Thoughts of a new player, 1k games in

A 1,000 game review by a new player

Some background: I’m fairly old for a game player. I’m from (approximately) the first generation of PC LAN gaming roughly 25 years ago.

That also means I’m old enough to have a family and a real job that pays me very well. I’m new to WoT, but not new to online games. Spent last few years playing LoL, so don’t bother with warning me about toxic players, etc.

I figured I’d write about my experiences and impressions after 1k games. I will not say I am good, but I am getting better. My WN8 after 150 games was about 260. At 500 it was around 430, and at 1000 it is ~680, so a reasonable, steady improvement by that metric (last 100 battles it’s almost 1,100). I tend to mix in a blue streak where I’ll run 10 games in the 1800-2000 wn8 range then just totally crater and have a few outright awful games (like, slide into the water on Lakeside super early awful). I figure my ceiling, given the amount of time I have to put in, is probably in the 1500-1800 range on a consistent basis but I am not there yet and maybe I never will be.

On tech trees I’m playing T-34-85 (v solid tank, T-43 unlocked but I can’t afford yet), A44 (I really liked the A43, but I haven’t figured out the A44 yet), MT-25 (I suck in Russian lights), and AMX ELC bis (going down the track branch, not wheels, also the AMX ELC is fun as hell), and I’m in the 53tp (love it, probably couple days away from 50tp, but might not have credits for it either). I’ve also played some other stuff I’m not currently grinding (German meds, German TD line, Swedish TD, Swedish med, some early UK, random arty bc I want to get campaign missions but don’t really like arty play) and used my token on the KV-85 so that the IS will unlock when the tech tree changes.

Things I’ve learned:

– Tier 1-4 is such a beating. Everything is bad, and the tanks are so fragile the slightest mistake means you are dead. It’s hard to learn in that sort of environment. I think the HP changes for the low tiers will be really good for learners.

– The people who play full gold ammo Luchs (et al) are real quality humans that must be proud of everything they’ve accomplished in life.

– The thing tier 1-4 is best at is tricking you into screwing up your first 100% crews. I sure wish I’d done more learning about crew management first. Pretty sure the tip is don’t retrain until tier 5 (unless you’re willing to blow gold on it).

– Variety of maps definitely ramps the learning curve. It *really* helped me to watch some youtube videos I found from MaxGamingFPS giving basic tips for each non clicker class of tank for each map (that he has videos for). I watched them and took notes. Literally, I wrote notes and I have a stack of paper I can look through while the game loads. Some maps I don’t need the notes anymore, so I am awesome purple here I come.

– There’s a 1/3 chance most of your team doesn’t realize it’s an encounter battle and goes to the opposite edge of the map from the cap, and so you lose the game even though you’re up 6-1 in kills.

– There’s a ½ chance most of your team doesn’t realize it’s assault battle and you’re defending, so they press W and try to take forward positions instead of taking defensive spots where they are easily supported by other guns/TD spots.

– Getting out of spawn for an encounter battle on Himmelsdorf feels like half the battle.

– If you think you might have been spotted, don’t wait for 6th Sense to confirm it.

– Triple clicker games are…. They are games, for sure.

– Frontline might be boring for some experienced players, but I thought it was a great learning experience for me. Probably because I didn’t have to deal with the map changing and could focus on just the dynamics of using my tanks within a single environment for 20+ minutes.

– The Polish line is a little annoying bc you need a medium crew for 2 tanks (I just kept the 100 crew from the Pudel rental), but it’s SO SMOOTH. Every tank felt competent at tier either stock or with minimal upgrades. Every tank (at least from 5+) has felt very strong fully upgraded, even competent at +1 tier matches. The 90mm at tier 6 is great, and the 105 cannon at tier 7 is just unfair when you are top tier. Nothing has felt like a horrible grind. Yeah, the 40tp is hilariously slow for a med and the 45tp is quite peppy for a HT, but they felt easy to learn to me. The Polish line was also the last tech line I picked up, so maybe I would have a different opinion of some things if the order was different.

Overall, I’ve had a lot of fun. No game is perfect for everyone, and there are changes I think would be improvements for this, too. But people, let me tell you something: whining/raging about game devs doesn’t fix anything, and it sure doesn’t help attract new players to your game. Same goes with raging at new players or seal clubbing. Nothing makes me say “this game is great I should convince a friend to play with me” like driving my T-34 around and a platoon of gold spamming Luchs gunning me down like they were one of Al Capone’s crews. In the long run, the game will be better for everyone if, you know, we just all chill out and respect people a little more. In disclosure, I have not experienced a lot of toxicity personally. The most annoying thing is when someone who’s dead is spam pinging the map.