Kolni's Story from Pleb to 6K (personal story, no gameplay advice)

[kolni 69,670,870]

 

Alright, so since I've been a part of WoTLabs for so long I thought I'd share my story on how I got here. About WoT, going pro, being the best and the wonderful and not so great times I've had because of it. This is just a personal story, for some it can be entirely pointless but some people might enjoy it.

(This is purely my experiences that made me the player I am today,, so if you're not interested in that type of thing this probably isn't for you.)

Let's start off at the very beginning. I was 12 or 13, my uncle introduced me to this game. After an hour of playing or so I got kind of hooked, but as I was kind of underdeveloped in some areas at the time I started focusing on very different things than what my reasoning now will never see. I got a code with a T2 Light Tank, and it made money! Great, I could spam the OP round day in day out and earn credits along the way. T18 was also a stupidly strong tier 2 so I kept myself to playing those two. I liked being in charge, dictating the game. 2K games later (yes you heard that right) I got bored of the T2 gameplay, and decided to try something a little higher tier. 
I made my first forum post on the official forums frustrated about players rolling me over, and I was lucky enough to have Poltto (old EU Legend) answer me there. He gave me some great advice on how to think about the game that I still carry with me. Being sure and confident in your ability aids you just as much as perfect mechanics will. That belief had some sort of value. I am diagnosed with autism, so I found this very soothing. Then I looked at Poltto's stats and was amazed. How in the actual fuck? At the time I had just gotten my first tier 9 (M46 Patton) with about half his outputs in everything. 
I got curious about player skill, something I hadn't really considered as games weren't competition to me. Now they were. It felt like I had figured it out, getting to enjoy the satisfaction of improvement. I started off by watching various streamers (not RU streamers though as their meta lets them get away with way too much stupid shit) to both find openings and rotations mostly, I always liked low armoured assassin champions. I picked up Shaco in League and climbed pretty high in the first season, getting into the real mindset of the drive you need to actually improve to the point you want. Taking this process into WoT wasn’t really difficult, it almost came naturally.

Fast forward about 6 months: 
I found WN8 and WoTLabs from two OM guys that just crushed my entire team and frustrated as I was, flamed in all chat. They told me to look up WotLabs and the Elitist+Stronk Pluton channels in game to meet some stronger players.. I looked at it, and the metric seemed pretty good. I thought... is this what people use to measure their strength in? Probably not. I saw myself on that ladder, very far down. I played ranked solo queue in League where  people try harder, so I improve. II had the same feeling for tanks, I needed to go up the tiers. Once I felt improvement, I couldn't stop. That was it. The urge, and while I had a career in music production right off the bat in high school.. This was what I really wanted to do.. 
I started looking into the numbers, who the great players were; emu87, zzlzxzzlzx, espanol and unknwn comes to mind. You are not there yet, but you can be if you improve is what I told myself.. At this point I had about 2 years of playtime, not doing anything else but s3alclubbing in game every game I played since higher tiers were going so poorly. 1 year later I decided to move up the tier trees again for another try. I wanted to become good at the game. It felt like a good challenge, and I like a good challenge. 

I also started platooning with some better players, Draz_H from S3AL in particular had a 6K game in his Type 59 on Kharkov the very first game we played together so I was just blown away. He offered to give me some pointers and explained that preserving HP and a good opening is normally enough to have a good game. The trick to this according to him was reading the line up according to the map state. I never really figured this concept out until then. Time to find more information to build my gameplay upon.

(Now about at 1500-1600 WN8)

Here comes the next contender: Hellcat (pre-nerf).
I  watched EJ play it in an interesting way I’d never seen before.. Concepts like vision and kiting were easier to put together as parts of the game's inner workings while watching someone else. 

I was 1500 WN8 56%WR at the time (s3alclubbing buffed my WR, as I said.). of this happening.. I grew something inside of me, I wanted to improve. And today, that desire still hasn’t gone away, It’s fueled much, but also caused much frustration along the way. I was learning now, reviewing my own retardation in replays for months to get a better sense of right and wrong and I finally felt some clarity. A long and dark path, probably lonely too. Perfect for me. I am going to be the best at this video game. Period. I decided this in high school. Hellcat spamming was a great teaching tool for understanding vision that I still appreciate today, even if I refuse to play anything below tier 9.

My high school years were spent producing beats and sampling old disco songs into EDM, honestly a very simple thing to do if music theory is something you master. I was really going my own way and already carving it out before adulthood. However, this game. World of Tanks… Something about it made me always want to play.. Eventually I started playing over composing in my free time instead of balancing the two. Seeing one’s work come to life is something truly special - but WoT filled another void within me that I honestly liked better. I had fun, was confident and started to make sense of it all. 

Streams like EJs and advice from the many players on here (X3N4, _KT, Patient0, Poltto, Kewei + plenty of other of you) really helped me grasp the more difficult parts of the game and as such, I started improving rapidly. My period as Unicum before Super Unicum was the shortest between the cutoffs on the spectrum, and I really started liking the game. I played well, got into some stronger clans at the time (KITTY and S3AL) where I could regularly play with players of the same caliber and continue evolving. 

Then WoT introduced Marks of Excellence. I was still on a shitty MacBook Pro using a Wine wrapper that couldn’t load 4 maps at all and crashed every 3rd game, but I managed to 3mark the E 50. That was a very big milestone for me, but I felt that my PC really kept holding me back. My parents were nice enough to support me in gaming as my diagnoses hadn’t been discovered yet (although they were most definitely there and parents were aware) and that doing something I simply genuinely enjoy might be worth spending some money on. My parents were musicians growing up so they always supported that path. Gaming was new and something my mom especially had trouble seeing as anything more than a time-sink until I got good and showed her my Paypal after 2 months of non-stop boosting later on .I’m jumping forward in time here but I don’t think family stuff has a place here, but I’ll at least say that this was eventually resolved.

I got a decent PC, a GTX 970 which was brand new at the time and other fairly solid components making the game suddenly run very smoothly on high quality. It took me a few days but past that? What an improvement. I went from barely being able to mark the “easy” marks to doing moderately hard ones in 75 games or less. The jump in DPG went from scratching the 2K region to reliably hitting the 2500-2800s in tier 8s. I felt ready to move up to tier 10 and get good there now. I spent most of my time with tier 8 as it was so much easier, and I liked marking premium tanks for their income during the challenge. I was never much for skirmishes until I actually joined S3AL a while later. During this time I had just left KITTY to join WaterWar’s clan LAVA and this is probably where I had the most personal growth as a player, KITTY’s Commander (GetLucky) was also swedish and liked playing with me a lot, as he was a 4k player and I was hovering at 3k wn8, I paid a lot of attention to his play. He played very passively to my surprise but eventually explained that patience tends to lead to better decisions as long as you don’t take too long. In LAVA I started playing Ranked TBs and skirmishes as they were so good for credits, and I also got the hang of organized play. Randoms were still the thing I enjoyed most until I joined S3AL after LAVA died and we were doing T6 fastbois. So much banter, soundboards and genuine fun on the TS that included a social aspect of the game I didn’t really experience until very late in my career. I found it fun, but randoms were still my jam. We had tons of fun with T-22 memery, tons of top clans coming together to.. Uh… complete missions, and all that stuff. 

At this point in time I was very much a platoon player, me and Constie (remember him?) pretty much played everything together. but 3 man platoons always felt like cheating to me.

As I was now drowning in credits, I could finally buy and play tier 10s without issues. I really liked the BatChat, and spammed it until I 3marked it (1700 games.. lol) until I moved to the next. I realised that mostly what I was searching for was a challenge, more particularly one that fell in line with something I’d taken interest in. The 3MoE hunting ensued. After having done one tier 10, I believed I could do them all. That’s what I set my goal as, the DPG hunt got pushed aside in favour of marks.

I think this would be late 2016, as I started topping DPG charts on tier 8s and finally hit the 7k combined recent/overall cutoff FAME had to get into the clan. I asked X3N4 and he sent me an invite. I felt like I made it first time I joined FAME, best clan in the world so I am one of the best players. It wasn’t until here I discovered ESL and found that super interesting. After a few months in FAME I got a Whatsapp message from Knäckebröd asking me to try-out for their team mid-season as genghiswolves had been accepted to his uni and couldn’t play anymore. 

Placing wasn’t great either as they were already so behind that we couldn’t get back into the league despite having a positive record past my joining. In this environment I was still pretty new, everyone was a better player than I was used to so the tricks to beating bad ones didn’t work since they wouldn’t fall for them. Cohesive gameplay and real time strategy became the big thing to focus on as flawless mechanics should be a no-brainer here. Boosting became a thing and I really went in for it to provide some extra value to my team, we were 8 and 7 people could play so as the new guy I’d have to fight for my spot if I didn’t do well. Luckily I never had to. But the boosting (climbing) times, me, Xaneleon and Failware (all on Knäckebröd, now Xane works for WG and Failware is considered FAME 1st team and one of the best players in the world in organised play) we all spent 20+ hours on Steppes and Mines to figure out new stuff for strats for the map. 

I really liked FAME. The motto of “it’s not personal, you’re out if you don’t have what it takes.” really groomed me. I wound meeting some of them in Katowice during the -16 EU playoffs, had a great time and I think there’s still some legendary clips from Dakis stream from when we were there. I graduated high school around this time, and started boosting on my free time. WGL training + boosting was basically what I spent my day on, earning enough to get by and fund my music stuff (studio time isn’t cheap) and we set our eyes on playoffs in KB that’d mean a decent piece of prize money. We trained 3 times a week, sometimes against EU or RU teams in 3 hour blocks of perfecting strats, after they had their turn trying their strat - we had ours. Sometimes the team would want us to adjust strats to counter to see if we could beat it and sometimes they just wanted a standard defense to fight against so in general the training varied heavily from team to team. The russian teams always went full yolo every single game no matter what so you barely gained anything from the games if you didn’t just crush them in fighting them before they started applying any sort of strategy, funnily enough the EU silver league was MUCH better training partners than the russian ones, even some RU WGL teams were a complete mess to talk and organize with. We weren’t a top team even if KB placed 5th the season before so we mostly got practice times with EU teams and silver RU/EU teams as the top EU teams trained vs eachother and russian top teams most of the time. As I joined, the relegation was already dangling over our heads so I could pretty much play without pressure. 

I really liked the 7v7 7/68, the attack defense + boosts made it all about strategy and very little about RNG as the better team actually won most of the time compared to randoms. 

My very first ESL game was against KAZNA, the #2 team considered by pretty much everyone as DiNG was stomping most teams. I played out of my mind, and we were up 4-2. Sadly they were prepared for our Ghost Town strats (4th map) and we found ourselves in a tiebreaker, here the stakes were insane. We were expected to lose this match and even had a W/L route planned to remain in the WGL if we did and we went in kinda uncoordinated as I had only been practicing the game-mode for a week and was pretty fresh. If we won this match we would surpass The Lucky Bunch, putting us outside the relegation risk zone. KAZNA sadly had a better Cliff strat than we did and won the game 4-5. As my first WGL game, the comeback really made a dent in my confidence. After that loss, the team sort of lost its charisma and the rest of the season was depressing. After the relegation there was a major league in between silver and WGL where we played, but most players moved on after KB got relegated. I focused on streaming after this point. 3MoE hunting was my jam, and I was getting good at it. Aim_Drol eventually released a spreadsheet of the top 100 markers on the servers and I found myself on the top 10. I decided to mark every tier 10. That was my goal. So I did. It was a long grind, the STB-1 especially almost broke me. Once I had hit that, I felt completed. What now? I was already good at the game, with Daki and Jostra shaping me competitively and much of the WGL training made me a much more consistent player.

However, I didn’t really know what to do. Quit playing? I have completed what I set out to, but I’m too good at this to quit. Then I remembered; I want to be the best. I looked at my service record and saw the demise that the play4fun me caused before I started taking the game seriously - so I sent a ticket in and resetted the account. I got to keep all rewards so I had a 260, 907, T-55A and all my premiums along with enough 907 ammo/consumables for 1K games. 

Account was resetted, and I wanted to wait for the right time to start playing randoms on it. I grinded regular TBs and Skirmishes to get a good enough crew for the 907 in randoms. I had already marked it twice before so I wasn’t too worried, but I need at least 3-4+ skill crew if I want to challenge the top DPG players.  On this account, every game mattered. I could not autopilot or not take it seriously, so I invested very heavily into performing. I was streaming most of this and it grew a bit, and the 907 grind was kinda funny. Reserves or FL didn’t exist then so you had to actually grind the crew you wanted from scratch, otherwise I had to complete the first set of Stug missions to get a female crew - which would require playing random battles. I wound up starting my 907 grind with a 100% crew at 80% on BiA in randoms once the reserves came as 50 games let me hit 3 skills if I used x5s and boosters right. Still, the first 150 games got me to 94% on the mark. I thought to myself that hmm.. Maybe it’s just really OP? 

But then I had 1k games straight of bullshit where I fluctuated between 80-90 and just couldn’t get a good enough streak of games to complete it. But I wouldn’t give up. I was the number one 907 player on Hall of Fame 4 months in a row, without the third mark completed. That really frustrated me. I was the fucking best player of the tank, how can I not get it? The mark req was at it’s peak (6600) and I was playing out of my mind. There were like 2 players on the server at the time with a higher DPG and they didn’t have anywhere near the battle count (100 vs 1K) so I couldn’t fathom how I couldn’t get it. I decided to put it off after hitting 1k games and started playing other stuff and really saw how much that I’ve improved. I had gone from a typical 3k 50B player to topping the DPG chart with zero time on it in between, and the same applied for many other tanks. Tier 10s were getting marked before 100 games. I was really peaking. At least I thought so. 

Carbon was basically the only guy who reliably beat my DPGs at this time and as Luna (not Wotlabs Luna) knows Carbon, and me being in the same clan as Luna both in S3AL and FAME, I got some advice and replays to learn from. I inspected them very closely and learned a lot. Carbon’s greatest strength that I gathered from his replays was that he always knew what was going to happen and positioned in time, in every tank. Timing and gameflow became something I inspected more closely and I really developed in consistency even if my median game went down slightly, my average went up because of the insane carries coming more consistently once I had Carbon’s mindset down - coupled with my own. This is also when I started boosting a lot. I had been boosting 2016-2018 and faired well, but when I really competed for the top is when I got a lot of offers. I made a living out of boosting after having rerolled, some stream donations and the boosting money was enough to pay for the crucial stuff. I didn’t mind gaming all day, I still liked the game. I still do. This meant that I drifted away from music, lost touch with a lot of my friends in the business as I dove into gaming. I wanted to be number 1. This account was a fresh start and I was going to make sure of it. At 5K games it would show up on the leaderboard, so I needed a 5500WN8 overall to take the spot. I didn’t want to cheat my way there by abusing light tanks, or cheat WN8 by the tier average bug so I went straight for the tier 10 DPG tryharding again. 

I watched some movie, can’t remember which (sorry), as I was trying to fall asleep but couldn’t. The day before was awful as I had gone from 93 to 82 on the 907 mark. Something there just really inspired me. I went for a walk at 4:30 in the morning for about an hour and then just got to it. I decided that this is it. I’m completing this right now. I turned on the stream, feeling torn if I should stream it (I always play like 5-10% worse on stream, never been able to shake it) or just grind without viewers over my shoulder. I decided to stream it, and my god if that wasn’t the best session I ever had. 7,2k average combined across 25 games. The most tilting thing happened though, as the game that shaved off before apparently was a big one meaning I had to do 7.8k to get mark from a 94.95 across the finish line. This was the third time I had the mark in the 94,9X range, and I wasn’t going to choke this time around. Incoming triple arty full tier 10 Karelia. I was so tilted as it’s one of the worst maps to get the REALLY high results on even if it’s decent at getting adequate ones - especially the three arties. Luckily the enemy team just runs into my gun and my team doesn’t do much but take damage for me. The mark mod told me I was across the finish line, at 8AM I could finally let this challenge go. The rest of the game I played out perfectly with the pressure gone, wound up turning it into a 95,7 percentage once the mark actually completed. With it, I also went over 5K games and finally took first place on the WoTLabs WN8 leaderboard as the only 6K WN8 player on any server at the time.

This was also during the time I boosted 3MoEs for days on end, getting into it eventually lead me to just watching movies on a second monitor and autocompleting everything non-tier 10.

The last thing I did was join Majstoras silver team FAME 7x7 where we literally crushed everyone and still stomped WGL teams in the qualifier - but as Majstora (our FC and a WoT mastermind) was moving to England with his brother Maresca (also on our team) our team started falling apart. We still had the WGL slot, and some players decided to stay and formed a new team, Savage Squad. I decided to leave because without Majstora I didn’t think we would compete with the top teams. We were scrimming them and going evenly, but doing some trainings without voicecoms (training personal decision making - it’s a trick to make players better on initiative so the FC has to micromanage them less and can focus more on big picture)

Now I felt burned out, that grind really took a while and our effort into the ESL kinda was the last I had in me. 6month hiatus ensued where I got back into music again as it’s a hobby I felt I had neglected for so long. I quit boosting too so I could distance myself from the game. 

Coming back to WoT casually afterwards, the game changed a lot. Maps were remodeled much to my dismay and so many gimmicky things made the game harder to play. Coming back I definitely felt washed. Playing on cygaN_’s account as I didn’t have my own, a great polish friend of mine from S3AL. I also used User’s account for some challenges, like the ISU-130 (also almost broke me) and the T-44-122 to complete some of the rarer marks in the game that I wouldn’t have access to otherwise. 

After that, cygaN_ gave me an account from a great friend to play on. Wujaszek, an account that had ground out everything, 500mil credits and about as much invested into consumables. He said that he was done with randoms and that I was free to use the acc as I wanted as long as I just don’t log in when he’s online playing FL or skrims (having to check the clan website page before logging basically). I was really happy he’d just give me the freedom to use his acc for whatever I wanted. I missed out on all the ranked stuff but he didn’t, so I had 4 full sets of improved equipment I could put on. I also had every tank in the game available outside of the low tier premiums, and nothing was 3marked. This felt like a really nice time-sink, but the game changed so much that I had to relearn much of what I already knew. Tempo sped up a lot and lights were figuring out better bushes and I had to adjust. For very long I wasn’t anything special, I could still 3mark any tier 10 with ease but the reward tanks kept giving me trouble. 121B wasn’t more than 100 games to do after the buff, but the rest took a while. It was my first M60 attempt and while I had the M48 playstyle down the mobility really changed the way to play the tank. 800 games later I took it and wound up really liking the M60. High mobility, high pen and a strong gun felt like the perfect combination to me. I wanted to repay him for letting me use his account, but as I’m marking pretty much everything I play - he considers that enjoyment enough since he can only play on weekends anyway. Great guy, we can’t communicate very well as he’s polish and can’t speak english but nevertheless he is one of my best internet friends anyway. 

This meant I had to change the way I played the game, from a more aggressive approach to map control to a mistake-capitalising once. Surprisingly this came very naturally, and once able to combine the two I really started having pop-off sessions like never before. 4K+ing tier 9s, nearing 4500. At this point I kept feeling burnouts after 2-3 weeks of playing the game, realising the fun only lasted for a week or two. So I modeled my gameplay after this. I decided to play casually, but well. Plenty of breaks in between, playing mostly once every other week if at all but I was still able to showcase some good gameplay. 

I started the engineering programme at uni at this time, so now I had studies, WoT and music to juggle. WoT just fell short of the other two at this point my life, so I barely played at all during 2019. Studies came first and music was finally going well again, started doing live shows (DJing) and having fun without gaming. WoT slipped further and further away. Whenever I wanted to waste time, League was my choice of game - or I’d go back and speedrun Mirror’s Edge (still top 20 on two maps xD) rather than having to learn the changes of WoT. 

But every now and then, I pick WoT back up - generally for a challenge to see if I still got it. This is how I play the game now. I spam games under a short time period and put it off afterwards, it works for me but I’ll definitely admit that playing WoT is freshware, you need regular exposure or you’ll drop in skill. 

I like WoT now. Wheelies and arty can still suck a dick but I am having fun playing this way, trying hard enough I am definitely able to keep up, but there are no stakes - I have other things I should be doing if WoT goes poorly, so I can quit without anger and move on to the next thing right away. 

I managed to 3mark the Chieftain which was the last very, very hard reward to do for me. I enjoyed the grind, even though it was 300 games long between 85-90 until the 90-95 happened right away with perfect maps and not a single game drop. Past that I also felt it left some void, DPGs on this account doesn't matter because these tanks have all been played by someone before me so it’s not something to shoot for, but I think that’s a good thing. No pressure. I can play the game, have fun and not care if things don’t work out. I am very willing to admit that I am washed up from my prime (I’m a 4800 player now, not a 6k player) and recent CWs with FAME have shown that I really got more to learn. I missed Daki flaming me in some weird way so feels good to be back in something recognisable. 

3 weeks ago however I broke my hand, initially it looked very very bad. Right hand too so no mouse use. This also meant I’d miss the campaign which I only joined because there’s just so few things to do in Sweden during COVID that I found it to be something I might enjoy. I missed the FAME guys anyway after meeting them in Katowice. (70% of the WGLEU was FAME, and all playoffs teams had at least majority FAME players + one or two russians so it really was just like meeting the best players of the best clan). Most of them are really nice, Barry and Skarium especially were super fun to meet and hang out with.

We did a smaller S3AL meetup in CPH a while back too, but it quickly turned into a who can beat Fosco in a drinking contest that the weekend is a bit of a blur

Luckily my hand is healing well, I played again yesterday and with a brace I can use a mouse to about 90% accuracy which is enough for WoT. Also had my first tier 9 10k game, super rusty.. Oh the irony. Now I just play to perform, and when I don’t.. I just quit. I feel like I’ve escaped the clutches of this game's addictive lure. I’m really happy I can still perform, and I’ll keep trying until that’s no longer an option I think. But now I am in charge, not the game. There is no “go next” after dying early, that is an ALT F4 and I can leave WoT behind without dwelling on it. 

This may just be pointless rambling, but I thought I’d write it up. As I said, there is absolutely zero gameplay advice here, simply my story on how I got to where I am right now. I’m still not peaking I believe, as I’m reaching higher highs than when I literally played this game for a living well over a year tryharding my ass off. Development really is a fickle thing and I really do think peace of mind and critical thinking is a bigger part of improvement at the top than anything else.

I’m going to end this on a more sombre note. I was genuinely addicted to WoT. I never got help, but I valued games over things like sleep, food and socialising. That was a big mistake I made, and the one bit of advice I’ll give in this thread is to not let the game take you over. Yeah, you will likely be great if WoT is all you ever think about - but then the game is really just playing you. Improvement is slow but concentrating it into shorter timeframes really doesn’t do you any favours. Taking things from past games is what helps you improve, and a replay review will give at least 10x the information than just “going next” will in that game.

Today I like WoT, I have fun playing on my own terms and I can look back on my WoT days as something I enjoyed. There’s no hatred, but the game really didn’t do me any favours outside of the game. I have many regrets and going down this path is honestly one of them, even if I achieved what I wanted in the game I think pursuing other goals outside of it would have made me happier. I’ve accepted this though and it’s not bothering me. 

I don’t know where I would be without WoT though, it really ignited the grinding and improvement spark that I think can be well put to use if you find something interesting enough to keep it alive. I haven’t found that IRL yet, but I’m gonna keep looking. It also showed me how an elitist attitude necessarily isn’t a bad thing, and that competition means making hard decisions and having a strong mental. There are definitely things I can take with me to help me in other areas. The strive for being the best, actually getting there and feeling the relief of completion is honestly astounding. When that endless drive is fueling you, why pump the brakes? Take your shot. I’m conflicted about what happened when I did mine, but talent/hard work pays off if you lean into it so I think it’s a good idea to shoot your shot when you finally see an opening. I'm especially thankful for knowing that I am able to power through no matter how bad things feel, the 907 really had me in shambles but sheer will is enough to set things straight sometimes. 
 

 

[GehakteMolen 2,063]

Interesting perspective to read how someone goes from green to unicum with all the steps in between. Most of the unicums i played with were unicum since day 1 (beta was our free reset more or less)

So this whole: climbing up from low tier sealclubber to joining FAME is new to me. I myself just asked and got into a unicunt clan (THE unicunt clan actually)

ps: and Drazzz ``preserving hp``, i dont remember that from him

[kolni 69,670,870]

4 hours ago, GehakteMolen said:

Interesting perspective to read how someone goes from green to unicum with all the steps in between. Most of the unicums i played with were unicum since day 1 (beta was our free reset more or less)

So this whole: climbing up from low tier sealclubber to joining FAME is new to me. I myself just asked and got into a unicunt clan (THE unicunt clan actually)

ps: and Drazzz ``preserving hp``, i dont remember that from him

I was yellow as I started out I believe, funnily enough it's the only game I kept playing that I naturally didn't get right away. By s3alclubbing I mean simply playing T2 Light and T18 with gold and spamming it with brain turned off, I wasn't a good player at all. I really didn't take the game as a puzzle to be solved or consider game results in any shape or form for very long. If I yolo'd in and died 20 seconds in, who cared? Once I started caring though the improvement was pretty stable, sometimes hitting a wall but eventually going past it. 

I also played a lot with Devilishred and BPX to improve further once I went past 3k, gave me a lot of ideas on how to approach bad matchups etc

I learned this game mostly by studying other players, I constantly think about my own gameplay of course, but it's easier to get an idea from someone else than theorycraft from scratch

[TheMarine0341 4,972]

I've peaked at my current NA stats, but my growth was much of the same. Started a shitter, wanted to get better. Peaked at 3.2k WN8 w/ my T10's about the time I played with Teal Team 6 (NA Silver then Gold team). My own flaws as a player/person prevent 'improving' (Impatient, too aggressive in game. If I play just 5 battles I can play as well as almost anyone but then I stop giving a fuck and derp) but Ive reached the same stage where I can just play and have fun. Feel the stress, and I just quit for a bit. Im currently taking another break, finally ground out the first two stages of the new reward tanks and finished about 1/4 of the 279E missions. 

 

 

[echo9835 166]

Lol I've gone from shitlord to shitlord who wins more than he loses. I keep improving, but I doubt I will ever hit a purple overall stats.  I just don't have the motivation that players like you have. It's really cool to see how you got to be the best of the best tho. Also glad to see you're hand is working again.

[PityFool 7,737]

I can relate to the M18 Hellcat spam, the old pre-nerf hellcat taught me so much about decision making and how to use a tank's strengths in the most effective way.

[kolni 69,670,870]

8 hours ago, PityFool said:

I can relate to the M18 Hellcat spam, the old pre-nerf hellcat taught me so much about decision making and how to use a tank's strengths in the most effective way.

Not to mention the old Chaffee, if you were quick in your rotations that thing could rack up 3k base XP games in +5MM matchups pretty quick. Have you seen EJs absolutely bonkers game? I'lll link it just in case: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/43387271 (wouldn't embed)

 

The Hellcat is something I spent about 300 battles on before finally understanding the concept of proper kiting, but you had such a potent gun that if you just stuck to it, you kept having good games even against tier 8s after the MM change. I remember 2K DPGing it after playing a fresh one and almost reaching 3k with the T25/2 (yes it was also good, all of you just sucked). All in all Hellcat really was the perfect tank for learning vision. E25 comes to mind, and so does the Týpe 64 for fastbois until Bromwells. I think I picked up the majority of my skillset in those games as vision became clearer and most importantly; an advantage I could reliably leverage

Hellcat was perfect for this. There were periods when the AMX CDC and the black M41 bulldog were spammed by everyone in SHs and you really got a better grasp of vision, Competitive play is like 40% execution, 40% strat and 20% vision which you use to adjust your strategy. Funnily, even though I played ESL (and did well despite team on a downfall) I really wasn't used to this type of setting where you need to think your way to win before doing something. I'm still bad at this, I can't help go for an opening I think is good and better clans are smart so they bait me into it. All in all, I learned about vision and map control much more from competitive setttings. than randoms. One thing that really comes to mind is that you start to understand every angle from every spot and what your options are in that position before you have to move. Things like knowing how to shoot between the rails on Prokh is a very important thing for example, something you'd never do in randoms. I was a randoms player, I wanted damage - but I played good soldier and followed all calls. Fucked some up, some went well but no cigar. I played my heart out those 9 games, so I likely got invted because I could do all the ESL map climbs and topped some DPG charts, but I had absolute 0 7v7 experience before joining Knäckebröd. Great team, sad they didn't have it in them to tryhard the relegation and get back up, but as the season was now over I was focusing on randoms again. Failware especially was an insane player. I think he was 16 when I met him Katowice in 2016, the most quiet guy you'll ever meet and he is literally untiltable. (Probably still a top player in the world, went to GoHard after KB died and FAME 1st team in all tournaments to this day)

 

 

Off topic to Pity's post:

A few months later Majstora needed a player for Go4WoT tournament, he was happy with how I l played and I was asked to join the new Silver team he was creating. I don't know the exact rules, but we played less games as we entered the season past start, but we crushed literally everyone, The team consisted of me, Alphahvh (previously from PENTA, long time FAME member) , creator31, (our best player, he was great in 7v7)  zet  (played in LGEND the season before, usually our T8 player). RavenHR from Knäckebröd - our carry in the final to elevate to WGL. We also had a russian guy, as sub, Freedom or something... i don't remember his name.. That coupled with Majstora and Maresca we basically had a WGL ready roster. We only lost one game the entire silver league, coming in late and winning it no contest. Final 5-1. Even the WGL teams said that our team was playing almost perfectly. Teams even asked about our Himmelsdorf approaches after breaking a 80% avg winrate base camp (in WGL with that strat) against another silver team. With this team we got much better practice during our silver league because of Majstora's competitive history and respect so many more teams wanted to practice with us. When we were still right in the middle of the silver league we were practicing with several EU WGL teams, lots of russian silver teams and even RU WGL teams since Majstora's russian is good enough to communicate. We really improved as a squad and both the casters and the teams thought that we could be challenging for a playoffs spot. It wasn't meant to be however.

Sadly both Majstora and Maresca (I forgot to mention that they are brothers) left the game after we got promoted to WGL - as Majstora made 95% of the strats and Maresca was great at making in game stuff and basically never misplayed we were down our two most key players. Maresca already lived in England but Majstora got the chance now to move there and took it. Maresca couldn't play anymore either, so the crew was fairly bare bones, I left the team and they rebranded it to Savage Squad. That's the official end of my 7x7 career, I spent probably 3 hours per day unless game day for training and it was getting exhausting so I felt like leaving after Majstora left as he was the corner stone of our team and I lost faith in the team after that. We had no FC anymore - but Creator played so well he went to OOPS -TTG, ending third in the season I believe. Others stayed to play, but the team was in a defeatist mood then. They filled the slots with new players and an FC but in the last season of WGL they just couldn't make it work with a 30% avg WR on most maps. Nobody blames them though, people want to play 7v7 even if it's going poorly, you're getting casted and it's a gamemode that is 10x times better than CW. You have eyes on you that will mock underperforming teams but the fun of playing it makes me think that a bad team in the league can still enjoy playing it. I wanted to go to playoffs at least and meet so many of my friends (70% of the WGL players knew eachother) but I didn't think our team would be able to do it after losing our FC. So I started focusing heavily on randoms again. This is when I started getting really good. The 7v7 experience meant I knew every inch of those maps and I also improved significantly mechanically when you're going to back to fighting average players instead of someone of your own skill level.I took a lot with me into randoms and applied it, the strategy part didn't do much as pubs don't understand what you mean by pinging or the language english. The positioning part and constantly adjusting to the map state however is when I realised that my playstyle was too aggressive. (29 survival rates with 4k+ dpgs lel) I toned it back a notch and started playing faster tanks with good guns and I really found my place and what tanks my skillset benefit from and how to do it: PTA, STB (after buff),, Leo1, M60, M48, E50, E50M, Type 61, Standard B and russian meds (all of them but K91, T-54 DPG was the first time I managed to top CarbonWard lol) were tanks I could really put the tanks to use and start racking up monster sessions. So I stuck to them and refined the playstyle in randoms. I think that's about where I am right now, I still play mostly those tanks and some other 10s to 3MoE.

 am still waiting for EU acc with a PTA with 0 battles!!!!! there is bounty equipment so barely no cost with that and 1k bonds for rammer or vent directives (that will be earned back in battle pass), also 5skill crew pls

what do u get? probably your first ever 4K+ tier 9. Either I stop at the third mark (should be around 75 battles) or go for a 100 game DPG validity (whoever lets me do this decides which of these they want)

I've held a 4400 avg for 300 games now. I can also refund the gold personally if I want to retrain crew members and their skills etc as I will be stealing the best german crew in the garage for it and reskill them

 

 

[GehakteMolen 2,063]

14 hours ago, kolni said:

I was yellow as I started out I believe, funnily enough it's the only game I kept playing that I naturally didn't get right away. By s3alclubbing I mean simply playing T2 Light and T18 with gold and spamming it with brain turned off, I wasn't a good player at all. I really didn't take the game as a puzzle to be solved or consider game results in any shape or form for very long. If I yolo'd in and died 20 seconds in, who cared? Once I started caring though the improvement was pretty stable, sometimes hitting a wall but eventually going past it. 

I also played a lot with Devilishred and BPX to improve further once I went past 3k, gave me a lot of ideas on how to approach bad matchups etc

I learned this game mostly by studying other players, I constantly think about my own gameplay of course, but it's easier to get an idea from someone else than theorycraft from scratch

yeah, BPX was / is good player, as for Devilishred, still salty he joined IDEAL with Xen, instead of 322 :<

Speaking of elitst channel, you ever joined that?

(Before it got ruined (again) by baddies, the original channel, ``322 platoons``, got screwed because plebs kept leaking pass)

For NA player, top clans of EU (PTS, EFE, 322, UNICA) wanted to make it easier to find platoons, same for guud players from other clans, so we got a chat channel with a pass so all the real skillers could find easy platoons and do some intra-clan communications (mostly bitching about arty and how player x from other clan was a fucking ry hard noob)

http://forum.worldoftanks.eu/index.php?/topic/238596-elitist-channel-read-op-for-pw/#topmost

 

[kolni 69,670,870]

21 minutes ago, GehakteMolen said:

yeah, BPX was / is good player, as for Devilishred, still salty he joined IDEAL with Xen, instead of 322 :<

Speaking of elitst channel, you ever joined that?

(Before it got ruined (again) by baddies, the original channel, ``322 platoons``, got screwed because plebs kept leaking pass)

For NA player, top clans of EU (PTS, EFE, 322, UNICA) wanted to make it easier to find platoons, same for guud players from other clans, so we got a chat channel with a pass so all the real skillers could find easy platoons and do some intra-clan communications (mostly bitching about arty and how player x from other clan was a fucking ry hard noob)

http://forum.worldoftanks.eu/index.php?/topic/238596-elitist-channel-read-op-for-pw/#topmost

 

Yeah, I had the pw but I wasn't there very often - I asked morgotz on Steam to get the info and he thought I was good enough beause my E50M had higher DPG than his  

Yeah, BPX and Dev were my fav triple platoon, they both play super aggro so I could just snipe and steal their dmg  During the HD E5 meta we had so much fun together. Dev was always super high and BPX was permaweebing and the all chat memes were such a joy considering how toxic Dev could be  

The only other players I really enjoyed platooning and talking with were Constie (think we had 1500 games together or smth) and in LAVA I played a lot with vernl and vaxce when I was tryharding my tier 8 sub 100 game 3mark stuff

Otherwise I always liked playing solo more. Dodic (S3AL friend) was probably the only guy I could platoon with and actually never disagree with in play, we were always on the same page without ever talking so we really stomped stuff alone in full tier 10 games but he quit when I took my longer hiatus

[hazzgar 730]

One thing makes me wonder. Don't u wish to be super good at something else? Something that could be a career? I often think about the time spent at getting good at wot and how I could have spent it but I at least have an excuse of having so much adhd I should literally get a prize. 

[TheMarine0341 4,972]

8 hours ago, kolni said:

am still waiting for EU acc with a PTA with 0 battles!!!!! there is bounty equipment so barely no cost with that and 1k bonds for rammer or vent directives (that will be earned back in battle pass), also 5skill crew pls

I have an EU account, could grind out the PTA+Free EXP if you'd like

[Vindi 414]

@kolni The whole story was heartwarming, for me at least.

I started the game in similar style back in 2011 so I was not that young but similarities are noticeable, like the t18 spam, hellcat and others. I loved the game and used every tool in the internet to gain knowledge on how to play it and to gain better stats in it (including 3 times acc reset, streams, replays, boosts and videos) but honestly to view in a general spectrum, that 2011-2016 were one of the best time of my life or at least back then.

I learned so much from not just the mentioned' guys streams but from you also.

In a similar manner, WoT was kind of escape route for me and I gained great online and offline friendships from it (last period just before quitting was in IDEAL with a great community, before I was in NERVA for a long time which was also great). In green blue times -MM was still one of the funniest clans I have been in.

Lastly, in 2018 the game lost its appeal to me with the reworks, arty and the implementation of wheeled vehicles was the nail in the coffin.

I clearly remember my last game, I did 9700 damage without any "big" effort just farming tier 9 in the Chieftain and I felt no real competition. I mean one game is this, other game is that I was spotted with 800 damage and instatly died to arty etc.

Before that I bought t30 for fun and in the first time I maintained 82% wr in that tank but that wasn't so competitive either.

I just felt burned out and really pointless to play the game battle after battle nonetheless the battle type, ranked or frontline or normals.

I sold my account and since then I haven't thought much about WoT since 2018. 

At the beginning of 2019 I started playing LoL which brought a whole new world of gaming at least for me champion and playstyle wise and I presume I will not be burned out from that game since I turned off chat 

World Of Tanks was a great adventure to me and will remain in my gaming hall of fame for all times but even if I would came back to play it sometime in the future it will be only for fun since I cannot be bothered with stats anymore. (not like in lol where I clench my teeth while furiously type to my teammates in an incredibly toxic manner while I'm losing from 98lp diamond to 0lp for the fourth time)

[arthurwellsley 132]

23 hours ago, kolni said:

 am still waiting for EU acc with a PTA with 0 battles!!!!! there is bounty equipment so barely no cost with that and 1k bonds for rammer or vent directives (that will be earned back in battle pass), also 5skill crew pls

 

Sadly my Leopard PTA has 441 games.

However I do have a T95/FV4201 Chieftain with bounty equipment. Three crews members on three perks (78% fourth) and commander on five perks (57% on sixth) which has 0 battles. I have only ever played it in clan wars.

23 hours ago, kolni said:

 

Really interesting read. Back in the day I played a few platoons with you. I had not realised that you were so young.

 

Given your journey in World of Tanks, your dedication to repetition for improvement and mindset and the fact that you are reading engineering at university, let me suggest a book called Black Box Thinking by a guy called Matthew Syed. You can read the whole thing if you want or ignore most of it, and just read the chapters that revolve around James Dyson. I think you will find his theories about iteration of prototypes interesting and you may find an echo in there to your journey in World of Tanks. Thanks for the read.

[Wanderjar 298]

Solid read as always kolni. thanks for the history lesson! Makes me think of my own history in WOT plus fighting my PTSD.

 

[Archaic_One 1,853]

TL;DR - Autism is the new evolution

 

I just watched a recent replay where your platoon mate had a nice carry in a BC.  I'm glad your hand is getting better, it would suxor to have a gust of wind mess up your hand as a 20 y/o.

[kolni 69,670,870]

8 hours ago, Archaic_One said:

TL;DR - Autism is the new evolution

 

I just watched a recent replay where your platoon mate had a nice carry in a BC.  I'm glad your hand is getting better, it would suxor to have a gust of wind mess up your hand as a 20 y/o.

Yeah, pbTim is a chill guy and has a really decent reroll - I recommend his stream https://www.twitch.tv/pbtim

 

 

I'm currently spending some time finding new openings on maps because there has got to be a better way to combat the gameplay works right now, so I'm basically dying a lot - also don't need to clutch mechanically to know if play is good or not so there's that upside

- found decent berlin, minsk and kharkov plays now in high mobility meds so i can ban abbey and fjords instead

[j_galt 60]

On 7/12/2020 at 1:27 AM, kolni said:

- found decent berlin, minsk and kharkov plays now in high mobility meds so i can ban abbey and fjords instead

oboy, that sounds wonderful!!!!  Pls share!

[Masterpupil2 946]

Kinda makes me want to write my own story, although now all I do is try and help my 3 friends learn the game while we kinda fuck around.

Great read buddy

[Kuroialty 447]

You sacrificed your history for the delusion that you were ever 6k.  All taken into account, you clearly never were.  I, too, can manipulate my historical records to say whatever I want about my performance, but I would rather be genuine.

Capping off your WoT history by calling it an addiction is the absolute wrong attitude to take.  You should be looking at the process you took towards networking, study, grinding, refinement, coaching, being coached, and all other steps in your journey as tools to apply to other areas of your life.  Success in one area of the game can be translated into success in other areas of the game, but should also manifest as life lessons and speak to how you can improve elsewhere.  Casting it as an addiction does a massive disservice to yourself and the community as it blinds you from the opportunity to take something away from this and not just leave it as some period of your life when you got excited over pixel tanks.

[Deus__Ex__Machina 989]

1 hour ago, Kuroialty said:

You sacrificed your history for the delusion that you were ever 6k.  All taken into account, you clearly never were.  I, too, can manipulate my historical records to say whatever I want about my performance, but I would rather be genuine.

Capping off your WoT history by calling it an addiction is the absolute wrong attitude to take.  You should be looking at the process you took towards networking, study, grinding, refinement, coaching, being coached, and all other steps in your journey as tools to apply to other areas of your life.  Success in one area of the game can be translated into success in other areas of the game, but should also manifest as life lessons and speak to how you can improve elsewhere.  Casting it as an addiction does a massive disservice to yourself and the community as it blinds you from the opportunity to take something away from this and not just leave it as some period of your life when you got excited over pixel tanks.

im gonna go ahead and say that ur prob just trolling? considering you are the literal definition of a low tier stat padder who cannot perform any degree of consistency above tier 5. 

[Kuroialty 447]

4 hours ago, Deus__Ex__Machina said:

im gonna go ahead and say that ur prob just trolling? considering you are the literal definition of a low tier stat padder who cannot perform any degree of consistency above tier 5. 

More wrong attitude.  What's your point?

[kolni 69,670,870]

On 7/19/2020 at 9:00 PM, Kuroialty said:

You sacrificed your history for the delusion that you were ever 6k.  All taken into account, you clearly never were.  I, too, can manipulate my historical records to say whatever I want about my performance, but I would rather be genuine.

Capping off your WoT history by calling it an addiction is the absolute wrong attitude to take.  You should be looking at the process you took towards networking, study, grinding, refinement, coaching, being coached, and all other steps in your journey as tools to apply to other areas of your life.  Success in one area of the game can be translated into success in other areas of the game, but should also manifest as life lessons and speak to how you can improve elsewhere.  Casting it as an addiction does a massive disservice to yourself and the community as it blinds you from the opportunity to take something away from this and not just leave it as some period of your life when you got excited over pixel tanks.

This is a personal story, so the number 5k wouldn't change much of the story so I think you missed the point, but I'll bite (later on).

It used to be, now I have a healthier relationship to it. Did you earn your living playing a game? You realise it'll kinda lose it's charm but you'll play anyway because playing a game I disliked > working in my mind. I would probably still have done so if it was profitable still. (Lemme just remind you that Carbon took 0,5 EUR per game played on avg, bere in Sweden that'll wind up being enough to live decently on. I upgraded my PC, paid rent and furnished my apartment with money coming from WoT and that was a pretty big incentive to keep going. It got to to points where I was so tilted out of my mind I had to retry stuff for free or play 20-40 extra games to compensate because not playing meant not making money. Eventually the boosting clientel dried up and I stopped, but I couldn't stop playing. I had to play the game because what else am I supposed to do, this is what I normally do (bear in mind that I have stage II autism) so I'll do it anyway. No incentive to keep going but still doing it - I'd call that addiction. However, taking a longer break and finding a hobby outside of gaming again (basically stopped producing music because ideas stopped coming. head was always rambling about gameplay) so I have something genuinely fun as an alternative to when WoT just isn't doing it's fun is great. I can quit and do something else I also would like to do (DJing) anyway so I don't feel like shit when a WoT session went bad and it ruins my day. It isn't ending on a dark note because I played first time without a brace on at a friends PC during an afterparty, we discussed gaming - I told them about short term pro on tanks and apparently two people there actively plays still, and got very intrigued. I felt weird playing PC games at an afterparty with louder music on the living room speakers than I can get the headphones to shut out, (ran smooth on minimum graphics + max render except for heavy foliage between sniper/arcade toggle) and it was my first time back since having my hand back. I'm nowhere near as confident in person as in game, so the rank 1 thing I kept to myself for time being. No mousespace, no armrests (i need pretty level armrest to mouse) and an entirely fresh client so had to set up clientside settings in game (guessed everything right but aim that was a bit off considering mouse-space. Still:

 

They were blown away, I also found it good considering I'm usually super picky about external factors when trying to focus but could focu somewhat still in status you'd want to check it) but after they got hyped up I just started playing super well and confidently much  earlier than normal if I'm rusty and this session is what? 7-8k wn8 or something? see it's not that hard

wnat more?

vvv Leopard PTA 4,6k DPG 31 games vvv
https://youtu.be/D1O8J9X21TU (wouldn't embed)

 

 

(above clearly assistrigging, still only #2 dpg )

Maybe this is something you never really considered but I consider myself more capable at Wot than at social interactions. I'd genuinely say I'll understand a player in his thought process about the game while in-game just by looking at their tank/gameplay or by where they are than I am at predicting how someone will react to something I say, It's just a side effect of putting so many hours outside of this game that wasn't actually gameplay too. Training scrim blocks used to be 2-4h, in 4h blocks we used to play four maps, 30 minutes per side and as many scrims as the timer allowed for in that time frame. Whoever "won" (got to play their map pick because you could click battle at 29:59 etc, would autolose the next uncertainty in the timeframe during the entire scrim block. Sometimes you were asked to pick specific lineups or strats to emulate certain opponents or sometimes you would both go in blind doing the same strat for the full 30min, or a different one each time.. really depended on what the teams wanted.This list just goes on and on and it taught me such incredible amounts of game knowledge on every map because these situations got so easy to recognise after all the time spent. .I for one know fuck all about history, the name Erwin Rommel only tells me that it's a commonly used phrase in one's IGN and almost exlusively bad players but never heard of the guy outside of WoT. Literally just k

As for the 6k, I was ranked #1 the leaderboard for quite a while, but my acc has since been oopsie'd into some rich asian fellow's lap that depadded it to oblivion. It had a 6k overall and a k recent because I was playing both E50 and M46 constantly to keep the WN8 avg up.My reroll had more cash and gold (from WGL/go4/FACEIT and CWs than I was able to spend in my 5k games on it. My most played (907) was at 5,3k (WN8) and was topping both DPG, total combined and XP four months straight of Hall of Fame so if Kitten could have kept old 907 values the WN8 would be pretty nutty but I was aware as I was simply 3MoEing 907 at it's highest MoE uyet.All my other most played stuff was at 6k+ the T21 Light having 36 games (3moe reason i stopped playing it that was 15k+ avg so while 1,5% or ur recent, that's a pretty good bassline to have like I did trying to push my recent (right after that insane streak happened). The only other tanks below tier 8 I ever played on the account was the Hellcat, WZ-131 and T20 until they were marked, and outside of 907 and FV4005 - everything I played was pure statpad tanks. E 50, E50M (back then), 50B, M46 M48,, Skoda T50, TVP, 140, SConq, Standard B etc.

Today it's just PTA/Leo1/M60 and on good days 6k is a cakewalk? I don't understand your point. Do you even know what my old account name is? That it also doesn't matter? I've spread most of my accomplishments through different accounts. I worked with the reroll, took it seriously (played 907 straight in randoms with 100% crew no skills but that's cuz no Defender and refused to buy and no other good RU tank trainer then (T8 MTs weren't megabusted) otherwise no credit worries from the second I decided and never wavered so of course am I going to keep improving and I just happened to improve further than most people at that time and played a lot. So of fucking course I'm here. Great at the game. Who would've thought someone who sat grinding years on end would turn up good? That was the whole point. 

I know I'm a 6K player, I just don't/won't/can't play as much to keep up to that threshold anymore, but I was there. I'm not the best player at the moment, neither did I say so. Who are you fooling? 

Even Carbon admitted I had him beat.. 

Regarding gameplay my opinion will never waver because I don't think anyone is that much better over me to leverage their gameplan over mine in random battles. It's an endless pit of confidence compared to IRL where I'm shy and fragile. Also a reason I found it so addictive, the only persona you make is you what you currently want so what can really go wrong with that when you (later on) find out you have stage II autism that almost every thought you have about something is right? Then it's not so bad. But yeah, 6k achieved. ^  Just look at that above real quick and now I do it on a fresh account. My average on the PTA on the account above is a shared account (half the battles are mine), I'm starting to break 4600, that's close to 7k WN8 so I were to make a new reroll with a PTA crew I could probably go for that now. If someone gave me the opportunity to do so I'd take it in a heartbeat, for free. 

[Kuroialty 447]

When I mention that you aren't a 6k player because you erased your history to get there, you are not providing me a counterargument by showing me a highlight reel of recent games.

So far, people are getting so hung up on my pointing out that the numbers are rigged that the bigger story about reflection and transferal of skills and life lessons is being totally ignored.  Holding up the authenticity of scores is not the takeaway from your game experience that you should be focused on.  There is much more value to be gleaned from your history than that.

[#NightWolf5628 58]

6 hours ago, Kuroialty said:

When I mention that you aren't a 6k player because you erased your history to get there, you are not providing me a counterargument by showing me a highlight reel of recent games.

So far, people are getting so hung up on my pointing out that the numbers are rigged that the bigger story about reflection and transferal of skills and life lessons is being totally ignored.  Holding up the authenticity of scores is not the takeaway from your game experience that you should be focused on.  There is much more value to be gleaned from your history than that.

It's not "people getting so hung up" its literally just Deus calling you out. Seems to me kolni has completely admitted to regretting "reflection and transferal of skills" in the past as well, but now he's changed that more/improved than before.

You haven't made an fairly decipherable point/reasoning in your reply of why it matters he's "not 6k" and it's obvious through his story that tanks helped him apply his skills to other areas of life.

I would imagine he's so focused on proving authenticity in reply because you pointed it out to him.

[kolni 69,670,870]

5 hours ago, #NightWolf5628 said:

It's not "people getting so hung up" its literally just Deus calling you out. Seems to me kolni has completely admitted to regretting "reflection and transferal of skills" in the past as well, but now he's changed that more/improved than before.

You haven't made an fairly decipherable point/reasoning in your reply of why it matters he's "not 6k" and it's obvious through his story that tanks helped him apply his skills to other areas of life.

I would imagine he's so focused on proving authenticity in reply because you pointed it out to him.

No, I'm concerning myself with it because it is a good point looking at it from outside. If you don't know me, haven't watched me play or read through any of my content I can understand how taking my word for 6K can be hard to believe. This is what I meant with the first of the screenshots - the context being IRL people not believing me and me having to prove it. I could've had a shit session right then and there and have egg on my face but I'm confident enough in my ability to play the game that I could prove them wrong just by trusting in my ability. The difference here being that it wasn't anything special session-wise and unless I keep this kind of quality I stop playing.

I'm trying to treat this the same way but without either breaking confidentiality on other accounts (that'd simplify claiming this very easily but I'd basically be discrediting paying customers), or getting enough alonetime on the one acc I normally use to simply spam 1k games that I can verify is 100% me (streaming them) I have difficulty in actually doing so. Neither of these are situations that are going to happen and I don't actually play very much meaning the acc owner'd have basically give up randoms for the remaining part of the year for me to have enough time at this rate to play a string of 1k games that I can take credit for. I also can't use my old account for the same reasons and I also don't have access to it, but anyone that was here during the time I did and watched me when I streamed daily never had any doubt about it. 

Considering the way I currently play the game it's very difficult for me to get enough alone time on account to spam that many games to get a WN8 value that is solely my own - so providing evidence for the claim (6k) probably needs more to stand on when it's coming from a PoV that hasn't watched any of my gameplay whatsoever. Take the "highlight reel" above for example, obviously I have more games played than those and sessions not up to my standards that I didn't upload in between them - but there are fewer sessions of those than there are of those above you. 

There's also the problem that I made this claim like 2 years ago when I had an account you could look at and see it for yourself. I hit the 6K mark and after 5k games I quit, goal of game achieved until I came back and kept playing casually. All I have now to back up what I say is my credibility and I don't need more credibility in my eyes. Anyone that was there when I streamed the reroll grind saw it for themselves, and I don't need people believing me because when it comes to WoT. 

What rubs me the wrong way is calling it a delusion when it wasn't. This is just a story, and the takeaway really isn't some number - I don't understand why that's an ongoing narrative. 

12 hours ago, Kuroialty said:

When I mention that you aren't a 6k player because you erased your history to get there, you are not providing me a counterargument by showing me a highlight reel of recent games.

So far, people are getting so hung up on my pointing out that the numbers are rigged that the bigger story about reflection and transferal of skills and life lessons is being totally ignored.  Holding up the authenticity of scores is not the takeaway from your game experience that you should be focused on.  There is much more value to be gleaned from your history than that.

Ah, now I see - there was some misunderstanding that I can clear up. I thought you were saying the numbers weren't real at all, not that they were just that high because of rerolling - that's true. I won't dispute that but I do believe rerolling was the right thing to do because I wound up getting much more recognition afterwards and the goal I had in mind with WoT at that point onward meant more tedious grinding than grinding through the tech trees again would do.

"Sacrificing your history" isn't really a great take when you never tried to hide your past. As you can see above, my past isn't exactly great. I took a long time before becoming a good player and I say that frequently, and I kept my IGN/identity instead of reinventing myself like many do, and that I easily could have. I've kept my history with me, but I don't really think history matters. If you're in a rough spot mentally and move somewhere else to start fresh (IRL rerolling), are you sacrificing your history? I don't think so. It's more like not liking your history and while you certainly can online, you don't have to throw it away just because you want to start a new chapter. Mine was to compete and the easiest way to do that is a clean slate - so I opted for that. I don't think there needs to be more meaning into something like it than that.

I have a boosting history which is morally debatable though considering people take credit and is messing with integrity and I'm enabling the behaviour - but that's a different topic

 

more about rerolling:

 

Today I would have kept the account because you can compete now right from the get-go due to HoF, you don't need a clean service record for a tank anymore to #1 it. I also wouldn't call it rigged when I played fair and square to get them, I just got them within the 0-100 game windows rather than let's say a between 300-400 game window because that's what you had to do if you had any history of playing it from a different time and 20-30 games is okay, you can compensate for those but several hundred? Even with the highest level of play it'd take so much time . You could screenshot the start and finish and easily calculate performance but it wouldn't show up anywhere which is the whole reason behind it. 

I was already 5500 recent when I rerolled and the acc was at 40k games 3400 overall, and I started out the game similar to how you still play the game but I just wasn't very good at it. As Gehakte already pointed out earlier on in the thread, beta to launch was a hard reroll for every player there already so that's something that polarised the playerbase from day 1 that you're still taking issue with. I wanted to see how I measured up against the top and knew I was closing in, but the current trend was tryharding for 100+ games and that wouldn't show in your service record if you already had 1k games in the tank you were now performing as the #1 player in it by far. You could do the math but it still wouldn't show anywhere as the recent games on dpgwhores never really worked and vBAddict wasn't doing this either. Call it greed or attentionwhoring (bit of both IMO) but I wanted my name up there on the top DPG charts. That was my primary goal from there on and with me already having games from a much more shitty time as a player of course the reset makes sense.

The biggest problem was that I'd already ran through most tech trees (all T10 marks but arty and IS-4 etc) and if I wanted to compete in DPG (which was the meta area to try and push yourself in IMO) I'd have to reset the account or play ludicrous amounts of games to get there in any tank as I already had 100+ games of every tier 10 but the IS-4. There was no Hall of Fame to compare against other players, only dpgwhores, vBAddict (which was inaccurate) and that russian forum post of top DPGs. This is not a problem today anymore thanks to HoF and session stats, so today I wouldn't have rerolled. I wanted to compete, not just play well. I just didn't want to play my E 50 for thousands of games to get it to the 4K DPG mark when I was already averaging it while the overall was below 3k and over 1k games played. Today this is not an issue, HoF makes good use of this. Can't cherrypick your way around it, prevents the "need" of rerolling and if you're boosting you simply just play 49 games so it doesn't show on the HoF board. 

I also don't see how rerolling is an issue if it's for the sake of competition. Yeah it's a reroll - doesn't change the numbers it put out and doesn't give you an advantage over another player. Why is it a problem?

I also don't really get what you mean by being hung up on it - you brought it up? I don't like being called delusional when I'm so obviously not or I wouldn't be where I am, of course you're not going to get away with saying that without a follow-up.

I've reflected on the game plenty already, I had to so I eventually could have decent relation to it. You can't distance yourself emotionally otherwise and that's a key element to self-improvement in any area as introspection is generally the best path toward improvement. Until recently gaming has always been a huge part of my life so of course my history with WoT will determine and unveil things not directly related to the game. The point is that you're trying to tell people to focus on what's already established instead which they already are, this is just a story and there are no other take aways than reflecting on how WoT affected them.

I agree with that there is much more with WoT I can put to use to life than just the addiction part, and this is something I'm already doing. I just wanted to stress the addiction part more than the other parts because the frustration of not being able to quit something you want to is so incredibly problematic compared to the positives WoT can bring. This is something I try to avoid bringing up unnecessarily but I've always been easily "hooked" on something and once I am, can't shake it. I think it'll be easier to understand just how bad it was if I say that I found quitting actual drugs with a physical addiction easier than a mental one. WoT was harder than drugs, literally. Can you see how that becomes a problem? Leaving social gatherings midway because I couldn't stop thinking about WoT so I had to go home and play, calling in sick to get a whole day to play, skipping classes/entire days in favour of playtime. Most people probably aren't at that level, but I was for sure. 

My biggest takeaway from WoT is probably understanding that other people are flawed and that you're going to need a strong mental if you don't want them to frustrate you. I can't see those things in person and can barely read a persons intentions so people skills isn't something I naturally have, everyone's so incredibly stupid and can't see it is how I feel 99% of the time but at least now I've matured enough to keep my composure through just about anything.