This post here is to express my opinion towards the 3.8 equipment overhaul which everyone are discussing. I will try to provide decent ideas, and also expect a few grammatical mistakes here.

To be honest, I like WG’s idea of implementing the new overhauled equipment system, as it attempts to provide a lot of new choices and combinations for players to choose from, while not letting them always choose the same “OP” loadout. The theory of the equipment overhaul is that it allows the same tank to have the ability to focus on improving different aspects of the tank according to the players’ playstyle and his/her preferences.

For example, a Tiger II, has rather decent armor in the hull, and it has a decent gun which can perform mid-range support as well. It has two options it can take at Combat Power Level 3, “Vertical Stabilizer” or “Refined Gun”. You can Enhance the Tiger II’s close combat capabilities with the “Vertical Stabilizer”, or you can alternatively Enhance the Tiger II’s role as a mid to long-range support tank with the “Refined Gun” option. It could open a lot of possibilities, and provide the “Diversity” that we and WG wants.

The Equipment overhaul also reworked some of the less popular equipments and combined them as a single equipment. For example, Spall Liner has been tweaked a bit and reintroduced as “Enhanced Cabin” where it lost its “Reduce HE splash Damage” capabilities. Cyclone Filter, fill tanks with CO2, Enhanced Torsion Bars (Enhanced Suspensions) and Wet ammo rack was rebalanced and combined and reintroduced as “Protected Modules” where the bonuses were reduced but now it has the capability of protecting most of the modules at the same time. In this new equipment system, we also see the removal of Binoculars Telescope.

So, let’s talk about the poorly executed ideas about this equipment overhaul.

1- Timers

If you are too lazy to read

Not a bad idea

It can:

Slow down the grind of players

Allow the player to understand the tank better before equipment slots are unlocked

Slow down poorly performed players who are keen on improving

WoTB Players already took fully equipped tanks for granted

But in reality, we need to play the tank to understand it’s characteristics, and choose the equipment accordingly.

In 3.8 it will take 24 days to fully equip a Tier X Tank

Even down at Tier I It will take 2 hours

Normally a player would’ve reached Tier III or Tier IV after playing for 2 hours

Timer is Too long

Players would’ve reached 2 Tiers further before the slots are unlocked on a tank

Diversity is barely visible, as you will at most have 5-6 slots unlocked while grinding.

Little option to optimize the tank

The bonus WG suggests adds up slowly, from hours to days due to unlocking

Suggestion: Reduce the timer length to acceptable length

Suggestion 2: allow premium account holders to have a shorter Timer

Adding Timers into the game isn’t a bad idea at all. It can Slow down the grind of players, so that they would play more games in that tank, and understand it’s characteristics better before the equipment slots are unlocked. But fact that the whole WoTB Playerbase took Fully equipped tanks for granted, where it is almost a universal rule in Blitz that you must fully equip your tank before you take it out. In reality, what we need to do is to play the tank without equipment loaded, and understand where the tank needs to be improved, then apply the equipments that will improve the tank’s weakness, or allow the tank to perform better at its strengths.

However, with the Timer implementation at 3.8, It will take nearly a month (24 days) to be able to fully unlock all 9 slots on a Tier X tank, and even down at Tier I it will take 2 full hours. For a new player, 2 hours into a new game of Blitz would normally already take the player to Tier III or even IV. I understand that the Timer is an effort to slow down player progress, so that they can spend more time to understand the game and the tank they are currently driving better. It’s also an attempt to slow down poorly performed players as if they are really keen on improving, they would spend more time to equip their tank before moving on. Still, looking at the calculations, isn’t the Timer duration a bit too long? I think many players hated the Timer idea, not because it heavily promotes the spending of gold, but simply because the Timer duration is so long that it even affects the experienced players heavily.

I recently speed grinded the STB-1 from Chi-To, which took me 3 weeks of time. I will be using this as an example to try to illustrate the point. I completed the grind from Chi-To to Chi-Ri within 9 hours of playing it, and if the Timer Function was added, it will take at least 2 days to fully unlock all 9 equipment slots (assuming linear scaling for tiers). I completed the grind from Chi-Ri to STA-1 within 24 hours of obtaining it, and it the Timer function was added it will take at least 5 days to fully unlock all 9 equipment slots (assuming linear scaling for tiers). If players were to speed grind like me under the 3.8 Timer system, they would’ve reached at least 2 tiers further before all 9 slots on that tank was unlocked.

The Diversity that WG Suggests, is barely visible from this example given, because during the grinding process, you will only have at most 5-6 slots unlocked on that tank before you will reach the next tank, giving the player little option to customize their tank according to their needs while grinding the tank. It’s also worth mentioning that compared to the old system where your tank will be instantly equipped, the benefit WG suggests only adds up slowly over time as the equipment slots will have to be opened in a specific order, with each unlocking taking hours to days. At this state where WG is trying to take away stuff that has already been in the game since its birth, Where the players already took it for granted, will certainly trigger a rage-storm by a large proportion of the playerbase.

My suggestion for the timer issue is to reduce the timer length to acceptable by the majority of the players, but not fully removing the timer function, to retain its positive function as to preventing poorly performed players to go up tiers that easily, to allow the players to invest a bit more time into this game, and also to allow new players to understand this game more before they can move up.

Another suggestion is that to allow premium account holders to have a way shorter timer then other players (let’s say at least 50% quicker). I know this sounds like pay-to-win, but still it requires time to unlock the slots, just the time is shorter compared to a player without premium account, so it’s actually more like pay-to-progress.

2- Spare Parts

A new currency, Spare Parts, is added together with the change of the whole equipment system. There are a few problems that arose because the introduction and balancing of the new currency.

2.1- Obtaining Spare parts

If you are too lazy to read

Two ways to obtain (Battle and Missions)

Missions isn’t a good way to encourage players to grind spare parts and vice versa

50% drop from battles is frustrating

More and more game elements depend on RNG

Should rely on battle statistics like XP or Credits

Remove the 50% drop rate

As mentioned in WG’s news, there are current two ways (not sure whether via Events is still available), via Combat Missions, and upon calculation of battle results. It seems strange that the new currency is not available even paying gold and such, which is strange as WG would monetize anything they can find monetizable…. But it’s a good thing for free to play player, as they are at the same playing field against all other players, and paying more doesn’t affect your chances of obtaining the spare parts whatsoever.

First, Via Combat missions. I know missions is not welcomed by players because of the limitation of it only resets twice a day, and it doesn’t always give the correct prize in respond to the effort that players paid to complete the mission. Together with Hated supremacy missions, using missions to promote grinding Spare Parts/ Using Spare Parts to encourage players to play missions is a tough thing to achieve. I don’t have any good suggestions that I can give regarding to this. Still want WG to know that this is happening.

Secondly, upon calculation of battle results. You guys mentioned about the 50% drop rate for the spare parts. Till this moment, I still haven’t been able to come up with an reasonable explanation for the reason behind ‘50%’. But this is now a thing where more and more of this game is depending on RNG. The drop rate is depended on RNG, then the actual spare parts you will receive will be likely to depend on RNG as well. I would like to suggest that to remove the 50% drop rate, and allow the Spare Parts to be calculated like XP and Credits, with a formula to be created and followed. Not simply depending on RNG, but at least allow it to depend on current existed calculations such as XP.

2.2- Spear Parts Unlocking slots

If you are too lazy to read

2.49 days to just grind SP to unlock one single Level 2 Slot at tier X

15.82 days to fully grind SP to unlock all 9 slots at Tier X

Requires 24 days to have them fully unlocked

Extreme cases where it takes 7.71 years for a heavily paid player to acquire SP to fully equip his garage

Suggestion: Largely decrease the amount the SP needed to unlock slots

Using Spare Parts to unlock the equipment slots is the reason why this new currency existed in the first place. But here is a problem. For example, a Tier X will require 29300 spare parts to unlock 1 Level 2 slot. Assume I play 20 battles per day (50% WR), and only half of the games I obtained Spare Parts, completes all missions (obtains 10k spare parts per day if I am lucky enough), then I will have ((10*116)+(10*231))/2+10000 = 11735 Spare Parts per day at most. It will take 29300/11735 = 2.49 days = 3 days just to collect the spare parts required for one single level 2 equipment slot. Adding to the fact that it will take (29300*3)+(32600*3) = 185700 Spare parts to fully have enough Spare Parts to fully unlock all 9 slots on one tank. That will take me 185700/11735 = 15.82 days = 16 days just to grind for Spare Parts. In 16 days, I can easily grind a Tier IX tank onto Tier X, which can vary from 200k exp to 319k exp. Also, taking into account that It will take 24 days for all 9 slots to be fully unlocked, it’s safe to say the grind is just a bit too long.

This Spreadsheet is very useful in illustrating my point here, for the time required to grind the Spare Parts Required. I decided to put the next part inside “Spear Parts Unlocking” because it relates to the price of the equipment slots.

I know a player who owns every single tank in the game except 2, IS-6 Fearless and KV-220. He has played around 38k games, from this spreadsheet he was told that he will obtain 2.1 million parts when the compensation drops, which leaves him with a grand total of 32 million Spare Parts to grind if he wants to fully equip all 217 tanks in his garage. From my assumption of that playing 20 battles per day, and complete all 6 daily missions, it will take him 32,000,000/11375 = 2813 Days = 7.71 years. 7.71 years from the point where Version 3.8 drops. I don’t know about WG, but I never spent 7.71 year doing the same thing every day, repetitive, non-stop, 24/7 and 365 days per year. And the point is that he can’t skip using gold. As you can tell by now, he is one of the heaviest payers for this game, and trying to ask him to do the same thing 7.71 years non-stop is just insane. This is insane to a point where I wonder whether the developers ever check their maths. I know my attitude is turning bad here, but I am trying to illustrate the truth here that the number of Spare Parts required to unlock a single equipment slot is insane. Even reducing the required spare parts by half will still take him 3 years at least.

So my suggestion is largely decrease the amount of Spare Parts Required to unlock any given equipment slot, at least for the sake of these heavy payers, there is also another solution which I will talk about next

2.3- Spare Parts Compensation

If you are too lazy to read

22500 SP for a fully equipped Tier X

Only 12.12% towards fully equipped tank

Suggestion: Take in account the battle count of the tank (Only apply to tanks in garage), as the player might be very experienced and has a lot of battles in it but forced to regrind due to low compensation

Tanks with 1k battles should receive compensation where it can fully equip with only with small grinds

As you all know, the transition from Old equipment to new equipment system means the old equipment will be deleted, and existing equipment will be compensated in the form of a small amount of spare parts, along with another compensation of spare parts that is calculated from your battle count per tier, and the amount of equipments equipped on each tank before the compensation arrives.

Currently players also heavily criticize about the lack of compensation, saying that it’s basically making the players grind like crazy just to make the tank as competitive as compared to before the new equipment system. This is actually quite true, as for example, I fully equip my Tier X tank with the expensive equipments, I would get 22500 spare parts when compensation drops. But 22500 spare parts isn’t even enough to unlock a Level 2 slot, which is already the cheapest for a Tier X tank. With the 22500 spare parts you will be only able to achieve (22500/185700)*100% = 12.12% of Fully equipping a tank that you might actually already owned for a long time, and has a lot of experience in this tank, but was forced to regrind the spare parts for this tank because the compensation for the transition to the new system is insufficient.

My suggestion is that the compensation for per tank should also take into account the battle count of that tank, it sounds like it would be the same as compensating the Spare Parts using battler count according to tier, but this compensation for per tank is only available for tanks that are in the garage. For a Tier X tank we would like to see at least 70-80k compensation per tank, especially for tanks that we have played a lot (for me it’s Obj.140, over 1.5k games), as I expect the compensation I got from Obj.140 would be able to fully equip this tank with the compensation it receives just for that tank (around 125k) + a small part from compensation from battle count (60k). This still allows the grinding of players, but not because that they need to make their tank as competitive as before 3.8, but to further enhance their tank’s characteristics as with the compensation from the tank would be easily enable them to unlock up to 7-8 slots if they like that tank and use it frequently, And in my option 7-8 slots unlocked would make the tank almost as competitive as before, or even more competitive than before. In my option 7-8 slots unlocked would make the tank almost as competitive as before, or even more competitive than before.

3- Balancing

I know this is the least discussed topic as it involved a lot of calculations and assessment done by WG, but I still want to point out a few of the problems that I think is improper in balance.

For the category Vitality, Level 2 there are options to either increase armor thickness by 5%, or you can have the option to increase your maximum health by 5%. Meanwhile Level 3 there are options to either allow the tracks to repair to full health, or you can have the option to increase the speed of repairs by 25%. In my honest opinion, the either options at level 2 gives more of an advantage than options available at level 3, as more health or more armor, means you can survive in the battlefield for longer, and for the Enhanced Tracks and toolbox is only aimed to assist the repair of broken modules of the tanks.

My suggestion regarding to the detailed tweaking is that to swap the equipments of Vitality Level 2 and Level 3, or nerf the bonus given by the Improved Assembly and Enhanced Armor, or more better, to improve level 3 equipments so that they are competitive enough to be at level 3.

My other suggestion is that add Binocular Telescope into the level 1 of Specialization, where it would be the only slot to have a choice between 3 equipments. This can retain the original Binocular Telescope that is popular amongst passive scouts, and TDs.

4- Other Issues that emerges from this Equipment Change

Tank Performance Gap. As mentioned in “Spare Parts Unlocking Slots” and the “Timers” part, the time to fully unlock all 9 equipment slots on a Tier X tank can start from 24 days. During this 24 days of “Unlocking Period”, the player will certainly come across players who have the same tank, but fully equipped with all equipments. WG has suggested that fully equipping your tank in 3.8 will give you even more bonus compared to you fully equipping the tank in 3.7, so regardless of skill level, the player who has less equipment equipped will be definitely under disadvantage. Adding onto the fact that hard to grind Spare Parts, Players who are able to fully unlock all 9 slots on their Tier X tanks are most likely players who are good in that tank, or they are good as a player themselves.

So now imagine a Platoon of Super Unicum IS-6 on Team A, and a Platoon of Average IS-6 on Team B. The first thing that come into mind should be that the pair of Unicums on Team A would most likely have unlocked all 9 slots on their IS-6s, and the platoon on Team B would be less likely to have all 9 slots unlocked. With these simple assumptions and processing you can easily predict the outcome if these Platoon face off each other.

This of course takes away the fun for the IS-6 Platoon on Team B, as they knew they are not fully equipped, but are going against a pair of Unicums who are most likely to be driving a fully equipped tank. It would be safe to say that the odds were never stacked in their favour. Following this pattern, it’s going to be very easy to predict the pattern of how a battle will turn out to be after 3.8, as players who are able to fully equip their tank would be unicums and tank enthusiasts, so when you recognize a unicum inside of a battle, you would be able to easily tell which side would be favoured to win the game, just because there is a very skilled player driving a fully equipped tank, which is already a big advantage itself. And now the game sounds a lot more boring than it should be.

Conclusion

Whole Equipment overhaul isn’t bad at all. There are definitely some ideas that need to be improved, and it just shows what WG have in mind is slightly different then what we players are expecting to get. I honestly don’t want to see Update 3.8 fail like the Rubicon update for WoT PC, having to fully stop the update due to heavy user criticism.

I hope WG would be able to read this, and learn from their mistakes. My ideas are not the best, but like everyone else, I am trying to point out as many problems inside the new content as possible so WG can come up with a nice solution to try to solve them all.

Old Version
Spoiler

Hi WG and the WOTB Community,

I know WG is currently under a lot of trouble right now, but I will still post my views here so that WG can reference, and allow more people to see it.

To be honest, I liked WG’s idea of implementing the new equipment system. Without mentioning the bad ideas involved this equipment overhaul, the equipment overhaul itself attempts to provides a lot more choices for players, and the theory is to allow the same tank to have the ability to focus on improving different aspects of the tank according to the players’ playstyle and taste, for example you can equip your Tiger 2 to be a Frontline Head-on Tank with the “Enhanced Armor” Option, or turn it into a mid-long Range Sniper/Supporter by equipping it with the “Refined Gun” option. It opens a lot of new possibilities for the same tank, which provided the “diversity” that we and WG wants.

The equipment overhaul also removed some of the equipments that practically no one uses (Low usage on Spall Liners, Cyclone Filter, Fill Tanks with CO2, Enhanced Torsion Bars (Enhanced Suspensions) etc.) and it also removed Binoculars Telescope, and Wet Ammo Rack. There are a group of people who feels that the removal of Binoculars Telescope is unnecessary, I totally understood their reasons, and I feel this is debatable, but to avoid this turning into “debate about whether Binoculars Telescope should be removed or not”, I will just leave the topic here for the discussion for future.

So, let’s now talk about the bad ideas of the equipments.

1- Timers

Adding timers into the game itself isn’t a bad idea, it slows down the grind of players a bit, so that they can play a few more games and understand their tank better before the equipment slots are unlocked. The whole WoTB Playerbase took fully equipped tanks for granted. But in reality, is that we need to do is play the tank without equipment loaded, and understand where the tank needs to improved, then apply the equipments that will improve the tank’s weak aspects, or allow the tank to perform better at its strengths, just like how WoT equipment system was designed to be. But the fact that it will take nearly a month for a Tier X to be able to have all 9 slots unlocked, even down at Tier I it would take 2 Hours to fully unlock all 9 slots. Normally, 2 hours into playing this game would already take a new player to Tier III or even Tier IV. I understand this is an effort trying to stretch the grind life of a free-to-play player, to encourage them to drop a few cents into this game, to slow down the grind to a point where players can’t fail their way onto high tiers anymore, to encourage the existing players to invest more time into this game, and also to allow new players to understand this game more before they can move up. But looking at the calculations, isn’t the timer duration a ‘bit’ too long? I think many players want the timer function to be gone not because it’s a money blackhole, but simply the timer is too long that it affects even the experienced players heavily.

I recently have Speed Grinded the STB-1, Starting from Chi-to, I have accomplished this within 3 weeks. Not trying to boast this achievement, but rather use this as example. I went from Chi-To to Chi-Ri within 9 hours of playing it. I feel that the timer required to unlock all 9 slots for this tier should be around 6-7 hours, but if it uses the current 3.8 timer it would take at least 2 days or even more (Assumed using Linear Scale). I completed the grind from Chi-Ri to STA-1 Within 24 hours of unlocking the Chi-Ri, and I feel that the timer required to unlock all 9 slots for this tier should be around 18-20 hours, but if it uses the current 3.8 timer it would take at least 5 days or even more (Assumed using Linear Scale). If players were to speed grind like this under the 3.8 timer system, they would have reached at least 2 tiers further before the all 9 slots are unlocked on that tank.

The Diversity that WG Suggests, is barely visible from this example given, because during the grinding process, you will only have at most 5-6 slots unlocked on that tank before you will reach the next tank, giving the player little option to customize their tank according to their needs while grinding the tank. It’s also worth mentioning that compared to the old system where your tank will be instantly equipped, the benefit WG suggests only adds up slowly over time as the equipment slots will have to be opened in a specific order, with each unlocking taking hours to days. At this state where WG is trying to take away stuff that has already been in the game since its birth, Where the players already took it for granted, will certainly trigger a rage-storm by a large proportion of the playerbase.

My suggestion for the timer issue is to reduce the timer length to acceptable by the majority of the players, but not fully removing the timer function, to retain its positive function as to preventing poorly performed players to go up tiers that easily, to allow the players to invest a bit more time into this game, and also to allow new players to understand this game more before they can move up.

Another suggestion is that to allow premium account holders to have a way shorter timer then other players (let’s say at least 50% quicker). I know this sounds like pay-to-win, but still it requires time to unlock the slots, just the time is shorter compared to a player without premium account, so it’s actually more like pay-to-progress.

2- Spare Parts

A new currency, Spare Parts, is added together with the change of the whole equipment system. There are a few problems that arose because the introduction and balancing of the new currency.

2.1- Obtaining Spare parts

As mentioned inside WG’s news, there are two (or three) ways of obtaining the new currency. Via Combat Missions, and upon calculation of battle results, (or even events). It might be strange to see that the new currency is not obtainable in any other way.

First, Via Combat missions. I know missions is not welcomed by players because of the limitation of it only resets twice a day, and it doesn’t always give the correct prize in respond to the effort that players paid to complete the mission. Together with Hated supremacy missions, using missions to promote grinding Spare Parts/ Using Spare Parts to encourage players to play missions is a tough thing to achieve. I don’t have any good suggestions that I can give regarding to this. Still want WG to know that this is happening.

Secondly, upon calculation of battle results. You guys mentioned about the 50% drop rate for the spare parts. Till this moment, I still haven’t been able to come up with an answer for the reason behind ‘50%’. But this is now a thing where more and more of this game is depending on RNG. The drop rate is depended on RNG, then the actual spare parts you will receive will be likely to depend on RNG as well. I would like to suggest that to remove the 50% drop rate, and allow the Spare Parts to be calculated like XP and Credits, with a formula to be created and followed. Not simply depending on RNG, or at least allow it to depend on current existent items such as XP.

2.2- Spear Parts Unlocking slots

Using Spare Parts to unlock the equipment slots is the reason why this new currency existed in the first place. But here is a problem. For example, a Tier X will require 29300 spare parts to unlock 1 Level 2 slot. Assume I play 20 battles per day (50% WR), and only half of the games I obtained Spare Parts, completes all missions (obtains 10k spare parts per day if I am lucky enough), then I will have ((10*116)+(10*231))/2+10000 = 11735 Spare Parts per day at most. It will take 29300/11735 = 2.49 days = 3 days just to collect the spare parts required for one single level 2 equipment slot. Adding to the fact that it will take (29300*3)+(32600*3) = 185700 Spare parts to fully have enough Spare Parts to fully unlock all 9 slots on one tank. That will take me 185700/11735 = 15.82 days = 16 days just to grind for Spare Parts. In 16 days, I can easily grind a Tier IX tank onto Tier X, which can vary from 200k exp to 319k exp. Also, taking into account that It will take 24 days for all 9 slots to be fully unlocked, it’s safe to say the grind is just a bit too long.

This Spreadsheet is very useful in illustrating my point here, for the time required to grind the Spare Parts Required. I decided to put the next part inside “Spear Parts Unlocking” because it relates to the price of the equipment slots.

At small scale, it seems that it’s not that much of a problem. But if you look at one of the extreme cases, you will see what am I trying to say here.

I know a player who owns every single tank in the game except 2, IS-6 Fearless and KV-220. He has played around 38k games, from this spreadsheet he was told that he will obtain 2.1 million parts when the compensation drops, which leaves him with a grand total of 32 million Spare Parts to grind if he wants to fully equip all 217 tanks in his garage. From my assumption of that playing 20 battles per day, and complete all 6 daily missions, it will take him 32,000,000/11375 = 2813 Days = 7.71 years. 7.71 years from the point where Version 3.8 drops. I don’t know about WG, but I never spent 7.71 year doing the same thing every day, repetitive, non-stop, 24/7 and 365 days per year. And the point is that he can’t skip using gold. As you can tell by now, he is one of the heaviest payers for this game, and trying to ask him to do the same thing 7.71 years non-stop is just insane. This is insane to a point where I wonder whether the developers ever check their maths. I know my attitude is turning bad here, but I am trying to illustrate the truth here that the number of Spare Parts required to unlock a single equipment slot is insane. Even reducing the required spare parts by half will still take him 3 years at least.

So my suggestion is largely decrease the amount of Spare Parts Required to unlock any given equipment slot, at least for the sake of these heavy payers, there should also be another solution which I will talk about next.

2.3- Spare Parts Compensation

As you all know, the transition from Old equipment to new equipment system means the old equipment will be deleted, and existing equipment will be compensated in the form of a small amount of spare parts, along with another compensation of spare parts that is calculated from your battle count per tier, and the amount of equipments equipped on each tank before the compensation arrives.

Currently players also heavily criticize about the lack of compensation, saying that it’s basically making the players grind like crazy just to make the tank as competitive as compared to before the new equipment system. This is actually quite true, as for example, I fully equip my Tier X tank with the expensive equipments, I would get 22500 spare parts when compensation drops. But 22500 spare parts isn’t even enough to unlock a Level 2 slot, which is already the cheapest for a Tier X tank. With the 22500 spare parts you will be only able to achieve (22500/185700)*100% = 12.12% of Fully equipping a tank that you might actually already owned for a long time, and has a lot of experience in this tank, but was forced to regrind the spare parts for this tank because the compensation for the transition to the new system is insufficient.

My suggestion is that the compensation for per tank should also take into account the battle count of that tank, it sounds like it would be the same as compensating the Spare Parts using battler count according to tier, but this compensation for per tank is only available for tanks that are in the garage. For a Tier X tank I would want to see at least 70-80k compensation per tank, especially for tanks that I have played a lot (for me it’s Obj.140, over 1.5k games), as I expect the compensation I got from Obj.140 would be able to fully equip this tank with the compensation it receives just for that tank (around 125k) + a small part from compensation from battle count (60k). This still allows the grinding of players, but not because that they need to make their tank as competitive as before 3.8, but to further enhance their tank’s characteristics as with the compensation from the tank would be easily enable them to unlock up to 7-8 slots if they like that tank and use it frequently, And in my option 7-8 slots unlocked would make the tank almost as competitive as before, or even more competitive than before.

3- Balancing

I know this is the least discussed topic as it involved a lot of calculations and assessment done by WG, but I still want to point out a few of the problems that I think is improper in balance.

For the category Vitality, Level 2 there are options to either increase armor thickness by 5%, or you can have the option to increase your maximum health by 5%. Meanwhile Level 3 there are options to either allow the tracks to repair to full health, or you can have the option to increase the speed of repairs by 25%. In my honest opinion, the either options at level 2 gives more of an advantage than options available at level 3, as more health or more armor, means you can survive in the battlefield for longer, and for the Enhanced Tracks and toolbox is only aimed to assist the repair of broken modules of the tanks.

My suggestion regarding to the detailed tweaking is that to swap the equipments of Vitality Level 2 and Level 3, or nerf the bonus given by the Improved Assembly and Enhanced Armor, or more better, to improve level 3 equipments so that they are competitive enough to be at level 3.

And as for Binoculars Telescope / have to choose between optics and camouflage net issue, I am sure a lot of players would like to debate about this a lot more than I do.

4- Other Issues that emerges from this Equipment Change

Tank performance gap. As mentioned in “Spare Parts Unlocking slots” and the “Timers” part, the time to fully unlock all 9 equipment on a Tier X tank can start from 24 days. During the 24 days of this “unlocking period”, the tanker will certainly come against players who have the same tank, but fully equipped with all equipments. WG suggested that fully equipping your tank will give you even more bonus to the tank compared to now in 3.7, and as I suggested somewhere in a discussion with other players, people who will be able to fully equip their tank when 3.8 drops is the players who has a lot of experience in the tank, because they have been liking the tank and choose to invest their spare parts onto tanks that they like and they excel.

So now Imagine in team A a platoon of a pair of Fully Equipped IS-6, and in team B a pair of poorly equipped IS-6 (Only managed to unlock 3-5 slots). Taking into account the skill difference of these IS-6 platoons, it would be safe to say that the platoon of IS-6 inside team A should have a higher skill level as they have more battles played, and has the patience to unlock all equipment slots, which thus lead to the fact that they are more skilful. On the other hand, the platoon of IS-6 inside team B should have a lower skill level as they did not unlock all 9 slots, or they just use IS-6 as a credit grinder, not really liking the tank itself, so they don’t bother fully equipping it. In this situation, having a pair of apparently better IS-6s vs a pair of obviously worse IS-6s, the result if they end up in a 2 vs 2 with each other, is really obvious.

This of course takes away the fun of the IS-6 drivers from Team B, as the odds were not stacked in their favour in the first place, and it also creates really predictable match outcomes, as you recognize players from unicum clan, you would assume them driving a very skilled tank to grind spare parts, and they would use a tank with all 9 equipment slots fully equipped. From there you can easily predict the match outcome and the game suddenly sounds a lot more boring than it should be.

Conclusion

Whole Equipment overhaul isn’t bad at all. There are definitely some ideas that need to be improved, and it just shows what WG have in mind is slightly different then what we players are expecting to get. I honestly don’t want to see Update 3.8 fail like the Rubicon update for WoT PC, having to fully stop the update due to heavy user criticism.

I hope WG would be able to read this, and learn from their mistakes. My ideas are not the best, but like everyone else, I am trying to point out as many problems inside the new content as possible so WG can come up with a nice solution to try to solve them all.