In the previous episode you said that the developers create
the different nations by giving them unique features.
So what is the main feature of the British vehicles?
Can you reveal the features of the heavy and medium tanks?
The British heavy tanks will be pretty straight forward
and may seem familiar. For example, you can look
at the Churchill and see all the features for the proposed branch.
The vehicles of this branch will have
high amounts of armor and maneuverability; the fire power
will be in the medium range compared to other nations.
This branch contains the “real” tanks, which are
able to take large amounts of damage. As for
the medium tanks, we are going to add two types: the semi-heavy
tanks or “the infantry tanks” and the cruiser tanks.
The good example of the infantry tank is Matilda. This tank has the poor maneuverability,
but its armor is really good. As for the cruiser tanks,
these vehicles are similar to the Soviet and the
American tanks. These vehicles will have their own
features, but they won’t be dramatically different.
What are you planning to do with the Soviet premium tanks,
like the Churchill, after the British tree release?
Well, we may remove these vehicles from our shop.
Will the players still have these tanks, if you don’t remove them from the game?
Yes.
What are the main priorities for the developers of World of Tanks?
What are they going to change in the near future?
Are they planning to add some new features or are
they focusing on releasing the game in new markets?
Well, I can’t tell you about any new markets, mostly because it’s not
my area of responsibility, and it’s a secret. It’s not a very good
idea to reveal this sort of information. As for the new features… Well,
we are going to release the tier 10 medium tanks and tank destroyers
in the next update. Then we’re planning to add the new rendering system.
This system is totally remade and is no longer similar to the
original BigWorld system. We might also add the physics in this or
the next update. We haven’t decided the order of these changes yet.
All these features will be included by the 8.0 update, which we are
going to release after the 7.5 update. We are planning to release the
British tank tree in one of the next patches. We may also develop
some new features to make the current game modes better. We will add
an easier system for creating tank companies and some features for
tournaments and so on. We are going to release these features in the
upcoming patches. Well, I can’t call them “patches” because the world
“patch” means some kind of fix; we’re just adding more functions.
Can you reveal something about the new rendering system?
What system is it? And what changes should we expect?
Well, if you want a clear definition of the word “render system”, it’s the mechanism
for the visualization of game scenes. It’s responsible for the scene that your
computer modulates, using the information from our servers. The computer creates the
camera and records the scene. The computer can use a wide variety of the algorithms
for recording; I don’t want’ to go into too much detail about algorithms. The only
thing I’ll say is that some algorithms are better than others for certain tasks.
We’ve removed the bad algorithms and optimized the good ones. We’ve also created
our own algorithms. As a result, the final picture will be more spectacular.
There has been a lot of discussion about narrowing the tier spread
for the match maker, but you haven’t added this to the game yet.
This function may resolve a lot of the complaints you receive.
Can you explain your reasoning for deciding against this so far?
I’ll give you my reasoning. Some tanks were balanced to fight against the high
tier vehicles. These features prohibit us from narrowing the tier spread.
After some more changes, which we are going to make in the 7.5 update, and
after the tier 10 tanks release, we might be able to narrow the spread.
Are you going to change anything else in the match maker? What will it be?
Yes, we are going to make changes, but they will not be universal.
We will make some changes to some of the math. As I said
earlier, we might make the tier spread narrower. We may also add
some other little features to the match maker, nothing drastic.
Are you planning to develop any unusual maps that are not similar to the current maps?
Yes, we are going to develop some unusual maps.
Well, we’ve released “Dragon Ridge” and we are going
to develop more maps with an Asian environment.
We are planning to develop maps with an American environment as well. For
example, “Dragon Ridge” is not pretty different from most of the current maps. We are not
going to create the maps, where tanks drive on the ceiling, if that’s what you’re asking.
How will the maps change after the physics release?
Are you going to add the physics to all maps?
We may add the physics to all maps, primarily because it is too
expensive to support two mechanisms. There will be serious
changes in the gameplay. The fast light tanks will have to
control their speed if they don’t want to fly over the hill.
You will be able to cross some places which were
impassable before, for example, escarpments like this. The
tank will be able to drive over it. This feature will
bring serious changes to all the well-known routes.
You mentioned to the community that there are plans to create
fortifications on the battlefield. Have you made any progress?
Well, these fortifications are still just plans. These plans are definitely
not going to be completed in the near future because our game contains
PvP-content, the players fight against each other, and it is quite hard for
me to imagine a player who wants to play as a stationary fortification.
Are you going to create any other platoon types? For example, 4-man platoons.
The 4-man platoon was the original idea and there was a lot of
discussion about their creation. These platoons are too powerful,
we couldn’t let them join the Random Battles. We’ve discovered
that after some tests. Testing for the 5-man platoon will occur
on the Chinese server, but we are not going to allow these
platoons to join the random battles. They will join the battles in
two sets of 3 such platoons or fight against a tank company.
We will definitely not allow such platoons in random matches.
How long are you going to develop for World of Tanks?
And how long are you planning to support this project?