At the end of March,
Victor Kislyi met with players
in San Francisco
and answered their most
pressing questions:
will artillery be reworked?
When will the matchmaker be fixed?
When will the maps be improved?
When will vehicles be rebalanced?
Watch the video
to get all the answers.
Welcome everyone, we are at
Wargaming North America
at our HQ in San Francisco,
and we’re joined by a lot of players that
we’ve invited here but more importantly
our God Emperor himself,
Victor is here
Hello Victor Good to see you.
How are you doing?
Hello.
And we’re gonna roll on to
some question with players,
but before we get to that lets just deal with some
sticky stuff just to make sure that,
you know, Victor’s in the right mood
So, tough question
when what 10.0?
We cancelled it?
It’s gone?
What was all that about?
Well, no matter how good
the game was six years ago,
recently because we have
more than 150 million players
in the game
We have 400 tanks now,
as compared to approximately
100 back in the day,
40+ maps, e-sports, clan wars
Some people who were playing
this game for six years kind of,
they evolved as World of Tanks players too,
so for the last,
let’s say year,
year and a half,
we were still very immersed
in thinking about new stuff
which we can add to the game,
and kind of forgot a little bit
about the old good game.
Those things which made players
happy in the beginning,
and because of these balancing issues
and much more complex
mathematical model behind it,
and now we have servers
all around the world, it’s not just Russia,
Europe and America.
We have players in South-East Asia,
in Japan, in Korea and China,
in South-America
So it all resulted in
the fact that the game
probably needed more attention
on its core
Our players were
more and more vocal about that,
and we did this mistake,
we did not listen
well enough to that.
And we were in the middle
of preparing this next big
Rubicon 10.0 kind of patch,
and we were a little bit deaf
towards what players
were crying on the forums
and the video blogs,
but then we realized that ok,
something is like really wrong,
fundamentally wrong
We jumped on it,
and brought the best people,
including those two guys
who invented the game
and made it successful in the first couple of years,
analyzed everything,
saw data, met with the players,
met with video bloggers,
and oh my God,
the picture was not so good
So we had two choices:
Keep going,
pretending that nothing is happening,
or be honest and transparent
about the fact that
we are kind of screwing up
We chose the latter
We admitted it
I stood in front of a camera and said,
“Sorry, we screwed up
We have to cancel,
can, postpone
We’re not going to release
this Rubicon thing
Instead we’re going to
roll back and see
what’s wrong with the game
and fix it in the first place.”
That’s what happened
We immediately did
a lot of significant changes
to the leadership of the
tank development team
Ok, some people had to go,
some good new people came in
and 9.14 actually is a good example
of our turning this big huge ship
towards what players really really want,
and from now on
we’re going to be doing this.
Now player feedback
is going to be the integral part of our strategy
Yeah, we were saying this before
Every company says like, you know
“we listen to our players”,
but it takes special procedures,
special attention,
time, people like we’re doing now,
to actually be listening
to the players, and then follow it up
and just actually doing what they ask.
Victor told us about
the staff changes that will
improve the game and help avoid
similar mistakes in the future
First of all,
Slava Makarov and Sergei Burkatovskiy
will be working on the game again
They helped shape the game
at the very beginning
and created a great game that everyone liked
Secondly, western professionals
have joined the team:
Thaine Lyman from the USA,
who previously worked on
Call of Duty and Destiny,
now heads WoT Development;
Neil Pettitt,
a former British submariner
and an experienced manager,
is at the helm of the Minsk studio
All together,
we managed to release Update 9.14,
which was greatly appreciated by players.
And this is just the beginning.
To make players happy,
the company will continue to search
for top professional across the globe.
The new physics in 9.14
appear to have been very well received
Everyone seems to really like them,
and in particular here
in North America when we did the update
the amount of people with their heads phones on
who then started making noises
because all the new sounds
had happened were wonderful.
Obviously 9.14 is just the beginning,
we have tons of things
planned for 9.15,.16,.17 etc
and this list,
this time, is comprised from
the players desires
and from those requests from forums,
from meetings like this
Our community managers work
asking what they want
So there’s not gonna be
like something ground breaking
in 9.15 and I’m gonna tell you why
The things which are
going to be there for sure is,
we will up something like
ten old Premium tanks,
it just so happened that
those tanks are not good enough,
not comfortable to play
and players cry out loud that,
come on, you’re selling this
and it’s not up to…
I saw the list I agree,
I think all the tanks
we picked that were’re gonna buff, they’re all good,
they are all the right tanks to pick.
Besides this,
the Rampage mode will be gone for good
in the next update
However, some of the
mode’s mechanics can reappear
in the game in the future.
The biggest thing which we
have to do before we think
about anything else big
is the rebalance,
and it’s gonna be a huge,
huge project
It’s actually going now
So let me please explain
to you how and what we will do
Obviously now we have 400 tanks,
more than 40 maps,
players who’ve been playing for six years etc
etc etc
and the methodology we
were using for balance, for matchmaking,
for premium tanks
kind of is a little bit dated
from 2011 and -12 when we were
launching the game.
Victor stressed that the
full-scale rebalancing
will help take the game to the next level
It is essential to diversify
the game and ensure that
gameplay is different and unique for each
vehicle type and nation.
The whole rebalance needs to be done
Tanks, nations, classes,
their usage, shooting distances,
speeds, traverse…
of course the new physics
will play a role in that because it changes the
gameplay by definition
We were under a misconception before:
“Ok, if players don’t like matchmaking,
we just fix matchmaking
Ok, they don’t like this or that map,
let’s take them out”, and you know etc
So that’s why,
for our grand rebalance
we will take some extra time
to make sure we analyzed everything,
understood everything,
and make those changes nicely
so that they don’t
break the whole system.
Now I’m really looking forward to it
So, more: What’s your question?
I hate arty
All my friends like AkulaV,
they hate arty too
Is there anything you can do to fix it?
I can hear you
Everybody hates artillery
apart from artillery players.
I love artillery.
But like in this
biological ecosystem
there’s no way we can just
cut it out and everything is good
Artillery is a class
in World of Tanks
It has its purpose
It has a lot of power today,
too easy, too sneaky, yes
but we’re going to rebalance it
Nerf or up it whatever is required
as a part of this
overall rebalancing
with attention to maps,
changes in maps,
other classes,
shooting distances,
matchmaker etc etc etc.
What are your thoughts
on the current map pool and map design,
and what changes can we expect in the future?
Maps also are a part
of this ecosystem,
and this is probably the most tricky part,
like a map.
You understand this is a couple of square miles,
one battle lasts there
for 15 minutes.
30 angry guys and girls,
ok mostly guys,
are trying to destroy each other
in various types of tanks
on those maps.
What can be done to fix the matchmaker imbalances
regarding tiers and tank types?
You know I’m a physicist myself
so I know some things about math,
statistics, physics
It is being worked at
as a part of this overall rebalance,
and again matchmaker
is a part of the system
We tried but there is
no such easy solution as +/- 1 level
or just platoon of one tier allowed.
Those are kind of
like good ideas
but we need to see how they work,
to what extent in conjugation
with the rebalance of tank classes
What can be done to reduce griefing in random battles?
The other aspect of it is
we understand that people
use now more often
bad language because they are
frustrated more often
That’s the whole thing of this rebalance
and bringing back the game you love.
That’s interesting,
so the anger they have from being unhappy with the game.
What do you feel of having
a positive feedback system
in place besides just the negative
options right now?
You know, you’re absolutely right,
and that’s a very good question,
and the answer will be very short
We should absolutely do this,
like you know “click, choose players name
Say thank you, send kudos”
We were kind of trying
to address this
with our dynamic platoons,
like when you can click on
the name of any player on the team
and invite him to platoon and then you can tell him
whatever you want,
good or bad things right?
But this streamlined,
Facebook style kind of
“thumb up” “kudos”
is an easy solution
I will put this on the list,
we will make it.
If only we were recording this,
then we could like hold you to…
oh wait a minute, we are
That will be great, that’s a great example of
listening to the players
Getting… I mean that’s it right there
We can do that
We’re gonna do that
He said so.
Yeah Yeah.
When we look ahead
to the next year for Tanks,
I am super excited
about the rebalancing
The fact that we’re doing a root-and-branch,
everything, ecosystem rebalance
I can’t wait for it to turn up
I know it’s coming the next year,
like I’m really, really jazzed about it
But if there was a message
you wanted to get people
to take away from your time here
with the players and to the people watching on a video,
what would be the message about Wargaming
that you would want them to hear.
Well, of course I am so happy
to be where I am,
and I’m so happy for Wargaming
for where it is now
Yeah ok, we have our ups and downs,
we have all those problems
with you know, Rubicon and that’s why we are talking
and some players are very unhappy,
but philosophically like in general
I’m so happy to be in a gaming company
which is making games which I love,
strategy games, combat games,
tactical games, team play games
I’m so happy to be playing these games,
to make good business out of it.
Victor said that we finally realized
our crucial mistake:
we weren’t listening to players
Now players are viewed
as not just buyers
but as part of the game
and as important as vehicles,
maps, and physics
All employees now have
the same motivation
And this simple,
very, very true phrase
is just two words
“Happy player”,
and at Wargaming if you look at us
like very, very philosophically
what we do, we’re little magicians
who are putting together,
in the right balance,
this challenge
and happiness for you.
Whatever hypothesis you have,
you have to test making sure that players like it,
making sure that this makes players happier,
and then roll it out
So from now on “Happy player” is our mantra
You wake me up in the morning
and each and every one of our 4000 employees,
ask them what we’re doing?
“Happy players” is the answer.
It’s a fantastic answer
It’s the end of our time
Thank you to the people who managed to get to our studio
Thank you to the people able to watched the video
Thank you to Victor for being here
It’s been great to have you here
Thank you very much Happy players, that’s Wargaming.
Thank you.