Update: due to the undying interest in the topic, I did a more serious research in the topic, read that instead!
World of Tanks is an extremely successful game with 20 million users and 30% paying rate. That's 6M paying customer, in the same league as WoW, despite much smaller developer budget.
To make it more awesome, World of Tanks is a PvP game, while the other blockbusters like WoW, Farmwille are purely PvE, where no one is frustrated by defeat. Everyone can tell a dozen PvP MMOs that failed or linger with a few 10K subscribers. And unlike the other mentionable successful PVP MMO, EVE online, there is no "high sec" in World of Tanks. The only gameplay is going to the field and battle enemy tanks, head on.
PvP games are killed by the "PvP spiral": the bad players are pwned and stop playing, making the second worst group the worst, who are now pwned and it goes on until no one left but the hard core. World of Tanks is probably the only game out there that is not affected by it.
Of course the developers can tinker with the matchmaking system to give both teams equally strong players (as opposed to tanks), so the bad ones are carried by good ones. However it's just annoying but not a fix: in this scheme the bad ones would still be massacred, despite half of them would get a "you won" screen (that he probably don't even see as he exited battle on death). This was the first piece of puzzle that I could use to set up my tinfoil hat theory: I saved the results of 60 battles and found that:
The next clue is the winrate itself. 60% winrate gets you to world top 1000, and despite serious efforts I failed to find a single player below 40% winrate, even when I looked up players who griefed the team in battles I was. Yes, even active griefers manage to win 2/5 of the battles. I know, random battle, but still. Put a gladiator in a WoW BG and see how he both dominates the chart and also provides lot of wins. In WoT, even the best players are just "slightly above average", while even the AFKers and griefers are just "slightly below average".
The above alone explains the success of World of Tanks. It's a PvP game where no one fails. Everyone has wins and everyone has kills (if the best ones have just little more than average kills, the worst ones also have little less than average kills). A PvP game where no one pwns and no one is pwned, a game where everyone is competitive, where no one is left behind. A miracle. It's too good to be true. And probably it's not.
I started to get data about the misses and ineffective hits of me and my girlfriend while using the best cannon of the game, BL-10. It wasn't easy to get the data as the game has no combat log and the developers explicitly told that they never put in any. I had to make marks on a paper during battles, so probably made mistakes. This data is not at all accurate, but the result is so big that the signal-noise ratio is probably good enough:
On battles that we won 13% of the hits were ineffective.
On battles that we lost, 29% of the hits were ineffective.
I'd like to stress that below comes my opinion about the facts and not facts themselves. There are other explanation of the facts which can be true, therefore I can't claim my opinion be "the truth". The straightforward explanation is: "if you suck or unlucky, you lose", however it assumes that the battle depends on me. I saw too many AFK-leeches win battles to believe that. I can suck and shoot nothing but E100 turret front armor and still win due to teammates and can be "top gun" and lose (did that too many times). Also, why does my penetration rate varies so much between battles? I magically forgot where to aim in 5 minutes?
Now my tinfoil hat explanation: the matchmaker decides who needs a win to not fall too far from the average and who needs a defeat to not elevate too far from it and assemble the teams accordingly. The "winner" team gets a bonus to its penetration chance, the "loser" team gets a penalty. While you can make a miracle and with awesome play you can win even these battles, or lose a "won" battle to griefers or 6+ AFK-ers, but the bonus/penalty on average works, making sure that everyone is just slightly away from average. After the victory is decided, the players do the rest. As I already found, on the winner side the kills are much more distributed, half of the winner team scores at least one kill. So while in every battle the good ones "pwn", the "good ones" change from battle to battle.
Further proof is my gold ammo test: with item shop ammo I had 2.4 kills/battle and 69% wins (world top 100). My kills are simply not enough to explain the insane amount of wins, as I killed only 16% of the enemy. The solution is that gold ammo allowed me kills when I did not suppose to kill anything, turning a lost match into a won.
Even more proof: the statistics page lists which tanks has the highest win ratio:
T82: 59.09%
Marder II: 58.07%
SU-26: 57.32%
Lorraine 40 t: 57.03%
MS-1: 56.98%
Except the Lorraine, all of the tanks in the list are lowbie tanks. Why? Because lowbie tanks have very little armor compared to gun. If I shoot a Marder II with another Marder II, I simply cannot get a nonpenetrating hit without it being obvious bug or cheat. Even if my real penetration strength is just half of the formal value, I still can damage everything on the field (except KV front armor). So these tanks are able to bypass tinkering with penetration chances. With such tanks it's possible to get insane win rates.
One more time: the data can be insufficient and the results can be interpreted differently. However, even if they are completely innocent in rigging the matches, the case is a good example for maximum transparency: in the presence of combat logs, even the slightest shed of suspicion could not exist.
EVE business report: 4.13B (0.4B gifts). Remember that you can participate in our EVE conversations and soon group activities on the "goblinworks" channel.
World of Tanks is an extremely successful game with 20 million users and 30% paying rate. That's 6M paying customer, in the same league as WoW, despite much smaller developer budget.
To make it more awesome, World of Tanks is a PvP game, while the other blockbusters like WoW, Farmwille are purely PvE, where no one is frustrated by defeat. Everyone can tell a dozen PvP MMOs that failed or linger with a few 10K subscribers. And unlike the other mentionable successful PVP MMO, EVE online, there is no "high sec" in World of Tanks. The only gameplay is going to the field and battle enemy tanks, head on.
PvP games are killed by the "PvP spiral": the bad players are pwned and stop playing, making the second worst group the worst, who are now pwned and it goes on until no one left but the hard core. World of Tanks is probably the only game out there that is not affected by it.
Of course the developers can tinker with the matchmaking system to give both teams equally strong players (as opposed to tanks), so the bad ones are carried by good ones. However it's just annoying but not a fix: in this scheme the bad ones would still be massacred, despite half of them would get a "you won" screen (that he probably don't even see as he exited battle on death). This was the first piece of puzzle that I could use to set up my tinfoil hat theory: I saved the results of 60 battles and found that:
- 58% of the players had 0 kills
- Only 23.5% had 1 kill
- 10% had 2 kills
- 8% had 3 or more kills.
The next clue is the winrate itself. 60% winrate gets you to world top 1000, and despite serious efforts I failed to find a single player below 40% winrate, even when I looked up players who griefed the team in battles I was. Yes, even active griefers manage to win 2/5 of the battles. I know, random battle, but still. Put a gladiator in a WoW BG and see how he both dominates the chart and also provides lot of wins. In WoT, even the best players are just "slightly above average", while even the AFKers and griefers are just "slightly below average".
The above alone explains the success of World of Tanks. It's a PvP game where no one fails. Everyone has wins and everyone has kills (if the best ones have just little more than average kills, the worst ones also have little less than average kills). A PvP game where no one pwns and no one is pwned, a game where everyone is competitive, where no one is left behind. A miracle. It's too good to be true. And probably it's not.
I started to get data about the misses and ineffective hits of me and my girlfriend while using the best cannon of the game, BL-10. It wasn't easy to get the data as the game has no combat log and the developers explicitly told that they never put in any. I had to make marks on a paper during battles, so probably made mistakes. This data is not at all accurate, but the result is so big that the signal-noise ratio is probably good enough:
On battles that we won 13% of the hits were ineffective.
On battles that we lost, 29% of the hits were ineffective.
I'd like to stress that below comes my opinion about the facts and not facts themselves. There are other explanation of the facts which can be true, therefore I can't claim my opinion be "the truth". The straightforward explanation is: "if you suck or unlucky, you lose", however it assumes that the battle depends on me. I saw too many AFK-leeches win battles to believe that. I can suck and shoot nothing but E100 turret front armor and still win due to teammates and can be "top gun" and lose (did that too many times). Also, why does my penetration rate varies so much between battles? I magically forgot where to aim in 5 minutes?
Now my tinfoil hat explanation: the matchmaker decides who needs a win to not fall too far from the average and who needs a defeat to not elevate too far from it and assemble the teams accordingly. The "winner" team gets a bonus to its penetration chance, the "loser" team gets a penalty. While you can make a miracle and with awesome play you can win even these battles, or lose a "won" battle to griefers or 6+ AFK-ers, but the bonus/penalty on average works, making sure that everyone is just slightly away from average. After the victory is decided, the players do the rest. As I already found, on the winner side the kills are much more distributed, half of the winner team scores at least one kill. So while in every battle the good ones "pwn", the "good ones" change from battle to battle.
Further proof is my gold ammo test: with item shop ammo I had 2.4 kills/battle and 69% wins (world top 100). My kills are simply not enough to explain the insane amount of wins, as I killed only 16% of the enemy. The solution is that gold ammo allowed me kills when I did not suppose to kill anything, turning a lost match into a won.
Even more proof: the statistics page lists which tanks has the highest win ratio:
T82: 59.09%
Marder II: 58.07%
SU-26: 57.32%
Lorraine 40 t: 57.03%
MS-1: 56.98%
Except the Lorraine, all of the tanks in the list are lowbie tanks. Why? Because lowbie tanks have very little armor compared to gun. If I shoot a Marder II with another Marder II, I simply cannot get a nonpenetrating hit without it being obvious bug or cheat. Even if my real penetration strength is just half of the formal value, I still can damage everything on the field (except KV front armor). So these tanks are able to bypass tinkering with penetration chances. With such tanks it's possible to get insane win rates.
One more time: the data can be insufficient and the results can be interpreted differently. However, even if they are completely innocent in rigging the matches, the case is a good example for maximum transparency: in the presence of combat logs, even the slightest shed of suspicion could not exist.
EVE business report: 4.13B (0.4B gifts). Remember that you can participate in our EVE conversations and soon group activities on the "goblinworks" channel.
48 comments:
"PvP games are killed by the "PvP spiral": ... World of Tanks is probably the only game out there that is not affected by it"
I am not sure if you are aware of League of Legends. I asume that they are doing very well with their Free To Play model to. And it is all PvP even with only one map all the time. (2nd / 3rd Map but not used for reall competition)
With their ranking they also acchive the almost 50/50 percentage. And even unranked games it is almost equals in games. I am right now 320/280.
Try it out, maybe even a game for you.
This is really exciting! Could you get more combatlogs a further prove your points with some automatic parsing?
My guess is that even the undeniable proof of their cheating to equalize wouldn't break their business, since this is not a game for the competitive, elite minority. Those who keep playing already settled with their slightly above average results.
For the record, it is pretty ridiculous to compare lobby-based PvP games to MMOs. At what point do you start adding things like Battlefield 3 or MW3 to the list? Or if you want to keep it F2P, how about Team Fortress 2?
That said, the story itself is pretty exciting and a total coup if there is any way to verify the numbers (or at least get the designers to go on the record).
"Because lowbie tanks have very little armor compared to gun."
I guess you are talking about the situation, when you have researched everything about the tank, otherwise it is not so easy to penetrate them. Moreover with Marder II I often get matched against T5 tanks, which are somewhat difficult to penetrate and if they get shot at me, I'm dead.
You think that every player play just for show their awesomeness. You forget that for a player to play game continuously, first he must like the game's game play. Like the first comment, "Dota based" game is a pvp game with very small content from developer. The true content is come from player.
Also consider that all shots in WoT have a randomly assigned, up to +-25% buff/nerf to penetration and damage. This difference is quite large and any "tweaking" can be hidden there.
It's not all about penetration, but it also seems like the higher your WLR the more you roll low damage rolls as compared to people with lower WLR.
Glotan is not a fan of pvp. while im sure he would enjoy the pick/counterpick part of league of legends im not sure he would enjoy the game itself. i see little oppourtunity for him to blog about it which i believe is a big factor in his gaming choices.
It would of course be funny to see him socially engineering players there to improve his own redults and im sure he has enough readers which would be available to help him resesrch the game when starting.
The biggest block to him playing league is the soon to be released D3. im sure many of us look forward to his posts on it.
http://media.pcgamer.com/files/2011/11/riot_lol_infographic_full.jpg
League of legends, entirely free PvP mmo, might it be one of the largest successes in modern times?
Might i Rmeind you that the picture is now half year old and League of legends steadily increase.
Last month there was a tournament at cebit in hannover, where the livestream of the final matches had over 300 000 viewers.
The season two final tournament will have a prizepool of $5 million http://na.leagueoflegends.com/news/league-legends-season-two-feature-5-million-prize-pool
And the season one had $1 million.
People like watching this game and they enjoy playing it. Myself included (i´ve played it since the american beta back in april 2009)
Actually luck is a very possible explanation for your results. Unless the BL-2 has 0.1 accuracy or you're shooting point blank at stationary targets (let's assume that's not happening at t9), where you want to hit isn't necessarily where the shot will land. Even if a KV-5 stands still a 100 meters away facing you, and you try to shoot its driver's hatch* taking your time to aim, you'll still have a about a 40% chance to hit its turret or front armor instead. So unless you're sniping lower tier mediums (or even lower tier heavies) where you don't really need to hit a weak spot, some of your shots will miss and there is nothing anyone can do about it. Sometimes this happens a few times a battle, sometimes not once, and sometimes you can't get a good penetrating shot in 15 minutes. Your data comes from random battles, a place where there are too many factors beyond a single person's control to affect the win rate noticeably. You can, at best, scrape off 10-20% more then the average guy (or less if you are afk/griefing/plain bad consistently).
*I used the KV-5 example to illustrate my point because its the kind of tank that is heavily armored for its tier unless you hit the weak spot (which gets penetrated every time). Unless you miss by an inch in which case you get to hear everyone's favourite commander report that "we just dinged them".
re "in the presence of combat logs, even the slightest shed of suspicion could not exist"
similar to what thalis said, if the game just adjusted your probability (dice roll) based upon your win rate, it would take a *huge* number of combat logs to have enough similar situations to see that WR% and roll were correlated.
---
Listening to GamebreakerTV at the last GDC, apparently WoT is over $10,000,000 per month revenue which is not bad for a free game. And they frequently hit over 400k simultaneous players just in Russia.
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Azuriel: as people wait around Stormwind for their LFG, LFR or BG to pop or someone to HGWT them, the lobby analogy is not as far off as it used to be. I read rumors of no 85-89 flying and dropping HGWT in MoP.
Hour does you w/l ratio compare with your tier placement within a match? If you arw the bottom tank you are far more likely to bounce your shots and have someone less skilled than you in the top slot.
If my KV-107 if the top tank I expect no bounces, multiple kills, one shot kills and to win. If the same tank is in a tier 8 or 9 I expect bounces, no one shot kills, 0-1 kills and normally to have far less impact on the game.
With out battle and tier data you're mostly building a correlation between tier and penetration
League of Legends (LoL) avoids the "PvP spiral" fairly well.
LoL seems to use a system in which a player's first 50 or so games have a large impact on their rating, with the first 20 or so games granting about +45 or -45 rating for wins and losses respectively, and eventually trickling down to around 9-13 rating won/lost each game.
For people looking to stomp less skilled players, this system can be "gamed" be purposefully trying to lose the majority of your early matches, and then having a long streak where you're free to destroy the other team.
Despite this potential flaw, in all but the rarest cases, this system works pretty well because veteran players posing as newbies (they are commonly called "smurfs" for some reason), usually end up winning and end up facing only other "smurfs" very quickly.
The result is that most people end up near their "true Elo" rating pretty quickly and so end up having around a 50/50 win/loss rate.
This keeps the skilled players happy, and the large mass horrible players happy too.
If anyone would like to try League out, using my referral link won't hurt you:
http://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4d67284307695807071338
p.s. Is it ok to post referral links like that or should I refrain in the future?
Ha, i've first noticed that while playing my KV. Got a lot of games lost in a row. After 9 defeats in a row (8 big tier games and 1 same tier as me) you start asking yourself what is wrong.
What are the chances that you can lose 10 games in a row where you can influence very very little.
I always tell my team 'we were meant to lose'.
There are many more details, the tanks in the team and the balance of heavies/mediums, the amount of premiums in your team etc.
I think you are trying too much to find conspiracies where you can actually explain it by simple probabilities.
Let's consider a 1v1, skill-based PVP game. The outcome of any battle is obviously down to your skills opposed to your opponent's. That's you having a 100% influence on the outcome: if you're better than the ennemy, you win, if not you lose. You both of you are of equal skill, you will win 50% and lose 50%.
Now, let's consider the same skill-based pvp game, but this time this is a team-based game: 2v2, and every player has the same weight in the game (same tank, same weapons...). The outcome is then decided by the addition of your skill + your ally's skill in opposition to the ennemy team's cumulated skill. You are now down to having only 50% influence on the outcome of battle (1 player out of a team of 2).
Let's consider the case of WoT: you are now 1 player in a team of 15, against another team of 15 players. The result will still be down to what team has the most cumulated skill. In this game, your influence is however only 1/15, which is about 6.67%. What this does mean is, no matter how good OR BAD you are, you will probably only be the deciding factor in 6.67% of the games. That means, your victory/defeat ratio will only deviate by about 6.67 from the theoretical average of 50% (let's not take draws into account for simplicity's sake). That is, the chances that your victory ratio will be outside 43%-57% are very slim: you simply don't have enough weight in the team to influence the result more (in one way or another).
What this does mean is that by simply joining a battle, even if you don't do anything, you know your chances of winning are at worst 43%. They're are NOT 0, because once in a while the team will be able to carry your (dead)weight to victory. So, with no need to resort to conspiracy theories, we know that probabilities alone tell us the odds that anyone has a 30% winrate are awfully small.
Ofc this is all theory, but let's add some real statistics to that. This is a graph showing the winratio repartition for players with more than 100 battles. I can't exactly remember the exact numbers, but IIRC, the amount of players outside the 43-57% bracket has to be somewhere along 15% or so. I think those 15% can be explained by the fact that this 6.67% theory is only valid when every player has the same weight. We know however that in WoT, there is a top of the list, middle and then bottom of the list. Obviously, someone at the top of the list in an IS-4 will have more than 6.67%, and someone in a T1 heavy at the bottom will be close to useless, thus there actually is a way to deviate a bit more than 6.67%.
T82 win ratio has a simple explanation, its the smallest tank (its a teir 3 tank destroyer) that can run the HE firing 105mm howitzer whcih does not require penetration to do damage.
Its not a very accurate gun, but if it hits anthing tier 4 or below the chances are very high it will kill it with one shot, negating the fact it has no armour as it can't be shot back at.
It also has high speed, good view range and high camo values, even if it doesn't kill its target with one shot a compartively large HE shell often kills crew, damages modules and detracks its opponent leaving it a stationary target.
I often fire 13 or 14 shots, only get 6 or so hits but kill 5 tanks.
Its a popular choice amongst the more experienced tankers for a little light relief down at the "noob" levels.
http://forum.worldoftanks.eu/index.php?/topic/36414-is-the-game-playing-with-loaded-dice/page__hl__loaded+dice
World of tanks had combat logs during closed beta in russia
they switched it off due to a huge amount of battles. logging all that data required very expensive and fast databases and loads of server capacity..
it was just not viable for a free to play game.
All these people come here and try to fight against rational thinking.
The editor of this article is right. WoT made such hidden MM so noone will get big ratings/low ratings.
Your post started bigger discussion on WoT eu forums:
http://forum.worldoftanks.eu/index.php?/topic/103568-the-secret-of-world-of-tanks/
Regular players have suspected this has been going on since beta. It is no coincidence that any threads or mods that attempt to identify the numbers beneath the hood are banned. Posts showing any data obtained via the highly popular mod XVM which allows players to examine the efficiency, win rate and number of played rounds of teammates are prohibited, as are any mods that data mine the player's dossier files. After accusations of deliberately hiding the truth, they allowed threads that link to these mods, but the data obtained by them will get you an account ban if presented on the forum. Personally I suspect it goes much further, I have been tracking my accuracy and penetration by data mining the dossier file, and there is clear evidence that both fall off considerably after large purchases of gold, I can only assume their intent is to encourage sales of gold ammo and the transfer of xp for use on other vehicles.
http://forum.worldoftanks.eu/index.php?/topic/113928-world-of-tanks-myth-busting-greedy-goblin-theory-true-or-false/
There is no need to "cheat MM".
If this was the case then the people complaining the most would be those players with high win rates. I play for a top clan. Our high-end players continue to improve their win rates.
Also, it would be apparent if tanks performed differently in Clan Wars than it random battles. They don't.
I too play in a very good clan (OM-V) and don't find anything unusual about the performance of my tanks, neither in random matches, company games nor clan wars.
A platoon of three skilled players can easily achieve 70+% win rate in random games. I did that just today - 30 out of 40 matches won, and that's routine when platooning. Also, such a platoon more often scores 8+ kills per game than not.
Tank company battles usually are a slaughter. 20+ wins in a row are a frequent occurrence, the overall win rate easily exceeds 85%.
Based on this, i find it safe to say that the game isn't rigged against me when playing tank companies or platoons, and i don't find the performance of my tanks to be any different when i'm alone in random.
The win ratios of 40 to 60% are just due to the little weight of the individual player.
Totally agree with the article.
I am subject to automatic noticing patterns and even if I didn't write down the penetration rates etc. I can see that there are mechanisms to keep player's win/loss rates around 50%.
That makes sense: frustrated players will leave the game and not buy anything ever.
But on another side, are we sure this matchmaking shit is working? Or is it only frustrating good players and nothing more?
I'll explain later on.
As the author says, anyway, the proof is there under your eyes.
Of course you can have good and bad players but WHY there are no players with 30% victories and no players with 70% victories?
It's only normal that SOMEBODY would be able to reach these numbers.
If not for the good 70%, for sure for a bad 30%. And as the author wrote, just try to play like a monkey and see how your team ANYWAY will bring you into the 45% victory rate.
I find this very un-sportive and frustrating.
Frustrating, because I find myself most of times (like 7 matches on 10?) trapped in teams that look like total morons unable to shoot down anything.
I make an average damage of around 3000 per match, like 2 tanks for each match.
Often I kill 3 or 4.
But sometimes the rest of the team is so retarded that there's not even time to shoot 4 shots because they get wiped in 2/4 minutes.
Unsportive, because there's no way to see who is REALLY better than the others.
Stats are, at this point, completely fucked up.
Yes you can keep your victories over the 52% most of the time if you are really good but still... if you are really good you'd probably win 70% of the time, against the whole of the other players.
Now, I think that there should be a better way to make noobs enjoy the game.
The matchmaker could simply match noobs with noobs and goods with goods.
In these matches, nobody would feel annoyed and frustrated and slowly, noobs able to play would emerge and be matchmaked into better matches with average players, while noobs-noobs would remain matched to retarded's matches.
With this matchmaking technique of course the victories % would be much more faithful to player's skill and the game would be enjoyed by everybody.
To tell it all, it's also a retarded way of making people "have fun": because ANYWAY, when I play in a team of morons, THEY die first, NOT ME, most of times.
They DON'T dominate the scene, they get fucked like morons anyway while I try to help everybody and put in there my usual 10/15 shots with all my fuckin frustrating bounces and shots that go away from where I aim.
On a last note, I want to remember you about a game that never did any matchmaking and that was played by MILLIONS... that game is COUNTERSTRIKE.
Everybody loved it.
Suckers and monsters.
There were stats, REAL stats, and that was it.
Also, TEAM FORTRESS 3 has no matchmaking and is a huge success.
WARGAMING is better to rethink this shit because when somebody will find proof of it (and now or later this WILL happen, somebody WILL log in all shots and % of damage, penetration and bounces and matchmaking shits) they will lose a huge part of users and nobody will want to even start play the game.
They would lose the best part of players: the ones who are better at playing the game and probably pay more stuff.
Nobody wants to play a frustrating game and also know that the game for which they paid for is fucking up their fun and they can't show their skill because it's cheated at its base.
I bought a Lowe and have some more credits to spend but if things go this way my effort will be put into giving these "features" more publicity possible and not giving a dime more to WARGAMING.
I have a correction to do to my previous comment.
For what concerns the quantity of losses a bad player can cumulate it's wrong that he can go under around 44% and here is why.
Let's say that a player accounts for 6.66% on the match result (100/15).
If the player is the worst possible, he will be like NON playing.
At this point, a team playing with a unit less will have probably around 5-10% chances of losing more than if it played with a common average player.
I don't write that the team has around 6.66% chances more of losing because more factors enter into play on calculating the practical absence of a tank on the field but... you get the point:
even the worst player possible will, in average, not go under 42% victories, it's almost impossible, because the rest of the team, in average, will win also for him on those 42% of times, and lose because of him for that around 56% of times.
So, here you have why there is nobody with less than 42% of victories. I think it's normal.
On the other side, a very good player CAN in principle account more than 6.66% of the power of a team, if he is really good.
Let's take a perfect average player: he will kill 1 tank on each battle.
In example, I have now an average kill rate of around 1.25.
There are people out there with more than 1.5 kills per battle, but you can have some aces that can kill 2 per battle in average (and there are probably some).
Even if the rest of the team sucks, this player can have the skill to change the odds of the match in more than 6.66% of times, as opposed to a "missing" player without skill that the max he can do is not existing (I don't take in account idiots damaging the same team or blocking etc.).
Everything else I wrote in my other post remains.
I'm feeling VERY frustrated by the actual matchmaker politics.
I feel CONTINUOUSLY put in team of people without a brain. They don't cover all the spots, they die all in 3 minutes from the start of the match (I still wonder how that is possible), etc. etc.
The right way for the matchmaker, as I said, is to match players with similar skill together on both teams.
It's right on a "sportive" point of view and it's more satisfactory because good players will not suffer the "retarded team" syndrome and basically players will run around a 50% victories.
I am a really good player, an I suspect you might be right about the matchmaker system!!!
I some games I miss really many shots, and in others I hit all the times.
I play low tier, as I feel that I have much more influence on the win ratio.
In tier 1 I can get at kill ratio on +3 i average.
In tier 3 it drops to 2.3 for me.
In tier 5 it drops further to 1.6
My only tier 6 tank is at 1.1
MY win rate in tier 1 is 71%
my win rate tier 3 is 66%
tier 5 60%
tier 6 54% but not that many battles.
the above is not science but support the article!
Good job!
Could be that there is a bias in the match making system but...
But I think you forget some factors!
When you start up you are 1 out of 15 on a team, if all players are equal good/poor each player weight 6.67%
Then, if we then look at a really good player there is a limit on how much he/she can acomplish due to reloading time, aiming time, game play time(15min), tank speed, vision, camo factor, hit per shot and amount of shells.
Due to the limitations above one player simply cannot dominate the game.
In the low tier game you have plenty of ammo and therefore a good player can dominate again to a limit. In my opinion he/she can weight up to 40% giving a win ratio of 70%
In High tier battles its different and a good player can mabye dominate up to 25%... its a geuss...
Imagine a T-95 with a max speed of 13kmph hunte down the whole enemy team, there is simply not enough time :-)
Br.
The old editor
I am affraid that U R not taking in account 2 major parts of this game: Platoon and Company, no to mention the real PvP in this game and that is clanwars over the teritories that earn gold. The main issue with this game is that this game is not just PvP game, where better reflexes ultimately win. This is also the game of strategy and teamwork and cooperation. Not to mention that evry tank has it's own weakspots and all of those can be found on the internet.
Considering "dominating ultra players" that are "always winning" and about whom U say U didn't find them in top 100 - 1000, I must say that U will not find them playing in lower tiers battle, or will in a rare occasion. This game is not new, and all the top players are allready battling evry evening for Europe, or Africa or Middle East in clanwars which are much more interesting than usual "lemming train rush" games with little or no tactics in the lower inexperienced tiers of battle. On the other hand, "he killed 0 and he won - and so the game makes him happy" is totaly out of contest here, cose this game is also not about "kills" but more about "dammage" to the enemy team, and a hint for a good player is ammount of dammage that he makes per battle in top tier tanks, where a 2000 dmg/battle is considering pretty good and usually enables U to join a clan. That said, now let's try to figure out why is this game so popular? Your theory is that no matter how good a player you are, you will ultimately be happy with some fair share of winnigs that will come to you by some "tweaks" by the developers. IMHO that, even if it was true, and I sincirely doubt it, has nothing to do with it, but the most inteligent system of revards and the gameplay that has to offer something for evry type of player. If U like to camp, there's arty for you to play. If U like the daredevil drive, you can be one of those ultrafast scouts. Wanna hunt in pack with your friends? Than med tanks are for U. Want to be mobile fortress? Than U should step into Heavy tank and roll over anything that stand in your way. Ont the top of it, Each game last for 5 - 15 min, and it is ideal for killing idle time before your lunch is ready, or to clear your head from studying, or just to relax a bit after a hard days work, and U know U don't have to be a teenager with a raging hormons, or ultra geek, to feel good about knocking some sences into your less experienced/lucky enemy, than there are multiple bonuses for grindings and a lot of speciall events and competitions that add aditional flavour to it...
My five cents bout this, hope someone finds it usefull
Best wishes
Saton_Baal
several thing that I and others have noticed is that each time you hit a tank the damage is less than the hit before when you have hit a tank several times in a row the the next killer shot will miss no mater how close or well aimed. large caliber gun over 100mm dont seem to be affected by this problem but Im still positive.
also I have noticed that looking at results at end of game it seems that the wining team has a higher life-time hit ratio then the loosing team which I found very interesting. this is far from scientific as my sample group was only about twenty games.
I have thought that paying players seem do better than non-paying players but this is just my opinion
I like this to Los Vegas games of skill yes you can beat the house but the house is going to manipulate the odds in their favor.
Hello,
I'm happy to have found your explanation. I've done more than 2000 rounds, with a quite constant progression from 48% of win rate up to 55%... and then I suddenly started to loose games after games, with series that can go up to 11 games lost in a row (probability is one out of 2048... should not happen more than once, but did happen more).
Now that I've read your post, I believe you got the answer. This also explains many abnormal situations I have seen while playing :
* Rounds won with 15 to 0 kills -> almost impossible if teams are balanced
* Rounds when you feel to play with dummies and only 2 or 3 players kill one tank. If you go and search stats of others players (those who were ineffective), you find they are not bad players.
* My KV1 that I had managed to bring to 60% when I started to play it, and suddenly lost battles after battles (9 times in a row) until it reaches 55%. I don't feel I became suddenly a bad player though.
* My results were systematically above 60% win rate day after day until I reached 55% of win rate. Then I was systematically between 40 and 50% win rate... strange !
* I have seen rounds totally unmatched (like 6 heavies to 1, it sometimes happen), and the weakest team wins...
* A friend of mine only plays the pz38t, he managed to reach 59% of win rate (because he's good AND using APCR as primary ammo), and suddenly, the game prevented him to buy APCR on the Pz38t...
All these strange situations make me feel things are not like they were told to be by Wargaming.
"Even more proof: the statistics page lists which tanks has the highest win ratio:
T82: 59.09%
Marder II: 58.07%
SU-26: 57.32%
Lorraine 40 t: 57.03%
MS-1: 56.98%
Except the Lorraine, all of the tanks in the list are lowbie tanks. Why? Because lowbie tanks have very little armor compared to gun. If I shoot a Marder II with another Marder II, I simply cannot get a nonpenetrating hit without it being obvious bug or cheat. Even if my real penetration strength is just half of the formal value, I still can damage everything on the field (except KV front armor). So these tanks are able to bypass tinkering with penetration chances. With such tanks it's possible to get insane win rates."
you are wrong. I did several tests. I played ms-1. i did 4 kill per battle average. I had 29% win ratio. Its always like, the system willdo everything ypu loose when u do high kill/damage.
I played other tank after - T1 - and i didn shoot at all. My WR climbs to an whooping 65% win ratio. The system is trying to compensate my low damage.
So i tried to do same with fast tank like elc amx. i ran without ammo to avois ammorach wipe off me from a game (its builded in a game to eliminate players) and im did insane 71% average WR just for riding around battlefield.
You can read about all miracles in WoT game on my facebook page -
http://www.facebook.com/pages/World-Of-Tanks-Jak-grać-by-wygrać/555212461157927
just please use an goole translator from Polish to english language.
I writen down an manual how to use builded in the game algorythms to start winnig in the game on particular tanks. Many ppl tested it and it works. Of course im hated on WoT page and perm banned for my discoveries :P
Regards, shittzu
This guide after the publication of the forum was quickly removed, the account banned for "trolling": Wargaming does not want people to read it. So I invite you to read.
So what you need to do to start winning and not hit the series of fighting dozens of losers? It's simple: Play as newbie. But we are not newbie, so ... You to troll Match Maker. And then will help u.
For immediate effect u will need new account. its possible to achieve effects on old account but it will take a lot of time because you will need to do a little deviation in the statistics of the 10-20 percent and with a dozen or so thousand battles, this means a lot of fighting focused on the effect.
U need a good loltank. Best of all is the MS-1. This tank can Snip all tanks in battle is able to spot. Quickly will begin to lose the fight, but that's the point. lets play will as long as you will have 3-5 kills per battle and some 29-25% winratio. About winratio do not worry, the system will take care of it yourself, but if you can help me MM and losing battle all the time striving to up large quantities of killed enemy tanks.
When we have 30-200 plays select a tank in the line that u want to develop. Overall do not shoot. Do not hittin enemy tanks. After dozens of fights we see how MM is trying to help us. We'll start hitting the teams that win.
When you notice that ypur team is hitting enemy even from 500 meters and consists of shots even when the tank is a 10% target, this is the moment for u wait. shoot then if you can. Will win the fight with a good achievement point. And so, every time - when you in losing team - do not shoot. When u in win one - you shoot.
What happens - you see the meaning of this is that you will have many more lottery winners than losers. MM will compensate for the fact that few get.It is then much more likely that it will help you when you have a star.
My results are as follows: MS1 - 3.5 kill for a battle, 35% winratio (there were more than 4 per battle and 28%, but I wanted to see what happens if you stop to shoot)
ft1, hotkiss, amx38, amx40, elc amx - 60% to 64% win ratio while virtually no shoot and as quick and stress-grind. Not develop guns, going forward in the tree. Almost all the time I have a good chance of hitting draws, but not shoot, deepen the deviation from the average player goes wrong. MM increasingly trying to help me!
Someone probably ask why at the beginning of Ms-1? After that the "launch system" need to spoil winratio. If it is to shoot and hit it so that you will be doing battle lost. Playing a tank Grind Do not shoot, then we will repair MM win-ratio and begin the fight to win. This is how it works, and works very well. Also notice that the tank that will very nicely Grind earn credits for scout. I know that the comic is such kw1 scouts, but amx38 or amx40 do it, keeping light up enemy tanks, fight and win and so will fall into a lot of credit.
Then MS-1 will not be necessary, shoot once in a while a few tanks as soon as we see that MM obviously helps us take our missiles to the target.
And again, I have FUN with the game looking like my actions affect the outcome of the whole battle. As the system is doing what I want. This game in this respect is unique and special.
Update - please do not install any improvements on the tanks.
This will skew the results of the game. Establishment of modules for gold will automatically make lose just to upset the player took off modules for gold and began to play another tank
Sorry for english, its automated translate. The reason i did it is WargamingG is mass banning players accounts when players asked about it and all the money and the time the players spent on the game is Lost. WG is doind everything possible to piss old players and rule them out of the game, and take new ones to grab the money off them.
Shittzu I had always the sensation that something was "driven".
Some times XVM shows a 95% win chance, and you see your mates dieing like flies one after another, your shots going to hell and bouncing one after another, and the match is over in 4 minutes if it's not a camping map.
That's statistically impossible and after this your post I have more confirmation about matches "driven" by WG shits.
I really hope that in CW this shit is disabled.
But I'm afraid not.
In one of the last CW I participated on, happened strange things: I didn't penetrate the belly of a T110E5 with BatChat gun. TWICE.
AND, I was totally unspotted, I shot an enemy that was spotted 400 meters away, I didn't hit and I REMAINED unspotted, and he shot back randomly from the direction of my shot... hitting me.
Some times this shit is so much clear that I can only laugh at how USELESS is the match... if "match" is still the right word.
Thank you a lot.
I went to exactly the same conclusions.
My concern now is : I gave too much money to this game, and I regret. I feel like a dumb now.
They know how much extra money they can make cheating with players. But do they know how much players they loose ? Probably not : ex-players are not real, they are not in statistics. WarGaming is a dumb too.
This game could be addictive if battles were like they are supposed to be. Players could stay years, but they quit. Like the friend that introduced me to this game.
The loose is cumulative, all those ex-players not spending a single penny anymore !
Loosing 10 times in a row with your favorite tank (that has a very good winrate within a large amount of battles), too often and offending statistics, makes you wake up and start to smell something bad in this game.
This game is different of other games.
This game stresses me too much, I get angry when the matchmaking puts me (way too) many times in a row in a poor team, unable to win because made of noobs (and the game knows perfectly who plays like a noob, there are statistics ;))
I don't understand why WG thinks it is intelligent to stress the players this way ?
It is obvious that is a stupid strategy.
It is not a stupid strategy.
Me and you are not the majority of players.
The majority of players don't post on forums, don't participate in community.
The majority of players are noobs and unskilled.
And WG wants to please them, because they are the majority.
They have the most money, not the pro.
So they have to satisfy the most users possible, to obtain more money possible.
If the game is satisfying, they increase the chance that people buy.
But on the long term I think this will get publicity and will play against them.
Especially with WAR THUNDER developing in the background...
I've read this when article came out, and i did some extensive research and i came to some important info:
Basically what Goblin wrote is true, games are rigged to keep a balance between players by rigging known game mechanics use of 'bugs' and hidden stats.
In other words when you press battle game rolls a 3 value dice (1: game is rigged for your loss, 2: game is not rigged and all values are average - this is where your skill matters, 3: game is rigged for your win):
To make it short in 2 out of 3 cases the match is rigged to produce 'average' player base (that is 66%, with 33% being matches that are skill/no skill depending)
Now if you look at server stats you will find out that at any given time between 62% and 68% of player base fall within the 45-52% 'average' players, while remaining players is pretty much evenly split between below average/bad and above average/good players.
If you compare numbers to dice chances its pretty much a match, what breaks this match from being stable is the gold ammo since it negates stealth mechanics and increases ability of good player to turn a doomed match in to a win.
So, how exactly does game rig matches? well, you already know of +-25% buff/nerf on penetration and damage, and you know of these 'working as intended' 0 damage penetrating hits.
but that is not all, besides that other stats that are 'tweaked' are camo values (ohhh yea you have all seen those stealth E100's killing people), accuracy buff/nerf (how many times i felt on my skin that rounds actually went OUT of the aim circle 'working as intended', chances of fire and crew kills are tampered with too.
but all of those are quite logical and if you think about it and track events that happen to you you will come to same conclusion. But there are also hidden stats that are not listed anywhere, are confirmed to exist by wargaming but no values are given. One of these stats is armor homogenization which is basically a value between 80% and 120% that decides actually armor value (yes, you read right, there is a chance for armor of any tank to get a secret +-20% nerf/buff each match). Thats why sometimes my E100 can take on several enemies alone while in other match you cant bounce a hit from a tier 8 tank.
Anyway i've stopped playing that bullshit game.
True, and I felt it too. Last Anonymous has excellent info. There are "all things go wrong" matches where nothing works. Even happened to shoot gold ammo from an overpowered tank (KV1) in a tier 4 head on (no angle) and it bounced with zero damage - and this is HE we're talking here. Next shot, 20 meters away, missed with full aiming, crew @ 100%, improved ventilation etc everything.
Latest addition, that testify that they are heavy playing with anything in game comes from a news in a release version of World of Warplanes.
Enjoy:
"New game balance
Lastly, out of the many things we’ve added to the 0.4.2 version, we want to mention the many balance tweaks that will help to improve the overall ‘feel’ of the game. From plane performances and module characteristics to weapon behavior and even game mode settings – we’ve retouched the most crucial aspects of the game to make it fairer for beginners and more enticing to hardened veterans. Naturally, since the game is being designed to provide fun for weeks, months and possibly even years to all sorts of players, this part of the development is at the core of our efforts and gets quite a big deal of attention, hence we couldn’t let it go unnoticed."
i do believe that there are funny things going on too. Once i was in my T-34 upgraded to 76mm gun, trading shots point blank with a Pz38T. My five shots all bounced, and he killed me in 4 shots. i made sure my armour was angled, and i was moving to deflect his shots. Last night i was in my M4A3E8, i rushed a Tiger, shot him once and set him on fire (immediately doing close to 70% damage) and rammed him, destroying the Tiger. Not sure if that can ever happen in a fair Tiger vs M4A3E8 fight.
In another game, i was also in my M4A3E8 facing off another M4A3E8, all four of my shots bounced, and all his shots hit me, destroying my tank.
In another game, abt 150 meters from an enemy T-29, took my time aiming, and all 5 shots missed, and he didnt even spot me. His friend in a Jagdpanther kills me in 2 shots.
In another game, same tank, i placed 3 105mm shots into the side of a stationery KV-1 at less than 30 meters, all bounced. He shoots me and kills me in three shots. And yet, when i drive my KV-1, any small hit will detrack/damage my modules, and subsquent shots will kill me.
I think the performance of the tank gun and crew is rigged for sure.
One thing I've definitely noticed is despite the fact that I aim for a weak spot I know on a tank using the IS-6's 122mm (175/217/16 pen), I'd randomly get a non-pen or low-damage shot. I've gotten upwards of 2k damage using that tank, but not very often and more often then not I'd end up with a ricoshet or no-penetration for no bloody reason, even when firing at the sides or back. I've had the same problem on every tank I've ever used, even with the KV-1 85mm cannon which has a fairly high penetration.
Yeah, it's rigged, I saw a guy with fantastic stats, hit rate 77% and over 1000 average damage... yet his win rate is below 50.
And my experience is that if I don't pay money for a while, the win rate suffers badly.
Those programmers are smart, games are no longer left to random chance for the owners, they carefully mould games to entice spending and increase their profits. Don't think for a moment that computer games roll dice... there is little randomness.
Well done on the analysis. Sadly, we are living in a time where companies are specifically recruiting teams of psychologists whose sole job is to maximize profits for the company. They need to be subtle, and sophisticated, What Wargaming has done is to prey on the weakness of players who are easily manipulated by 'incentives' to improve. All they need to do is keep paying, and their computers will change their modifies to appease their egos. The player then feels like an emperor, he pays them and has his ego boosted as an alpha gamer of sorts. What a tragedy when he realises that his ego was based on a lie. His 'skill' never really existed. It was simply a delusion which wargaming happily cursed him with in exchange for hard-earned cash. Far from a winner, he is in the game of life the biggest loser, while the company laughs all the way to the bank. Thankfully there are independent thinkers like you who can see through the schemes. Wargaming are covert crooks, unfortunately. And I agree the basic game is quite fun, but the longevity is artificial as the imbalance in the mechanics force people to play and pay. I'm really sick of the fanboys who don't even realise that they are being fleeced. They allowed themselves to be tricked and then defend those who tricked them. Complete foolishness, and contemptible short-sightedness.
I'm glad more and more people are getting aware of what's happening.
I switched to War Thunder months ago... only to find the same exact thing behind.
I begun thinking then: I am having these sort of problems since the very beginning of my multiplayer experience, since Counter Strike.
No matter how much I worked on the netcode, switched phone operator, changed house location, I always had most of my shots "lost" while I was killed very easily.
Now this is statistically impossible.
I now accept it as it is but I won't ever give a coin to anybody for multiplayer games just to feel inferior when I'm pretty sure I'm a very good player.
I have also gathered a lot of data, I just have to find time to sort it out and present it the right manner then I'll open a website about all this shit.
Can I open up another point about this. Is it now the case that in general the law is lagging behind game development. In other transactions between clients and companies, there are various law-enforcement agencies that guarantee quality when we say buy food or deal with our banks (ha!, society has recently failed there, too). The freemium model is relatively new and I think the law doesn't yet have the awareness to know how to control it. Surely it is now time that some kind of law and law agency is enforced to protect the gaming community. They should have unrestricted access to the codes of gaming companies in order to ensure fairness and no manipulation. They should be given total powers to make random checks on companies like Wargaming (a bit like food standards agencies have the power to randomly check any food retail outlet), and have a code of ethics and standards which they must abide by, or be closed down/penalised in some way. This would also restore the sense of trust gamers can have in their purchases. Lastly, it will prevent THE QUALITY OF THE GAME itself going into decline. I believe gamers should be shouting that this must be done, that they are not sheep to be lead into financial traps, and that proper and decent human rights is just as applicable in a gaming environment as well as in real life, especially when cash is involved. In the end, the people, the average gamer has the power to fight back and change the law for the better, and the problems we have been having with companies will end, their subterfuge will be neutralised, and they will be forced to be honest, or leave the industry altogether. That is a better future for gaming, and for all of us who play games....because WE LOVE THEM, and enjoy spending our free time on them! Also do we want kids being brought up in this kind of gaming environment, which is becoming in the wrong hands very corrupted? Let's give them also a great experience playing in a fair environment where they are treated with respect by their gaming companies!
WOT are greedy they rerelease tanks they've already sold and are now selling the founder tanks which never existed and they even said they wouldn't re release them
The good about WOT - it is fun at times. Yes upgrading your tank and learning how it functions is fun. Yes the game has good aspects, however they are totally outweighed by all the negative IMO.
Match Making is the worst. WG needs to allow players to choose what tiers they want to fight in as long as its the same or higher tier. MM is one of the single most frustrating things about WOT. Being forced to Scout is another. Example: if you pick a tank line ( American Light Tanks) you will be forced to scout, and you cant do shit about it. This means if you dont like scouting but want a tank in that line.. well tough, your stuck scouting. Thats not fun, its stupid.
RNG ( Random Number Generator).. it sucks. Its the difference from hitting and damaging your target or not. It will screw you over more times than not. It needs to be revamped or removed.
Spotting. Spotting is the second most annoying thing about WOT. If you dont have your radio maxed and a spotter down range.. you cant see the tanks.. but they may be able to see you. You can see trees falling but no tank knocking it down. How stupid is that.
You will get hit from out of nowhere and cant do shit about it. The other thing is vanishing tanks..Its totally messed up how you can see a tank downrange..and then poof! its gone only to appear either behind cover or in a spot they can hit you. At even close ranges tanks can vanish then reappear shoot and duck back behind cover before you can react. Its soo frikken annoying.
WG also does not care about the players because instead of fixing these issues they spend development time on shit like Chaffee racing or Tank soccer. 2 VERY stupid addition to the game. Development time could have been used to make things more fair..but no we get tank soccer instead. Way to go Developers.
BUT , the biggest problem with the game is.. Players who pay. As long as people pay $$ to play this game WG will not change anything because they are making money.
If we want change the best way is to tell WG by NOT paying and complaining about things that are unfair / broken until they listen.
Good luck with that because most ppl will continue to pay because it gives them an edge and strokes their ego to be better than others.. even if its because of $$ spent and not skill, These people have more $$ than brains apparently.
Do yourself a favor, if you want to play the game.. great have fun at it, just dont pay a dime for anything.
My 2 cents.
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