On February 22 2016, the chief developer of Armored Warfare, Richard Taylor, and Obsidian Entertainment Community Manager Michael Dunaway participated in a two-hour IGN stream session with IGN's James Duggan. The stream can be viewed here.
A summary of the developer info from the IGN stream:
- The developers are looking at armor mechanics to make sure the MBT armor on higher tiers is not too prevalent, but they are also looking at other classes to ensure they are viable and effective enough to mitigate the high-tier MBT domination. This will definitely be updated in the next patch or two
- There are no concrete plans for Xbox AW for now
- The game will be supported by developers as long as players are playing it. Obsidian is actually expanding and hiring more staff to add more content and produce content faster
- Richard Taylor is quite an aggressive player, he prefers MBTs fighting on the frontlines such as the Challenger 1
- The Base mechanism is currently a work in progress. There are plans to significantly extend it and there will be many more upgrades and production options
- There will be E-sports support some day, when the game is ready for it
- There are currently no plans to allow private servers for Armored Warfare
- There will be a third MERC- and ICE-like edition special vehicle set, details about which will be unveiled later
- Polish vehicles will be introduced very soon – the BWP-1M Puma will be the first one available and later on there will be an entire Polish line in the Third Dealer roster
- Israeli tanks are coming soon, Japanese tanks are a little bit further out, but eventually pretty much every suitable vehicle will be introduced, including Hungarian tanks for example
- One of the endgame modes is the "Lords of War" team battle mode, which focuses on smaller teams that compete in the King of the Hill mode (win streaks with players fighting progressively tougher opponents the more battles in a row they win). There will be unique rewards for this mode as well. A VoIP system may come along with it
- The M163 Vulcan could come eventually, but a mechanism for rapid fire cannons has to be implemented first
- Tier 11 vehicles are not planned for the foreseeable future. Such vehicles would probably delve into the realm of science fiction
- The developers are also experimenting with physics and there is room for improvement - It's a complex issue (every little change has a major effect on the game), but it's something the developers would like to update
- Between realism and gameplay, gameplay is more important. When it comes to earlier vehicles with well-known stats such as armor thickness, the developers are trying to keep things like the mentioned armor historical, however, the rest of the characteristics are based on balance. The most important thing is that the model look realistic
- The Founder's Pack Tier 6 Terminator will be exclusive for one year from the Open Beta launch – after that it can be returned to the game (either via events or sold), but the original Founder's Pack Terminator will receive a unique skin
- The developers will add a feature allowing players to see the impact of their shells through an X-ray vision
- All lines are planned to end at least with Tier 9 vehicles, it is just a question of time
- Development of a vehicle from scratch takes roughly four months
- Roaming or server migration mechanisms are not currently being developed
- Historical battles will probably not be added – it is one of those things that sounds cool but it wouldn't be very well balanced
- The aim is to make PvP and PvE roughly equitable in progress rate, but achieving this is quite complicated and the game is not there yet. Update 0.13, however, does deliver an improvement to it
- The developers are constantly working on optimization. It's one of the most important topics at the moment
- Armored Warfare will be officially released in 2016. There are quite big changes coming along, including a commander system overhaul, a crew system overhaul, randomized loot from matches (currency, reputation bonuses, crew XP, but also permanent rewards) and more
- Terrain and environmental object hitboxes will be given more attention and the developers will make another pass on existing maps to correct these issues
- The K2 Main Battle Tank is coming. It's the vehicle Richard Taylor is personally looking forward to the most
- The maps are usually based on plausible conflict zones such as strategic locations – plants, refineries and other such valuable sites
- The developers are not currently planning any dedicated non-combat vehicles such as ARVs or bridge layers, but they are considering other (combat) classes for introduction
- The decals will be updated to look better. A lot of new decals will also be added
- Tier 10 vehicles will arrive "soon", but more low-tier vehicles will be added as well
- The M1128 Stryker is tricky to play due to its poor gun elevation and gun depression. The developers will improve both characteristics in an upcoming update
- There is a chance Air Support will appear in the game as part of a new mode
That's it for today – see you on the battlefield!
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