I've been playing this game on-and-off since it was first available as a beta test in Europe and to be honest it's shocking to see how much the game has both developed and stagnated at the same time. I'm nothing special in terms of performance, maybe an average player at best, but I like tanks and would like to enjoy the game on the long-run. Interested in your thoughts, warning, wall of text.
I have maybe three of four main qualms about WoT but lets start with the good.
- Graphics and sound have both come a VERY long way since the early days, the horrible pixel forests of old are gone both on maps and vehicles. Details are abundant in vegetation, scenery and geology. The sounds of the guns, engines, tracks grinding on different surfaces add real enjoyment value to the game. Furthermore some of the countdown music you get simply gives me goosebumps every time I hear them.
- Map design – mostly gone are the corridor shooter galleries of old (or you can blacklist the remaining which is good), the maps have become both larger and more nuanced which I do like. It has to be said that balance is somewhat lacking in certain maps (some spawns are just simply superior to others, etc.) But this I feel is mostly a positive change
- Vehicle variety – Holy BEJESUS! Those tech trees… having maybe 1-2 hours screen time a day at best its impossible for me to max out every tech tree, not that I'd want to, but the opportunity is there and that is good to see.
The bad.
- Spotting mechanics: to me this is one of the major causes which forces me to stop playing after 3-4 weeks. The fact that someone can keep shooting you from 100 meters away without being spotted simply because there is a small bush in the way is ridiculous. This combined with the amount of health a tank has vs. average damage forces most to camp and reduces replayability of the game. As this is an arcade and not a simulator I don't expect bushes to catch fire or simply be stripped of leafs from the first or second shot but some form of triangulation logic should be implemented that in time negates the effect of concealment. For example if you were to shot from the same bush three consecutive times then you'd be revealed as the enemy commanderspotter could gauge your location from the repeated shots. Plus any enemy teammates that also have line of sight to the same bush would count, so if only one sees the bush then three shots, if three tanks have LoS then only one shot is required. This would force both mediums and TDs to remain mobile, think more about positioning, etc. Map design could be made better more suited to a mobile meta, etc. (maybe there are much better solutions, this is the best one I can come up with).
- Balance: I don't think there is Soviet bias in the form that most people think. Most tanks T7-8+ are all well balanced if we're talking about a few unicorns who are actively cooperating to win. They know the weak points, the best places on the maps (per tank type) where they can play to their tank's strengths, can read the map due to practice, remain cool under fire AND can control their tanks through reflex. Me? I have no idea where the best spots are, or about the specifics of the innumerable amount of Object tanks and very little hope of reading the map accurately. And lets not even talk about cooperation. In my case these vehicles in which you go hull down in and boom "iddqd" enabled are super overpowered, I panic, try to leave but by then it's too late and soon I'm back in the garage. Yes there are certain immensely OP tanks (Defender, khm) but I do believe that most are balanced around the hypothesis of a very well rounded commander who actively cooperates with others to achieve victory and not the herpaderp average Joe. We just drive around the battlefield cluelessly only realizing there's a Maus in front of us when it crushes our tank beneath its massive bulk.
- Lacking end-game: now as this is not an MMO I'm not expecting raids or instances, etc. I'm talking about providing motivation to playing high-end tanks. I have five or six T10s unlocked and hardly play any of them. What is the point? Most games are a collection of lemming train stomps (either way) or campfests. Maybe 1 in 10 games is actually enjoyable irrespective of the outcome, those are horrid odds if you ask me. Where are the fun T10 specific game modes, special challenges, quests you can do for rewards (cosmetics, slight personalization of your tanks different aspects, etc.)? Frontlines is a grindfest for slightly over-tuned premium tanks, clan wars is not applicable for me, so what to do with these? Usually after a few weeks of playing the futility of advancing the tech trees hits me and my motivation to log back in flies out the window.
- The grind: with the addition of xp and credit boosters this is much less of an issue but I can't help feel that WG is just patching certain aspects of the game without ever actually looking at the whole. Sure you could say that T10 is the icing on the cake and the journey there is more important than the final tank itself. Right… then why are stock tanks borderline unplayable in most cases? To get a sense of progress? Bullshit. Some tanks have such convoluted development paths (E50, khm) that I just don't even want to start with it, you need what 70K XP to take it close to playable at T9? Sure blow some free XP on it, but… still can't help but feel that there are too many components to be unlocked and bought and the end result is not worth it.
- Pay-to-win: OP premium tanks aside (we could just boycott WG and not buy them) the push to buy premium consumables is becoming too obnoxious. Armor creep forces you to use more and more premium rounds pushing credit income down, this in-turn forces you to buy premium time. Once you have premium you'll advance faster between tiers making upkeep even more expensive pushing you to buy premium tanks so you can maximize gains. BUT wait here is a new tech tree which has an even better armoured line-up of tanks so please buy more credit and XP boosters to reach them even faster. I'd gladly pay for premium time OR premium vehicles but this vicious cycle of pushing ever more premium stuff on people is a bit much for me.