4Game

Listen dears,

I've been with this game since the BETA. I've played it for eleven years. I saw the great potential and joy this game could bring with it from the start and have sunk countless hours into random battles, clan wars, and everything else. But any more booting up the game has become a chore. Overall, I'm tired.

I'm tired of fully aimed shots on vehicles with as low as .23 dispersion like my Grille 15 slapping to the outside of the reticule and missing even at close range.

I'm tired of watching high caliber 122-155mm shells slap uselessly against the flat, un-angled side armor of a medium tank, or slap tracks or wheels for zero damage.

I'm tired of even the heaviest armor in the game being rendered worthless by high pen gold rounds and lucky snap-shots.

I'm tired of the absolute horrific inconsistency of the game in general.

World of Tanks is one of the only games I have ever played where I can take four shots from the exact same position, at the exact same target in the exact same position, with the exact same shell, and get four completely different results.

I'm serious. Take a friend or a clanmate into a training room. Have them line up opposite of you, and throw some rounds at them. Even if neither of you move at all and all you do is click the mouse, each result could be different. The first shot hits true and pens, the second goes low and eats dirt, the third goes high and hits the tickets part of their armor and bounces, the fourth hits the same spot as the third but pens, the fifth flies wide right and crits for no damage. With a little bit of luck, you can probably even fire ten rounds and not get the same exact result twice.

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I have a Lowe. I love my Lowe. And once upon a time it was renowned for having one of the most accurate guns in the game. With upgraded bounty and bond equipment, a seven perk crew, and some good ole rations, It rocks a rather respectable .26 dispersion. With over three thousand battles in it, I know the vehicle well and I wear my marks of excellence with pride.

And yet. On a vehicle this well equipped, with this much experience, I find time and time and time again that even my fully aimed shots simply don't fly where I aim them. 80% is my over-all average hit rate, but that's not factoring in shells that technically hit the target but not where I wanted the shell to hit, often resulting in no damage dealt. And then there are vehicles with .3, .4, and even .5 dispersion values that I have no equipment nor experience in. If I can't hit 90+% of my shots reliably in my Lowe, the others don't have a chance.

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The RNG values are ridiculously broad and inconsistent. There are days where I find I have better luck at a craps table in a casino than I do in a game of world of tanks. My own tank's performance often feels vastly outside of my control, let alone the actual outcome of the match. And it often makes the game outright unfun to play. Its not just a dice roll, its five or six dice rolls that all have to go in your favor.

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Far be it from me to complain without a proposed solution though. My suggestion is a painfully simple one.

Shorten the range of parameters impacted by RNG. For example, the AP round on the RHM's 128mm gun ranges from 184 to 308 in penetration value. That is an absurd range of 124 mm of penetration difference between a high and a low roll. Let's tighten that up. 240-275. The high end can come down, the low end can come up, so that a player can have a reasonably predictable outcome of firing a round. The damage, too, can be tightened. The same round's current damage ranges from 367 to 613. Again, a massive range, where the high nearly doubles the low. Let's tighten that up, 400-550.

Penetration values of a given round should differ by no more than 10 to 15% of the cap. Damage shouldn't be any more than 25 to 30% of the same.

Accuracy, too, can be tightened. Instead of .32 to .4 being the average, let's buff every vehicle across the board by about .05 at least. Why? So shells go where the players aim them. If a player invests all of his equipment, skills, time, and money, into making a gun accurate, it should be accurate.

I know the RNG is meant to provide a sense of 'realism' in just how unpredictable these sorts of things could be in actual battle, to simulate any number of variables that could impact performance. But WoT left behind realism a long time ago, for the better I'd argue. It's time to start balancing the game like a game, and put power into the hands of the players. I want to be certain that the player who bests me 1 on 1 outplayed me, and didn't merely get the better dice rolls.

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I think this would be a step in the right direction.