What Would You Change About… World of Tanks?

May 22, 2015 12:14 ( Articles ) 1

What Would You Change About... World of Tanks?

 

For our next “What Would You Change About…?” article we’re taking a look at third person tank shooter World of Tanks from Wargaming, a titan in the tank shooter market that has dominated the genre for many years, with very few rivals able to match it. With all the things that we think World of Tanks has gotten right there’s still major room for improvement in some areas that we think would improve the game overall…

The Spotting System

Tanks shouldn’t be able to just turn invisible. Whilst World of Tanks has always been focused on more fast, fun and arcade style combat as opposed to its primary rival War Thunder, which offers a more realistic simulator, there are elements to WoT that even we think go beyond just being “arcade” style and verge on the ridiculous. The spotting mechanic is one of them as players can get eyes on an enemy tank that will flag them up and makes them pretty easy to notice, however with the right assembly of camo skills and crew training players are literally able to turn their tanks invisible like they are equipped with some kind of futuristic cloaking machine that can hide several tonnes of steel in the blink of an eye regardless of whether you’re in the middle of an open field or not. It’s a majorly off putting factor given the theme of the game and we’d much prefer something a little more subtle such as blurred visuals, silhouetted outlines or only being available when in dense cover and specific locations.

 

 

Expand the other Tech Trees

Japanese and Chinese tech trees need some attention. The focus on American, German and Russian tanks is way too biased and the other trees (including to a lesser degree French and British) need to be brought up to par. We don’t need additions into the other trees whilst the Japanese and Chinese are already lacking what with him having about half of the British or French tanks and around a quarter of the big three. With some players wanting to focus up a specific tree they are certainly left out in the cold and with a lack of options if they go for either of these nations.

Remove Gold/Premium Ammo

Paying for a golden bullet is just bad. Every game has to try and find avenues in which it can make its money when it adopts a free to play model, the balancing act is keeping the integrity and not going for a “pay to win” philosophy which no one other than players with deep pockets and low morals care for. So when WoT offers the option to buy Premium Ammo that can essentially kill practically any tank in 1 to 3 shots, we have to ask “What the hell?!” It’s at times like this that we question good game vs good business philosophy, we can’t argue that giving players a way to buy their victory is definitely something that will appeal to a lot of players, particularly when it becomes so rampant in endgame/competitive play that you’re at a major disadvantage if you DON’T use it. That doesn’t make it right. For those players that buy it for the “last ditch attempt” before it’s them or the enemy, it’s no better… saving your skin because of a golden bullet still flags up that they don’t have the skill and need to rely on paying to win. It needs to be gone to once again even the playing field, but as a big money spinner for Wargaming there’s absolutely no way this will ever happen.

 

Improved Matchmaking

Teams are all too often imbalanced due to lack of skill. Matchmaking by skill level is something that has been done in competitive MMOs dating back to CounterStrike, giving payers a skill level based off their kill:death ratio and pairing them up into battles so that they’re all of a similar skill. World of Tanks doesn’t and the result is often extremely one sided battles where one side ends up with a good handful of veteran skilled players against a bunch of unskilled players or BOTs balancing the team; you can generally predict which way a battle is going to go even before the first shot is fired based off the team makeup. What results is a one sided ass kicking which, whilst fun for the ass kickers, is extremely boring for everyone on the other team and for those who really loving coming away from a challenging match win or lose. Match skill levels, let players go up against those in their own league, sure it will damage their win/loss ration a little to start with, but everything will balance out and the game will simply be more fun.

More Maps

The game is suffering from map boredom. To start with there’s not all that many maps to start with anyway, then combined with the fact that some maps are limited depending on the game mode, the designers really need to spend less time incorporating new tanks and more time making new and interesting maps. This doesn’t mean just adding snow onto a map that already exists and calling it a new one, and we’d be happy to see no more typical three lane maps, also perhaps focusing on maps that might benefit light to medium tanks as opposed to the Tank Destroyers and Heavy tanks that other maps seem to favour.

So that’s what we’d change with World of Tanks, but more importantly what do you believe should be changed? What do you think could/should be added to improve the game? What would you add to your own personal wish list? Let us know what you think in the comments below!

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