Popular Opinion on the M55 Addition to 5 Tech Trees And All Copy Paste at Large

Machinery of War Discussion Ground Vehicle
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If a vehicle was built, it will come to the game.

To do otherwise is, again, leaving money on the table.

However, the M55 is much less exciting in terms of “brand recognition” than the Hummel or the Sexton. So, it’s no huge loss to just copypaste it to everyone. Then, maybe (judging by some of the visual material they’ve released) in 2026 we get the Hummel. And maybe the Sexton is scheduled for, I don’t know, summer 2028. And so on.

Again: drip feed content industry. By doing this, you have milked as much interest potential out of each of these vehicles because they get to hold the spotlight for one update.

You don’t get it. This isn’t a single player game, where you can adjust difficulty settings in myriad ways. When it comes to PVP, you are not just trying to achieve competitive balance, you are also dealing with people’s behaviour.

The moment one side is favoured (real or perceived!) over the other, everyone will start queueing on one side.

World War Mode in 2022 ended up exactly like this. The Germans could only have one Jagdtiger per operation. However, there were x10 people queueing on the German side than there were on the American side. And if they saw the Jagdtiger was not available, they left the match, and tried again, because they wanted to use the big fancy weapon to stomp the Shermans.

Asymmetrical balance is much more difficult to achieve and even if you get there on paper, people will screw up the matchmaker based on their preferences. Hell, even with performance-based matchmaking, Germany at the WW2 BRs has so many players that you often get an entire team of only Germans playing against everyone else!

Since this is a competitive game, the best and easiest way to ensure balance is to go by vehicle performance. That’s all.

It makes sense competitively. If your problem is that it breaks historical immersion, I would ask what exactly is historically immersive about playing tank battles in urban environments without infantry. Or any environment, really.

Why? They can kill you. You can kill them. It’s a competition. Have fun. If you’d rather play a milsim, there are other titles available.

On the other hand, WWII planes in real life didn’t get the benefit of third person view and mouse aiming, and were generally - you know - afraid to die. Planes in WT are free of those limitations, so they are stronger than they were IRL, so they face stronger opposition than they faced IRL. It’s that simple.

It was tried many times. It never worked, for the reasons described above.

I don’t know, maybe one of the most long-lived and successful MMOs in the history of videogames does not need to fundamentally rethink its entire approach, what do you think? Lol.

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allays room for growth and expansion, besides following a model like WoT means you will always be behind you major rival.

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That still makes no sense … Iv been playing since … about 2015/16 around there and I have heard all the arguments about balancing etc … If I get killed by a comerable era tank …then it is what it is, but getting killed by a HeatFS round from a modern tank that can outmenover and out gun me just … well its just wrong. If balancing is a thing then why must I suffer and the modern tanks get a free ride ?

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Which they’re doing. Historical matchmaking is an idea that’s been tried many times and hasn’t worked once. There’s a reason their growth and expansion is focusing on other areas.

Bro, WT is miles ahead of WoT. The latter has been in decline and they’ve actively been trying to bring in more players with dedicated campaigns.

Besides, WT is already massively different from WoT in ways that actually matter, the game mechanics. They are completely different products.

Heat-fs is just sad because of the dumb way WT models APHE. You can nuke every Heat-fs slinger easily using WW2 ammo.

This is evidently and manifestly false from a competitive perspective. If WW2 tanks really couldn’t compete, this would emerge in gameplay and stats, and they would go down in BR. Instead, they can compete.

If you’re not talking about the competitive perspective, then it simply doesn’t matter. This is a pvp shooter game.

Between 6th October and today, I’ve been playing the 7.0 - 8.0 bracket using German 6.7 vehicles in ground RB. This is because I’m playing with a friend who has the removed 7.0s and so I’ve been uptiering myself to play with him. So, I’ve been seeing even more postwar vehicles than German 6.7s usually do. Here’s how it’s been going. Win rate:

IMG_20260206_205104_706
IMG_20260206_205104_7061280×446 29 KB

And this is the ground K/D:

IMG_20260206_205107_283

Any claim that late war German heavies are not competitive against early cold war tanks is simply contradicted by the evidence.

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You contradict yourself. Filling the TT with same-same vehicles all at once doesn’t string out the content. It rams it down player’s throats.

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Except I do not, because I literally addressed this in a later comment, which I will quote:

TL;DR Hummel, Sexton, Wespe etc are unique. M55 and M44 are not. You spam the M44, then the M55, to give access to the mechanic to multiple trees at once. Then you bring in the unique and interesting stuff piecemeal, so that it’s not gone after one update. You also work less (because you can copy paste the M55 and then keep working on one SPG at a time). It is classic drip feed content industry behaviour. The incentives to do it this way are clear. Why do you expect a company to behave elsewise?

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I love killing Tiger IIs with my ELC BIS and my 350mm HEAT

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And I love killing M103s with Jagdtigers and Tiger IIs. Feels so damn satisfying.

Which is another point that gets overlooked when discussing why historical MM just does not fit WT. The variety of encounters really is something that keeps the game fresh. Honestly after playing the Tiger II at 7.0 - 8.0 for so long, when I get a 5.7 - 6.7 full downtier I end up enjoying it less. The matches aren’t necessarily easier, because you’re often stuck with baby teams of Tiger Timmys who don’t know what tf they’re doing with their Tigers and Panthers. But the engagements you get certainly require less thought, you just point, click and delete stuff at will. While playing the Tiger II at 7.0 - 8.0 requires a lot more thought. I just find it more stimulating.

56

actual truth nuke, howitzers are the most annoying thing in this game by far.

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NICE STATS !!!

now I want to know … is this becase you are good or the German heavy’s are good or you have a team player with 7.0 tanks that is blocking for you ?
In my 6.0-6.7 games I get sniped from across the map by Heatfs shots or killed by a Ontos or some rat tanks that snuck past 10 other players to kill me just outside spawn.

The outer thing is … are the players fighting WWII Ger Heaveys JUST bad at the game ? Yes I have seen games where the Heavy’s dominate … but they are less than 10% most games I get the modern tanks have competent players and the Ger Heaves just don’t stand a chance.

You seem to know this game well, am I just bad at the game ?

My Stats

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It’s obviously a combination of all three. Let’s start with the latter.

One could say my 7.0 team mate is doing all the carrying. Suppose it’s true and that he’s the only reason why we’re winning matches. Let’s say that explains the win rate.

I still have a 3.6 K/D in the Tiger II Sla over all those matches though. Clearly I’m getting plenty of kills. With a heavy, while playing it outside of its bracket. Why? Because the tank is damn good, that’s why.

Also, if you really want to know if I’m contributing to the wins or not, all you gotta do is look at the average score I’m getting with the 6.7s at 7.0. For example, my average score this month was:

immagine

This gets us to points 1 and 2. I think I’m a good player of ground, I try to improve all the time at any rate. But I would not be getting those numbers if the tanks were trash. The really good players, I’ve seen them do well in literally anything. But I’m not one of those. The Tiger II Sla, Tiger II and Jagdtiger don’t play themselves, but they aren’t duds, either.

It happens to all of us. The key point is though, anything that snipes at you, you can snipe right back. So long as you have good spatial and situational awareness you can do plenty good.

For example.

This is a Tiger II Sla nuke I got in a 7.0 - 8.0 match. In this match, I sniped a Foch’s cupola at 900m, I killed two Somuas and a Sheridan, among other things. Anyone can do the same thing with the same tank, because the tank is good, and it’s mostly good because of its gun.

Another match at 8.0:

Note that at the very beginning of the match I had two fast postwar tanks on both of my flanks. I was ready for them. Why? I saw the Frenchie in the kill feed, killing a light tank that had gone ahead of me, and I knew from experience where he would go next; and I heard the engine noise of the Bardelas on my left. I reacted accordingly and got them both, and when the Bardelas guy respawned in an AML, I got him again… and that’s before you get into the rest of the match, which I ended 5 spawn points away from a nuke.

Rule of three demands I post another 8.0 match. This is one that actually went pretty badly. Our 8.0s died right away, my first spawn ended with only three kills, we ended up losing the match. I still took an Object 906 and an M103 down to hell with me though!

Please understand that I’m not trying to sing my praises here, I’m singing the tank’s praises. I’m showing what it’s capable of. Some matches are point and click adventures. Use the Tiger II well and it’ll serve you well.

Tbh, to understand where you are now, all-time stats are less important than monthly stats. Since you’ve asked my opinion, I’ll go ahead and check, but without looking at your replays I can’t really say anything too specific.

immagine

I think you should focus on yourself first, and worry about vehicle balance later. I’m saying this in the kindest, most supportive way possible - you seem like a fairly average player, but we’ve all been there at some point. When someone on your team does very well, or someone on the red team thrashes your guys, go look at the server replay and see what they did differently. Best way to learn!

59

I think half of the M44s and M55s should be removed. For example, for Germany, I would replace them with the Hummel and the Brummbar Late Model. This way, Germany would have two tanks with the same damage output, but completely different in armor, bullet velocity, mobility, etc. We should also look into replacing these vehicles with some indigenous ones, if possible, like the FV433 Abbot for the British.

In the specific case of the M55, its enormous 203mm shell should simply have a penetration of around 80 to 100mm, at least to justify the long reload time, since as it is now, it’s nothing more than a mediocre way to add a vehicle to several tech trees without much effort. The M44 is similar, but somewhat better, as it performs the same functions as the M55 while reloading much faster. However, as I mentioned, other indigenous vehicles could be added to replace it in some tech trees.

On another note, it would be beneficial to add HESH ammunition to the M109s in all tech trees, in addition to finally improving the bullet itself, as the HESH rounds are currently quite poor.

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you have a youtube channel? link it for me please. I am subbed to the normal ones odd codmine spookston, but watching pros play doesn’t really help … all though I like that they have discord channels were you can get good or reasonable teams. The game has great graphics and the gameplay is good, I just feel that the so called balancing is a bit off. But then I have been told I play like a real tank and not a video game … my logic cant cope with some of the stupid things tanks can do in the game. I would play more sim if I could get teams for it, soloing sim is a dead loss.

I don’t hate WT … I did play WoT for about 10min and thought it was just stupid so I delegated it. I just think it could be a lot better.

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Hopefully when I play I get players like you on my team ;)

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It’s the same channel as in the videos I’ve linked. You can check out the rest of the channel from any of those three videos. All the same, here is the link to the channel itself:

https://www.youtube.com/@warblunder1999

I’m not really trying to be a fancy CC or anything. I just like the music video format that was popular on YT when I was a teenager and I’ve been using it on some matches I’m happy with. But I think you can still find useful gameplay tidbits in there.

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Still one of the more egregious things that can be done due to the APHE overperforming in damage output. If you have 2 foch facing eachother they cannot frontally penetrate afaik. But they definitely cannot kill eachother in this way. But any decent gun with aphe can just pen the cupola and nuke the entire crew because it has explosive filler.

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Yep, it’s ridiculous. On the other hand, it’s also why the Foch is 7.3 and sees WW2 vehicles at all. In reality it would merrily shit on all of them.

It’s incredibly ironic that one of the primary obstacles to having the “historical matchmaker” that some people demand is the very over perfornance of APHE. If APHE and solid shot worked historically the BR cutoffs would look very different. Instead we (by literal popular demand) live in a world where APHE makes WW2 vehicles extremely competitive against much newer machines.

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historical MM would work if the armour and ammo war realistic, but then it is a game … and that annoys me no end . . . Tank battles where never about racing around the battle fields with quick flick shots or giggle peeking … generally tank on tank battles took place at max range and was a slogging match. That is one of the reasons I deleated WoT. Ramping a tank of any kind would generally break something or bash the heads of the crew against the steel interior of the tank. I however would like to see a REALIST battle to be as Realistic as posible.

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WT has struck a goldmine by pairing realism of the visual model, complexity (but not necessarily realism) of the damage system, and arcade shooter mechanics. This makes the game accessible for a much larger audience. Look at how many people play sim instead of RB and you’ll rapidly get an idea of the relative sizes of the audience.

There are other titles that focus more on hardcore realism. They have smaller audiences because they are niche products. And that is completely fine.

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I think they should not be added the way the current tech trees are.
They should be removed, other than the US one…

Reasoning:
The BR and rank is wrong - at least on German Tech tree - West Germany (post WW2-era vehicles) should be at rank 4 minimum, but I prefer to have them at even rank 6 (Which basically leaves Rank 5 as prototype range for WW2 what-ifs).
Frankly, West and East Germany should be separate (sub)trees at least, which should also allow the NATO vs WPACT battles. I prefer battles with context (axis versus allies). So, moving to cold war era should also be made to accommodate this context.

If the issues in reasoning are addressed, I would be in favor of having more borrowed “traitor” vehicles.
But as of current issue - the M55 (4.0) in the place where we see panzer 4s (3.3-3.7) duking out against Shermans (3.3-5.7) and T-34s (3.3-6.3), this just looks jarring, for someone who’d like to see semi-historical matchmaking.