Premium Ammo Rebalancing

Premium ammo has always been one of the hottest topics in World of Tanks and over the upcoming year, we’ll make a key revision to the entire mechanic.

Current Situation

Earlier this year we took the first step toward rebalancing Premium ammo by removing the feature of purchasing ammo and consumables for Gold. Therefore, the terms "Premium ammo" or "Gold ammo" are no longer appropriate — let's call them collectively “special ammo.”

We’ve been waiting for the amount of “special ammo” in World of Tanks to decrease and for players to adjust to the new concept. Just to be clear, let's start off with the key reasons for rebalancing.

Players choose their ammunition based on what’s happening on the battlefield . When it comes to high explosive shells, these tactics are justified. We all know these shells are almost always guaranteed to cause damage, but this damage is usually much less than the damage dealt with standard shells. Basically, HE shells are used to fire on unarmored vehicles, for inflicting maximum damage per shot, or for targets with few hit points left. In any game situation, the pros and cons of these shells are clear to everyone. Therefore, it's obvious that constantly using HE shells, while you have standard shells, is simply ineffective.

When a player has to choose between standard shells and “special ammo,” they focus only on armor penetration . Types of ammunition differ in characteristics — shell velocity, for instance — but the key factor for most players is still armor penetration. Using "special ammo," most notably APCR or HEAT, you get an advantage just by spending more Credits .

What Do We Want to Do?

Our top priority is to help players choose their ammunition loadout more consciously. We want players to evaluate the advantages of different shells and factor in the consequences.

It's extremely important the new system first of all suits you, our players. That's why we decided to try the solution you actively offered, based on forum feedback.

NOTE: We’ll reduce the damage output of “special ammo” by 25-30 percent, depending on average damage of the shell, while their penetration will remain unchanged. The percentage of damage reduction will depend on the amount of damage per shot — the more damage per shot, the greater the percentage of reduction.



As a result, we are going to implement the following mechanics:

Standard AP shells are now the most attractive in terms of price and damage . They have high damage per shot and are are cheap, but it's not easy to hit armored vehicles using these shells.

"Special ammo" is good for firing on armored vehicles, because of a higher chance to penetrate but have lower DPM . But they have a high cost and lower (by 25-30 percent) damage per shot than standard shells.

High explosive shells make it possible to inflict damage with a greater probability, regardless of whether the vehicle is armored or not . They are effective against poorly armored vehicles but have low armor penetration, cannot pierce obstacles, have the lowest damage per shot in case of non-penetration, and, often, the lowest velocity.

What's Next?

We’ve put a lot of work into these improvements and are excited to get your feedback. Your input is crucial as we continue the rebalancing process of “special ammo.” If feedback on our proposed solution is positive, we’ll release it for testing and analyze how it impacts the current gameplay.

If all testing steps go as planned, we'll then try to adjust the cost of all shells, depending on their effectiveness and how often they are chosen.

We are well aware that these changes will significantly affect some tanks. Don't worry: All vehicles will be evaluated individually, on a case-by-case basis!



In some cases it will be necessary to change the cost ratio or the characteristics of a vehicle, but it will be too impractical to look for a "one-size-fits-all" answer. The decision to implement this mechanic has not yet been made! We'd like to analyze your feedback, so feel free to leave your thoughts and concerns on the forum.

Matchmaker

We outlined 2019 would be a big year for the matchmaker, so prepare for big changes over the next 12 months.

Evolution of Change

The matchmaker’s main objective has always been getting players into battle as quickly as possible. Ever since 2010, the various versions have valued speed as the top priority.

As a result, we encountered key challenges:

So-called "fail Platoons," which consist of vehicles that differ by more than three Tiers (most often it was top Tiers + low Tiers in a single Platoon)

A large number of SPGs in teams (up to eight)

Teams were getting matched in such a way there were very few opponents of your Tier in battle. For instance: there could be 13 Tier Xs but only 2 Tier VIII vehicles on your team.

Update 9.18 was designed to solve these issues in the form of a template system (the main ones are 3-5-7 and 5-10), which is still used today.

The templates bear strict rules: there should not be more tanks at the top than in the middle, and no more in the middle than at the bottom. Thanks to the templates, in each battle, players had a sufficient number of enemy tanks, with which they could compete on an equal footing. Even playing at the bottom of the list, you always have the same number of tanks of your Tier in the opposing team.

New Update, New Challenges

After the introduction of the template system, the battles became more acceptable. On the other hand, we've faced new serious burdens and challenges:

Players rarely get matched with vehicles of their Tier and 1 or 2 Tiers lower, and mostly they play with higher tier tanks. In other words, you often get to the bottom of the list. This is especially true for Tier VI and VIII vehicles. Players with preferential Premium vehicles play most their battles in the 5-10 template with higher tier tanks, and rarely get matched with vehicles of lower Tiers. As a result, this greatly smooths out the benefits of preferential matchmaking.

The templates in the current matchmaker architecture are strict, so they cannot quickly adapt to the queue evolution, creating these issues. In other words, the matchmaker cannot analyze the queue and has no tools for operating with it dynamically.

What Will Happen Next?

We are working on fundamentally new tools so the rules for assembling battles can quickly adapt to the queue and specific game situation. We also assumed battle enjoyment was more important than queuing time. Waiting for a battle may take a little longer, but the teams need to be better balanced.

In the future: Templates will become more flexible, depending on the current situation in the queue

In addition to the classic 3-5-7 and 5-10, new templates may appear in order to help sort the queue

For a two-Tier battle, there may be 6-9 and 7-8

For a three-Tier battle, there may be 4-5-6 and even 5-5-5. Templates may also appear with a larger number of tanks in the top than in the bottom for two-Tier battles. This mainly concerns the 8-7 template for two-Tier battles.

Your Feedback = Our Success

There’s a lot in the works, and even more on the way for the new matchmaker in 2019. The technical part of the architecture is almost ready and is currently being tweaked and tested. If we're satisfied with the outcome, we're planning to launch an updated matchmaker on the main servers in all regions. We’ll carefully analyze the effect of these changes.

We're excited to hear what you think about all these tweaks, please post your general feedback in the special thread on our forum. Gradually, step by step, we're going to improve matchmaking and make World of Tanks even more enjoyable.