Is World of Tanks Rigged? 

1:03:28 The game I was talking about is no longer under NDA, and is called Project Cold War. I’ve been playing it since the first play tests were available, it’s pretty good (for now) feel free to look it up to hear what other people have to say about it.

Incredible attention to detail, quality. Other youtubers uploading battles from Twitch because they don't even want to record a new video on YT, and what you create here are completely different standards. Congratulations, keep it up.

I am 39 years old, who played alot of games and watched a looot of youtube videos, this , this might be the best articulated, explained and created video on youtube. Congratulations my friend, and as a humble suggestion, you should create more because obviously you are an artist

Look how they have massacred my beloved WoT

You almost got me to install that game again. But then I remembered what playing 10 bottom tier matches every afternoon after work felt like: Stockholm Syndrome. the dread of knowing the other flank will inevitably collapse while you have to do the wobble wobble cupola snipe ridgeline dance. Oh god, I think my PTSD is flaring up.

So... you're welcome at Armored Warfare, Chems! ;)

Know you waited a while, but I'm on time.

in case you are wondering, kajzoo and dakillzor did contribute to this video, but i noticed a lot of people talking about a "claus" person, i don't know where this idea is coming from, but he is not involved with this video at all.

i think the russsian bias came from the time where wot was still only 4-5 nations. Back then for example a tier XI T54 med had a 500mm ring arround the tank. I think things like these fired the russian bias up

It is looking so good! Fr looks better than most WoT official videos.

To be fair, when QB said they paid 4400 dollars it is more rational to think that he wasnt aware of the Argentinian loop hole than to assume that he intentionally lied to his audience.

23:00 I noticed this with the UDES (t8 medium) and a few other tanks where you'd go to the top gun and despite it having worse accuracy and gunhandling it hits far more consistently. Never knew there was a term for it. 32:50 Also I'd argue that matching up tank types is far more important than matching up skill levels.

I just noticed, that in your video on equipment, at the end, you showed ,,list of things Chems said that turn out to be true", one of the things is WoT will die on 30. November 2023. And this will drop in the same exact date. You have planned it from the beginning, didn't you?

I like how looking at the timestamps in the description, there is an entire section dedicated to the grille 15.

44:05 Quite frankly, this reminds me of something: When Apple introduced random music selection in their music player, it was truly random. That means that the same song can come again right after it was played. People reacted negatively and said this isn't random. So Apple made their random selection less random by preventing the same song to be played for a few songs and people reacted to it positively AND though it's more random.

-23:08-- sigma value means z-score, not standard deviation, it's basically standard deviation normalized against mean. For example, to get the same distribution (identically looking curve) for 0.2 and 0.4 accuracy values, the standard deviation for 0.4 has to be higher to compensate for the higher mean.- Edit: I was wrong. The above applies to damage calculation, not to shot distribution. Still, the shot spread definitely does NOT follow normal distribution, as mention by Overlord_Prime in his document. And term "sigma" is used because it is established in WoWs.

The unicum of unicums. A person who taught many, strikes again. Definitely the best wot content creator.

HE CAME BACK WITH THE MILK

I would be more interested in Kisly's patent - where good players get their RNG nerfed when engaging against bad players and vice versa to level the gap in skill somewhat in order to prevent bad players from being discouraged and rage quitting WoT forever, or the theory that your RNG is set at the start of the battle which results in games where you hit all your shots, even poorly aimed ones, and the contrary situation where you keep missing from 5 meters or bouncing 100% pen shots.

40:26 I didn't actually know there was a *rotation* of maps. I mean, I guess I had heard that somewhere, but I didn't realize I was being cycled through the same set of maps on purpose.

I have never seen any WOT CC who have put so much dedication to the content like you, Chems. Good job!

How about: 1. Gather up some money as group 2. Buy the game from WG 3. Make some changes = Game good again!😲

In summary: World of Tanks isn't rigged. The problems are much deeper than that.

Something i'd like to add to add to the whole booster myth. I don't play WoT but i know similar situations from War Thunder. Once you activate one of those really big boosters, which an f2p player will rarely get, it almost seems like the entire enemy team knows about it and just comes after you exclusively. And while i did often have this experience, it's just that this situation isn't exclusive to the times where you use a booster. I think that the biggest problem with boosters is the promised reward. Let's say you use a 500% booster. Really big payout, especially if you do well that game. But (in the case of WT) since it only lasts one game, you become hyperfocused on maximizing your profit. This has you trying to perform pretty much every action that gives you currency as much as possible, like killing players. But you become so focused on hunting down players and killing them as fast as possible, that you will most likely not see the enemy player who just pulled up behind you. And once the round is over, you're frustrated because, even with the booster, you barely made anything. And all of that, just because you didn't play optimally, but decided to maximize your payout.

You were always the best, chems, nobody ever came close. You define art, and it defines you.

Claus will be 90 in a retirement home trapped in his feedback loop ranting on Soviet bias because he didn't pen a 279e one time.

2 points from a WOT beta veteran. 1. Re evaluate the game stats from WHEN the "RU is OP" claim was coined, ie. the early days when there were only 3-4 nations.. 2. Evaluate the RU RNG values for bouncing enemy fire or enemy shots doing nothing, critical damage received vs dealt. camo and spotting ratings. Essentially look into the play by play bias, not the total stats. Bonus, show the stats before and after the Type 59 was introduced, then after it was nerfed. Super bonus, look at when the Bat Chat was added.... those days caused many broken keyboards. Great vid.

@chems is there a mod that will record the information of my shot pattern? like you show @ 23:46

This surely is going to be one of the best videos in the history of world of tanks.

0:56:57 Premium Store Exploit 🔥🔥🔥

Thanks for this Analysis. Very nice to watch this kind of work. If you need some "more" casual Data (replays) for any further Analysis, i have around 5500 replays from July 21 till today.

love your videos. very informative. always curious what your next video will be about. good luck.

I love how chems at the same time makes some of the lowest effort and highest effort wot videos 😂

Easily one of the Top 3 best videos you’ve ever made. - Tbh you’re the reason I started my WoT channel to (eventually) create content on the Match maker, Maps, tank designs, and other discussion topics. It’s so refreshing to see that there are people with solid critical thinking skills creating content in this largely NPC player base.

What information does the support request from you if you want to change your place of residence? When you change your place of residence, kan you still play on the eu server? Can you still place your place of residence back?

yo chems, just fyi, the 3d skin you've made for the kpz 07 p(e) has some kind of texture issue, if i get too close to the barrel, my MoE fades away, this problem doesnt persist with any other of the skins i've downloaded from your page, so i just wanted to let you know, and maybe know how to fix it myself if needed

Me when Chems about to release a new video:

I'm not claiming that mercy shots are real, however part of the argument for them is that it's concealed in a far more complex and sinister manner. It's not just damage that you lowroll, it's also penetration rolls AND accuracy rolls. The claim is that first you are more likely to miss, second that you are less likely to pen and third that you are less likely to roll high. Looking at just the damage doesn't fully cover the mercy shot claim.

This looks more like an academic paper than an analysis of the mechanics of a game. Amazing analysis and statistical proficiency! Hats off for this sir!!! And this is coming from someone with the account since 2012 that has played through a lot of periods and rage quit for years at one point:)) Amazing research!

As you look quite good in statistics I have a question: I have several rather similar tanks, so similar in fact that they can be defined as identical (Mutz & Pz58 for example). I played both for around 900 matches. Strangely, I have, for example, 52% WR in the one and 47% in the other. How can this be explained? I would expected that the WR is more or less the same. Is the sample too small? Or is the player's influence in the outcome of a match lower than we expected? I have seen this phenomenom on other accounts as well. And for some tanks it is also identifiable in the game data...

Chems is like playboi carti, everyone wants him to drop, he denies, and comes with a huge comeback once in a while.

The title alone is gonna piss off a lot of EU forum users

1:01:30 Fellow WoTB player here. Seeing your obj 780 argument makes me think of the collector tank system we have here. There was a time when tanks like the T-22 medium was considered a broken tank and it was sold for as high as 22.5k gold. After all these years, instead of not getting your gold's entire worth after buying the tank (for all premiums, you never do), you at least get 7.5k gold when you sell it. The opposite can be said as well because of the crate system we have (WHICH VERY, VERY RNG HEAVY). Thanks to the Mystery Boxes that we get annually, people can get away with spending 500-42.5k gold (each price tag gives you certain amount of crates) with a 5% chance to give you a mystery certificate, which is guaranteed to give you a tank. But the tank can range between T5-10 and can be a premium or collector. By a stroke of luck (which adds to the amount of randomness World of Whatever games have) I managed to get 3 tier 10 collectors; The Badger, T95e6 and T-22 medium and a T9 collector, the Obj 752 for only 4.5k gold that I grinded for free just because I got that 5% drop chance four times within the 13 chances I had. Remember, if you feel like you’re out of luck; just take a break and continue if you want. There’s no point raging in this game because it won’t change how the game works (That Streamer who injured himself in chem's video)

Brilliant video! Btw, what software/website was used at 18:38 ?

One thing id like to add to the grille thing: -the grille has abbismal shell velocity on ap and heat, and the way aiming works makes it so if youre leading a target, then according to the game youre just aiming further away than where the target will be, therefore the shell will look like it misses by alot, when in reality it may not deviate by that much, but the arch of the low velocity shell cause it to go further away than where you wanted to aim (i hope what i said is understandable, it would be better if i could draw or smth).

As a WoT Player who took statisics in Uni last semester, this video is a damn gem!

I love when Chems makes valuable educational video that gives you more insight about Life than the game "masked" as a World of Tanks video. Thanks for being real Chems kuddos to you stay real as always!

I mean, okay. The maths do math. Still, when your aiming circle doesn't shrink despite having stood still for a long time, you're tracked twice in a row multiple times, you get uptiered many times in a row despite taking continuous Ls, your WR keeps plummeting but you are always bottom tier... can you really blame people for questioning the validity of the game?

One thing you forgot about is the massive advantage p2w mechanics give, that being having access to the best tanks in the game just by default having better pen/ shell velocity having better crews better equipment directives and so on. Those base stat advantages in a largely rng based game make for a massively different gameplay experience then any non 100k games free to play player could ever experience. Other then that great vid

I swear if this is a troll, like an hour long compilation of Claus Kellerman, then Im gonna loose it.

Chems the mercy shot part, you didn’t add that HE rounds can also do much less then the shots average damage. Makes sense the average damage is a bit lower. I agree, with your points and am trying to add to it. I don’t know if you only took values from ap or if you took average shot damage.

I use to be a clan Fugitives long ago and one of the leaders was on the wot website and wot posted a page pretty much saying that bad players get a little bit better rng. Another member log in and saw it but the page was taken down pretty quickly. It was talked about for a while in the clan. No one was surprised cause we kind of already new. I can normally call a game based on what rng is doing in the first 2-3 minutes of play. I have a 99.8 percent accuracy in calling a game based on that. I also normally know whats going to happen. ie what module is going to get damage. Its like clock work. When you take a well aim shot into the ass end of a tank that might have 55mm armor with a gun that is 250mm pen on the worst shot bounces or my fav crit hit with no damage when it matter and it happens way to many times its either rigged or the mechanic is so broken that wg refuses to fix it.

This video is undoubtedly the greatest video you have made made and is a must watch for ALL WOT players. Your hard work will pay off. This video will reach over a million views, guaranteed

23:40 the term sigma also comes from an actual “named” value World of Warships uses which I’ve noticed also started being used for WOT to describe standard deviation. For example the Japanese ships tend toactively have better sigma values than the other nations

I witnessed first hand that rng can change. I was above average until i got into an "argument" with an in game mod (back in the day where you could shoot em for gold for the first time). After that day my shots simply missed, low rolls were the normal, damage blocked by armor was rare, matchmaking was basically always lowest tier. I must note that clanwars were unafected, there the rng was normal. I stopped playing long time ago. The account is still active so you can test if you want, maybe it will surprise you.

A very interesting and well structured argument. There is one itch to scratch though. If the definition of Rigging is, "The game manipulated by dishonest means" then the null is, there is no evidence in the data to support this. At 33:10 a statement is made, the MM does attempt to influence the result by moving the player(s) to be top or bottom tier. Does the game tell the player this? Is changing the match parameters to either help you win or lose transparent and honest? Going back to the null, if after the MM tier adjustment is made is there evidence that the win rate of the players moves up or down? Would that meet the stated criteria? The answer may well lie in Behavioural Game Design. I can't post links without RU-vid deleting the comment but it is easy to find. The hypothesis being WG wish to manipulate the result to create a 'schedule' for the player. Such as the daily challenges, e.g. win 4 games.

36:45 "shadow nerfs" are just people getting used to fighting those tanks and learning their weaknesses which makes them lose their "element of suprise"

Highly respect the effort that went into this, and honestly, this stuff makes tons of sense - WG always has been about money, and to make money you need playerbase retention, especially when it comes to players that are rich or have at least SOME disposable income.

bro, i can't even describe how much i respect you after that video. I have no words..., really. You have got new watcher and new subscribe right now, and also i will share this video if i find opportunity to do this. Love to you

Dear Chems, please send the light of truth to illuminate us! The part of the video that you show and change the mean and standard deviation is pretty awesome. What software are you using for that ? Tks !!

Went in for wargaming ramble, left with a life lesson. What a legend, love the vids. Please keep making them. I'll listen to anything, as long as it is by chems.

This is probably the most well made video essay about WOT I've ever seen, chems always delivers

where can i find the original clip from 52:38

the winsxwn8xdamage is a very poorly chosen metric. Wn8 already includes damage and win rates featured prominently in its equation. wn8 is modified to explicitly shape its expectations of performance on the actual outcomes of games. It has to support your question. Kind of like saying the scale is correct because it measures your weight as the same amount as a machine that is based on the readout of the scale to verify its correctness. It's right because you have defined it as correct. (I was a contributor to wn8 btw, so am familiar with the subject for what that is worth.)

Great Video! I like the development of your channel and your personality as it is actually pleasan to watch - unlike playing the game itself. It seems that you are now just moderately trolling instead of being the incarnation of chaos and i actually like it. Ps: This (36:26) screenshot of the skin is kinda epic, isn't it?

My god this has been such a banger! So well written and perfectly explained , with plenty of proof to back it up with. We really appreciate all the effort that you've put into this , and i truly hope this gets more recognition. W video chems

What around the time when WG nerfed HE and T49 was penetrating all meds for 900hp on the side. Shorty, WG made some adjustments or a mocro match (can't recall) and HE didn't pen shit anymore. So yeah. They do change secretly stuff. They screwed up the change, something was malfuncioning, and they secretly adjust it.

Point of clarification. A statistical test comparing two means of continuous variables with a presumption of normality is called the student's t-test. A null hypothesis is a component of the scientific method where you generate a falsifiable hypothesis assuming that your test will be negative (null hypothesis: "There is no difference in mean shot distribution between two accounts")

At what point will people realize that Wargaming is making op premiums because the playerbase refuses to play balanced premiums

I have never played the Grille so the bloom stats were very interesting to see

To all those wondering if Claus Kellerman participated in the video, I highly doubt it, and I may be Wong, but it sounds more like his voice is AI generated using an a AI voice changer.

Strong video! Ones mindset is the most important indeed. The reason I stopped playing, a health issue, it over times triggered too many negative emotions (frustration, anger, helplessness, uselessness). Thus the enjoyment started degrading, till I recognized the above had commonalities with struggles one can go through in real life: depression.

on EU 15-3 Result is SO common and most of my looses are that result

the time and effort put into this is something that other wot creators (and just creators in general) cant even fucking FATHOM. gorgeous work

@chems Is there a way to register Argentina residence account? VPN set on Argentina only results in having residence set to USA.

I think the "soviet bias" myth came from old times, when accuracy was good, and you could have hit shots while moving on your extremely innacurate IS-3 or KV-1s

As someone who has played WoTs for 10-11 years, thank you for opening my eyes. I've definitely felt like World of Tanks was rigged at times. I will definitely feel like it is rigged at times in the future, but then I will remember this video. Thank you.

Chems you do a fantastic job of explaining overall gameplay...I'd love to get your high view on particular tanks and how to play them.

48:51 OR.. Some people just try to hard when they activate Boosters and start making little mistakes that cost them their Match because they were greedy (happens to me more often than i want to. Just watching my replays after some time tells me that.) Thats just because better results equals more exp and money.

Guys, how can I like this vid more than once? @chems you did more for educating the population on statistics than the universities!

Great video. You really dug into the theories. But man do I wish WG would make MM +/-1. I'm so tired of working on stock tech tree tier 8s and getting throw into endless Tier X matches. Feels like the match is already decided when your armor can't do squat against them spamming gold and yours wont punch their tanks.

Hey chems congrats to 100k subs and also i have a question for you on this topic. Lets say you perfectly know where a tank is in a bush for example but they are not spotted. I noticed if they arent spotted you probably wont hit them but if they are you probably will. idk if this is really true but this has happened to me multiple multiple times when i saw someone but they got unspotted or how u say it i shot them : no hit they got spotted and they stood still i shot and boom hit them like i dont know if this is true or not but i think its interesting

Very good piece. Time flew with so much different topics covered. Glad some of that "myths" got squished perfectly. Funny thing is: I took almost a year off in 2021 to 2022 because the game fucked me up so much. Well, not the game but the Matchmaking. Since then I count all my random battles played (no platoon and only randoms) to see whether the MM treats me fairly, meaning whether the matchmaking roughly evens out top tier to low tier battles... Still gathering data, maybe you are interested. I would give it to you.

i would imagine you would say "Yes, and it's because of Artillery's entire existence"

This video is legendary. Well explained, well visualized, and well thought out. well done. :D

I only noticed really bad teams... Losing 15 games per day for 2 months and 0 wins... That's what made me to quit game completely. I did miss, hit, bouce, ammo racked, got ammo racked and all that was fair actually. But around 100 lose streak was really bashing and I'm not sure it was even possible until actually happened.

Average users in WoT are just NPCs for the servers. And I always yell at my screen when CCs sold to Warscamming say that you need to get skill. Sure, I bet they also have skill when they play at a casino... Everything is rigged in this software. I don't say "game", only "software". A game is meant to be fun and rewarding or pleasant. All those things that you never find in World of Scams...

After 12 years of playing I can say that the game IS manipulated and it has gotten worse... there is a lot of video evidence on the Internet, direct shots that do not hit the target, shots that hit directly and that come from positions where THERE ARE NO TANKS... etc... Remember, it is a business and an increasingly ambitious one.

I think russian bias can be explained by different design philosophies. German tanks are usually big boxy blocks, you just have to load gold to pen. Russian tanks often smaller, have more armour on the side and plates are well angeled, you actually have to hit the weakspot to pen. Like for example obj 257 or Lt 420 and E75 or HWK.

Quick note on the Shadow nerfs. I think that the statistics (as win rate, wn8 and so on) can get worse a while after the tank is released. Why? Because casuals are continuing to play those tanks. I bet that the strongest of players jump into those tanks on release to get aces and 3 mark them as soon as possible and they move on, therefore they increase the high end of statistics on release, leaving average and weak players with those tanks a month or so after.

More Tanks equals more tanks to devide throw. So as a nation has more tanks it will get a lower number, as it is played more and widely than a smaller techtree. In other words, count the heavy lines, the scout lines etc. And dont start with Tier I, start with Tier V. As than the player has some time in it. Exclude prem tanks as they just distort the WIN rate. Cmon.

Absolutely excellent video Chems! Your portion on the Grille's accuracy and bloom is something everyone needs to see. My tiny little RU-vid channel gets zero attention in comparison, but I've tried to explain the hard stats vs soft stats. Nice to see all the work you've done to show hard data over large sample sizes. Thanks for all the effort and dedication I know went into this. Had to take a lot.

chems uploads a vid :😊👍 only to realise its a trailer

I remember there was an article on how WOT made the average damage go down when your win rate goes up at around 2016. The Author used two different accounts with different win rates and proved it in custom battles. I tried to find the original article. But no luck.

Can you add the dispersion data and analysis to the excel sheet? It looks like you are using a 99%CI when 95% is more common.

The simple fact that i stopped playing WoT like 2 years ago but this video helped me combat my friends "bias" beliefs from War Thunder is just so funny (like the Booster MM or CCMM), also amazing video, felt like watching a documentary lmao, great job chems

i recognise Desmos calculations when i see them, very based as always

You can make numbers say whatever you want. If you want a pre-decided result you can easily make adjustments to get the desired chart.

The fact is that from a realistic standpoint rng just simulate a gun dispersion wich is inherent to real shooting. Unfortunately introducing rng in a game, summing it with a lot more uncertainties like mm, lag, use of premium stuff from other players, team retard etc makes up for a very punishing experience for a good player wich simply has not the time or money to gather all the resurces and means in order to reduce resulting randomness from all the abovementioned factors. That’s why people talks abour cc rng, most of us are perfectly aware of cherrypickicng, but when you as cc have 100mil credits on your account and any top equipment and crew you are reducing randomness more than i will ever be able to do with my couple millions on my credit balance. I might be even better of a determined CC Unicum, but we will never know since i will never be able to gather the resources to reduce my randomness to a full time CC level. That leads younger players to simply quit, letting longer time player becoming larger and larger whales in the game, benefitting from any possible tank, discount, reward, op equipment, map and gameplay modification trough time knowledge etc. This is unhealthy and will in the long run lead to the game falling apart imho. Fact is, in a game, i might be slower to move, aim, hide etc, but if i aim on green i pen you even if i am playn with the worst possible tank equipment or crew, otherwise we will never know if enemy just accumulated more stuff or is better then me at playn.

I know many will miss this preview, but it's fucking fire