No offense but I kind of wonder what Wargaming does everyday? Like, I get they moved HQ but even before that the game doesn't really change except for a few new Premium Tanks, a not-dissimilar tech tree line, and maybe a new map per year.
They are making a profit and maybe don't want to mess with success. Crew 2.0 and experimental equipment received such backlash and no support from the playerbase that maybe WG just thinks it's best to leave the servers running and call it a day.
If there are any players interested in expanding gameplay they should speak up. There's only negative comments at the hint of change or new features so WG can hardly be blamed for not doing anything. The playerbase is vehemently tame and the game is stale.
If you disagree, please do not downvote this post. With so many downvotes I won't be able to post and stir the pot. Please express yourself in a comment but don't censor people.
What follows is a response to the poll about areas people might want to see the game improve:
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Multi-turret control and co-axial weapons sound fun. Machinegun fire could simulate the commander having to close the top-hatch and reduce vision or something. If bullets against armor are too loud for the crew it could maybe delay controls to simulate difficulty in the commander relaying orders to the crew.
Artillery used to be satisfying to play. Back in the day you could 1-shot tanks from 100% health with a penetration. Artillery felt destructive.
I feel like Artillery should be inaccurate with large blasts of damage, similar to how it was in ww2. That it's precision sniping to do small bits of damage and apply a debuff is gamey and good for newbies, but not awesome like arty used to be.
Maybe they could make 2 kinds of arty: a field gun and an SPG. A field gun would be inexpensive and let you snipe for chip damage and acclimate to the game mechanics. An SPG would have chaotic accuracy and let you drop bombs and wreak havoc at long intervals. The massive shells could cost more than regular tank shells and present you with the decision to lay a barrage for a price or only fire when opportunity presents itself. Yeah it's rough getting 1-shotted but war is hell.
If they were powerful enough they could be like a reward. Like after 5 victories you get an Arty voucher and you can drop the wrath of God on people for a game.
Crew 2.0 sounded like an improvement. The playerbase should not not want it implemented.
A new equipment system could probably be really fun. The Experimental Equipment sounded really simple and almost like nothing but if you could customize your tank's modules that might be interesting. Field Modifications is probably good enough but it would be interesting if you could Frankenstein a tank out of parts from other tanks. Naturally there would be a best Meta combination with no way to balance other choices, though.
In this thread I've seen the suggestion of balancing all the tanks. This isn't really possible since there's basically the universal design that is best and then other stuff just for flavor.
For city maps you want the classic Russian tank. The round, impenetrable turret with no cupolas, thick side armor for side scraping, and high-alpha for peak-a-boom trading and then reloading under cover of allies. For hilly terrain you want what used to be the exclusively American design of impenetrable turret, modest cupola weakspot, and extreme gun depression.
WG seems to be releasing these designs to every nation but these seem to be the two main types of terrain and subsequent tank designs. Adding hybrid tanks with different engine or gun statistics just makes a kind of inefficient and impure tank design. I'm guessing these tanks are about as balanced as they can be.
Except for the STB-1. It has the ideal combination of mobility, turret armor, and gun. It is above average in the characteristics that matter and chooses weaknesses in areas that don't. Also the Vz 55. These are the all-around best tanks for your average tank battle. You take a hybrid tank and give it perhaps broken soft-stats to compensate. I'm not sure that's the best way to balance all the lines. Are the specialized tanks the best or are the hybrids? Perfect balance is a moving target and there will always be an overall best tank no matter what.
What about German tanks? They're supposed to be fearsome but are easily dispatched because they're not meta. They specialize in thick armor which doesn't matter in World of Tanks. Gold shells go through you like butter except now you're as slow as molasses.
WG could make an automated system where the tanks with the worst records are compensated with additional credits or something as a way to balance the lines.
The true king of World of Tanks is the Tank Destroyer. And the turreted, armorless TD at that. At the end of the day all you need in WOT is camo and a good gun and the paper, turreted, TD specializes in just that. Why would you trade gold in the middle of the map as a heavy when you could farm with standard AP as an invisible TD?
Ideally it would be less expensive and more fun to brawl, but that's not how WOT is balanced.
The trade-off for a paper TD is middling. Having no armor doesn't even make you really that susceptible to damage. After you've killed the tank that spotted you you might have to use a consumable if there's a tank with enough Intuition skill to load an HE shell and enough RNG for that shell to hit and penetrate. The glass cannons in WOT are too beefy. A Grille 15 can brawl with the best of them when they should be devastated from a single penetration. They should be fragile and substantially affected from splash damage.
Most tanks in WOT are sluggish and inaccurate. Perfect for an invisible TD to sit in their designated spot and farm. WG has even described their map design process as there being spots designated for each tank class. There's the bushes on the red line for artillery, high vantage point rocks in the back with bushes for TDs, chokepoints in the middle for brawling heavies, chokepoints farther away from spawn for mediums, and various bushes for passive scouts. Every map has the exact same design philosophy and exact same strategy. It's boredom that makes tanks advance into such suicidal fortification.
These are interesting, minor, ideas to expand on WOT but I'd like to expand the scope even broader and change the meta substantially.
Tanks are awesome because they're so fearsome and destructive but in-game they don't feel very strong. In footage you see tanks exploding after a single penetration but in WOT you tag each other dozens of times before dying. It drags out the action so much that the whole thing is diluted and boring. I like that there are no respawns in WOT and would even like for it to be even more hardcore and reduce the TTK (time-to-kill). It's like comparing American NFL to touch football.
Similar to sports, the maps are not unpredictable enough. That they are formulaic and you can memorize which spots fit your gun depression, etc is kind of lame. It would be more interesting if maps were procedurally generated and players had to adjust to new surroundings as well as battle each other. They could be symmetrical to ensure balance.
And make them fully destructible! Crushing buildings is awesome and I want even more. Let me blast a hole into any house an enemy is hiding behind. Let me set a city block on fire and roll through after it has burned down to capture the objective. Let me hull-down in a crater from an artillery explosion.
The "feel" of the terrain could add a lot. People like mudding in real life and watching rally cars or Monster Trucks is pretty interesting. I'd like if tanks could tear up the gritty earth and throw up debris while they peel out and powerslide. There's room for improvement over the smooth ground and neat tracks that we have now.
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WOT is a lot of fun but is beginning to show its age. This is how I'd like it to advance and I'd be interested to read constructive feedback.
