Ezz

I think its been 1 year since I played a battle of WoT!
Yeah, next gen Intel is good.

No you're a meme.
Next gen Intel worth a look?

Userbenchmark has been a meme forever.

Hello there! Here's a pair of Progetto Stealth setup Ace Tankers!
 
 

Hello,

Many of you already know who I am. Some of you may know me from my WGLNA days, others may recall I'm one of the sponsored streamers, and some may remember that I was the creator of the Equipment 2.0 document.

I have recently finished a guide for gun mechanics for World of Tanks. I figured I'd share it with this community as I was once as fairly active reader.
Click the text to access the Ultimate Gun Mechanics Guide.
If it doesn't work from being overloaded, feel free to read the Google published version (poor formatting warning).
 
Warning: it is a massive document at over 130 pages.
 
I don't expect the community here to be too active. But I figured it's good to have a resource like this in WoTLabs at the very least.

The pre pre pre buffed lowe and kv5 were the early prems. Look where they and the other 8s are now.

Marketing team must be asleep. They didn't call it "dynamic"

The pre pre pre buffed lowe and kv5 were the early prems. Look where they and the other 8s are now.

Translation: "You guys aren't buying this, so we need to think of another shell game that will confuse everyone enough we can get away with implementing it."

I will have you know I put Low Noise Exaust on my maus. It is way better than a camo net.

Not T49 specifically, but skills' recent sheri derp vid is rather glorious for those craving some HE pen action.

How to balance a premium... By buffing it of course... https://thearmoredpatrol.com/2021/04/12/supertest-🇨🇿-skoda-t-56-changed-stats/

my bet they are somewhat copy and pasting the M48 turret to the M60. More armor, maybe same tumor rework and they call it a day.
And I still don´t know, even after all this years, why they wont just give it the A3 turret.
It would make the tank look so much cooler. And it would finally be a bit different to the M48.
And please don´t give me this "it is too modern. Realism yada yada" This ship has long sailed. 

 

2 hours later... "Just doing my dailies"

2 hours later... "Just doing my dailies"

It's basically meaningless to even care at this point, but of all the ways they could make the game more gimmicky, did they really have to go with such unrealistic ones?

You are well below average.
Here's some advice, stop looking at WN8. Just stop. Focus entirely on learning to win more games and you'll get better.

And that line isn't niche? :-) 
As long as wheelie boyz exist in this form, other tier 8+ lights are obsolete. You can still have some fun tho, 13 105 line is okay. Fast, nimble tanks with camo and clip can work in many situations.
 

I should think that 1.0 maps, armour inflation, pen inflation, reward tanks, and the ubiquitous use of gold (HE for some tanks) would be slightly higher on WG's list of things to fix than.......crews having the same skills.
Also, a lot of it isn't just poor execution in the sense of WG being (as it usually is) incompetent, some of the stuff, like 750 gold for retraining, RNG instructors and the post-75 grind are specifically designed the way they are to get players to spend real money on the game.

Yesterday I had the chance to play on the Supertest.
To make it short, I don´t like it. 

From watching the video already it was cleart to me, that this whole new system is a complicated mess. While the change from the current Skillsystem to this new Skillpointsystem I could at least understand and accept. This system with Ultimateskills, Prestige and Instructiors is giving me goose bumps.
 
As many I think the transition from one system to the other will not grant you with the same power. Let alone this 0-Perk crew tansition bug, I endet with several crews being worse than before. 
But the worst thing about this new system for me is the psychological effect it had on me. An example. Currently you grind a marahton tank and you get it with a 0-perk crew. Adding some crew books and you have a 3 skill crew in an instant. And with this 3 skill crew I feel powerfull. Maybe not the best crew but I have the feeling it is a good and powerfull crew. 
When this crew gets transfered to the new system I end up with 47 Skillpoints (3 complete skills + 50% in the 4th skill).
Let alone if this new skillpoints net me the same power of skills. Now I know there is 75 skillpoints + this prestige system what comes after it. 
So 75 is the new good. Everything below is just meh. 
Therefore I come from a system where I felt powerfull to a new system where I seem to be a looser. I don´t feel as powerfull anymore. 
I have so many crews sitting in the 4th skill rigth now and I think those are good crews. After playing on the testserver and transfering them to the new system they felt like shit. 

It's basically meaningless to even care at this point, but of all the ways they could make the game more gimmicky, did they really have to go with such unrealistic ones?

I did a summary of the changes (I'm lazy so the formatting is fucked). But really, it doesn't take a professor of anatomy to tell you that the changes are ass. Here's why:
 
1. Crews lose skills
Your old crews that had 3-4 skills will only have ~40ish skill points in the new system, which will lose you - 2-3 skills/perks in practice
3-4 skills were basically enough for anything that wasn't a highly specialised LT build,
but now, you have to grind much, much more to get those crews to perform at the level they perform now, i.e. >75 points in the new system which is the equivalent of what is now a 5 skill (non-0th skill) crew.
for a more detailed take, see: https://www.reddit.com/r/WorldofTanks/comments/lqriw0/this_average_crew_loses_24_skills_when_converted/
2. Crews do not combine
If you were in the habit of grinding several crews to 3-4 skills instead of having 1-2 crews which you maxed out (which most people will be), you're shafted because crews do not combine and you're stuck with multiple (un-competitive) crews
this is unfair to the players because under the old system, there was very little incentive to go past the 3rd or 4th skills, whereas now you're massively penalised for it with no recompense whatsoever
if you think this is just sandbox and they might change it later, community contributors have said on the forums that they do not plan on introducing merging crews as a feature.
3. 0th skill crews have exactly 0 worth
If your crews are Christmas crews/0th skill BIA crews, the extra skill you have will not be counted in the new system - you lose 2-3 skills from that alone - not counting the fact you effectively lose 2-3 skills anyway for what are currently 3-4 skill crews
this massively shafts people who bought/ground out 0th skill crews with zero compensation
4. RNG-gated instructors
Speaking of 0th skill crews, special 0th skill crews will now become 'instructors' which give small bonuses to specific perks. you have a choice between 3 perks of one category for each instructor - and which 3 you get to choose from is pure RNG - no rerolls.
this locks bonuses behind a pay to progress, RNG-based mechanic where previously you just had to grind crews to progress.
which makes the game even more unfair as between the players that pay up and players that don't (or can't).
5. Massive endgame grind for even more inequality
They nerfed the commander bonus and introduced a new 'expertise' grind where for each level of progression you grind past the 75th point, you get a 'small' bonus to your vehicle handling. vehicle handling is the same thing as what BIA does now, and the maximum ('small') bonus you can get from expertise is 20%........on top of the 5% you already get from the renamed BIA and all the other bonuses you have through skills/equipment.
Previously, crews, once you were past 100% and had BIA, no matter how much you played with them, no matter where you got them, no matter how many crew books you bought and fed to them, were capped at the same level of performance - you won't get a faster reload, you won't get less aimtime.
For the mechanics of these changes, see: https://www.reddit.com/r/WorldofTanks/comments/lqlt46/crew_20_sandbox_general_feedback/goi4lif?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
Now as for their effects....
The new system introduces an all new grind that gives you the equivalent of stacking an extra ~ 2.5 more bond vents on your tank
this not only adds a new grind, but increases the already gaping inequality between players
a new player with a fresh crew will lack the renamed BIA, he might lack equipment, he is likely not to be be running food, he certainly won't have the expertise bonus on his tank - and he will be facing veterans with crews that perform 40-50 percent better than what he has.
*this hypothetical player would have to grind the equivalent of 7 skills in the current system just to catch up.
the only bandage on this fresh bullet wound is the free sixth sense - which players in the current system could have got pretty easily by crew books in the first place - and which could be added without all this hullabaloo with the new system.
CW Implications:
some of the perks would be very strong in a competitive setting, which I admit isn't a bad thing necessarily.
for a decently competitive clan, crew 2.0 would mean basically mandating people to have the equivalent of 6-7 skill crews in order to perform on a 'level' playing field
and that's not counting stacking with bond/bounty equipment and access to reward tanks
There are also side issues with tanks with large crews seemingly being shortchanged but that's minor compared to the iceberg that we're headed towards.
Don't look a gold sink in the mouth!
one of the touted features of Crew 2.0 is that you can train 1 crew for up to 3 tanks, only that..
u/Kuratovsky has kindly pointed out to me that in Crew 2.0, training your crew for the 2nd and 3rd tanks, just like retraining crews under the current system, will result in a penalty.
unlike in the current system, the retraining penalty for the 2nd and 3rd tanks is 10% of the crew's total experience.
if your crew has, say, 13 million exp (~6 skill crew), you will lose 1.3 million crew exp from the F2P option - and this directly eats into your crew skills/expertise bonuses
currently, the penalty for retraining a crew to another tank is 10% of the major qualification, i.e. 10% of 100k exp. this does not affect the crew skills/perks.
if you want to avoid bleeding XP, the solution is simple: 750 gold, 750 gold for every tank other than the first tank, and for every new tank that you switch in.
the effect is that what appears to be one of the most F2P friendly features of Crew 2.0 is simultaneously the least F2P friendly part of the changes. this is because people who don't have gold will be forced to lose 10% of their total crew XP every time they retrain a crew to a different tank.
Concluding thoughts
For those of you who say that there's nothing to worry about and WG will surely revise the sandbox changes and make them good, I present to you the examples of:
what happened to WOWS (https://www.reddit.com/r/WorldOfWarships/comments/k44sbi/flamu_dissects_the_upcoming_commander_skill/)
what happened to Console(https://www.reddit.com/r/WorldofTanks/comments/l12hd1/world_of_tanks_console_ruined_with_1_update_dont/gjx40yr/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
and what is happening with the HE changes despite the population being generally ambivalent towards them (http://forum.worldoftanks.eu/index.php?/topic/765180-sandbox-test-he-shells%E2%80%94feedback-and-reaction/)
For those of you who still remember, Rubicon failed in 2015 because the playerbase was not okay with cosmetics having an effect on gameplay. That they made heard. These changes with Crew 2.0 are of a much greater magnitude, are much less accessible, and in their current guise, it is safe to say that they will impact the game much more negatively.
The multitudinous changes to the system and the overhauls to the interface only serve to hide the fact that your crews will be worse, that as players we will suffer, that we will have to pay more, grind more, to get less in return.
There is no reason that the playerbase should allow these changes to happen.

Basically it looks like this is the plan:

Right now it's brutal to start out (especially when we're talking 50% crews) but you gain ground rapidly. It peaks earlier, because a 2-3 skill crew is reasonably competitive for the most part. By the time you have 4 skills you hit diminishing returns because you probably have all you vitally need on most tanks.
2.0 flattens it all out into a more linear climb. You start out way better off (100% crew plus 6th sense) but gain much more gradually. And ultimately, while your crew is lamer in the middle zone than it used to be, it eventually becomes more powerful... but only with a metric ass-ton more grinding. It takes way longer to get to the end, but +20% to crew skills alone is redonk.
So, the good is that new players won't get shafted as hard, and the scaling of crews is much more even. The bad news is that they want to basically obsolete a bunch of your crews and extend the grind.
Extending the grind is what this is really all about. Veteran players all have solid crews in their tanks at this point, so there's weak incentive to furiously smash that lever like a conditioned muppet to get the next pellet. So they want to make the grind longer and ultimately more rewarding as reaching the end grants stupid bonuses to the entire crew.
So cool, purple nazi dork (and other assorted no-lifers) now rules the world, the whales get milked harder as they dump resources to pump up crews, every one else is pissed. LOOKIN GOOD, GUYZ

This is trash. 
The new perks suck ass for a multitude of reasons, especially proc based situational ones. They don't work in any game, I can't believe someone greenlit that idea.
  Creates a huge gap between 7+ skill crews and lower level crews. You don't have amazing crews? Fuck yourself. New players can look forward to literally never being on even footing with veterans. I'll end up with 50%+ more crew skill then the other players in the match after 3 kills and a burned medkit. That's fucking stupid. I'm not even playing the same game at that point.
  How much you benefit from the crew conversions depends entirely on whether you kept a small number of good crews or a lot of okay ones. You honestly might as well quit the game if you did the latter because of the above reason. Incredibly disappointing. Give everyone sixth sense and then literally never touch the system again, wargaming. 

Under normal circumstances, this would be a non-issue. If some tomato in an E3 chucks HE at center mass and does say 300 damage he's only cheating himself out of the 750 that should have been dealt by one of the other shell types. The only way that the HE tactic gets ahead is if the other shell types have very low odds of success. Otherwise, HE consistently loses in the long run. If HE really has become an actual threat to the high tier meta, that would mean something has gone terribly wrong with the conventional AP/APCR/HEAT performance against typical armor profiles.
As of the odd detail that HE no longer causes splash damage (cue memes about non-exploding HE), this smells to me that they're trying to shoehorn arta back into relevance as the magic solution to the 'camping' problem. Good luck with that.