World of Tanks IV: We're on Fire!

[MCerberus]

As a former WoW player: oh boy, looks like you guys are dealing with the infamous gear rating.

What could be a decent tool for a jumping off point in analysis instead leads to a massive cycle of oversimplification, doing things for no other reason than to increase an irrelevant number, and subjective idiocy getting in the way of its intended purpose.

And like gear rating, the "it's just a tool and how you use it" excuse doesn't work because everyone has ceased using it right.

The 360 forum community doesn't have database APIs, so we've been doing essentially root-cause analysis on people's stats. It's actually brought the community closer instead of turning into a yelling fight.

[otakuryoga]

Again, please don't strawman a non-existent argument. The original point was that people cap far too early in a game and thus lowers the XP gain of everyone in the game. WN8 doesn't even come into the picture.

you know what maximizes xp gain?
WINNING (heck..even just playing and losing another game)

you will usually get...what? 250-300 xp minimum for a loss?
vs how much for letting someone hunt down 4-5 tanks?
at 1-5 minutes for them to do so...
so capping and getting into another game and getting just one xtra win that day..worth more than finishing off a few more tanks..especially if you are not the one doing the damage
and if you cap a few games..get 3 maybe 4 more games..win 2 of them = MUCH better xp

but finishing off those tanks? that does maximize the magic number gains for those couple guys

that said...PLEASE lets not start THAT debate again

[Grif]

That's why I said I thought WN8 was a definite improvement. While wins is what I care about, a stat that dealt only in wins is fairly easy farmable with platoons of traditionally OP tanks, and thus wouldn't really be an accurate reflection of pure skill. What CAN be done, and I've sure the stats jocks at WOTLabs have done, is look at the recursive team win % numbers, and figure out that one rating ends up with a higher reliability (taking less results to approach the predicted number) over another, then use that figure to further refine the system. Multi-player ratings, particularly one with 15 variables per side, will always be far less reliable than any kind of direct head-to-head system, however.

You can be quite sure all the number crunchers in wotlabs/WOT forums/etc are busy trying to come up with a better system. I still remember when Efficiency was the metric thrown around to measure player skill. Now that one was a laugh. (Quick recap: efficiency weighs cap points and cap defense disproportionately, thus making it far too easy to pad.)

The thing about a damage-race game like this, is that fundamentally, the roles eventually fall into the standard MMO/RPG tropes. You have a "tank" that can either absorb more damage than usual, or has a way of deflecting/dodging shots that lowers the enemy's total DPS output, you have heavy/medium/light melee with direct damage shots, you have "ranged" DPS in artillery and TDs played from cover, and you have "buffs" with equipment slots and on the field with the kinds of force multipliers that good scouting and positioning can give the team, with the corresponding de-buffs coming from purposely attempting critical hits with HE or shot placement. The only thing WOT doesn't have is a healer class, just a limited ability to counter debuffs if you buy the right "spells".

I could torture this metaphor all day, but it points out how really really hard it is to escape this pattern from cropping up in game design, and you could probably replace all the terms in the anti-arty argument with whatever the current hated class there is in WOW, and you wouldn't notice the difference.

That's an interesting way to look at things, if nothing else. I'm not entirely sure if it does applies to tanks though.

(Disclaimer: Any bold that appears was added by me)


Win rate - Even with great skill, it's still largely dependent on the other 14 people on your team. I know earlier in the thread it was said that good players can bump their win rate to something like 65% or so. But that sounds like something that you'd have to spend thousands of matches trying to improve, and it still doesn't account for randomly generated teams.

It does, by virtue of collecting thousands, and thousands of games together. 500 games may not be an accurate representation of the base winrate for a particular player, but 5000 games would be a much accurate statistic. Overall WR does present the problem that even WR from your newbie days are counted in. This has resulted people in relying on 60-day winrate instead to gauge player skill.

Oh. Never mind then. So WN8 ignores a completely valid method of playing? One that the game itself gives exp for?

Not for the lack of trying, mind you. It is only recently WG has begun to track and give out rewards based on spotting and tracking, and this data apparently still isn't available through the database API. Tracking spotting damage has been something that has been requested multiple times.

Could you clarify that for me, please? Because I initially took that to mean that good players just do what they want and ignore the team.

Yes and no. Yes, in the sense that good players often use their team to help carry the game. Note this does not mean "camp at the back, snipe everyone", though it can occasionally happen. More often than not, they try to get into advantageous positions where average players don't even consider, or carry out tactics which you wouldn't expect people to do. It can be quite enlightening watching these players handle their tank well.

I appreciate that you acknowledge this. My problem is not with you and others that feel this way, rather, my problem is with the large number of people that believe it is perfect and use it to unfairly judge others. If we didn't have this rating system, I wouldn't be accused of cheating because there's "no way a red player can get top gun." Or being told to quit before the match starts because I'm not good enough to play in Tier 3. They're the toxic element to this game, and they're being enabled by a number that doesn't account for everything and largely serves to stroke egos. I'll grant that some people might find it useful in certain situations, but if it's going to have this much influence on a game, it should better reflect all valid playstyles.

That sounds like you just ran into the vocal douchebags of the server. My sympathies there. Although I'd argue the problem is the person, not the metric being used.

We get less of those here on SEA, and those who rely on stats tend to be quite level-headed.

And like gear rating, the "it's just a tool and how you use it" excuse doesn't work because everyone has ceased using it right.

Aside from vocal statpadders who think magic numbers make them better than other players, IMO thus far people have been reasonable about the metric.

you know what maximizes xp gain?
WINNING (heck..even just playing and losing another game)

you will usually get...what? 250-300 xp minimum for a loss?
vs how much for letting someone hunt down 4-5 tanks?
at 1-5 minutes for them to do so...
so capping and getting into another game and getting just one xtra win that day..worth more than finishing off a few more tanks..especially if you are not the one doing the damage
and if you cap a few games..get 3 maybe 4 more games..win 2 of them = MUCH better xp

but finishing off those tanks? that does maximize the magic number gains for those couple guys

that said...PLEASE lets not start THAT debate again

I'll just note that you're still mixing up the argument. I (and Sanguis) said that on a sure win, you should go for killing everyone to maximise xp. If the match is down the wire, or the enemy only has 1 tank... eh, it doesn't matter either way. Capping would be recommended. Please do not continue claiming we advocate killing everyone at the expense of winning the game.

[Leon]

Unlike gearscore the assorted metrics that tankers follow has no bearing on who they play a game with other than being a vocal asshat in chat or sinking to the level of team damage (for which the auto system is fairly swift).

That system is rather effective at what it does and the rage posts that turn up on the forum from some twit who was banned by it for "defending" themselves are on a balance of funny and sad. These morons can't see that shooting a allied tank "in defense" is exactly the same as the team damage that was inflicted on them in the first place. Their tears, they are almost as good as the tears of the rabid arty hater getting one shot by it.

[SanguisAevum]

I take offense to this statement. Your precious XVM still rates me as a "Red" player, but I consistently perform better than over half of my team. At the end of the battle, I almost always place in the top seven of highest experience earned. I've earned Top Guns and High Calibers, Invaders, Defenders, Kamikazes, and Reapers. I have a few Ace Tanker badges, with a lot of 1st class mastery. The average experience I earn each round is slowly going up, meaning I must be improving. I have never, EVER, purposefully played a match badly for the sake of screwing with .

Then you belong in the first group i described. Your "recent" ratings will probably be much better than your overalls and your trend graphs will be going up. Both are clear indicators of someone who is trying. And i applaud you for it... Anything i can do to help that proccess is a pleasure for me.

Its the people that DONT try that are the problem (the second group). Not you.

[AdmiralCheez]

Then you belong in the first group i described. Your "recent" ratings will probably be much better than your overalls and your trend graphs will be going up. Both are clear indicators of someone who is trying. And i applaud you for it... Anything i can do to help that proccess is a pleasure for me.

Its the people that DONT try that are the problem (the second group). Not you.

Fair enough. I apologize if I came across as bitter or angry. It's just incredibly frustrating when I think I'm doing pretty well and WN8 barely registers a change. I did notice that yesterday, my recent score had gone up enough to barely qualify as below average, so that's a start I guess.

It does, by virtue of collecting thousands, and thousands of games together. 500 games may not be an accurate representation of the base winrate for a particular player, but 5000 games would be a much accurate statistic. Overall WR does present the problem that even WR from your newbie days are counted in. This has resulted people in relying on 60-day winrate instead to gauge player skill.

I guess I just need to put in a few thousand more matches. Not that my winrate is bad or anything, it's sitting nicely around 50%. But a huge portion of those are still newbie matches when I just bought all the Tier 2 tanks to figure out the different tank roles. I had a lot of learning experiences there, is all I'll say.

Not for the lack of trying, mind you. It is only recently WG has begun to track and give out rewards based on spotting and tracking, and this data apparently still isn't available through the database API. Tracking spotting damage has been something that has been requested multiple times.

I hadn't realized that spotting damage was that new. It's been there the entire ~2 months I've been playing, so I just thought it had been there longer. Hopefully that data becomes available, because a large majority of my damage is done through spotting. It'd be nice if my score could reflect that.

Yes and no. Yes, in the sense that good players often use their team to help carry the game. Note this does not mean "camp at the back, snipe everyone", though it can occasionally happen. More often than not, they try to get into advantageous positions where average players don't even consider, or carry out tactics which you wouldn't expect people to do. It can be quite enlightening watching these players handle their tank well.

Okay, makes sense. A good player isn't going to just follow the herd. I usually end up going off on my own, or going to reinforce a weaker line, but I'm not one of the "good" players yet, so it doesn't always work out for me.

That sounds like you just ran into the vocal douchebags of the server. My sympathies there. Although I'd argue the problem is the person, not the metric being used.

We get less of those here on SEA, and those who rely on stats tend to be quite level-headed.

Yeah, I realize it's just the vocal minority that gives a bad name to everyone, but it doesn't make it any less frustrating. At this point, I'm just trying to raise that number to get people off my case. After that point, I'll probably just go back to ignoring it, only checking it out of curiosity.

[SanguisAevum]

Don't fall into the trap of "playing for stats"

Therin lies the path to "padding"

Instead just focus on playing well and improving. Your recent stats will reflect your increasing skill, and your overall stats will eventually catch up.

Look at my stat block below. My recents reflect how i am playing the game currently (i think they are 60 day stats)

My overall stats are somewhat behind, but it would take 1000s of games for me to "fix" the very bad start i had at WOT (like 5 or 6 thousand games of badness) so i dont really care about the overall... As long as i continue to play well, my recent stats help me guage how well i am doing, and my overalls will fix themselves over time.

[AdmiralCheez]

So, I had my first encounter with a "pro" today, and managed to score the kill for 250 gold. I had almost forgotten that was a thing until I noticed a tank with an odd symbol on the enemy team.

[otakuryoga]

i hate seeing a "pro" on the other team
because it usually leads to everyone on the half of map where he is spotted going YOLO to try and get the gold..which leads to a quick roflstomping after they all get shot up by the teammates of the pro

[AdmiralCheez]

Yeah, that happened in our match. I wasn't trying to go after him, actually; I just happened to turn a corner while fleeing a heavy I couldn't hit, and the pro was there. Of course, half the team had already been wiped out by that point and I got lit up by at least four enemies, but at least I got the shot in.

[SanguisAevum]

Is this an NA event?

[Janwin]

Just pointing something out here...

Being willing to plug a hole when most of your team goes one way and leaves a flank open is not mutually exclusive of obtaining a good rating.

I'm not purple, but I have a blue 1000 battles rating, and have always been quite willing and ready to solo defend a flank if nobody else does. It doesn't prevent me from doing well. Using it as an excuse doesn't work, sorry.

That being said, I do agree that the person who is willing to do that is being far more of a team player than the others who pack up and run off leaving a flank open.

[darksolitaire]

Siege of Tobruk. Yes, it's just as bad as everyone feared. Some people managed to snatch victories for Germans...and then the Matildas rolled in.

[Leon]

Sounds like Fun (Matlida's FTW)

[Jonzac]

Been trying to get a historical battle on the NA West server and NADA! Never more than 2 or 3 people queued up. Maybe if I could be waiting for a historical and still play randoms it would happen more.

Just been potting around lately, I can't seem to muster up the needed "give a damn" to level up my T-44 and IS as well as get enough money to buy anything. I just play a few games on those, my Type and then HellCat. I have been running my T29 as well, I had forgotten how much fun that tank can be...even against highter Tiers.

[otakuryoga]

yeah..historicals had a run of 2 or 3 days when they were introduced...and no one plays em any more

[AdmiralCheez]

Is there any difference between a historical and a random battle, or is it just the same gameplay with specific tanks? Figured I'd ask, since it's unlikely I'll ever get to play one at this point.

[darksolitaire]

Is there any difference between a historical and a random battle, or is it just the same gameplay with specific tanks? Figured I'd ask, since it's unlikely I'll ever get to play one at this point.

Tanks have fixed modules and ammo loadouts and teams are asymmetrical. Battles tend to have bias for one side.

[Grif]

Tanks have fixed modules and ammo loadouts and teams are asymmetrical. Battles tend to have bias for one side.

More to the point, it's also imbalanced due to the broken MM and the fact that they carried over the HP system from the normal games. It made playing low tiers a joke, so everyone queued up the big boys and further broke the MM.

[Jimorian]

Yeah, if you have any kind of assymmetry in tank lineups, the metagame is going to resolve out to something completely unpredictable as optimum strategies and tactics get worked out.

The only solution I can see would be to have a dynamic MM that adds or subtracts lineup points based on the last match on the server, perhaps combined with a limit on the "big" tanks on each team. However, while that may "balance" the win chances for each team over the long haul, it certainly doesn't mean that any particular match will be enjoyable for those who play in it.

[darksolitaire]

Yeah, if you have any kind of assymmetry in tank lineups, the metagame is going to resolve out to something completely unpredictable as optimum strategies and tactics get worked out.

Not really. There aren't platoons or teams in historical battles, metagame is that you play what you want to play. Or rather, metagame is that you want either Matilda, or something that can damage Matilda. Or Crusader, but that's about it.

[Jimorian]

Not really. There aren't platoons or teams in historical battles, metagame is that you play what you want to play. Or rather, metagame is that you want either Matilda, or something that can damage Matilda. Or Crusader, but that's about it.

Metagame in the general game-theory sense I'm talking about is how common knowledge of the scenario eventually changes how it's played as opposed to how the developers meant it to be played, thus breaking any possibility of there being a "fair" fight. Assymmetrical warfare of *any* kind can lead to ultimate tactics that make no sense under normal circumstances. A lot of board wargames that attempt to simulate uneven battles, even after extensive playtesting, often fail once let loose in the wild where players lack the assumptions of the designer of how things "should" go.

So that's why I say they may have to make the MM dynamic, in essence to metagame the metagame, so that the scenario automatically adjusts to compensate for the kinds of optimized strategy and tactics that will develop over time.

[MCerberus]

Things I've learned from the WoT360 E3 announcements

1. autoloaders incoming
2. waffles going to be taken
3. there might finally be a second winter map
4. We're getting a fix to fail platoons
5. PC players are mad jealous of Sand River - Night

[Jimorian]

One of those "have to laugh" games where I scored exactly 1 point of damage and 1 kill after an allied Hetzer trades shots with an enemy ELC bringing it down to 1hp and my followup shot in my SU-85b did the rest. I don't remember that ever happening before where that was the only damage I did in the match.

[Jimorian]

Encounter on Malinovka, Tier 7, and we lose fairly handily. However, one of the funniest things I've ever seen happen closes out this match. Only our T49 is left, and he's hiding in the bushes near the cap circle. Their 2 arties are capping while the rest of the team (4-5 tanks) are hunting around the map furiously looking for him. Apparently he was just outside of automatic spot range, because one of the SPGs is right there. He never moves or shoots (only point would have been to get Defender medal), and when they finally cap out, he explodes because he had been disconnected that whole time!

In another match with my Sexton II, I get a new medal by killing all 3 of the enemy's SPGs, "For Counter-Battery". Kill all enemy SPGs (at least 3).

Finally, in another match that we won, I was so amazed at how badly one player on our team was playing that I looked up his rating (and it wasn't like bot behavior, that just gets ridiculously funny when it's bad). WN8 of 38. No, I didn't miss typing a number. 38. He was driving a KV-1, and had 1400 matches under his belt. (NA Eagle_30). I hope it's a little kid that just likes playing the game, because then that would at least make some sense.

[AdmiralCheez]

He never moves or shoots (only point would have been to get Defender medal), and when they finally cap out, he explodes because he had been disconnected that whole time!

Is that what that means? I've been wondering why people suddenly explode at the end of a match... Still, that's pretty funny. Looking all over the map and he's right there watching.

Finally, in another match that we won, I was so amazed at how badly one player on our team was playing that I looked up his rating (and it wasn't like bot behavior, that just gets ridiculously funny when it's bad). WN8 of 38. No, I didn't miss typing a number. 38. He was driving a KV-1, and had 1400 matches under his belt. (NA Eagle_30). I hope it's a little kid that just likes playing the game, because then that would at least make some sense.

I looked him up too, and apparently 1100 of those 1400 matches were all within the last 24 hours? I don't know what to make of that.

[Jimorian]

I looked him up too, and apparently 1100 of those 1400 matches were all within the last 24 hours? I don't know what to make of that.

WotLabs? It says something similar for me when I tested it. I think it's based on the most recent query, so since nobody had queried him before me, all the stats from the last 30 days got pulled from the database at once, and it doesn't get spread over the proper time. Or it's just a bug on the site. I'm pleased to see that my win rate in the last month has been 56%. Considering that I've been mostly playing all my crappy tanks with losing records trying to boost them over 50%, I'll take it.

[AdmiralCheez]

Yeah, that's where I looked. Thinking back on it, I think a similar thing happened when I first looked myself up, so I guess it's just a weird thing with their program. I'm not sure it's even physically possible to play that many games in a single day.

[Leon]

I looked him up too, and apparently 1100 of those 1400 matches were all within the last 24 hours? I don't know what to make of that.

From something i saw on the WoT forums its a error in the reporting software.

[GloatingSwine]

It's not so much an error in the reporting software, just a limitation of the API.

when you query a player with the API it only returns their current totals for those data points it returns at all.

Websites which do differential performance over time like WoTLabs do so on their own database, but for database size reasons they only update players when queried unless they actually have an account on WoTLabs itself. So if you query someone who hasn't been queried in a while, there's nothing to tell WoTLabs when the games played since the last query took place.

This is the same reason that XVM doesn't offer recent performance information, because they don't hold historical information for database size reasons they have nothing to perform the comparison on.