WORLD OF TANKS: Beta

[fabyak]

I've been playing this quite a bit in the last week

[Dog Pants]

i had a few games on saturday night and played quite a bit yesterday. The American tier 2 tank killer with a 75mm gun is a monster.

[Anhamgrimmar]

I haev a confession to make.


I have joined one of those clan thingies, and i've been having a blast!

anhamgrimmar in game, give us a shout if anyone wants to platoon up

[Dog Pants]

I got my legendary Luchs back! Well, not the exact same one but with its upgrades it'll be just as good. Maybe even better - I had a look at the custom paint jobs and you can get them permanently applied for a few pence. I'd pay a little real money to make my favourite tank pretty, especially given how much time I've had out of the game.

[Anhamgrimmar]

If you like the luchs (and fast tanks in general) go have a look at the second US tankdestroyer line. The T49 (its like the russian t34 was before they fixed the lag in beta, fast as hell with a rapid firing high penetration gun) and the Hellcat (equal fastest tank in game at 72kph, same as the russian T50-2). they're both quite cheap as well.

[HereComesPete]

Got my KV, took it out for a spin, chalked up 9 kills. Not a bad start.

[Dog Pants]

Oddly enough I've been following the American TD line, mainly because I love the M10 Wolverine in real life. I went for the M40, but I think I've unlocked the light TDs too. I also noticed with the M40 that you can retrain your crews so you don't lose all your experience when you upgrade.

[Dog Pants]

Froggie tanks get some boosts this weekend for Bastille day. I don't have any.

While I'm here, I've been reading up on crew. Worth paying attention to it seems - you can transfer your crew to another model tank for a % drop in XP (worth it if it gives you a few XP head start, and you can keep a persistent crew), and skills work from the beginning. Neither are default options, so are worth poking about at.

And on the subject of default options which are bad:
Turn on auto-replenish
Turn off keep crew on sale (unless you want to keep them, as above)
Turn on buying a new tank with full ammo
Turn on crew skills as soon as you get your new tank

It kind of feels as though the devs give you a load of shitty options ticked as default to reward you for tinkering.

[Dog Pants]

Hmm, looks like you might need 75%+ crew skill to use the perks. Oh well, here's another tip then: Keep your garage full and use every tank for the double XP boost; 5% of all XP earned goes to general which can be spend on any tank.

[FatherJack]

I like the idea of this game, but haven't really thought about getting it, as I don't know very much about tanks. Would this be a problem?

I don't know why, but even though various tanks look very different to each other I have great difficulty not just seeing all of them as "a tank". I'm the same with motorbikes, boats and Warhammer troops - they all look the same to me, but with cars or guns I can spot the serial number at 50 paces. I suppose it's down to having an interest in the latter that my brain has a name for what I see, whereras with the former I only have a few generic category-names stored in there. If quizzed for tank names, I could probably only list about five and I wouldn't even be able to pick them from a line-up.

[Dog Pants]

Doesn't matter. I like tanks and I've only heard of a handful of them. Most of the ones in the game were prototypes in real life, some never even finished design stage. Hell, most of the French ones are taken from the 50s. The tanks fall into five categories; Light, Medium, Heavy, Tank Destroyer and SPG. They all have their own role, and other than that they mostly just have variations in speed, gun, and armour.

[Killavodka]

I knew nothing about tanks when I first started playing, you soon pick up the essentials. The rest comes gradually over your tanking career.

Don't quite understand what you mean by bad default options though Doggers.
Crew training is split up into Perks and skills; skills being small bonuses which build up as you gain experience and perks being specific bonuses which only activate once the skill is at 100%.

[FatherJack]

Does the game show you what category the various vehicles fall into when you see them on screen, particularly the enemy ones? That's all I'm concerned about, whether I have to be able to recognise what I'm up against - so I don't send out Armoured Personnel Carriers against monstertanks.

[Killavodka]

There are quite a few options on the HUD for helping you identify tanks.
All tanks have a symbol to designate their type, 1 bar for lights, 2 bars for mediums, 3 for heavies, triangles for tank destroyers and squares for artillery
You can also choose to show the player name or the tank name, which can be very handy if you have trouble identifying tanks by their outline.

[Dog Pants]

Also, tanks are categorised by tier so you'll never be that badly outclassed (although it still seems to constantly send my poor Luchs up against heavies). You won't get the choice in-game anyway - you get direct third/first person control over whatever tank you selected in the lobby. To explain a little more about the matches for anyone who doesn't know; they're 32-player games of mixed teams (i.e. you get all nationalities on both sides), with a random objective based on some form of king of the hill. There are no respawns, which works well as it means matches are fairly quick. The genius is that you can quit out of a game you've died in and start a new one, and the wreck will remain in game until it ends whereupon you'll get cash and XP for the result. It makes it a pretty quick-fire affair, and naturally encourages you to rotate through your tanks.

[Killavodka]

The main mechanic which makes this game different from other games is the spotting. To shoot accurately you must first see the target which requires you to either spot it yourself (be within the view distance of your tank) or by being in the radio range of another tank which has spotted the enemy. If done right you can engage enemy tanks without being detected yourself, but can also be very annoying if you are the subject of such attack.

[Killavodka]

British tanks! Well not quite yet but the trailer is awesome.

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xt7AA9OcD4g[/media]

[Dog Pants]

About bloody time. No idea why they released French tanks before British, given their comparative proliferation and contribution during the war (I.e. Not much all for the French, most of theirs are post-war).

[Killavodka]

I think the main reason for French tanks taking priority was for the difference in play style, as most of the post-war tanks traded armour for speed and the revolver magazine.

[Dog Pants]

During a patch of free time between the game binning me out (from the menu) and having to brush Sprog's teeth I worked out some prices, since this is the only F2P game so far I've felt inclined to spend real money on (although their shop's down at the moment, ironically). Based on the lowest exchange rate and assuming anything better is a bonus discount:

2-tone camo (permanent) - 75 gold = £0.30
Multicoloured camo (permanent) - 150 gold = £0.60
1 day premium time - 250 gold = £0.99
1 week premium time - 1250 gold = £4.96
1 month premium time - 2500 gold = £9.92
1 year premium - 24000 gold = £95.20
Convert 1000 XP - 40 gold = £0.16
200,000 credits - 500 gold = £1.98
Garage slot - 300 gold = £1.19
Churchill Tier V Premium Tank - 1500 gold = £5.95
Lowe Tier VIII Premium Tank - 12500 gold = £49.58
100 76mm HEAT rounds - 700 gold = £2.78
Field repair kit (one use) - 50 gold - £0.20

Which I think is a pretty good balance. I'd certainly spend 30p or 60p on my favourite tanks to make them look prettier, and the XP conversion is cheap enough to make viable (you still have to earn it, but it lets you move it from 'maxed out' elite tanks to those still with things to buy). The cash thing is a little pay to win, but in reality XP is for more of a commodity than cash. I've heard complaints that the premium ammo is overpowered, and it might be, but the figure up there might last you two or three battles which is appropriately expensive I think (and I've rarely thought that I've lost unfairly because the other guy has it). Personally I don't think the premium tanks are much cop, but for £50 I'd hope that top one is a monster. Really I can only see that as a winning situation for the company, throwing large sums of cash at them to make the game less enjoyable for everyone. At any rate, I think in most cases they've got the right balance of price and items that make them desirable without being game breaking.