World of Tanks controls

Picture the following situation: A German heavy tank, Tiger II, bunny-hops past you. Then he notices you, uses his leet mouse-turn skillz to turn around in a fraction of a second, and proceeds to circle-strafe you. Obviously all this would look extremely silly, which is why it can't happen in World of Tanks. There is no jumping, instant turning, or sideways movement with a tank. The controls are a bit more realistic than that.



The strange thing is that in the world of PvP games this is an exception. A plate-wearing tank with a huge two-handed sword in WoW isn't any more realistic than the Tiger II tank with his bunny-hops and other unrealistic moves. But it is what you see on every battleground. In fact, when people talk about how "skilled" they are in PvP, most of the time they are expressing how good they are at moving in a totally unrealistic way.



In World of Tanks you sometimes meet one of these "skilled" PvP players. They are easy to recognize, because they fire their gun in the first second of combat. Because that is what pressing both mouse buttons in WoT will do, not mouse-turn. Apart from the controls being different, the biggest difference is the speed. The Tiger II, with improved chains, will turn at 26 degrees per second, thus needs 7 seconds to turn 180 degrees. His stock turret turns at 34 degrees per second, and thus manages the 180 degrees in 5 seconds. While technically turning the turret could be considered a "mouse-turn" (you use the mouse for it, just without the buttons), it is pretty obvious that your speed in moving the mouse has no influence on the result.



Which means that if you don't want to get shot in the back in World of Tanks, you will have to watch where you are going, where the enemy is, predict his movements, and move in a way that doesn't expose your back to him. And that requires a lot of skill. It just isn't the same sort of skill people talk about in other PvP games. Which is why I'm playing World of Tanks.