37 replies to this topic

[Bulldog_Drummond]

Obsessive_Compulsive, on 15 September 2020 - 05:41 AM, said:

I think they carried a fairly well balanced load of HE and AP rounds. Leaning towards a larger number of AP. The targets were buildings, bridges,tanks, artillery, carriers of both troops and mounted weapons and of course buildings and any other hard cover. Given Tigers were usually deployed against superior numbers I think the ammo count speaks for itself. I have no idea on the kill per shot ratio of a tiger tank but I do know that at 1000-1500 m a tiger tank tended to hit what it aimed at.

 

 

Fair point on the HE rounds.  People tend to forget that the vast majority of WW2 tank activity was shooting HE at infantry units.

In good conditions, e.g. static, hill position, clear weather, pre-ranged-in, absence of enemy distractions like artillery barrages or smoke, you are right, a Tiger would probably hit at long range, and there are plenty of examples of T-34 tank rushes being obliterated.  However, most actions were a lot messier than that.

[Cobra6]

1/4 deviation on both penetration and damage have always been way too much.

 

5-10% RNG would still make sense and have a base in real world mechanics while at the same time removing the unpredictability from the game and thus make it better in general.

 

Cobra 6

[arthurwellsley]

fwhaatpiraat, on 14 September 2020 - 09:10 PM, said:

OP left the chat?

 

No I am here. I hold no strong view either way on many of these points and possibly I have mixed two things that I should not have. But essentially it boils down to RNG in gameplay. Does it need to be altered? Will altering either the number of RNG rolls or the 25% that RNG is set at have a positive effect or a negative effect on gameplay?

 

The second point is about game longevity. If esports draws more new players into World of Tanks it may increase longevity. One of the alleged reasons that War Gaming has so far been unsuccessful in promoting World of Tanks as as esport is RNG. Although above there are posters who give plenty of other reasons. However if for a moment we work on the assumption that professional esport teams have said to WG that they will not sponsor teams in WoT as there is too much RNG, and WG makes a decision to chase the professional esport teams to sponsor players in WoT contests, what would be the effect on gameplay of reductions in RNG made by WG at the behest of professional teams.

 

I commented on Riot Gaming altering League of Legends to reduce RNG in their premier game. LoL is a very successful esport.

 

So I have not posted much because I do not hold firm views about this and wanted to provoke a discussion and see what others have said. Maybe reading their comments will help me think through the points and reach some form of conclusion.

[DuncaN_101]

Doesn't actually hitting have an rng roll on it aswell? Or is that just me being terrible.

As I understood it 3 rng rolls apply every shot one for hitting the target, the next for penning it and then the 3rd for the amount of damage you did.

Now if I'm wrong fair enough I'm an idiot. But that's what I was lead to believe.

[fwhaatpiraat]

DuncaN_101, on 16 September 2020 - 02:18 PM, said:

Doesn't actually hitting have an rng roll on it aswell? Or is that just me being terrible.

As I understood it 3 rng rolls apply every shot one for hitting the target, the next for penning it and then the 3rd for the amount of damage you did.

Now if I'm wrong fair enough I'm an idiot. But that's what I was lead to believe.

Correct. Hitting the target rng = aim circle rng. And I think there is also a dice roll for doing a critical hit. The - for example - 20% chance to set an engine on fire, besides the damage that gets dealt towards the engine hit point pool.

 

So many uncertainties, reminds me of real life

Edited by fwhaatpiraat, 16 September 2020 - 02:45 PM.

[geoff99]

Critical hits are interesting. The roll for engine on fire (and other module damage such as tracking, ammo rack, view range port etc) should only happen if your engine is hit, so its conditional on aim, pen, and then hitting specific part of tank.

 

But it seems as though you can also get zero damage crits which don't damage systems.

 

To summarise my understanding:

 

Do you hit (aim circle dispersion)

Do you pen (nominal gun pen + 25% RNG vs armour (plus overmatch etc))

How much damage (nominal alpha + 25% RNG OR zero-damage crit)

Do you break a module (module damage % if module hit)

 

I have a bonus question

 

When I fire in third person, typically short-range ridge poking or trying to farm damage at the end of the game, the aim circle stays much smaller than if I go into sniper mode. Is this true, or just my perception, and if true, do the game mechanics take it into account, or is just a modelling/UI error?

 

 

[fwhaatpiraat]

geoff99, on 16 September 2020 - 03:08 PM, said:

Critical hits are interesting. The roll for engine on fire (and other module damage such as tracking, ammo rack, view range port etc) should only happen if your engine is hit, so its conditional on aim, pen, and then hitting specific part of tank.

 

But it seems as though you can also get zero damage crits which don't damage systems.

 

To summarise my understanding:

 

Do you hit (aim circle dispersion)

Do you pen (nominal gun pen + 25% RNG vs armour (plus overmatch etc))

How much damage (nominal alpha + 25% RNG OR zero-damage crit)

Do you break a module (module damage % if module hit)

 

I have a bonus question

 

When I fire in third person, typically short-range ridge poking or trying to farm damage at the end of the game, the aim circle stays much smaller than if I go into sniper mode. Is this true, or just my perception, and if true, do the game mechanics take it into account, or is just a modelling/UI error?

 

 

You are correct, but besides the chance of getting your engine set on fire, your ammorack ignited, etc, those modules have an hp pool as well. If the ammo rack hp is 0, kaboom. Model damage (per shell) can be read on tanks.gg, module hp pools as well.

[DreadPirateRobert]

One thing I like about WoT is that the use of an aimbot is not as effective as in other shooter games, because we have a lot of randomness.

The less RNG we have, the more the game will be ruled by cheaters/hackers. That's why I voted against the reduction of RNG.

[pihip]

Bulldog_Drummond, on 14 September 2020 - 06:32 PM, said:

I don't know anything about esports but top Bridge players, Poker players and Backgammon players cope with and manage massive RNG and still win.

Most (all?) games have RNG involved, you might be a professional gambler and yet sometimes your predictions will go wrong because the newcomer is very lucky and gets all the good draws or rolls.

I guess elements of our community are somehow spoiled? But then again, World of Tanks is kind of built on frustration - keep throwing the virtual dices and eventually you'll get a good roll.

[Bulldog_Drummond]

pihip, on 20 September 2020 - 09:57 AM, said:

Most (all?) games have RNG involved, you might be a professional gambler and yet sometimes your predictions will go wrong because the newcomer is very lucky and gets all the good draws or rolls.

I guess elements of our community are somehow spoiled? But then again, World of Tanks is kind of built on frustration - keep throwing the virtual dices and eventually you'll get a good roll.

 

There are some games of pure skill, e.g. Chess, Go, Snap, etc but generally you are correct.  In most games a large part of the skill is in managing the randomness over a series of games, so the newcomer might well win some rounds but will lose overall to the expert, and you see the same thing in WoT.  A few months ago I did a few toons with Private Miros, who is a very good player, yet in one of them I managed through luck to get a much better score than he did.  Similarly, if I played a single game of Backgammon against the best player in the world I reckon I would have a fair chance of winning, but if we played a dozen games I would lose my shirt.

[pihip]

Bulldog_Drummond, on 20 September 2020 - 11:45 AM, said:

Similarly, if I played a single game of Backgammon against the best player in the world I reckon I would have a fair chance of winning, but if we played a dozen games I would lose my shirt.

As long as you don't bet your trousers and pants you'll be fine.

[8_Hussars]

The poll idea is good however the questions are somewhat biased so did not answer.

1) FWIW, 25% RNG agrees quite well with WW II shell ballistic errors, manufacturing standards, and the technology at the time. also,

2) FWIW the game is much more about positioning, isolation, defeat in detail, game flow, and managing stress response than the singular issue of aiming and penning other tanks; that many players focus on and object to.

RNG is a catch up mechanic that allows poor players to have good games, good players have poor games, and for the underdog to win matches occationally.  I find this is one of the key mechanics that differentiates the game from insert RTS of preference, it is NOT a twitch shooter and that's a good thing for the current demographic (Older male adults with disposable income.)   Without the RNG game mechanic you fundamentally break the current game.  

Would it be better game and draw a larger audience (and wider demographic) without RNG?  (Obviously some form of SBMM would be needed due to the lowering and/or removal of the RNG mechanic.)

Would that make a better game experience?  Who knows?

Although for as much abuse as WG takes for being only about the money, you would have to think they have run the numbers on this concept already... and acted accordingly.

[8_Hussars]

 

arthurwellsley, on 15 September 2020 - 03:49 PM, said:

But essentially it boils down to RNG in gameplay. Does it need to be altered? Will altering either the number of RNG rolls or the 25% that RNG is set at have a positive effect or a negative effect on gameplay?

 

IMHO, just changing RNG without consideration of the overall game dynamic would have a detrimental impact on the game.  It would simply allow good players to contribute more and poor players to contribute less.       

 

arthurwellsley, on 15 September 2020 - 03:49 PM, said:

The second point is about game longevity. If esports draws more new players into World of Tanks it may increase longevity. One of the alleged reasons that War Gaming has so far been unsuccessful in promoting World of Tanks as as esport is RNG. Although above there are posters who give plenty of other reasons. However if for a moment we work on the assumption that professional esport teams have said to WG that they will not sponsor teams in WoT as there is too much RNG, and WG makes a decision to chase the professional esport teams to sponsor players in WoT contests, what would be the effect on gameplay of reductions in RNG made by WG at the behest of professional teams.

The supposed RNG issue often goes unchallenged as the issue with WoT and eSports.  I recall it more being WG went out on their own and tried to do it themselves and did a shoddy job of it.   Having said that, why is eSports a solution for WoT longevity?  Considering the current demographics are not the twitch/youtube/eSports crowd.  Although I dislike analogies: would making Chess (skill based) more like Checkers (rote move and counter based) be good for long term player retention and longevity of the game?  Frankly, there is only one WoT and a hundred other eSports games.  Would making that change be a net gamin or loss for the game.  For the record, I liked and followed Gold League play.           

 

arthurwellsley, on 15 September 2020 - 03:49 PM, said:

I commented on Riot Gaming altering League of Legends to reduce RNG in their premier game. LoL is a very successful esport.

The games are too dissimilar: the different key demographics and marketing methods do not make a good foundation for comparison.   There are many more differences than RNG and to boil it down to that one mechanic being the difference between the games (and eSports) seems overly simplistic.


For me the number one thing WoT should do to keep the game going is more Maps.  Re-open the map design software (WG bought and closed down) so the community could build maps and super-test them or even just play in training rooms.

[tonni42160]

it's all about money they use algo server each battle man if they want is all 

[NUKLEAR_SLUG]

tonni42160, on 13 October 2020 - 01:33 PM, said:

it's all about money they use algo server each battle man if they want is all 

 

Would you like another go at stringing those words into a coherent sentence?

[ZlatanArKung]

It is incredibly unlikely that WoT would have had an esport scene if the variance was just reduced from 25% to 10%.

Edited by ZlatanArKung, 14 October 2020 - 01:34 PM.

[Steeleye_Spam]

thinking about it, the only part of RNG that i would probably change is accuracy. There are already two variables that decide whether a shell connects or not - how much you let the gunner aim, and the accuracy of the gun. This already introduces a lot of variance. Having 25% RNG on top of that leads to the silly situations of missing a Maus from 10m.

[Snaques]

I feel like most people don't really understand the point of RNG in WoT. It is there to even out the playing field in the short term. If you remove RNG the best players would run a riot and the impact of one player would become even bigger. While that may sound rewarding, it would not be good for the game. You need to keep the game interesting for all players.

 

Someone mentioned poker and in fact that is a really good analogy. In poker the best players do win in the long run, but if you would remove rng then bad players would quit immediately as they wouldn't win any hands. Same thing in WoT, even the worse players need to get lucky every now and then to keep playing. In the long run the best players will still be best. You just have to realize that in WoT you are very good already at 60% wr, you shouldn't expect 90% wr.

 

 

And what comes to ESL, I think WG was realistic and accepted the fact that WoT is just not an ESL game. You can't have such RNG in competitive scene, but you also can't have the ESL games based on completely different mechanics as the Randoms.

 

The one thing where I don't have a strong opinion is the amount of RNG. Maybe +/-20% would be more fun, but then again it could be too brutal for the worse players.