Stockensprotz

We could use Twitter..eh..X and add community notes to any announcement they make.

I did not think of that. So i might have to go back into that mess again? But then the reward for getting all the green lights is a large tactical container that contains 3 grey boosters, 3 flags and 5k free xp? Hm... seems i DO NOT have to go back into that mess again.^^

So I tried it in the Split because there is the stupid "get 25 kills in Euro ships" mission. And one battle is enough to tell me that I will do this mission in the Viribus at T5. I do not have any masochistic tendencies and to enjoy this mode in anything but a CV one definitely needs those. Honestly they would have to increase the rewards for the victim-ships (prey-ships? sacrificial ships?) in this mode quite substancially for me to even consider trying this again. Thoroughly unpleasant experience even though i did manage to kill a CV. (Why? Because the second one lived.) Might be a lot better if friendly fire was turned back on again for this mode and the victims came to a Gentlemen's Agreement.

To balance that they could add indestructible slowly moving snail mines that move at 10 knots, follow you around the whole match and detonate you when they catch up with you. So you have to move the whole time. Except CVs - because they do not have the detonate mechanic. So it is fun and engaging for everyone and CV-players are not unduly stressed.

I use the Alaska to grind credits and (try to) grind through the T9 DDs. Alaska is as tanky as the T10 cruisers if you angle correctly but since it is T9 instead of T10 you get less of a credit penalty if you shoot the T8 bots. And it helps with the current "potential damage" missions. So Alaska is fun - DDs not so much. I am not a good DD player, so sometimes i am overwhelmed a little if you have to spot and tank (thanks WG) for the BBs while the bots dodge your torps like a pro and the bot CVs and Nebraskas keep you spotted. So i am not enjoying that as much but it is still more relaxed grinding than facing T10 subs, superships and Nakhimovs in randoms. Udaloi, Schultz and Z-46 are next on the list there.

I think this mode illustrates that WG understands their playerbase very well. The average(!, of course not you dear reader) BB-player seems to be a person that presses "Battle" and then spends 15 minutes trying to avoid actual battle. We saw this in convoy where BBs let the transports tank for them - you know, instead of protecting the transports. At the time i joked it would make more sense to let BB-players steer the transports and the transport-bots control the BBs. Would have created more natural flow of battle. Cruiser mains and destroyer mains are generally not like that because if you are in a cruiser you know that you can randomly explode at any point in the match and DDs know that they are focused anyway the moment they are spotted. Its only BB-players that play this game with a feeling of relative safety. And WGs understanding of this mindset is absolutely visible in asymmetric battles. The ship class with the most HP, best armor, best heals and biggest guns gets DDs and cruisers to tank for them so they can idle about while farming damage. This is not bad gamedesign - this is designed EXACTLY with the current playerbase in mind. If BBs where actually fired upon consistently they would stop playing this mode immediately. A Schlieffen or Pommern farming damage here only works because the bots DO NOT focus them - if they did the farming fun would stop very fast. That is why WG "balanced" this mode by nerfing the rewards (for everyone btw) and not by adjusting the targeting order of the bots. This mode is a love-letter to their largest demographic: BB mains. As long as they have fun this mode is a success.

In a way on GOG you do. Just download them and keep them on an external drive. No DRM included or external installer needed. Thats why i have switched from Steam to GOG for all the stuff i can get there. I even buy digital copies of games i already have on disc there just to have a backup.

He is right. If WG was not the benign, loving, caring and generous company that they are, you would have to pay them for the privilege of testing their patches. But WG loves us and that is why you are allowed to work for them for free (and maybe get something, sometimes, no guarantees). If you expect timely compensation you may have an ungrateful mindset that will lead to much unhappiness in the corporate wageslave world. You should change that. Start by going to a mirror and saying "I do not deserve this!" about ten times to your own image.

Received French containers but no community tokens, dubs, credits or euro destroyer tokens. Also wasn't there missions for T2-4 premium ship containers in the same mission group as the french destroyers? Was under the impression that these were for the live servers too.

Yeah, i probably should have put the "excited" in quotation marks. You can't buy anything and the people who could buy something may find it hard to find something worth buying. I do not consider a random ship for the same price as a ship i would actually want (just with some flags and camos added) a good deal. What if you dont play CVs but get one. Btw. did Austria not also have a high-court ruling against lootboxes? Is the "event" allowed there?

If i remember correctly last time you used the summer tokens for sequential bundles with gambleboxes. Journey to the west, Supercontainer, Black Friday and at the end Premium Ship Container. Of course you had to spend money to get enough tokens for any of the (remotely) interesting gambleboxes. So - do not get excited about the event just yet. I recall you spent about the same for the random chance for a random premium ship as if you bought the ship you wanted directly. And for that uncertainty you were rewarded with some camos and flags.

No it will not. Think of the 1990 nature documentary "Tremors". Subs will be like that. (Just with a vegan alternative to Kevin Bacon.)

Apart from the alcohol and other games (just imagine how many years worth of games you could get for that money on GOG) this price also is also equal to the most expensive Midjourney subscription for a year (if you pay 10 bucks a month). And unlike WoWs you get to be creative with that one and learn a skill that could become useful in the future (dealing with AIs). And you have way more fun. For example: My request for the USS Iowa created this glorious T12 Battleship (with flagpoles for guns):

Quite frankly: If you want me to test make the rewards independent of other players behavior. I am sick of people wasting my time. Tried ranked today both times the DDs immediately turned in spawn and ran to the edge of the map away from the enemy. Since at least (part of) my getting rewarded for testing is based on winning the match that kind of behavior makes this impossible. Either ban people like that from the test server or remove win conditions from test rewards. And i am sure as hell not wasting my time doing testing for you without getting any compensation for it.

If we look at the 55% winrate graph: Do they really leave or do they just fall out of the 55% bracket? Using a sample size of 1 (me) I would argue that some players just have stopped caring about winrate. The changes that WG has made have turned the game into something so ridiculous and random that I have stopped giving a sh*t about winning (at least in T9 and up). In most of these matches i am glad if someone takes me out early because then I do not have to suffer the aneurysm-inducing ballet of combat avoidance to the end. Just quickly flip through the garbage games until you come to one that is actually fun. Fun is the basis for a videogame, fluff like winrate comes on top of that. If the base is rotten everything that builds on it is worthless. Superships, Super-CVs(I list them extra because they are extra cancer), Subs, Nakhimovs and the player base: T10 DDs sitting broadside in their smoke until the torps arrive, battleships afraid do do any battle, abundance of overmatch - we all know the list. And all of these ARE design decisions. Even the behavior of the playerbase because Dead Eye shows that WG CAN influence player behavior with gamedesign - they have just chosen to steer it the wrong way. They created the "battleships that are afraid to do battle" meta and if they wanted to they could get rid of it with the right incentives. People want to have fun, they want battles with ships with big guns, they want explosions and some wild action - I pretty sure even the people doing it do not like the "sitting behind an island afraid someone might scratch your paint" gameplay that is going on right now. Its like inviting people to a boxing match and treating them to a surprise tree-sitting contest and then wondering why they leave and refuse to buy any new tickets.

Base XP is easily done in duck mode. Its faster than Coop and a lot faster than randoms. About 1k BaseXP every 5 minutes. More if you have hands and know what a cap looks like, less if not. Just take the DDuck and rush into the caps. If you need citadels the BBDuck is a cit machine against the cruiserducks. Potential damage: BBduck and swim around in front of the DDucks, let them spam you with torps. The only one i would go coop for is the main battery hits one, that is quicker in a fast firing cruiser or a Gunboat DD. Added Benefit of duck mode: Battlepass Missions are also quickly done. So the duckmode is a godsend for anyone who has limited time to do the missions (and can stomach the ducks). Just don't be the one duck that sits at the map edge trying to snipe...

Still hoping for Atragon/Gotengo. The sub of subs. The CV of subs. The BB of subs... Or its Anime Cousin SUPER Atragon:

Cynical me thinks: "Well there is still room for a Tone... But seriously, this just makes me angry. Its a videogame. It should be fun. Nothing on that image says "fun". It just says "annoyance", "frustration", "anger", "plague", "torment", "passiveness", "disinterest"...

Yes - its a mode without Subs/CVs and where Superships are balanced. (I do also expect a massive Hybrid-Battleship-Spam in randoms which i would rather avoid as it comes on top of Subs and CVs and Superships.) So since you can do most missions this patch in Ducky-mode, Ducky-mode it is.

Found AP not to be worth it. Played without IFHE and with, kept it afterwards. Does not seem to do more damage but at least the constant shatters do not drive you mad. I find this line quite underwhelming. A lot of work dodging and shooting for very little reward in gun damage. Had one match where i had about 190 Pens with 35k damage when i was oneshotted by a Kremlin. And that was not even directly at the start of the match but after 10min of painful dodging. You do the maths on the damage per shell. Its like the guns are just there to deter DDs but even there they do too little damage and fly to slow to be able to really punish them when they are spotted. Even when an enemy is low health the low damage with the long reload means it still takes ages to get them down. The supposed good AA just tickles the CVs you are most likely to meet (Malta, Nakhimov, Super-CVs), Subs have fun with you because they actually outmaneuver you und you do not get ASW-planes until T10. And even the torps are not that good as they seem to be easily dodged. They just look good in the range/damage department but slow and easily spotted makes them quite useless in reality. I love the other jap. line but this one i can not get used to. Currently grinding the T9, its an extra pain with T9 matchmaker. Will probably not touch the line again after that because it is unenjoyable and offers nothing that other ships do not do (much) better. Maybe Unicums can make it work - but then, why would they bother when they are even more effective in actually good ships.

I also used to prefer Azuma. If you are comfortable with the "sit at range and spam HE" playstyle it is a very relaxing ship to play. AP is also nasty if you catch a broadside. The hull is not that great but the guns are very, very nice. And one does not feel the itch of the japanese cruiser curse ("Must...show...broadside...because...torps!"). Problem with T9 (as i have stated multiple times before) is that it currently combines everything that is wrong with the game without adequate means of dealing with it. Subs, Nakhimovs, superships and super-CVs simply suck the fun out of it. The Yoshino at least has a fighting chance in that situation. The better T9 earnings mean nothing if you are dead faster than the T10. And the gameplay is similar enough that i go Yoshino now every time i get the japanese cruiser urge.

There should be a symbol to the left of the pricetag in the premium shop on all items the coupon is good for. I assume they want us to use it with either ships or (santa) container bundles. So you are supposed to buy something that you would not really buy without the coupon on the off-chance that you get something good in a container. To which i quote Melanie Bronson: "I'm almost done... resist. This is bigger than my little life, the lives of my men and the lives of the people I was forced to kill. Resist. Humanity demands it! Resist!"

No. I actually wanted to spend some money on gaming for the holydays and, lets be honest, with the way Europe goes we might not have that much to spend next year. But opening my free MegaMegaMega Satan crates with the assorted useless and downright insulting junk in them I see no reason to waste money to get 1 (one!) more of them. Especially since i get another 5 anyways if i can stomach to finish the battlepass. So i got myself Wasteland 3 Colorado Edition, Tyranny Gold Edition, the old Westwood Blade Runner Adventure and other good old games. Will probably get more fun and more playtime out of them than out of any ship (for less money btw) and i can play them on a laptop during blackouts because they need no internet tube thingies.

Best idea is probably to play ranked for the T5 ships (that one probably has enough of) thus getting some additional base xp and with that vouchers for ships that one does not want to play (e.g. most tech tree T9s or CVs in my case) and gaining some extra steel and dubs if proficient enough to win. And ranked is also faster and more fun than random matches. T6/7/8 can be done in random because that is still (some) fun. Afterwards one should have enough vouchers to get the flakes from the ships one has not played.

My Mega-Container luck holds up: 2500 Dubs and 4x 20 blue eco bonuses. Well, at least the Battlepass is free and i can therefore look forward to another 100 blue eco-bonuses from the 5 additional Megas at the end. Or maybe i get really lucky and get some camos.