Monday, January 14, 2013

[WoT] Global Vision: Part I

Last time we spoke about Global map was not so long ago, but it's about time we summarized everything, provided our feedback and some additional info on the subject. I'm going to give an update on the current state of things in two posts. You about to read the first one.   


For simplification purposes (multiple regions, multiple releases) I will use Russian (RU) server as an example.

Clan Wars mode is still at beta stage (yeah, rather continuous I must say) in ALL regions, we still have got a lot to do so as to ensure the release quality of the product.  As usual, there are lots of ideas and plans in the air on what to improve.

Technical side

On RU side (to a lesser extent this applies to EU and NA) Global map can be prone to technical failures because of high server load for the main RU1 server. To solve the issue we are going to implement new mechanics - provinces will be assigned to a separate server closest to their precise location (not just one dedicated server for all regions as it is now). Taking RU as example again, battles for Moscow and nearby regions will be played on Moscow-based hardware, same for Siberia. The thing is that it will allow not only to cope with the load better but also to prepare for making Clan Wars really global. Yes, merge is still in plans, however the ETA is unknown. Once things become global, the above mentioned feature will make sure battles for respective regions are played on respective servers. In respective prime time. :)

Because of the peculiarities of turn processing, battle room can be created only 1-2 minutes before the battle start, not regular 15 minutes. This is a known issue that is planned to be reworked as a part of code optimization.

Demand for new stuff


Clan Wars mode has been at beta stage for ... how long?... Should be around 1.5 years for now. This is very unfortunate that our end-game content suffered most from the lack of manpower and required resources. Clan Wars, as a separate project within Wargaming, got its own dedicated team only in late 2012. We have planned really a lot from game design perspective, but were shorthanded where it came to actual implementation. Now things are determined to get better.

Global Map Events are special semi-historical scenarios that last for limited period of time.

For testing purposes events were conducted only on RU server. There were 2 of them:
  • Atlantida (summer) - our first try with a separate island that came to the surface in the Atlantic and later drowned again. It was defended by WG's Rattes and some of the top clans.
  • Mongolia (late autumn) - for Mongolia provinces with vehicle tier restrictions - tiers 1-3 (yeah, SU-26 time!). It received a warmer welcome than the first one.
It is decided to continue such events in future.

So, what's planned?

Again we do really hope (and there are reasons for that!) that things will get better in 2013 from production point of view. New version of the portal that is planned for release on RU server in January/February will contain two major features: pillages and revolts, and on top of them - modified tank freezing mechanics.

Pillage

The concept resembles the one used in Total War series. After you have conquered the province you can either pillage it or just occupy as usual. Pillage brings you 3-day income at once, after that the province won't generate any resources to any owner for 7 days.

Revolt

With certain probability that depends on various factors each owned province can become a starting one (regular landing rules apply) till the end of the current prime time. The following factors can increase chances of this happening: clan loses any province or HQ, there are no troops / tokens in the province, etc. And vice versa.

Both pillages and revolts are almost ready and are likely to be introduced as a kind of special on RU region (with subsequent releases on other servers) to test how things will work out. If the results are satisfactory, the features will stay.

Freeze times for vehicles are meant to be changed. Successful offensives will be rewarded with decreased freeze times - let's assume that invaders capture hypothetical resources to repair their machinery while defenders have got nothing else apart from what they already have. :)

Having captured a regular province, you will get -50% freeze times, for gold province - 90%. Offensive gameplay is incentivized.

New make-up


Apart from new features, later this year (approx summer for RU), we are planning to upgrade visual part of CWs (engine) and greatly improve usability (UI). The most important change is giving up region-based system on portal - you won't have to select a separate region to view it anymore. The entire Global map will be available at a glance. Troops relocation and multiple attacks will be made easier to perform.

To be continued...

76 comments:

  1. The CW map looks weird in Chrome. Zooming out gives some strange artifacts: colored areas indicating clan control are offset from the actual province borders. I hope it gets fixed.

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    1. Chrome is fully supported. Might be a rare bug.

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    2. It's not that rare... Whenever your last zoom setting is not fully zoomed out, if you switch regions/load up the map, zooming out further than that causes the colours to not line up. This can be fixed by zooming all the way out then switching regions, but that's kind of a pain.

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    3. This is going to be fixed in the new engine.

      Delete
  2. quite a problem distributing regions on the CW map to actual regional servers when the highest values of the provinces are in mainland EU

    there is also one huge factor: players do battle to own hi reward provinces
    and that will cause the load to transfer to EU, and since EU has only ONE cluster - good luck

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    1. Single server can manage about 220.000 CCU. When we are getting closer to this number, EU will likely to get 2nd server and thus have its own cluster as RU.

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    2. no, you are not managing that number
      because lately you got increasing number of forum posts regarding lag issue on EU server
      and there is no EU2 in sight, there wasn't even a serious talk about adding it

      Delete
    3. I agree with zMe. Everytime the EU server gets around or above 140k players it gets laggy as hell. And this is becoming more often. There is a reason why im playing almost no WoT anymore. Simply because it becomes unplayable pretty much after 1800 and until 2300 due to lag spikes.

      This has been going on for weeks now and Support keeps blaming it on my computer or internet provider. That's nice since i know of at least 5 people in different country's who also have it.

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    4. zMe ul,

      There was no talk about it cause we are not nearing 220k currently.

      Current capacity of EU is lower than 200k as of now, what I pointed out is that EU has potential to be extended further.

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    5. wontcachme,

      EU should be capable of running 160k now. Are u getting performance issues in peak times only?

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    6. 160K ... no wonder.

      EU-Server is reaching more than 140K now every evening and its noticable that were near the limit:

      - lag spikes
      - Sixth Sense not working or only delayed (3sec normal delay aside)
      - starnge moving tanks
      - server side crosshair in arti mode opening up, while there was no clientside input

      -> time to upgrade capacity!

      Ofc support and forum moderation is buisy with telling us some tales about our bad pcs and internet connection/isp

      Delete
    7. no shit overlord? U'r not nearing 220k
      at the end of the last year with the specials layed out by WG, what was the max concurrent users? wasn't it 350k+ ??
      maybe someone has a exact number

      isn't that number exceeding by over 50% the estimated peak capacity of the EU cluster?

      Delete
    8. zMe ul,

      350k where? On RU side, where we have got 5 peripheries now. On EU we have one stand-alone server, that is now about 160-170k (capacity) and can be expanded to about 220k. After that EU2 will be required.

      Delete
    9. After 140k the lag spikes get enormous. For example: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/50254601/World%20Of%20Tanks%20Screenshots/20121226_2025_usa-T34_hvy_14_siegfried_line.wotreplay

      This is an replay of when i gamed during christmas. This happend all the time that evening. Since then also more often when there are more then 140k people online. So that is pretty much every evening, when there is an good special and during weekends.

      Delete
    10. "On EU we have one stand-alone server, that is now about 160-170k (capacity)"
      In prime time there are already 150k+ players. When will you upgrade the server?
      (and unrelated question. Why was with the MM change the waiting time not only for arty, but also for regular tanks increased?. Sometimes you have to wait over a minute for a batlle with 3k+ players in the queue, several hundred of them in the same tier.

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    11. That's because the load on MM-ing system has increased by the introduction of semi-hard SPG cap.

      Delete
    12. im also getting lag issues sometimes in the evening im on my university's 100/100mbit and my ping to the rest of the world besides wot is 11 ms, while on wot it ends up on 130-140 sometimes :(

      Delete
    13. "that is now about 160-170k (capacity) and can be expanded to about 220k. After that EU2 will be required."

      When the server hits 149/150K players people get disconnected, countdown hangs, game behaves choppy and all kinds of other stuff happens. The servers can't handle the current load properly, and it happens more and more often.

      Delete
  3. Thank you Overlord for keeping us updated. What kind of timetable can we get for the NA server? I understand the Russian server is where you want to test these features, but it is still BETA for the U.S. as well.

    We don't mind being guinea pigs. Test away. We need something new, some changes, anything, please.

    What could be the harm in adding the pillage feature and the revolt on the U.S.? We are a smaller server population but one that is dying for change and would welcome anything. I truly believe that even if new changes were implemented, and then found to be undesirable the community would not mind. Take a chance, view us as rationale human beings. One mistake isn't going to make everyone stop what they are doing and quit.

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    Replies
    1. I think there will be no major delay between the release of the new features for all regions. Most likely it will be done the same way as with client updates - shortly after RU release.

      Clan Wars updates require WoT-portal to be updated as well.

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  4. When I started playing wot in eu server there were 6000 to 10000 players playing same time. Now there are 150000! From lag it was 60 To 70 now it is from 90 to 120. I think it is time to make northen European server and southern

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    1. I would not make this separate servers at all. It would be just a matter of logging in to EU1 or EU2 as much as I understand from Ovis post, so the login system would still be on one server, but depending on Your choice would assign You to paricipate in battles calculated by EU1 or EU2. Continent system in Planetside2 works like that. On each "server" You have 3 continents with fixed population cap, and sometimes it just takes some time in a queue to jump from one continent to another within the same cluster. I think that's the same thing that WG is aiming for, bt that's a thing that Overlord should confirm for us I guess ;)

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    2. Mostly correct. Once implemented (not announcing it right now for EU), multi-server system works this way:

      - players login onto special server - it is called "center", this server stores the state of player account and periodically gets updates from "periphery" servers which can be EU1 and EU2.

      - players play their actual battles on those "periphery" servers which are interconnected with "center"

      - physically center and peripheries can be located in different places, the latter - to ensure better connection (lower ping)

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  5. I wonder if something can be done to make CW's more accessible for clan-less players. So you have to be there, you have to listen to orders, but you don't have to have 50 other people with you in order to archieve something. Some sort of individual easily accessed (important) battleground, where stakes are higher (W/R, amount of played battles requirement?) but rewards are greater (small amounts of gold?), possibly on the same map as current CW's... this thought must have occured to the designers, so I wonder, why was such a "higher tier play" (separated from randoms) denied? Splitting the random battles audience maybe?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Don't want to split the main game mode.

      As for CW accessibility, it's meant to be end-game content for 5-10% of players.

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    2. Tho we are thinking how to make it a bit more accessible for wider audience.

      Delete
  6. OT Question :
    When i moving crew from one tank to another with retraining , For example retrain for credits will keep 75% of crew's main role , I wanted to ask if this type of retrain (Without gold) is defecting only 25% of main role or also the additional skills like camo and repair etc ?
    I have a 100% crew with 2 skills , I do not want them lose 25% of their skills also , cause of retrain with credits .

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You will lose 25% of the total experience of your crew.
      But the additional skills/perks will keep their experience. It will just take you longer to get your crew main skill back to 100%.
      If your crew is not 100% trained and you drop your skills/perks, the experience will be used to train up the main skill to 100%.

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    2. You just lose the main skill experience.

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  7. I am hoping that the "mercenary" concept is still in design and will be addressed in Part II

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    Replies
    1. No, it won't be, sorry. I'm planning to cover relatively short-term things in it.

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  8. Don´t want to sound too negative ... but the decreased freezing time is not really that much of an inszentive to be offensive if you consider revolts forcing clans to stay in a pretty small area (depending on the revolt risk) as more extremely valuable tokens are busy with defense.

    The amount usually is not the big problem as far as i know from our and bordering clans - the amount of tokens is what limits the offensive options for a clan. Only chance to really be offensive is to act as a nomad clan - which is quite not-so-smart regarding the gold income ... the main inszentive in clan wars (apart from playing against better teams with tactics and stuff - which can be found in companies and eSports as well).

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    1. as long as I read WG's plans I can try to see reason behind them, the moment they try to explain why they are changing something in clan wars, I see they have no idea what they are doing.

      what I would like to see in CW are 2 options.
      1. Increasing freezing time of HQ in case it is lost. That way it would slow down the lemming train of zombie clans and made enemy HQ more valuable target to attack and knock out.

      2. Each player should give you 5 tokens (1 for LT, 1 for MT, 1 for HT, 1 for TD and 1 for SPG)
      you can have up to 75 tokens (15 tokens of each kind) in a province.
      That would allow more strategic choices if you can use different vehicles in battle.

      decreased freezing time are not so important, revolts will just make better clans smaller - instead of fighting between each other they will just focus on repelling zombie clans.


      Did WG learned anything from the napfest that no landing rule bring to WoT?

      Delete
  9. Hi Ovi!

    First of all I would like to say THANK YOU for finaly doing something with CW to make it more entertaining. So far it's only sitting on a couple of regions that have 2-3 map types, and playing the same battles on and on and on all the time, so ANY form of additional action would be great.

    At the same time i just need to ask You:
    You posted in Your post something about "normal" and "gold" provinces. Can You tell us more? I know that at the moment every single province is erning gold for the clan so hearing about two types now is a bit suprising for me. There were of course rumors and non official statements, but this was never clarified and explained in any official or semi-official form whatsoever.

    Another thing that I wanted to ask is: when will we see some sort of different map variants? Night battles and weathere were mentioned before, and most likely will affect the gameplay in many ways. This can add a lot th CW as defending one province can be different in different conditions. This most likely would make "sitting on a map" less boring, and not so static at all. I know that it's good to have an opportunity to master Your tactics on a map, and after two weeks with 30 battles played on one specific map You are prepared for almost anything, but how i that supposed to still be fun after 30 battles on the same map?

    Now something not related to the post itself:
    Pls give us an update on new/reworked maps and garage battles! It's been so long playing all the old maps over and over, that i'm DYING for any diversity in the game. New game modes that include assault etc. are not really a big success, so maybe garage battles would be an opportunity for a change!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. 1. Planning to differentiate provinces in terms of gold income stronger than now.

      2. Night battles and similar stuff belong to client side of things. Such changes require fundamental research. Currently we are thinking of garage and historical battles - eg first can also be used in CWs. As for 30 vs 30, we are working on that. :)

      Delete
  10. Wait, what? WGs Rattes, like in Landkreuzer Ratte? xD

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  11. What about giving clans more options to cummunicate with their members? Like a Message of the day (MOTD) or something like that?

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  12. After someone pillages a province will we be able to pillage it again when we get it back or 7 days waiting period applies?

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  13. Will be the battle-types in CWs change?

    I mean for (current) landing battles would be more realistic the "Encounter Battle",
    and for attacking-defending a land the "Assault" type.
    (Attacker and Defender sides are obviously squarely determined.)

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    1. My thinking is that garage battles and 30vs30 battles would suit CWs a lot better.

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    2. Sure, but this would require at least 50% bigger maps!

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    3. oh yeah.
      And if 1 battle for clan wars will take an hour using 30 players to play, you will of course start wandering, why clans who have 3 provinces dont attack anymore?

      Let's translate the suggested changes:
      Pillage: if you are weak, but good enough to have a chance to get high income province, all you need is to capture it to get 12k gold.
      If you can usually keep the best proviince and you happen to lose it, you lose 30k gold.
      So what wg gives better clans is incentive to protect their lands much better.

      Revolt: if you are big then you can't have tokens in all provinces. It increases risk of 1 of them being attacked or the risk of revolt.
      So the last thing you can do after that is to expand, you have to very carefully protect what you already get.
      However if you just landed and you happen to win, it will be easier with each new battle - until you will have some territry you will have to worry about.

      So... it's giving a bit of incentive to attack to clans who dont have anything and who already want to attack cause they can't do anything else.

      However for clans who already have 2-5 provinces this options will bring a lots of penalties for even trying to attack anyone.

      so what was that about incentive to attack?

      It's again the story with no land rule - it was advertised as a way to bringe balance and more clans to the map.
      The effect on euro server was, that the moment changes started, most wars between alliances stopped. Maybe more clans showed up, but they were second sub clans of land holders and new clans who were only able to stay for few days on 1-2 provinces.

      This "incentive to attack" will end with even bigger freeze in CW activities reducing clan wars to big land holders not touching each other and only eliminating landing clans.

      Delete
    4. Doesn't mean we will stick to clans of 100 with 30vs30 battles.

      Regarding the rest,

      basically against any change?

      Delete
  14. There was a rumour that stated a mercenary option will be on the Global Map, so Clans will be able to hire other clans on a mission for gold.

    Nice plans btw. Big plus to WG.

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    Replies
    1. This feature is still under consideration - ie it's not in development yet.

      Delete
  15. Can we get some some global views of things to come that aren't only related to Clans and clan wars?

    Mostly because,as you said, those news are relevant only for a 5-10% of players.

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    Replies
    1. You can refer to this - http://overlord-wot.blogspot.com/2012/05/wot-new-in-wot-digest-part-1.html
      and this http://overlord-wot.blogspot.com/2012/05/wot-new-in-wot-digest-part-2.html

      They are a bit old, but still give some idea on what we are working on now.

      Delete
  16. Should I even bother reading this`?
    Can anyone tell me if anything about server transfer is mentioned?
    Been waiting for that for over a year. Cant play clanwars...wrong timezone. its getting lame. losing interest in the game. 10 tier 10 and dont feel like pubbing anymore.
    *sad*

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    Replies
    1. Server transfer is in plans even tho it's not mentioned here.

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    2. Thank you, very glad to hear that!

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  17. Overlord someone at WG better rethink the new contest quick It's rather easy to cheat.

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    1. I think he means the chinese showdown. And by cheating I think he means dragging T1 tanks into T10 battles to gain lots of spotting XP and win in this class.

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    2. Yep that is one of the cheats, the other is more than one platoon pressing battle at the same time, do it with multiple platoons and you can easily contrieve one player getting a large score.

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    3. The obvious solution would be not to concentrate on T1 then, though

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    4. T1 has nothing to do with anything.

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  18. Why you changed the income of premium tanks? I have all pre tanks but now i wont buy the new ones coming becouse of that.

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    Replies
    1. Pretty much all of them feel this way. For me the least profitble is Pnther M10 that seems to have difficulties getting much better than neutral credit ballance, and i do NOT hve this problem on most non-premium tanks where my average is above the costs by 10-15K.

      I have no idea what tank does reddistic own from the premium group, but I can confirm that they pretty much have some income issues now (since 8.2 IMO). And I do own quite a few (T34, PantM10, Type62, MatildaBP), so I can actualy speak in terms of a general state things as I have a couple machines to compare.

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  19. So I saw you mentioned that WG used there Rattes to defend land? Am I misinterpreting this? How did that work? Are you saying they have actual playable models of the Ratte, I could only imagine what it's stats would be, do you have any clue to the stats? I know they arent gonna put it in game but to have it in a new mode of CW would be really cool!!! Thanks for the update Overlord we all seriously appreciate your efforts to keep us on the NA server up to date because at times we can feel a little left out! So Thanks again!!!

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  20. When can WG implement Clan Gold (transaction) records? This has been requested countless times by Clan commanders since CW came out.

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  21. seems to me that WG guys creating new ideas for clan wars are forbidden to play clan wars so they cater to the opinions expressed on the forums by people with no experience on clan wars on clan leader level.

    and those people always assume big clans don't WANT to do anything besides gold farming, while the truth is, at some point htey simply CAN'T do anything due to the lack of chips.

    One CW change is explained "it's wrong if 1 clan is able to hold 10 provinces" next CW changes is explained with "we need an incentive to attack".

    So now losing a territory means increased risk of revolt and attacker has less tanks. To the point when territory sizes become comparable.
    It's not an incentive to attack, it's "the better you are, the more effed up you will be", it's leveling everyone down.

    So more and more clans will be able to show up on the map. It doesnt matter if they are mindless lemmings, more players on the map is the only goal.

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    Replies
    1. No. It's not. Sheer number is not the goal. Diversity and richer gameplay are.

      Delete
    2. I can agree with this. Problem isn't some clan keeping 10 provinces or 20 if they can. Its about others to take them and current means aren't the best ones.

      WG interface don't help clans to make alliances where they could defend border on friendly ground. This would help old but also new clans to make alliances easier and ease needed coordination to move chips.

      Cover chips is maybe main problem, you should be able to help ally but not to that extend that attacker needs 3 wins row to get ground.

      What I'd like to see is different limits to battle tier, so that clans would have like 120 tier points to spend on 15 man team. Some provinces would be 80 points.

      Other is that you could drop troops behind enemy lines but further you drop them, smaller tier you can have. Like fly over 1 tile and lose 14 tier point, 2 tiles and lose 28points,... And clans should have 200 chips instead of 100. Same goes for defender, he should be able to move more than 1 tile/day to defend but at same cost of losing battle tier points.

      And trust me, there is no general gold farming in big clans. Like in ASEET we pay for those who fight and we want to fight! Normally there is more than 20 people waiting to get on board of game. If we had more chips we would fight more and love it. But with this random revolt change we need more chips/sibling clans at back to keep things in order.

      Current stable state is around 3 battles a day as you can get 3 15 chip sets. If we had more chips there would be more war.

      If you want to hear more pls pm. me. Antti

      Delete
  22. Are there any plans (I know this would be a far future thing) to actually put the CW map in-game? When I'm playing and want to check to see when our battles are, it's a bit of a pain to exit to go look it up on the site. I mean, you have that nice map in the garage...make that a click through to open the CW map?

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    Replies
    1. +1 to that request!

      Some sort of "Clan Screen" with member list, some "note of the day" message as somebody mentioned before, and the whole clan and CW management functionality should be already in the game at least since the beggining of 2012!

      Delete
    2. It will certainly require a lot of work. Since we are currently planning to use another web engine, there is no consideration of such client-side CW support. However, I do think it's possible in more distant future.

      Delete
  23. A few weeks ago I managed to sandwich a t 54 with my e 75 on dragons ridge (the farming hill sides) but I was disappointed to see that it almost didn't take any damage. And I was doing full out Russian street techno on its engine and view ports. I got him after som more "cuddling" but I wished sandwiching would cause more damage, as you would surley ruin the engine. Cupola and turret ring. Any change we will see that?

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    Replies
    1. Ramming damage depends on speed and weight difference.

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    2. I wasnt ramming him. I was on top of him! The ramming dmg is ok, but you hardly damage driving on top of them.

      Delete
  24. Hi Overlord,

    What will happen to the built in voice chat ? It really needs to have a massive overhaul because right now it barely works!

    Thanks.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Since newly-released 8.3? Having troubles with voice chat?

      Delete
  25. Whoever thought that clans can materialize in the middle of a territory out of the blue, giving a fuck about the time you spent organizing your defences and land, is retarded.

    Just so that you know.

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  26. This comment has been removed by the author.

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