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The introduction of the spare parts in 3.8 changed the economics of the game.
prior to 3.8 you had effectively 3 currencies.
1. Gold either bought for with real world money or very occasionally a hard mission would give you some.
2. SIlver used to buy equipment and consumables and new tanks. Earned by fighting and doing damage or possibly by using gold to get silver.
3. Experience ( grouped crew and free XP in with this) earned by fighting etc.
To progress up the tech tree you needed to earn XP and silver to unlock upgrade to tanks using the XP and eventually gain access to the next level so you could then buy the tanks for silver.
Silver for me was a limiting factor as one of my long term goals was to own all the tanks in the tech tree and work the crew skill to 100%
running a tank (for me at tier X) I did not quite break even in the silver department so would quite often drop down to tier 8 and use my IS6 which was a nice silver generator.
Along came 3.8 and the (@@@@@. @@@@. Pile of @@@@<self edit> insert own 3 minute rant here).
Now we have 4 currencies. The original 3. The new one being spare parts. So to now equip the tanks I have in my garage back to full equipment I guessed would take around 4 years..... I am not going to be buying new tier X tanks until I have at least equipped my favourite tanks as using a less than fully equipped tier X in tier X battle is really painful and you are usually running at a big disadvantage. Tier X I find is very unforgiving of mistakes. As everybody equips their favourite tier X tank first as a priority. The easiest method of gaining spare parts is by completing missions. They have also allowed for a wide range of tiers to complete the missions V-X. In the past it used to be just one tier.
I expect that that they were planning to introduce a system of buying spare parts for cash but after the backlash on the introduction of 3.8 they backed away from it. ( from talking to a number of players about this a large number of them would have quit the game. I certainly would. The cash grab introduction of 3.8 was just too far and still leaves a very bitter taste in my mouth).
They introduced the give aways of free crates. Perhaps as a sweetener after the bitter pill of 3.8. Silver became irrelevant for me as they had also changed the amount of silver earns in battles and with the daily give aways and other silver earned for the grinding for events. Just before this last release I had about 45 million. I used up a large amount of this to raise the crew skill up on most things to level seven using up the experience gained on elite tanks. But I am now back to about 23 million. Running most of my tanks now with full consumables etc, not quite yet bothered with running camo all the time.
I now only play my favourite tanks which I have fully equipped or on their birthday reducing the variety of tanks that I play. I go seal clubbing far more often these days as it is easier to get missions at tier V and VI rather than tier X. I of course use fully equipped tanks.
The poor newbie player is taking a pounding and my win rate is slowly climbing.
I still grind away at the tech tree but these days I will often only play the tanks for its first victory and the drop back to the old favourites.
The idea of having nine equipment slots did appeal to me. But you are limited on choice so almost all my mediums will be equipped the same way , the exception being the auto loaders. All my heavies are equipped the same way. Ditto lights, TD'S are slightly different depending on if they are big gun, no armour grill15 or lots of armour small gun tortoise. So in reality there is little difference in the way my tanks are set up. Which counteracts the reason given by WG for introducing the 9 slots. They may be changing this but from what I have learned it is going to be a very minor change.
My take on the introduction of the 3.8 was that it was an ill thought out money grab attempt. That backfired when people stopped paying for premium time ( no point in using this as it doesn't affect the spare parts earning rate and we do not need the additional silver, the extra XP is nice but as you are limited by spare parts is it worth it for just XP?).
Not going to be using gold to buy 100% crew skill as not going to be buying many new tanks.
Not going to be buying premium tanks as you do not have the spare parts to equip them.
Timers are for me a pointless annoyance I will just wait out the time as I do not have the spare parts to equip the next slot anyway and it will almost always take me longer to earn the spare parts before the timer has run out. So no gold from me for timers.
If WG thinking really was to retain new players by reducing the advantage that the long term players had. It is in my opinion a complete failure as since 3.8+ it has increased my advantage over the new players and I am far more likely to play them before they have gained much experience.
I use fully equipped tanks at a lower level than I used to play. I used to play mostly at tier VIII to X now I play Tier V and VI mostly and the occasional VII avoiding the vast majority of fantasy tanks as you do not get many at tier V and VI (I hatesem I do so my precious I hatesem but my dislike of fantasy tanks is for another thread).
I have the advantage of having most of my crew skills at level 7.
That is my take/rant on the introduction of 3.8. P.S. Before 3.8 I tended not to post on the boards I just used to play the game and occasionally hunt around on the boards for information. Now I appear here far more often, cos I can at least vent my feelings about the <self edit> things that I think WG is making mistakes in or occasionally good stuff. FIREFLY YEA!!
fighting battles .
