Figment

Technically you're doing the same thing now just from a different perspective. The real difference is that right now you control aircraft speed and cornering manually. A combination of the two modes (longer locked down attack angles) and a combination of squadron pathing and manual control would have been a lot better where switching controls between ship and squadrons would still be possible. Max two squadrons in the air, possibly with limited flight range (longer range at the expense of return flight range = air could be lost at sea if you don't close the distance with the ship), would have been a lot better. The main thing that CVs need to be countered well is proper attrition gameplay. Shooting down aircraft should impact the performance of the CV immediately (till replenished) and long term (run out of air). CVs being played badly by stretching the aircraft's fuel economics without compensating by positioning close to combat should cause additional attrition (no more A-line CVs). I'd also prefer CVs to have a bit more active control of what are currently their secondaries for defensive purposes. That sort of thing should make these ships far more interesting to play with both resource management, map planning and immersive third person play.

True, but if you'd reroll today those ships would have to be coded for and thus not be available for some time.

Russian bias for German subs confirmed? :P

Why would it be faster underwater? Diesel / electric difference I presume? Sounds like a bad game mechanic trade-off design though, if it is faster, it needs to have a compensational element. There should be reason to sit on the surface or periscope depth after all to make the sub regularly spottable. The time under water duration sounds like it could do with a balance pass. Personally would argue submerged time should be ~2 min max and periscope depth should have a max time too. Staying under water should take about as long as a good smokescreen. Surfacing time then doesn’t have to be long, at the least frequent periscope depth needs to be enforced that HE is optional as countermeasure. I’d also say depth and duration should be trade-offs and could be design differences between nations along with dive speed, speed and torp damage/amount, stealth and engine capacities. Btw, I’d never use homing torps with such a high turn rate if at all either. Will test some subs soon, got the first lease just now.

Neither version is quality. The RTS mode had pros and cons, as does the current one. RTS: + (recipient) drops were predictable and locked in multiple seconds in advance, giving you time to setup evasive manoeuvres, sail over torps before they activated and force aircraft squadrons to sit in your AA longer as they flew around to a better line up position + (recipient) AA boost could throw off targeting (angle increase was a little bit over the top though) + (recipient) could manually (ctrl click) prioritize incoming squadrons + (recipient) torpedo activation time was longer + (recipient) anti-DD and anti-cruiser AP rockets didn’t exist + (recipient) one attack meant full flight time required until the next attack + (CV) traps could be setup (strategic element) + (CV) choice: could select your preferred specialized squadron setup + (CV) more functional and practical choice in captain skills that didn’t determine (unless uptiered) if you could even engage a target. Could for instance opt to spec in AA and still be competitive. + (CV) could switch to CV mode without losing flight time on your squadrons + (CV) more CVs to choose from, less stagnation in certain tiers (particularly lower tiers) + (All) could engage other CVs and burn or flood them to death + (Recipient) launch, deckloading and landing could be interrupted with fires (bit excessive burn time though) - (recipient) bad camera angles on aircraft - (CV) RTS tiering balancing and squadron selection balancing were an absolute disaster. You could not fight, outrun or even do anything if the other CV had higher tier fighters. If not just fighters. That fighter squadrons only mode was probably created with the idea of 3+ CVs in a match. - (CV) lot of poorly supported micromanagement - (CV) poor map and controls UI, often bugged map controls - (CV) less adrenaline rush in attacks due to more detached gameplay - (CV) too many CVs initially due to no numerical limits - (recipient) Insufficient AA at lower tiers - (recipient) could face four or more attacks at once - (recipient) some CV squadrons were very OP in squadron aircraft numbers and amount of squadrons - (recipient) far too many squadrons making staying stealthy impossible - (recipient) too much reach - (recipient) too little AA attrition against top tier CVs - (CV vs CV) at start one would kill the other too quickly, especially uptiered CVs stood little chance or would be neutered early in the game. Could leave “winning” all-fighters CV without anything but spotting to do Rework: + (CV) more nations with greater variety to choose from (would take time with roll back to get these coded appropriately for RTS) + (CV) more interaction and involvement in the fight due to third person perspective + (recipient) AA tiered balancing seems reasonable on a per wave basis (not on the whole) + (recipient) only one squadron airborne at a time + (CV) specialisms against certain classes (more or less, overall too jack of all trades) - (CV) bad camera angles - (recipient) bad camera angles on aircraft - (CV) mostly must get all survival captain skills to keep air alive - (recipient) too much damage in short period of time from multiple waves - (recipient) depending on ship can dodge one or two waves but too many waves in short order and CV can often easily correct last second on your maneouvres - (CV/recipient) tiering balancing sucks - (recipient) often too hard to close in, especially with non-agile ships or uptiered ships due to attack frequency - (All) nigh invulnerability to all kinds of attrition attacks and near invincible AA with fighters negating the need to stay close to AA cruisers and other ships - (CV) Switching between air and ship is clunky and loses control of either - (CV) provided UI information is often unclear and non-intuitive I’d rather they redesign the CV mechanics and controls again then reroll.

Are you saying people dive right at the start?

So how many of these players surfaced to move around at top speed? Few I bet…

Depending on player stupidity 3-8mins for coop? Tried one with Fletcher yesterday, bot-sub was easily tracked and killed in two passes. How to track? “Oh I’m spotted. Oh look, now I’m not due to island, so it is somewhere in that direction and within 5-6 kilometers, oh look there it is indeed press G, dead.”

Indeed, ethical business is a choice that can be very profitable without damaging consequences to others. Wanting to squeeze out every last penny no matter the cost (to others) tends to lead to exploitation and damage to others. Squeezing a source dry for the short term can be harmful to your business long term as well. SOE for instance kept increasing the monthly subscription cost of PlanetSide from €10 to - after no more development was done for two years - €16. The justification of monthly subs was of course “continued development”. And then they wondered where all the people went.

Definitely cheaper than Netflix. …Even if they still think I’m Canadian since I started my account while vacationing there. :)

Structural usage and clearly intended as insult along with associated prejudices and generalisations. Clearly that guy is an awful racist. Probably more so towards Asians even given what he wrote. Appaling ignorance and attitude. Not how I read it, seems like he calls him out for being a bigot and happy to let him be the representative for WG. Bullying him out would be to think Yuro would leave out of his own shame for his behaviour. Doubtful given he gives no crap about his image. If anything it is mounting pressure on WG by shaming them for associating with someone with such a bad attitude and behaviour. That isn’t bullying though, but societal conformation peer pressure.

I’m not entirely surprised they’d come up with some BBs given they’ve papered their way through lots of lines in various games and the ships would have come from Italian, German and British wharfs. Which could mean the ships resemble other ships of the time and can be pasted together from existing models. Seems they did that with some made up bits of the Dutch cruisers too. I’m more surprised they’re already foreshadowing adding more than the DDs and subs, when I’d expect the Pan-EU line to be far more likely to be expanded with a new BB line first. But apparently those don’t need the skills any time soon.

There were plenty paper plans for WWI era BBs, but that’s about it, so didn’t quite expect WG to invest in a BB line here anytime soon. Perhaps they’ll go with a premium based on the Kaiser class or so since I think that was an option at some point. https://forum.warthunder.com/index.php?/topic/503515-dutch-battleship-designs-of-the-1910s-yes-the-dutch-almost-had-battleships/

Can I point out to you that Dutch Captains in WoWs have skillset options for ALL classes of ships, unlike the Pan-EU captains and De Ruyter has explicitly improved skills for DDs/Cruisers/BBs? :)

Some said they watched streams in the thread. I presume from tests, doesn’t mean the videos were new, didn’t say how new their info/conplaint was. Two things here: bugs make it to live games all the time, mostly due to management deadlines and “we will fix it in batch updates”, that isn’t necessarily on the dev team. The other thing with feedback is that it needs to be heard, not just stated. I got a lot of things done in PlanetSide 2, but I had a direct line to the lead developer and a level designer and pretty much educated them both on fort design for gameplay in a combined arms (land/sea/air) game. I predicted how their updates would pan out and only after six failures with accurate predictions did they start to take notice. Even if I had been on the player council with that express purpose and NDA - and ignored - along with two other PlanetSide veterans for two years in development. Hell, SOE’s CEO even quoted my privately submitted through CRM business case / pitch / what-went-wrong-with-ps1 essay on why they should start on developing PS2 on one of the fan forums. It is frustrating to not be heard, but I can only recommend finding an inside man to work with. Otherwise, you’ll likely be ignored. :/ Nah. WoWP never was a success from the start. WoWS has had a bit better start. But like most games, with lots of hiccups along the way. Designing for stupid is the reason for all the BB buffs since beta. :/ They mostly listen to money. So in that regards, if this is going to cost them, they’ll do something. I never said they’ll do what we want per se.

I honestly don’t know, I asked if the above was correct, but didn’t get an answer. :/

Don't underestimate player stupidity there though. We don't know if they just surfaced in front of enemy cruisers, forgot to dive or simply got outplayed by superior Belarusky AI DDs.

It's not. First of all it's on test server streams. Not live. Aside from PvE mode not being exempt from mistakes and errors, as no game, no mode is without updates that may contain flaws, PvE isn't exactly the epitome of AI pathing even without the recent changes. Those probably made them worse, but it's not like WG would even know if this happened if they didn't test it. You can be "upset" about it, or report it and suggest changes if you want to be even more constructive. Whether they'll listen is another thing obviously, but at least you can take this to WG without going The End is Nigh. Now, they're not upset because they're suddenly losing to bots, they're a bit miffed because it mostly takes a bit more time to finish coop matches by looking for bots - and really, if that is the worst thing that happens... Likely they'll figure out the most likely places for such subs to end up soon enough. From what I learned recently from a WG Staffmember, a Coop match should - since some recent patch - end immediately after all human players have left. Point score at that point counts afaik. So under those circumstances, they should get a win assigned to them rather than wait for the bots to finish fighting. If that's the case, then it's a completely bypassable issue for PvE players: just quit when you're ahead (against subs). Do ask this question: what would WG gain from not pleasing any of them? Sometimes it feels like players think there's a conspiracy going on at WG aimed at them personally. Given we provide them with food and lodging, that's hardly likely. Can they make mistakes? Can they double down on mistakes? Sure. Will they change stuff if it hurts their wallet? Probably, or move on to develop a new game from scratch, but given the resources poured into this game, why would they now? They'd sooner make a new R&D investment on the coding of AI and submarine controls and gameplay mechanics, since they'd already have the models and animations, which is probably the most time consuming and most expensive bit.

0.9.4 april 2020. 3 weeks of special battle type with a bunch of rental subs, much like how they approach this Ranked. People like you claimed it’d go in like that within the next patch. There was no way they would not stop at nothing to add it as is blablabla… Here we are a year plus later, with quite a number of changes from the looks of it. If things had worked as well as hoped they’d been pushed live a lot sooner. Read your post again and ask yourself what constitutes a success for a business and how business decisions are made. You are going for the interpretation of by ego, cover ups and guaranteed total failure. Ask yourself this: Is it for management needed to be introduced to keep the game running? Or is it just a potentially nice appeal for getting in new players and keeping the game fresh for older players? They spend huge amounts of money on event modes. I don’t think this is as big as you think it is for them. While doing these submarines on the side, they’ve introduced a number of new nations with tech trees and all kinds of events with lots of special dedicated artwork, rules, balancing and even AI. They’re not run by Stalin and the distance between them and management isn’t that big it wouldn’t be noticed immediately. You think those devs control the financial and player monitoring? They don’t. And such an impact will be seen within two months in subscriber numbers and player attendance in game. So if the impact is clearly visible and can be linked to specific dates and patches, which it can very easily, there is no cover up possible. An equally well paying and save cushy game development or management job in Belarus? >.> Gaijinn? Projection. I think it is more a sign that they want to test subs in more skewed matchmaking where fewer hard counters are available and maps smaller so subs can have both more of an impact and don’t have as big a map to hide in. So WG is going to pass blame at someone outside of WG? As a company, you might try to say individual employees might try to project a rosy picture, but reality is they don’t control the things that show whether it was succesful or not. Define 20% please? 20% of players in any match? 20% of players have a sub? 20% of players play a sub how many times a month? etc. I’m just trying to make sure we talk about the same thing. Given that WG made a hard limit of 16% CV presence max in potential games, I’m not sure I can agree when a new class is introduced that inevitably spreads player usage thinner. Plus it depends on dev costs. Think more time was spend on the map reworks (which was largely done by RNG algorythm I bet) than on sub models. That is one way. You could also make it enjoyable… You’ve worked at some great company cultures with horridly blind management then… Don’t know their R&D budget for this. I work in R&D developing stuff, most the time working out concepts decided on by management and often suggested as “needed” by sales. Some of those get scrapped in the end, because they were simply bad concepts with little market value. And development cost for those are just as high as for succesful products, if not more due to sometimes longer testing being required to make something even remotely work. (As an aside, my replacement suggestion of a fundamental rework of the base tech is selling very hot worldwide, both literally and figuratively speaking. :) ). Management can take chances and gamble on controlled failure, but they can also turn around and say “Okay, you were right, this didn’t work, what do you think would?”. Of course that depends on the people. But a scorched earth strategy like you suggest is not that likely to keep you in a job for long. You risk that other company also seeing this failure if they’re in the same line of work and competitors. Nothing changed in that respect. Loss of face is relative and less important than improving a product to make more money. Not really fair comparison, subs havn’t been in game for years yet, so those claims have less weight. New CV barrel bomber type with Immelmann, British CV, German CV, Russian CV are incoming, rockets rework, some balance changes to AA. New Captain skills for both AA and CVs (twice including the coming changes with AA skills becoming more attractive by adding ASW buffs to them)… Yeah, clearly they didn’t invest any budget on CVs since 0.8.0… Heh. You know how long I’ve heard they’d never be able to make or even spend on a Dutch Tech Tree because the Dutch playerbase is so small and that if they did work on them, they’d just make a half line integrated with the Pan-EU line or they’d at mostly do DDs, but they’d be just a copy/mix of whatever playstyle the Germans/UK/Americans had going? How’d that work out? As long as you’re not their R&D manager, CEO or finance director… You don’t get to state such things as fact.

People played coop AND have a good experience pre-subs? Coop has been boring since day 1. Note how this is mainly a complaint about AI pathing intelligence, not even subs exclusive. Yes, they need to do something about that, but it likely is the least of their priorities right now. That thread is like complaining AI aircraft never hit a damned thing. Btw. One funny take away from that thread is human subs died very fast to enemy bots, while in others they didn’t get focused at all. Seems like an additional prioritization issue, which we already knew WG’s AI has, while also indicating that if player’s use their counters, it could be over quick. As for not finding those bots… Shouldn’t be too hard.

Last I played on the live server in the sub mode (years ago), my Fubuki killed them in one pass, while my US and EU DDs required multiple passes. The depth charges then reloaded so fast, that given that nothing changed (I did not verify this) I recommend dropping them all as you’re unlikely to engage multiple subs in the same minute. For timing, take into account speed and known direction of the sub (I just based it on how the indicator had moved and then extrapolated) and remember that your depth charges are launched at the rear of your ship. Take their angle into account too. Not entirely sure, but could be some DDs launch more to the side.

When they first created a submarine mode and deemed them inadequate. Or management. Was their decision to push it. I think you undervalue the amount of money it costs to develop va the amount of money WG has to gamble on stuff like this. Plus what you’re saying is that WG staff has a lot of incentives to get it right before introducing it. Especially since… well… You realize pushing a game killing addition would mean more jobs lost? Which means they are still in the process of balancing and the fact they want to try them in Ranked is to see what they do in more controlling numbers. If they were just pushing them to go into the game asap they would be putting them directly in the main mode, Randoms, which they have not dared for the second time. They are not ready to call it done. So you’re saying they’re not going to be a problem… make up your mind? Plus it depends on what the goal was. Likely the goal was not “break the game with ungodly powers”, or make everyone play this new ship. More likely, it was something like: “appease the submarine crowd and try to lure in some new players and give the rest something new to keep playing and milking them for, but most of all keep the remainder of the playerbase content or at least not extremely unhappy.” Yeaaaaaaah, no. You cannot force players to play in subs, only against. You can entice them however and you can give people a choice. “Hey boss, remember that thing we introduced? Well shortterm it didn’t work and it backfired so badly we killed one of your golden geese.” Yeaaaaaah, no. Forget about even that resume then. Hey, that’s not true, they created underwater terrain to hit with torpedoes and DDs unexpectedly. Tbh, I don’t think we can say there are no alternative plans at WG, I’m under the impression the progress had been focused on staying within a certain predefined concept until tuning that turns out not to work, because it would be way more costly and time consuming to start over outside of the models. Plus they did that with CVs as well. Completely different implementation after several failed balance passes and even entirely rebooted tech tree lines. Remember? Probably. Though I’d say you won’t see the final form for another two years. There is still a chance they call it off entirely too, but they will need to have clear reasons why and so far I can’t say I’ve seen much in terms of “OP”-ness in a player environment beyond the potential of some homing torpedoes. I think those need a bit of a maximum turn radius tweak and possibly a ping rework, but overall I don’t see it as too problematic. Again, that is assuming countermeasures will be appropriated and exploits removed. Forced ship surfacing or periscope depth and expanded HE blast size will make them a lot harder to play than the initial easy switching between depth modes to dodge damage. That said, I’m not saying you may not find them boring to play, but that’s somewhat subjective. Some people may like that sort of gameplay more than guns blazing type of play. I know U-boat sims too draw quite a different crowd after all. I can’t say the previous live version thrilled me to play subs. It was a kinda okay new gameplay element for my DDs (Fubuki killed them with ease), my main beef with the DD play was the killing of subs was too easy, usually just once pressing G after sailing over it (could be my timing and approach direction was just good). Wish we had easily accessed stats for Brawl and alternative modes. Btw. Consider this too: If WG can attract 5-10% new players among people who do like the idea of subs and who are not prejudiced regarding conservatism with the state of the game before, while retaining the rest of the players or losing only some old, rather saturated accounts (many are too invested to stay away), that might already be worth it for WG.

I was talking about mechanics compared to the lack of countermeasures and exploits before. Damage tweaks are balance pass material in any game and devs tend to overcorrect hoping to establish some boundaries and then tune down (and often forget that finetuning bit due to budget constraints or management calling it done etc.). It’s not bright, but also not a sour apple that is unfamiliar to gamers. Sadly it seems a repeat mistake for devs. They aren’t too big to fail, they’ve been recalled before. They’d sooner be placed in their own game mode, even against bots if necessary, if it turns out to be too problematic. I havn’t found them to be that problematic thusfar though (even in a slow BB during previous tests prior to countermeasures like air drop depth charges). It’s a very high risk unit class with very specific weaknesses and high fragility if hit. I would expect cruisers and BBs to become more of a pain to them with the new capt. skills increasing the HE radius especially. Aaaaaaand there is the fearmongering hype… No, they won’t. If that was the case they’d not have created so many cruiser lines that are unpopular due to BB popularity. They would also have pushed the previous versions through unchanged. Plenty of evidence they’re taking this slow-ish in comparison to say the Dutch cruisers. Main goal will always be keep players playing and make money. That will always trump subs if necessary. Right now, it is mostly BB-fear, “the great unknown”, “WG is always out to get us (even if they want to make money off of us) and they try to ruin my childhood dreams” and “change” in general that are drivers for the anti-sub hype. That said, I think they can work, I’d sooner expect another rework at some point regarding pings and.increasing evasion chance on homing torps and/or dropping citadel damage on subs. I would also expect a max number of subs per side.

I’m doing okay with ‘m, I also don’t mind somewhat teamwork requiring gimmicks. They surely could have handled them differently, simply by gun balance, but hey. Fokkers. :) meh. Tbh most lines are not a different meh from early post-beta. Doing fine with virtually all unless it isn’t my playstyle where I know others can make specific ships work much better than I can (Roon for one). Where various ships were also slightly too good at certain things. :P But nothing breaking IMO. Thund was fine to fight against, most players didn’t know it had AP and could play well mid range after all. Now they have to go mid range and still can’t find #2. It’s never been nothing but meh in that case. Why do you think I’ve had multiple breaks? :) Meh. Too many modes anyway. Ranked with CV is fine even if some whine about it. Ranked with subs will be “fine” too. Just something to get used to. There’s just a lot of soor losers out there that hate stuff that counters their rock with paper.

Going to try, subs seem as overhyped by fearmongers as the Dutch air strikes. Especially now that sub and anti-sub counterplay has been tweaked.