World of Tanks

I can try to translate quickly, you may want to wait for an official translation from WG.eu.

Serb starts off asking you to come over to the dark side where he has biscuits.

1) Why did you extend the trees to include tier X mediums and TDs considering the tier 9 ones were powerful... ?

Serb: This will provide more gameplay variety, apologies for starting to answer from the end. We originally saw this as a ladder where there were tier X Heavies at the top, tier IX TDs, tier VIII meds and artillery. We decided to move towards complete equality of branches with comparable effectiveness.

2) How will tier IX MTs and TDs change?

Serb: Too early to say, tests will show more

3) Will this affect team compositions on the global map?

Serb: Honestly, this is a matter for players. If it affects it then teams will change, if not they will stay the same.

4) How much XP will be needed to unlock these new tanks?

Serb: Again, I can't say but I think it will be comparable to the amounts in the heavy branches taking intermediate modules into account.

5) Will all TDs and MTs come fully unlocked or will they have additional modules?

Serb: Firstly, we already have a tank, E-100, that has an unlockable module at tier X. Some will have additional modules, in particular the M-48, whose original canon is insufficient for tier 9, so it will have the M-68.

6) How will you further develop the arty and LT branches? Will we see something new there?

Serb: First the easy part, LTs, France will have an Lt moved to tier VIII and some other trees will have new light tanks up to tier VIII. Unfortunately we have not found any candidates for higher levels. For some nations even tier VIII will be a problem. For example, USSR, just because until '45 they were too busy to be designing light tanks and afterwards they shifted towards making mostly amphibious tanks. We will not be introducing light tanks purely because of their pointlessness. Amphibious tanks could only come in useful if there is a water obstacle to be crossed outside the zone of enemy fire and quietly make a breakthrough somewhere. Our maps are still too small for this. We will "think", only think about tanks that can swim once our "limitless map" project is successful: that is making 3 x 3 km maps and larger teams.
As for artillery, the top tier artillery has the correct effectiveness for being top of the tree, so to simplify grinding and balance we will add some new intermediate machines and make the current tier VIII arty into tier Xs.

7) New regimes. How successful do you think the launch of the new regimes has been? What do you consider to be unsatisfactory and likely to change and what has been the most satisfactory?

Serb: In testing the "escort" mode was the most problematic, so we withheld that mode from release. This regime requires a high degree of coordination and responsibility from the top tiers on the team, who were the VIPs. Everything went great with Supertesters, but as soon as we let go of the discipline, there was complete chaos. Apologies, dear players, but you have significant deficiencies in discipline and intelligence compared to the supertesters. This has also been the problem with the 'assault' mode. Supertesters, having driven on the maps quickly worked out techniques for attacking, and defending,...but...but...this doesn't work for random players who dislike thinking. What to do?!? On some maps where players never found correct solutions were removed from this regime. As an example, when you are attacking on Malinovka or Prokhorovka, think about moving artillery onto the flanks and cover from counter-attacks and lights; this would make the position of defenders very difficult. Unfortunately, the key word here is to think, and that is difficult.

8) Why did you make the new regimes random at first and then switched to them being selectable?

Serb: So everyone could have a go.

9) Are you planning any new regimes and are you planning any new regimes with computer controlled bots as in the airplanes game?

Serb: We have no plans for bots in the future, an exception might be some special gamemode such as a tutorial. A bot in the air creates more problems for players than one on land. Our whole game XP is based on facing human opponents which makes farming difficult. Bots would have no answer for human players as their algorithms are known, so you can just grind over and over again. This would be boring, we don't like bots.

Interviewer (quietly): What about new regimes? Are you planning or working on any new ones?

Serb: We will not introduce the "escort" regime as we don't believe in the discipline of our players. As for historical and garage battles, we have announced these a few times and are working on them. The historical battles will come first, we planned to have them ready for the New Year, but I'm afraid we will not do so as we need to do a lot of preparatory work. We are working on intermediate solutions which will simplify life in normal regimes and the historical and garage battles will come after.

10) Please tell us more about the new radial menu which will replace the keys used for quick battle messages?

Serb: This will look like a flower with 8 petals, which will appear when you press Ctrl. You will be able to click on any of the petals, which might have 2 levels to give out a command.

11) Are you planning to switch off the in-game chat?

Serb: Nope.

12) Will you have something like a player reputation (karma), where users could give plusses and minuses to other users.

Serb: You know we gave you plusses and minuses on the forum, so play with those. In-game, play with tanks.

13) Will there be more ways of customizing the tank skins such as rings on the cannon, tank names and numbers or historical slogans? "To Berlin!" etc.

Serb: You will be able to put writing on very soon and as for numbers etc then maybe with time. The problem here is that the number of stickers must be limited, so we can't make an infinite number of decals for them. We will make however many we manage to make.

14) Players continue to complain that the "red screen" is still here. When are we likely to see this resolved if ever?

Serb: "Red" screen is something which stems from an area which sits on the border of our zone of responsibility and that of the producers of video card drivers. We can only do so many things that depend on us, but we can't do things which depend on the creators of drivers. This is a serious problem, dependent more on computer sciences rather than game-making. We are working on this, but cannot give definite dates.

15) In the last issue you mentioned that you have been trying to make nations that differ from one another. What will be the special feature of British tanks? What will the heavy and the medium tanks be like?

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