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OK, hear me out on this... I haven't seen this idea come up before, and I'm not sure if it makes any sense, but I think it could be beneficial.
People have been discussing that there is a problem with this game as it ages that there are many very experienced people out there that might be up to 100,000 matches or so, and it's pretty clear that the crews in their most used tanks will be 5-6 skill crews or more by that time. If they play exclusively a small set of tanks, they will have maxed out the skills a long time ago. Beginners already have the disadvantages of being new to the game, but also having incomplete training and/or extremely low skills on the crews. This makes it harder to compete on the merits of the actual skills of the players and discourages new players to continue.
However, the reality of crews in the military is that most go through a tour and then are released, and at the very least, they get rotated into the front and then pulled back for periods, so there is a need to rotate crews in a larger scale. Plus, they actually die, which in WoT only happens in the actual match you are playing. After which, they are reincarnated!
If WG essentially created a "tour" for each crew member and capped them to number of matches or something similar, it would force turnover that could do a bunch of different things:
1 - Give people goals for more personal missions after completing the four currently available or similar
2 - Level the playing field somewhat through turnover of crew
3 - Encourage larger barracks and more diversity in tank use
4 - Create a new dynamic that people will need to plan into their gaming strategy some
5 - Would also make seal clubbing less rewarding because it would reduce the average skill level of the crews for an experienced player (I'm thinking of those guys the run E25's and similar all the time).
Actually, maybe the better proposition is that they "retire" when they have reached a certain skill level, not based on number of matches. So, if you are really good, you will cycle through crew faster. The cap could be placed low enough that for some tanks, you would need to decide which skills really are the ones you want to have, because you can't just keep adding additional ones beyond, say, 3 skills, because it will be time to retire.
Either way, I think the goal of this could be accomplished; forcing crew turnover and providing an additional variable for the game that will add complexity.
For example, I have about 4500 matches on my account, so I'm fairly new and not terribly skilled as of yet. I do best at about T5/T6 where I have a few tanks that I am running about 53-55%, mostly American mediums and lights. As I move up, my WR drops considerably, so I have been working to gain skills before moving higher (other than some premium tanks, which have been useful for some of the personal missions).
My M4 crew has 3 full skills and am getting close with skill #4. I have the RAM II, the Thunderbolt, the M46KR, and the Super Pershing that I rotate the same crew through to train them up. At the moment, there is no penalty to doing that, and I will probably place that crew into the next higher medium when I get it, or maybe retrain them for a different class of tank and then start another set in the M4. If, however, there was a life limit, this work to train up would be of somewhat limited value, because when you place them in a higher tier tank, and they might only have a hundred battles left in them. That would change the dynamic on how things are developed as time goes on.
My thought is that the skills level requirements be dropped a little bit so you can progress a little faster (maybe a 1.5x multiplier for each skill level rather than 2x), but then cap the crew member at a certain number of matches before they retire. When they retire, you could recruit a new member and the retiring member can "mentor" them so they aren't complete greenhorns, but frankly, if there are that many matches under a crew's belt, the player will probably have the skills to train up new members very fast anyway.
I know some people may think this is a solution searching for a problem, but I don't think it is. The problem isn't that the skilled players aren't enjoying themselves, the problem is that new players are really disadvantaged against a player with 50,000 matches or whatever and 5-skill crews. All the additional things that stack against them is tough to overcome. That discourages people who try it out, and eventually, it will mean the game will become non-viable.
I'm interested in hearing what people think of this concept. Has something like this been discussed before?
