Welcome to our ninth issue of the Community Highlight series, dedicated to the community members of Armored Warfare, their contributions and their interaction with the developers. Find out more about the game, learn something new and check out the cool community content!

This time, the Community Highlight will be more about the developer interaction with the players.

News from Development

Obsidian Entertainment have recently answered some player questions during the Russian/English stream session. Here is a summary of what the Lead Developer Richard Taylor said to the viewers:

The maps - as well as vehicles - have different statistics depending on the region to region

Obsidian introduced the current camouflage system (color and pattern combination) to offer the players as much flexibility as they can have in customization

The current camouflage system is only the first phase of vehicle visual customization; more features will come in the future

Battalions will factor in for some of the upcoming competitive modes

The developers are working on the first competitive mode called "Lords of War", it's not a full-fledged "clanwar-like" mode yet, but Battalions will be able to gain recognition if their members do well. This ladder-type mode will only be the first step; more Battalion-level content will come in the future

The basic concept of the "Lords of War" mode is winning series of matches, after which you become the "king of the hill" and other teams try to knock you down - the higher you get on the ladder, the better the rewards (some of the coolest ones will be mode-unique)

Replays should appear quite soon, internally the system is already developed (it will feature pause, slow-motion and fast-forward functions)

Tier 10 tanks are already in development, one of the very important things to the developers was to make them as attractive ("badass") as possible, they will include the most modern version of the Leopard 2, Challenger 2 with certain experimental modules, XM1A3 (next generation Abrams), two French vehicles, the T-14 Armata and one Polish vehicle. In total there will be eight Tier 10 vehicles coming in the first round in one update

The developers are working on improvements to the PvE system - PvE is always taken into account when discussing new features

Mine-laying abilities (for AFVs for example) are not something the developers are working on, it's potentially a player-frustrating mechanism

Personal missions will definitely appear in Armored Warfare - they will be both short missions that can be completed within the space of one match and longer multi-stage missions with larger rewards

Very early on, Armored Warfare was actually developed with six classes, the sixth one being self-propelled mortars (some vehicles of this class were actually even modeled). SPM's would be like SPG's, but short-range - they'd have to move much closer to the frontlines, but they would have a higher ballistic arc, allowing them to shoot over obstacles more easily. It's possible this class will appear in Armored Warfare after the existing classes are properly balanced

Richard Taylor agrees that the current Matchmaking mechanism needs to be replaced. The Matchmaker 2.0 in Update 0.13 is brand new. It addresses the platoon matchmaking issues (the situations where one team ends with a platoon of high tier tanks while the other team has none), platoons will be matched against one another or - in worst case - the other team will at least have high-tier vehicles as well

Another advantage of the new Matchmaker 2.0 is class distribution, allowing the mechanism to be stricter with team composition especially on higher tiers in order to create as balanced setups as possible

Garage interface will undergo improvements in the future; the developers will consider adding clock to the garage as well

The developers are planning to add voice chat to Armored Warfare but haven't yet decided on a specific solution

There are plans for an improved kill-cam feature; it will be implemented in the future

The developers will introduce a special map (tank proving grounds) where players will be able to test vehicle properties as well as an armor inspector in the garage

Crews in Armored Warfare are multi-national; introducing national voiceovers wouldn't make much sense

Dynamic tank visuals (tanks getting dirty from mud or battle damage for example) will be implemented as soon as it's possible to get this feature in

It's possible the developers will introduce a "survival" mode where players fight against increasing waves of enemies for special rewards

The current T-80 MBT will be replaced by another vehicle - current T-80 is actually a T-80 prototype, that's why it doesn't have the ERA as well as other features. The model will be completely replaced and additional protection will be added as a part of this replacement

That's all for today, see you on the battlefield!