** Salt Rant ahead lol
I've been through *almost* everything already, shitty tier 6 and 7 stock tanks, awful gold/free exp sinks like the dead horse AMX 65t that WG keps beating, or the god forsaken and infamous Perishing (yeah I wrote that right) which has been by far my most miserable time playing wot and still today my worst WR tank (In which I have a meaningful ammount of battles)
OMG the Ikv 103 when I was going up the low tier swedish TDs, 0 armor and a gun less accurate than the Caliban, what a fucking pain.
KV-3 was also big oof, (But fucking loved the almighty KV-FOURTRESS, which taught me how to side scrape, tons of fun bouncing T95 shells, even when they aimed for my giant cupola, cause angles, bitch, yeah)
IS, one of my first heavies when I just started, with that huge dispersion and a bad crew it was also pretty bad, specially when it doesn't really have usable armor, how do you think a new player will do with it? IS-7 is still one of the most recommended lines for begginers, yet I remember thinking, "why the fuck would someone recommend me this? I'm supposed to be a heavy but I get penned everywhere and I can't be in the frontline, but I also can't be far away cause my vision is shit, and dispersion is even worse so wtf am I supposed to do?" while getting matched against tier 8 and 9s
I took several breaks because of how fuckign awful it feels grinding some tanks until you reach the promised land that is the "It gets really good at tier 8/9/10" Man I just remembered the Black Prince, churchills funny enough, were fine, cause I started with a Churchill 3 code, and learned to angle it, so the tech tree british ones weren't that much of a problem, I even aced the Churchill VII.
But yeah, grinding lines, which is the main progress of the game, drags you down too fucking much, stock tanks shouldn't exist. I've thought of a rework for the tech tree system that would help a lot and would eliminate the stock bullshit and pain without making the grinds any shorter, if that's what WG wants. Well, the grinds would be a bit shorter because you wouldn't be driving a sack of shit, but the exp needed would end up being the same:
1- Remove module gringing, all tanks would just be as they are now when fully upgraded.
2- Change how tanks are unlocked, you know how campaigns missions give you one of the tank components each time you clear mission 15? Just divide every single tank into those components.
For example to unlock the Tiger II you'd have to first get the Tier I (which would be fully upgraded from the beginning, as all tanks) and play with it, you get exp on it and then you decide the order of how you want to unlock the components for the Tiger II, just to have some clicking to do in the tech tree to make it look simmilar to how it is now.
Let's say 25-40k exp for each component (I don't remember how much total exp you need including modules and tank, to unlock the Tiger II right now, Gun, Turret, Hull, Engine, and Tracks, and when you have them all, a bit more exp maybe to assemble the tank, and boom, You have it.
You still need to invest time and effort to unlock tanks, but at least you don't have to walk the miserable path of going through 2 shitty guns untill you get the 3rd, while needing to unlock get the good tracks first while playign with the shitty gun, because the shitty tracks can't support the good turret + gun weight, and you better get the engine or you won't get anywhere close to where you can do damage and or you'll get caught and farmed trying to climb a hill.
And sometimes it's not only multiple guns, but multiple engines and tracks too!
With this proposal, aka, not making your playerbase's life miserable, the game would probably retain a higher percentage of new players, which should be ultimately good for the game, no? Idk, maybe i'm crazy for thinking that games should be fun from the start , cause if they aren't people will just move on and try a different one.
So what do you guys think?
