SandBox Official Summary


this is the official summary of the Sandbox:



Vehicles available to players are limited to Tier X, and also to Light Tanks of Tier VIII. Each vehicle will have a crew with 100% in Major Qualification and enough Crew XP to train 3 extra skills/ perks. At the beginning of testing, players will be given a one-time crediting of 5,000,000, and each day they will also get 500upon logging in. In addition, the credit acquisition rate will be increased 200% compared to the standard game server. Also, the possibility to purchase premium shells for credits will be switched off.

The list of available tanks:

Ru251, T49, Т-54 ltwt., Bat.-Châtillon 155 58, G.W. E 100, Conqueror Gun Carriage, T92, Object 261, 121, 113, TVP T 50/51, AMX 30 B, Bat.-Châtillon 25 t, AMX 50 B, E 100, Leopard 1, Grille 15, Jagdpanzer E 100, E 50 Ausf. M, Maus, STB-1, Type 5 Heavy, T110E4, T110E3, T110E5, M48A1, T57 Heavy Tank, FV4005 Stage II, FV215b (183), Centurion Action X, IS-7, Object 140, Object 268, IS-4, Т-62A, Object 430.

New Vehicle Balance Goals

  • Increase the importance of armour in the game. Currently, armour is significantly less important than speed and firepower. We would like to make armour more relevant in battle.
  • Reduce the cost of mistakes made by players in battle. We are going to encourage players to fight actively in battle. Increasing the role of armour will allow players to fight, without being afraid of going to the Garage right after being spotted, as to penetrate the tank from a distance will be much harder.
  • Decrease the risk of being focused from afar. Increased armour importance should increase player survivability at far distances, even when focused by several enemies. Covering directions and focusing spotted vehicles will become less effective, because it’ll be harder to penetrate armour at long distances.
  • Decrease combat distance. Long-range clashes should not be the ultimate way to win battles for the majority of vehicles. Vehicles should perform certain roles: shielding allies, soaking fire, pushing through the defence, etc.
  • Increase the gameplay variety. Roles for different types of vehicles should be distinguishable and performing them should make the battles more diverse. When choosing a different class of vehicles, you should also be choosing a new distinct style of gameplay.
  • Improved gameplay experience. The changes to armour penetration at a distance will encourage players to put in more effort if victory is to be achieved.


First Iteration: Main ChangesSome of the main game mechanics will be changed on the Sandbox server, in order to achieve the balance goals listed above.


Distribution of hits within the aiming circle

The goal is to decrease the effective firing distance, in order to increase vehicle survivability when being focused from far distances. Players will now have to aim their shots more carefully. The distribution comparison between Update 9.15 and theSandbox is as follows:


Decrease in armour piercing capacity at long distances

Armour-piercing capacity decreases more significantly depending on the distance, in order to increase the importance of armour in the game. Shooting from afar will become less effective – thus, players will be encouraged to engage in close-range combat. They will have to fight more actively and manoeuvre more in order to cause damage to enemy vehicles.

According to this feature, the chance of penetrating a vehicle frontally is decreased at far distances. Thus, heavy-armoured vehicles will be able to battle through the flanks.

Penetration reduction values over a distance, for the Sandbox are as follows. The initial distance of reduction is also specified:

Reworked damage caused by shells

Initially, there were few gun types in the game, but over time, many high-calibre guns have been introduced. Therefore, the guns should be reworked. Within the Sandbox tests, it is planned to test the new system of distributing damage per shot for different guns. The goal of the new system is to decrease the risk of being destroyed with one shot and increase the importance of the amount of damage a gun can cause per minute.


Changed manoeuvrability of vehicles

Since it is planned to increase the survivability/ time spent in battle, fast vehicles featuring poor armour will also be improved. It was decided to determine the relation between suspension speed and turret traverse speed for each vehicle type within the class and role systems. As a result, fast vehicles will be able to use different manoeuvres to outflank slow, heavy-armoured vehicles.


Role models for different types of vehicles

Currently, all vehicle types can perform different roles. I.e., vehicles of each type (except for SPGs and some light tanks) can perform multiple roles effectively. Thus, players use similar tactics when driving different types of vehicles, which makes the gameplay monotonous. The improvements listed below are supposed to diversify the vehicles in the game, according to their roles, and depending on the functions they perform. Seven in-game archetype roles have been distinguished on the basis of expert evaluation. These are the in-game roles that each vehicle should perform:

In general, if we talk about system changes, general reductions to manoeuvrability and View Range changes stand out, which contributes to role-based gameplay.

Remember: all suggested changes are not final and may be altered, depending on the feedback from the tester community and in accordance with gathered statistics.


SPG rebalancing

On the Sandbox, the role of SPGs will be changed from damage dealers to support vehicles. In addition, SPGs will receive some new features:

  1. Explosive blast – A new feature for SPGs. Explosive blast occurs together with splash effects after the shell explosion. The tanks that are in the radius of this explosive blast temporary have their characteristics worsened. The damage caused to the battered tanks is counted as damaged caused with your help.
  2. Allied SPGs target area marking: displaying approximate areas allied SPGs are aimed at. If the SPG is not aiming at any particular vehicle, pressing the Requesting fire/ Attacking button (the T button by default) will display the special marker. Otherwise, the standard notification of attacking an enemy vehicle is displayed. The marker will be displayed in the corresponding area on the minimap and in 3D view. Besides, the notification of the SPG status (loading/ready to fire) is displayed. This feature should help players to coordinate actions.
  3. Alternative aiming for SPGs. A new aim mode changes the aiming display for SPGs and makes aiming more convenient for players, which is similar to sniper mode.

Changes will be made to HE shells as well: the amount of damage caused with this type of shell will be decreased in most cases, but the dispersal of HE shell fragments (the radius of splash) will be increased. In short, SPGs will be dealing less damage to single targets, but their attacks will have a better chance of affecting multiple targets at once.”

SandBox Official Summary

129 thoughts on “SandBox Official Summary

  1. Firstly, this is the SANDBOX server, not TEST server. Maybe none of this will reach the game, maybe all of it will but with less extreme changes.

    Anyhow, my thoughts:
    I’m actually looking forward to seeing how artillery plays now. I am an arty player (Please don’t crucify me comments section) but the current state of the game for arty is dreadful. I don’t think that arty should have the huge alpha damage it currently has, but these changes I think will improve that. Now the arty will no longer fire a shell once every now and then and have a small chance of hitting an enemy. I think arty will be more important to the team than it was before, where bad RNG for a match screws you over completely, whereas good RNG makes arty certainly better than it should really be. I also like the de-buff effect idea and the increased blast radius to compensate for lower alpha damage.
    I’m also looking forward to seeing how light tanks and medium tanks play. Before the Cromwell was just as mobile as the AMX 12t, but with arguably a better gun and just as good view range. The only advantage the 12t had was camo values. I like the idea and direction the LTs are headed, as the eyes for the team as they should be, and hopefully something is done to the T-54 ltw. That thing is just nasty.
    I think that the shot spread accuracy could become a bad idea if it is left as it is. However, with the accuracy buff to TD guns, they shouldn’t be affected too much, and with the MTs and HTs forced into closer quarters fighting I think that they too won’t too affected. Also, this should mean that certain tanks known for their derp guns (Looking at you KV-2 and O-I) won’t be useful as sniping tanks, which I see scarily regularly. I just hope they do something with the reload of derp cannons as they said they are changing the ability to one-shot vehicles.

    Overall, from my (Limited) experience playing the game, I think that most of these changes hold the potential of working well together, as long as WarGaming balance the changes well. The best part is that LTs may be useful again (Yay!).

    1. The problem right now is that the sniping NATO medium tanks are screwed with the accuracy change. They didnt buff the aim time or accuracy. It’s worse, they reduced the top speed on the NATO mediums. Leo 1 goes the lightning speed of 45kph now. Trying to snipe from range? Shot dispersion screws it up, combined with 40% drop off to penetration at range, and 2 degree of APCR normalization. Trying to brawl? Good luck surviving with 1700HP against the more agile Soviet “cruisers” as WG brands the subclass now. I know it’s still early and they’re testing the extremes but this is ridiculous. Especially the shot dispersion.

      1. tansedge says:

        I think they currently have a global change, because the Bat-Chat has had a mobility nerf as well as the other tanks, maybe a % reduction to speed on all meds? But I have a feeling that it won’t stay this broken for long, maybe the next iteration of the sandbox server could fix the mobility issues. And in my original post I completely forgot about the NATO snipers like the Leo, so yeah, I hope they do something about that, an accuracy buff at least would be good, but the 30/40% reduction in pen for AP/APCR is at 500 metres so that is gonna affect the snipers a lot more than the ‘cruisers’. I hadn’t thought of the effects of the changes on the different types of playstyle for each class. So in effect this buffs the Soviet meds compared to the NATO meds, and I hope that doesn’t end up being the case. But this is War Gaming, so anything could happen. Hell, the AMX 40 could get a nice gun yet 😀

      2. Jack Kenyon says:

        Spot on. It’s like they’re thing to take this opertunity to ruin the NATO mediums even more. Right now the Leopard 1 and AMX 30B are fairly underpowered mediums. They want to nerf the Leopard’s speed to 45? Erm since when was top speed a balance parameter that could be meddled with against historic accuracy? The Leopard could go 65 kph in real life, why shouldn’t it in game? What drugs were they on o
        When they accepted that even for the sandbox server? It makes no sense to even suggest making the Leopard 1 go 20kph slower than it did in real life, nerf the dispersion and accuracy, nerf the HP, nerf the rate if fire and damage per shot, and then ruin its penetration at range with standard ammo (forcing you to use gold ammo with no damage falloff, so ,ore gold spam and money to Wargaming again)

      3. Joshua says:

        How is it ridiculous? Extremes are being tested, like you said. You’re complaining as if it were already on the live server.

  2. VanMeergeren says:

    Will I get all my premium-tanks-gold-spent back?

    I can’t imagine how to play CDC Sandbox-like version


  3. Nopp says:

    Everything subjected to change, how about we calm our titties and see what happens next. Actually happy for AP nerfs, Type 5 will be a real beast at Tier 10.

    1. they have to because if not it’s pay to win and plays into the bigger clanwars clans also in the sandbox they are doing it to limit the gold rounds to get a better idea of “real World” play

  4. Anonymous says:

    I like the new mechanics as it is much more realistic but the “stun effect” only happens to soldiers out in the open. If a tank is hit directly that is completely different but any shots that do not do so will have no effect on the crew whatsoever.

  5. Winterx says:

    Such a rework may well break the game entirely. By that I don’t mean it would, by default, not work. Yet it will likely alienate a significant percentage of long time, loyal (and paying) players if the changes mean they will have to go out on a limb to adapt to the novelties.

  6. paincompliance says:

    So view range, positioning, leading targets, learning the camo system, etc is all gone. More boring brawling seems to be the vision. Joy. At least now they can make more boring city maps for the boring gameplay that’s developed

  7. shankmeyster says:

    want to see what would happen if they get rid of gold rounds entirely like the good old days. people will be rebalanced to fair fights again and maybe the NA player base will expand again. also dependent on them reworking the economy so you can actually pull a profit in 8-10 in most games unless you do horribly.

  8. Cosmo says:

    Looks to me they want to make the game more noob friendly.
    Larger splash on SPGS will certainly help pubbies get less frustrated.
    Lower high speed combined with the willingness to make combat less long distance will help those who can’t lead shots.
    The change in how shots are distributed is moronic….
    The change in pen while keeping the +/-25% RNG in pen is absolutely terrible.

    What most good players ask is:
    – better in game balance in same tier tanks (matchmaking issue)
    – Arty overall nerf/role change from dmg dealer to support
    – reduction of RNG to +/- 10% RNG (at least in pen)

    but seems like WG is completely deaf to what these players say… (funny, no mention from rita from the NDA they asked ALL the streamers to sign regarding sandbox).

    I’ve played 22k games and uninstalled/installed wot twice in the last 2 months and haven’t been playing since 10 days ago. If most of the changes from the sandbox servers go through, I will definitely uninstall this game and move on.

  9. SobD says:

    I’m on SB server now. The only thing I can tell is MT speed nerf will do nobody any good. After nerf Leo1, AMX30B, BC25 and STB-1 are a pain to play. To make things worse USSR tanks remain 50+km/h speed, well if this remains, hard to defend WG from somebody says Russian bias.

    Also, I don’t think in current game “Currently, armour is significantly less important than speed and firepower.” Listen to those who complain MTs are op is just wrong. Players will always find a way around, you nerf NATO tanks they will start to complain USSR MT, you nerf all MTs they will go complain fast HTs, this will never end.

    Decrease combat distance is a must but I against achieving this goal by change gun handling, this should be done by change basic spot system, like force spot TD after 1 shot or 2, also like LTs can dig TDs out by special ability.

    If what in this SB make into live, I think I’ll quit this game very soon.

  10. Anonymous says:

    after all the updates, on arty i mean. you will no longer to be able to defend yourself if u r the last player, wot will probably be not worth playing after sandbox updates

  11. Anonymous says:

    I have been playing this game for a long time, almost since the beginning and yes, arty was annoying and still is, but the game is great as it is right now. Why do they want to change everything suddenly? Come on we keep playing WoT because we like our tanks and the gameplay like they are, it’s sad but I think a lot of players and myself will uninstall if they change the game this way

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