early exits from a lot of games due to Hetzer/M4/PZ IVH/KV-2 etc. As you went up in tier, tanks had more staying power and while players were still punished for mistakes, they were not insta-deleted anymore.
Then WG stepped in and added high alpha tank after high alpha tank, added prem-HE rounds, buffed the shitbarn and deathstar. Now suddenly tier X games are starting to look a lot like tier 5 games used to. I see tier 10 tanks 1-2 shot all the time now (it happened to me today - got 183mm less than a minute into a game) and more and more players are getting send back to the garage in 90 seconds for getting spotted crossing or making one bad poke. How many new heavies ave 600+ alpha?
Tier X is frustrating enough to play while losing money every game, adding RNG kills has not made it any better. WG took away the ability of getting deleted by a T92, so of course they had make up for it by adding the Type 5 and buffing the FV.
</Rant>
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I know your post was (hopefully) tongue-in-cheek, but ironically this is what WG needs to do to balance the OP premiums if they are unable to directly nerf them.
The fact that the defender is *such* a bullshit tank still amazes me. Like which bright spark at WG decided it would be a good idea to introduce a tier 8 heavy with a weakspot lower plate of minimum 220 effective armor and a pike and turret that can bounce 10s. Not to meant sides that also regularly bounce 200pen guns.
I don’t think I’ve seen a T10 when playing 8s since the introduction of the new MM. Previously, around 75% of tier 8 games were seeing 10s.
T10 queue times where always shitty on the ANZ server, both pre and post MM change would experience timeouts. The key different know is that when you get a game that it seems to be mostly 9/10 matchups, although I have since entire t10 games on ANZ.
Overalk, the new MM is a LOT better, single tier battles are now a lot more common across tier 5-8.
Could be worse.
Could be Minsk.
@Masterpupil2 I also miss Hidden Village, Port, Northwest, even South Coast. But not Severogorsk - that was shit fucking corridors from hell.
Rated them based on tier. I barely play my tier 8s anymore but I'd still call the Lowe "good". Some I could shift up or down a category because it's iffy. It's all subjective, of course, but the rundown is something like:
Good: Pz 38H, T-127, T-15, Pz B2, T-28 F-30, 105 LeFH, Thunderbolt, T-34-85M, Pz IVS, Type 64, Lowe.
Solid: T7 CC, T-45, Light Mk VIC, Pz S35, BT-SV, Pak 40, Pz IV H, Stug IV, Matilda IV, Churchill III, SU-85I, Matilda BP, Excelsior, Rudy, TOG II, Strv m/42-57, AC4 Experimental, Pudel, Cromwell B, Panther M10, E-25, IS-2, SU-122-44, AT 15A, Type 62, Super Pershing (I want to say good but I can't buy a win in it), T34, T-54 Prototype, IS-6, T-34-3, WZ-111
Nope: T1E6, T2 Light, Pz IID, Tetrarch, Type 97, TKS 20mm, L-60, Locust, MTLS, Toldi, BT-7 Art, LTP, T-29, Sexton I, Valentine II, AC 1 Sentinel, M4 """""Improved""""", Ram II, T14, Pz T25, Turion, Pz III K, T-34 shielded, KV-220-2, Type 3 Chi-Nu Kai, Fury, Tiger 131, Dickermax, SU-100Y, Heavy Tank No. VI, T28 Concept, ISU-122S, FV201 A45, T25 Pilot, M41 90mm (no it's not, stop), Panther 8,8, Mutz (playable to power creeped in 1 year flat), Jag 8,8, KV-5, FV4202, CDC, FCM 50t, FV215b, FV215b (183), AMX 50 Foch 155
@Siggy I’m a bit worried that you’ve turned into a 45%er:
“The weekly mission and 15k free XP is appealling, particularly if you have lost all ability to win at any tier in pubs.”
If there’s anything we can do to help, let us know, otherwise enjoy spooky tank mode instead.
Ladies and Gentlemen - I present Angel___Kiss.
A player so awesome that he has played 800 games in the P.43ter an average damage of...2. Totally not a bot though, otherwise WG's bot detection software would have detected him.
And lets have a look at some other tanks - the P.43 bis. 653 battles with an average damage of also 2.
The KV-1. To be fair, he is way better in this tank, averaging 4 damage a game.
Ladies and Gentlemen - I present Angel___Kiss.
A player so awesome that he has played 800 games in the P.43ter an average damage of...2. Totally not a bot though, otherwise WG's bot detection software would have detected him.
And lets have a look at some other tanks - the P.43 bis. 653 battles with an average damage of also 2.
The KV-1. To be fair, he is way better in this tank, averaging 4 damage a game.
Ladies and Gentlemen - I present Angel___Kiss.
A player so awesome that he has played 800 games in the P.43ter an average damage of...2. Totally not a bot though, otherwise WG's bot detection software would have detected him.
And lets have a look at some other tanks - the P.43 bis. 653 battles with an average damage of also 2.
The KV-1. To be fair, he is way better in this tank, averaging 4 damage a game.
Ladies and Gentlemen - I present Angel___Kiss.
A player so awesome that he has played 800 games in the P.43ter an average damage of...2. Totally not a bot though, otherwise WG's bot detection software would have detected him.
And lets have a look at some other tanks - the P.43 bis. 653 battles with an average damage of also 2.
The KV-1. To be fair, he is way better in this tank, averaging 4 damage a game.
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