Haswell

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.

Yes, you'll get this one. Any changes will only be in effect starting from the next contract. Ranked is definitely a group effort, but I'm not going to force anyone to do anything. I will however recognize people who put effort into it, though I'm not sure how I would do that yet. Anyone object? If not you're gonna be our recruiter. It's not like LABS is running out of member slots, so I think we can keep the current requirements of literally anything goes. Will definitely have to revisit this once we get too big, but for now I'd prefer to maintain open to anyone and everyone. Everyone have until next Thursday 0000 UTC to tell me which Hades vehicle to pick.

The Obsidian textures have a lot of scratches and rust in them, I think I prefer them over the newer textures. You still haven't told us how to make custom skins...

Soo, several things that need to be handled. Everything here is public and open book, this is intended. Shadow parts With LABS growing with members, it's clear that the old system of "decide among yourselves who should get the Shadow" wouldn't work as well as before anymore. Consensus and generosity are great, but not everyone are happy with the way it worked. Besides the old system, there are two other alternatives to handle the Shadow: person with the most contribution points get the whole Shadow; or top N people get a distribution of parts based on the proportion of their contribution. Vote on which system you want, or suggest one here. Ranked battles Some people have expressed interest in playing ranked battles to increase the ranking of LABS to at least 1001, in order to get more rewards from the contract missions and faster progression on the overall contract. I'm a dumbass when it comes to all things PvP so if all possible I'd prefer to leave this matter in someone else's charge. Feel free to volunteer/argue/assign people to handle this, I'll go with whatever people decide. Hades vehicles This is the easy part, vote here on which Hades vehicle you want for the next buttalion contract. We are currently on the M8-120 Thunderbolt. Recruitment Do you want LABS to increase recruitment effort beyond our current status quo? Throw suggestions here as well, or if you want to take on the responsibility of attracting more labbies.

https://aw.my.games/en/news/general/update-033-pts-delay I hope the extra time mean stage 2 will be far less of a shitshow, but after seeing how the stage 1 changes included stuff that nobody asked for I'm not terribly optimistic. Let's see just how effective the feedback so far is, and if they decide to double down on everything people hated.