The below are my ramblings, they are not stated as fact, they are stated simply as my musings based on my game experience with WoT across 4 accounts (mtl_templar, volfsangel, mtltemplar and viaggio_rules), as food for thought
Game Reloading (RNG Reset)
Over time, I have noticed that when I am in a gaming session with WoT, sometimes the matches will go from good to bad and then stay bad/worse from there. When I am saying good/bad, I am talking about RNG (the number of fully aimed shots that miss entirely [mostly dropping into the dirt halfway to the target] or when they do hit the target, don’t penetrate) as well as team makeups (as in being on the receiving end of roflstomping, or <3.5 minute games, repeatedly). When this happens, I will exit out of my game client completely and relaunch it and try another match. 90% of the time the matches completely turn around immediately and get better and I start hitting/penning more of the shots that are fully aimed and being on the better (winning) teams, and 10% of the time the first match back is just as bad, so I exit and reload again and then the matches turn around again.
Since this has happened repeatedly and consistently for the last couple years, this leads me to anecdotally believe that Wargaming might be setting the ‘session’ (as described in the matchmaking training) per game client launch and A) ‘setting’ RNG values on the server side (the single value for the seed) when the game client launch communicates to the server that a new instance has been opened, or B) that the RNG is actually embedded in the client binary somewhere and gets reset when the game relaunches.
I will need to investigate the game binaries and python scripts more to see if we can figure out just where it occurs
Gaming the MoE system
When trying to mark a tank, and it has become hard (as in a struggle to go up .5%), I will put a tank away for 2 weeks, then come back and play 2-4 matches in it, then put it away for 2 weeks again and then just play 2-4 matches in it at that point. On at least 4 occasions for myself (and 3 for another player in my clan willing to try it), this has allowed us to quickly mark a tank that we were struggling in, as our EMA is unmoved for 2 weeks while the server average changes, and then as compared to 14 day server average, we are looking pretty good.
My personal opinion on why this works is due to Wargaming’s desire to make you excited about a tank again, so when you haven’t played a tank for a while and take it back out, between how battle tiering in the matchmaker works, and Wargaming’s desire to make you have a good experience in the tank again, you get a couple REALLY good matches in it before they start going downhill again, so if you keep to just those few good ones, you can game the system to get the marks quicker.
Soft Stats on Tank Purchase
Another thing I have noticed is that there are many occasions where my experience in a tank is utter SHIT compared to another player’s experience in my clan in the same tank. This could be due to play styles, RNG values, etc. but when it’s consistently worse compared to someone else’s consistently good experience, I started to wonder why.
We’ve all heard of soft stats on tanks, stats that are assigned that we cannot see that determine how the tank operates in all its functions. The general numbers/information for this are outlined on sites like tanks.gg, since they’re not available in-game, but it got me starting to think. If soft stats can be assigned per tank, per player, would that indicate that potentially Wargaming has a selected range for each soft stat, and when a player purchases a vehicle, a ‘random’ value from within each range is selected and recorded as the permanent base soft stat(s) for each tank? Could this be why some people’s experience in a tank is far superior to other’s experiences when they’re running same crew, same equipment and same loadout?
To test my theory, I took 1 tank each from tiers 7, 8, 9 and 10 where I had purchased the tank and my experience in it was TRASH after playing at least 20 matches in it and recording the hit/pen rates, max speed of travel, etc. and then I sold each of those tanks and immediately repurchased it, set it up exactly the same (same crew, same equipment, same loadouts) and played another 20 matches in it. In all 4 cases, my experience turned around, almost night and day, and the tank performed considerably better after the re-purchase. I know there’s a little confirmation bias going on here, and I’m working to build up more empirical evidence of such, but on straight performance of hit/pen rates and max speed of travel, there was a marked increase each and every time.
More to come on this as I get the chance to do more empirical testing (might have to make a mod or something) and get others to join in the test from their accounts.
MoE Rigged RNG
I have noticed that when you are getting close to 2 or 3 marking a tank, right when you get within the last 1-1.5%, many times the matches take a noticeable and decisive turn for the worse – worse RNG, worse teams, etc. It’s almost like Wargaming is aware you’re about to mark it and they want to make you work all that much harder for it. This is highly subjective, but it’s just something that myself and 3 other players have noticed.
This is why it’s sometimes better to just put the tank aside for a couple weeks before taking it back out again (as mentioned above).
Different Playstyles and How They Relate to Different Classes of Tank and Tank Types
WORK IN PROGRESS
but essentially this will be about how there are different playstyles for each player, and how those play styles relate to playing in the various tank types in an effort to debunk the ‘this tank sucks, period’ mentality from some, when other players are playing at a super unicum level in them. there has to be SOME reason for this.
How to Properly Track a Player’s Performance That Matters for Team Play
WORK IN PROGRESS
weighted versions (as a value from 1-10 or 1-100) of:
overall WN8 and winrate
recent WN8, winrate and average tier
recent WN8 and winrate in specific tanks
overall damage and frag ratios
track MOE for 20+ matches in last 14 days
using the weighted versions, tanks have to be in the top 7-10 or 75-100 for you specifically to be considered as possible to be used in advances/CW
THEN put that up against both actual server averages for overall wn8/winrate and dmg/frag ratios, as well as what the clan’s averages are for the same
for B team players you do the above AND require tryouts where you split into two teams of B players and go into a training room and do a best of 5 matches type thing so you can weed out highest and lowest values and average the other 3 for dmg/frags and then say okay, you can bring that tank – that sort of thing
- add section on matchmaker after patching / server reset