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I just want to vent a little regarding how today's gameplay went. No idea what happened, but as you can see the image here it was not possible to win a game in a row of 10 no matter what I tried both in Ranked and Random. just to illustrate that I'm not a complete noob, the lost battles included ones like this This is my most pathetic and laughable MM experience ever since WoWs started. I'll take a break now as this [edited] is nonsense and WG hopefully will analyze the results and figure out where they messed up the player pairings in MM. this is crap.

Today I had a nice Trip in Ranked: started off with RANK 15 zero stars and after 10+ battles midnight came and I'm back to RANK 15 zero star The closest I was to RANK 14 was 3 stars but then a loosing streak of 3 kicked in - unexpectedly of course... :-/ so great feeling spending time and getting nowhere at all...

I had a feeling recently that I'm getting too much into World of Warships playing and also Premium Shop spending so I started to review my time and money investments and came up with the following interesting calculation results. I ask you to try to do the same or similar and share it with us, so we may be able to see trends, strategies, lifestyles. First my key stat results and below some details. Keep in mind that I joined the closed beta, that time is also accounted for. The only battle numbers I had to estimate was the Ranked season 1 and 2 as those stats disappeared from the public stat page (only shows current Ranked season / too bad) 1. On average I spend 37 minutes per day to play the game (since April 2015) 2. On average it costs me 1 EUR each hour I play 3. The TOTAL time I invested in playing during the past 271 days is 168 hours that is technically 1 full week! This is 2.6% of my total lifetime in that period :-) It is pretty cool. Methods (Boring Part) First I collected all my payments for shop items (I purchased some ships, doublons, flags and premium time as well) that came out at 161EUR in total Based on my battle stats I estimated the time I spent in a battle on average - arbitrary I set it at 15 minutes (including wait time, load time, battle time) Put all in a nice Excel table and started to calculate the averages and SUMs I must say it is quite interesting to be faced with your own obsession :-D So anybody cares to share his results?

Well I agree that matches does not take 15 min on average this is why I said that my estimate includes two additional elements: 1) waiting time to get into the battle 2) the Game starter countdown 1 minute (or load-time for slower PCs) This together rounds up the 11-12 min estimate to 15 as gross time spent with one battle...

Well, thanks for the comments and sharing :-) to expand on the my first post my spendings were mostly focused on premium time and maximizing XP gain on one battle I play: flags and buying prem ship Tirp. Also I'm pushing towards Yamato so mostly my grind strategy is to play the standard ship to unlock the next tier, but convert Elite and Prem ship XP to FreeXP to bypass module grind so I always play with the ship equipped with best modules (hull, engine, etc) This is an awfully expensive strategy but by playing less than 600 battles I'm almost at the Yamato :-) Please keep sharing and do not be shy facing the reality as how much time and money you invest in your hobby. +1 : somebody mentioned that 15min per battle is too short as estimated average... I'm open to suggestions on that

Well on the MM thinking about ship class my observation is the following: In Random: besides the obvious rule of having maximum two CVs in the game that are class matched, it looks to me that there is a maximum number of BBs the MM allows into the game around 4 or 5 - however I do not know what happens if the maximum 5 minute wait time is reached (never had such a battle so far) I agree that other than that it is very random regarding cruisers and destroyers split In Ranked: I also believe that number of BBs are maxed out at 3, the cruiser and DD balance is not regulated there either. It seems to me that WG thinks cruisers and destroyers are interchangeable, or alternatively given the huge interest in BBs they must allow interchangeability on order to have a chance to create battles efficiently...

Well I also believe that ammunition cost is paid in WoWs as well. I haven't noticed the fixed fee "issue" yet, probably because of playing with prem account the economy is a bit more bearable for me - but I fully agree that WoWs is much more worse than WoT was in terms of Credit and XP gaining. What I also noticed that is a similar disparity is the use of the consumables (i.e. repair module or planes or smoke, etc...) If I'm right in WoT the consumables (especially premium ones!) if they were not used in the battle remained on the TANK and was available for the next battle as well. In WoWs it is different! No matter if you use it or not, it is spent and you need to buy a new one for the next battle. I find this rather unfair. The only "compensation" that a player can achieve is if sailing a BB it is watched that the HP restoration kit is always used up so your repair costs are the lowest possible...

Looks like we have deviated a bit from the original subject but I absolutely do not mind it as learning about the "Serb" was very interesting, not to mention the "Fail Platoon" subject that shows up in WoWs as well What is very interesting and indicative is that once again I experience and see that the community playing WG titles is very dedicated and also have constructive ideas for all the problematic behaviors we encounter in the game, and yet the Wargaming company culture does not allow it to flow through and actually make the game even better - perhaps WG will listen more when the figures (i.e. $$$ earned) will indicate that they started to decline and there is need to please the community. Regarding the loosing streak problem I'm over it by now and thanks for everyone who contributed to this topic the help and support - even through the negative comments! Saying something is always better than remaining silent :-D Cheers PS: can somebody post picture of the equivalent of the "Serb" in World of Warships? Who is our designer "beast"? :-)

You have an absolute valid point. While I'm a bit occupied in my mind about loosing streak the opposite can happen as well, of course! Obviously very few people will complain about a 10 battle long winning series that probably happens too. :-D I'll have to wrap my mind around the second part of your comment that speculates that if you win 57 of out 100 somebody else loosing 57 out of 100 as the complexity here is that the winning is per TEAM, so it may happen that you are winning your 57 battles against different players (loosers :-) ) Thinking about entertainment value of course winning series are much better motivations than loosing streaks. The question is what is better? Allow huge extremities of good and bad or have a more "stable" pattern where the "hand of God" (i.e. MM) softens a bit the peaks and valleys so the experience is more balanced...? I guess it is also a question of personality as some people like challenges some more comfortable with stability... It is ultimately WG's decision to handle we can just collect and express opinions here... :-) (off the subject: I remember the old days when Word of Tanks started to grow. At that time WG was accused many many times that the MM puts premium account players in advantage vs. standards. No official comment was ever made, but some guys on the forum run series of blind tests trying to prove this but concluded that no such mechanism is in place... this memory always makes me cautions when thinking about conspiracy theories)

I must say this tier fixing MM thing is visible for me especially in Tier VIII BB battles with my AMAGI. When the trend kicks in that I start seeing lots of Yamatos and Montanas it gets tuned down after a while... noticeable significantly only here I must say not on lower tiers...

SOURCE for "Back to our subject: so we know from WG's official communication that the MM has the capability to break player trends (i.e. stop putting the player into relative HIGH TIER battles versus its ship tier even if the tier ruling in general allows that)" I'll have to dig out the exact link later, however I'm certain that I read about this (to be precise the fixing of this feature) in one of the PATCH RELEASE NOTES coming directly from DEVs.

Well thanks for the encouragement and I agree with what you say about the MM. I also on the belief that the MM does quite a lot of things, but it can be as good as the actual by the minute player population allows - so the MM itself can be victim of the statistics random behavior Regardless I would really like to see what you mention that eventually MM gets to a state where it watches out for player skills as well :-D Looking forward to meet you on the high seas - but rather a division mate than an opponent based on what I learned here about the state of your mind :-) I'll get over this streak soon do not worry about me. Perhaps both of us should take some lessons from JapLance who seems to be a very fine cruiser player based on his stats... Cheers

You are quite a good cruiser captain - I might say Admiral :-) looking at your stats vs. mine on the only comparable ship Konigsberg tells a lot :-) But I'm in no business to beat your personal record of 12 losses in a row if you don't mind :-D

Dear Masta, I like very much your demonstration on statistics. I was thinking about similar things myself, but wasn't brave enough to summarize it in a simple way as you did. Thanks! There are two points that came in my mind: 1. One is directly related to the statistical chances. I agree that despite the 50% odds even in simple cases such as coin flipping we can experience a series of "heads" andonly the large number of flips are going to show the "true" trend of 50/50. I may have made the mistake of assuming that a series of 10 battles is a big enough sample to assume that the chance of having another loss must be very very very low and yet it happened... WG's matchmaking is obviously a very complex system compared to a coin flip so you can argue that sample size should be much much larger - I can agree to that. In order to get closer to the problem there is a way statistics deals with the extremities -as far as I understand- that is the standard deviation measure. What I would be VERY interested in is to see the standard deviation of the current MM win/loss trends. In simple terms what I mean is the MIN and MAX win/loss series the system have experienced since release for one given player nick. This would indicate how much fluctuation is "normal" for this complex system. >> my favorite illustration for standard deviation is the following: let's assume you walk out into a bus stop to take the bus. The schedule table displayed at the stop shows that the bus runs every 10 minutes. What would be your expectation regarding how much wait time you will have? Without training in statistics one could say it is on average 5 minutes, but no longer than 10. But this is wrong. Why? because what is NEVER mentioned on bus stop schedules is the standard deviation - that is being the intended MIN and MAX fluctuation of the bus arrivals - i.e. traffic jams in the city and you can expect to wait even 20 minutes that is still valid << Back to our subject: so we know from WG's official communication that the MM has the capability to break player trends (i.e. stop putting the player into relative HIGH TIER battles versus its ship tier even if the tier ruling in general allows that). Obviously the MM is not considering player skills today that may be good to change... Besides that my comment is still valid for the case if WG does not want to change MM logic and it is proven that the standard deviation of the win/loss ratio can be VERY HIGH: simply reduce the player penalty on loosing by adjusting the multiplier applied against losing team members in favor of the winners. 2. My other point is that looking at the comments it may appear that I was implying that WG or the MM system is putting me personally at disadvantage. Just for the record: I did not want to say that. I have no conspiracy theory against myself. What I was trying to say: since this is a GAME that supposed to be entertaining, it is a bit harsh that the system in GENERAL allows such a bad experience to happen - especially when there are many ideas as how the discomfort can be eased for everybody's benefit. Ideally I would want WG to acknowledge that. My apologies if it was not this clear the first time.

Your comment is a simple insult, that adds nothing the subject. I wonder why you spent precious 1 minute of your time creating it...? .-) (you know as Murphy said: "Never argue with a fool — people might forget who's who.") Have a nice day!

Thanks for the encouragement and also the critics. I know that I'm by far not the best player, however this series of loosing battles made me frustrated to put it nicely. To the last question I indeed played Nurnberg in RANKED most of the time, the only one in progress was a random one into which I entered by mistake (forgot to switch to ranked after playing AMAGI) After calming down from last evening a few points: Yes I indeed blame a bit WG for creating a system that allows such a bad playing experience, however I do understand that it can happen and I'm part of the results most of the time. What makes me disappointed in this is not the pure fact that I lose so many battles, rather than the fact that my own playing result has absolutely no correlation to the battle results. Taking out 3 ships with a cruiser in RANKED battle practically means almost half the enemy is taken care of. Similarly I had experience in RANDOM with AMAGI where myself and a fellow BB occupied 4-5 enemy ships so the rest of our team was in full numerical and quality advantage yet we lost big time. This disparity of individual performance and battle result is a "problem" I think, because in WG's scoring system winning the battle creates a HUGE advantage in earning XP and Credits. This is why loosing series becomes a frustration as while you perform OK and time is invested the "randomness" of the system penalizes you (in my case FOR HOURS) My say is that if it is to be accepted that battle result does not depend on individual performance, the scoring system must reflect it in such way that a given player does not get penalized for somebody else's mistakes. Last observation from me is that just like it was mentioned many times in the World of Tanks forums, the server side setting that WG does day by day absolutely influence game quality. It was proven in many occasions that the "randomness" for example of the aiming zones (hit/miss ratios) can be and are changed from time to time without any announcement. It may happen here as well. Conclusion: yes I admit that I have weaknesses and a lot depends on me, however I would like to suggest that WG has its own share in enabling / allowing such frustrating situations to happen. Randomness in not an excuse for everything even is statistics.

From time to time I go and check if there are new additions to the famous Statistics Galore series from our Dear Crysantos. Unfortunately nothing lately. So I have a question - that is not 100% related to this topic, but more the most recent development of the player community. If we check the stats link and go to the PLAYER stats we see the following - the DATA is said to be WEEKLY basis. Player Dense on played Battles battles players 2015/12/19 2015/12/12 2015/12/05 2015/11/28 2015/11/21 2015/11/14 2015/11/07 2015/10/31 2015/10/24 1 165007 165763 172174 179181 180957 177744 197262 212324 211516 50 19159 20835 20459 21522 27295 29237 27397 31570 33527 100 3769 4254 4037 4079 5736 6248 5794 6733 7152 150 901 974 991 945 1271 1526 1443 1678 1758 200 226 276 213 231 374 446 421 472 432 250 68 66 74 71 108 121 107 128 142 300 19 31 17 15 35 44 28 46 46 350 5 6 7 12 11 13 9 10 9 400 3 1 2 3 4 2 8 450 1 1 2 1 3 500 1 1 1 1 550 1 5 600 1 1 1 3 850 3 1050 1 1 1150 1 1 1300 1 1450 1 1800 1 total 189156 192208 197975 206060 215791 215384 232469 252964 254607 So it seems that we are loosing a significant portion of the player community 254,600 souls in late October that is by now only 189,156 souls last week. What is really visible that not only the lowest bracket (less than 50 battles per period) is shrinking, but the average hardcore player community as well - that I consier around the 100-200 battles per week (if I read the stats correctly) What do you think? Am I right reading this?

The opening post said: 1. Annoucing ranked game mode 1 day before season starts. I know in WG just no one cares about gamers at all, but I dont believe no one understands the need of preparation to next season. Tiers and start model were unknown to us. Essential things to all players - what ships we have to prepare for rankeds was missed. Of course WG eanred a lot of money in case of this, because captain retraining and grinding new ships was impossible in one day only (especially to high ranked players, who got 16+ points captains). WG messed up completely when season not even started. what I want to ask is this: IF the Rank 10 that divides the V-VI Tier vs. VII-VIII Tier is not irrevocable how do you manage to keep prepared ships from 4 tiers to Ranked Battles? Is it easier than just struggle at Tier 10 like it was the first (lowest) in a league? Imagine flipping back and forth between Rank 11 and 10 for days! The biggest problem on the EU server is NOT the skill of players, but the solution for TEAM PLAY. Language diversity makes it difficult to keep the 7 team members on the same page / strategy. On RU and NA servers this is far more easier - but heck, we live here and we call Europe our HOME! So we have to manage this. Just look at the stats of the Pilot Season to see how few people reached significant ranks (say above 13-15) Few thousand! And see how many plays 50+ battles per month (that is not too much but if somebody has a life besides this game, a work, a family, a kid it is decent) and try to understand why WG is looking at the interest of the crowd! ...and if you are REALLY GOOD, no matter what you will reach the top. Perhaps because you can be a leader and educate others who will help YOU meet YOUR goal. (but for this you can't fully be selfish!)

The point of having transferable FreeXP between the Wargaming games in my opinion is not going to increase the "noob" factor. If you have FreeXP gained in any of the games significant enough to unlock a Tier VIII, IX, X unit in another it assumes multiple hundreds of battles in game concepts similar to each other. While it may be possible not to be perfect in handling ships after tanks or airplanes, but such players have passed learning curves and most probably respect the unknown in sense of skills required to play efficiently. This is one of the main reasons why I propagate the Unified Account! The invested playtime that resulted in the accumulated XP has already delivered its benefits! So why cannot we spend it the way we deem the best? Last but not least I repeat my main issue: the absolute lack of transparency from Wargaming if the feature will come or not! We may be chasing a ghost while they make us believe it will come. That is bad morale and unfair!

Thanks for the note and sure there may be exceptions from Nelson's great rule and teachings. While I certainly believe that you who carries the name of the great Admiral in the game understand what it is about it may be worth to spell out for others - a kind of history lesson: what Nelson means is that good captains always ACT proactively against the enemy. In the sail age "placing the ship alongside" meant showing your sides where the guns were (no rotating turrets... eh?), so you could give your best greeting broadside :-D To stay on topic: a question for our Dear Topic Owner, Mr. Crysantos, could you offer us your analysis on another special ship type: "Gift" ships that can not be purchased, neither unlocked just collected through special events - do they worth their uniqueness? My list of such ships: 1. Tachibana (was on a Gift Code with PC Gamer UK) Tier II 2. Albany (that was a free gift from WG) - this is a very poor ship in my experience 3. Arkansas Beta (gift for CBT participants) aka "Shotgun" as IChaseGaming mentioned it once in Tier IV

Ectar, I appreciate you turning up here and making some communication on behalf of Wargaming. What I see and understand is that for whatever reason the "official" communication on this matter is not clear. It is notable that in case of pressing issues saying ANYTHING can backfire ("damned if we do and we're damned if we don't."), however I would encourage the Management to consider taking a definitive side on this matter with a commitment or stating the bad news that it won't happen soon. All in all what would be important to me is to make an informed decision at the time of logging in to WoWs that the Unified Account is a future reality or simply a dream. Why for a change not share some of the internal dilemmas of this subject with the player community? I'm very much interested in seeing the pros/cons WG is balancing on this subject. And most importantly: how come that WoWs was launched with DOUBLONS and not Gold from the get go? Why is that if the Unified Account was on the horizon?

Point1 - why allow players skip progression: simple. this is a motivation to anchor players to Wargaming titles. What is the overall situation? WG competes with other titles very directly (to my best knowledge BOTH tanks and airplanes) so when it comes to convince players to INVEST THEIR FREE TIME on Wargaming servers vs. another company's it is obvious that they reward loyalty. Point2 - WOT and WOP unified. Yes, and you are right that it came gradually. In my understanding there were two reasons: WOT / WOP was the first two to link, therefore I can accept some learning curve, however WOWs design should have incorporated that from the get go. (and YET! they introduced Doublons instead of Gold as terminology...) And here comes the second argument: Wargaming has less interest in linking the ship world to the others as to my best knowledge there is no competition on that, only on tanks and airplanes! and surprise! where they were forced by external market factors they did the homework... Last but not least I still have to emphasize that my main opinion is that the Unified Account is LOGICAL and it was PROMISED. This latter meant (at least for me) that I invested my time in WoT _in anticipation_ of WoWs! The issue exists on two levels: 1. Moral and ethical - they simply do not keep their promise and the fair trade, because A) they advertised a feature that is nonexistent B) they took your time and gave nothing in return - assuming you played with the understanding the FreeXP will be convertible. 2. Financial Grounds - they double charge you - so you have to give them twice the effort for the single result.

I'm on the side to think that the current earning issues in High Tiers are much more conscious than we think - we should not assume that WG can not read statistics and see what is going on in the game. Making high Tier battles "expensive" is (IMHO) a reasonably good way to drive players to lower tiers so the attendance levels are sufficient where it is more needed. I will not comment a lot on the "free to play" point as many posts before me said a lot, but here is one element to consider that I haven't seen turning up here: many of you have a kind of "tunnel vision" when analyzing the concept of "free". For me this game is absolutely not free-to-play EVER! This is because I consider my TIME that I invest in it my most precious resource and when logging in for a battle I'm giving it to Wargaming. Never forget: this is an on-line game, it worth absolutely ZERO without people playing it. So may be free from money perspective, but it is not the only aspect. Last but not least: the natural drive for people to go up to Tier X is very much founded in the WG concept of MatchMaking - it is very obvious that the entire game concept is that beside the rock-paper-scissor unit types you always meet OVERPOWERED vessels from higher tiers that motivates you to go up up up

Just for the NO voters a little theory to think about: what does XP represents in the Wargaming Universe? XP is most critical game element that CAN NOT BE PURCHASED FOR MONEY. You need it for developing tech-tree - you are PRESSED ON to develop as you always meet bigger ships in play until you reach the top. So what do you give Wargaming to get this precious XP? You give your TIME! More time to give, more XP to get! What does Wargaming GET from your TIME? Attendance! Without players servers are empty. No WG title would work with little community as matchmaking would die! So you give your time, you hopefully enjoy the game, WG gets people on the server and the machine works! (BTW: this is why WG needs free players not only paying ones - it is an integral part of the concept of having LOT of players) Why the lack of Unified Account is BAD? Because you ALREADY INVESTED YOUR TIME when you earned your FreeXP, so Wargaming GOT what they WANTED! And you? Not necessarily. Why? Because if you are now playing WoWs and not WoT, your accumulated freeXP can not be spent on WHAT YOU WANT! Conclusion: by not unifying accounts WG simply does not give it's end of the deal! In other words: they double charge you! Unfortunately many people does not realize this.

When wondering about the German BB lineup, can somebody tell me what you think the Tier X unit will be? Looking at the fact that Tirpitz become a Tier VIII BB in the game, we need at least two ship classes above it to serve as Tier IX and Tier X BBs (I presume logically the Bismarck will be the Tier VIII). So what are they? I'm not fully knowledgeable regarding the German WW2 navy, however can not name any ship bigger than Bismarck... maybe they had SuperBattleships on paper or what...