On the 18th of December, the first episode of the Developer Stream took place. In it, Chief Developer Richard Taylor, PvE Developer Tyson Christensen and Senior Developer Charles Staples talked about Update 0.12 changes to the game and answered some of player questions with the help of Michael "Spunky" Dunaway, Obsidian Entertainment Community Manager. The recording of the stream can be found here:
For those who do not want to re-watch the entire show, here's a quick summary of what the developers said about Armored Warfare and its future:
- It's possible the tank destroyer ability will be improved and modified, even now there are also some internal changes being tested
- The ICE tanks do not break the guidelines on premium vehicle introduction, as they are simply regular vehicles with premium status and different skin, the principle is the same as when Obsidian introduced the battle-hardened function
- There are plans to introduce the PvE element where AI opponents actually choose which round they should be using against player targets for best performance
- AI opponents will also be able to target weakspots
- The developers are considering increasing the rewards for PvE, it's possible that PvE and PvP will have more similar economic model (repair costs + higher incomes), the goal is to make both modes equally important and balanced
- It's possible that premium account and premium vehicle reward calculation mechanism will be changed
- The developers are working on a PvE campaign through which the players will be able to progress through (no details are available yet), another upcoming PvE mechanism are the boss fights
- Insane mode is still being tested, the developers are not quite yet satisfied with its balance
- Retrofits will not increase the armor thickness itself, but more retrofits increasing vehicle protection in other ways are considered
- The bug where Explosive Reactive Armor is more effective than it should be against kinetic shells will be addressed in the upcoming hotfix
- Tier 9 vehicles are watched carefully, especially the player feedback, the developers want to have it as well balanced as lower tiers are
- There are plans to improve the gun depression of some TDs, for example the LAV-600 (the poor gun depression was caused by wrong models that caused the gun with historical depression to clip through the hull model)
- It's possible that special side angle gun depression will be added so that vehicles will be able to depress their guns further with the turret traversed to the sides as there is no hull blocking the gun depression
- Commanders will have their skills expanded (more skills, more interesting choices, commanders will be built around specific playstyles - current commanders are more generic to fit more playing styles
- Tier 10 vehicles will possibly have module upgrades, but the decision depends also on player feedback, whether players would like to have such progress or not
- A major base update is coming (currently there is however no estimate as to when), in the future there will be many more mechanics and improvement to it
- The shot delay situation should be somewhat improved in 0.12 but the developers are still working on correcting the issue entirely, some progress has been made
We hope you liked the first episode of the Devstream. See you on the battlefield!
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