TheCinC

Completely agree. The dockyard, the building process, fantastic. Hope they put a vid online of the complete animation once the ship is done. But the mission? Completely FUBAR. I've spent a bit more time than usual grinding and I can't even get through the second objective. So unless something changes, I'll end up at stage 14 out of.. 36.. Who the eff creates 36 stages? While playing, I am only reminded by how this game fails at so many levels, making me even less motivated to grind. In order to get objectives done, I need to compete with my teammates, not play together. So even coop becomes a suicidal rush to get as many kills as quickly as possible. Coop is over before you're started, while working together in random is next to non existent, unless you're playing with clan mates or something. Honestly, I'd like the game a lot better if it just had good multi player, like a fully functional training room where I can play with and against all the premium ships I have, with bots that could actually fight their way out of a paper bag. Especially if there was something like operations in a single player mode. But grinding my way through a game that is currently more frustrating than fun, in order to get a knock-off of a ship I already own, never mind pay for it? Yeah, nah. I really don't get why Wargaming is completely missing all this, notoriously bad at anticipating completely predictable things like this. At this time, my main problems are with the lack of team play, the lack of balance, the amount of grinding involved to achieve or unlock anything, in that order. And I don't see any improvement in sight, they think CV gameplay is 'fine'. Sure it is.

I hope that submarines will be a success in their separate game mode and then the CVs will go the same way. They just can't be properly balanced, they are inherently OP. That is the whole history of WW2 at sea in a nutshell, so it's no wonder it works the same way in this game.

I did the math and am probably not going to get anywhere near. This is yet another huge grind and I already have Alaska. I might have found the time, but, why? There are so many more other things I could do. Now if I really enjoyed the game, sure, then it wouldn't be too bad, but unfortunately it is hardly ever fun for more than a few matches before it becomes frustrating and/or repetitive. Worst part is, this is by design and therefore not going away. They want it to be a grind, so you have to play a lot. They want quick games, so you can play a lot, but for which you need consumables. They want you to spend money to make the grind easier. But I for one am convinced they could make the game a lot more fun and be hugely profitable at the same time.

Just checked in-game. With upgrades, my Moskva radar has 12 km range and lasts for 36 seconds. More than enough for his teammates to nuke a DD. But no, that is not the problem. The problem is a death by a thousand cuts. Sure, some players are exceptionally good, rarely make mistakes, and have a unicum winrate. Congrats. But for all the rest of us, the game is a mess if you want to play DD. It used to be that a DDs small health pool was compensated for by stealth. But that is no longer the case. No matter what you do, no matter how careful you are, you can always be spotted. By a radar cruiser hiding behind an island, making it impossible to counter, while his teammates shoot at you from every direction as you struggle to withdraw. By German hydro making you visible from 6 km distant, simultaneously making your torpedoes useless. By CVs which can just spam aircraft at you (just played some low tier games for the first time in ages and holy crap, talk about being infested by CVs.. 2 enemy CVs is just too much!) and either attack you with difficult to avoid rockets or just keep you spotted while his teammates shoot you to pieces.. Meanwhile, the DD is still the go-to ship to cap, but too few people want to support them, too many people are too greedy and try to take down the enemy BB, ignoring the enemy radar cruiser, even if you repeatedly ask them to shoot it before its cooldown is over.. So yes, DDs are difficult to play for most of us, and much less fun than they used to be, radar being just one of the problems. Saying there is no problem, isn't helpful. And if you do know how to deal with all of this, then please, share your insight, so maybe the next time a DD has to face all of this, the guy on your team can benefit from what you've learned. But to me, all this means is that games get ever more lopsided and ever more passive. All these changes mean passive gameplay works, whereas more aggressive moves and capping are punished. Which means this game is getting further and further from real naval warfare, not that it ever was anything close. I do not see this as a positive development.

Basically, yet I see (mostly BBs) yelling for AA support.. Which is impossible and they themselves have some of the best AA in the game and they control whether they're alongside other ships. All the CV has now is a fighter consumable that can be 'dropped' on the location where a squadron currently is. All I've seen of that, is that it is fairly ineffective. Again, it might blunt an attack somewhat, but not much, and no CV player is going to hang around in the area covered if it is not needed..

Again, some good responses in this thread. I am not here to gripe about anyone else's play, I know far too well I can do better too. What I'd like to do is get people to think about what they can do to improve things.. How can we work together better? Are there things that non-DD players need to know? And, just putting this out there, do you guys think that rewards for teamplay are enough? I had a game where all I was able to do was cap and spot. Got one of our two caps, got over 160 k in spotting dmg, including the enemy CV, as I pushed into their rear as they were fleeing before us.. Torping from behind doesn't work, opening fire with guns without smoke would mean they could just blap me, smoking up would be pointless without someone else spotting. I ended up dead last in that game, didn't seem fair to me.. This also points to the problem that there's little incentive to go cap. Cap, they know you're there and run you down, if they even need to do anything other than turn radar on. It is risky, yet essential. I've previously floated the idea of rewards for how close you are to teammates, how close you are to a cap, for hitting a target that was pointed out by an ally.. I'm also thinking about a system for voting for strategies, and the game then taking into account how well people are working together to get those caps. Think something like that'd work? Because it seems to me that the game would, kind of, need to force people to work together. Thoughts?

When I opened this thread and read the OP, I was afraid of what would ensue, but I am happy to say there are so many good remarks here.. I really do wonder how many people who don't regularly play DDs understand how hard it is and what THEY can do to help out.. So let's put in my two cents.. Okay, knowing me, my two euros.. DD main here. Admittedly, statswise, I am a very average player. But I used to love DDs and still have warm feelings for them. I recently took a long break, after the CV rework, but I came back and am now contemplating taking another long break, it is just getting to me too much. Having been here since the Closed Beta, I've seen the DD die by a thousand cuts. Meanwhile, BBs have almost consistently been buffed, CVs have been made easier to play, cruisers have also been buffed in some ways, although not enough to compensate for the hilariously vulnerable citadels. Need I explain? DDs used to have stealth, that was their feature. But now you have CVs that can send squadron after squadron, almost no time in between, to keep you spotted and attack you with rockets and dive bombers. My counter? I have tried to AA spec my Gearing, which I was doing pretty well in. But I've been paying attention and even if I shoot down 14-16 planes in one attack, mostly AFTER they hit me, so I still lose about 1/3rd of my HP, while spotted, with enemy cruisers licking their chops to get at me, if they aren't already. So that is pointless, while reducing my firepower and other advantages, because captain skills come at a cost. In the early days there were time you could slip through the enemy team, get in their rear and torp their CV out of nowhere. That doesn't really happen any more. Some BBs and CAs have gotten radar and hydro, as well as the option of detecting torpedoes sooner. Torpedoes are now the main weapon of even a gun cruiser, provided they have them, because they can be used stealthily, without announcing your own position, giving you a chance to hit hard and slip away. But long range torps are often slow and radar ranges are, wait for it, about equal to a gun DDs (effective) gun range. Also, BBs have secondaries that (almost) outrange a DD's main guns, especially on GK, which is just absurd. So, without saying that BBs and CAs are OP, I don't wanna go there, DDs are in the unfortunate position that they've been hit with the nerfbat left, right and sideways and played well, ANY class can counter them. Just about EVERYTHING can easily kill you, while even torps at short range can often be dodged by a player who knows what they're doing. So what point is there to playing DDs? It is still fun when it works, plus I just love the plucky little ships. But the amount of abuse you get.. in my case, often about my stats, which are, admittedly, not very impressive. (But then, I've been playing since CBT, have played almost every ship in the game, have played mostly with captains that were well below 19 points, etcetera, etcetera. Nevertheless, I try my best.) But the lack of support.. One of my most successful topics is the one which started off with me wondering why people insist on the AC split. To me, the disadvantage is obvious. On maps where A and C are on opposite sites of the map, you can't support each other. Whenever I point this out and ask for either AB or BC, I almost invariably get abuse. Last evening, a guy in Mino suicided by trying to rambo half the enemy team at A, while I was left with no support in B and after capping it I was immediately set upon by a radar cruiser and died instantly. Instead of defending the B cap and dealing with everything pushing in, as we should have, most of the team was left in the C cap and we ended up losing very, very badly, despite the best effort of some to turn things around. This, to me, are two elemental mistakes and I see it over and over and over again and I am, quite frankly, sick of it. 1) Not moving in such a way that you are at least in contact with the other team members, which especially BBs should easily be able to do 2) Either getting too invested in whichever cap you yourself are going for, even if you are getting nowhere because half the enemy team is opposing you, or not pivoting when getting a cap and helping gain/defend a second cap Unfortunately, the infamous AC split happens all the time and some of the time it works, so people think: hey, it can work, so no need to avoid it. So that is one thing you have to deal with as a DD player. You fight, defeat the enemy DD in the cap, hopefully with support, cap, look around to decide where else to go and you team is failing miserably unsupported at the other side of the map, leaving you with a struggle uphill. Try to adjust as a DD to an alternate cap to be closer to the rest of your team? Get abuse, hardly anyone follows you, your team dies because they have no DD spotting and you get cornered and die too. Try to even discuss a strategy? Most often, no one joins in, or people intentionally, often after hurling abuse at you, do the exact opposite. ABC is about as bad as AC, it dilutes your forces too much, meaning you're at a disadvantage everywhere, so unless your lucky and/or some of your teammates really skilled, the other team has an early advantage in firepower at two caps and wins. To me, it seems obvious that DDs need support, so the team must go with them, but also DDs need to avoid the AC split or ABC (I am sorry to say there are many DD players who apparently disagree). Instead, too often, you think you have support, but the attention of your teammates is on that BB that will heal up, instead of the briefly spotted DD or radar cruiser that absolutely MUST DIE INSTANTLY in order to be able to secure the cap. Aside from CVs, which can hit you over and over and over again, while keeping you spotted so the entire enemy team can dump all over you, radar cruisers are a huge pain too. Too often, a radar cruiser installs itself on the other side of an island, on the edge of a cap. Unassailable until a flank is turned and even then, often able to just backtrack a little more. A skillful player in a radar cruiser can very effectively deny a cap for often a very long time. Which is why I point out radar cruisers when they are spotted making their way to such a spot, hoping for an instant and devastating volley from my allied BBs and CAs. Unfortunately, all too often, that doesn't happen. So, basically, as a DD player, you're often at a huge disadvantage. No support, attacked by things you can't counter, focused by half the enemy team, smallest health pool.. So yes, one little mistake and you're toast. Fun. And then, of course, the failure of the team is on you. I keep trying to improve my play. Try not to take necessary risks, without being overly cautious and out of action for too long. I try to torpedo and spot early on, cap if the opportunity presents itself, but otherwise stay alive, because a live DD can still be useful, all you need is 1 hp, everything else is superfluous. But it is not easy, being a DD. So please, try to look at what you can do.. Follow your DD and don't go to the opposite side of the map, deal with the radar cruiser, with the DD that just popped up, especially if your DD is asking for that kind of support. As a radar cruiser, use your radar when you see a cap being taken and you know you and/or others can hit the DD in the cap, instead of wasting your radar when no one can shoot it. Don't let enemy radar cruisers position themselves so they can't be dislodged. As for CVs however, at this point, I really do wonder if we wouldn't be better off putting them in a different game mode, just as is intended for the subs. That way you don't have to waste point and modules speccing for AA.

Same.. seems like the server is down..

I submitted a proper bug report but wanted to share the images of this, as I don't see it mentioned anywhere yet. I tried to do a training room battle with Mogador against Bismarck and won the instant battle started. Re-starting the battle resulted in the following pictures, where you can see a Bismarck spawned on top of a mountain, crashing into it and instantly losing all its HP. Was Bismarck trying to prepare for climbing Mount Everest? Is this an attempt to create an instant Siegfried line? Are the Germans so demoralized they are destroying their own ships before they can be captured? We report, you decide!

So far all my experience of HNLMS Friesland comes from torpedoing both the examples that I encountered on the other team (on two separate occasions) with my Harugumo's torps.. But I met @WG_Lumberjack today and we talked about the ship for a bit, as a result I am now considering buying her and taking my chances.. Past few games with Haru were disastrous, in part as teams keep going AC despite a certain topic on these here forums.. So if I end up losing anyway, might do so with a Dutch ship at least, right? I still fear she'll be above my skill level (not that much needed for that), but still..

Curses.. As is unfortunately too common I was a bit late due to problems with the train, so I missed that.. Nevertheless I had a great time, and had the opportunity to talk to both @Crysantos and @WG_Lumberjack as well as a few members of the panel. Having no actual navy experience myself and having obtained my knowledge almost exclusively through books and such, I certainly got some new tidbits of information from the perspective of actual naval members. Sergei, if I got that right, was also very nice, I would love to see/hear more of him and his team. He mentioned a stream in the near future? The goody bag got me a Prinz Eitel Friedrich too, so that is also pretty cool. Gratis! Due to circumstances I ended up rushing through the museum a bit, but I did get too see the highlights. As for the aforementioned question, I for one don't mind the mix up, I always like being right and otherwise I would have been happy having learned something new anyway. Sadly I was not lucky in the draw for the tour of the naval base itself, perhaps someone who went on the tour can post about that? P.S. @WG_Lumberjack I'll reconsider my position on the Friesland. She was already pretty dear to me, but given what your advice on how to play her, maybe I will give her a shot. Need to have a talk with my wallet about that.. Good luck with future events!

@WG_Lumberjack@Crysantos Any idea when we will receive information about the tour? I can't find the original information any more but entry was closed last Saturday.. Now I don't know if I need to keep checking my e-mail or don't have to bother any more..

So you're saying Friesland is here too soon? Damn us Dutchies being ahead of our time.. But yeah, excellent point..

It is not on sale, it is for sale.. Wow.. that price.. I actually have a little booklet on this class and its sister class and am kinda fond of them. But that price gives me pause.. Don't they know us Dutchies are often considered to be very prudent with our money? I have shelled out a lot of money on this game, but I really do fear Friesland will be a very difficult ship to play right. I am pretty sure Khaba will eat Friesland for breakfast, just that much more firepower and a heal, and torps. I'll stick with my Harugumo for now, but I do want this ship in my port someday.. presumably to mostly stay there.. Sadly, if it doesn't sell well, the next Dutch ship will probably be delayed, but that is also not a great argument for buying her.. If only it'd be 10% to 20% off, with a coupon or something, but I don't have any.. Such an odd choice.. WW2 era De Ruyter would've made more sense.. Flagship of Karel Doorman at the Battle of the Java Sea to boot.. (pun intended for Dutchies) That ships is so famous it'd be worth the price at tier VI and it'd definitely be a joy to play.

Exactly! That question baffled me, using several sources at my disposal. The only reason I went for 10:43 was that all the other times made even less sense as they were most certainly too late. I started wondering if 18:13 was 'Tokyo time' or something.. but that seems to be 1.5 hours later than 'local time' as used in several chronologies so that doesn't match either.. Some of the first moves take place around that 10:43, including a message from Helfrich to keep going, but so far, no firm source on why that time would be relevant, and it's so exact.. Half the times in any of the chronologies are guesstimates due to logs being lost and such. Aniway, I am pleased to say I got all the questions right, except, somehow, my nickname.. but I guess that's impossible to process properly and just required for input. My honour as a historian is safe! @WG_Lumberjack @Crysantos I would still like to propose that the question about the start time of the battle not be counted, so more people will be eligible, unless it can be stated with certainty that 10:43 is somehow the correct time. Maybe there's some new research on this front? If so, please share this information with us after August 4th! And looking forward to seeing you there!