Figment

16 points actually seems reasonably complete to me. Again, numbers not quite to scale with one another, just trying to see if you can generate different profiles that stand out towards one another.

Exactly. Those terms don’t need to be remembered right away either. Brainwashing can be done over the course of thousands of battles. ;) It is said you need to see something about seven times in order to remember it.

That was the idea, some of those were subvariants of others in the list for instance. :)

That’s fairly stable actually. Most the time it’s way faster down hill when a game expansion fails or something. There even seems to be a trendbreak with a higher valley. Clearly the holidays have a major role in the number of players.

Or challenge then to a game of pong. See how long they can last without these fancy newfangled “graf-icks” and those fancy “soundtracks”!

Oh come now, at least he isn’t pasting a -t arbitrarily behind half the words or ending all his posts with “houdoe”.

Peops. Not to worry you now, but we are having a mostly constructive debate. D: So if we look at the other classes, what would you say of the following roles: CA/CL Sub hunting (ASW) Active scouting (hydro/radar) Passive scouting/concealment DD hunting AA/Air power (defense) Air power (offense) Firestarter (HE) Light cruiser hunting (AP) BB/Heavy cruiser hunting (AP) Mortar fire (fire from cover) Kiting Closing/rushing Brawling Sniping Mêlee torping Ranged torping Smokegunner Smokerushing (Bow) tanking BBs: Ranged sub hunting (ASW) Anti-DD defense Active scouting (hydro/radar) Torp brawling 2ndary brawling Main gun brawling Mid range torping Mid range ambush (AP) Sniping Alpha striking AA/Air power (defense) Air power (offense) Firestarter (HE) Cruiser hunting (AP) Kiting Damage absorber/healer Damage negator/tanker Overmatcher

That's my observation as well. Classes are more a collection of roles, where the same role might be present, but shifted in efficiency or usage compared to other classes. Think of scouting, a Dutch or British CA/CL becomes the next in line to scout as a DD would if you're out of DD compared to other cruisers, but as a cruiser, they're naturally worse at it than DDs. That's not that new tbh. Some people thought they squeezed out more exp by chasing that last ship (or had more fun doing it) than ensuring a win over a draw or loss by capping since alpha. This is largely a mindset issue where people try to optimize their fun or grind goals at the detriment of themselves and/or others. Especially when they don't understand their chances of winning. Depends on the player's capability and pre-existing knowledge, but for the "don't need to read the manual" crowd there's a very high Dunning-Kruger chance if they assume that knowing one line of a particular class ships makes them masters of the class of ships for the entire game. Playing Dutch cruisers for instance is completely different tactically, strategically and in terms of patience, timing and target selection compared to other cruisers that also rely on firestarting.

I was also thinking about scouting and number of waves (Soviet CVs are relatively bad at scouting due to having just one wave), travel time ratio (again bad rating for Soviets - which kinda forces you to sit closer to the action) and direct vs indirect damage (flooding/HE), where British for instance are better. Quality vs quantity might be a thing to consider as well (number of torps vs damage per torp).

@YabbaCoe Any chance you could tell us if there's any priority being given to UI improvements and ways to inform/educate players these days? I know there's a lot of cynism going around the community (see above) and I realise implementation of what I'm suggesting would take quite a bit of time, money and effort. The direct return is probably hard to define. But it would raise quality of life for players and be recognised as a player oriented positive improvement* that's not just a money grab**. * Although probably taken for granted soon after when the next pet peeve pops up. :p ** Some people will probably argue it's only done to make premiums seem like good investments*** *** even if they'll have lower ratings than tech tree ships...

What do you think your fighters should do when they come across an enemy torpedo squadron in their guard area? Return to loitering endlessly till you're torped, or chase after it till they run out of ammo? The red circle is tiny in comparison to the map. If fighters mean nothing even if you enter their tiny area to guard, what's the point of deploying them? Note, we used to have fighters with manual control, constantly blocking your path to your target and eventually catching up with you, then shooting till they ran out of ammo. If you think this is excessive, consider there were CV configurations with up to four manually controlled fighter squadrons (and a single HE bomber squadron iirc), all airborne at the same time, chasing after your one or two fighter squadrons and two or three torp/divebomber squadrons (there were no rockets yet).

Or you'd get something like this for quick role and strengths/weaknesses comparison that players can understand more easily. (Note: numbers are not to scale :P).

Purchase cost is just one element. Operating cost and profitability another.

When I played PlanetSide 1, TTks were in the order of 1.3 to 5 seconds (if every shot hit), with significant clip limitations and reload times on top of stamina levels that could either be a boon (extra speed or hp) or a detriment if ran out (extreme slowing down). It made duels and overall combat far more tactical, giving older and smarter players a bigger chance to compete with those who were just trigger happy twitch skillers and new players a chance to learn and have the idea they were participating in the fight, even if they did lose to the usual good players, they were still a threat. PlanetSide 2 was influenced heavily by BF2, CS and CoD players and hence those TTKs went down tremendously (under a second often), leaving next to no reaction time. Considering PS2 had way more enemies in the field (up to 2000 players over three factions per map oppposed to PS1s 200-300 enemy players on the same size map, that created IMO a much less noob and old people friendly environment). Real shame. WoWs is a lot friendlier due to positioning and pre-rotating turrets being a lot more important than split second aim. Doesn't hurt to be fast at aiming and leading, but it does level the playing field and provides more advantage to experience. It's one of the things I like about WoWs over say WoT. That feels more cramped and twitchy in comparison to the "shoot weakpoint cupola from 500m" mechanics and relatively small, densily populated maps with threats behind each bush where outmaneouvring an enemy you can't see till it shoots, moves or is outpositioned is harder due to all the chokepoints they're camping.

Lack of attentionspan is why I want to provide them with a clear graphic that may entice them (eventually) to think a bit deeper about a subject and in doing so provide minor education on how to use the ship using trigger words. Ultimately, it may change behaviour and manage expectations. Say Scout: 8/10 vs Scout: 3/10 would try to use exactly that sort of superficial understanding you talk bout to trigger their curiosity and shape their preconceptions of a ship a bit more. Whereas "firepower 73" doesn't say much about how to use it, for BB players, things like Torp brawler: 8, Secondary spammer: 9, Sniper: 3, Citadel protection: 7 could possibly change their perception of what it is supposed to do, where before they only saw guns so can do pew pew. If it is integrated right with the rest of the UI, it could also affect people's ship tuning, like choice of modules and captain skills and changing their behaviour around and expectations of the performance of the ship in question. It might also give them a basic explanation when they fail at using the ship that they might do something wrong. For more experienced players, it'd also provide a neat advanced ship search filter.

Communicating things visually is a generally important and quick way to transfer relatively complex information. The guides you describe are great at detail and study, but generally bad for a quick comparison. Hence these would be great complementary features. Explaining roles and proficiencies might also create more understanding and acceptance. For DDs, you could define even more slight differences in role proficiencies: hit-and-run, DPS, Alpha Strike, baiting, firestarter (HE). The wheel shouldn’t get too full, so making such roles toggable would ease comparison. Of course once assigned it could help as additional filters in ship searching and selection (of grind goals) in both the tech tree and owned ship carroussel. Extrapolating, it’d also be nice if you could see in game how taking on certain captain skills, flags and modules would improve such roles before acquiring them. For instance, showing the max potential of the ship opposed to where it is now with a low opacity layer (and ideally explaining how to acquire such stats). There’s a big information sharing and choice supporting opportunity here IMO.

Depends. Do we define BB only players as playing? Obviously, it's 42.

Your real age is what you get when you add the numbers together. ...Or was it detract lowest from highest? Either way, most of us behave somewhere between toddlers and recalcitrant teens online anyway, so does it really matter? D: (38 btw, first pc was a MSX and still did maths with microcassettes at grammar school.)

Hmm thought there was a delay introduced 2 or 3 patches ago (or talked about?). But yeah the damage immunity dolphining was absolutely ridiculous. It's funny that it even existed, because it shows you how much effort goes into thinking about potential abuse scenarios when WG designs stuff. Like the border exploits, those things should be obvious. Hence I see this as a major indication of oversights, deadline rushing, not revisiting initially picked solutions and/or incompetence on part of the design team, whereas a lot of people will jump straight to malice. I've just seen too many of these exploits that had to be fixed later. I appreciate the material is relatively complex to code, but this sort of stuff is quite elementary gameplay abuse and should never not be caught before a production release even on test. Yeah, you can fire at steepish angles below periscope depth as well at times, which is kinda logical from a realistic pov, but completely silly since you shouldn't have any useful targeting information at that depth. In the open perhaps, in a more confined space I've noticed it's easy to run into an island quite quickly. Does depend on the sub. Yeah, sub situational awareness should be their major weakness. Especially wrt aircraft. They've got far too much and also provide too much to others through scouting. This is one of the main things that I've been hammering on needs to be adressed. I don't like the sub vs sub gameplay in that respect either, because it's really easy to kill another, though that's largely to do with player skill as well and it severely impacts the data WG uses to balance them. Had one a month ago where he was behind me, I go to full stop and reverse while changing depth, he passes by and I'm now behind him, spamming torps at him without even pinging him as he moved forward without even turning. Some people have no idea how to play these things. That bothers me as WG is notorious for spreadsheet balancing blindness. I've not bothered with the T10s too much in comparison, think I played T8 mostly. As usual they went over the top with the power creep, but that's not unusual for WG when they introduce new ships, I would expect a lot of balance passes before they get a whole new class right anyway. IMO it should take more time between volleys at least and a bit less damage per torp overall should be fine. I've tried pushing them though, if you do you can get in over your head quickly. But with the range some of these have you can also take it very slow and take pot shots. I don't think we should have that sort of play at all, 8-10km is really the max attack range a sub should have IMO and it should start feeling very uncomfortably close at about 4-5km depending on tier. I've been considering various detection systems one could introduce, one of them would be that a sub lingering at periscope depth gradually gets a larger "oh noes our periscope can get spotted" radius when it's within 6km of an enemy ship. So the initial ~2.4km detection radius could become say 4.5km and then slowly returns to ~2.4km after one dives (so dolphining shouldn't work to abuse). Agreed. The whole repair button usage is ridiculous. I proposed that an engine stop could be a simple alternative for the same lock breaking functionality. That would instantly remove 90% of the frustration for cruisers especially. Agreed. But I'd rather stay constructive in hope they change something, than go into bashing mode and know for sure they're not going to change anything for the better. All in all subs as is can be dealt with by competent players, which to me is evidence that they can fit in game if they were just properly designed as a class, but as is it's too situational and there's too many exploits and conditions that need to be met. I don't have confidence WG will make the right decisions, especially what with proper feedback being drowned out by the abuse spouting people that don't allow the light of day to more constructive feedback.

Yes, that is why I aim ASW next to torplanes unless the terrain suggests otherwise. Like at a narrow. Usually get a hit from predicting where I would go. Sniper BB are a problem for everyone tbh. Enemy sub (and sometimes capping DD) are prime targets. Hence I want subs to fire deep water torps at peri depth.

Shotgunning subs have a very hard time tracking a diagonal movement. Think scoped sniper. At close range their turn rate is far too low to keep up with lateral movements (their nose needs to be pointed at you) and those torps can be drifted past with a DD and even a cruiser quite comfortably. Would not do this with BBs per se. If they stay at the surface long enough to shotgun, they are extremely vulnerable to counterattack if it fails. If you sail right at it though, yeah, I’d agree. Like sailing right at homing torps that’s a bad idea. Always keep a small side angle so they have to lead, a lead which you can abuse to evade torps and/or outmaneouvre the sub whether homing or not. When was the last time you dolphined? Because that dolphining exploit is far from as valid as it was a few years ago… You take damage as a sub from HE well past periscope depth now. And iirc they even further nerfed transition speed in a recent patch. Need a bit more netfing IMO though. Heh, your definition of a dime is pretty big. A DD and cruiser have much better agility. The dive time is rather poorly implemented overall. Still if a CV is pressuring you whenever you near surface, you will run out quickly. CVs don’t seem to realize this. Some portion of blame is to poor scouting teamwork here and it not being communicated how much diving time it lost due to spotting. I’ve been experimenting with them to see just how many of the claims of popping up anywhere or really close by at shotgun range without counterplay are true. You need to be quite careful, situational aware and carefully pick targets, win the sub duel and get some support if you want to press early. People make a lot of false claims. Agreed, hence I’ve proposed a large number of changes that would highly increase risk for subs and their usage. But at the same time too few people understand even the basics of sub related gameplay as is and make wild nonsense claims.

Sometimes I get the idea players are even less imaginative than WG developers. Hmm what could WG have wanted? And no, doesn’t mean they succeeded… - New unique, standing out from the rest, grind “content” (grind is not content, but completionism and power creep keeps people playing) and a (limited) amount of additional premium sales. (Won’t sell as much as most regular ships as there won’t be as many lines). There is likely only so many cruiser and BB lines people want to grind before they are exhausted from repetition. - Shake things up (a lot of companies think this has to be done after X years to “keep things fresh and players interested with new challenges and having to adapt”. While not making too much of an effort to do it right of course, but going through with it anyway, because cheap [edited]policy. Ask EA.) - Attracting old players that left with the promise of renewed gameplay. This is basically what they do with a lot of new lines with special gimmicks, so fits their policy and vision for game expansions. - Attracting new players with the lure of something new where the existing lure apparently missed the content that got them on board (and no, that doesn’t mean having to be OP, just different from existing). - Pet project (someone in management just liked subs. Could include personal vision and lack of (allowing) critical feedback). - Reaction to requests for subs by part of the playerbase (polling sampling could have been very bad and data vague given WG track record with enquiries) - Frequent complaints about poor state of stealth play from DD players, completely misinterpreted or presented as an alternative to fixing the information acquisition and sharing overkill issue that is the main problem for stealth DDs. But no, let’s assume the only logical thing is they wanted to pester away people that have been spending money on their game and providing them jobs and income. That sounds logical.

Hmhm. They applied the standard scouting and vision system for WoWs that they use for any unit. They never made exceptions here. Like with the others, they have some view range differences as unit specific variable, but that's it. That's IMO a flaw in their design vision (goes for CVs as well), but they just don't seem to consider this a design variable. That's either policy to simplify the game (so a no go area for developers), or a major oversight. Either way, I think it's a huge mistake not to overhaul the scouting system (see my thread on 'radio distance' suggestions that should balance subs, CV aircraft and long distance sniping more). They have not altered hydro specs. The complete non-detection mimics their idea of going silent for escape. It's a very crude and rudimentary implementation on the cat and mouse game between surface ship and sub and this is a highly underestimated problem by WG. As I said, they seemed to have looked at this from the sub perspective without considering the consequences very well, also probably thinking their depth charge design would be fine in this situation (ideal scenario building without considering the impact on the surface ship having to spend time in a spotted environment with everyone knowing their position). Excel balancing. They've repeatedly said subs wern't performing that well on average performance, purely by looking at statistics and without considering player skill. This is to me a sign of incompetence. I'd also add that the perspective for many players who haven't even tried subs (the "I'm not a griefer" type) is highly skewed and doesn't represent the experience on the receiving end of ASW. Many players in a surface ship want a near instant kill for detecting a sub and tossing ASW in their general direction. Those players don't realise sub players have to be able to play. They're players too after all. But the balancing is poor and is done on the assumption that the basic sub design concept they have applied is good, which it isn't. What you completely ignore however is that they have started giving more indicators on where subs are and the direction in which they flee underwater (oil spill spots). The ping wave was added not for subs, but for surface ships. Even if it works pretty poorly, it's clearly meant to make it easier for surface ships to know whereabouts a sub is, hoping someone will close in on the target to find its exact position. If they started handing out exact positions, the ASW would be extra deadly, which would mean everyone in the area would be dropping their ASW perfectly on top. A lot of surface ship players also don't seem to realise that you can ping at targets regardless of the orientation of your sub and speed of the sub. So people who are stupid enough to never play subs and figure this out aim like crap at the wave and will likely miss completely. That's on them for not trying to understand subs in this gaming instance as well. I don't agree with the design mechanic itself, nor its implementation if you would go for this, but even then there's a huge amount of player error due to ignorance involved. But again, NO evidence whatsoever for your paranoid claim. In fact, it is evidence of the exact opposite: they tried to make it easier for surface ships... Doesn't mean they got it right immediately (which again, is more likely down to incompetence and lack of understanding the complexities and them not understanding of the interpretation and subsequent actions their indicators have w.r.t. players). Wouldn't be the first time they messed up with interaction icons and symbolism. Can think of a couple more such instances from beta and later. Though I think the current team is less experienced and has a bigger design problem to solve than they are equiped to handle. This isn't completely true. If the sub is firing torps, you know it is roughly angled towards you, especially when it isn't pinging (or away from you if it is firing butt torps), it must also be close to the surface at that time, thus it can be detected if you're somewhat close and otherwise it's very susceptible to ASW none the less as that covers about 8km. There are some stupid exceptions to this with 14km torps and that's a typical WG power creep issue (they want there to be incentive to grind), but in most instances, if it is firing at you, it's likely within range of your BB ASW. Fire a bit to the side you think it's going to escape to (especially if you have two ASW strikes) and you should have a good chance of hitting it several times for quite some damage. Close in on it. When it stops firing you know the last orientation and likely the approximate range. As they can't turn fast and most can't dive that fast, you have a good chance to detect them by closing the distance. If they go underwater they lose time. They'll have to surface eventually, which often means close to enemies. Again, I'm not saying I agree with this design, but you're exagerating and I think it's because of lack of playing subs. You might think it just dissolved into a position of "anywhere", but it hasn't. It's new position is related to where it was. If you used ASW at any time before that, this gives you information as well and air borne ASW recharges fast enough. I can't tell from your hidden profile, but I presume you havn't actually played a lot of subs yourself. Your experience seems to mostly be the receiving end of subs and therefore you have a skewed image of their effectiveness. In practice they're pretty situationally handicapped compared to the far greater flexibility that surface ships have. You however, completely ignore this aspect of subs, while WG probably considers it a trade-off. Whether it's done right and the trade-off is well-defined is an entirely different question. However, you are very biased against WG, because you assume a very specifically defined malice intention and hidden agenda where there's a perfectly fine alternative explanation for it and because your "WG WANTS US TO BUY SUB PREMIUMS LOL" theory doesn't hold up to any scrutiny whatsoever.

Or you want to see it as evidence of that. Fast majority of subs will be free. There won't be that many premium subs in the foreseeable future. How many people are going to buy premium subs? Especially with the current open hostility due to them not being accepted by the community yet? I cannot see it make millions, and if it drives people away, it is going to be costly instead. There is no financial argument to be made for a bad implementation, not in the short term, or in the long term.

Obviously there are ways to balance and counterbalance subs. There's just a lot of people who claim otherwise (for no other reason than that they want a more simplistic game between just surface ships) and they're fundamentally wrong. I really wish I could sit down with some of these devs and slap some game design sense into them. Set clear restrictions on what subs can and shouldn't be able to do and define how they should interact with each other class in both ways. This is pretty much an urban myth IMO. I haven't seen any evidence of this. Fun fact: ffing up the gameplay for everybody to the point people quit means there's less players to buy regular premium ships. By definition what you're saying is not a workable business model, so WG can and will not pursue it as a policy. What is more likely is that they had a bad initial vision from the sub side of development only (with some initial limited and weird idea that giving DDs and cruisers some ASW would be more than enough to fight them. Which sounds like they had an utopic view of things and didn't really understand the broader consequences and multitasking involved for other ships). In essence, they fell for a typical development tunnelvision error and subsequently a panicky creative black hole with some stop gap solutions to problems they created, likely due to doubling down on the concept with the egoes and investments involved, while focusing on their usual Excel balancing. This all sounds like and is better to be explained by inexperienced/inept management and development more than by a mere money grab. There's simply not enough people willing to purchase CVs and subs to warrant their development with an expected loss of playerbase in the surface ships groups that are far more lucrative. What they want is a new line of ships that's interesting to as many people as possible. Not the group of people "who want to buy easy wins", because that group is per definition smaller than the potential customer base of a well balanced and integrated class that both retains players, keeps players happy and introduces new players while everyone buys and plays everything or at least keeps doing that for their prefered classes. IMO they were just way too optimistic their initial idea would do this and they don't seem to have any idea how to make proper adjustments to it because they havn't changed their role and capabilities in a more fundamental essence. So although there's an anti-submarine conspiracy and agenda among the players who enjoy nothing but surface ships, I do not see any evidence for an anti-surface ships conspiracy on part of WG. From what I can tell, that's all baseless propaganda and dismissive fearmongering conjecture by people who want the game to "remain pure" (i.e. surface ships only), so to speak. EDIT: And btw, the reason we're seeing high tier premiums today is probably because you lot all refuse to play lower tiers and thus have no reason to spend much money on those tiers. So you can mostly be enticed to spend money on higher tiers and only if it's somehow lucrative for you to do so compared to the free ships. Welcome to the unescapable consequence of grind over content and power creep enticing people to play high tiers.