If you missed it World of Tanks NA, Andrey Biletskiy (Creative Director), and Maksim Chuvalov (Publishing Director) hosted a live developer Q & A. Myself, 13Disciple, Nick_Shox were able to ask questions to the developers!

Here’s a shorthand recap of the live stream with all of the questions and answers. I typed this out live during the stream and will be going over to clean up some of the text so it reads clearer. Enjoy!

Wheeled tanks re-balance. Going to start with increasing effect on damaging wheels increase terrain penalty then go forward to nerf other aspects of the tanks if that does not have enough effect.

Fire mechanics, does a tank on fire go out faster if you aren’t moving? That is not true, fire doesn’t change based on other parameters such as movement. Maybe it was true in the beginning of the game. Error in the wiki.

Balancing of the game. Why does it take so long to rebalance overperforming tanks? Takes sometimes 1 to 2 quarters. Group of earlier adopters that over perform in new tanks. 3-6 months is bad idea to change things that fast since if we move too fast it might need changed again. We check to see if WR changes on a player by player basis. For example a 50% player has a 48%-52% WR in a new tank then its okay. If a 50% player has a 65% WR in a new tank then its probably broken.

We just saw Collectors Vehicle category be added to the game. Are the any plans to release new non-premium tanks that wouldn’t fit into the main tech tree as Collection Tanks?

With collection vehicles being added in, is there a chance we might see a multi-national “Tank Collection” style tech tree with new nations not currently in the game?

Collectors vehicles, lots of ideas but more important matters right now. Long term plans to add tanks into collection tanks. Can’t share info yet. Its a tool that opens up the possibility to add in tanks that we did not have before.

Argentinian tanks, Hungarian tanks, what criteria’s to unlock these tanks. potentially. Considered last year to add in a multi national tech tree, its in the backlog since it wasn’t feasible before Tank Collections.

Sandbox testing & Ammo Changes

MAX: Really complex and lots of stuff. We decided to split it up and do some changes down the road in later patches after developing them further.

Andrei: Collection of different features not meant to come in all one patch. We Tank HP 1-6 and tech tree changes. Guarantee at the moment, nothing else will happen without another sandbox test

Particularly Premium Shells and Shell changes rated very Highly

However HE changes and SPGS were not very popular

At the moment we don’t want to change one without changing the other. They need to be changed at the same time. We rolled back these changes, and we are doing a next big integration for shell changes down the road.

Have you considered changing shell speed, normalization, RNG for specific shells?

At the moment we are not trying to change those different values. Tried to do sigma changes but they didn’t end up working well.

We want 3 shells to have all different reasons to use and we dont want to make it more complicated by changing things such as changing RNG, normalization, etc.

Andrey: Story of playing the same map over and over. We didnt change anything outside of making sure people dont see the same map within 7 battles. Almost all complaints disappeared about maps repeating.

Shell rebalance. Why do premium shells cost more? Arent these pay for advantage Are you considering normalizing the shell costs.

Yes and No we considered that.

Lets start with No, the way we determined the cost is effective damage per minute

Probability to cause damage x damage value.

Special shells have higher effective DPM thus the higher cost

One of the tasks is trying to resolve once we figure out damage, since the more damage standard rounds cost. Means we will adjust prices after we figure out the shell mechanics.

Leo 1 and STB-1 changes received well. How about changes for the E-50M, AMX 30B?T-62A. What about Object 430U nerfs?

Andrei…… Yes we do have plans for tanks to find a niche for them. Sandbox tests later this year? E-50M yes, definitely

121 is in a very hard spot, and we want to improve it in some way. Similar to Obj 430U. 121 trying to find a spot for it.

121 is a problem tank needing help – official answer. higher DPM than 430U maybe?

Its nice to finally see the T110e5 getting super test rebalance changes. However, it looks like only the gun reload & on the move accuracy are receiving buffs. Leaving it still behind the Super Conqueror in almost every category. Have you considered giving the T110e5 -10 degrees of gun depression that the T110 project called for? Or possibly a slight forward/reverse speed buff to have it play similar to the M54 Renegade?

Andrey: I’ll pass that t110e5 suggestion onto the head of balance. I dont’ have enough info on the E5. However, we want to keep the playstyle the similar to how it is now.

Remove the cupola? No we are not since that is how the tank looked like. The T110 e series was an interesting project. It was originally designed(T110e3 specifically) that it can fight underground tunnels in the alps. So the tank’s origins were really niche. We are not removing the cupola

A lot players agree that the both the T95/FV4201 and Object 279e influence tier 10 matches far more than other tanks. We see the proof in that many competitive tier 10 battles feature almost entirely these two tanks. Does WG have any plans to rebalance the T95 / FV4201 and Object 279E?

Andrey: Plans for T95 fv4201 and obj 279e. I specially had a call / meeting about that today. To make a speculated answer on how we will deal with these tanks.

Matchmaking changes up to possibly to banning tanks from ranked battles that are reward tanks or to mirror them in match making.

Players that get them takes a ton of effort to get them. We don’t want to piss people off that earned them. Dont want to start by nerfing them without possibly nerfing + buffing them to rebalance. No on a straight out nerf.

Ranked battles and CW. Maybe have special restrictions on provinces that are certain tiers or certain nations?

Long term plan intention on evolve clan wars separate team developing that. Thats an interesting idea.

7v7 or 9v9 clan wars? We have a different idea for CW. But we want to include smaller clans into the global map. Move it towards line of Crusader Kings, adding in politics, large & small clans. More depth. Yes

T34-85M. Maybe antenna physics or other interactive elements on tanks? We like to test features on a limited scale before adding it in on a massive scale. You are correct on physics on tank customization and we are working on bringing that in. T-34-85M flag is a test of that.

Minsk rework changes coming? YES we are ready on Minsk changes. It passed testing, however other issues such as historical things since its in the city that we work in we are trying to solve those issues first.

Pearl River that will be released very soon, done testing.

Soap Rocks. Any update? Yes. We are working on improving that with the havoc engine. Havoc has lower resolution than our own physics engine, we are actively working on it to improve. not made for server based games currently. Before 1.0 we werent modeling rocks individually. After 1.0 we are modeling rocks and thats what is causing it.

There was talk when 1.0 was release in 2018 of either reworking or enlarging small maps such as Ensk and Mines that do not play well at higher tiers. Was the plan to change these maps scrapped? And are there any other removed maps that you are planning on bringing back? Such as South Coast, Windstorm, Swamp, and Stalingrad.

Maps. We removed maps at 1.0 since we wanted to release ones that worked the best and then add in maps that added good gameplay. Old maps that are not working that were removed due to gameplay.

Not possible to fix easily, and reworked from scratch. windstorm, stalingrad, south coast in this area maps such as ensk and mines that need to be enlarged. Takes a lot of work and need to also be re-envisioned. Really hard to re-envision mines and ensk. Right now we are focused on bringing back maps such as pearl river, berlin, and also new maps.

After that we will either make new maps or trying to rework and bring back maps specifically like, Windstorm, South Cost, and Stalingrad. Or try to rebalance maps in the game already.

This year 2020, pearl river and berlin. Also, new maps in game modes in steel hunter will get unique maps however. Maps bigger part of 2021 plans.

Unique audio experience with maps. Any plans to add more sounds for tanks, engines,etc?

Yes more stuff coming to the game specific to tanks. Nothing huge right now however sound design team is working to add in and improve the new sound engine that was introduced in 1.0 (Max)

1 very specific limitation(Andrei). Limiting factor with more diverse gun shot noises. Memory to store sounds, and we are still supporting very outdated PC that can run on a calculator.

Battle Hits being added in the game? Armor viewer? into the game?

Mods not as stable as out client and they take shortcuts. Difficult to add some in. We are working on adding in more mods, possibly Battle Hits. And also planned to add in a armor inspector to the game. Not 2020, but in 2021.

Armor viewer. Our 3rd try to add it into the game. Added a significant problem with the client knowing stuff it shouldn’t know. Would make mods that allow you to cheat / aim bots to aim better if it was built into the client. We need to implement it properly so it doesnt cause issues. Again our 3rd try to add this in.

Frontline. Redesigned the mini map into HD just into Frontline. Random battles HUD is old and outdated. We are are actively working to improve it and add more into it. Mods fill the gap in the game right now for those features.

Incorporate every mod? Why dont we just buy the mods from them?

We are trying to reinvent them because we can improve them on our own and make them work better and more stable if its baked into the client and work on all of our supported systems. Bug and safety testing.

Any plans to add in latin american tanks or other nations with smaller amounts of tanks.

Yes, collector tanks for future nations and tanks in the future that don’t fit into a full tech tree. 3 nations this year. Polish tanks! Also, other is a secret, japanese tds not yet.

Any plans to expand twitch prime? Yes there are plans to add in more care packages. Yes on Twitch Drops! for World of Tanks, coming as long as our talks with Twitch currently happen finalize

We are discussing twitch drops. We do hope the bring them and finalize with them

10th year anniversary events.

August we are planning something really special and wont spoil it yet. Cosmetics, camouflage, and extra goodies in August and much more later on for the 10yr celebration.

How has the anonymizer been received by WG?

We are really happy with how it was implemented and streamers love it.

Regarding the Battle Pass. Is there any chance that for future installments that players will be able to receive progression while playing other modes outside of standard 15v15 battles. Such as Grand Battles, Frontline, or other modes.

Most games that have Battle Passes do not have Premium Accounts / Subscriptions. Has WG considered integrating the improved Battle Pass with the World of Tanks Premium Account? Or at least providing a discount?

Battle Pass. Progression, no easy to implement other events. We are wanting to add in more progression paths in differnt modes. Not in modes with special tanks but definitely usual modes with as grand battles.

Price: Working on making it bigger(battle pass) and also adding in other purchasing options. We have the free path of the battle pass and also we are thinking on how to develop. Seeing how this version of the battle pass ends

(Andrei) we understand that there were many modes that didn’t add into battle pass progression recently. We want to run it permanent or semi-permanently. Want to use it as the main body of progression for multiple game modes instead of just 15 v 15. Battle Pass 2 will be a relaunch of battle pass with small changes. Battle Pass 3 more tweaks and in 2021 will see more significant changes to the Battle Pass compared to this year.

Have you considered adding in premium tanks into the game to purchase with credits as a rental. Then you can purchase it for gold? Or how about turning or boosting a normal tank into a premium tank?

If you recall(Andrei),Christmas 2020 allowing people to add bonuses to tanks. This was actually a test of a feature like this. The community didn’t respond as highly of it than we though so the priority isn’t super high but we are considering it. (talking about turning tanks into premium tanks)

Rentals / Try before you buy tanks. We see that in Frontline already, where you can buy it at the end with a discount. We are positive we are looking into adding in a rental feature to try a tank before buying in full.

(Max) If you see new mechanics on live server, even small. Then its usually a test of a feature coming into the game in the future at a larger scale. Used to gather more data mainly before full release.

Any Italian heavy updates?

Not yet.

Many players including myself are confused about the changes to the crew system that will be sandbox tested later this year. Can you give us more information on how ‘Commanders’, ‘Units’, and ‘Counselors / Special Crews’ will work?

Andrei…. Small story, we over complicated Crew 2.0 explanation a bit on another stream, so to explain it better.

We want a skill tree and also one commander per tank.

We also want this new “commander” to drive multiple tanks without having to relearn tanks.

Also want it to be customizable. Counselors add in skill points to specific skills. Will be Prominent famous character such as Santa(or someone like a General, George Patton). These counselors will add special points to specific skills so you dont need to learn certain skills or perks.

Multiple builds for the same commander to swap easily so you can customize your tank to specific play styles. We scrapped the idea of units since it was too complicated. Kept commanders and counselors. And want to add in idea for commander to drive multiple vehicles in place of the “unit” idea from before.

Question from the chat. How will we convert over to the new crew 2.0? We are making sure that it is transferred over properly to compensate everyone.

Interesting crew fact

Only a little bit over 1,000 people in the world over 11 perks. Congrats to them

Any word on 3rd set of personal missions and campaigns? Not really. Not right now. No plans.

Will we see changes to Arty?

Arty changes not before next sandbox. They will be in next round of testing for player base to test out before release.

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