Our next set of answers from the development team is in - learn about the development of the game in this round of questions and answers!
Question: Do you plan on doing anything about ATGMs on higher tiers? They do seem to have many downsides especially around tiers 7-8.
Answer: They do have a lot of upsides too though! While regular HEAT ammunition would be stopped by the advanced ERA systems, the tandem warhead missiles deal with it with ease and can cause a lot of damage due to their HEAT mechanism. It is a question of balanced gameplay – we do not want to make missiles completely overpowered – after all, they already can be guided. We are continuing to evaluate their overall balance in the higher tier environment to make sure they are a compelling option with definitive advantages and disadvantages.
Question: Do you plan to implement some kind of battalion game mode like Clan Wars? Can you share any details?
Answer: We will implement a Battalion mode called Territory Wars, but it is too early to share any details since the mode itself is in very early stages of development. We will however consult large clans and skilled players while developing it.
Question: Do you plan on addressing the credit income? Many players feel the rate at which credits are earned, specifically in cooperative mode, is rather poor.
Answer: Yes. In the next major update (Update 0.10) we are planning to address this issue in both PvP and PvE modes. There may also be additional changes announced for 0.11.
Question: Any plans to rebalance the XM1?
Answer: At the moment the XM1 is over-performing due to its excellent armor. We will have a look at that vehicle further to see how we can adjust it.
Question: Will the T-72 and T-72A be buffed? They seem to underperform.
Answer: The T-72A and T-72 will be receiving turret armor buffs in an upcoming patch.
Question: How many dealers do you plan to add in total to the game?
Answer: As many as needed, as long as we have enough vehicles to build several full branches per dealer.
Question: Are there plans to improve the engine sounds of tanks? All the tanks I've used so far have the same sound.
Answer: Yes. Our goal is to implement distinctive sounds to many different vehicles in the game, based on the recordings of their actual sound in real life where possible. This is however an involved process and it might take some time before we achieve our goal.
Question: Will the rest of the planned tier 10 tanks also get a preview mode so we can admire them?
Answer: That is a good question. We do not want to introduce too many assets too far in advance because this would essentially make the players download models that they cannot use in any way apart from having a look at them in the garage. This in turn bloats the client needlessly. Furthermore, in many cases these preview models are just placeholders with the actual models looking better.
Question: What is the expected duration of OBT phase?
Answer: This has not been determined yet but it will be months before the game is ready to be officially released.
Question: Are camouflages going to be generic for all tanks, or will they be semi-historical or vehicle-specific?
Answer: In the first phase, the visual camouflages will be common to all the vehicles, which will help us to streamline the visual camouflage creation process. Vehicle-specific camouflages will more likely be introduced in the form of special re-skins (such as the case of the “Veteran” T-62). On the other hand the game will eventually feature a large number of camouflages, some of them obtainable only for exceptional feats and achievements and thus being very rare – the players will get a chance to show off their skill. Some historical camouflage patterns (possibly the Berlin Brigade, Tamanskaya Division) are also going to make an appearance.
Question: Will there be the same reputation requirement for tier 1-10 than there is currently for 1-8?
Answer: No, unlocking tier 10 from tier 1 will take longer than unlocking current tier 1 – 8. Overall, the game progress will be balanced even for players who do not want to spend any money to speed up the progression to be able to eventually reach tier 10.
Question: Are commander perks additive or multiplicative?
Answer: Currently, they are multiplicative. We are considering converting them to be additive due to the math behind that being more intuitive for players.
Question: Are additions and reductions multiplicative or additive? For example, if I stack two retrofits that each reduce aim time by 10%, do I end up with 80% (additive) or 81% (multiplicative) of the former aim time? If I stack two +7.5% damage boosts, is that +15% (Additive) or +15.5625% (multiplicative)?
Answer: Similar to commander skills, they are currently multiplicative, but we are evaluating converting the mechanics to be additive after we determine the overall impact that would have on balance.
Question: How much normalization currently exists for each type of shell?
Answer: Kinetic shells have normalization value of 5 degrees. Other types of shells have none.
Question: Are there any plans to allow crew members who have multiple jobs to get an extra skill slot? For example, if a gunner is also the loader? Is crew layout taken into consideration when balancing tanks?
Answer: The fact that some vehicles do not have a loader and therefore cannot benefit from loader’s perks is already included in their base statistics. We are however planning to overhaul the crew system to make it much more interesting and exciting for the players. As for the second question, the crew layout is definitely considered.
Question: It is very nice for reasons already known from that other tank game, to NOT have your statistics shown to the public. However, months from now when clans establish themselves and hopefully AW will become a success, drawing more and more players in, will recruiters have some tools at their disposal to make right personnel decisions?
Answer: We are planning to allow players to view the statistics of other players by using an API. The statistics however will never be displayed in battle, eliminating some of the worst effects of the statistics display you mentioned. Users will have the ability to specify if they want their statistics to be private, viewable to friends only, or public for everyone to see. Players within the same Battalion will probably always have access to view each other's stats as they are inherently part of a close knit community by being a part of that battalion in the first place.
Question: During matches we encounter invincible helicopters and airplanes flying around. Will there be any scenario in which we can successfully bring them to the ground?
Answer: It’s possible we will make the flying objects destructible, but it is likely to happen by a mid-air explosion, not by classic “shooting down” – we do not want wrecks of NPC objects falling on player’s heads.
Question: Once you add amphibious capability, would you ever consider an amphibious vehicle only game mode with maps similar to BF4 “Naval Strike” maps?
Answer: It’s a bit early to think about such things. Generally speaking though, there aren’t that many amphibious vehicles in the game and they are spread across the entire scale of tiers. Such a game mode would be very difficult to balance and would likely not be very interesting with only one or two types of vehicles appearing on each tier of the mode.
Question: Do you guys still plan to work on game performance? Like making some of the maps have better FPS. Right now River Point and Narrows are still pretty bad.
Answer: We are aware that some maps still do have FPS issues. Each major patch we are doing optimization passes to fix these problems while keeping the visual standard of the map.
Question: Any plans on making a line consisting of vehicles armed with nothing but ATGMs?
Answer: An entire line is unlikely but we are planning to introduce more vehicles armed with ATGMs only, such as the Soviet IT-1 tank destroyer.
Question: Any plans for more game modes?
Answer: While we are planning to introduce more game modes in the future, we will not do so immediately. There are several reasons for that:
First and foremost, the game just entered the Open Beta phase. We want to give all the new players time to get used to the game and to learn the basics of gameplay in the two modes we are currently offering: PvP and PvE.
We do not want to confuse the players with too many game mode options right off the bat. In order to build a house, you need to have good foundations and the basic PvP and PvE game modes are the foundations of our game, on which we will build and to which we will add. We do not want to split the playerbase into too many new modes just yet. Having two modes already means (if we theoretically consider that both modes have the same level of popularity) that each mode’s queue is half the size compared to having only one mode at the start. This brings multiple complications such as worse matchmaking (the matchmaker mechanism doesn’t have as big a pool to build battles from), longer waiting times etc. Generally we will first likely add the training room mode and some specialized group activity modes (such as “companies”), but will wait with the introduction of more modes intended for wide audiences.
Question: Since the next dealer's supposed to be Chinese, are there any pieces of information on which nation the next one focuses?
Answer: This is not entirely correct. The third dealer will actually have a mix of Chinese, Swedish and Polish/Czech vehicles. The introduction of these branches will take some time, so we do not currently have any concrete plans for the fourth dealer. We will however likely add Israeli tanks at that point.
Question: Are you planning to add some sort of armor overview in garage like in War Thunder?
Answer: Yes, such an armor inspector is planned.
Question: Can we expect some kind of “create a camouflage” contest for players?
Answer: That is an interesting notion. We might do just that.
Question: Training room, how high is it on your priority list? In my opinion that is something that most of the players would like to see.
Answer: Very high. We are intensively working on that feature.
Question: Do you have any plans to create an in-game market (auction house) where players could sell tanks to other players?
Answer: No. We did consider this in the past but decided not to do it. For one, it would require a complete game economy overhaul, something we cannot afford so far into game development when monetization is already available. Secondly, this economy model brings a large number of negative effects, the chief of which would be the attention of “gold farmers”, various scams etc.
Question: What is being done about shot delay?
Answer: The shot sound/initial muzzle blast is a client side event that happens at the time you press the button, and the shell itself appears as soon as the client gets the reply from the server verifying the direction/velocity of the projectile. There are a few different ways of approaching this problem.
We can make both the muzzle flash/sound and the shell wait for the reply. In 300ms ping (remember, this is almost 1/3 a second), you will experience a delay between the time you press the mouse button and anything happens at all. At 100ms, that delay should be extremely brief ( 1/10 a second ), but will still be felt to a small degree.
Alternatively, we can fire both the sound and the projectile client-side the instant you push the button. The downside to this approach is that while it will feel immediately responsive, the actual trajectory of the projectile will only be the client's best guess as to where the server is actually going to send the projectile, and the greater the latency, the less accurate the shell that you see visually will be, which can lead to moments where it seems like the shell flies right through another vehicle.
The current approach is to give you immediate feedback that the shell fired, but still wait to show you the accurate path of the shell per server-side calculation, which I realize creates a noticeable, disconnect between firing and the shell itself firing out. Nevertheless, we are working on a solution to mitigate this effect.
Question: How about separating skilled players and newbies a.k.a. solo ranked mode?
Answer: This is not planned for random battles but it is possible we will introduce some sort of ladder mode in the future.
Question: Will artillery see a progression improvement?
Answer: The thing about artillery is that many players use the regular shells without bothering to use the support shells. Doing damage only unfortunately deprives that respective artillery player of spotting bonuses for using illumination shells or cover bonuses for using smoke shells, that can (if used properly) contribute a lot to the reputation and credits gained from the battle. Buffing the damage reputation/credit income would result in extremely high incomes for the players who do play the artillery class while using all the shell types. We will however definitely keep an eye on artillery statistics.
Question: Will PvE get Reusable Repair & Ammo Kits?
Answer: We already have a reload consumable mechanism in place. Re-usable repair kits might be overkill.
Question: What do you think about recently suggested idea to allow player test-driving his vehicle in the garage and around the base, possibly adding some shooting range near the base?
Answer: That’s something we’ve been working on for a while. We would for example like for players to be able to test-drive premium tanks before purchase.
Question: Will tier 9 Challenger2 use 120mm/L55 smoothbore gun?
Answer: No.
Question: Any plan for non-European localization, such as Chinese, South Korean, Japanese etc.?
Answer: Not for now. A localization pack is a massive undertaking that requires a certain playerbase size. We will consider such steps based on the feedback from Asian communities.
That's it for today, stay tuned for the next part!
