PVE in World of Tanks! (sort of...)

[xamdam]

Bored today and since it takes them 5 hours to install a new patch... I reloaded WOT after probably 4 or 5 years of it being off my PC and nearly 9 years since I stopped playing it regularly.

Was met with a fun little tutorial scenario with two other Shermans. And then 7 "Random Warm-up" battles where my team and the enemy team is entirely populated by bots. The coding was good enough to have me fooled at first, I thought they were real players. I am able to play any vehicle in my garage, including tier 10s and so far, no arty has shown up! Fun times! The rewards seem to be normal payouts. And somehow I landed 17 days of premium time.

The game though... sheesh has it ever become cluttered. I have no idea what to do with my crews, upgrades and consumables. There's just so much "stuff" to look through and it's not very well explained. I imagine that's what WOWS will look like in a few years.

Just messing around with it for now. Some of the maps I remember from closed beta but I don't know what most of the vehicles are anymore. They've been busy over there it seems, not necessarily in a good way. I tend to prefer "simple is best", like it was when it started and how WOWS used to be before all the gimmicks. 

[Admiral_Karasu]

Basically, 3 simple rules will cover you in today's WoT.

1. Shoot gold.

2. Buy gold.

3. Shoot more gold.

[xamdam]

8 minutes ago, Admiral_Karasu said:

Basically, 3 simple rules will cover you in today's WoT.

1. Shoot gold.

2. Buy gold.

3. Shoot more gold.

Hah!

That said, there are some things there that WOWS sorely needs... Like the "Topography" practice maps. They teach cover, how to use your armor and terrain. WOWS has nothing like that for new players... There should be tutorials that show what happens when you're spotted and broadside.

[Admiral_Karasu]

20 minutes ago, xamdam said:

Hah!

That said, there are some things there that WOWS sorely needs... Like the "Topography" practice maps. They teach cover, how to use your armor and terrain. WOWS has nothing like that for new players... There should be tutorials that show what happens when you're spotted and broadside.

True, although WoT does not let you study all of the maps, just a handful of them.

Personally, I'd like to study at least my favorite maps, especially the best WoWS map carefully, down to every minute detail.

[Wolfswetpaws]

3 hours ago, xamdam said:

There's just so much "stuff" to look through and it's not very well explained.

Compared to World of Warships, Star Trek Online has a lot more "stuff" to learn about and more "administrative tasks" available for a player to make decisions about.

A handful of Space Maps have some sort of "terrain" to deal with, but most of the terrain is discovered during ground missions.

Personally, I'm enjoying the additional variety of content and customization and "crafting" that STO offers.
WOWs is still great for "pew pew pew - shooty boates", though.  🙂 

[xamdam]

1 hour ago, Admiral_Karasu said:

True, although WoT does not let you study all of the maps, just a handful of them.

Personally, I'd like to study at least my favorite maps, especially the best WoWS map carefully, down to every minute detail.

They have 14 maps, with 4 training scenarios each so 56 missions. Each set of 4 nets you 3 sets of large consumables (repair, first aid and auto fire extinguishers) plus some coins. At around 6 mins each, that's around 5 1/2 hours of practice. Yes, not all the maps, but for beginners it's a heck of a lot better than WOWS just chucking them into a few bot matches and then the deep sea! 

[xamdam]

I'm not advocating a move back to WOT btw, just pointing out what has changed and how it could help (or hurt... as in such a cluttered interface) here. Also, since I'm so rusty, the practice stuff is fun.

[Admiral_Karasu]

5 minutes ago, xamdam said:

I'm not advocating a move back to WOT btw, just pointing out what has changed and how it could help (or hurt... as in such a cluttered interface) here. Also, since I'm so rusty, the practice stuff is fun.

Back when we had the universal premium time, I used to alternate a lot more between WoWS and WoT. Both games still were a lot more enjoyable back then, of course. Now I play WoWS still much more regularly than WoT, basically just occasionally logging in WoT, though I like the periodically returning Frontline, it gives some variation of play.

[xamdam]

8 hours ago, Admiral_Karasu said:

Back when we had the universal premium time, I used to alternate a lot more between WoWS and WoT. Both games still were a lot more enjoyable back then, of course. Now I play WoWS still much more regularly than WoT, basically just occasionally logging in WoT, though I like the periodically returning Frontline, it gives some variation of play.

Universal premium time... yes, remember when they promised in game currency and xp would be universal and then reneged? I had a pretty good stash of gold over there from clan wars and was looking forward to spending it here (never thought the xp part would be a good idea though). In the end, I burned it all up on that Universal Premium Time but only played ships. When it was gone, the game got uninstalled.

Oh and yes, both were a lot more enjoyable back then. A lot more...

WOT now looks like a mash up of COD / Battlefield and and GTA Online. And they never figured out a way to put it all into their interface that makes any sense. Kinda like our Japanese kohkoku (advertisement pages) in our newspapers. Pack as much stuff as you can on a single piece of paper and hope everyone sees it...

I don't need to have fifteen different menus for customizations (I like to keep things looking as historical as possible). I'd rather just have more maps and better game modes. Alas, ain't gonna happen.

[Estimated_Prophet]

All I know is I haven't played in about two years, and a month or so.

Just watched the Roadmap Video on the Game Center today.

Basically a bunch of changes that amount to;

• Because crew training was such (bovine byproducts,) all my crew without enough xp will be going away. The so-called 'compensation' doesn't 'compensate' for the fact I will have many tanks that no longer have crew.
• 'Balance Changes' for old tanks; = 'were fixing some T10s, and who gives a flip about other tanks."
• Gameplay changes that basically are claimed to be making things 'easier,' but which more realistically equal; "The hell is even the point of trying to play this game any more?"
• More and more and more paper tanks, gimmick tanks, and etc...

Edited February 22 by Estimated_Prophet

[Taylor3006]

4 hours ago, Estimated_Prophet said:

All I know is I haven't played in about two years, and a month or so.

Just watched the Roadmap Video on the Game Center today.

Basically a bunch of changes that amount to;

• Because crew training was such (bovine byproducts,) all my crew without enough xp will be going away. The so-called 'compensation' doesn't 'compensate' for the fact I will have many tanks that no longer have crew.
• 'Balance Changes' for old tanks; = 'were fixing some T10s, and who gives a flip about other tanks.
• Gameplay changes that basically are claimed to be making things 'easier,' but which more realistically equal; "The hell is even the point of trying to play this game any more?"
• More and more and more paper tanks, gimmick tanks, and etc...

Oh wow, nice.  I played Tanks a bit, only up to around tier 6 for most lines but have a bunch of premium tanks I earned or bought. Still have like 20k gold there too since I never worried about spending because they said they were working on cross title access to resources like doubloons/gold. That didn't work out. But what made me totally quit was the crew skill rework. It didn't take a PhD in Stupid Decisions to know that was going to be a cluster.  Might have to reinstall and check it out. 

BTW back then, you could actually play PvE in Tanks. You just had to play on the South American server. The population was low, really low, and the teams were almost always made up of one or two humans and the rest were bots. I loved it.  Not sure if the SA is still around but it kept me playing for longer than I probably should have played. 

Edited February 22 by Taylor3006

[Amaruk]

On 2/22/2024 at 1:33 AM, Estimated_Prophet said:

• Because crew training was such (bovine byproducts,) all my crew without enough xp will be going away. The so-called 'compensation' doesn't 'compensate' for the fact I will have many tanks that no longer have crew.

According to the video this should affect crew in barracks only, not crew in your tanks.

Quote

8:43 Another long-awaited event coming up is the Barracks cleanup.
8:47 All crew members that don't have enough XP to train their first perk to 100%
8:52 will be removed from the Barracks and compensated for with Crew Books.
8:57 These will contain as much XP as the converted tankers had.
9:01 And don't worry about special crew members like celebrities:
9:04 you will keep them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8M5WMAGE4Fk&t=523s

 

 

On 2/22/2024 at 5:51 AM, Taylor3006 said:

BTW back then, you could actually play PvE in Tanks. You just had to play on the South American server.

SA server is still up.

Edited February 25 by Amaruk
timestamped link

[Taylor3006]

1 hour ago, Amaruk said:

According to the video this should affect crew in barracks only, not crew in your tanks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8M5WMAGE4Fk&t=523s

 

 

SA server is still up.

Thanks for the information Amaruk.  Seems a good strategy would be to fill your barracks with low skill crew members to farm some books. Damn shame I used to clean house by dismissing them. They used to just flood you with new crewmembers and it was so annoying to me. Couldn't rearrange crews on my premium tanks because my barracks were always filled with unused people. 

[Estimated_Prophet]

7 hours ago, Amaruk said:

According to the video this should affect crew in barracks only, not crew in your tanks.

Missed the barracks part; thanks.

Still won't do much for me. It was hard enough (re: impossible,) to even get a first skill point in crews I used, so I doubt anyone unassigned in the barracks has any progress points.