Developer Friday - 11.12.2015

Welcome to the Friday series with developer information based on the frequently asked player questions!

• Tier 8 premium vehicles are still far away and won’t come before the introduction of tier 7 premiums and tier 10 regular vehicles. The first tier 7 premium will come within a month or two – it’s a variant of a vehicle often requested by players.
• There is a weather changing mechanism implemented into the game. Currently it is being used to make the Regular and Encounter battles on the same map different. The developers are considering adding dynamic weather (weather changes within one battle) to the game, for example a sandstorm could appear on the Port Storm map. That’s just an idea for now, however.
• For now there are no plans to add custom avatars to the game.
• Developers are planning to add multi-channel sound as a part of fixing some sound issues in the game.
• Current User Interface development focus lies on improving the Garage interface. Things like displaying the last time a Battalion member logged on in the Battalion player roster will come later.
• Developers are planning to periodically review module costs, especially when introducing new vehicles. These prices are generally influenced by the fact that the developers have decided to introduce a “no loss policy” – even on high tiers, vehicles will not make players lose credits even lacking a very high winrate. Income statistics are being monitored carefully and adjustments will be made if required.
• The Stingray is not doing great statistics-wise, that’s why it is getting buffed in Update 0.12
• In the upcoming Update, a mechanism will be implemented allowing the players to replace old retrofits with the corresponding new ones (upgrades) in the same slot by only paying the price difference between the two rather than the full price of the upgraded retrofit. Regarding transferring retrofits from one vehicle to another, that’s a rather complicated matter since the retrofits’ cost is different for each vehicle and is calculated to correspond to the general price scaling on that respective tier as well as to mitigate sealclubbing (low-tier vehicles armed with the best retrofits, used by experienced players to hunt down newbies – newbies could never afford the retrofits if the price was the same for all tiers). The developer goal is to make the effort to acquire retrofits roughly comparable to the appropriate tiers.
• Developers are planning to improve the T-80 in the game, including the option to add an ERA kit to it.
• Developers are investigating the theory that some cases of player disconnects are tied to the appearance of the M1A1 tank in battle:

“You'll be happy to know we just figured out and fixed the issue with 32-bit clients getting disconnected from matches with M1A1s. It was an issue specific to the vehicle that exposed a platform difference and caused a desync between the client and server. Thankfully it is an easy fix. It will be fixed in 0.12 for sure and possibly a hotfix for 0.11, but I don't know if that will actually be rolled out.”

• The Tank Destroyer 0.12 rebalance can be illustrated best in the case of the B1 Centauro. In 0.11, it has to have the aim circle reduced to minimum size in order to receive the sniper bonus (15 percent extra damage). In 0.12, it has that same bonus all the time and also the active ability to deal damage without having its camouflage reduced by the penalty incurred when firing the gun (which allows it to return fire under conditions where it would be usually forced to run). This is a clear buff – both its potential survivability and damage are increased. The LAV-150 90 would be another case however as its winrate statistics on the Russian server reach 54.56 percent and it earns 138 percent of average reputation for its tier. If this vehicle was buffed as much as the B1 Centauro was, it would become overpowered. That’s why it received a lower buff to the overall damage in 0.12 than other Tank Destroyers. Generally speaking all Tank Destroyers were buffed, but the ones that were very powerful were adjusted so that they wouldn’t become way too strong.

That's it for today, see you next time!