Tank Gawd It's Friday - Stat Tracking for New Players

Should new players focus on tracking their stats?

Welcome to Tank Gawd It’s Friday, a weekly series where we pose a question to ourselves and to the community regarding World of Tanks or another gaming related topic. Each of us here at Tank War Room will answer the question, but then we'll throw it over to our readers to answer as well. Our goal is to reach out and start a conversation, so we hope you will join the discussion by answering this week’s question in the comments below this article. 

Today’s Tank Gawd It’s Friday Question is:

Should new players in World of Tanks focus on stat tracking, such as WN8? 

Sam Chandler: I am the first to admit that I am not a unicum player in World of Tanks, nor am I “MLG” or whatever the kids are calling it these days. But what I do enjoy is being able to track my stats in video games. I think it’s an important tool to be able to judge whether one is improving at the game. 

Besides, being able to track your stats is a good way of creating competition with your friends and even yourself. It gives you a goal to work toward. I want to improve my win rate, so I’m going to do whatever I can to ensure that happens. Stat tracking, in a way, acts as a sort of meta-game. 

However, the problem I have with stats is that it takes into account the first several hours of time you spend playing a game. The issue with this is that when you first start a game, the chances of you being even remotely good are slim-to-none. This is even more evident in a game like World of Tanks where there so much detail and such a nuanced system that early mistakes can very easily create an uphill battle when trying to improve. 

New players should definitely not worry about WN8, at least not for the first several hours (if not hundreds of hours) of gameplay. Your first experience with the game should be about learning how to play and understanding mechanics, not trying to breach a 70% win rate. 

Bill Lavoy: This is a really tough question. 

First, I think that, as a new player, you should enjoy the game without analyzing it too much in the early going. Take some time to admire the exploding tanks and frantic battles on maps like Mittengard. After you’ve gotten a feel for the controls and worked your way through the honeymoon phase, then you can start to worry about your stats a bit more and plan the various tank lines you intend to go down. 

On the other hand, some early stat tracking isn’t a bad thing either. As we’ve discussed recently, some of the decisions you make in the early going can have an impact on how you do in the later tiers. You don’t want to emerge on the other side of 2K battles and realize you’ve dug yourself a big hole. 

My advice to new players (as a fellow new-ish player), is to find what you enjoy the most from World of Tanks and ride it until the wheels fall off. If you’re a casual player who doesn’t care to track your stats, good for you. If you know from your first battle that you want to take this game seriously, great! You do you. That’s my advice.

Larryn Bell: Stat tracking in any game is only as valuable as you make it. For some, personal stats and metrics can be a useful tool to help you better understand your performance and growth as a player. For others, personal stats can appear as little more than a glaring reminder of performance blunders, lacking a clear means toward improvement. 

I think that new players in World of Tanks should avoid getting too caught up in stat tracking, as they may not have the sufficient means to interpret the data beyond a surface level, especially for more complex stats like WN8. Stats only really begin to mean something once you get a hang of the game’s mechanics and know how to go about improving yourself as a player. I don’t need to review my low WN8 or win rate percentage to know that my gaming performance could be better. Stat tracking will only tell me whether or not I’m improving, but not necessarily how to improve. 

That is not to say that new players shouldn’t familiarize themselves with stats, however. Stat tracking can prevent a new player from forming bad habits early on, as they will likely be more aware of their stats as they play.  Stats can also inspire a player to set small goals for themselves in order to improve their numbers, and sometimes it’s accomplishing these small goals that make gaming that much more fun. 

Generally, I think new players in World of Tanks should focus on their mechanical capabilities first before going crazy with stats. Stat tracking becomes natural as you make progress anyway, so it’s better to integrate stat tracking gradually as you go. 

Keep the discussion going by leaving a comment below on this article. We look forward to hearing what you have to say about this topic! 

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