[WoTB] Mobile Gameplay

The current principle for WoT Blitz we try to adhere is focusing primarily on battle aspects of the game, at the same time trying to streamline and simplify the garage management part as a whole. This includes having cleaner interface for main garage screen, overhauling crews as concept, changing the way consumables/shells/equipment is handled.

What things from your perspective should be considered? Any changes to progression? Currency balance for WOT? What would be the things you would be willing to spend money for in general in such a mobile game? Like having limited fuel or energy that replenishes with either time or money? :)
What could significantly change the steep learning curve of WoT (there is such on PC, recollect your first battles) on mobile while preserving certain challenge which is absolutely necessary for any game?

Feel free to post most radical things.

[WoT] Making Nasty Things Prettier

In response to Nasty Little Things post,

the feedback actually appeared to be more applicable for PC WoT than for WoT Blitz, since in the latter we either have done many things differently (aiming, crews, key bindings, interface, etc) or have already accounted for what was suggested (platoon restrictions, MMing spreads, vehicle filters in garage, etc).

So I have forwarded the summary below to Storm for his review, he said it was useful. Probably I can squeeze some more from him in future. Right now it's rather difficult because of the workload related to 0.8.9 (EU and NA) update which is being tested publicly at the moment. By the way how do you like the update so far?

Mechanics

It's really annoying having aimed at a tank far away with no ground behind him and shoot just a split second after the tank disappears and when your gun immediately raises itself making it a definite miss.

Aiming/reticule automatically moves up a bit when I aim at a target far away. Normally you would have to aim higher than the target, because the shell drops while it is in the air. But WoT does this automatically. At first this seems like a good way to help inexperienced players. But in the end it hinders me hitting my targets. When a target is moving and I have to aim in front of it, I would just aim a bit higher to account for shell drop and a bit the the left or right, so the target "drives into the shell".

But in WoT this happens: As soon as I move my reticule away from the target, to account for it's speed/direction of travel, the automated vertical correction no longer aims at the distance of the target but it aims at whatever I am currently aiming at. If it is a hill, or even the sky, my shot will be too high, or too low, and I can't do anything about it.

Also why are there still no tier limitations on platooning to prevent the Maus + Leichtraktor troll platoons? I can't think of a single reason for not preventing this from being possible.

My biggest bugbear in WoT is that often it's possible to peek over a bit of terrain / round a building in in sniper mode, place the reticle squarely over an enemy tank, (without that red outline showing up, but WHOLE targeting reticle over tank), fire, and just hit the terrain because the collision model doesn't match what's visible.

Also, make it possible for the red highlight around enemy vehicle when you target it, to show up when aiming at the enemy tank across a wreck of a tank. At the moment, for instance, if you aim at enemy tank through a wreck e.g. between wreck's gunbarrel and hull, you have your penetration indicator work, but no red highlight show up.

When in a rush and using hot keys for repair kits and you hit the wrong one you are basically fucked. You need to move your hand to the ESC key to close it, retype the hotkey to get it right. Very bad. 

camera's settings reset after each battle (really senseless feature)

Get rid of the forced f1 help key binding in game. I mean, FFS, who uses the help key after 100, 1000, 10,000 batles? Yet, its FORCED bound to one of the MOST useful F keys. For god sake, allow that F1 key to be rebound to something useful. 

Ability to rebind ctrl and alt

AFK tanks and bots.

The existence of premium ammo and the ability to spam it endlessly without any limitations. Every tank is designed and balanced with its armor and penetration of its gun taken into account.

Chat

I would also like a notification if someone adresses me in chat - a ping sound or something. Clanchat, whispers, etc. in battle. Chatlog.

Not being able to private message with those in my clan is annoying. I'm forced to add people already in my clan list, to my friends list, just to send them a message.

For me, lack of any indication in e.g. clan chat, that someone is AFK or in battle, it would be really nice if I could set some infos for their mates (or if I'm in battle, system would set it for me), similar you can do that on communicators like Skype.

Limited ignore list size (256?)

No counter for clan members online

Interface. Lobby

The absence of ping in garage. Not funny when you go to battle with 999 ping. 

Plane/Tank viewer. In EVE Online you can see in the market your ship in a 3D fashion (even if it in the game the shape has it no meaning.). As for WOT where shape (slope) has a meaning, it should be in the game. How? To save space add a magnifying glass symbol on the picture of the Tank/Plane details; if you click it a window opens and you can see your plane/tank and can scroll in, look it from all sides.

better indication of an invite or chat request, something should popup in the middle of the screen to get your attention, rather than the button/icon simply glowing.

Transaction logs

Interface. Vehicle Specs

how much HP the turret uprgade adds to the tank is to either buy it and find out or look on youtube at videos of upraded tanks

The horizontal gun velocity is one of the most important stats for an arty.

You can find that info nowhere ingame.

A warning on light tanks that suddenly get Scout Tiering, as in the Pz38na.

Interface. Platoons

Tank Tier in platoon window. I cannot believe your UI designers missed this out, and we have to rely on a mod such as XVM to show our platoon mates tank tiers (and battle tiers).

Special Battles, Tank Company, Platoon, Training Room interfaces (and possibly Team Battles - have not seen its interface yet). These need to show tank tier, battle tiers.

Tank sorting in TC and CW waiting room. Currently the sort is based on when the player joined the room, which is useless. It means the caller is constantly having to go down the list multiple times making sure there are enough mediums or T57s or whatever for the plan. A simple sort by tank would make this 100x easier.

If anything the platoon/TC should just transfer leadership to the last guy standing in it so he has the option to invite others again instead of making a new group.

Interface. Tank carousel

Why are there still no tier and premium filters in the tank ribbon?

Tank Tier filtering in garage - this is an absolute must, especially if you have a large amount of tanks in your garage.

Option to have few rows of tanks "portraits" instead of big useless tank

Tank Carousel. I want more then Primary markers. Tier, Grinding, Clan Wars, Tank company, and favourites are a must for me. As this list is different for each player, just let us create and name our own filters and select which tanks are in it.

Possibility to sort tanks in any order I want (according to my prefereable order of playing them

Interface. Missions

Very often the missions are simply named mission, There should be a name for every one of them.

Some missions although have measurable parameters (like damage done, XP earned etc), dont have progress bar attached to them.

Mission after battle interface could be improved so that you do not have to click to every mission to see what they are. 1 line of explanation under the mission name would be enough.

Interface. Battle

Fire notification. Especially a problem on large screen monitors, it should be a great big message in the middle of the screen.

Reload timer. Come on guys, how hard can it actually be if mod developers have implemented this in the various cross hairs for a long time. Minor UI tweak.. major usability improvement.

Interface. Crews

XVM's didn't have a crew transfer/send option and it was torture transferring crews one by one again.

Garage - send entire crew to barracks /pick best crew. Again, we have to wait for XVM to step up and give us a major usability improvement especially when loading a crew into a premium tank.

Crew manipulation. Without XVM's update it is tedious and slow to reuse crew on premium tanks. Send all crew to barracks, use own crew, use best crew, use same type crew.

Option to assign a crewmember to many different tanks at the same time - of course if a specific tanker is in battle in one tank, player is not able to play any other tank where this tanker is assigned. That way I will need absolutely no crewmemeber swapping while using the same crew on premium and normal vehicle.

Misc

Whenever you patch an existing tank you drop all equipment, consumables and stuff from him and you don'T tell us- So we login and play with stock and no modules the first time as you usually don't notice this. MARK THE TANK and force us to check equipment first when you do this. Its rude not doing so.

No automatic server change when joining CW

a checkbox on the login page below the "save password" checkbox labeled "atomatic login"

the checkbox is greyed out if "save password" is not enabled

if "save password" and "automatic login" is enabled the client will go directly into the garage if the player presses "play" in the launcher or launches worldoftanks.exe directly

to disable auto login, change the user or change the server the player has to "disconnect from server" form the game menu

Kosher Counter Attack

Almost exactly 40 years ago a battle raged that would have had the aggressive tank commanders of World war two, such as Patton and Rommel, cheering and yelling "That's how you use armour!" Today we will look at that battle.

In 1973 Israel was engaged with its four neighbours in the Yom Kippur war. After the first week of fierce combat the Golan Heights had stabilized, and focus shifted to the Sinai Desert. As dawn broke on the 14th of October a 9 minute artillery barrage landed on the dug in Israeli forces. From the lower ground around the Suez canal Egyptian armoured vehicles numbering in the thousands advanced behind a walking barrage. This was Egypt's first ever attempt at a major armoured attack. Using Warsaw pact doctrine things went wrong immediately. The combination of exploding shells and the sunrise behind the Israeli's made it almost impossible to see the Israeli tanks. The British and American made tanks occupied hull down positions on the higher ground. Equally the Egyptians attacked along abroad front trying to grab all their objectives immediately.

Things on the Israeli side looked worrying too. The sheer number of enemy tanks and APC's advancing on them caused alarm and awe. Opening fire at two and a half miles, the defenders reaped a massive toll of destroyed armour. One Israeli tank battalion reported knocking out over 60 tanks in an hour. Despite this the sheer weight of numbers meant that the Egyptian attacks reached the Israeli lines. As the columns of Tanks and APC's punched through the defensive lines Israeli tanks were killing T-55's and T-62's at under 50m. Still the Egyptians drove headlong towards their objectives, not returning fire. As the Egyptian casualties mounted their attacks began to falter. Snatching the moment the Israeli defenders charged and routed the Egyptian forces. The Egyptians had lost about 400 tanks, while the Israeli's had lost only 6. Although another 34 had been damaged. With the Egyptians attacking force blunted the Israeli's prepared to go on the offensive.

Two roads, the Tirtur and Akavish, stretch across the Sinai. These lead to the north end of the Great Bitter Lake. They were laid by the Israeli's after they captured the Sinai in the Six Day war, 6 years before. The roads also lead to an area of the Suez Canal where the canal ramparts had been weakened in case the Israeli's needed to cross the canal.

To maintain the element of surprise the Israeli counter attack would need to cross the 20 miles from the front lines to the crossing point before dawn. The only problem was the road had an Egyptian armoured division parked across it. However reconnaissance had discovered that the join between the Egyptian Second and Third armies was just to the south of the Akavish. So on October the 15th, as darkness fell, three Battalions of tanks set out on the cross country trip through 19 miles of desert. Remarkably they made it undetected to the crossing point. The force split up at this point. With one battalion moving to the North to block any Egyptian thrust towards the crossing point. One battalion remained at the Canal. The final battalion moved to attack the Egyptians from the rear and open the roads.

After going only a short distance the Israeli's reached a place now known as the Chinese Farm, where they found the entire Egyptian 2nd Armies reserve force. This formation was only a mile from the crossing point. A raging battle erupted there as all three armour battalions joined the battle. The fighting was so fierce that after 15 minutes so many tanks were burning it illuminated the desert night like it was daylight. The battle raged for two and a half days, as Egyptian forces attacked from both the north and south. However the Israeli tankers held on.

Meanwhile Major Giora Lev led his 30 tanks down the Akavish road, and through the tiny gap that had been opened at the Chinese Farm. Some of his tanks towed motorized rafts behind them.

 

Despite taking fire from both sides of the road the Major reached the crossing point. Each raft could carry a tank, just. Reversing his tank onto the raft was tricky, but Major Lev led his battalion across the Suez canal. As the first tank across Lev crested a rise and spotted, and destroyed an Egyptian APC. By 0900 on the 15th his entire battalion was across the Suez.
At this stage the Akavish road was still under constant attack, and no logistic units could make it through the gap. This included the Bridge sections that would be used to cross the canal. Major Lev was ordered to hold position and secure the bridgehead.

Major Lev ignored his orders, and used his tanks to hammer the rear areas of the Egyptians. Splitting his force up into small raiding parties he started wreaking havoc. Major Lev took command of a platoon of tanks and led them, with some supporting infantry, towards the Airfield at Deversoir. As his 4 tanks approached the front gate the Sentry not knowing Israeli tanks were anywhere near by, threw a salute.
After his combat group had smashed all the vehicles planes and AA weapons, Lev found time to use the airfields telephone, he called his wife.
Returning to the crossing point, Major Lev received a Long range radio transmission from the head of the Israeli armed forces. From the first day of the war the Egyptian SAM batteries and wreaked a huge toll on the Israeli Air force. Lev was ordered to destroy as many SAM batteries as he could find.

By now the bitter fighting at the Chinese Farm was beginning to swing in the Israeli's favour, and  reinforcements were arriving. Again splitting his force up into raiding parties, normally of a tank and APC section, the Israeli's went SAM hunting. One raiding party destroyed 12 SAM batteries in a day. Overall Major Lev's battalion accounted for over 100 vehicles on the 17th. Normally the Tanks would take up position about 2000m away and start shooting up the battery. Meanwhile the APC's would close then assault through the batteries position using their machine guns.
In desperation the Egyptians were firing SAM's at the tanks. Although utterly unaimed the sight of a SA-2 Guideline screaming towards you is a terrifying sight. One Israeli Tanker described it "[...] like a Telephone pole flying at you at very high speed!"

As the final days of the war were entered more re-enforcements were channelled through the bridgehead. They began to surround the Egyptian 3rd army, one Israeli unit at the end of the war had driven over 1200 miles in armoured vehicles to complete the encirclement. Taking fire from two sides, and being bombed by the Israeli Air force the Second Army took heavy casualties. It was only the cease fire that prevented its utter destruction.