Hi CS,
I've tried to stay away for awhile but couldn't resist. We have a more serious problem with players online rate dropping. Please see the charts below, you will see that since R3.8 dropped, about a month ago, both player average online and peak numbers have also dropped steadily for the past 30-day. While the peak show some momentum, likely due to grind event, but you surely can see that the peak didn't last and now we are on a steadily decline. Patch R3.9 was a welcoming change, but it did very little to reverse the effects from R3.8. What worries me is the daily peak and average online players. These will eventually leads to longer wait queue, which might lead to further player loss due to unwillingness to wait for a game to begin. I won't sour you with negative experiences on lack of variety due to players playing same tanks to grind rare parts, and game quality continue to decline.
There are 2 main issues we need to address, one is shortage of Rare Parts and another is queue length.
1. Rare Parts - Every game we play, we are reminded that WG have cheated us out of our 100% equipped tank. Players will eventually learn to deal with equipment change, timer, or even the unfair insufficient rare parts given after the R3.8 because these are one-time action and most players have short memory. But every game we play, we reminded how painful it is to get loose change of rare parts. This is worst than begging for food/money on the streets. Players are not happy about the current way of getting rare parts and not able to fully equip all of their tanks. People buy many tanks because they want to play 'any' tank they like, at any tier, any time... without enough rare parts, this is not happening soon. Plus players are less motivated to grind new tanks or buy new tanks because they don't have rare parts to equip the tank.
2. Queue Length - This is becoming a catch-22 issue when player online drop and queue lengthens. Eventually more players leaves the game due to not wanting to wait, once this reach a certain point of no return, there are no way to reverse the effect. The solution might be to bring back MM with +/-2 tier. I'm not a fan of +/-2 tier MM, but it will ensure a shorter wait time for players to get into a game. As for the potential negative impact of being lower tiers, well, most of the older player base already have experience. As for the new players, it might bring a different gaming variety that the game needs. Right now every tier 7-8 game we see is dominated by the same tanks being played. Seeing Dracula/Helsing go up against tier 9 MT/LT will be an interesting change.
https://stats.wotapi.ru/stats/wotb/asia/total