Pukovnik7

We need more maps with tall, relatively dense islands which limit crossfire capabilities, so as to enable more pushing. Also, replace "Deadeye" / "Swift in Silence" skill with "Pants on Fire" skill which gives a 10% speed boost to a battleship when it is on fire.

Except your "basic gameplay of rock, paper, scissors" is precisely one of the main problems with CVs. If battleships are rock, cruiser scissors and destroyers paper, then CVs are a multimegaton thermonuclear warhead. They have no counter, because they have an essentially infinitely regenerating HP pool, and even the two classes which are supposed to counter them... aren't really effective at the job, because AAA is not really effective, and HE damage gradually reduces AAA power of the battleship anyway. Increase battleships' AAA firepower, remove the CVs aircraft regeneration... and suddenly CVs have to hunt YOLOing DDs and CLs, and these have to stay close to battleships in order to survive... which then forces them to actually play with the team instead of suiciding early in the game. And if CVs take too many risks, they get permanently deplaned - and if that happens, then DDs can use it to scout and cap more aggressively in the late game. Of course, this still removes much of the DDs potential, but a proper CV player will keep an eye on caps anyway, which means that the sneak-past-and-cap-under-enemy's-noses approach - which can be extremely powerful if done properly - isn't really that viable in a CV game. And a good CV player would be rewarded for patience and teamplay because he would have to rely on his team to remove the AAA umbrella with HE damage and enable major air strikes. And this would enable more active gameplay - especially for battleships - because DDs wouldn't have to hide all the time, and battleships would have a scouting screen with them. And if battleships have to stay with DDs for objectives to be done, then they will be forced to push. No, it wouldn't. You would think that way, but what happens is that everybody gets terrified of constant spotting and HE spam and doesn't move anywhere, but just stays in the spawn and lobs HE at distances where they can't hit crap. At least at low tiers battleships are so inaccurate that they have to get stuck in if they want to provide anything other than fireworks... but at high tiers, you have Thunderers and Montanas hanging out with CVs at the edge of the map, and not doing anything useful until the reaper comes for them. Now, this is not just a CV problem... but when you combine constant spotting via CVs + map design that allows focus fire + overpowerful HE, then pushing becomes almost impossible. To be fair, it isn't just CVs, it is interaction of various factors, all of which have a mutually reinforcing effect. But CVs are a big part of it. And they don't just remove "sneaking up", they negate the possibility of tactical positioning because - again, constant spotting. And I have pointed out, multiple times, that a) terrain is part of the problem, likely even greater than the CVs, and b) there is a difference between "passive play" and "spawn camping". And that is true. Which means that, ironically, passive play by DDs can lead to more aggressive play by the team, as they don't lose their scouting component. And I was explaining why map design is so important for determining how aggressive plays will be. Which again brings us to map design... map can help constrain long-range engagement options, which then enables pushing and brawling. Smoke wouldn't have the same effect. It isn't just about protecting battleships from CVs, it is about protecting all the ships. Also, smoke doesn't really protect from CVs, and in fact - unless you are a very small target - places you into a greater danger, because both CVs and DDs can simply blind-torp you, and you will never see it coming. In a DD, I only use smoke for disengaging, and when capping - but only when I know where enemy DDs are and where I can expect torpedoes from. It does provide a measure of protection from air strikes, but I have to question how effective it would be at protecting a 250-meter, 70k ton battleship.

I replaced my in-game soundtrack with this: Though I often shut down music wholesale.

Which, again, is why islands are so important. And yes, presence of islands, DDs and CVs matters. A lot. If there are good islands around, you can push because effective ranges are limited. If it is open water or else open ocean, it will be long-range slugfest. If DDs are present, push requires support of your own DDs; if CVs are present, then push is very dangerous due to a combination of damage and info saturation which a good CV produces. Closest ship is not always the easiest target - it is easier to hit a New Mexico at 20k than Dunkerque at 10k or a DD at 5k. It may get focused anyway, but that will allow farther-off ships to engage unmolested... which can be a lethal mistake. A CV - or two CVs - does change playstyle to a far more passive one. It reduces or even removes the fog of war, which means that you cannot sneak up on the enemy. It forces ships to group together, which can lead to a very passive game. Of course, it is not only CVs - but as I have pointed out, aggressive plays require exploiting the terrain, and CVs significantly reduce the impact of the terrain. DDs can be countered - follow your own DD. He spots enemy DDs for you and helps you neutralize them, you blow up cruisers that would be a threat to him. If a destroyer-cruiser-battleship group moves together from the spawn onwards, most of the problems are gone. Fast battleships at higher tiers can keep up with destroyers and cruisers, but even low-tier whales can still profit from simply staying with lighter ships. Light units provide scouting and protection, battleship provides fire support, damage sponge and a fall-back point. I have done it at all tiers where I play battleships... and it works. But it requires islands for cover, because you can't exactly tank when you are being focus-fired. And at high tiers, I'd say that constant HE spam is a greater problem than anything else. EDIT: I think we may be missing on a simple solution here. Buff battleship AAA. If battleships can create a no-fly zone around themselves, then pushing becomes viable strategy again. In fact, battleships and cruisers would be forced to push because CVs would delete unsupported destroyers. But this still means that island question should be addressed as well.

OK, so... 62,5% win rate, 32 437 average damage and 1 568 average PR in 24 matches today. So far so good, except... The Duck was really good to me today.

Not necessarily. A well-timed push or a flanking maneuver can turn around a losing match. In fact, when you are winning, you don't push - you play defensively. And I'd definitely rather push into a cruiser+bb+dd than a cruiser+bb+cv. In fact, I have - in a destroyer - had several non-CV games where I single-handedly turned what was a certain defeat into a victory, by slipping past the enemy and capping. A well-done BB push can achieve the same (there are several examples on Youtube - look them up). But presence of a CV removes a lot of offensive options. As for your sniper-vs-sniper analogy, that is where map design comes in. Yes, nobody will push when the entire enemy fleet can easily focus you. That is why tall islands are so important for good games: they enable pushing by enabling threat management.

1) It was a tongue-in-cheek comment, but... If you develop a game for the lowest common denominator, you are making it worse for everyone else. If you look primarily at statistics instead of game experience as such, you are likely to make it worse by trying to make it better. And from what I have heard about many developments in last few years, they did indeed make game worse... it is fine if Tier I-III are easy to play, but by the time people get to Tier X, they should know when to use AP and when to use HE, for example. 2) Thanks. 3) I hope it will be taken into consideration, because as it is, CVs are literally the only class which can threaten other ships without incurring any significant risk. Having CVs constantly regenerate aircraft is like giving battleships constantly regenerating health pool. It breaks the balance, especially with how relatively weak AA is. 4) Thanks. 5) That is a pity, because HE mechanic is one of major problems with the game. All ships are able to damage all other ships with no regards to positioning, targeting or anything beyond shells hiting the other ship. This would naturally lead to very static gameplay, especially since fire damage is so significant. 6) Thanks. Which is, or rather should be, completely irrelevant. I wouldn't like to have games with no carriers all the time, but I don't want carrier presence to be there at the price of ruining my enjoyment of the game.

Yes, you are interested in making it worse. If you want to make it better... Will there be any new maps that have islands that you cannot shoot over? Will CV plane regeneration be made a consumable akin to surface ship's health regeneration? Will there be some rewards for battleship players who properly support their team instead of just sniping from max range? Say, a credit and XP bonus for taking damage without sinking. Will HE mechanic be replaced by AP superstructure penetration mechanic as a main way of dealing damage to ships where you can't penetrate armour? Will you at least try to balance MM by skill (say, by person's WR in the particular ship)? All of these changes would make the game better - more active, more dynamic and more involved. Last one - balancing matchmaking - would also help counteract the impact of idiotic stuff such as matchmaking monitors. But first and foremost, you need to actually listen and understand the players' concerns.

Since I regularly push in a BB... quite often, and with myself on the receiving end. And that is where we come back to map design: pushing will only happen if there is sufficient cover present. I will often criss-cross half the map before even attempting to push, all because I am looking for proper islands that would enable doing so. And even then, pushing will often turn into a ping-pong engage-disengage dance. But carriers make it far worse, because it is almost impossible to get into a proper pushing position when you are being constantly spotted.

Main problem I have with HE mechanic is the impact on the game. Namely, that it is one of several mechanics (HE, CV, flat islands / large open sea areas) that promote camping behaviour.

I was thinking for all ships, actually. Because I have seen cruisers ignoring destroyers and farming damage on battleships with HE... leaving destroyers free to spot, cap, and torpedo the s**t out of not just battleships but also cruisers themselves. As for smaller ships dealing damage to larger classes, what about superstructure pens? That would happen with either HE or AP, or maybe you could even have increased HE damage compared to AP when hitting superstructure - plus increased probability of disabling modules. What doesn't make sense however is HE shells outright destroying the ship... even with AP shells, actually sinking a battleship was incredibly difficult. HE shells would wreck the superstructure and potentially (if lucky enough) relegate turrets to the local control, but they would not be able to actually destroy a ship through fire damage.

Except that map is precisely the example of an open terrain map that is not conductive to pushing... though I have seen pushes happen there, mostly by hugging the island.

Yeah, I know. Though at least DD has a chance of simply running away... BBs that are abandoned by their support or else misplay can only die.

I'd say it is rather due to a combination of game design and map design... I have seen maps where teams push by default, and all of them have one thing in common: dense, tall islands. If islands are set up in such a way as to remove the possibility of focus fire, then it is far more likely that teams will actually push. But if islands are low and/or dispersed enough, then yeah... you get what you describe in the post.

Look, if you want BBs to do anything, then you need to support them. The reason why BBs tend to camp in the back is that they know they cannot rely on support from DDs and CLs to clear out enemy DDs, and if enemy DDs aren't cleared out or at least kept busy, then it is torpedo alley time and any BB that pushes dies a very quick and floody death. If BBs don't push then CLs won't push either because either BBs or DDs will wipe them out, and that in turn means that middle of the map becomes a destroyer nest... so how to change that? Simple: do your job. I have seen BBs that don't push, but I have also seen BBs that do push, and it is far more likely that they will push when they know they will get DD and CL support. EDIT: So in other words, DD players who don't understand DD mentality... I mean, as a DD main myself, my first reflex upon seeing smoke is to unload every torpedo I have into the area. One time I got a DD and a cruiser that way...

Destroyers do in fact have 80% hit rate when shooting battleships. As for the rest... ...you could make BB secondaries have a penalty when shooting destroyers. My problem isn't so much that secondaries miss destroyers - class can't take a hit anyway, so they need a way to survive, though as I pointed out a DD can simply avoid most of the shots anyway and it does become a problem when it allows a DD to simply burn down a battleship with HE - my main problem is that they keep missing battleships. At two clicks. As for destroyers outgunning battleships, that is not a problem with destroyers themselves, but rather with HE mechanic. Which I think should be nerfed or removed because it is one of main causes of the long-range spamfest.

Yeah... BB secondaries are the same as those on destroyers, yet for some reason destroyers have 80% hit rate and BB secondaries have 80% miss rate... against a same target. This is made worse by the main turrets... they tend to have slow traverse and in many cases are fairly inaccurate. Especially at low tiers, I have had situations where I shot two or three HE salvoes at a destroyer... and all the shells landed all around the destroyer. And even if the BB secondaries had proper accuracy and/or were player-controlled... well, DD is smaller, faster and has quicker rudder traverse. It should be able to avoid most of the secondary shots even while landing most of his own. But I don't understand how battleship secondaries can keep missing a battleship.

They can, especially if a BB in question had already shot a cruiser and is on a reload. Also, BBs have very bad dispersion, especially at low tiers. When you are in a BB against a DD, about 100% of DDs shells will connect... around 95% of yours will not. I know because I had been on both sides of the issue - burning BBs in a DD, and being burned by a DD in a BB.

If you ragequit then you are part of a problem... doesn't matter how bad your team is, a good player who quits is far worse than a bad player who plays. Example:

Got Fireproof, Dreadnought, Witherer and High Caliber, and it still wasn't enough for victory. Simply put, bad team placement. I tried to push once, and got focus-fired by three enemy battleships. Barely got out of that one alive, but it was a risk that had to be taken; as soon as that move failed, I knew we were finished. Oh, and I got new damage record.

Open map with extremely boring game culminating in a loss... but hey, at least I have my new damage record - both Dunkerque and overall record. I count it as an achievment because I managed to hold off two battleships - kill one and nearly kill the other - on an open ocean and with no backup after rest of the ships on my side died. Second one got saved by the bell.

Took my Dunkerque for a coop. Had a rather nice brawl - very nearly rammed an enemy Kansas - and ended up on top of the scoreboard despite being a bottom tier (Tier VI in a game with 3 Tier VIII and two Tier VII ships per team). Unfortunately, I don't have a screencap of my Kansas brawl, so just tables for ya.

I don't care about occasional AFK. I have had cases where my internet connection just crashed or the game froze while in the match, and by the time I had managed to get back to the game I was on fire, with 10% HP left, and being shot at by half the enemy fleet. While sitting in the spawn, because in the time it took me to sort out the issue, rest of the team had gotten roflstomped. Stuff happens, and that is something you simply can't get away from. I had it happen to me, so being angry over it would be rather hypocritical of me. And extremely stupid, too. What I am talking about, what I was talking about from the beginning, is when people regularly underperform by refusing to play - either by not giving a crap, logging in and then sitting in the spawn, logging in and going AFK, or just "playing" in the chatbox and not caring that half the enemy fleet is shooting at them. That is what a toxic behaviour looks like. Even if they are not technically AFK, they are away from the game. Somebody who regularly does that is clearly not interested in the game. And even if they are not toxic and are merely bad, it is not fun when the opposing team has 20% higher WR and 10 000 more PR on average and simply ROFLSTOMP the opposition. Or get stomped flat because they were running matchmaking monitors and thought it would be an easy win even if half of them go AFK.

PR specifically is a combination of statistics, such as damage dealt and so on (this article states it is damage, wins and frags). Regardless of WR, an AFK player cannot have high PR. Though as @Camperdown points out, it is not exactly a good measure either. Still, I do know that game keeps track of stuff other than damage: there were more than a few games where the only things I did were smoking, spotting and capping, and I still ended up at the top of the scoreboard by stars gained.

Actually, they can. Well, PR can: https://wows-numbers.com/personal/rating It is far from perfect, but it does provide a measure of player's influence on a battle. Neither lemming, suicider nor spawn camper have high PR, true, but they have one thing in common: they are useless to their team. Meaning that teams balanced by PR will still be far more balanced than ones not balanced at all.