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Dear Players,

We would like to gather your feedback on the impact of the partial re-introduction of the tracer system in game.

Did it limit the effect of artillery in game?

Did it help in counterbattery fire?

Did it help with fighting hidden enemies?

What improvements can be done?

Please feel free to send us your feedback. It will be collected and provided to the development team in order to improve the game in the future.

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Thank you in advance,
Your Wargaming Community Team

Me and my teammate keep getting killed by ghost shots from tanks that are not visible untill they kill you. How does this work when you cant even see who it is shooting at you on the battle interface. I think it needs to be shown who is shooting you from which positon for at least 5 seconds or so and then disappear

It's awesome especially when you know there is some1 out there in a bush but you dont know exactly where.. thanks to the tracers you know and you can shoot him (A) i love it as a arty player

Tracers don't work on my desktop, they do on my little laptop. The desktop use a 32 bit windows and thus are forced to medium graphics while the laptop use a 64 bit windows. I wonder if that is the reason.

As an arty player myself I love tracers.
There's nothing better than hitting another arty from the other side of the map after be fired just a single round and it only gets better when the "cheater" accusation comes bouncing across the chat channel.
I've gotten into the habit of moving after every shot now but, from what I can gather, the concept still eludes many people.
It's great for finding hidden TD's too but that does generally rely on team mates giving you a clue where to look.

I have liked return of tracers.

For arty it means more intresting game, as you have option of countering or concentrating on spotted tanks. For non-arties tracers are important as they show where enemy is hiding. You might not know exact bush, but general direction, so you can better position yourself. You can even see where arty shells are coming, which is quite important.

Possibility of countering forces arty to move. In some cases it reduces firing speed, but more important, it means that arty can't just sit in best bush. As arty need to move they are more vulnerable to be spotted regular way.

think for arti it is an essential mechanic to have especially in matches that have several arti on each team and it becomes essential for survival and victory to find the enemy arti early.

In other situations where tracking a hidden tank such as Td or another tank you been closing in on it ertainly helps to give advie and diret the team to his location or take a pot shot to shake him up.

Personally i think without the tracer system, artillery would beome highly ineffective and i personally doubt i would continue on the artillery route.

Only thing i may like to see change is maybe a momentary brilliant white start to the tracer as a muzzle flash maybe 1/10th of a second

Tuccy, on 27 January 2012 - 03:34 PM, said:

No, not at all, arty is generally too far away and tracers are too short and too faint to be of any significant use.

Tuccy, on 27 January 2012 - 03:34 PM, said:

Can't say, I am not currently playing any arty. I haven't seen any improvement with team arty though. The few times when counter battery fire did work (to the point of losing us the game as our arty fired at nothing else and poorly prioritized targets), it was due to heroic scouting of lighter tanks not tracers.

Tuccy, on 27 January 2012 - 03:34 PM, said:

To some extend yes, it is easier to identify the direction of incoming fire. However, what does not help is that guns zero in only on what you can see. Even if you have determined the enemy's position, your gun will zero in on the terrain 100m behind the enemy you know 100% sure is there (thanks to tracers) and you will overshoot your target by quite a large margin. If the terrain is sloped, or if there are terrain features, you can manually compensate for this, but that is not always the case.

Tuccy, on 27 January 2012 - 03:34 PM, said:

• Give us back full tracers or fix the spotting system rather than tracers.
  
• Allow guns to zero in on "invisible objects".

i've not noticed any change at all while playing TD's and i've only been counter batteried once since reintroduction and rarely had to move  

Quote

yes do fix the spotting system as tanks dissapear while moving on clear ground with no obstuctions between you, less than 100m away, however don't make tracers any stronger and don't let guns zero in on invisible targets because that would make cammo skill and nets meaningless

I like the tracers a lot, although the income nerf did more
to reduce the number of arties, I love to play counter arty.

For arties:
It changed the gameplay from just attacking the tanks to
also make the arties life more dangerous, of course only, if there
are enough to justify searching for them.

For other vehicles:
Gives you at least an idea, from wich direction you are being attacked.


All in all the return of the tracers is my highlight of 7.0/7.1

Alabamatick, on 28 January 2012 - 07:57 PM, said:

Actually that simply is not true. Camo nets and skill would still significantly decrease the chance of being detected in the first place, which is what they should do. Forcing players to miss the spot they're aiming at by having an automated gunner system zero in beyond the intended target is both undesireable and unrealistic. We're not talking heat seekers here, we're talking actually shooting where you're aiming at. In real life any tank comander could instruct his gunner to zero in at that 'empty' grassy field to the left, even if it would be totally pointless. In WoT the automatic spotting system and gunner AI decide for you whether something is 'pointless' or not and will override your/the commander's decicision even if it is the correct one and not pointless at all.

Brazilski, on 29 January 2012 - 11:50 AM, said:

you misunderstood i was disagreeing with Brazilski who i think wanted guns to shoot exactly at a hidden target and not just at the general location where a hidden unit was, like some sort of lockon rather than i think there's somebody behind that bush and that definatly would render them useless  

I think the tracer on arty is fine but not with all the other nerfs.

I have a T7 arty fully specced but even if I fire, then move instantly I'm often still counter-batteried as you just can't move that fast.

Arty who counterbattery don't actually understand that if we all did that, then arty would never get any XP as we would all (except the one who survived) be killed before much of the game took place. It also defeats the purpose of having arty in this game - which is to support the tanks win the battle. If we wanted to just shoot other arty (and I fail to see the fun in that) then arty only battles should be set up.

But really, my complaint now we are at v0.71b is this:

1. arty are very slow, no armour and are easy targets
2. arty (at higher tiers) are lucky to fire a shot a minute given slow reloads and slow aiming circle shrinkage
3. have artificial inaccuracy built in
4. scouts move unrealistically fast and can expose arty pretty much every game
5. income has been nerfed, damage has been nerfed

So it's almost impossible to fire more than 4 rounds a battle on average given counter-battery from tracers, scouts exposing you in a minute or tow and slow, inaccurate fire

When people were complaining about arty it was having battles with 4 or 5 arty on each side. You didn't fix that, you just made arty far less effective or fun to play. So less people play arty but you still have arty party battles?

Please undo one of the points above to make it more fun. I don't care if it is tracer or loading speed or aiming speed or armour or anything, but all 5 is too much.

Alabamatick, on 29 January 2012 - 03:04 PM, said:

Uhm,.. I AM that same Brazilski.

With regard to the lock on, I never said that. What I am suggesting is neither a lockon nor a general direction aim. I said that if I know an enemy to be hiding behind a specific bush and zero in on his precise location, I should be able to hit him just as when he would be visible. His Camo net and skills still work in that they prevent me from knowing he's there in the first place. I might miss, just as when he would be visible as well, but I should not overshoot the target by definition.

at short to medium range it's okay... yup someone's got a potential line of sight to you...you're likely to be spotted.

having said that, being counter batteried at over 1Kilometer range when the enemy's scout has decided to go to the other corner of the map, you're away from all the "noob arty" spots while hull down behind a hill, within 2-3  seconds (when arty guns take 5-8 seconds to zero in) of firing your first shot and immediately relocating ( or trying to ...hit "shift", press "W", wait forever) seems unrealistic as anti-arty /predicter radar only came into being in the 80's/90's IIRC and the enemy has no method of seeing you via the LoS(line of sight) game mechanic ?

they got surveillance satellites or what?

oh and "arty snap" is just as annoying as it ever was..
yeah i know some of it is traverse, and if the gun platform changes you need to start from scratch. that i can handle as it is realistic.

BUT!
when you're already zoomed in on a stationary tank and in the last fraction on the lock-on the tank "disappears" (still in same location, but the spotter on your side has moved)
the drop of aprox 2 meters from tank engine plate TDC (top dead center) to ground height BDC (bottom dead center) (under the tank,) causes a full sight "snap" thats infuriating enough to cause IRL /yelled expletives. (especially (if)/WHEN the target re-appears half a second later in the same spot having never moved at all)

thanks i've wasted 8-12 seconds that i could have used to reload... a monumental amount of time when theres a team depending on you and you only get to shoot 2 rounds a min if you're lucky

Brazilski, on 29 January 2012 - 11:50 AM, said:

"if" you are aiming at a target(tank) and it vanishes the target location now has a variance of 2 meters vertically this 2 meter VERTICAL change seems to induce the game's  in-built "hit or miss" logic and then it seems the
" missed by a mile"  deviation rule seems to kick in...

...is a 50-m to 100m HORIZONTAL variance realistic for a initial relocation point of 2 VERTICAL meters?

only if the shell is flying almost horizontally ...like a tank High velocity shell.
for a shell traveling near vertically (from the sky to the ground) vertical distance of +2 meters SHOULD bring a variance in the range of possibly 50mm - 100mm  thats millimeters , not meters.


THEREFORE
so , i'm guessing the relevent computer code is cobbled together using a standard "tank gun" variation matrix with pretty arty grafix thrown in (overhead view of a tank shell going in ? anyone? )

rather than a high arc / low velocity shell (read H.E.) trajectory : calculated by "throwing it up" and calculating where it falls type of physics engine code. (basically dedicated trajectory code for proper arty calculations)

i guess i could be wrong...after all the IT industry never uses 2nd hand bits of code cobbled together to do another /task ...they always, ALWAYS, write brand new shiny code for every SINGLE part to be addded...don't they ?

Excellent, I have waited for the tracers to get back on since they were removed. I used to love counter arty and now in my GW panther it's more fun then ever. Is still agree that it's not realistic. But it surely adds to the overal arcade style gameplay.

The only thing left to add to the system is a muzzle flash. Besides the fact that its realistic it would also be easier to guess behind which bush a tank is hiding.

For now I would like to thank the devs for bringing back a nice part of the unique arty gameplay

Generalwulf, on 29 January 2012 - 06:43 PM, said:

What in God's name are you talking about?

You've completely lost me.

ah, sorry.

example.
you line up on a tank thats not moving and the gun zero's in to nearly it's narrowest point...
tank disappears and your sight snaps back to it's widest setting just as you fire (no target seen by AI)
you shot goes 100 meters wide of the target which has now reappeared without moving.

this is plausible if you've got a high velocity tank gun missing the target with a near flat trajectory (I.E. shooting directly at it)

not so plausible when a shell should be traveling almost vertically down from a great height (lobbing in a shell with indirect fire) and it should reasonably land somewhere close.. in this instance 100 meters is a very wide margin of error

Generalwulf, on 30 January 2012 - 02:07 AM, said:

 badly drawn example 1.JPG (31.04K)
downloads: 94

like this

which is why i wonder if the arty fire game-mechanic is based on the direct fire game mechanic, or separate code expressly written for indirect fire, or if the code reverts to the direct fire mode in the moment that the target vanishes and then re-appears etc