World of Tanks and the Great Balancing Act

Let's face it. If you visit any World of Tanks social network of any sort, you will see endless posts about how so-and-so tank is really underpowered, or how such and such tank needs a buff, or how Wargaming has no idea how to balance matchmaking, the game, etc. etc. etc.

The inevitable fact is that World of Tanks is a very difficult game to balance. Think about just some of the parameters that need to be considered:

• History - remember what happened when Wargaming completely diverted from the pages of actual recorded history?
• Gameplay - WoT currently boasts over 400 tanks representing 9 major nations plus Israel, Switzerland, and Taiwan. That is a lot of tanks to choose from, and each one has to be designed to be unique in some way)

Well, almost completely...

• Data - the numbers don't lie. Unless of course, you misinterpret them. Either way we see time and time again Wargaming using the numbers to justify a buff or a nerf (tank is winning too much/too littler/not played enough/etc.)
• Profit - well, Wargaming is a business after all...

...and those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head.

So how can we balance WoT exactly? How do you strike a balance between all the above factors?

I'm not sure there's actually a way to do so, not completely. Balancing WoT will run as long as the game runs. Every new tank added is another variable, every new mode or change to mechanics can drastically kill the gameplay of an entire line while boosting the appeal of another.

What we can do, however, is focus on a particular aspect. Take one point and work around it to build the others. Let's take History, for example. If we completely rebalance a few trees with history in mind, we can tweak them for more unique gameplay and identify profit options (re: premium tanks).

I don't really expect anything to come out of these proposals; most if not all will likely involve some major tweaking of the existing tech trees that make them impractical or unprofitable to implement. Still, it never hurts to get something off your mind, right?

...after all, because this is my blog, I'll can write up whatever the heck I want. I just haven't really decided what that is yet.

Watch this space...