More than a year ago I wrote a pair of posts that World of Tanks, one of the most popular online games cheats its customers. The posts themselves aren't really good, they contain anecdotal and circumstantial evidence. Yet, these posts are my most visited ones even a year later. I mean they get on top of the direct page hits (when someone look for a specific page instead of the blog top page) every new month. I think they resonate with something my readers found themselves.
Since my main focus is EVE, I learned how the Incarna riots changed CCP for the better. I abandoned World of Tanks back then with no hope for it. Now I believe that players can force the developer to fix its messed up game. If EVE could be fixed after it tried to exploit its customers via pay-to-win, WoT can be too. So I thought it's time to revisit that game, this time properly collecting data. So with my girlfirend we started a pair of accounts and started playing. We picked the newly introduced British TDs, because the newly introduced tanks are usually overpowered, so the results will be more obvious. The results indeed came, and they came in such numbers that they way exceeded my original plans. Instead of a revisit post, it will get a 5-pieces series, each focusing on one-one aspect of the cheat, with lot of data and experiments.
Before I start, let me clarify what I consider "cheat": something that affects the outcome of the game except player skill and unbiased random number generator. If you play a dice game and the dice has 1/5 chance to give 6 instead of 1/6, someone is cheating. If someone can read the back of your cards to see your hand in poker, he is cheating. In team games you get teammates from the game provider whose actions you can't control. They act as random elements and can cost you or give you wins you don't deserve. However on the long run, you are the only stable element in your battles, the effect of your teammates mold into a big "average player" effect, providing a result that represents only your personal performance. If you gain rating in League of Legends, it is because of your skill, even if sometimes your teammates do carry you. If you have 40% winrate in World of Warcraft random battlegrounds, it's because you are bad, despite you will often lose because even worse teammates.
Matchmaking must be totally random if there is no official rating and your winrate must only be affected by your performance (after enough matches). Matchmaking should be according to the rules of a tested rating system if there is an official rating ladder to guarantee that your rating represents your performance. An individual shot by your tank must only be determined by stats of your tank, the enemy tank, the terrain and an unbiased RNG. Important note: having a rating system without official rating ladder (hidden rating) is a severe case of cheating, as one player must play much better to win the next battle, but it is considered equal by participants and spectators. Winning at 2300 rating is much bigger task - therefore bigger feat - than winning at 800 rating. Hiding the rating will equalize the two - very unequal - performances.
While it should be obvious, I write it down: cheating in a game is bad, as it takes away the chance to experience flow by destroying one of its necessary elements: "a sense of personal control or agency over the situation or activity". A game against a cheater is frustrating and no one wants to do that. Cheating is grounds to be banned from the game in practically any games. Cheating in a game where the reward is real world money (like poker in a casino) is considered a crime in several countries. Finally, while the game provider is free to set any rules in its own game, they must be made publicly so the players can choose to not play that game. If the rules are hidden, especially if they are against commonly accepted norms of gaming, they are cheats and must be treated accordingly. One can create a roulette machine that never gives black. But one can't place it to a casino without explicitly informing the players as they would play under the commonly accepted custom of black having 50% chance.
I believe no one would give money to play World of Tanks if the game provider was upfront with matchmaking and individual shot rules. The game provider gets its huge amount of income by making the players believe that they participate in fair games where the teammates and opponents are randomly chosen and in case of two identical tanks battling, the outcome only depends on player skill.
What is my aim? Not simply to incite an Incarna riot in World of Tanks. CCP did not cheat, they changed their game openly, giving the players only two choices: take it or leave it. Incarna riots were players choosing "leave it". World of Tanks is cheated, giving a third option: exploit the hell out of it. After identifying how the cheats work and more importantly "why", I designed how can they be exploited to provide players extreme influx of credits and XP at the cost of making the game unplayable to everyone else, without breaking any written rules. This is the beauty of cheating: they can't say "we didn't mean this back-door to be used by you, we placed it for someone else". After reading this series, you'll either uninstall the game, massacre newbies in pimped lowbie tanks for fun or use the exploit to get credits for gold ammo and tier 10 tanks for your clan matches. This will force the developer to change the game to the only unexploitable way: fair.
Today I start with the weakest proof: trends. If the matches are unbiased and you have X winrate, the chance of the next match being won is exactly X. On the other hand every player experiences suspicious winning or losing streaks. This is a weak argument because the chance of 10 heads on 10 coinflips in a row - while very low, 1/1024 - is not at all impossible. If you throw group of 10 coins 1000 times, the chance of not having a group with all on heads is (1023/1024)^1000 = 37%. So I initially wanted to ignore trends, but found a strange pattern repeating itself again and again, so later I started collecting such data and discuss them.
Now let's consider the alternative, that the game tries to make every player "average", in order to make no one quit over "too hard" or "too easy". In this case the game estimates your skill and gives help to the bad players and handicap to the good ones. An ordinary player plays with various tanks, giving large sample to the game to calculate with. We only played with a few tanks. Before we started playing AT8, we played 116 matches with only one tank, its predecessor, the AT2. AT2 is a shamelessly overpowered tank. Whoever designed and OK-ed a tier 5 tank with 200mm front armor (as strong as the tier 10 heavies) have no place in gaming design. We made a killing with that tank, making the algorithm believe that we're some kind of super-gamers. So it gave us serious handicaps. Combine that handicap with a new stock tank and you get horrible winrate. When our poor results with AT8 got into the dataset, the algorithm overcompensated, providing 66% winrate which is World top 1000. With these data added to the set, it finally got our "proper" value and we got our place with 57%. Then we left AT8 for the next tanks. Tier 8 enemies are harder than Tier 6, our results with AT15 were worse than with AT8, it's normal. But when we returned to AT8 to farm credits to buy the Tier 9, the algorithm used our AT15 results to calculate handicap, giving once again 66% winrate. The effect was further doubled by two players in the platoon having the same unbalance.
Preparing this to happen again, I wrote down every individual result with the tier 9 Tortoise tank. Remember that I wrote we returned to AT8 to farm credits for Tortoise? So the last data the algorithm got was our 66% winrate when we started playing Tortoise:
What does the above tell: that the match outcome is pretty surely manipulated, there is an algorithm calculating your strength and then rig the matches to level you to the average. Tomorrow we'll discuss one way of messing with the match: messing with your shots.
PS: If you'd think we purposefully lost to fabricate these results, please wait until Friday before commenting. You'll see that it's impossible to fabricate such data.
Since my main focus is EVE, I learned how the Incarna riots changed CCP for the better. I abandoned World of Tanks back then with no hope for it. Now I believe that players can force the developer to fix its messed up game. If EVE could be fixed after it tried to exploit its customers via pay-to-win, WoT can be too. So I thought it's time to revisit that game, this time properly collecting data. So with my girlfirend we started a pair of accounts and started playing. We picked the newly introduced British TDs, because the newly introduced tanks are usually overpowered, so the results will be more obvious. The results indeed came, and they came in such numbers that they way exceeded my original plans. Instead of a revisit post, it will get a 5-pieces series, each focusing on one-one aspect of the cheat, with lot of data and experiments.
Before I start, let me clarify what I consider "cheat": something that affects the outcome of the game except player skill and unbiased random number generator. If you play a dice game and the dice has 1/5 chance to give 6 instead of 1/6, someone is cheating. If someone can read the back of your cards to see your hand in poker, he is cheating. In team games you get teammates from the game provider whose actions you can't control. They act as random elements and can cost you or give you wins you don't deserve. However on the long run, you are the only stable element in your battles, the effect of your teammates mold into a big "average player" effect, providing a result that represents only your personal performance. If you gain rating in League of Legends, it is because of your skill, even if sometimes your teammates do carry you. If you have 40% winrate in World of Warcraft random battlegrounds, it's because you are bad, despite you will often lose because even worse teammates.
Matchmaking must be totally random if there is no official rating and your winrate must only be affected by your performance (after enough matches). Matchmaking should be according to the rules of a tested rating system if there is an official rating ladder to guarantee that your rating represents your performance. An individual shot by your tank must only be determined by stats of your tank, the enemy tank, the terrain and an unbiased RNG. Important note: having a rating system without official rating ladder (hidden rating) is a severe case of cheating, as one player must play much better to win the next battle, but it is considered equal by participants and spectators. Winning at 2300 rating is much bigger task - therefore bigger feat - than winning at 800 rating. Hiding the rating will equalize the two - very unequal - performances.
While it should be obvious, I write it down: cheating in a game is bad, as it takes away the chance to experience flow by destroying one of its necessary elements: "a sense of personal control or agency over the situation or activity". A game against a cheater is frustrating and no one wants to do that. Cheating is grounds to be banned from the game in practically any games. Cheating in a game where the reward is real world money (like poker in a casino) is considered a crime in several countries. Finally, while the game provider is free to set any rules in its own game, they must be made publicly so the players can choose to not play that game. If the rules are hidden, especially if they are against commonly accepted norms of gaming, they are cheats and must be treated accordingly. One can create a roulette machine that never gives black. But one can't place it to a casino without explicitly informing the players as they would play under the commonly accepted custom of black having 50% chance.
I believe no one would give money to play World of Tanks if the game provider was upfront with matchmaking and individual shot rules. The game provider gets its huge amount of income by making the players believe that they participate in fair games where the teammates and opponents are randomly chosen and in case of two identical tanks battling, the outcome only depends on player skill.
What is my aim? Not simply to incite an Incarna riot in World of Tanks. CCP did not cheat, they changed their game openly, giving the players only two choices: take it or leave it. Incarna riots were players choosing "leave it". World of Tanks is cheated, giving a third option: exploit the hell out of it. After identifying how the cheats work and more importantly "why", I designed how can they be exploited to provide players extreme influx of credits and XP at the cost of making the game unplayable to everyone else, without breaking any written rules. This is the beauty of cheating: they can't say "we didn't mean this back-door to be used by you, we placed it for someone else". After reading this series, you'll either uninstall the game, massacre newbies in pimped lowbie tanks for fun or use the exploit to get credits for gold ammo and tier 10 tanks for your clan matches. This will force the developer to change the game to the only unexploitable way: fair.
Today I start with the weakest proof: trends. If the matches are unbiased and you have X winrate, the chance of the next match being won is exactly X. On the other hand every player experiences suspicious winning or losing streaks. This is a weak argument because the chance of 10 heads on 10 coinflips in a row - while very low, 1/1024 - is not at all impossible. If you throw group of 10 coins 1000 times, the chance of not having a group with all on heads is (1023/1024)^1000 = 37%. So I initially wanted to ignore trends, but found a strange pattern repeating itself again and again, so later I started collecting such data and discuss them.
- First 29 battles: 24%
- Next 71 battles: 65%
- Next 86 battles:57%
- 198 most recent battles: 66%
Now let's consider the alternative, that the game tries to make every player "average", in order to make no one quit over "too hard" or "too easy". In this case the game estimates your skill and gives help to the bad players and handicap to the good ones. An ordinary player plays with various tanks, giving large sample to the game to calculate with. We only played with a few tanks. Before we started playing AT8, we played 116 matches with only one tank, its predecessor, the AT2. AT2 is a shamelessly overpowered tank. Whoever designed and OK-ed a tier 5 tank with 200mm front armor (as strong as the tier 10 heavies) have no place in gaming design. We made a killing with that tank, making the algorithm believe that we're some kind of super-gamers. So it gave us serious handicaps. Combine that handicap with a new stock tank and you get horrible winrate. When our poor results with AT8 got into the dataset, the algorithm overcompensated, providing 66% winrate which is World top 1000. With these data added to the set, it finally got our "proper" value and we got our place with 57%. Then we left AT8 for the next tanks. Tier 8 enemies are harder than Tier 6, our results with AT15 were worse than with AT8, it's normal. But when we returned to AT8 to farm credits to buy the Tier 9, the algorithm used our AT15 results to calculate handicap, giving once again 66% winrate. The effect was further doubled by two players in the platoon having the same unbalance.
- First 20 battles: 25%
- Next 28 battles: 57%
- Next 18 battles: 48%
- Next 84 battles: 58%
- 320 most recent battles: 57%
Preparing this to happen again, I wrote down every individual result with the tier 9 Tortoise tank. Remember that I wrote we returned to AT8 to farm credits for Tortoise? So the last data the algorithm got was our 66% winrate when we started playing Tortoise:
What does the above tell: that the match outcome is pretty surely manipulated, there is an algorithm calculating your strength and then rig the matches to level you to the average. Tomorrow we'll discuss one way of messing with the match: messing with your shots.
PS: If you'd think we purposefully lost to fabricate these results, please wait until Friday before commenting. You'll see that it's impossible to fabricate such data.
39 comments:
A much better test would be to do two trials, one where you intentionally lose a percentage of games, and record the results of the games you played seriously, vs one where you played seriously every time. If there is no matchmaking, one would expect the results to be similar between the two. If there is hidden matchmaking, then one would expect the serious results when interspersed with intentional failures to have a significantly higher win rate.
Just running some simple statistical analysis on your results, the only surprising data in all 3 of your data sets is right at the beginning. Now I've never played world of tanks, but your post suggests that tanks improve over time, and in fact you admit that this may explain the first data point in your first set. The variations later on in all 3 data sets fall well within statistical reasonability.
Great job, I always know that something wrong with game, but "average" player plays different tanks in his hangar (one after another) so how that affects their overall and individual tank statistics?
Sounds as though the handicapping system needs to apply two ratings, one for general player and one for each model.
That way someone moving from an old model (where they've traditionally capped out their rating at close to their max performance), will have their net handicap reduced to compensate for stock model. It would also aid players that switch between tank types.
I'm not sure how this is in any way "cheating". All you've shown here is what is already well-known: that wargaming.net have a matchmaking system that tries to pit you against peers of the same skill as you, so that in the long run your win rate should be around 50%. Simply by choosing opponents and team mates for you at around the same level of skill as you, they should be able to achieve this aim, without any need for manipulation during the match.
The problem for wargaming.net is trying to calculate your skill level. Especially when you have only a few matches under your belt, its really hard for them to figure out exactly who are your peers.
@Dácheng: and you think it's not a cheat that one has to perform much better to achieve the same result?
@Dobablo: it shouldn't use any ratings (unless there is an official ladder)
@gevlon:
yes I know it is a lot of work but:
I'd really would love to see the Datapoints of your "exploiting the cheats/bad design" compared to "normal games" i.e. a player that plays every game seriously without trying to exploit anything.
Currently this gives anecdotal evidence in any way, as it just looks at what you experience.
This is more a request for scientific rigor than not beliving you. (Additionally it might be worthwhile to collect datapoints from other readers of the blog that play WoT (I don't))
I don't Gevlon. When I play chess in tournaments, I expect to be pitted against opponents with about the same ELO rating as me. As I get better, I typically don't win more games (well, only marginally); instead I get to play better opponents. I have to perform better to get the same results (in terms of winrate).
When I was a sprinter, as I improved, I got entered into better competitions with faster and faster opponents, and I had to improve to get the same results (in terms of winrate)
In soccer, as my favourite team gets to the top of the league, it is promoted to the next league up, and has to do better to get the same results (in terms of win-rate)
That's how competitive sports works. The top golfers don't get pitted against the likes of me. they compete against each other.
The matchmaking algorithm, far from being a "cheating" mechanism, is a mechanism that wargaming.net proudly advertise as ensuring that you are appropriately challenged, by fighting players in the same league as yourself, rather than allowing you to steamroll noobs, or be steamrolled by better players.
Whether you like it or not, there is a rating system, and there is an official ladder. You are pitted against opponents who are on about the same rung of the ladder as you.
There is an official ladder, as I said. It just isn't made public.
@Dácheng: when you ADVANCE in chess, you still have 50% winrate but higher rating. Your reward for playing better is the rating itself. If World of Tanks has a completely correct rating system with hidden rating, it's equal to a cheat, just like equalizing a chess game against a grandmaster with a chess game against a 5 year old kid.
In a "hidden rating" system you have no way to measure your performance, therefore no way to advance. You are in a threadmill where nothing changes by your actions.
@Dàchéng
Did WG announced there is such matchmaking algorithm where you are put against equal opponents? I did not see it anywhere and I thought the system matches only tiers and vehicle types.
@Dàchéng The problem is, if Gevlon is right that there is a hidden ladder, is that there is no way to tell where you are on it. The only measurable output is your winrate. Being in the PGA, or the English Premier League, or the NFL etc is already in itself a measurement of skill which is not available in a game that has hidden matchmaking.
I wouldn't necessarily use the term cheating, but it's certainly annoying design, and as a gamer I wouldn't want to play such a game. The concept of having no way to tell how good (or bad) I am doesn't appeal to me.
@Gevlon I'm eagerly awaiting what other data you have to share. I don't find this post alone to be super convincing just yet though. Here's a test I'd love to see the results of. Pick a tank, and have both you and your girlfriend max it out, then play a bunch of games separately. Pick a number of initial games to ignore (do this ahead of time) to allow any individual ratings you have to adjust to where they ought to be for the two of you playing solo, then compare your results in the next hundred games. If you're correct, the result should be very similar winrates. If you could do this across 20+ people and got very similar winrates I'd be rather convinced that you're correct.
"I think they resonate with something my readers found themselves."
Counter Hypothesis:
The two pages you linked in the opening paragraph are getting lots of hits because people are seaching Google for "World of Tanks cheats", looking for a cheat code or something similiar for the game.
Given your traffic, age of site and other positive aspects of your website, your posts are coming up near the top of the Google search.
I agree. It's a shame that the ladder is hidden.
All the same, I'd rather have a hidden ladder than no ladder at all. I'm glad I'm no longer paired with new players who think rushing across the field in Malinovka is a great tactic, or with players who start shooting their own team because they do not know that they are on a team. As I mentioned in Seal Clubbing, I no longer see these behaviours because even when I drive a tier 1 tank, I am no longer matched against such beginners. I am matched against players who know what they are doing. And that's more fun.
Jumina, now that I search for it, I can't quickly find any announcement from wargaming.net of how their matchmaking works. http://wiki.worldoftanks.com/Battle_Mechanics#Matchmaking tells a little of the story, but what it omits is more important than what it says. Maybe you can find something more revealing?
I meant to also mention, in response to "when you ADVANCE in chess, you still have 50% winrate but higher rating. Your reward for playing better is the rating itself" that while it is gratifying to see your ELO rating rise (and disheartening to see it fall), the main reward for playing better was more thrilling games.
Interesting...
Just played 8 games in a new (to me) AT-2. Won first 4 games - hit most times with gold ammo on the howitzer. Then the games got higher tier and I started to miss or bounce shots. 7th game I get bounced maybe 5 or 6 times for xero damage at point blank range by a KV1 (<75mm armour, my pen is 83mm to 138mm). 8th game - one shotted immediately by a guy in a IS-2 (tier 7 - Mine is Tier 5). Checked the guys stats - says he dont own an IS-2. Opened chat to the guy and unfortunately he talked gibberish...)
Weird...
He is right. Go straight for the T29 heavy tank as fast as possible, platooning with two others doing likewise. As long as you use the tanks strengths, hull down etc, you will do remarkebly well, and hit 60-70% winrate. But oh boy, you will soon find yourself teamed up with complete tools, no matter if they are tier 8-9-10.
You and your platoon will be forced carry the entire fight. You will also notice that a lot of your shots will start to ding, and generally odd things occurring. If you start dishing out premium ammo, you can alleviate some of this. Its as if the penetration formula gets tweaked in your disfavour.
Never mind, I found the patent and all it discloses is the known "battle level" MM based on tank tier. False alarm. However, if the case gets to the discovery phase where depositions start being taken, the devs will be forced to disclose all of the details of MM on cross examination.
http://www.google.com/patents/US8425330?dq=8,425,330&hl=en&sa=X&ei=OIaMUeWBAuLIigK32ICYDw&sqi=2&pjf=1&ved=0CDQQ6AEwAA
On WOT forum is thread:
http://forum.worldoftanks.eu/index.php?/topic/245770-patent-us8425330-about-mm-system/page__hl__%20patent#top
talking about patent of MM.
Patent contains:"According to another aspect, the matchmaking server may store a win/loss percentage for each user (or vehicle) at a given battle level. As the player's win/loss ratio decreases, the player becomes more likely to be placed in battles having battle levels at the lower end of the allowable range, whereas as the player's win/loss ration increases, the player becomes more likely to be placed in battles having battle levels at the upper end of the allowable range. Thus, when a player has been repeatedly put into too many difficult battles, the balancing is done in favor of easier battle sessions, thereby encouraging the player by providing an easier game environment. Similarly, when the player has been repeatedly put into too many easy battles, the balancing is done in favor of harder battle sessions, thereby keeping the player challenged instead of letting the player become bored with easy games. "
While the patent itself is a reason not to play with the game, it is also insufficient to explain what we see. The patent says "if you are good player, you'll be put in a team with morons, if you are a moron, you'll be teamed with good players".
This would explain the winrate. But the good players should have high kill/battle farming the enemy morons. Yet, we don't see many of them.
@Gevlon
That doesn't seem to me to be at all what the patent says. What it says is that if you are in a tank that can be in battle level X, X+1 or X+2, you're more likely to get put into X+2 if you have a high win rate and X if you have a low win rate. Each tank has a different set of levels it can be in, so in an average battle you would expect the drivers of tanks that are in their highest level possible to have better win rates than those tanks that are in their lowest level possible. So the weaker players in a battle will generally be in the better tanks, and the stronger players will generally be in the worse tanks.
As for "While the patent itself is a reason not to play with the game", this is just silly. I'd rather play a game with matchmaking than one without, the only issue is that there may or may not be matchmaking done in such a way that it's invisible. You can tell what battle level you are playing in, so there's nothing invisible about that.
recent developer posts on shot mechanics:
http://forum.worldoftanks.com/index.php ... c-changes/
Not sure about your theory of a rigged mechnic to normalise WR. I would believe it more if you were not constantly platooned or playing tanks that can swing a game by themselves. The Brit TD's are great in a city map where they cannot be easily flanked or hit by arty, but very poor on open maps.
If your results were tracked by map type and un-platooned then you could start to extrapolate. But under the current MM model there are far too many variables (Assault.Defence/Standard game type, map, having a partner to lessen the chances of being flanked or to cover stupidity of teammates etc etc).
Our clan (ARS and ARS3) platoons all the time, does very little tank companies and does not Clan War. We try to always platoon and e on voice chat. Our average WR's are around 55% ( with some players exceeding 60%). If what you said was true, then we would all be normalised down to 50-53% over the thousands of games played. We do not see that.
We see that skill, teamplay and communication is rewarded.
Uh, did you even read his article? Of course platooning, teamwork helps. But its your PLATOON pulling the dead weight of the team. Its your PLATOON forcing out victories in a set of rigged matches. And you no doubt use a lot of premium ammo when the situation calls for it as well.
Thats how the game works. Force you to spend credits or real money to increase your e-peen statistics.
Here is a proff that wargaming matchmaking is cheating you:
http://www.google.com/patents/US8425330?dq=8,425,330&hl=en&sa=X&ei=OIaMUeWBAuLIigK32ICYDw&sqi=2&pjf=1&ved=0CDQQ6AEwAA
In other words. If a game says you will lose--) YOU LOSE. No matter the skill you have. You will get a lot of *critical 0 damage hits* in a losing games.
Nowdays if i see that i just hide somewhere on a map too save money.
Instal XLM and you will see how a matchmaking works.
Generaly if you are in a team of full red players you Auto-lose.
Some players stat pad it with using a platton of skilled players.
But its totaly pointless. They are put into a games of red players all the time.
I have over 10000 games played and i know how the system works.
I´ve played WoT for over a year know and I do pretty well with over 60% WR mostly solo random.
From my experience I can say that I have never found any evidence of the MM system being flawed or cheated. Though I have never done statistical research I´ve never felt like I was dragged down in my performance. Adding to this, there are far more ways to determine your "skill" than by pure WR.
All ELO ratings for WoT are community-made and none official. They are flawed in more or less points and the MM does not take any ratings into consideration.
The only thing you can rely on in randoms is yourself, or your platoonmates on the very worst.
The best way to "cheat" is getting the team to work together - which can be damn difficult at times.
If you have a winrate of over 60% doing "mostly solo", you are using mostly the newest premium tanks like the super pershing, type 59, t-34 etc (for beneficial matchmaker tier spread), using a lot of premium ammo. Then you can greatly affect the balance of each match.
No? Then provide your in game name and server
My ingame nick is Solaknir, I'm on the EU server. I have two prem tanks I play: KV-5 and Super Pershing. I barely ever use gold on those and in general, mostly only on T10 TDs and tanks.
And like I said the WR is not the only measurement of how good a player is.
@Anon - duh platoons blah blah blah
You statement refutes Gevlons point. If what Gevlon is saying is true, then the platoon would all see the normalisation at the same time (as we play in large blocks like Gevlon and his wife).
We would all miss, or zero damage pen, or go up against better and better teams until we were crushed back to an overall 50% WR.
But this does not happen, as you yourself have reinforced. Why does it not happen? And if it is happening what is the only factor left to support our WR's? Player skill.
As to mine - Freshmeatiest - NA server
As you said you did not want to give WG any money I would guess that you did not spend gold on crews. In that case the "stock tank effect" certainly comes into play even if the starting gun is a good one.
@Anon - duh player skill blah blah blah
Nope, load up premium ammo and you can push through rigged matches.
But I suppose peeps that spend humdreds of euros on the game and an unhealthy number of hours on the game, increasing their e-peens through platooning and prem ammo spam don't like being called out for doing exactly what Wargaming wants you to do: Pay to win.
Let me guess, you one shotting people in your M4 or Pz IV is "player skill" right?
Your statistical analysis is very strange.
First of all, you should use equal intervals. Not 20 battles – 28 – 84. It seems you just tried to find such numbers that would prove your idea. For example, your AT15 57% of 28 battles just mean wining 16 of 28, two games up from the equal win-lose. And 48% of 18 battles – you are mistaken, it's really 44% (8/18) – one game down.
Any statistics on 20-30 battles is irrelevant. It's just too small number of experiments. Any random factor turns it very different – a battle won or lost is 5% on its own. If your own winrate is 57, then it's only 2% better than medium for this TD (54.9% average if we trust noobmeter). The bias is 2.5 times bigger than your experimental value now. It means you should count _at least_ 200 battles as a unit to see actual results.
The correct way would be like this. Ignore the battles until you have top tank (or play all battles stock – no difference, just use the same tank for all the battles you count).
Ignore the battles with very different tank crew skills (playing with 50% basic crew and 3-perked crew gives you very different results). The best way – buy a tank with 50% crew, get it to no more then 55%, fire the crew, get a new 50% crew. Play 200 battles, write down the result. Repeat a few times. I strongly doubt there will be any significant peeks in the graph on that scale.
And the next thing to consider is: you are not the same each time you play. Sometimes you fill well; sometimes you are sleepy and your reaction suffers; or you are tired and take wrong decisions; or your cat jumps all over the flat causing havoc, and you worry on tanks much less;… tons of reasons to make you play perfectly one day and horribly – another one. And sometimes you don't even recognize playing worse than normal. A few days ago I was tired, but seemed to play well – 5 kills in one battle, top-damage in another, but lost both… I played 12 games and won 2. I was furious. My teams are idiots, I am a superman, but what can I do?
The next day I looked at my stats change. My normal XVM efficiency is about 1200. The day before that it was 600. Yes, I played well a few times, but generally I was a dead load for my team. No wonder we lost. And no reason for paranoia
Mike (RU Colibri_Warrior)
Funny how you think 203mm armour on the AT-2 is overpowered as all heck. Nowadays everyone knows not to shoot the front: just shoot that big on/off knob on top, that should do it.
Also, I think the only way to really be able to figure out if there is or isn't a botched matchmaking system, is to play with tanks that have a maxed out crew (not just skill wise, but also all perks maxed). Also, you would need a server of your own with at least 300 people of various skill levels, who are using the same tanks with maxed out crews.
And even then there are too many random factors that can influence your win rate. Maybe you want to get that best gun for your tank before you go to the loo and take a break. Or maybe the missus just got home from work. Or maybe the phone starts ringing in a crucial stage of the battle. Or maybe your eyes have had a good workout today and you're starting to go cross-eyed from the intense battles. Or maybe you're just going bonkers because of the lemming train heading off to the other side of the map. You'd have to calculate the chances of such things happening, times the amount of players in your battle, too. And some tanks just work better for you then others. Some people like 'em fast and agile, some people like 'em slow and armoured.
If MM was botched like you seem to think it is, then ,over the 22840 battles I have done up to now, should I not have an average win ratio of about 50% instead of the 55% I have now?
Greets,
Tiger313 (EU server)
Hi
I have found the same unfair treatment from WoT as you describe and I too set about gathering some date to see if it was really happening or just me on a loosing streak.
I started to loose an insane amount, like 19 out of every 20 games. Accusations of 'noob' are fatuous since more often than not I'd be the last man standing (and sigh, I wasn't camping either). So I started to keep a record over several evenings - just games played and percentage where I was assigned to what would be the loosing team. In defiance of all probability which should give me a 50% rate of membership of the winning side, I was indeed at 19 out of 20, or a 95% chance of loosing. Since then Wargaming's patent for a system to "rebalance" games has been discovered and much discussed. The company say it was just an idea and they never implemented it. Yeah right. That's why companies pay lawyers to draft patents - so they can forget about them.
I am extremely bitter about this. I used to adore World of Tanks and spent insane amounts of money and time on it. Now I feel thoroughly cheated - because I have been.
@Dacheng: No it's not fair. WoT isn't only rigged by teams but also by decreasing penetration / damage of the players shells. So a good player needs to compensate bad teams AND lowered pen / dmg, which is impossible if you can't flank the enemy.
On top of that WoT became a lawless shithole with this super mod "warpack" everyone can use, weakspot skins, reload timer for the enemy tanks, etc. On top you can teamkill, do teamdamage without any punishment, block wtf else.
Any player worth his weight in salt does not need a skin pack to see weak spots, i have only played about 7k to 8k games.
I know every weak spot on every tank in the game yes all of them, it does not take a super smart person or a good player me being just below average to know how to kill a tank.
I have taken down giants with low level tanks, so i myself have not seen evidence of this game cheating me.
Sure there is a odd game where i feel like i cant pen something but its not like i preformed worse, simple tactics keep me alive and give me more chances to shoot them with more chances to pen them.
The only thing that i have to hate in this game is the lack of teamwork, it may be a MMO but try to get anyone to work together is almost impossible.
In the end all you get are those greedy players that will do anything stupid to get a kill, like rush out into the open just to shoot someone just to be killed by the rest of the team watching over the area at the time.
of course it is rigged and not random. otherwise it would no be "after a very good period in WOT" you are definitely going to suffer in the next matches. It's proven fact. That is the reason why i quit playing this game.
I think there is something to what Gevlon is saying, although maybe the statistical evidence in this post was a bit weak. I'm very interested to read what you write in your coming posts.
I have played over 10k matches in WoT, and I usually play with two friends. It took us a few thousand games, but after a while we started seeing a pattern. At first we thought we were just being paranoid, but we kept seeing the same thing.
The pattern can be summed up like this: Some games are almost impossible to win, and some games are almost impossible to lose.
Nowadays we can usually tell within a couple of minutes if the game is going to be fairly even, or if it's going to be one of those "steam-roller games", where one team just rolls right over the other team. If it is a steam-roller, then we know it doesn't really matter what we do. If it's a steam-roller where we are on the winning side, then it's just a matter of racing forward to try and get as many shots off as possible, before the other team has been wiped out. If it's a steam-roller where we are on the losing side, then we can try to get as much damage done as possible, before we get obliterated by the enemy team. Sometimes it's not even worth trying, because most of your shots will bounce or miss anyway.
We have been in winning games where it's fairly obvious that we basically can just point at a tank and shoot. Aiming for weak spots is not really important, because almost all our shots WILL hit, and they WILL penetrate.
At the same time, the enemy team can aim and shoot all they want, most of their shots WILL miss or bounce.
We have seen this pattern, both on the winning side, and on the losing side, over and over again. I don't think we even doubt it's existence anymore.
O my f**king god I f**king knew it! I F**KING KNEW it. The game is so rigged, and its freaking obvious!
Just like Grumpy above me said, you get so many games where you cant possibly win and games you cant possibly lose.
Its so obvious when all of a sudden 4/5 shots are not on target, gold rounds are bouncing off the sides of mediums.
And I knew its because of stats balancing, this way Wargamer can say everything is balanced because all tanks have a close to 50% win ratio.
Im so done WoT,
The only thing that doesn't change is the absurd nature of the IS7, super Russian bounce armor.
Just started playing. 1000 battles in. Totally agree. When I started I was pretty bad, but somehow I won enough to get up to 45% win rating ... but I was bad and couldn't believe that the win rate was climbing. Then a pattern emerged with each (and every) tank I bought as I moved up, T82, T46, etc. first the win rate shoots up to 60+ then gets dragged steadily down. For example, when I got better and bought the Pz1c I was up to a stonking 86% win rate on the first 30-40 battles in that tank, when suddenly a 'switch' got flipped. It didn't matter how many kills I made or game changing moves, my team always lost. Of course I gave up on that and moved on to the next tank, but same thing happened, I started well, then lost steadily until the win rate was under 55 then things started balancing out. Latest tank is just the same, first 30-40 battles up to 80% win rate, but next 70 have dragged the win down. Must be that switch got flipped again. This evening almost every other battle there has been chat about the XVM prediction being so bad (less than 25% in most battles), now whilst I don't place too much store in those predictions, they were right. My penultimate thought was that I'll have to get the next higher tier tank, and of course I simply must spend some money to train crews convert XP etc.. Yes, they are definitely cheating us. But not me any longer; my final thought is that once I've used up the wee bit of gold I've got it's so-long WoT. Or maybe before then. I'd like to see the CEO put his hand on a bible (or equivalent) and tell us it isn't so. Wish this was more than anecdotal, but I didn't honestly think I'd get cheated so haven't kept a record.
Don't want to sound like a troll but I wrote this only because it's what I really think about this game and the game mechanics you seem to have diligently pointed out.
When you play WoT long enough, you know it usually won't matter how awesome you are. I've seen matches where 5 direct shots with a high penetration didn't penetrate a medium tank in the rear. My shots going way above and below the target even though I aimed perfectly. Situations that made me think the game's angular armor calculations must be bugged somehow. My team winning or losing with 3-15 end score in 3-5 mins. I have also seen, on rare occasions, my X damage cannon continuously dealing 3X+ damage. I didn't document all those, because WG had already lost my respect and support in trying to fix their game bugs.
There seems to be many algorithms in place in order to keep your wins ratio in check, firstly while assigning you a team. Then there are the penetration & hit-miss issues, and unexpected critical hits that deal no damage when you were only waiting for that killing blow. Then sometimes the tables turn and everyone you hit seems to have their ammo rack blown up and you hit the tip of their tracks and their engines go up in flames.
All these clearly rigged game mechanisms aside, before we start preaching fairness and go about how this game sucks on that department and uninstalling, there are a few things to think about:
1- Would you prefer fighting tougher fights because you're a good player yourself? (fair game with visible rating system)
2- Would you have the less skilled players get oppressed by your awesomeness and quite likely have those less fortunate leave the game? (fair game with no rating system - totally random matches)
3- Is it ok to just go about shooting stuff not caring much about showing off how awesome your stats are, or without trying to maximize your income, in a rigged environment that's trying to equalize players? (Current WoT system - rigged everything - you'll be an average player in f2p & may have to pay to do better)
I believe I've been a good player in many games. Here, I've been in many random matches where I saved my half-tarded team with my general situational awareness, lucky moves/shots and 5-6 kills. But I don't care to always be so good because it's too stressful in any game, whether it is rigged or not. I believe this rather shady game style has it's own merits too, though easy to hate. For one thing, it makes me appreciate good team mates since they seem rather rare. Another thing, I would definitely get bored fighting all tough or all easy opponents all the time. This oscillation between ok and total crap seems to be close to just fine.
While WG's "take it or leave it, we don't care to explain or fix stuff" policy certainly isn't aspiring me to pay for this; I still keep playing because I like moving around positioning my carelessly designed imaginary tin can, clicking at stuff in a primitive fps game environment. And ofc because I'm ok with not winning everytime, although I tend to call em names when I'm the only one in my team with a kill when the game's over.
This rigged and rather primitive fps tank game seems to be an ok mix in my opinion. It's primitive because I know tanks in real and I know it is much more complicated to shoot stuff accurately in those old tanks. Here, tank fights in small areas (can't see tanks beyond 500m) and shooting without caring about range, projectile speeds, etc... Simplicity is sometimes what makes games more fun. Yes this game has many issues and perhaps it should have an option to let users decide for themselves whether to play with the rigged system or have a public rating. Perhaps it is too much to ask from WG. Or perhaps it would be too much for the average user to handle all that detail, even if they pulled it off. This is what they serve, perhaps misleading and a little annoying, but simple enough, provided as is and overall, I still find WoT enjoyable.
Yes It's obvious to me too that this game is rigged by the way tanks over perform and then under perform.I'm not sure why some players don't see this obvious pattern unless
for some reason they just don't experience it but most do and comment on it during game play. My tanks go from magically disintegrating tanks almost before the round
even leaves the barrel to not being able to pen lower tier lighter tanks at point blank. I've gone against identical tanks on level ground and while they could pen me with every shot I could not do any damage even after loading premium ammo.Then there are the 1/15 kill matches that are rampant.This game still hasn't been fixed yet
so these problems will most likely never be addressed.I'll be leaving it soon too.
I believe there will be a developer soon who can do a tank game right.
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