I started playing about one month ago after a break of roughly a year, possibly longer.
Tanks have become absolutely unusable, and I say this for a variety of reasons which I’m gonna list down below. Despite being a Germany main this problem surely affects all factions.
Mobility
This is the most important point of this rant. It wasn’t this bad once. The problems are endless. Tracks don’t seem to have any grip anymore, even the slightest incline is enough to reduce your speed by 90% or often even stop you completely. Turning while going uphill immediately stops you in your tracks and even trying to turn on the spot won’t work while being on a slope (no matter how gentle it is). One-meter-wide trenches will get a Tiger II stuck. Hell, even a small crater will get it stuck. Any piece of environmental clutter will get it stuck: crushed vehicles, pile of crates/barrels, tiny piles of rubble, wooden fences, log piles, train tracks, etc.
Please for the love of God make tracks work like tracks and not like wet soap bars.
Visibility
Playing tank is like playing blind. There is way too much visual clutter. I understand that infantry needs its space for balance reasons, but tank gameplay can’t be this crippled. Bushes, trees, relicts, and horrible map design makes landing a good shot almost impossible. With the introduction of the guerrilla squads the restrictions on map boundaries were definitely overkill. Forget about finding a decent spot with a good field of view: you’ll be forced to get close (WAY too close) and this will bring you directly to the squad selection menu. Why? Aside from the aforementioned mobility there’s another aspect that needs to be talked about:…
Survivability
Everything counters tanks. Tanks trump nothing. They get bullied by every single infantry squad: every soldier can carry explosive packs and/or TNT charges and EVERY single AT weapon easily penetrates even the front armor of every tank of its respective tier. Panzerschreks and Panzerfausts 100 in the hands of every faction make armour utterly useless. You don’t even need strategy, flanking or anything else: just aim at the tank and you’ll one-shot it.
There’s also aircraft, but that wouldn’t be a problem if it weren’t for the abysmal mobility that makes moving away from bombs utterly and absolutely impossible. You hear a plane engine approaching? Start thinking about what squad to pick next, because you WON’T SURVIVE, EVER.
And I think that’s pretty much it. Honestly I don’t think that the last two points will ever be addressed by the devs, but they are the least important ones. What needs to be ABSOLUTELY fixed is the horrid mobility, ASAP. Especially the (nonexistent) grip of the tracks on the ground.