1 – Armor means nothing. Most of the tanks should be played as having no armor at all, even if they have stat-wise. I see there are labels for tanks, like an "assault" tank that is labeled to be able to push and bounce. They cant. This is all because the "gold" spam has become such an issue that practically everyone shoots "gold". This completly nullified the meaning of armor because you cant push or hold a spot as "assault" armored TD because you will get shot in the casemate and mantle and penetrated without much issues. This doesnt only apply to high tiers as looking at the damage log I can tell that the "gold" spam starts as low as around tiers 5-6. There is simply no meaning to armor anymore unless you happen to roll into someone who shoots regular rounds. On higher tiers you are simply punished for not using premium rounds and being on minus-creds every battle (which you already are most likely if you're not among the top on won battle). Slower armored tanks seem to be mostly poor performing because of this and next point. Like, who cares about weakspots when you just can penetrate frontally without caring that much where you shoot. Premium rounds should either not exist at all or be highly nerfed in terms of damage output so they dont deal the same damage as regular ones. This was a pure p2w mechanic back then and they changed them apparently to very expensive credit rounds which doesnt exactly change the fact that they are p2w, you just have to earn those creds back (by also paying money for example for premium account)
2 – Autoloaders. Oh god. What happened here. Back then french tanks had autoloaders and very few USA I think. Now everyone and their grandma seems to get an autoloader. Because of that, holding a point is just impossible (just like you cant hold it anymore thanks to your armor which means nothing now). You roll up to a point on map with 2-3 other guys. You want to hold it, you know, typical for this game peek'n'shoot. Nope. Because on the other side there are also around 4 tanks but three of them (or even all) are autoloaders. They dont care that you will shot them…once. You get rushed and absolutely massacred before you even reload. I dont get it why there isnt a limit to autoloading tanks on 1 team to prevent cheesing like that. If you yourself dont have same composition of autoloading tanks in the same spot then you're fucked, they get out, rush you, kill you and now they won the flank. You also cant retreat upon seeing them because most of the maps are constructed in such a way that if you try to retrat, you will be shot by some other guys from some other direction (new maps that were added during those 8 years seem to actually be a bit better designed IMO, old "3 lanes poke and choke" are so bad and boring). It's kinda weird how there is a arty limit of 2 but there is no limit to autoloaders.
3 – Arty seems barely useful now. From what I could tell, splash damage pretty much no longer exists. I could hit a HE shell – that is supposed to have around 5-6m radius – right next to enemy track and I wont even get that typical audio saying something about "almost hitting". Nothing. Nada. Either you hit dead on or you dont. Which makes inaccurate arties absolutely useless I guess
4 – Too big tier difference still exists. +/- 1 tier should be the standard. Majority of the -2 tiered tanks are not able to fight +2 tier tanks. If you're on bottom of the tier and +2 tiers compose like 1/3 to half of upper tiers, you're in for a poor game. This has been an issue every since the game started but oh well, see number 10 later, it exists for a reason and player experience sadly doesnt matter
5 – Powercreep. Mostly related to the autoloader issue but not entirely. It seems that older tanks in the game are just…obsolete. You're not doing much, you cant do much, you will die. This, along with gold spam and tons of autoloaders made for example my experience in JgTiger 8.8 – that I used to have so much fun back 8 years ago – into rather poor experience. My T110E3 used to be able to hold a chokepoint, now I'm getting penetrated into casemate even with some regular rounds from some tanks. Also for whatever reason the "750" damage gun almost never deals 750 damage. Most of the time its around 620-650 but that's another thing
6 – Spotting mechanics changed a lot ? I kinda dont understand this one, there is the view range limit and render range limit, from what I remember if you are outside a tank's view range, you simply cant get spotted by that tank. That doesnt seem to be a thing anymore as frequently on open maps I can confirm that I'm spotted by a single tank (for example there was no one else left on that flank) that is outside the view range (but still inside the render range). So its like you can get spotted inside the render range now.
7 – Paid "better battle pass" thing seems like a joke when there is already a ton of stuff you can/have to buy.
8 – I've mentioned maps before and I gotta say that some of the new maps are really good. However, due to all the powercreep and other stuff, I kinda have a feeling that maps are simply too small overall, especially on higher tiers (not that much of an issue on lower tiers). For slower tanks on rather open maps, you often end up dead before reaching you're intended destination/flank. I just feel like for 15 players the maps are too small these days. That also brings me to those "grand battles" which apparently are so god damn rare that I only played one. But boy…that's the map size I like. And honestly it was a pleasant experience. I played only 1 so I cant tell exactly if I'm right or wrong but it felt kinda perfect when it came to ratio of player numbers to map size. Maybe 25 would be better, maybe not. Cant tell, but boy the match was fun
9 – Multiple use repair kits. Great stuff. Should have been like that since the beginning
10 – Point 1, 2, 4, 5 and 7 clearly exist for money-making (for devs, not you xd) reasons. Which brings me to an interesting thought, that in the age where companies receive a massive backlash for unfair p2w mechanics or massive years-spanning grind unless you pay to shorten it to few days, absurd lootbox mechanics, exclusive overpriced stuff…all of that basically, it baffles me how this company introduced more and more unbalanced stuff, pushing players more and more into paying and they get away with it. It's almost like the players of this particular game simply dont care as opposed to playerbases of other games. Like…why ? Players vote with their wallets and companies getting greedier and greedier finally got hit back for their practices, but here it seems that not only WG didnt get any backlash at all but they acutally (probably ?) make more money than ever because no one seems to care that much as to stop supporting them for all the messy balance…no, for all the non-existent balance that they finally achieved
11 – Oh, last time addition, MM balance doesnt exist. Not like it ever did from what I remember, but there is absolutely no skill-balance between teams, nor balance between players. As per every online game that has MM, poor players shouldnt be playing against good players and vice versa. One team shouldnt have clearly better players (bigger number of them) than the other. One sided roflstomps are a daily thing when they shouldnt. But that is a plague of many online games. I wonder if the ranked mode actually has a working MM so you dont get a "semi-pro guy" against "poor saturday player" but I guess not.
I guess that's all, at least all my thoughts I can remember. If I were an actually trying-to-do-something and trying-to-reach-something player like back then, years ago, I would quit faster than I upvote quality memes. The game just seems to lost all balance and is in such a messy state where I'm wondering – as per point 10 – why there is no backlash from the community that forces developers to do something because otherwise they loose money. It just doesnt seem to be a thing. They keep milking and they are doing great. Good for them I guess.
Don't get me wrong, I still have fun in like half of matches I play but it's just…meh. I kinda play like around 15 matches, shoot here, shoot there, the games are much faster because of the powercreep (kinda stupid, if you want faster games then reduce the match time instead of introducing tanks that resolve the games faster punishing anyone who doesnt play them but well, again all of these is clearly for gaining more money from the game)
Back when I quit WoT, I started playing Armored Warfare for a bit. And maybe my memory is poor but I remember AW being better balanced and much less grindy game when I played it, and it was still beta I think. It seems that the game is pretty much dead now but TBH back then it was funnier to play than WoT. Right now, sure, I can have fun as I said, but I'm completly surprised that people are still trying to "try-hard" and achieve stuff when the game balance just doesnt exist and all you can do is to just pew pew for fun TBH ¯_(ツ)_/¯. I'm too old for any online try-harding these days. So, that's all, have fun (or not xd) and remember to vote with your wallets wisely（＾＿・）
PS: There is also a matter of cheats but TBH I dunno and dont really care, back then cheating was a massive issue. No idea how it is now, I cant really tell if anyone is using cheats but one thing that struck me is how perfectly some players (especially when looking at my allies) hit tanks that are outside of render range. So I asked uncle google and sure enough, there is a hack that displays tanks for you outside your render range xd
