Jesse_the_Scout

After playing the game for a month my opinion is all the people throwing a bitch fit are being ridiculous. The level of bugs and glitches in the game is completely ridiculous, but other than that the game is great, I haven't had this much fun with a game for years. I'm probably at 100 hours at this point and still going strong, and the game is clearly still a framework for expanding, not a 100% finished experience. It plays as a single player game, it plays like a multiplayer game. It's part exploration, part survival, part construction set, part MMO, part RPG, part shooter, and there are a dozen ways they can expand and improve upon it as they continue development. I don't really know what people even apparently expected, if they hate Fallout 76 then they should have hated Fallout 4 since it's basically Fallout 4 but bigger, crazier, glitchier, and multiplayer.

I took a 200 box sample posted on The Armored Patrol and Quickybaby's 200 box opening and combined them into a 400 box sample. I assigned value based on raw gold values with my own assessment tweaks, which means I counted credits and garage slots as 0 value since I don't care about using gold to get either these days. I counted premium days at a rate based on buying one full year at a 15% discount, the best deal you typically can get. Note there are several other bonuses not included in the gold totals here, including 1 special commander, maxing out the in-game decoration Christmas bonuses, 4 skins for tier 10 tanks, all those garage slots, and all those credits. The rate of premium tank drop appears to be about 1/6.8 boxes (~15%), with the odds of a tier 7 or 8 rare tank dropping about 15% of that time. That means every box has a ballpark odd of dropping a high value tank item of ~2.3%. Given the low drop rate and still somewhat small number of samples that number could still vary significantly. I'd call it 2% conservatively and say that's probably pretty close. Considering there's a 1/4 chance of THAT 2.3% of getting an IS-3A and you're looking at 0.6% chance per box, or needing about 180 boxes to get the thing every one is freaking about. That seems to mesh roughly with the "150 boxes" value other people have been passing around. Either way I completely agree with QB that any one buying these boxes because they want a specific tank is the height of cringe-worthiness and math fail. Have to give them credit in that the amounts are pretty generous, especially if you're willing to fork over the highest end commitment. 250 gold per dollar is a typical WG deal, with 300 being a good exchange rate. 400 is pretty high and 600 is darn near crazy. If you want gold this is hands down the time and way to do it. Personally I'm wildly undecided on what to spend, as I've been pretty down on the game lately and haven't bought anything since last year. I wish they had given more info out on the big 1.5 rebalance plan, if I knew some real changes were coming (or weren't) it'd be easier to justify buying anything (or nothing).

Looking at the numbers on paper it appears reasonable at first glance. The fire on the move, turret bloom, and accuracy stats are all abysmal. Mobility is closer to a wash due to soft stats on medium ground. The real outlier is the RoF, which is showing as 9 on 3dmodels. I'm guessing that's not totally accurate, since that would literally be double the DPM of the IS-3 at 3500 vs. 1760, but whatever it is it's probably still a large difference. The value of an autoloader of that nature is hard to quantify on paper though, especially since it's just straight up superior to any loading system in the game. Accuracy is also of questionable value in this game due to the ridiculous "ludicrous miss-dead center-ludicrous miss" loop of the shot distribution. I could easily see it being more than the sum of its parts.

Since status updates are a little wonky today, I decided to make a topic instead since this is only for 14ish hours. I have a scorpian in my garage which I do not own, it's still there from a rental. Lo and behold this is what today's advent calendar looks like when I check out "buy with gold". https://imgur.com/8DmmuEZ So, I can't test it because I only have 6300 gold, but it looks like it thinks I already own the Scorpian and will reimburse me basically all the gold if I buy it. So, do I blow $30 just to have enough gold to test this where if it works I will still have 11k gold? I've been on a "no money for WG" kick for a year and am reluctant to break it, but on the other hand it would probably annoy them to give out a scorpian for free. Has any one else with a rental in their garage given it a shot? EDIT: the more I think about it, who knows what it actually does. It probably just works the way it's supposed to, and just doesn't give you any tank nor takes the gold. I mean, they can't possibly have screwed this up again, right? Like, for the third time? Right?

World of Tanks is like a 104 year old man in that whichever one of its conditions you identify as life-threatening you are probably right.

The best way is to just redo the video using two vehicles with baseline 100% crews with no skill, no food, nothing else weird, and verify the baseline factors are all the same. No vents even just to make sure. If there is a secret stat somewhere you would want to start on two tanks where you've already detected a wide gap. Choosing two tanks at random, who knows what their secret stat difference would be? It could be the stat is 1.0 for 80% of the tanks in the game and they bump or drop it for only a small number of vehicles. I'm actually really curious to see the results of such a test. It is worth noting that combining mobility boosting effects has a higher yield than each item alone. Food lowers ground resistance, which means the gasoline HP boost actually is even more effective when it's combined with food. I tested this a long time ago and found slower vehicles could see a noticeable mobility increase using food+gas. It's not viable because you have to give up either a medkit or a repair kit though.

Welp, I mixed the weights up when I was looking at the values. In that case I am literally 100% baffled. That is the only explanation I could come up with that made any sense. The HP/ton is virtually identical, they have the exact same soft stats, I can't think of any other explanation at this point other than WG has some secret statistical factor they've managed to keep hidden from every one. Perhaps there is some unknown difference in the video, like food or crew skills on the scorpian, but it seems like too much difference unless the scorpian was using some crazy combo like food+improved gas+off road+etc. I'm leaning toward bullshit secret stat though, and my impression was the tanks that got slower after physics were over-performers... hence why I originally thought there was some ninja nerfing at work.

In one of the physics changes (the last, totally terrible and unnecessary one where tanks handle like garbage now), I noticed the speed of different vehicles ranged from no change to slower. The KV-1, for example, slowed down to the point I never play it anymore. The WZ-111 lost its cross country speed advantage over similar heavies as well. It used to hit 50s on a long, flat drive, and now it hits 40 or so. It's very subtle and I never figured out a clear relationship as to why some vehicles got slower and others didn't. My first thought is that WG used physics as a cover for ninja nerfs to mobility of some kind, but I'm pretty sure no ground resistance stats changed. Now I suspect it's the shitty moon gravity at work. WG distorted space and time to absurd proportions by tweaking how gravity and inertia works in the game to the point where on the one hand hitting the slightest bump in the ground while moving can send your tank into a slow motion skidding flop onto its side, yet at the same time I have literally seen tanks magically bounce off the ground and right themselves in a way that is 100% cartoon absurd. Given that the new TD is over 50% heavier than the scorpian my guess is that the (to reiterate: TERRIBLE) physics are the reason. Inertia clearly does not function the same in tank universe as in our reality, and the general trend has been that heavier vehicles have gotten slower.

Played a round. It's very fast and more agile than I expected. It bobbles constantly, nearly flipped myself in the first minute, the turret is huge and makes it top heavy. The length of the tank is a double edged sword, it makes it harder to flip than it should be but also renders it really unstable. Can't use a vert but doesn't really need it. Gun is tickle tier with no pen, alpha, or DPM. Fast enough to be hard to hit, but big enough to not be that hard. On an open map it would be fun. There are no open maps. It doesn't make premium tank credits and the gold round is absurdly overpriced, so it's one of those "lose money or be useless" tanks. A.k.a., shit. Throw it on the pile of unplayable garbage now forming a 50 ft cone of rusting steel and oil leakage behind my garage.

Do you remember when marathons had understandable rules and were actually possible? pepperidgefarmremembersmeme.gif

Brah. I got a 128MB SSD for $35 like 6 months ago. Not big enough to put any games on, but the difference having the OS on it is night and day. The possibility of a restart no longer strikes fear into my heart. PITA to install but totally worthwhile, my life was a lie before the SSD.

Honestly, who gives a fuck. The game is unplayable garbage now, much less in a tier 6 light.

I haven't played tanks since Fallout 76 came out. I need a game I can log in and goof around for half an hour since I just need a break from school crap. I can't stop and play most games because most games suck you in or require an hour+ investment to be worth doing. Tanks always filled that niche and I had no other game that did, so it stuck longer than it otherwise would have. Find something better that fulfills the same role (for me that was the need for a time controlled break) and the ambivalent habit aspect will probably fade. It's not just about finding something else to do with your time, it's about what you (used to) get out of tanks that you aren't getting elsewhere.

This is what I was thinking about. It's long, narrow, and fast. Come Wednesday every mid tier game will be a map littered with T-50-2s on their sides rotating turrets in circles crying "help", like a civil war battlefield where the cries of the wounded and dying become a steady drone.