Haswell

Lots of stuff, I tried to truncate the uninteresting bits but there's still a ton of mildly interesting answers. MBT side armor being homogenized as steel (losing the extra armor from tracks and add-on blocks) is intended. MBTs are not intended to be more mobile than lights, this is still being looked into. AGDS missiles having a ~50m minimum range is intended for balance. No new dealer this year. No plans for next year yet. TDs not having fast ammo swap is intended because balance, and players "generally have more time" (note: MIGHT be true if said players exclusively sit at the back of the map, which brings their competency into question) Vehicle balance will continue to be tuned throughout 0.33. 0.34 will feature bigger balance changes based on data and feedback. 0.34 will come this year. (note: possibly November/December for the next BP) MM changes did not happen with the high tier rebalancing. ATGM chip damage is intended to counter long range hulldown invulnerability and reward players for hitting things. The chip damage isn't effective in PvP. (note: if it has that little effect in PvP, why add it in the first place?) Excessive drifting may be bugs. The next Raid will have adjusted missions, but the mechanics will be the same as the previous one. (note: which means nothing of value will be lost if people ignore the whole thing just like last time.) Abrams and Challenger series having their armor characteristics swapped (Abrams having much better armor now) is intended.The The current armor configuration of Challenger series is intended. MBT armor being homogenized and made boring is because "the developers wish it so". Devs want to change the meta from learning weakspots to simply checking distance and swapping ammo. (note: literally removing skill from the game) Custom decals in 2021, maybe. (note: just mod them in yourself) Arty in PvP got shelved, at least until 0.34. Move command for infantry is canned. Direct fire command is being developed. No plans to monetize player avatars and titles, not worth it. New PvE missions in late 2020 or early 2021. HE mechanics got changed, but it's not described in the patch notes and even SS isn't sure about it. (note: what's the point of patch notes then?) Skill-based gameplay "got us nowhere". (note: not sure if this is SS's opinion or fact. Either way it matches the trend of gameplay being dumbed down.) No plans to accelerate account progression (ie. grinds), the progression is already fast enough as it is. ATGM reload animations are expensive and complicated to develop, requiring maybe one month of work per vehicle. No plans to add daily overviews (ie. WoT-style session logs). Not needed due to the low amount of matches played daily (2-5) for the typical player. No plans to improve infantry movement animations, too expensive and not important enough. 0.33 was deemed "sufficient" after PTS2 for release. The release is also partially forced by deadlines and milestones. (note: this confirms my suspicion of the operator holding the reins on the devs.) Overall feedback for 0.33 is positive, there will be no rollbacks. No plans to change SPG mechanics. Abrams series will be remodeled, and possibly the T-80U next. Tracked vehicles not losing much speed on turning is intended "to make gameplay more dynamic" (note: someone also said the same thing about arty in WoT promoting "dynamic" gameplay) The upcoming PvP map Al Dabbah will be "really big". Soft kill APS is being investigated, but the increased missile noise is intended "to make [hits] feel rewarding". (note: so literally reward mechanics based on RNG) One reason for the 0.33 changes is to "make the game feel more fresh". (note: different, yes. Fresh, probably not.) MBT side armor being largely invulnerable to autocannons is intended. Spec ops is over, no more spec ops. (note: this is the 3rd time someone asked this IIRC, read the previous Q&As) AI behavior will get tweaked. Wheeled bots soon, hopefully. SS would like to see a good storyline without the Enigma stuff, more PvE and less PvP. (note: one can dream) No plans for smaller team sizes in PvE (including spec ops). Bradley TOW launcher never elevated. (note: false. See Salter & Morey, Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle Procedures Guides: Evaluation, Appendix D, pg. 34 & 46. Link below.) Bradley TOW launcher never had elevation/depression in the game. Some HE shells aren't tuned properly, probably related to the undocumented HE mechanic changes. MBT meta is intended. Some HEAT shells retaining their bonus damage are not intended, will be fixed. Ranked Battles disallowing platoons of mixed battalion members are intended, in order to promote large battalions. TD autocannons having double shot (ie. twin barrel Termi series) is a bug. Low tiers will also be rebalanced. No new heroic maps. Not worth it, maybe next year, maybe not. Launcher elevation/depression in-game is only considered for vehicles that have the ability IRL. (note: didn't they say the same thing last year about the T-15 fixed launchers being intended, then added launcher movement anyway?) The current contract reward lootbox is still the Eastern Crate. No plans to nerf HESH/PISH. The current gameplay feels more "dynamic", akin to pre-0.19. Devs are not keen on adding back the Wiesel 20mm. Devs prefer to add interesting vehicles, such as having multiple turrets or other interesting mechanics. Each game season will become very long. Spirithaven started in February and will end later this year. Infantry skins are very expensive and lack monetization potential. Enigma's Legacy performed "surprisingly well". (note: if they mean more players spent money, maybe.) The next PvE mission will use a modified spec ops map. Raw dump: Salter & Morey, Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle Procedures Guides: Evaluation https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA138578.pdf See Appendix D, pages 34 and 46 for operation procedures for elevating/depressing the TOW launcher.

Issue partially resolved in 0.33: name got changed. Spall threshold stat in garage and in battle still don't match up. Garage stat is now missing penetration.

Still present as of 0.33.

Bonjour! Bienvenue chez ArmoredLabs! The VODs are in French, but the analyses are fairly thorough with PvP focus. If people are interested in the PvP side I'd recommend watching them for some new perspectives.

Added patch notes to OP. I don't think dakka AP on AFVs got nerfed specifically, but dakkas in general have a lot more difficulty in penetrating MBT sides now. Rears are still valid target zones.

That's matches my experience both in WoT and AW pretty accurately, pubbies throw blame around in general only when they perform (relatively) well and rarely if they get carried. I'm guessing that might be due to the RU preference for PvP, and that they get more practice there than EU players simply because there are more opponents to practice against. Constant practice yields improvement, and having better opponents to practice against mean their skills get honed faster and more sharply. I can definitely believe this, again simply because they get a lot more practice and experience than EU players. Even in WoT the skill level of pro RU teams are miles ahead of EU and NA. I'm curious, are there any stats for the pro EU and RU teams in the competitive scene here? I believe EU players tend to favor PvE more, but how are the overall quality of good EU PvP players compared to RU? Are EU players even interested in the tournaments and competitions?

https://aw.my.games/en/news/general/maintenance-update-033 Late late patch notes: https://aw.my.games/en/news/general/update-033-now-available

https://aw.my.games/en/news/general/announcing-anniversary-takedown Getting 5 kills is easy, having to do that for 35 days is the harder part. I suppose not having mode-exclusive missions like the previous times is an improvement. The other great improvement is transitioning away from the god awful web-page system, hopefully this means the reward delivery will be instant and won't get buggered. I look forward to recording the drop rates from the ZTQ lootboxes.

https://aw.my.games/en/news/general/update-033-pts2-answers-feedback

Something has always bothered me in games with international playerbases: there’s always a small but incredibly noisy portion of players who seem to have an irrational hatred towards others who don’t speak their language, or otherwise appear different. That’s right, I’m poking directly at all the people who go “RU players bad EU/NA master race”. Let us say there are 10000 active players in the game right now for the sake of argument (the actual number is far lower, but 10000 make math easier), and that there’s a 70/30 split in favor of the RU region. Let us also assume that 90% of all the players are “bad”, arbitrarily labeled again for the sake of argument here. RU and EU have the same exact proportion of bad players, meaning out of all the RU players there are 90% of them that are bad, just as there are 90% of all EU players that are also bad. Time for some slightly more complicated math: if there are 3000 EU players in total and 90% of them are bad, that means there are 2700 bad EU players. Likewise, 90% of bad players out of 7000 RU players total means there are 6300 bad RU players. Oh no, clearly there are more bad RU players than bad EU players, does that mean the haters are right all along? Let’s look at the other side of the coin: good players make up 10% of each RU and EU populations, this means there are 700 good RU players and 300 good EU players. Oh crap, there are more than double the amounts of good RU players compared to good EU players. But that’s impossible they said, what about all those people and anecdotes proclaiming EU superiority? Confirmation bias is a fascinating phenomenon. For those who are unfamiliar this bias occurs when people pay extra attention to events that support their beliefs, but conversely pay less attention to events showing the contrary. This runs especially rampant in AW, where the belief of “RU bad EU good” becomes reinforced when players are primed to the irrational idea and then exposed to innumerous variations of gameplay. I personally find it quite amusing when players focus only on the occasions of being let down by others, while brushing off the times when all players in a match performed competently or even outperforming themselves. I suppose this is a case where beliefs are supposed to be proven true rather than proven false; there is no empirical proof that RU players are somehow “worse” or “better” (which I haven’t even quantified so far) than EU players given the assumptions I have provided above, so this belief is utterly baseless so far. Alas, people are irrational creatures by nature. Trying to convince them that their belief isn’t correct is extremely difficult, even more so when they are constantly being reaffirmed by others who share the same incorrect belief. After all they can’t all be wrong, right? Oh wait, the Earth isn’t a flat Frisbee no matter how many flat-Earth believers there are, clearly people can be wrong en masse. But this also shows even if there are irrational people there will always be others who try to talk reason into them, for better or worse. Sometimes they succeed, sometimes they don’t. So here’s a question for everyone who are enlightened enough to recognize the fallacy of “RU bad EU good”: how would you go about to curb this thinly veiled racism? Trying to straight up refute the believers is akin to bashing your head against the wall, is there a better and more effective way to drive this awful belief (and variations of) away? /ramble

That sounds awfully generous and easy, will there a twist to it? If it is indeed as simple as it sounds, then it might not be so bad. Assuming people don't go "reeee where's my box" like last time.

More stuff from the latest client update. 5 weeks of grind incoming.

New thread (and new management):

Last thread today I promise. https://aw.my.games/en/news/general/maintenance-september-10 Upcoming event, I'm betting it's the anniversary stuff. Sphinx finally getting fixed, took long enough. I wonder what will get broken because of this though...

Mined from the PTS client. Looks like a multistage grindfest, possibly spanning over 2 weeks (or 2 months). Based on the ZTQ article it's highly likely the reward will be lootboxes. Anyone want to bet this will be an insane mess like the last anniversary (the 287) and the Christmas boxes?

https://aw.my.games/en/news/general/development-ztq-15 Ref older thread: Based on data uncovered on the PTS client, the ZTQ will almost definitely be a lootbox vehicle. Since this article mentioned it may be available for the upcoming anniversary event, I reckon the event will be yet another grindfest that will reward you with said lootboxes.

Some very very late answers.

https://aw.my.games/en/news/general/033-pts-stage-2-now-available More stuff, this time in spoilers Round 1 > round 2 changes (not comprehensive) Preliminary patch notes:

It is decided then. Top contributor gets the whole Shadow Dark and Seb are in charge or Ranked Rick handles recruitment We're still on the M8-120

Can confirm. The armor viewer also shows the HEAT shell to be ineffective against non-heavy ERA (ie. Bradley), where other true tandem HEAT shells or ATGMs are effective despite having lower penetration.

Small suggestion: show the user in-game name in the integration, in case some people have different nicknames on Discord than their in-game name. Might also be a good idea to show what vehicle they are playing in case people are really curious. Sorry for feature creep :c

Lots of things here, not everything have been addressed but at least some of them are here. https://aw.my.games/en/news/general/update-033-answers-feedback

It has been said before but I'll repeat it here anyways: the greatest advantage AW has over its competitors (WoT, WT) is its PvE element. Everybody has qualms and criticisms against it and there are definitely lots room for improvement, but at the end of the day PvE is still the only thing setting AW apart from the other titles. On the surface, it makes perfect sense to capitalize on the PvE advantage and develop it further. From the last Q&A it is said that PvE make up 60-80% of all concurrent battles (depending on time of day), I wouldn't be surprised if PvE makes up at least 75% of the total number of battles over any 24h period. Long queue times in PvP outside of prime times notwithstanding, it wouldn't be a far stretch to postulate that the number of players preferring PvE far outweigh those who prefer PvP. From a game development perspective however, PvE requires a great deal more resources to develop and maintain compared to PvP. Take the example of developing a new map/mission and the possible efforts involved for both modes: PvP: Make a map (ie. terrain, props, effects) Add players (ie. spawn/respawn points) Add terrain features to enhance player experience (ie. hard/soft cover) Add objectives (ie. cap points) Balance the map based on playtesting PvE: Make a map Add players Add terrain features Add AI (ie. spawn criteria) Add scripting for AI (ie. pathfinding, target picking) Add objectives Add scripting for map (ie. multiple objectives, success/failure conditions, AI targeting) Check everything because something will likely be broken even before the map is playable Balance the map from playtesting Check everything again because the balancing probably broke something Add some sort of narrative (also paying for voice-overs) Cry in a corner because your scripting is now spaghetti It's no great surprise to me that the devs consider Glops to be a dead end even though it has immense potential, since it's practically PvE with PvP elements mixed in. The more things get piled on the map, the more effort required to not break things. The concept of PvPvE is fantastic, but the execution is difficult and demanding. It simply takes much less resources to develop PvP than PvE. From a gamer perspective, I'd gladly sacrifice all things PvP if it means I get a good PvE experience in return. From a coder/developer perspective, PvP is far easier to pump out content.

I intentionally made it public so others can chime in. I do agree that giving out the whole Shadow is far better than piecemealing the parts out, simply because nobody will ever get a full Shadow that way judging by our rate of completions.