World of Tanks

[Simon_Jester]

That's the one annoying thing. No matter how realistic you make the tanks, realistically, no tank ever created was designed to survive in an environment where enemy artillery could routinely place an 8" shell somewhere within ten meters of the vehicle, on demand, without direct line of sight, while the target is moving.

Except possibly the Maus, for which all those things are credible...

[Zinegata]

A rebalanced matchmaker would be very good for WoT, although it still doesn't solve the problem of high tier arty which is the main reason I haven't touched my account in a couple months or so. In fact, it would probably make my M103 and E-50 matches even worse since arty would be in an even smaller pool. I just got too sick of doing everything right (everything except the holy mantra of "hump a fucking rock" anyway) and then losing a quarter of my health and 3 or 4 modules when some tier 7 or 8 arty "misses" me.

Meh, I've learned to live with it.

[PeZook]

I never had to face tier 7 arty. Against Tier VI or so, it's good enough to just assume they're always targeting you and just dance after shooting.

[Skywalker_T-65]

Hmm...I could defintely go for a balanced matchmaker. It might make playing my T4 and up tanks less 'I want to pull my hair out!' and more 'hey, this is actually kind of fun!'. Incidently, I'm almost done with my PzIII and sould be able to get the III/IV soon...should I get that, or wait until I'm done with the Lee to get the T1/Sherman (still undecided there)?

[PeZook]

Shermans are fun tanks to drive, even if they do feel a bit fragile. They're...zippy, I think is the best way to describe them. Zippy with a bite, but can take a couple of shots, unlike French tanks. Amx12s pop like zits when hit with the Sherman's 105mm howitzer.

[Darth Wong]

Meh. For those who complain about arty ruining the game, just be glad you can't call in air strikes, like in Call of Duty. And that DID happen historically, with air support coming in and totally fucking up tank formations with bomb strikes, so it wouldn't actually be entirely unreasonable.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Heh. WoT has long since lost any shred of a claim to historical verisimilitude. I'm pretty sure there's more made-up Fantasy Imagination Tanks now than real ones available in-game.

[Mr Bean]

Heh. WoT has long since lost any shred of a claim to historical verisimilitude. I'm pretty sure there's more made-up Fantasy Imagination Tanks now than real ones available in-game.

When WoT started out there was a great emphasis on historical verisimilitude but over time gameplay trumps history and biases trump all which is why German guns under penetrate while Soviet guns over-damage and why location specific damage got axed in favor of percent chances. Doing something clever like shooting that KV1 with the 152mm derp gun in the gun tube itself would break it but getting that hit required blind luck or being in knife fighting range. Light tanks could use HE to de-track heavies to make fighting them easier and arty not only died in one hit but the first hit normally broke... everything on your artillery piece if you did not die outright.

Now it's a lot more random and a lot more gameplay focused but the devs seem to argue about what to balance to as tanks all seem to be slightly of from each other which is why tanks are constantly going up and down in ranks as new better tanks are added.

[Darth Wong]

I love the whining from German tank fanboys on the WoT forums about how the E-100 is "nerfed" compared to its "historical" specifications. Riiiiight ... the "historical" specifications of a tank that never existed, for which not even a single prototype was ever built.

[Skywalker_T-65]

Their whining about a tank that never existed being nerfed? Isn't that kind of whining about how the Maus isn't an indestructable super tank?

Personally, I haven't done many 'fictional' tanks yet, aside from the AMX Turtle twins (AMX 38/40).

[Darth Wong]

German tank fanboys strike me as remarkably obnoxious on the WoT forums. They're always complaining about how "nerfed" the German tanks are, and I have a Panther and Tiger and they don't seem "nerfed" at all. Their problem is that they want them to easily overpower other tanks, and they invoke "historical accuracy" to justify this. But historically, there were a lot of reasons why the German tanks were actually not good for winning wars (such as enormous cost, engineering complexity, overlapping road wheels causing problems in muddy or winter conditions, etc), and the game cannot realistically simulate those problems (or in the case of making them ten times more expensive to build and maintain, it's technically possible to simulate but the players would scream bloody murder).

[Skywalker_T-65]

I can see that...namely since there is such a cult of fanboyism about German ANYTHING from World War 2 (weapons wise...not people/government). That being said, I had a PzII and have a PzIII...and if anything, they are stronger than they were historically. The PzII shouldn't be able to stand up to anything resembling a real tank, yet it does, and the III is capable of fighting heavy tanks if you know what you are doing...which it certainly couldn't do historically.

[Mr Bean]

DW the German fanboys have a legitimate point, German penetration has been in many cases decreased and sometimes (In the bigger guns) vastly decreased in game penetration. A standard Tiger's 88 L/56 should not bounce a shell from a Sherman at any in game combat distance from any angle yet my Easy eight bounces every third round in a face on fight. There are real life examples of Tiger drivers engaging Shermans and killing them through entire buildings.

This is also a general symptom of high end tank gameplay in that the high end guns (Tier 6 and above) are vastly less damaging than they should be if they were going for the whole historical bit. However for gameplay reasons German tanks have tweaked to reduce their effectivness, some guns get hit a lot harder with the nerf bat than others. The biggest example of this is special ammo (Which was tested but never issued in any serious ammo) which is gold only in WOT, you can see 76mm HVAP which should be pushing 240mm of penetration is instead pegged in game at 177mm, or 88mm Pzg40 which had it been issued penetrated 201mm of armor instead of 171mm, but because of pay to win issues they hit the pzg, the HVAP and the ADPS with a nerf bat.

Note my comments refer only to gun damage and penetration which as I noted have been tweaked to high hell, if they are bitching about armoring, handling, power/weight ratios and the like they have no reason to complain, except for my beloved Hellcat which has been gelded.

[Darth Wong]

DW the German fanboys have a legitimate point, German penetration has been in many cases decreased and sometimes (In the bigger guns) vastly decreased in game penetration. A standard Tiger's 88 L/56 should not bounce a shell from a Sherman at any in game combat distance from any angle yet my Easy eight bounces every third round in a face on fight. There are real life examples of Tiger drivers engaging Shermans and killing them through entire buildings.

So? There are real-life examples of Tigers being so expensive to build that they hurt the war effort more than they helped. There are real-life examples of Panthers breaking down far more often than Shermans.

This is a game, not a historical simulation. When your tank gets hit in the tracks, your crew can jump out and fix it while under fire, and have you on your way in less than one minute, for fuck's sake. People only invoke "historical accuracy" when it suits them.

[Mr Bean]

So? There are real-life examples of Tigers being so expensive to build that they hurt the war effort more than they helped. There are real-life examples of Panthers breaking down far more often than Shermans.

This is a game, not a historical simulation. When your tank gets hit in the tracks, your crew can jump out and fix it while under fire, and have you on your way in less than one minute, for fuck's sake. People only invoke "historical accuracy" when it suits them.

And you think I support that? Heck no I'd love if they shorten battles to say six minutes, an ironman mode of sorts where damage is permanent and nothing repairs.

There's room for more than one thing under the sun.

[Darth Wong]

So? There are real-life examples of Tigers being so expensive to build that they hurt the war effort more than they helped. There are real-life examples of Panthers breaking down far more often than Shermans.

This is a game, not a historical simulation. When your tank gets hit in the tracks, your crew can jump out and fix it while under fire, and have you on your way in less than one minute, for fuck's sake. People only invoke "historical accuracy" when it suits them.

And you think I support that? Heck no I'd love if they shorten battles to say six minutes, an ironman mode of sorts where damage is permanent and nothing repairs.

There's room for more than one thing under the sun.

You were defending the behaviour of the German tank whiners, and none of them are asking for all the historical weaknesses of the German tanks to be somehow simulated in-game. They want all the win, and none of the fail.

[Lord Baal]

If I'm allowed to have a word on this. One should accept the bad with the good. If going historically accurate means better penetration but more expensive maintenance, then so be it! I refrain myself from playing the game once I saw people jumping out of the tanks to repair them on the field. I may be old fashioned or crazy but I don't like that kind of absurd fantasy on my games.

[PeZook]

Erm, actually they did that all the time, though obviously not while under fire ; It just took a while (instead of seconds) to fix a thrown track. It's the sort of gamey abstraction that's entirely acceptable.

[Lord Baal]

I meant in the mist of the battle. But yeah, to each it's own. I think it would be more fun if you can repair your tanks only when not in battle. Or it should take a lot longer deepening on the damage.

[The Vortex Empire]

Yeah, cause getting tracked and having to sit there twiddling your thumbs for the rest of the match is totally, uh... fun?

[PhilosopherOfSorts]

I do not want to hear any more bitching about the AMX-40. I just bounced a shot from my IS-3, (with the big gun, no less) off the side of one. Nothing else at tier 4 will do that.

[PeZook]

Yeah, cause getting tracked and having to sit there twiddling your thumbs for the rest of the match is totally, uh... fun?

Historically accurate!

Just like all those Shermans charging across plains, followed by a heavy-hitting group of Tigers and covered by Soviet artillery pieces

I have no real desire to see a simulation of the minutae of tank warfare down to the last rivet, since it would be an entirely different game. If I want a tank simulator, I'll go play Iron Warriors with all its plodding pace and instruments marked in ciryllic

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

I think we're collectively constructing a false dichotomy here wherein HISTORICAL REALISM and FUN GAMEPLAY are somehow mutually-exclusive extremes. They aren't; it's just that some games are very bad at it and give the illusion that such a dichotomy does exist.

Blending historical verisimilitude with gameplay just requires a degree of competence, see the Total War series or Flames of War, both of which manage to have both. WoT, on the other hand... struggles.

[Lord Baal]

If I want a tank simulator, I'll go play Iron Warriors with all its plodding pace and instruments marked in ciryllic

Thanks for the tip. I'll try it.

[Skywalker_T-65]

Well, I think WoT is perfectly fun as is. It doesn't try to be historically accurate in every way...its meant to be a fun game anyone can play, not just history buffs who go 'but you can't fix a track like that!' or 'My Tiger should have one-shot that Sherman!'.

And bouncing an IS-3 shot off an AMX 40?

I can't even bounce KV-1 shells when I'm in that thing...and thats from the front, not the side.