eliastion

Well, I'll be playing but I don't really see myself getting there... top 100 in any category on EU server is not something that can happen (without botting or treating the game as a full-time job at least), the base grind... well, kinda likewise. I'll see how it goes in practice but I have little hope. Maybe if such heavy grind was needed for a week, I'm the kind of player who naturally fluctuates between playing very little to playing really hard for a couple days in a row. But this here requires 3 weeks of playing hard... And can't even be made up for by playing even harder for just 2... Oh, well. There were other ways to get some pearls so it's not impossible that there will be some giveaways somewhere of coins too. Or maybe some special missions awarding coins instead/in addition to other rewards. OR we might see a nasty cash grab in the end - imagine a premium shop bundle with coins inside Although that would probably raise another sh*tstorm about "so in the end Kamikaze CAN be just bought for money"...

Well, the speed boost upgrade is, actually, decent - it's not a big buff and not even useful for all ships capable of equipping it, but if I fail to collect the coins for Kamikaze (the grind is out of this earth...) I might actually consider picking up that one... the price (in coins) for upgrades is much too big for their usefulness BUT I feel WG at least did one thing right here: rather than pushing upgrades on everyone or randomly cheating people out of proper rewards they thought they already won (you know, the problem of SC being full of this junk), this time they actually let you pick the (only) one you might actually want. I feel that's the only reasonable way to award these pieces of rubbish Although for this price in coins you should be getting x3 packages at least...

Well, the construction of the event, current state of the competition and the ability to extrapolate strongly suggest that the results were decided within the first hour of the event. Wanna have a small wager? Well, not really wager since there's nothing to gamble with, but let's make a bet for the sake of knowing which of us was right or wrong. My bet is: EU server - fire AEA - fire NA - water RU - fire That's my bet and I feel pretty safe about it (unless there will be some team shuffling between rounds). If I wanted to go a bit more risky, I could up my prediction: I'm pretty sure that all victors will have a clean victory (3:0 in rounds) and probably by a very wide margin in each round. Frankly, I'd like to be proven wrong here since the scenario I predict is pretty damn boring. I don't have much hope, however. The event promotes being on the winning team while having your preferred team win gives you almost nothing nothing (compared to winning with the less preferred one) - so people who care (and these are going to play more, on average) are going to go for the team on the lead. This will result in the team being more numerous AND filled with people who care - and play - more. I'd be REALLY surprised to see any comeback from the initially disadvantaged team on any of the servers. Not with how this event is constructed.

Actually it's pretty useless, then. If it were +100% xp AND +100% free xp then yes, but like that it's actually much worse than the "typical" premium camo. +100% XP does affect free XP. +100% free XP stacks multiplicatively with 1st win and the XP flag... Then again, normal premium camo stacks multiplicatively with papa papa. So, while a bonus is a bonus, it's not on par with normal premium camos...

Well, if that was the case, balancing the teams would be impossible... However, imagine if rewards are different: a situation where you don't compete against the other team to get REWARDS but rather to CHANGE something about the global (well, server-wide) rewards! Imagine, say, an event where the reward was some permanent camo for something (you know, like the stages of Christmas Convoys) or even Kamikaze with special camo. Only there's a catch: you don't get to pick which element. If the server has Water as the winning element - it's a Water server and everyone gets Water thingies (and Fire ones would be for sale or otherwise in more limited supply for those who really want them). the same the other way around, of course: if Fire wins - well, guess we have a Fire server and flame-themed rewards are what we're given for participation. It would be so cool. It would actually make people pick what they WANT rather than what they think will win - because they don't lose on anything for picking the wrong team. They can still try, and probably fail, but their rewards wouldn't be diminished - since their goal isn't "to be on winning team" but rather "to make the team they want to win victorious". If they fail? Well, they still get the rewards, only not the exact kind they wanted since the winners decided on the other elemental theme.

How could they POSSIBLY f*ck things up to the extent of SHOWING ON REGISTERING PAGE the current score!? I mean, seriously, way to go to make it obvious for people which team has advantage on every server so that newcomers get to pick either the designated loser of the event for the server or to feel bottlenecked because they know what team they need to join but can't. And it could've been so easily avoided by doing just two things: not showing scores and providing some small (idk, 10 camos or something?) reward for joining the other team if one is overbooked...

Well, that's easy. Cruisers are perfectly capable of pulling their weight even in average players' hands - as long as the class ratios are healthy. Basically, it's a feedback loop - too many BBs make cruiser play frustrating, leading to less cruisers and more BBs... EU suffered when KM BBs appeared - they were powerful and new, and fun... They became popular and disaster happened: we reached the critical mass of BBs. There were too many BBs to play cruisers comfortably, so people started playing less cruisers. Less cruisers meant more BBs because DDs kinda play their own game so even if there's a lot of them, they tend to kill each other at the start and by early mid-game you rarely end up with more than 2-3 per side surviving. BBs on the other hand mostly survive long and mostly shoot on cruisers first, given the choice. Once critical mass was reached, there was little that could be done to go back - even as the new BBs ceased being new, going back to cruisers wasn't really an option, because there were so many BBs around. Aaand, sinc people didn't go back to cruisers, there continued to be mostly BBs everywhere. That's why hard BB cap would be a good thing to do: assuming BBs are balanced (or at least not terribly out of balanced) the BB cap would force healthy class ratio, promoting cruiser play. After some time the cap could actually be softened or even go away, probably, because the main reason for people not playing cruisers now is the fact that OTHER people don't play cruisers. Artificially created situation where cruisers appear more common than they actually are would most likely lead to them REALLY becoming much more popular.

Well, apparently it indeed is hard, seeing how you mixed up the time given for event-related micro-patch (15:00 CEST two days ago, April 11) and the time for "more info" about the event (only date explicitly given)

Your calculation isn't correct. Yes, if you add BBs to the queue without extracting them, the queue will grow but not as much as you think - it policies itself because you - can play cruisers more comfortably, hence more cruisers - can get a match quicker in something else than BB (if the queue really grows so big that the queue time is a noticeable discomfort) - WILL get a almost-only-BB match once in a while if the queue REALLY grows (remember the ensured "get a match in 5 minutes" rule for Randoms?) As for BB buff - you claim that BBs would become more popular. But how, really? Who would flock to them? - current DD players who apparently prefer fast, stealthy ships despite BBs being comfortable and deadly? If someone mostly plays DDs in the current state of the game, it's most likely because he doesn't really like BBs that much. - current cruiser players who stick to the class against all odds? Why would they leave if their preferred class suddenly starts to face its peers and DDs rather than BBs? - CVs? Well, maybe, but they're completely negligible in size as a player group. Yes, BBs would become more comfortable to play too, but there just doesn't seem to be any player "demographic" in current meta that is likely to provide many recruits to the BB army.

Wait, I think you're going overboard here - isn't the module sale value more than the cost of 20 non-premium camos?

Let me enlighten you then as to how you're wrong (it's not just you who makes this mistake, however ;) ). When you put a hard cap on BBs, what happens with all of the points you highlighted, when it comes to cruisers (the heavily under-populated class atm)? 1. Cruisers are supposed to be mid-size ships. The ones you sail when you want a big ship but also prefer to be reasonably fast and nimble rather than slow and tanky. But that's not how they feel currently - outnumbered by BBs, cruisers feel TINY. I love cruisers. Or used to. I think my first t8 was actually in an IJN cruiser line. But more and more BBs sucked out the fun of the class for me. I was forced into passive, cautious play where 95% of my attention is on how not to die to hordes of better armed and armored enemies without being completely useless. I still can pull off good cruiser games, lately I even dusted off my Mogami a bit but really? Well, Atago is somewhat fun. But it's still really stressful, mainly due to the number of BBs. But let's imagine if there were much less BBs. A 3BB/match cap. Suddenly cruisers are BIG again. They can slug it off with other cruisers. They can inflict hurt on small DDs. Yes, they need to be wary of these couple BBs but that just requires you to be mindful of where the BBs lurk - because they're no longer EVERYWHERE. 2. Cruisers don't have as big guns as BBs are but, again: they have guns that can wreck small DDs and citadel other cruisers. Neither of the two works when there's so many BBs that you can't really get close. Result? The guns, once again, feel tiny as you're mostly relegated to setting fires from afar. So, basically, gunboat DD things. Your guns make a bit more noise and reload a bit longer but they still feel tiny. 3. Cruisers currently are very hard to play because every mistake is punished so hard - and often as much as getting too close to the fight is such a mistake because you can't angle against BBs that are everywhere (and then there are lolpens). My personal experience seems to suggest cruisers to be the hardest to play, requiring the most concentration. Sure, you can get deleted in a DD if you make a blunder and it's not like I never died like a noob to a bunch of torps in my INDEXCRUDZDIBLE BUBBLESOUP - but making a mistake in the cruiser is much easier and the punishment for that tends to come more consistently So, to respond to your conclusion - making BB numbers per battle limited WOULD in fact bring forth following changes: - cruisers would become subjectively bigger (compared to what they mostly fight) - cruiser guns would become subjectively bigger (compared to what they mostly fight) - playing cruisers would be objectively easier It would be pretty natural for cruisers to become more popular. Yes, the BB wait times would increase, especially at the very beginning, but I'm pretty sure that the change would actually make cruisers objectively more popular, because their gameplay experience would be just so much more pleasant. Not because they would be stronger against BBs, but because they wouldn't be facing the critical BB mass they need to deal with now.

These tiers are a pain as far as the matchmaking goes but it should also be noted that WoWs is nowhere near WoT as far as tier problems are concerned. Basically, most ships punch up reasonably well. Your guns still hurt them (a lot) and they still don't just obliterate you. So... basically, as long as you avoid fair fights where you just end up slugging it out with a similar ship of higher tier - you should be ok. A US DD should still be a deadly threat to IJN DD that outtiers him. A BB can still deliver devastating blows to enemy cruisers of higher tier. An IJN DD at t5 can invisitorp and while premium t7 cruisers with Radar are a big pain in the stern - and they're not THAT common. Basically, pick your fight and you should do ok. Which, in fact, isn't THAT different to playing normally since even as top tier you don't want to get caught 1v2, for example. I know my advice doesn't sound very convincing, but frankly, I'd just advise to, well, deal with it. You won't be the biggest ship in the pond when bottom tier, but at t5 you shouldn't be impotent either. There's no such thing as "a ship I just can't seem to be able to hurt" in WoWs and - with the exception of planes and AA scaling - the game lets bottom tiers have their fun. And there's plenty broadside-sailing noobs to target (on enemy team) and draw fire away from you (on your team)

As for upgrades as prizes - well, it depends how many and for what missions. Each upgrade is over 600k credits. And the speedboost one might actually have other uses than being a credits voucher. I mean, I pretty much swim in credits personally but that's mostly because I happened to do a full R1 ranked run in Błyskawica in... I think it was season 2. AND I also enjoy playing lower tiers from time to time. But I've heard many people find themselves short on credits from time to time - to them a couple million silver might be a nice boost to their account balance. Even if the credits were to come in the ugly package of useless pseudo-upgrades. PS: Also, on another note, I'm happy if the event proves to be a reasonable way to get my hands on Kamikaze R, the ship looks nice and I couldn't really take part in Project R event (save for the last week or so)

Well, I'd like to disagree on that, though. DDs at the very least should definitely keep spawning in front.

No, there won't. The devs were VERY clear about this.

The two mentioned are still ok-ish despite strange patterns and color choices. But then there is one of the most common premium camos: the dreaded prison stripe Ocean Soul Now THAT stuff is ugly.

No, he's right in a way. Imagine if they took main batteries from Bismarck - to get consistently good results you'd need to be one hell of a player to position yourself in a way that lets you contribute at all. So yes, in a way any unreasonable nerf - even one that takes out skill-dependent parts of gameplay while leaving pure RNG ones - does make it so that you need more skill to perform...

Technically it's possible - and not only on DD but on literally any ship. You need: 1. An enemy sailing towards you 2. An ability to stay just outside your main battery range from him Now, shells take some time to fly (sometimes quite a lot of time, really) and to hit someone you need to land them in the place where he WILL be when they get there. So, basically, you can hit people who are outside your gun range (if they're sailing towards you) and since your spotting range when firing = your gun range, you technically can fire and hit someone on open water without getting spotted by him. This is, of course, pretty useless in practice but it's technically possible.

Yes, flooding is frustrating like hell. How many times have I seen end results with 5+ floodings and 0 damage? So, I have a better idea about how to make current flooding mechanics less frustrating. Reduce the damage done by flooding to 1/2 of current value but make it so that damage control party only limits the damage by another 1/2 (to a total of 1/4 of current damage per tick) rather than plugging the leak completely. Imagine, severely reduced but much more consistent damage that allows you to always get some damage from your hard-earned flooding

If you feel stupid for reinstalling the game, imagine how WG must feel - they implemented this "feature".

Yes, that's the point I have a problem with. Not because of this particular buff but because the reasoning for why it's ok seems flawed. I mean, WG says that this buff doesn't affect cross-class balance, only the balance among BBs and that seems true on the surface - non-BBs citadeling BBs don't really happen. What they miss, however, is the fact that they're buffing survivability of a BB. Meaning: making it even harder to sing a BB as opposed to sinking a ship of another class, meaning that BBs will be a little tiny bit safer and a little tiny bit better off focusing their attention on non-BB threats. This once again makes the game even easier and more forgiving for BBs and even harder for cruisers. Which is not the direction of changes we need! And in case the above is unclear, let me give the two absolute extremes of the "inter-class balance" to show how it affects the game: 1. Imagine a situation where BB shells can't score penetrations on other BBs. They either shatter on hull or overpen the superstructure. It would only affect BB vs BB combat but the ramifications for other classes would be obvious, namely: BBs would pretty much never shoot at other BBs with ANYTHING other to shoot at. They'd also have no fear of showing broadside whatsoever - eaning that they would be able to bring all their firepower to bear in most cases... 2. The opposite of the above: every BB-caliber shell hitting a BB is either a penetration or citadel, overpens, bounces and shatters don't happen. Oh, and as a special rule - penetrations in BBvsBB fight deal 50% citadel damage rather than 30%. Once again, this only messes up BBvsBB fight but the changes to overal balance and meta are pretty obvious: BBs are DEADLY to each other, meaning that enemy BB is always the priority target over everything else - because he's just so easy to hurt plenty AND can hurt you so much in return. Despite BB performance against the other classes not being touched, suddenly both cruisers and DDs have much more breathing space because BBs just have bigger fish to fry trying to delete enemy BBs before they themselves get deleted. Of course, the above two scenarios are reallly, REALLY extreme but they show one general point: the way ships of one class interact with each other DOES change the way they interact with other classes. There were, in fact, situations where big changes were made to that and with considerable impact on the whole game - remember when higher tier CVs got their defensive fire, pretty much removing the CV sniping? That actually happened: a change that only affected one class but by doing so made them seek targets of other classes (because a one-sortie snipes became pretty much impossible).

Well, one of the teams melting is, actually, the expected outcome of battle of ships shooting at each other at long ranges. Let's simplify things (a lot) and imagine that all ship are identical. So, initially you have forces 12 vs 12. Now imagine that by better positioning, better focus fire or more luck, one side gets 2-3 kill advantage quickly. What happens? Well, the initial 12v12 becomes, say, 10v8. Now, even assuming it was just luck (rather than advantage gained through being better), what's more likely, 10 ships getting even more kills and widening the gap or 8 ships getting back on more numerous enemy? And its usually not a full 12vs12 really, the steamroll usually starts at one flank where there's say, 5v5 initially. If 2 die and it becomes 5v3, there's a big chance these 3 are going to have serious trouble as much as retreating in time too. Basically, even with perfectly matched teams, a landslide victory is nothing strange, really.

That's interesting... Still, they might just create an IJN Premium, the "normal" Kagero Clone that would be what Atago is to Takao. They might not even sell it for now - just stuff it into the game assets.

Well, mission accomplished, then. As long as you (and some other people) buy them, WG couldn't care less

So, most likely we'll just see a not-that-good ship that neither looks really unique nor offers anything special (probably "benefits" that make them premiums without extra income or training capability for other nations). Basically, history nerds will still much prefer normal ships, non-IJN DD players won't enjoy one of the not-that-good ships of this line, IJN DD players either have or don't like this one and the "shiny" factor of ARP that appealed to some (even if was repulsive to others) is not there. Basically - brace for a ship noone will play after a week from the moment of acquisition. EDIT: Wait, has the Asia server announced that the ships are going to be available for purchase? It's like they finally got hints from WG EU on how to run special events