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Hello! I here decided to share screenshots of my old experiments on lighting on the Vista map. I have always disliked the hazy lighting on this map, so I decided to do some experiments. Original lighting: Noon with default fog: Unsettled late evening: Noon with customized lighting:

The more I think about this the more I like it. In a way it would be just an aggregate total (i.e. get 50,000 spotting damage), but the amount of credit you would receive for a single match would be logarithmic. Laying it out like you've done would make that logarithmic progression transparent and easier to understand.

I gave an elaboration of my answers in the form, but I thought I'd share some here as well. Coincidentally, on the day the PVE query came out, I actually had a chat with a friend who used to play AW, and whom I was trying to get to play again just so I had someone to platoon and chat with during games. I wasn't successful, and some of his grievances were things I felt that nothing much could be done about (the grind, mainly). Other parts however, I thought I'd share as part of my response. Firstly, the variety of missions. As mentioned by other players, sometimes it can feel like you're playing the same mission again and again throughout the week. This can be easily solved by creating a wider variety of missions, and so I'm all for recycling PVP maps for PVE use. In all honesty, until Haskell pointed it out, I didn't actually know that Albatross used the same map as Umbrella and Snake Bite (And I've been playing since beta, so goes to show my skills of observation....). I think it would also help to just have more objectives such as taking part in missions, joining a larger push across open ground, or having to dig in and defend against waves of enemies. This brings me to a point which I didn't put in the query form, but I thought of afterwards. Maybe there could be the introduction of AI allies in standard missions, such as how it was done for spec ops? Personally, I quite liked the idea that we were just playing as one mercenary out of many, and having some AI tanks pushing forward with us would certainly help to build that feeling of being one part out of something larger and grander. It would also help to make the aforementioned objective types possible; an ambush where the AI vehicles are hit, a push with maybe two other platoons of AI tanks, or digging in with other AI vehicles. This would also prevent those types of objectives where the players are likely going to be shot at quite a lot a little less frustrating; the AI allies can draw attention away from the team. I liked the special mechanics in spec ops, but only when you could do something about it. For instance, being able to shoot down the drones/gunships targeting you. I wasn't so much a fan of dodging attacks that you couldn't really do much about; it reminded me a little too much of bullet-hell type games. Dodging artillery, on the other hand, was something that I figured couldn't be helped if enemy artillery was to make a return in PVE. On the topic of shooting down drones and helicopters, I think one way of implementing that into standard missions would be to allow vehicles the use of their roof-mounted machine guns or remote weapons stations. That way, they have a way of fighting off airborne enemies should the team lack an AC-equipped vehicle. On the note of vehicle-mounted machine guns, I'd love to see more missions where enemy infantry plays a bigger role, or even technicals. It would make the currently-introduced coaxial machine gun a lot more useful, I think. Having enemy infantry would also mix things up a little by having something different to shoot at every now and then. As far as the story goes, I was okay with it until the latest expansion. I liked it when it was just mercenaries and corporations, and no world-threatening thing for us to stop. I understand that a storyline is very useful to a game, but maybe it could just be toned down? Like instead of following a team in its quest to save the world, it could instead follow maybe a character or a group as they rise from simple mercenaries to being a PMC in their own right. I recall from an old post on AW about the setting that there are parts of the world where even corporations would not set foot in. That would be a pretty nice place to have such a story. Lastly, I think AW's biggest draw is that it has an actual PVE mode. WoT sure doesn't have one, at least not permanently, and WT's PVE is to me, quite a joke. I stuck with WoWS for as long as I did only because it had a PVE option, but it lacked variety, and the missions it had were tier-locked. With these games I mentioned, PVP is their main focus with PVE being more of sideshow. I think if AW does the opposite, putting more focus on PVE with PVP having a smaller focus, it would be able to carve out quite a niche for itself amongst the vehicle-arcade-semi-simulator group of games.

To their credit, the devs did try this with the escort mechanics of Arabian Nights and the delivery mechanics of Moscow Calling. However, it turned out that escorting an AI that is dumber than a bag of bricks is more rage-inducing than it is fun, and that only having a single delivery item that could result in mission failure was prone to griefing. Personally, I think the delivery mechanic is salvageable if they increased the number of items that could be in transit at the same time to prevent one or more players running off with delivery items and throwing the match (e.g. infinite ammo drops for the turrets in MC4, the team only needs to deliver 1 to each turret). An "over completion" mechanic for the daily "do X 10 times" mission would be welcome. However, given that the goal of these missions seems to be to get players to play more matches, I could see the "over completion" requirements actually requiring a point total that's about 50% higher. Several possibilities include: Get 3 times more of the specified value (e.g. 6000 spotting damage instead of 2000), but you only need to do it 5 times Get 5 times more of the specified value (e.g. 10000 spotting damage instead of 2000), but you only need to do it 3 times Get 7.5 times more of the specified value (e.g. 15000 spotting damage instead of 2000), but you only need to do it twice Get 15 times more of the specified value (e.g. 30000 spotting damage instead of 2000), but you only need to do it once The higher point totals for the over completion would (at least in theory) give players an incentive to actively participate in several matches rather than just brute-force the completion requirements before abandoning their teammates in 10 different matches. High quality gameplay is less likely to get players to burn out than high quantity gameplay. Another possibility would be allow players to have a single match count as multiple matches towards completing the missions based on how much they went over the minimum required amount. For example: 2000 spotting damage gives you 1 match worth of completion 6000 spotting damage gives you 2 matches worth of completion 10000 spotting damage gives you 3 matches worth of completion 14000 spotting damage gives you 4 matches worth of completion etc... Again, the idea here is to encourage players to be an active participant in a smaller number of matches rather than a passive participant in a larger number of matches. Quality, not quantity. On a side note, the Semper Fi contract is absolutely terrible. It is the only daily contract that forces you to use a game mechanic that is unavailable to most of the vehicles in the game. Every other daily contract can theoretically be completed by any vehicle in the game (every vehicle in the game can at the very minimum proximity spot and deflect 7.62mm MG ammo if it hits at the wrong angle or from far enough away), which gives players absolute freedom of choice in the vehicle they use without making the mission impossible to complete (maybe improbable or extremely difficult, but not impossible). I absolutely despise this contract because it forces me to use specific vehicles and sacrifice useful active abilities (speed boost, designate target, super APS, etc...) for a game mechanic that requires me to alter my playstyle for minimal (if any) gain.

Thank you all for participating. We gathered 600+ votes and it ended 70:30 in favor of more standard PvE battles.

The problem is with the core game play loop. AW is only a capture the flag game but with tanks. You are the attacker or defender. You either go to the point and capture the flag or you go to the point and defend the flag. Rinse and repeat 1million times. All these tasks do is give you something to do extra while going for the flag. The AW dev team needs to add more game play loops.

I provided my additional feedback in the "anything else you'd like to tell us" box. I hope I was clear enough in there that you understand what I was referring to with each point. A couple of things are worth repeating/adding, though. Balance in PvE does matter, and right now it's pretty bad. I get that PvP is more sensitive to balance issues, but according to your own numbers PvP is like 7% of the games played. It seems like you're spending far too many resources trying to appease a dying player base, and in doing so you're losing members of your dominant player base to the imbalances you're creating. I think it should be possible to complete PvE missions without having an MBT on your team, but it should be challenging. It should be possible for a dedicated spotter AFV to spot for a team without firing, and do reasonably well. Right now, though, that's not possible for a couple of reasons: 1) the maps are far too small and tight for a dedicated spotter to be able to function correctly, 2) even on those few maps when a dedicated spotter could work, view ranges are so close that someone else always ends up stealing the spotting damage from the spotter so the spotter gets no (or greatly reduced) rewards, 3) MBTs are able to play so aggressively that there's no need for a spotter in missions that have a reasonably good player in an MBT, and 4) spotting alone doesn't earn sufficient credit to get you a decent ranking in the after action report (AAR). I don't think MBTs should be able to spot for the team. That said, they should have a special ability that allows them to return fire against a vehicle that has fired at it. That way they're not sitting ducks, but they also can't steal the job of the spotters. I'd also like to see MBTs get credit for taking/bouncing damage, as that's kind of their role on the team. They'd get that instead of credit for spotting damage - get up front, attract enemy fire, and let your fire support teammates do their jobs. Some of the game mechanics are broken, or partially broken. For example, drones/helis/gunships/bunkers/etc count as misses when you shoot them, and the damage you do to them doesn't (uniformly?) count in your damage total. That's stupid, because you have to shoot them to succeed. Doing something that's required in order to successfully complete a mission should never be bad for your stats! That just encourages people to not do those things, and that's bad for a team-based game mode. Primaries and Secondaries should provide some small reward to the player who completes them, not just a generic boost to the entire team, and that small reward should vary based on your vehicle type. Capturing objectives (as Primaries) should reward the vehicles that sit there to do the capture. Right now it's more rewarding to rush off and find more enemies to kill than it is to capture points, so greedy players ignore the primary objectives. On the flip side, MBTs should not be wandering around completing secondaries - they need to be up front engaging the enemy - so any reward they receive for secondaries should be minimal. However it makes perfect sense for LTs and AFVs to complete secondaries, so they should get a nice little bonus for doing so. All of that is a long way of saying that goals and rewards should make sense. Right now they really don't because they're too generic.

You're talking real life. This is an arcade game. The primary role of the MBT in AW is to distract the enemy, soak damage, and generally be a nuisance in order to allow the primary damage dealers on the team to engage from safety. Yes, MBTs can also kill enemies. That's just not their primary role. The problem right now is that MBTs are too good at tasks that are not their primary role. To balance the game and give every class a reasonable role, the power of MBTs should be dialed back in the ways I've described above. Reward them for doing their job, but not for doing other classes jobs. (The same is true for the other classes - they should be rewarded for doing their job, but not for doing anyone else's job.) This is pretty basic game design theory.

If mbt's are to be the "MMO tanks" of AW, then they ALL need way better armor. And I mean along the lines of each mbt should be nearly, if not entirely, impossible to take damage if hit from the front, including missile chip damage. They would also deserve their VR back as well then so they could "gather" enemies to them. AW is not a typical MMO and those mindsets should not be referred to or even used here. And AW PVE is not a raid dungeon either. While there is several mbt's that could do such damage soaking for the team, they are too few and far in between to say all mbt are the "MMO tank class" of AW; especially with the armors the mbt's were given.