World of Tanks have a highly controversial feature: gold ammo. I love that game and believe it is a very good field of revealing M&S social behavior.
Gold ammo is bought for real money. It's a consumable that makes your next shot stronger. To understand how it works, you must know that "penetration" is a key mechanic in World of Tanks. If you hit the enemy, based on the power of your gun/ammo, armor of the target and the angle of hit, the shot penetrates the armor and makes its full effect, or it doesn't and you do no damage. The "gold ammo" doesn't have significantly (or at all) more damage than the normal ammo. It has higher penetration power.
The reason why the ammo is controversial is because its effect is numerically small, but social-psychologically high. Gold ammo won't change the match, unless it's a top-clan match where skill and gear (tank improvements) are already very high and every 0.1% matter. In a random match the gold ammo doesn't really matter. Actually you don't matter that much either. I won matches without a single shot, with the enemy massacred in 5 minutes out of my sight. I lost matches where I had 5+ kills. The match is usually decided in the first minute based on the "strategy". While random teams don't discuss strategy, they still play one. When people individually choose to attack on the left side, the team plays the "all zerg left" strategy. The team with the better strategy wins. Your best effect is to change the strategy of your team some meaningful way.
No one with his right mind uses gold ammo in a random match. It's completely stupid. Yet people use gold ammo in a random match, providing income to the publishers. The reason is the "anti-God-mode" cheat. You must know that tanks of several tiers are matched against each other. The higher tier (heavy) tanks are not just "stronger" than you. They are practically playing in God mode. "we did not even scratch them" says your crew when you open fire to such tank. You can empty your whole magazine on an AFK enemy (heavy from front) 2 tiers above you with no effect. He on the other hand can oneshot you.
This clearly unbalanced design is balanced by the randomness of the matchmaking. This match you can be the smallest tank, next match you'll be the largest in God mode. Also, you always have higher tier teammates who can take the big enemy out and the enemy always have low tier members you can hit.
The "we did not even scratch them" has an effect of the social mind. The social player feels bad that the enemy player (a peer) just pwned him and he couldn't do anything about it. Here comes gold ammo! With gold ammo, he can penetrate the big enemy. He will still be oneshotted and the enemy will still walk away victorious but he managed to take 10% down from his HP before blowing up. "i gave the big maderfukker hell before going down lol" feels good to socials. In reality he is still a terrible player who wasted his tank engaging a stronger enemy instead of getting to cover and keep the enemy sighted, targettable by SPGs. Getting to cover is "cheap" and "not fun" and "that fukkin arty steals MY kill lol".
Games sell "pay to cheat". You can buy power, increased chance to win if you pay in the item shop or by subscribing longer. They also sell sparkle ponies to retards but the main income is selling power. Of course it's a slippery slope, as you must have free (casual, new) players as fodders or the game dies. If you sell too much power and your free-fodders quit, then the weakest paying customers will lose, leaving the game. World of Tanks solved this brilliantly. They sell power that is small but feels huge to the socials. The point of making a good game is selling good feeling to the social M&S while not breaking the fairness of the game, which is important to good players. That's what Blizzard seems to fail to find. They sell real power to the M&S by gear resets.
Tip to Blizzard: start selling gear that has equal sustained DPS than normal gear, but provides a chance to make a "super-crit", which does huge damage in huge animated sparkling numbers and zone-wide announcement "arthasdklol just scored a 300K super-crit, arthasdklol is unstoppable" (of course with chat window filter to block it). The items would sell like candy and the game wouldn't be broken.
Gold ammo is bought for real money. It's a consumable that makes your next shot stronger. To understand how it works, you must know that "penetration" is a key mechanic in World of Tanks. If you hit the enemy, based on the power of your gun/ammo, armor of the target and the angle of hit, the shot penetrates the armor and makes its full effect, or it doesn't and you do no damage. The "gold ammo" doesn't have significantly (or at all) more damage than the normal ammo. It has higher penetration power.
The reason why the ammo is controversial is because its effect is numerically small, but social-psychologically high. Gold ammo won't change the match, unless it's a top-clan match where skill and gear (tank improvements) are already very high and every 0.1% matter. In a random match the gold ammo doesn't really matter. Actually you don't matter that much either. I won matches without a single shot, with the enemy massacred in 5 minutes out of my sight. I lost matches where I had 5+ kills. The match is usually decided in the first minute based on the "strategy". While random teams don't discuss strategy, they still play one. When people individually choose to attack on the left side, the team plays the "all zerg left" strategy. The team with the better strategy wins. Your best effect is to change the strategy of your team some meaningful way.
No one with his right mind uses gold ammo in a random match. It's completely stupid. Yet people use gold ammo in a random match, providing income to the publishers. The reason is the "anti-God-mode" cheat. You must know that tanks of several tiers are matched against each other. The higher tier (heavy) tanks are not just "stronger" than you. They are practically playing in God mode. "we did not even scratch them" says your crew when you open fire to such tank. You can empty your whole magazine on an AFK enemy (heavy from front) 2 tiers above you with no effect. He on the other hand can oneshot you.
This clearly unbalanced design is balanced by the randomness of the matchmaking. This match you can be the smallest tank, next match you'll be the largest in God mode. Also, you always have higher tier teammates who can take the big enemy out and the enemy always have low tier members you can hit.
The "we did not even scratch them" has an effect of the social mind. The social player feels bad that the enemy player (a peer) just pwned him and he couldn't do anything about it. Here comes gold ammo! With gold ammo, he can penetrate the big enemy. He will still be oneshotted and the enemy will still walk away victorious but he managed to take 10% down from his HP before blowing up. "i gave the big maderfukker hell before going down lol" feels good to socials. In reality he is still a terrible player who wasted his tank engaging a stronger enemy instead of getting to cover and keep the enemy sighted, targettable by SPGs. Getting to cover is "cheap" and "not fun" and "that fukkin arty steals MY kill lol".
Games sell "pay to cheat". You can buy power, increased chance to win if you pay in the item shop or by subscribing longer. They also sell sparkle ponies to retards but the main income is selling power. Of course it's a slippery slope, as you must have free (casual, new) players as fodders or the game dies. If you sell too much power and your free-fodders quit, then the weakest paying customers will lose, leaving the game. World of Tanks solved this brilliantly. They sell power that is small but feels huge to the socials. The point of making a good game is selling good feeling to the social M&S while not breaking the fairness of the game, which is important to good players. That's what Blizzard seems to fail to find. They sell real power to the M&S by gear resets.
Tip to Blizzard: start selling gear that has equal sustained DPS than normal gear, but provides a chance to make a "super-crit", which does huge damage in huge animated sparkling numbers and zone-wide announcement "arthasdklol just scored a 300K super-crit, arthasdklol is unstoppable" (of course with chat window filter to block it). The items would sell like candy and the game wouldn't be broken.
10 comments:
It's true that there is an incentive for M&S to get some gold ammo for random games, but very few do that. At least this seems to be the consensus on the forums. But who knows, maybe they are so ashamed of doing it, that they don't admit it =).
Usually, I find it a nice challenge to be the underdog against those bigger tanks. It's fun to try and improve and exploit the weaknesses of the enemy. Sadly, the teammates are usually not helping out very much. I recommend playing with a platoonmate or two, to withstand the countless morons playing this game.
It can get quite frustrating, when your teams toptank happens to be the idiot of the team, rushing to suicide. This is offset in games like CS, by everyone starting from same point in each match. In WoT, your team has a steep uphill to climb, if the toptanks feed themselves to the enemy.
The game would not be broken, but already charges a subscription. The main complaint is that the playerbase expects either a subscription model, or an item shop. Not *both*.
Now then, if the gear was weaker than what VP would buy it, with this chance of super-crit boosting its DPS up to par, it would be probably more acceptable. Though some players will still quit, based on principle.
I think there was some blue post about unbalanced abilities like Lay on Hands, and extending the power of it into damage.
That kind of item breaks pvp.
First Anon:
"It's true that there is an incentive for M&S to get some gold ammo for random games, but very few do that. At least this seems to be the consensus on the forums."
Forum = minority. Most of the playerbase never write on any forums, moreover many of them don't even read it.
Gear resets in WoW do not grant relevant power. A gear reset levels the playing field, yes, for a new set of challenges. But does the reset make the M&S more powerful? Perhaps against the previous' tier raids but not for the current ones. And isn't this what you praise about WoT? With gear resets, Blizzard makes the M&S "feel" more powerful when in reality they aren't relative to current content.
Gear resets are currently necessary to avoid fragmenting the player base. (Similar to how it is very hard to find groups for lvl 30 5 mans.)
Switching to level-based server access would allow elimination of gear resets. (Which, anyways, shouldn't be done during expansions given that expansions are so short nowadays.)
--Argyle
"I think there was some blue post about unbalanced abilities like Lay on Hands, and extending the power of it into damage.
That kind of item breaks pvp."
In my favour. Occasionally, the M&S will one-shot me through no fault of either of us. The rest of the time, I win close matches I otherwise wouldn't, because the bonus crit is taken out of their base DPS.
The point every good player have to understand in WoT is that small tanks can have significant impact on outcome but they cannot shoot. I play in platoon with my brother very often either Chafee or T-50-20.
We can decide almost every game but we are 90% last tanks in game. Gold ammo will not change anything on this.
Shame that in WoW if you are poor geared you are just useless (PvP-wise)
"In my favour. Occasionally, the M&S will one-shot me through no fault of either of us. The rest of the time, I win close matches I otherwise wouldn't, because the bonus crit is taken out of their base DPS."
The problem is when good players get this gear. The good players that can stack defensive gear and talents, then shut you down until they insta-gib you. PvP becomes even more rng reliant.
300k is a factor of what, 1000 or so? Which means it that if it has a proc percentage of 0.1%, the weapon would have 0 base dps to correct, and no matter how many defensive cooldowns they stack, I'm still probably going kill them before they do any damage.
More realistically, it would have a proc percentage of 0.01% or 0.005%, which means you'd see what, like one or two per BG, if everyone is wielding one of these?
Most realistically, Bliz would pump the crit factor even higher, to 2k or 5k - completely useless overkill - and tank the proc percentage even more.
Even that one time where I get instagibbed, I win anyway from enjoying their 5% self-debuff the whole rest of the match.
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