wot generals teardown (anton gromov)

WoT Generals: Teardown by Anton Gromov

OVERVIEW - BRIEF SUMMARYWorld of Tanks: Generals is a CCG (collectible card game) with RPG elements. Player takes the role of a military leader (within 2nd World War universe) and engages other “generals” in PvP duels.

Player has access to several types of cards: - Headquarters/HQ (special card, that is basically player’s “hero/class/subclass”) - Military Machinery (“units”) - Orders (“spells”) - Squads (“weapons and armour”)

The main battle resource which is used for playing cards is Fuel (“mana”) and after each battle you receive 2 types of currencies: - Experience (divided into HQ Exp, Free Exp and Elite Exp) - Credits (soft currency)

There is also a hard currency as well (Gold), which can be only obtained through different events and real money.

Cards are obtained via several progression trees. Each country (USA, Germany, USSR) has its own progression tree and each of these trees has branches leading to certain HQs. You can use the card which is unlocked under concrete HQ branch without limitations (i.e. I can unlock a USSR tank and then add it to my Germany deck - though there may be a loss of some card benefits when doing so).

In these trees there are several cards that you cannot buy forever, instead these cards are like mercenaries, which you hire for Gold or Credits for a limited time.

For unlocking a card you need to spend your Experience (either HQ Exp or Free Exp) and after unlocking it - you have to pay its price in Credits (if several copies are allowed - you pay for each copy of the card). After you have all the cards you want/can afford, you build a 40-card deck (HQ is not counted), search for the opponent and destroy him with pleasure :)

In the next several slides I would like to explain main changes to default/standard CCG gameplay, that are implemented in WoT: Generals.


OVERVIEW - GAMEPLAY (FUEL)

Fuel Gain (during the game)

Normally, in most CCGs the resource that is required to play cards is either generated automatically with each turn, or is gained by playing special type of cards (or sacrificing cards from your hand). So every player knows how much resource he will have available each turn.

In WoT:G, the resource (Fuel) consists of a similar static part (generated by HQ) and from dynamic part, which is provided by some cards that user plays. This leads to situation, that you should not only focus on your own Fuel, but also watch for and try to decrease the amount of Fuel your opponent has.

Starting amount of Fuel

Another significant difference of WoT:G approach is that the starting amount of Fuel (for most HQs) allows to play almost any card from your deck on first turn. This also means that very soon you start playing 2-3 cards per turn (especially if you are lucky with resource-generating cards in your hand and opponent allows them to stay on the field.

PROS CONS

Having high amount of Fuel helps with actually playing cards each turn - and it is good, because player is almost certain to play cards right from the start.

Also, since your mana actually depends on the cards that you have on battle field, makes you plan your unit deployment with a deeper strategic approach.

Player on average plays much more than 1 card per turn (and it starts right from the start), so he can easily run out of cards if the deck lacks draw power.

An ability to deny resources for your opponent favours “snowball” effect and gives even more advantage to the player who goes first.


OVERVIEW - GAMEPLAY (Battle Field)

Battle Field Structure

This one is really interesting - WoT:G brings some strategy for placing units on the battlefield and controlling them afterwards. Unlike in classic CCG (where once you played a card it immediately poses a threat to your opponent), here you can place your main army only around your HQ and since the battlefield is a 3x5 grid, it takes at least 2 turns (for fast light tanks) to actually reach the enemy HQ. Also, you can only attack the HQ with 3 units (except for HQ special power and Artillery that shoots through the whole map).

Such approach opens lots of strategies and new win conditions, as you need to rotate your forces carefully to maximise damage, or you can take all the cells around the enemy HQ and he will not be able to place any military unit until he kills one of yours to get a spare spot.

Military Units Strategy

Due to battle field being a grid, now you do not only need to play right units at the same time, when you engage in battle with enemy units (or in order to maximize damage to enemy HQ) you should be also very careful about the order of attack and which units to move where and in what order.

PROS CONS

Positioning and moving your units of on the field becomes a key factor - a smart deployment strategy is now a deciding factor between victory and defeat.

This also brings a lot of new strategies (or win conditions), for example you can take all the cells around enemy HQ and he will not be able to deploy his troops until he kills your units.

Games do last longer now, because even faster deployment due to high starting amount of Fuel cannot compensate for inability (or lack of need due to strategy) to use the unit immediately.

Game becomes more “hardcore”, especially as you can easily lose game advantage if your strong units are stuck behind weaker ones.


OVERVIEW - GAMEPLAY (Part 2)

HQs and progression trees

In order to get a certain card, player is required to unlock and buy items in progression trees. However, even within one country, there are 7 HQs available (including the starting one) and each HQ has basically a different gameplay (we consider HQs as subclass).

There are no cards that are specific to a certain HQ, except for cards, that have extra bonuses, but those bonuses are either country-wide (i.e. USSR) or HQ type-wide (i.e. Attack HQs). Sometimes, there are cards that are good for all HQs (within one country for sure and may be even for all HQs in the game), but they cannot be unlocked until the HQ in which branch they are located is unlocked and bought.

This applies some (unnecessary in my opinion) limitations and forces the player to play HQ he doesn’t want to play in order to get the card from that branch. Of course, there is an option to convert experience or to use Free experience for that - but majority of the players cannot use that option.

PROS CONS

This is an interesting and appealing RPG-like element, which not only makes the game richer and works good for player retention, but also opens huge opportunities for monetisation and future updates.

In the current implementation some cards that are useful for several HQs are located under certain HQ progression branch.

That can be frustrating for the player and if he is not ready to invest money in the game (since this situation happens early enough) it may lead to him leaving the game or just play with his current cards (especially if the HQ that has that card is not the one he likes to play.


OVERVIEW - GAMEPLAY (Part 2)

Card/Deck Power, Matchmaking & Hall of Fame

Instead of “quality” in WoT:G cards have power. This power adds up to the power of your HQ forming a deck power. So in every duel you are matched by your current deck power. While this seems fair, in fact this only works if all the power levels are calculated correctly. For example, tier 2 HQs have nearly 150 Power, which is true for some HQs (i.e. PzD Juterbog) and definitely not true for other (i.e. 4th Division USSR).

This actually makes the player (if he unlocked such an “ineffective” HQ) to keep playing his current HQ because it seems more efficient to him (if you look at the ratings, you can see that most of the players play starting HQs and perform better than those who upgraded to next tier HQs). A similar thing applies to other cards (especially mercenaries), so the upgrade or a more powerful card may not give benefit to the player.

Since ratings allow to play any deck - player can still play his starting deck and effectively go higher and higher in Hall of Fame, reaching higher leagues. While the whole structure and idea of Hall of Fame is really good, it lacks rewards and also doesn’t punish the player who plays low power decks (except for may be it gives a bit less reward for winning a match).

In my opinion, this is a very good decision as player clearly sees the target and sees that this target can be actually achieved. In this case he is eager to put more effort for such ranking system, compared to common ladder ranking.

PROS CONS

Hall of Fame is really cool - very interesting approach to laddering!

Matching players based on their deck power is good as well, until the player gets 1-2 good cards in his otherwise mediocre deck.

No visible drawbacks in Hall of Fame, but the whole system of power (especially when the player puts high power cards in his low power deck) provides huge gaps of deck effectiveness.

This encourages players not to upgrade his deck/card but to continue playing low power deck.


MERCENARIES

CARDS

HQs

Premium Stuff

OVERVIEW - Core Loop & Game Flow

Battle

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Research

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DAILY QUESTS

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ACHIEVEMENT

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SHOP

EXP EXCHANGE

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BUILD A DECK


My Ideas on Player ProgressionEven though the whole idea about RPG-like progression is very interesting and as I mentioned before - adds depth to gameplay and fits the universe, I’d do it in the following way:

Training Camp

HQ 1 HQ 2…N-1 HQ N

HQ 1 Card 1

HQ 1 Card 2…N-1

HQ 1 Card N

Lend Lease

Card 1 Card 2 Card 3

Card 4

Card 5

Card 6

- Separate tree for every country HQs

- There is no HQ exp, rather Country Exp

- Each Country tree has a set of country-specific cards

- Each HQ tree has a set of HQ-specific card

- There is a separate “Lend Lease” progression tree, which has cards, that can be used by any country and any HQ

Country Card Tree

This approach keeps the strengths of the RPG element, but makes it much more convenient for the player. He doesn’t need to think, about the HQ he is currently playing - he focuses on a higher-level element (the country). At the same time, the total cost of items in progression tree might stay the same - even if player invests in certain HQ, he will most likely meet a good deck which plays other HQ/Cards and will still have the temptation to start progressing with another HQ or even with another country.

In this case Free Exp is still earned, but is now used for unlocking other country cards, while cards within the same country are using its Country Exp (you can play any HQ within country and unlock any card that is in this Country progression tree).


My Ideas on Economy & MonetizationMy suggestion is that we need to implement a modern approach to monetisation, when hard currency is not that hard actually. In the system I’d like to implement, we will have the following currencies:

- Country Exp / Elite Exp (used for unlocking HQs, cards within country progression tree and cards within Lend Lease tree) - Credits (our beloved soft currency which is needed to buy the unlocked cards and mercenaries) - Gold (soft-hard currency, which we will use now additionally for mercenaries and also for premium cards) - Free Exp (same as before)

How does player acquire these? Well, Country Exp, Free Exp and Credits - are obtained exactly the same as now (though I would re-balance the amounts, because the difference between loss and victory is too small, so it doesn’t motivate you to try hard and also opens possibilities for exploits).

Now, about the Gold. We should provide Gold within Missions retention mechanics (when player has daily tasks to complete which now only give credits). If these tasks have some kind of reward progression as well (depending on the player level/power/etc.), they become much more tempting for player to complete and not to miss out (especially when Gold is awarded). Gold is still used for converting Free Exp and for converting Elite Exp.

Premium in this case should not only increase the Exp and Credits gained, but also gives a certain amount of Gold per day (roughly, the player will get 3x more gold during the period, compared to direct purchase of gold). Also, to support this, we need to implement a VIP system, which has a progression of bonuses, depending on the total amount of real money spent. One of the best implementation of such approach to hard currency and VIP can be seen in Heroes Charge iOS game.

I also love the idea about Elite HQs, so once you unlock and buy everything under certain HQ, you get Elite Exp while playing the HQ. The approach I suggested allows to sell Elite HQs multiple times (not only one time like now for Training Camp HQs).

Another thing about Gold currency is that it should be also given for places in tournament Leagues and Groups. It works similar to lottery - if the prize for 1st place in a group is 1000 Gold, then the player can obviously invest 500 Gold for achieving that and even pay real money, because he will think that he basically gets a discount for his purchase (if he is confident in himself).


My Ideas on Core Gameplay (Part 1)Not so long ago, Hearthstone re-defined the world of CCG. While this is true, it doesn’t mean that Blizzard’s approach is absolute and there are no other ways to build interesting gameplay in the genre.

Battle Field Layout

I do like the idea of a battle field (especially since it perfectly fits the universe of WoT), but I would suggest a different layout and structure (shown on the left).

Hex field is better in my opinion as it allows 4 deploy points to your units (up from current 3). Total amount of cells in the field stays almost the same (17 vs current 15), but allows 4 units to attack the HQ from melee making gameplay more dynamic

It also makes the game more casual, so that all directions are same type. In hex field, each unit will simply have its travel distance in hexes. In most cases, units will be able to move only 1 hex per turn, because in this field if you deploy on 2 front spots - it only takes 2 hexes to get to the enemy (down from current 3).

Unit Ammo

Instead of limiting units retaliation (for example, heavy tank cannot retaliate if it attacked), I suggest adding ammo to each unit. In this case, for example, heavy tank can have 2 ammo, and after it is used - he takes certain amount of turns to re-load.

The benefit of this approach - visually it will be much more clear to the player what the unit is capable of (instead of remembering icons of tanks and what they do) and will add another balancing mechanism (you can allow different amount of shots till re-load).

On the right, there is a sample, how it can look like - you can see the lights around attack value, that show how much shots the tank can fire till re-load.


My Ideas on Core Gameplay (Part 2)Deck Size & Deck Parameters

I think that the 40-card deck size in WoT:G is fine (default 60 is too much, but something within 30-40 cards is definitely what we are looking for). However, I’d say that the 3-card limit and for some cards - 10-card limit is kind of questionable (even if it only applies to Conveyer ability units). The variety of cards also is a thing to be improved, as at some points you basically have no (or very limited) choice.

HQ abilities

In my opinion, it is a very good decision, that HQs are separated by playstyle, and I totally agree with that decision. On the other hand, some of the abilities are way too cheesy. For example, the infamous PzD Juterbog does 4 damage (and when played correctly it always should do that) per turn. If enhanced by a couple of Squads, that equals 6 damage per turn and can easily destroy enemy HQ in 3-4 rounds with just HQ attack alone.

I would advise a more mild HQ strength growth and some less “cheesy” mechanics, which cannot be exploited. For example, PzD Kurmark has a very good design - your opponent can play around the HQ ability, while you can hardly play (unless you have Taunt cards, and even if you do - u need them in your hand in first 2-3 turns) around 6 dmg into your face each turn.

PvE & Party Battles

I think that in games of such genre (and Hearthstone proved it), duels between player are not enough for a complete gameplay. In 2nd World War universe there are lots of battles that were crucial and they are very interesting for players. This opens very appealing opportunities for players to take a role of Stalingrad defence and use their decks to achieve victory, etc.

At the same time, I think there is a huge demand in CCG for 2vs2 or even 3 vs 3 battles. When player need to co-operate with each other and create synergies between their decks. This is a case for MTG (as there is a special mode for that) and I think that sooner or later there will be tries to implement that feature in online CCGs as well.


My Ideas on UI/UXSince the game is still in Beta, some of the things about UI may be fixed during that phase. Anyway, here are my thoughts on this matter.

Deck Building (fake screenshot available in next slides)

This interface is really clunky. First of all, vertical deck is much more convenient (see Hearthstone). Secondly, when the deck is being built, it is much more convenient again if I could see all the decks I can build instead of the deck for currently selected HQ. Finally, it is not possible to switch HQ decks (for same HQ) from the main menu - so if I have 2 decks built, I have to go back to Deck editing, click Decks, select the deck, then return to main menu and then go to Battle.

Card Research

First of all, it is really a pain to navigate through the progression tree. The first temptation to navigate the screen is to obviously scroll it up/down, but that doesn’t work. Instead of that, player has to actually click cards to navigate through the tree. That is really annoying and has to be changed (even if it is done to force the player to browse the cards - the benefit is not worth such user frustration and inconvenience).

In-Battle Indication

Since units have a variety of actions that they can perform (move, attack, use special abilities), we need to somehow make a different indication when player unit can perform an action. For example, when the unit is not able to shoot there is a cross on its attack - but it is hardly visible and the unit keeps on glowing green, since he can move, but I already attacked with it and I do not want to move it… So for example, may be attack needs to glow if it is not used and then fades out, when unit attacked.

Hall of Fame (fake screenshot available in next slides)

There are a lot of improvements that can be done to Hall of Fame. We can give player the ability to browse other leagues and groups, we need to show the places that are enough to receive a promotion to a higher league, we need to show the reward that player can get for his current place in the group/league. These are just some examples, since there is really a lot to improve on that interface screen.


UI/UX “Fake Screen” - New Deck Builder


UI/UX “Fake Screen” - New Hall of Fame


My Ideas on Art StyleTo tell the truth, I think the general direction of the art style is superb. The atmosphere of those days, some cards look like posters and that does really good job for putting the player in 2nd World War universe.

My only improvement to the Art Style (excluding the UI elements) is that in some cases military units look too similar to each other. Of course, there is a name and description, but I would suggest making those military machinery a bit more specific and unique in terms of visual appearance.

Please see below some examples, that explain my vision on the subject:


Closing words

I must say I really liked the game.

It was like a breath of fresh air in CCG genre and the universe of WoT provides additional and appealing flavour to the game.

However, I must say that my experience was good only till I reached tier 2 HQs, which was basically useless, because to play these HQs effectively, I need a whole bunch of cards that are unlocked in these HQ branches and the amount of experience to do that is insane.

I reverted to playing low power deck and started to enjoy the game again. My belief is that this first gap is really huge (this also includes mercenaries, because even if I can get them immediately, adding them to my deck was actually a downgrade and I removed them similar to how I reverted from Tier 2 HQ, to Training Camp HQ).

But nevertheless, as I mentioned above - the game is really good. I really enjoyed playing it and it is not easy for me to find a game, that is interesting to play and which is somewhat addictive.

P.S. While playing the game, I thought that the next game could be in a genre of battlers (Heroes Charge-style), because it fits the universe and players are used to upgrading units in this type of games and upgrading tanks, artillery and stuff is what players liked and enjoyed in a client-based WoT.

Thanks for reading!

wot generals teardown (anton gromov)

Documents

types of cards

resource fuel

special type of cards

fuel mana

card deck hq

hq exp

card benefits

headquartershq special