July 17 Livestream w/ SilentStalkerFTR on PanzerMarmelade's channel

[Qbicle 108]

Source:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2200023430

 

Mirror:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugMzdQb-DIU

 

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Vehicles:

• BTR-82A is currently the worst performing vehicle in this BP, especially in its stock configuration with autocannon only. There are thoughts of implementing airburst rounds for it (which SS said is developed for Russian 30mm autocannon), but may consider buffing the vehicle in other ways.
• T-90M is doing very well, and so is the BMP-2M, especially in PvP. Overall the devs are happy with the vehicles for this BP, and just need to iron out some of the bugs.
• T-80BVM should be ready "this summer". As mentioned in the previous stream, the requirement will be damaged based.
• Object 292 will come after T-80BVM, but there's no ETA yet. The devs found some problems when testing the vehicle internally, but it's not as bad as BVM's situation.
• SS will look into player concerns on SPHINX's and Jaguar's low autocannon ammo capacity.
• Ajax was supposed to come sooner in development, but it ended up in Europe's Edge BP. It does more damage than Boxer (presumably CRV) in PvE and Spec Ops, but less so than RIWP. However, its usage in PvP is rather low, and is more or less a "meme vehicle", with its reputation now somewhat tainted for being bad similar to players' perception of the CATTB.
  • There are no plans to give the Ajax ATGMs.
• As mentioned in the previous stream, Leopard 2A8 will be developed to replace Leopard 2AX in progression. The 2AX will become a legacy vehicle just like PT-76. Performance-wise, not much is confirmed, but it will be DPM orientated, and it will at least have Trophy APS.
• The devs are reworking some of the existing vehicles' models, specifically Bradley and T-62. The Bradley's TOW launchers should elevate and depress properly once it gets a new model.
• Plan to implement Autocannon Wiesel kinda "broke down" because of recent development crunch, but the devs want to come back to it by next year.
• There are hints of Central Asian vehicles to come, possibly Iranian.
• There are also plans to release the EMBT in the future (the 2022 version).
• ZTZ-20's WP missiles now having a big dead zone is intended as a nerf to the vehicle.
• Progression T-14 now has a win rate of 49% after Update 0.160 buff, with average damage and survival per match. The 152mm version has a slightly better win rate at 51%, and is having a much higher average damage per match, while having about the same survival per match as the progression counterpart. As a result, there are no plans to nerf the side armour for now.
  • Not mentioned in the stream, but it's worth noting that there are still plans to implement side ERA to the T-14s, so this solution should still be an interim one.
• T-72 series will have new sounds, and their engine sounds may be used for other vehicles with diesel engines. There will also be new sounds for guns and autocannons, which are all WIP.
  • When asked if Chieftain tanks can have new engine sounds, SS said a group of Slavic-accent people asking for access to British tanks would look suspicious, especially if they don't have the amount of money that Wargaming has for collaborations.
    • SS also alleges that museums that collaborates with Wargaming are under some kind of exclusive deals, making them unapproachable to other tank game developers.

 

Balance:

• MBTs as a whole is suffering because of various unavoidable damage as well as dying too fast to autocannon. There are plans to make them more durable, and one of such direction being looked at is to make them take less module damage.
  • As for calls to nerf autocannon, SS thinks the devs will probably prefer to buff MBTs than to nerf the weapons. He personally likes high rate of fire on autocannons.
• When asked about giving vehicles more APS charges in PvE, SS said he has no immediate answer available on this matter, but also opined that some vehicles should get more charges in general.

 

Mechanics:

• The first iteration of HE mechanic overhaul is ready internally, and is released to supertesters for feedback
• There are no plans to revert most SPGs back to indirect fire
• When asked about drone operators as a new type of infantry, SS thinks that would essentially be the same as guided missile infantry, so it's not going to happen.
• When asked if lieutenants can be reworked because some can be too powerful on certain vehicles, SS said this feature hasn't been touched for a very long time, and it'd be a can of worms to open right now, but it may be revisited at some point in the future.
• Regarding bots' ATGMs ignoring player soft kill APS and smokescreens, SS said soft kill and smokes basically multiplies negative factors of ATGMs to make them less effective, but for some reason the values are zero on bots' missiles (i.e. zero multiplied by any number is still a zero), and changing the value to anything else would somehow break the bots' performance (SS: "they can't shoot for shit"). Nevertheless it's still an issue that the devs want to address eventually.
• There are no plans to give infantry commands on where to move due to pathfinding issues
• There are no plans to make some vehicles having to be stationary before firing missiles like they were before 0.19, because that would be inconvenient for the players.
• A user brought up how disabling one weapon on a vehicle with multiple weapons (e.g. autocannon + ATGM launcher) would disable all weapons onboard, and if the weapons can be split into separate modules. SS said this is very hard (and possibly hardcoded). Instead of finding ways to split multiple weapons into separate modules he may look into addressing individual vehicles that are susceptible to this problem.

 

Battle Paths:

• SS said it was difficult to write something equivalent to a book for BP stories (Eclipse and Exile) before deadline, and in addition to burnout risk he admitted the story for the 2nd half of Perihelion i.e. Exile was not as good as it could have been, hence he's not writing any for the past two BPs (Europe's Edge and Tales of the Dark). However, there will be more AW stories to come, but probably in other formats.
• When asked about progress scaling for BP repeatable missions, SS said chain missions, challenges, and repeatable missions will have to be looked at and overhauled if necessary.
• The current BP is supposed to have missions that require the use of infantry, but there are problems for the system to log the necessary data for them to work, and hence they were ultimately ditched.
• As for why different tier 10 vehicles have different prices in the BP shop, SS said some are supposed to be rarer than others, and the differences are part of the monetisation. The prices will be reviewed again for the next BP.

 

Spec Ops:

• In development article for the second mission of Black Company Spec Ops aka Lone Star is coming soon.
  • SS hasn't played the mission, so he can't comment much about it.
• The 3rd mission will be shorter than the first or second mission.
• The devs are still pondering how to make the current Spec Ops more accessible due to their long durations (i.e. having to slog through the first mission before reaching the second mission when it comes out), but it's a matter they will have to resolve, especially since they are anticipating new player influx in the future.
• As for Apocalypse + Exile spec ops, SS said that has been a "really painful issue", as it has been interrupted by changes in devs. Implementation into weekend War Games mode is still WIP, and as of now it's still intended to be a 5-mission chain with two Spec Ops crates as rewards per run for completion.
• The devs are thinking of either phasing out badly designed Spec Ops such as Moscow Calling and American Dream, or take a long look at them and attempt to fix or rework them. However, the latter will be very hard to do, requiring much time and manpower to figure out if anything can be fixed due to the legacy systems.

 

Developments:

• SS is not ready to reveal anything about the "something big" that is mentioned at the end of the Of Wishlist Games, Changes and Future article.
• In addition to new vehicles and old model overhaul, existing maps are also being overhauled with new assets, shaders, and graphics.
• Realistic Mode is very unlikely to be return, if ever, because the devs so far haven't found a way to solve the critical issue of hiding foliage, be it via mods or settings for this mode.
• Horde Mode development has kinda failed, so there is no new workable game mode in the near future.

 

Others:

• No plans to review or change contract missions, including tedious ones like 10 matches of XYZ. SS said the missions are designed to keep players "occupied" with tasks and goals.
  • In the past he also mentioned that it's a way to keep players online long enough for daily gameplay.
• No plans to change secondary objectives in PvE and Spec Ops so that they reward specifically to the player who completes them, with the reason being players fighting to get that bonus and not focusing on the primary objectives anymore.
• The devs are still researching into how to deal with AFKers (i.e. what mechanics or punishments to use)
• More real world military decals are to come in the future
• When asked for historical flags such as Yugoslavia, SS said "why not; nostalgia is a powerful thing".
• Playerbase right now is about 50:50 for EU and RU. Among the popular EU countries are Poland, France and Germany, with players from Czech Republic and Slovakia also on the higher end.
• When asked if old BP vehicle blueprints will be sold in the future for players who did not complete them in the past (e.g. Hunter) and did not want to buy the vehicle outright from shops, SS may consider an exception of conducting sale for those kinds of players.
• T-72B and T-72M1 are still some of the tanks that SS likes the most
• SS plays for 1 hour every Friday with the devs every Friday, and they play both PvE and PvP.
• Job description-wise, SS said he is now producer / art director, with main responsibilities including designing prizes, levels, and missions for battle paths, as well as localisation, picking vehicles for team approval ("so if you hate the TOS-1M, then that's my fault"), reviewing and approving art assets (particularly vehicles), as well as managerial role like making sure development plans are being followed. He also files bug and feedback reports gathered from players in his free time, or create a bug task for QA to investigate.
• Answers from Alexey Larionov (the CEO of Wishlist Games, also producer of the game at least back in 2017, if not earlier as well) Q&A will be available around this Thursday or Friday.
• As for company hierarchy, Alexey Larionov is at the top, followed by a main producer (whose name is not revealed due to lack of permission), and then by SS for the EU region and a colleague of his for RU for the operations team.

Edited July 18 by Qbicle
Added mirror URL (see edit history)

[Arto 157]

As usual nothing of consequence. Everything is "in the works" and "looked into", everything is delayed for YEARS. You're telling me reintroducing an already existing vehicle needs 2 years of work? Getting Apo and Exodus back in rotation takes a whole ass year?

Oh and horde mode is unceremoniously dead. God forbid we get anything even remotely new, more BPs for you instead.

EMBT coming in a lootbox, Leo 2A8 coming in maybe next decade alongside the Wiesel AC. Everything is coming soon except battle passes, those have to be on time.

[Les_Izmoor 0]

15 hours ago, Qbicle said:

.

• In the past he also mentioned that it's a way to keep players online long enough for daily gameplay.

 

• SS plays for 1 hour every Friday with the devs every Friday, and they play both PvE and PvP.

No irony there. Not even one little bit.

[General_Alladin 6]

18 hours ago, Arto said:

As usual nothing of consequence. Everything is "in the works" and "looked into", everything is delayed for YEARS. You're telling me reintroducing an already existing vehicle needs 2 years of work? Getting Apo and Exodus back in rotation takes a whole ass year?

Oh and horde mode is unceremoniously dead. God forbid we get anything even remotely new, more BPs for you instead.

EMBT coming in a lootbox, Leo 2A8 coming in maybe next decade alongside the Wiesel AC. Everything is coming soon except battle passes, those have to be on time.

Time is something they don't have

[Azdule 29]

SS Has been discussing today that his plan is to step back from the CM role to a more 'back office' type thing. 

This is in relation to SS' comment that Arto was still around, at which point I advised he was pissed at SS and left:

[Arto 157]

18 hours ago, Azdule said:

SS Has been discussing today that his plan is to step back from the CM role to a more 'back office' type thing. 

This is in relation to SS' comment that Arto was still around, at which point I advised he was pissed at SS and left:

Let me clear something up - SS is far from the only reason I chose to largely stop interacting with the community and focus on doing my own thing.