Every time we get a new premium tank or premium tank line, we start these circular discussions on balancing, and whether the new line is OP, and why the new Premium Tank is not "inferior to its Tech Tree counterpart" etc.
I never got the distinction between premiums or non-premiums.
I get why preferential MM tanks are balanced differently than "full-MM" counterparts of the same Tier, but this implied promise that premium tanks are inferior or at best equal to tech-tree tanks was never implied or promised officially – outside of said pref-MM tanks, it is just a stubborn assertion at this point, and would actually do nothing "real" for pushing the game forward.
The Powercreep is natural and almost needed for people to buy new shit or jump into new lines. I mean, if the Italian line was not a bit OP, who would grind it? The Czech MTs at introduction was the same story. We need a mix of powercreep and new features/mechanics etc to keep things interesting.
The problem is not introducing slightly OP Premium tanks or OP Tech Tree lines to spark some interest, the problem is that you don't followup with tweaks on neglected Tech-Tree lines to rebalance the game: you get them in, you follow up with a "counter", then rinse and repeat.
Rebalancing should be scheduled at a minimum on a bi-annual basis. Instead, we have tanks that have been the same for 3-4 or more years, and every new generation of tech tree or premium tanks, seems to pull ahead a bit further.
Even though I do agree that WG messed up with the whole Arty Stun mechanic and they had people riling up and the Arty-hating as high as ever, I appreciated that they seemed to actively seek to re-balance the new mechanic. I understand that this is complicated and takes time, perhaps more than we laymen guesstimate it should, but at least we saw some momentum.
I understand that some in WG want to do something about the Premium Ammo, but I also estimate that the whole economy is rigged around this "abuse", so things get complicated when a "blanket solution" is to be proposed.
We don't need anything dramatic.
- You have tons of statistical data from millions of games
- You know which tanks are meh. Sure, some times people exaggerate and love to be drama queens, but … some tanks are outdated. Clearly.
- Just make more regular changes to existing tanks to revive them. Even small stuff, like what you did for the Leo 1 can do wonders. No need to fudge with new mechanics necessarily (ala STB-1), no need to be "novel". Some better p/wt here, a bit better RoF or Pen there, small staff like that. Small increments, so that you won't break anything, but even if it was the case that a AMX 65t or a T32 would all of the sudden be a bit better than bottom feeders or the VK 100.01P would be a bit worse etc, would not hurt anyone, and you could always pull it back in 6m time. Shuffle that deck a bit.
