Jump to content
Assassin7

My thoughts on the game as current, and why I don't play as much any more.

Recommended Posts

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. 

 

Link to post
Share on other sites

I could honestly care less about how strong some tanks are if the maps were properly balanced designed to allow each tank class to utilize their strengths by being able to flex and not camp. That and sprinkle a little bit of removing stats from api.

Link to post
Share on other sites
9 minutes ago, Fulcrous said:

I could honestly care less about how strong some tanks are if the maps were properly balanced designed to allow each tank class to utilize their strengths by being able to flex and not camp. That and sprinkle a little bit of removing stats from api.

yeah, better map balance would make the imbalance between vehicles a lot less noticable

Link to post
Share on other sites

Yep, you basically wrote down everything that bothered me in the game.

Started playing this game in 2013, I completely agree: the peak best season was around 2015/2016 and it went downhill after that.

On the other hand, for many reasons the game itself stopped being competitive and started to seem like repetitive instead, which after 6 years, made me quit completely.

Totally understand the "old ones", gamers like Gehaktemolen who loved and played this game from beta stages and almost everyone I know has quit in the last few years because of said reasons.

For me, the peak of the game was reached with a fix position in a top clan, having recent 83% wr and unicum stats (would've been superuni if I'd kept playing) with constant high damages.

Regardless of statistics, WoT is not fun anymore, at least not for me.

I will sell my account, maybe in the future I will make a new small one for fun if the game will change (it will not).

Luckily I have found LoL which provides me with sexy skins and a more relaxed experience without 700+ artillery splashes and only toxicity which I can mute :>

 

Link to post
Share on other sites

One change, the T-100 is useless, just bring an EBR because its now better in every way because fuck you.

 

Fog of war? Not with the EBR meta. The Type 5 meta was ushered away with the even worse EBR meta in its place.

 

I agree with everything you say. In terms of personal performance, I never really cared so it doesn't bother me too much. I generally don't go on tilt by virtue of not really caring enough about the game for it to impact my decision-making. What has changed for me personally is 'getting used to the game' again, not poking out into stupid firing lines. That and the new maps I always need to relearn. 

 

 

8 hours ago, Assassin7 said:

New Patches these days don't bring me excitement. they bring me dread as to what they've fucked up this time.

SO MUCH THIS. STB has now been thoroughly fucked for me. The gun doesn't hit shit, the armour feels the same to me - gets penned randomly while hull down - and the lesser alpha just means less damage since I can't make use of the quicker reload. Oh, and AP standard is fucking shit. That combined with the inaction when it comes to broken tanks and mechanics which has somehow gotten worse after the 268 4, I have given up with the game.

 

I didn't play for over 4 months. Since I started playing a little again, the game has somehow gotten worse in that time-frame. I promised to play the campaign and honestly, that's the only reason why I am playing again. If I knew that I wasn't going to be getting any tank since I have all of them on offer I would have declined and not updated the client. 

Link to post
Share on other sites

If I had to say, game balance at tier 10 is shit, but what truly culminates the main issues are the fucking maps. Literally every single new map and reworked map after patch 1.0 is absolute dogshit tier garbage. They all are same stupid shit where you have these super-easy hulldown positions to shit on entire flanks (and as you know, 2/3 of tanks now have +300 mm turret armor), crossfires everywhere, flanks are designed so that basecamping TDs can shit on anyone who tries to move from those hulldown spots, making it a forced hulldown shitfest - and to make this worse, the hulldown spots are like 150-250 m away from each other, so it ends up being super heavily RNG based gold spam shitfest or people just spam HE. Nerfs to Type 4/5 derps has made hulldown aids tanks even stronger. While those guns are fucking stupid, yes, we have reached the point where we need cancer A to counter cancer B. Good fucking job WG. 

This has resulted in people playing *even* more arty and base camping TDs, because trying to play anything else is either expensive or straight up cancer. You've been wondering why there's so many 3x arty games at tier 10? Yeah, that's why (along with missions that force you to play arty to complete them).  Even with super garbage cancer tank meta at tier 10, some older maps that don't have this dreadful post 1.0 design can still be somewhat enjoyable because they don't culminate this cancerous meta to it's maximum. But take any post 1.0 map - Studzianki, Misnk, Ghost Town, new Kharkov, reworked Pilsen, Fishermans, Erlenberg etc, and you can feel the dreadful ebola hulldown meta that this game has become. Basically you see hulldown tanks just spam HE or gold at each other and then get shat on by arties and TDs. So many games on the new maps are tedious, long campfests.

When I saw all those medium tanks starting to get turret buffs back in 2017, I was worried. I knew a domino effect would happen that goes like this "a tank A is underperforming, turret gets buffed, now it's old competition in form of tank B is underperforming, it also gets a turret buff, etc etc". And look where we are now. Almost every tank at tier 10 has a turret that would be among the best in the game if it was added in 2013-2016 era WoT. No wonder how the T-62A, once the "meta" tank, best tier 10 MT and one of the best tier 10s in the game, is quite possibly one of the worst tier 10 MTs in the entire game now.

And yea, super OP mega cancer reward tanks are another stupid thing that are just straight up cancer. Anyone who plays the Chieftain or 279E in randoms can choke on a giant cactus, thank you. I also always despised the fucking idiotic S-tanks that promote horrible and cancerous gameplay, even more so in all these new maps. Sadly there's a lot of mongoloid who enjoy them and find them "uNiQuE", so there's no hope in them ever getting changed. I don't mind the wheelchairs as much, especially the tier 6,7,8 (tier 8 prem and tier 10 are annoying as fuck but thats about it) but considering how much negativity they add, they are another thing that should never been introduced to the game. Properly balanced wheeled vehicles would be really cool, but these idiotic wheelchairs that are literally designed for a 43% mongoloid who likes to suiscout in his LTs, autoaim and spam HE are not. Overly minmaxed vehicles have always been problematic (see - WT E100, prenerf 183, Grille 15, Type 5, Maus and Bobject have all been among the most problematic tanks at tier 10 and they are all super minmaxed) and never work very well, yet the tier 10 wheelchair in especial takes the minmaxing to the top.

I honestly don't know why am I still playing this game. Maybe it's because i've enjoyed it for years and I still love the concept and everything. I dont know man.

Link to post
Share on other sites

It's amazing how they've managed to take the game from a reasonable vision based meta to a brawly meta that still has broken as fuck camping bushes that can't be outvisioned.

Link to post
Share on other sites

And all this without mentioning the transition of premium tank philosophy from worse-than fully upgraded tech tree counterparts to better-than fully upgraded tech tree counterparts that kicked off with the Skorp G. 

Link to post
Share on other sites
2 hours ago, MagicalFlyingFox said:

And all this without mentioning the transition of premium tank philosophy from worse-than fully upgraded tech tree counterparts to better-than fully upgraded tech tree counterparts that kicked off with the Skorp G. 

That T26E5 and Super Pershing (post buff) and IS-3A and Caern AX

Link to post
Share on other sites

Thanks for saying everything I feel dude. It's so frustrating playing below my overall stats. I cannot adjust to the new meta for my life. God I also absolutely hate those god damn Strvs. Most fucking cancerous tanks. I'll take WTE100s as enemies over STRVs any fucking day. Also for me, best era of the game was when the Waffentrager line got released. Murovanka with the magic forest <3 

Link to post
Share on other sites
5 hours ago, Deus__Ex__Machina said:

:feelsbad::feelsbad::brokenheart: i though we had something special 

KnX8ojg.png

Guess ill go buy a cactus........

We still do, don't worry :wub:

You can still go choke on a cactus, though.

...on my "cactus" that is, KappaPride

Link to post
Share on other sites

Coming back from over a year it feels very....exhausting to play.

I feel like any small mistake i make is usually punished by loss of tank or most of my hitpoints, i have to play very conservative camping some key portion of a map doing no damage while most players are camo sniping for ten minutes, games seem to last a lot longer than i remember.

i just dont have the patience these pubbies do and i must be very out of meta because my playstyle has not changed and now im running yellow stats. i dont find it frustrating surprisingly as i mainly came back because i can see the potential in frontline even though it is a huge mess now. 

Im also struggling with the amount of armour in the game, tiers 8 - 10 posses some insanely armored vehicles now that i struggle to pen with gold and so many tanks are almost invincible hull down it can be very difficult to dislodge them.

Arty seems better surprisingly one of the few positive changes ive noticed in the game to be honest i never expected anything coming back and im glad i didnt, the truth is there are much better multiplayer games out there but i really enjoy the banter with the lads on the server so that is enough to keep me interested. i think steel division 2 will end up bieng a much better time sink.

Link to post
Share on other sites
8 minutes ago, westybig said:

Im also struggling with the amount of armour in the game, tiers 8 - 10 posses some insanely armored vehicles now that i struggle to pen with gold and so many tanks are almost invincible hull down it can be very difficult to dislodge them.

Yup, this stems from WG just overbuffing armour 24/7.

These days, especially at tier 10, armour is balanced a lot around gold and not standard ammo. you have to fire a significant amount of gold to do anything in any game.

meanwhile WG is talking about nerfing gold, without first solving the root problem of everything having too much armour. If they actually nerf gold without nerfing armour the game is going to be 100% fucked.

Link to post
Share on other sites

That feeling when you completely remove AP from any tank that has apcr as premium. Even premiums.

Not because tryhard, but because standard ammo doesn't make sense anymore.

The only tank that can reliably run on 100% standard is the Leo 1 because it got buffed. But even in the Leos I carry way more premium than standard, because hulldown meta.

 

As already said, the biggest problem with this game is the map design. Maps like erlenberg used to be fun (sort of) in tanks like US mediums with decent turrets and good gun depression+bloom, now look at it.

The west is completely flat except for the slightly elevated castle area. The east has 2 hills that are absolutely terrible to play from both sides because once you like your head out you get slapped for all your HP by some cancer TD. And then the desert just south of said hills. Nothing, nada, flat with yet another forest for TDs to sit in.

 

Reworked maps are cancer. Invisible walls everywhere, hitboxes larger than textures, you set up for a shot between 2 rocks only to shoot an invisible wall and get spotted (and obliterated) in return.

 

New maps are gay, you get studzianki which is 3 corridors, but in the open. Whenever a retarded scout tries to spot the field at the start dies. When I get that map in my lights I just kemp boosh like a td waiting for the enemy scouts to die so I can do my job. 97% of the map is unplayable.

Minsk isn't better, you have the 1 line and you have the 9 line. Everywhere else is either useless or a death trap. 80% of the map is unplayable.

1.0 pilsen. East is a TD shitfest completely in the open with 0 arty cover, West is a hulldown HT shitfest, this time arty can still hit you through buildings because reasons, and once you win the factory you have to push into TDs.

1.0 province. Well, the old one was fun in tier 2s, also there was no arty at those tiers and it couldn't shit on you because lol splash. This one is cancer, TDs don't even have to drive, all they need to do is turn their tanks towards the other side and fire away, completely unspotted. Middle is, of course, a death trap.

Glacier. Who is the retard that designed that map? The only playable side is middle, which isn't really playable because TDs can play like they do in province. Lights fight for control over the carrier, and once you get up there you can easily farm heavies. But you need to get up there first. And there is only one access, which is open for TDs to punish you and until you're on the actual ship deck you're vulnerable to fire from middle. South is just a twisty corridor with conveniently positioned bushes for TDs to ruin your day. At least it's kinda arty safe. North is dumb. Hulldown cover on one side (south, that little ice cum stain under the carrier's wreck), none on the other. Yet again, once you win that area you have to push into TDs, completely in the open.

 

Fjords 1.0 turned into: spawn east win, spawn west lose. No fucking matter what. North is a huge crossfire, HT corner heavily favours the guys spawning east.

 

Ghost town. Was fun in competitive, now it's just a hulldown brawl in middle with the 1 and 0 line dominated once again by TDs.

 

1.0 highway: north west is usually won by the south, who then have to cross an open field overlooked once again by TDs who barely have to move 100m from their spawn location.

 

All of this is made worse by tanks like the chieftain, which can literally park its ass in one of those convenient hulldown spots, turn off the engine and farm, farm, farm until all the reds are dead. Unless there is another chieftain on the enemy team. In that case it turns into a RNG fest in which the victor is whoever gets the most luck with gold pen/HE damage.

There's more.

The 279.

Thing has a weakspot. Which is 40% chance to pen with t10 gold. Tier 9s are utterly fucked against that thing. No chance to pen it.

 

Wheelies should not be in the game. I have so much fun in the t8 prem and I'm currently grinding the tier 8 regular.

They are gamebreaking. A single line effectively rendered 5 full lines completely useless. You just RR at 90 kph in your literally unstoppable wheelie thingy with godlike gun handling spamming (relatively) high penetration HE at anything you see. Of course you have zero view range so you have to basically suicide into the enemy to spot anything. #fungameplay 

 

Strongholds are dead, tier 10s were useful to try CW strats and comps. Now it's just a reward tank shitfest.

I'll play the campaign to get one of those balanced cumstains so that I can be part of the cool boys club for once. Until the next utterly broken reward comes out (actually soon with the FL reward, which got already buffed btw)

Link to post
Share on other sites
3 hours ago, koel76 said:

Imo, games like WoT just have no longevity. Eventually it's simply a race of adding new content and modifying the game, you'll just get bored :)

Thats not always true though. CSGO hasnt changed in basically forever and its still one of the #1 games out there.

Adding new content 24/7 isnt the only way to make a game last longer. WG hasn't learned that. Id kill for a year of no new content, just fixing older content. 

Heck if WG had actually run with making it a fully fledged and competitive Esport, we'd currently have probably less content, but WAAAY better game balance. And playing a game that feels fair to everyone is much more fun than a game where you have to get every new FOTM thing to stay competitive.

Link to post
Share on other sites
3 hours ago, koel76 said:

Imo, games like WoT just have no longevity. Eventually it's simply a race of adding new content and modifying the game, you'll just get bored 

To me it comes down to how you define longevity. As with many people on this thread WoT's been a game we've seen evolve (devolve) over many years. It is easily, and i mean like 5 or 6 times, the longest i've stuck with one game. Granted there are games like civ which i revisit in later iterations (skipped 5 tho), but it's not like WoT ran out of content real quick.

Anyway, as to how to keep people playing, i guess it was partially about keeping it fresh for people, but for WG it became about keeping it profitable. At some point things like competitive advantage were put on the 'what can we sell' table, and things started going to shit (which as my entry to this thread comes under the 'balance is fked' section).

Link to post
Share on other sites

Something that has boggled me for years is how one dimensional they deliberately keep the maps.

mines, mannerhiem line and cliff for example stand out as maps that would be a lot better if you have more ramps/ pathways to the contested area without risking death in the first minute. if you put a ramp in front of each base on cliff to the hill you could have a lot more contest for that key position, instead of whomever rushes it wins the game. there should be a lot more pathways in the city maps for flanking/ outmaneuvering and making plays. Controlling key areas of a map should give you an advantage but at the same time you shouldn't be annihilating the enemy team from it every game.

i removed erlenberg and paris from my map rotation for this specific reason though a few others came close.

i have a suspicion that WG tries to keep maps as favorable to TD's as possible, i dont know why but all the maps are set up in such a way that it benefits the campers more than any other playstyle.

Link to post
Share on other sites
On 6/26/2019 at 10:25 AM, canadiantrex said:

That T26E5 and Super Pershing (post buff) and IS-3A and Caern AX

The Skorp G was the first but the T26E5, AMX M4 49 and such really emphasised the transition.

Link to post
Share on other sites
3 hours ago, westybig said:

i have a suspicion that WG tries to keep maps as favorable to TD's as possible, i dont know why but all the maps are set up in such a way that it benefits the campers more than any other playstyle.

All the new and most of the reworked maps are designed around TDs, because there are plenty of spots literally next to bases for them to sit and do nothing. Even then, TDs are usually at the bottom of the list when it comes to damage dealt.

 

I also like how WG has not given a single fuck about team battles in all these years. It's a fun mode but it seems to be stuck in 2015 with the 7/54 format. Make a 7/70 and a 7/56 format (full t10 and t8) so that people can train for tournaments and actually have something fresh to do.

Link to post
Share on other sites

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    No registered users viewing this page.

×
×
  • Create New...