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jesus, on 26 April 2012 - 09:00 PM, said:
Ah, well. They did add 2-person platoons that one does not need a premium account to start, but I agree with you--it's a very cheap, and I think unnecessary, way to try to motivate people to buy a premium account. I think WoT has a good plan with the 50% more credits/xp for a premium account and don't really think anything more is needed. It's a strong bonus that incentivizes people to pay for it, is worth paying for if you get into the game more than passingly casually and does not introduce any "pay to win" elements.
The two greatest banes of WoT are it's absurd spotting system where tanks disappear 200m in front of you AFTER you've spotted them. As a friend of mine pointed out a while ago, with good camoflage you might not notice a tank 500 feet away, but once you've see it you don't magically UNSEE it. The second great bane is the single game mode, which gets dreadfully old. The matchmaker is poor, to be sure, but in all honesty it's not crucial that every single match be perfectly balanced (only that matches are, in general, balanced over the course of dozens and hundreds of games).
The two biggest game design choices in WoT that clearly favored money over sound game design are:
1) Intentionally designing away variety in clan wars (WoT's version of the endgame). Only end tier tanks are competitive. This was to motivate gold sales since people convert xp with gold to accelerate their progress up the tech tree, along with the premium tank to pay for it. This leaves clan wars participants mostly bored as balls after a month or two because there are only a few viable strats per map, with the same few tanks. Simply put, the clan wars endgame is boring, but by the time people get there they've usually spent enough real money for it to be worthwhile to wargaming, which is sad to me. Fortunately for WG.net, they've been aggressive in adding tournament play as an alternative to clan wars endgame play.
2) "Power creep" with new tank trees. The french tree was recently released with incredibly underpowered early tanks and grossly overpowered end tier tanks. This really rubbed me the wrong way, since it was such a transparent money grab. So many people converted free xp, including me, to skip the terrible early tanks to get to the end tier tanks, WG doubtlessly made a fortune from that expansion alone. Fortunately for me, I make my gold from the tournies, but obviously not everyone can do that. Then, ofc, a few months later they buff the lower tier French tanks slightly and give the high tier tanks a nerf. Figures, right.
But haters aside, the truth is that WoT has done a lot of things right. With a few changes, especially regarding endgame content and otherwise allowing money to dictate fundamental game design issues it would be pretty much the perfect model. I'm of the opinion that if you build a great game with longlasting appeal (read: viable and enduring endgame) then people will pay to play it over the long haul. I think trying to extract as much money from people on their way to the endgame, knowing they'll get bored when they get there (read: WoT) is fundamentally flawed and misses a great opportunity.
I would love to pay for a premium account to MWO for years, but they're going to have to give me a reason to and I hope that reason is sound, engaging endgame play.
What i think they did wrong is that they earned lots of money from players and now i was expecting they will make game a lot better
but nothing happend expect added few tanks and some other cheap stuff, and they are making two other games while wot is still not perfected it looks like it will never be. What games like wot need is players when they get to endgame then they just start to think about dominating over others fight for something, like in mmorpgs (e.g lineage 2 on weekends people fight to control main cities and gain gold +
castle), and when players achieve goal they have to fight to protect it and thats fun. too me it looks like WG guys are too greedy.
