This time we went for a slightly different format: instead of chaotically going from topic to topic, we picked and answered 5 top questions from last two weeks discussions.

Let's go!

Too many modes

Q: New modes keep coming and it becomes harder and harder to get the mode I want to play right now. This is deeply troubling for me — should I be ready for worse?

New modes are incredibly helpful as a tool for opening more unexpected facets to the game. We want to open the mind and find what else is possible in War Robots other than just running around knee-deep in blood, oil and spare parts (even though this is kinda the point). Make it so the game is always in a flux — but a healthy one. You should come into the game expecting something new and cool to see experiencing delight and curiosity — not the existential horror of “oh gosh, what do I have to grind for now“ kind.

By the way, we are extremely happy with the feedback on King of the Hill you gave us. Currently, KotH steadily holds 20-30% of all concurrent matches with those preferring speed over power and seems like we struck the vein for a particular style of players. And at the same time threads like this one allowed us to locate the issues that we’ll do our best to avoid in the future. Thank you!

Of course, with new modes come certain drawbacks — playerbase segregation is possibly the biggest culprit. We already have many players who enjoy playing exclusively TDM. Or sticking to the roots with Domination. Adding separate matchmaking queues is not the option here as it will hurt the matchmaking times and quality by a large margin.

But we also understand that you don’t want to be left at the mercy of random when it comes to picking modes. To soften the impact, we increased Domination and TDM reward multiplier (+10% and +33% respectively) earlier this week. Now you should get about the same amount of silver per match as you would in Beacon Rush.

In the meantime, we took a step back to check our priorities and see if we’re going in a right direction in how we handle new modes. There are many strategies we could adopt. Should we leave one queue for a fixed mode and rotate modes in the second queue? Or reshuffle queues and make it so, say, we have Domination+TDM and BR+KotH queues?

We’ll see soon.

Workshop 2.0

Q: When will Workshop 2.0 go live?

It is still pretty far away — a couple of months away at the very least. But once there's something new to unveil, we won't make you wait any longer!

Supply Drops: only Kumiho?

Q: The way it looks the only components in supply drops will be Kumiho components? Is this the case?

The goal is to switch Supply Drop contents every month or so. We'll begin with Kumiho, then rotating to something else — and so on.

We also plan to launch a poll where people will be able to vote for things they want to see in the next Supply Drop season. Stay tuned.

Leaving vs. Tanking

Q: In 3.6 you introduced a new pop up message about repercussions of leaving the match too early. Is it really enough to stop people from abusive activity like tanking?

No. Definitely not.

What we're actually doing with this popup is getting rid of the current "it's alright to leave, so just go" message that was there for eternity. Leaving a match is still okay in many cases, but the idea we want to plant is that there’s always a chance to ruin the game for your teammates if you leave them too early. Which is, of course, not alright.

This message alone is not going to stop hardcore tankers — would be naive to expect that to happen after the change so tiny. But the part of the issue comes from the fact that some people believe we support tanking — and we don't. We want to establish that clearly enough with proper wordings on our side.

There a lot of discussion going on which approach we should pick to handle matchmaking exploits.

For now, you can use this form to report players ruining your experience.

Shocktrain nerf

Q: Shocktrain is dominating in high leagues. Any plans on nerfing it?

We aren’t going to leave Shocktrain as it is, that’s for sure. We don’t want to nerf it into oblivion, as this would alienate thousands of people who enjoy using it (there's always two sides to the coin). But our goal is definitely to emphasize counterplay, allowing you to find weak spots in Shocktrain-packed enemies’ defence. This weapon should remain relevant — but not nearly as dominant as it is right now.

By the way, Shocktrain is not the only piece of equipment we’re looking at. We also want to bring many outclassed pieces — like Wild Bunch robots — to the forefront with some precise buffs.

We already have some solutions ready. As always, they will surface on the test server first — follow its official page and be ready for the upcoming week's announcements!