Hello everyone! My name is Slava Makarov,
I’m a Head of the Wargaming.net R&D department and I
work on new projects.
Sometimes I help other teams
with our current projects.
And today we’re going to talk
about the work on the new World of Tanks balance
and how you, as players, can help us with that.
The thing is that
when we were making tanks,
we had a concept,
where only Heavy Tanks
would have a Tier X,
and everybody would love them,
would like to have them etc.
It came about that this approach
was completely wrong,
and we had to adjust
other branches accordingly,
we created Tier X Medium Tanks,
Tank Destroyers and SPGs.
And this made us go further
than we initially planned
and this had some negative consequences.
One of the problems we were facing
could be described as the inflation
of the game characteristics.
One way or another,
we always had an incentive to make some of the tanks better,
and then we had to adjust
other vehicles again,
bring them in line with those we improved,
we changed the way the physics worked,
and each time the development team
tried their best to make sure the tanks would be
as good as they were before,
after all these changes
in physics and characteristics.
And little by little vehicle characteristics increased,
and at some point we had that quality change,
when any vehicle that leaned out,
immediately became spotted,
because the tanks could spot each other
at long distances,
they got hit immediately,
since the tanks could
hit each other at long distances.
Their armor was penetrated,
because premium shells sold for credits
allowed players to penetrate tanks
at long distances,
and you just got wrecked.
After that you started to hate SPGs.
And what was the reason for it?
Why did players start to hate them?
The answer is quite simple:
“It was designed as a unit,
the task of which was to make
other vehicles actively move around the map
and leave their hideouts”.
But leaving cover,
attacking and being aggressive
became unprofitable
and this is where we faced a paradox.
An SPG, which is supposed to make you leave your cover,
is not able to do that,
and what happens next?
It keeps hitting you,
and you either get destroyed
by the SPG or the rest of the players are focusing on you
and you get destroyed anyway.
Either option is bad for you.
The biggest balance mistake we made
in the time we were writing
the World of Tanks concept
will probably make you laugh.
The thing is that we chose
the IS-7 to be the top U.S.S.R. vehicle.
And this uber-vehicle with a 130mm gun,
high penetration rate,
super sturdy armor
and maneuverability exceeding
that of some Medium Tanks,
you know, 60 km per hour,
this kind of made Medium Tanks useless.
Of course we nerfed it a bit,
especially when it comes
to maneuverability,
but the IS-7 set the bar very high,
and that was our mistake.
As far as the nerf is concerned,
we were making that constantly.
Every patch,
we make changes to balance
on a small basis.
One tank gets nerfed,
one tank gets buffed,
maybe a little tweak to armor,
tweak to guns,
tweaks to functionality – small changes.
But when you’re making
small changes like that,
you can do that on a quick basis
and you can release it live.
But the kinds of changes
that we’re talking about making here
are more global,
they’re bigger system-wide changes
to the game.
What we want to try is a kind of compromise
between the supertest and common test.
We would like to involve a large number of players
in testing the balance we’re planning to implement.
Our idea is to make this test
as focused as possible.
We’ll start from the very top,
make playing on Tier X vehicles as enjoyable as possible
and then we’ll start moving towards lower tiers and do the same.
We’ve got the Maus,
which is good at absorbing and sustaining damage,
and that’s its main advantage,
and we’ve got the AMX 50 B.
These are different vehicles.
And we decided to start with them.
Once we’re done with the horizontal balance,
i.e. the balance inside Tier X,
we’ll move on to the lower tiers i.e.
we’re satisfied with the balance changes
we applied to Tier X vehicles,
then we switch to Tier IX,
then Tier VIII and we tweak
these three tiers in terms of vertical balance.
And so on, moving to the first tiers.
We would like to understand the role of each vehicle in battle.
There will be more roles than we used to have,
not just Medium, Heavy or Light tanks.
We would like to make these roles
more prominent and clear-cut.
To do that we really need to play
the full rebalanced game
as a full game,
but we can’t do that live to players,
because then,
if it doesn’t feel very right,
then it’s going to make the game
worse in the short term.
So what we’re gonna move to
is the concept of a Sandbox,
a beta realm, that players can play
in and come in on a limited basis
and help us make the game
that they want it to be.
“Sandbox” is what we call
a common test server,
where we’ll be testing all the changes that we make.
We’re planning to create a role-based system,
surely you’ve heard about that,
known as “Balance 2.0”,
that kind of stuff.
This sandbox will be the place
where it’s all going to be tested.
We call it a sandbox,
because we’ll have a lot of changes and a lot of variants.
We’re testing it and then deciding
whether we like it or not.
Then we make another change.
So this is going to be a server,
where all these changes will be a common practice.
It’s like playing with a bucket and spade:
you make a sandcastle, play with it,
get bored — then flatten it and make new ones.
We’re going to change things on this server very frequently.
And our main idea is to show our progress,
we’re not afraid to rebuild these structures.
Fun for players,
this is what we’re looking to achieve.
If it’s fun to play,
it means we’re on the right track.
If it’s not fun,
it means we took the wrong path.
Playing, having fun,
this kind of experience
needs to be delivered to all players.
The biggest end of the plan
is that it’s done when it’s done.
It’s done when it’s good enough.
It’s done when it’s right.
When it’s the game that players wanna play,
that we want to have them playing,
when it’s filling all the goals
that we think that it needs to fill – that’s when we’ll ship it
and not before.
The launch of the test server
is a huge leap forward for all of us.
We’re asking our active players
to join the test.
Together we’ll make our game better.
Thank you so much for helping us!