AndyHill

And the people who would like to spec their captains completely differently now given the extra point.

Thank you for your in-depth analysis of the situation, but for the reasons specified numerous times earlier, we indeed do need the full reset.

I think the mistake Wargaming are making is that they only think of the case where people only take a single one point skill. In situations like that it indeed isn't that bad if you just get another one point skill instead - or better yet, get to choose one. However, the way the skill tree is setup currently it is often more beneficial to take several one point skills and some two pointers instead of for example a five pointer. Some of them are very cost effective and together better value than a five pointer. With free SA the alternative cost of picking a five point skill goes down drastically and the picture changes completely. Without a complete reset people who have based their builds on the assumption that SA costs one point and thus picked several low level skills are a bit screwed.

Would it be possible to also have ship names on the minimap?

The smoke border feature is a great and very welcome addition, perhaps it would be even more useful to indicate somehow when the game thinks you are actually inside one (is it the center of the ship or do all extremities need to be in the circle?). Also, this feature should be enabled by default so that even the new players find it immediately.

The new co-op -modes didn't make me a convert, but especially the defending the bases thing is a huge leap forwards compared to anything there was previously. I suppose congratulations are in order. I hope there's enough randomness and variety in the thing to not make the missions repeat themselves too much. The assault was a bit meh, just sailing a few dds into the cap in the beginning was always a quick gg.

I made a post in another thread that I believe (hope) should be useful in demonstrating why the change is much much bigger than just the choice between different tier 1 skills. I don't want to repost the whole thing here, but of course if a mod feels it would be useful he can move or copy it to this thread. It's a simple message with three pictures of very different captain configurations that are different purely because of the free SA introduced in this patch. http://forum.worldofwarships.eu/index.php?/topic/56738-the-situational-awareness-is-gone/page__st__120__pid__1167172#entry1167172 The point I want to make clear in this thread as well is that the change is not about choosing a different one point skill, the extra point completely changes the entire economy of the skill tree and a reset is required to keep things fair.

Ok I came up with a practical example of the problem at hand, hopefully this will help in understanding what I'm getting at. First, here's the Yamato captain as he would probably end up with current rules: Here are two potential alternative setups I would be interested in if I get Situational Awareness for free: Whether or not any of these builds is optimal is irrelevant, but they are definitely not completely out-of-this-world specials just for this example. I hope everyone realizes just how massively different they are from the first one and the only real difference is the one extra skill point. The change is not about choosing a different one point skill, the extra point completely changes the entire economy of the skill tree and a reset is required to keep things fair.

Sorry you lost me there again. Nobody changed the rules of the stock market, your choice of not buying the stock before they went up was completely your own decision. If TSE suddenly decided that you can't trade Nintendo stock for no good reason (there are reasons for stopping trade on specific stocks) not only would the stock lose most of its value, every other stock in TSE would crash because of arbitrary rule changes and the resulting lack of trust. It's simply standard procedure in character development based games to give free skill resets when there are changes in skill trees.

Again, we did see the future, but WG changed it. That's an important difference compared to not seeing the future, because we can't be expected to try to predict what kind of changes to the rules are made during the game, we're supposed to play the game with the information we have. That's why in cases like this the changes need to be compensated for, specifically by giving everybody an equal opportunity to adapt to the new rules.

I don't really know how any of this has anything to do with steam sales really, the skills in this game are free, you only pay for resets. I think you don't quite realize how significant that one point actually is. Since the level cap is 18 you have to be very careful in how you use the available points. Especially if you go to about 12-13 points stage you'll notice how much of a difference that one point makes, mostly in significantly reducing the opportunity cost of taking a five point skill. And five point skills are designed to be very specialized as well as powerful so that if you pick one of those instead of a number of lower cost alternatives you will probably want to rethink the whole build.

But that's precisely the thing. We DID see the future and it's actually quite simple to, you just count to 18 and figure out what skills you want and actually can get. That's how all the games with character development basically work. The issue here is that WG changed the future, which changes the way people build their captains. Your point about putting points into low tier skills is also relevant to the discussion, since that's what many CA/BB captains do because the 5th level skills aren't worth the cost (even if they're willing to put in the effort to level to 18). That has now changed quite significantly, so the result is not a free skill but a very different captain from what the player would've liked to have (and should've been able to).

It is quite simple: if that extra point had been available before all the other points had already been used, the entire build could/would have been completely different. Five point skills for example would be a lot more feasible choices with an extra point available.

I consider situational awareness basically a must have skill for pretty much all ships so it feels like a good idea to have it on all ships. However, a full reset of captains with the skill chosen is required. Like I said in another thread, it's not just about picking one tier 1 skill above another one. When thinking about skill picks people like me who don't want to spend gold redistributing points go to a service like http://shipcomrade.com/skillcalc and figure out the whole build ahead of time so that they know what to pick when they have points available. For example, this is the beginning of the kind of a build I'd consider for a BB captain: http://shipcomrade.c...100101000000000 (note that the point isn't if a build is optimal or not, that's a different matter). If you unselect the situational awareness skill the picture of available remaining skill picks changes dramatically. An additional available point makes FIVE point skills much more worthwhile for many builds. Again, it's not just a simple choice between two one point skills, the change has a significant effect on the entire captain build. And needless to say, for many it's already too late and the builds are going to be significantly sub-optimal compared to what they could've been if you had the one extra point available to you when you originally made the design. We really, really do need a reset if this change goes through.

Another example is this (probably battleship) guy: http://shipcomrade.com/skillcalc/01110100000110101000000000 Instead of giving up a bit meh torpedo spotting skill and 10% secondaries/AA boost and picking manual secondaries or jack of all trades, he now gets a free skill point he can spend on expert loader or 10% more firepower for his spotting aircraft's rear gunner. Woo-hoo.

Again, it's not just about picking one tier 1 skill above another one. When thinking about skill picks people like me who don't want to spend gold redistributing points go to a service like http://shipcomrade.com/skillcalc and think about the whole build ahead of time so that they know what to pick when they have points available. For me situational awareness is a mandatory skill on almost every ship so it affects a lot of my builds. For example, this is the kind of a build I'd think about for a BB captain: http://shipcomrade.com/skillcalc/00110100000100101000000000 (note that the point isn't if a build is optimal or not, that's a different matter). If you unselect the situational awareness skill the picture of available remaining skill picks changes dramatically. An additional available point makes FIVE point skills much more worthwhile for many builds. It's not just a simple choice between two one point skills, the change has a significant effect on the entire captain build. And needless to say, for many it's already too late and the builds are going to be significantly sub-optimal compared to what they could've been if you had the one extra point available to you when you originally made the design.

After the mandatory one pointer you have 17 points do distribute as you wish and the one extra point might well have affected your other picks. For example on many of my builds the last points are a pick between a 3-point skill or a two-pointer and a useless one pointer. One extra point to distribute would give the option to take a four point skill instead, which might be a huge deal.

Yeah I kind of remember having to earn all that stuff, too. And my having been here since betas didn't help any. Well the Ark beta was a nice gift for closed beta, I guess that one counts in WG's favor.

Switching to basics of survivability or even giving the extra point to distribute as you wish is totally inadequate. The existence of one extra point is not only about getting a new tier 1 skill, it affects everything when picking skills for high tier captains. If I had had one more point available to me I would've picked very different skills on a number of them.

Now here's the thing; he couldn't possibly have seen them. Well of course he could, but you can never expect it and it's always you who are responsible and should turn pink from a TK. A bad player doesn't watch his surroundings and will run into friendly as well as enemy torps. The good players are focusing on a number of things, keeping track of enemy positions, predicting where they might come from or go to, finding opportunities for attacking and trying to predict where torps might be coming from. Especially if they were 8,5km closer to the enemy than you they were probably quite busy with real threats so that they don't - and they shouldn't have to - watch you in case you're torping or not and even when they get the torp warning they'll just decide in a nanosecond that since they're coming from behind they're either already past him or fired by a friendly who obviously isn't targeting them and has taken the precautions to fire safely. And no, I've never turned pink but I have managed to TK friendlies and a few times I've been saved by friendlies who managed to save their lives despite my mistakes.

So if people were to for example use this link I get some goodies? http://playtogether.worldofwarships.eu/invite/569QN7W Eagerly waiting for the "Thanks for being a faithful regular for a year now" -reward given to people with at least 3k battles and no notable breaks from the game.

I really need a cost effective Russian premium ship and I think a half-price Murmy might be just the thing. Could someone rewind time a bit for me please?

I have only seen videos of the new game mode so far, but although I agree with the thread starter about the concept being interesting I don't really know if it's actually good for the game in the end. First of all, instead of moving ships captained by actual human beings, I'm shooting and getting shot at by stationary targets that are less exciting than the bots in coop mode. That's not the kind of motivation that has kept me pushing the "Battle" button thousands of times so far. The balancing will probably be a bit of a nightmare when you need to make all ship classes work with and without the presence of these spotting / shooting fortifications. Perhaps most importantly, the fortifications will give people more dumb ways to throw games, which is not good for anyone's mental health. Of course I don't have a lot of experience on the mode yet, but what I know of it so far isn't super-exciting. At least the new mode should be designed with special maps or at least layouts specifically designed around the bases, the way it's done now makes me fear that WG just plan to eventually drop some forts into all the domination mode caps and call that added depth to the game.

I could already tell by the shell dispersion on my ships, but apparently Wargaming doesn't like me very much. I've even faithfully replied to all of their opinion surveys in hopes of better RNG or something, but WG only seem to send emails to me when they get something out of it.

So I take it that the surprise reward actually wasn't a premium Yamato after all?