eliastion

Well, they are currently moving in a terrible direction, though. They are solving none of the real issues and nerfing CVs in ways that make one think that reducing their power is a side effect and making them unfun to play the objective rather than the opposite. Getting rid of "sixth sense" (in WoWs it was actually called "situational awareness" back when it was a skill) on planes should've been done INSTEAD of the changes to rockets and ship concealment that we're seeing - and only then, after people play a bit like that - it would make sense to ponder if some further changes are required. Instead we're getting these "further changes" that might not even be necessary while, at the same time, the main issue of "hey, a DD sees you, now scout around" remains unaddressed (and there are no plans to address it, even - they want to remove the RPF, which is a reasonable change IN CONJUNCTION with removal of situational awareness and on its own solves almost nothing). WG is out of touch with the issues at hand and either misses them completely or tries to fix them in ways that provide little improvement at big cost to CV player's enjoyment. I was still reasonably optimistic up to... today, really. But the newest hotfix pretty much buried my hopes for the rework to ever work out, even after a couple months of tweaking and even with the inevitable boost of popularity caused by RN CVs (that should keep the CV numbers up for about the next two months - first with the limited release of t4-8 and then with a full line release on 0.8.2). This is some time to work with, so I assumed they would be able to kinda-sorta reach the goal of a workable post-rework system before the hype dies completely (so that the now-working system would be able to retain some of that extra CV playerbase). But to reach such a goal you don't need only time - it's necessary to be moving roughly towards it. And as for WG... for every step forwards they make another one backwards and three in some some completely different direction on top of that.

You fail to get it, right? It is reasonably easy to turn around if you want. Making the ship go forward is relatively easy. Making it REVERSE the way you want it is the big problem. Also, even if it's possible to USUALLY get the autopilot to do what you want, you are just not informed by the game in any meaningful way about what your CV is going to do with the orders given - so you can only realize that your orders were misintepreted once the ship already starts picking up speed - enough for the movement and course correction to be visible on the (mini)map.

If I were to believe WG to be reasonable (lol), it wouldn't be picking. You'd get the effective DPS and then it would be divided between the auras according to their contribution. So, in case of identical 600 DPS auras, everyone would be counted as dealing (the effective DPS)/(number of auras) amount of damage. With non-identical auras, the contribution would be proportional to each one's DPS - so if there was an 1200 aura and a couple 600 auras, the 1200 one would be dealing twice as much damage as the 600 DPS ones. Of course, this assumes that WG's solution is going to make sense. Seeing the newest hotfix patch notes - I'd be cautious about making such bold assumptions No, it isn't simple. Press DIRECTLY behind you and yes, you probably will reverse. Press at an angle behind you, however... and you might reverse OR accelerate and start doing (close to) 180 degree turn. And the captain is not even informed about what the autopilot divined as his intention - so that he could correct the error and assign new orders, hopefully ones that would end up producing the desired outcome.

One of the most annoying things about Autopilot is that it often misinterprets your intentions between "reverse" and "turn around" when you try putting waypoints behind the ship. What's worse, it's not readily visible how the autopilot interpreted your order, because you're denied even the basic access to thrust controls, hence you don't even see that the ship started accelerating forwards when you wanted her to reverse while turning slightly. So far I've encountered this problem a couple times, twice leading directly to my hull's premature destruction. Because I was not given the opportunity to realize that my order was misinterpreted before it was too late.

"There are chances that radical solutions will not be required" The very same night we read this, there's a hotfix sending combat effectiveness of rocket planes against DDs that don't have keyboard disabled down the toilet. Actively dodging DDs are already non-trivial to hit unless approached from behind AND you already lose signt of the DD if you want to turn and line up a decent follow-up attack... And now we're seeing an air concealment buff for everything coupled with a rocket aiming nerf (probably not a subtle one if previous changes to, say, IJN torps are anything to go by). So, if these are not radical solutions, pray tell: WHAT would be considered radical? Removal of rocket planes? Removal of the ability to spot ships by planes? Removal of carriers? The problem with CV vs DD was not that rocket planes (the weapon with the sole purpose of fighting lightly armored, mobile targets) were too effective. It was also not that DDs were too visible. The problem was that they were too easy to find because of plane's built-in situational awareness. DDs counterplay to CVs shouldn't be "can't touch this" - it should be the stealth play. The ability to avoid detection in the first place. And while removing RPF plays into this, the fact is that RPF only played a secondary role - the main issue was that even with no investments, a CV always knew if the planes were spotted by something. It's ok for a DD to be vulnerable to CV once found - it's not DD's job to remain invulnerable to attacks. The way DDs avoid danger is by not being easily located. Rockets should remain powerful and dodging is effective enough right now - what we need is to remove the "something sees your planes" warning from planes so that a DD can truly sneak past and never get targeted by these rockets in the first place. Or, failing that, a DD could run away under friendly AA - and then reappear a bit later, somewhere else, and again safe due to the fact that the enemy doesn't know where to look for them rather than because the weapons system meant for hunting small, mobile targets don't do their job. PS: One more thing. We're getting flooding rework. Currently it's extremely hard to score floodings with CV torpedoes - and the only saving grace of these is that unlike a DD you can (as long as your target is alone and lacks powerful AA) reliably strike a couple times and hope for a re-applied flooding. That's basically how you deal significant damage with torpedoes currently. Flooding nerf rework is going to completely negate this advantage but there doesn't seem to be any intention to restore reasonable flooding chance for airdropped torpedoes - should we assume that as of 8.1 air dropped torpedoes are going to be relegated to a role of a weapon that has current (or, in case o Midway, 80% of the current) alpha damage while no longer being capable of supplementing that with relevant DoT damage (even consecutive strikes landing on the stern or bow, coupled with lucky flooding rolls, will cause something roughly comparable to a single fire for BBs and not even that for cruisers)?

My experience with Mino is that CURRENTLY if I happen to meet a Mino on head-on course (planes flying towards Mino, Mino steaming towards planes) and I start turning away immediately as I see the enemy, my planes still dip into the AA long enough that I can count on (depending on plane type) about half of the squadron being yellow by the time I get away from AA range. This is, of course, the worst-case scenario ("collision course" encounter, so to speak), but that's without Mino being capable of stealth-spotting: Mino has enough AA and is stealthy enough that, unless there's some lone, low-AA target, I need to F the entire squadron as a price for just spotting her (under unfavorable circumstances where the ship and planes are going more or less straight at each other, but still). Now imagine the same situation but with Mino being stealthy enough to start shooting before I see her... And THEN imagine this when flying t8 planes instead of t10 ones

DD is given the initiative due to the overwhelming advantage held by BB in raw power. DDs can't - and shouldn't - fight fair against BBs. They are supposed to be the pest that BBs have trouble dealing with. It doesn't work if they can just off-handedly wreck them with the same weapon they use on everything else.

Well I have to disagree with you regarding the AA cruisers not needing an AA buff. because they did need an AA buff. We aren't dealing with pre-rework stuff for close to three weeks now, however. Why the hell would I be taking that as the status quo when talking about buffing or nerfing things? Well, I'm basing my claim on what I saw in some Youtube videos (and "destroyed by bomb" reports popping up when playing against a Midway). Sure they were harder to aim than rockets but not THAT hard and - unlike rockets - they hit like a truck. This might be related to the plane speed - lower tier planes took much longer to fly around a fighter patrol zone. What's more - t4 CVs actually don't have plane-dropped fighters in the first place? So rather than a nerf to them, it would be a nerf to ships relying on floatplane fighters for AA (well, not with the other changes included, since "relying on fighters for AA" was a pretty funny idea before and now they might actually protect you, even if the patrol range is a bit claustrophobic). Well, I struggled to keep playing Haku with un-fun torpedoes so I'll probably give it a shot with nerfed rockets as well... but adding the issue of Minotaurs invisible until I'm deep within their AA, I wonder how long I'm going to stick.

That was only true before the first hotfix, though. Post hotfix Midway's torps were actually better handling than Haku's.

And what's wrong about this? DDs aren't a class to engage in fair artillery duels with BBs. If a BB isn't prepared to fire at a DD and doesn't have the time to switch ammo, why should it be rewarded with penetrations of the high-alpha ammunition? You're literally complaining that a BB counter is hard to kill for BBs if they don't prepare the right ammo in advance...

Mostly the wrong problems and/or addressed in wrong ways. Every hotfix I'm more doubtful of WG's ability to balance anything about CVs... 1. It wasn't rockets that were too powerful against DDs. It was the situational awareness on planes. It's ok for DDs to be easy to kill with dedicated weaponry - they should be hard to FIND. And that is actually not solved by better concealment - this particular change strengthens AA cruisers (that actually didn't need it), not DDs. DDs will still be located based on "early warning system" in the form of "hey, something sees your planes". Also, the bigger, less maneuverable DDs remain just as screwed as they were against both rockets and HE bombs - and they weren't exactly in a good position compared to the ones that trun better to begin with 2. The weapon that actually was excessively powerful against DDs was HE bombs, a weapon system that's NOT supposed to be an anti-DD one. And yet they remain unchanged despite dealing tons of damage to the ship class that shouldn't be the primary target... 3. Nerfs focusing on making CVs more annoying to play rather than less powerful are a bad idea. Well, Midway gets torpedo damage nerf rather than even worse handling, so I guess there actually is a bit of improvement compared to how they were nerfing Hakuryu. Then again, WG keeps balancing by meddling with the already low flooding chance despite the fact that in a week we're getting flooding nerfed to the ground reworked, so any balancing around flooding chance is going to have to be revisited anyway (for both planes and DDs) 4. Fighters really needed the buff to target acquisition and speed... so that would be a good change. However, instead of just fixing that and looking what happens, WG combines that with patrol radius buff AND making them more numerous. Fine tuning with a sledgehammer - WG's specialty To sum it up: a bad patch that doesn't solve the core issues and even when it does touched on needed changes, it introduces them in an extremely heavy-handed manner that is more likely to cause new problems rather than actually balance things.

Errm. Nope. They can't get normal pens from most BBs unless they are using the ammo that's supposed to be the kind to be used against lightly armored targets. A CV initially basically scans (only) the approach to caps. There are a couple reasons for this: 1. While looking for DDs you get some general info about enemy fleets movements (namely: are they lemmingtraining and if so - in what direction) 2. There is nothing else to do when every enemy is at full AA capacity and the idiots didn't yet have time to get themselves isolated. 3. Looking elsewhere takes a lot of time for little reward since lack of spotted DDs might mean that they went to the side but also that they are AFK/late loaders/glued to their closest Minotaur friend 4. It's surprising how many DDs do the "full steam to the nearest cap" routine. If there are a couple DDs per side, then usually at least one gleefully leaves the safety of friendly AA to rush in the most predictable direction. Pro tip: making yourself the ONLY viable target on the map while positioning in a place where everybody would expect you to be doesn't lead to a long and happy life. Just today I met a Yugumo on Trap. He started the match by demanding in /all chat that we "stop playing these broken CVs". I mean, I understand that being in a double CV match is painful, but one would expect that if he's so frustrated by the fact that he feel the need to cry in chat, he might be playing overly cautiously, being useless by sticking to friendly AA cruisers more than necessary. That would be the kind of misplay you'd expect from someone that starts the game with such a line, right? But no, not our hero. He went and - all alone - decided to contest B. On Trap. You know, that map where B is an island-encircled, notoriously hard to withdraw from cap (even after the map changes that made it a bit less extreme) AND a CV can sit an arm's length from you, safely hidden behind the mountains surrounding the cap so that rocket planes can start attacking things inside the moment take-off sequence is over. Need I mention that I got reported by someone that match?

Quote them for me, please (the ones you believe are used, I'm tired of digging through them all at every occasion). I've debunked them recently in one of the threads of some conspiracy moro... enthusiast that was kind enough to keep the link to the patent in his signature (without ever reading the contents, it would seem) and I can do that again but I don't really feel like digging through the patent again just because another person bringing up "the patent" and "mm manipulation" popped up. Although I'll at least acknowledge that you're not dumb enough to mistake the contents of the patent for something assigning better or worse teams.

@MrConway, there's actually an interesting question that's not addressed anywhere. Or two, but related: 1. Is there a way to track your progress (how many "top twos" you managed to score")? 2. What are the requirements for the counted "top twos"? Most missions have a t5 requirement - but one is different... what about the "contest counter"? Is it t5+ or have you made the mistake of allowing lower tiers as well? Because by not stating it clearly (even if the requirement is the somewhat reasonable t5) you just invited some people to try and farm it around t1... and there doesn't seem to be any counter allowing them to realize the mistake.

I didn't really consider the precise metrics, but - generally speaking - the two objective (personal experience can vary) failure criteria would be: a) the population of CVs falling after a couple months back to the negligible pre-rework % levels (failure because resources were spent but the class revitalization proved brief) or b) the overall population/number of battles consistently lower than pre-rework (failure because the rework hurt the game and drove away players or made them play less long-term) The second failure condition is technically more important (more CVs but less battles is a more significant failure than no increase in CVs) but suffers from a significant problem: while it's easy to assume that changes in %CV participation would be caused by the rework and rework's accompanying changes, the same can't be equally easily assumed about the overall player numbers and activity. These are affected by basically any- and everything WG does with the game. Because of that, it's quite possible for some other factors to contribute to decline and make rework look bad... or the opposite: incentivize players to play more, masking the negative impact of the rework. This makes the main failure condition (negative impact on overall health of the game) pretty prone to both false negatives and false positives - not an ideal situation for drawing definite conclusions, regrettably. PS: These two conditions are, as stated, the objective ones, based on the overall health of player population and stated goals of the rework. Personal opinions can, and almost certainly will, differ. I, for example, enjoy the new CVs more than the old ones, so even if the CV population falls to the old level, TO ME the rework is likely to be a good thing. But there are some people with completely opposite views: they enjoyed RTS CVs (and don't enjoy the new ones) so even if the class ends up more popular, for them the rework would be nothing short of removal of an entire ship class they liked to play - clearly a bad thing, no matter what the numbers say.

And it can be clearly shown that none of the options described in that patent are actually used. Try again. Or, in fact, you should probably start by actually reading that patent. All the people I've seen invoking it so far as "proof" of MM manipulation seem to have not only mixed up "holding a patent" with "having implemented the contents" - they have no idea what the contents actually are.

Given that the rework is The Worst Patch Ever, One that Will Kill The Game, there should have been a sharp decline in number of players within the month of the patch. This has been seen in many games that received game-breaking changes/additions. We aren't seeing this if player numbers have remained relatively consistent. ... Seriously, I'm getting tired of the doomsayers heralding the death of the game - and your post might be (I don't know for sure since I haven't tracked your previous opinions) just an attempt at moving the goalposts when the expected catastrophe actually failed to materialize - so the "nothing changed that much overall" becomes the great defeat. As for the expectations - pretty much nobody expected the rework to lead to a huge increase in player numbers. The rework was aimed at a class that never was very popular (even when insanely OP) and it wasn't even advertised that much - because WG expected big balancing problems and decided to play it safe-ish, without investing in any accompanying marketing campaign (the thing that those "countless games" often put a lot of money into to give the new addition as much initial hype as possible). WG didn't aim for a quick hype-driven increase in players so it's only natural that such a thing never happened. Had I not been playing the game and reading the news, I might've missed the fact that a rework actually went live at all - how would you expect an influx of new (or old inactive) players when WG never even really tried advertising the thing? You'd have to actively follow WoWs or at least some streamers/youtube contributors to even be aware that something's happening. The rework changed (and is still changing, because it itself is hardly a constant thing) the game, but being actively involved with the game skews your perception of how much (or rather how little) fanfare accompanied this fact. Drastic short-term increases in overall player numbers would be strange rather than expected - and as for long-term results... well, these we might be able to see in six-twelve months. Whether the rework is going to turn out well or badly, only time can tell. And if the result ends up being a healthier CV population with no noticeable changes to the overall player population - that would actually still count as a success in my book, since "satisfied and dissatisfied people roughly evened out but now we have 4 living classes rather than three plus one corpse that sometimes crawls out of the grave to mess up your match" seems like a pretty good outcome overall.

One can dream...

It's something for dedicated coop players that play a lot. Most of the possible rewards (3 WG containers) are hidden behind much smaller grind, so you're not short-changed for not changing your gaming habits. Seems like a reasonable approach, in my book at least.

You get 3 days premium and some signals just for playing a bit (15k base XP is nothing with that time frame). Play a bit more (and maybe a bit better) and get an extra daily container + another day premium. And if you are insane, you might be up for a year of premium - not something I could hope for but it's a rare grind-fest that actually gives a very generous reward AND doesn't guarantee the best bot to be the ultimate winner Doesn't make it any less insane but has some oomph. Add an improved first win bonus for the entire week - and it actually seems like a profitable little event to get you to keep grinding in wait for 8.1

Man, that's harsh.

The secret is hidden within "pretty much". One shot might've went right above the citadel, for example (overpenning everything) while the other just a little bit lower could've been just low enough to hit the citadel, arm on the citadel armor and detonate inside. Also, there's also the option that you are mistaken about the shell - the one that caused the citadel hit might've reached the target underwater, for example. Oh, and there's also the option of a slight desync causing the game to "lie" to you about where exactly the shell hit.

Well, in the first week of CV rework that was precisely the tactic DD players employed en masse There are two considerations, however: 1. Your team also has a CV. The beloved excuse for "CVs OP" from RTS times is actually more true than it used to be because a better CV won't actually shut down the weaker one anymore, so while less effective, your CV will still exert similar pressure on the opposing team. 2. Matches usually have more than one DD, actually. If a CV (as described by ColonelPete) forces one of them back, the other one has a bit more freedom. Of course, this is a moot point if the team holds too far back and a DD can't do his job without pushing too far to be able to retreat towards them OR if you happen to be the only DD that even tries. That being said, there are certain problems with the current mechanics (the biggest being situational awareness present on planes and working basically like poor man's RPF as a result).

Actually, it's not silly at all on the conceptual level - at least on the ships that get the highest reinforcement values. Have you noticed that on DDs quite a lot of armament is mounted in a way that it can be turned to either side? For some DDs main batteries (or rather their invisible phantom clones that can shoot without regard for what the guns are doing) count as AA as well - and I'm pretty sure that you'll agree that when you're sailing a DD, one side of your ship is usually heavier armed than the other (as in: ALL your guns point one way and it takes time to switch to the other side), right? Reinforcement is just that. "Point whatever you have that can shoot up in that direction" - just very simplified, to fit into the abstract nature of AA we got implemented in the game (main battery AA phantoms for dual-purpose guns and stuff). Btw, when you think about it that way, you can also easily explain why bigger ships like BBs have much lower reinforcement values than DDs: a much larger % of their AA is in mounts situated on either side of their superstructure, making prioritizing one side much less efficient (as in: there are a lot of mounts that physically can't be pointed to the other side because parts of the ship get in the way). Additionally, you could also include minor factors like prioritizing the cooling and smooth ammo delivery to the more relevant (as in, facing the priority sector) mounts at the expense of the other side.

LESSER? In a Haku you could literally permaspot two DDs on two ends of the map (with empty dive bombers) without giving up on attacking other ships elsewhere. Right now you have limited-time limited-use fighter consumable and other than that you need to either park your squadron over a DD (doing nohing else ) or keep attacking the DD (each time flying back from the CV and leaving the DD for some time - as short as it might be - alone). And in any case you can only do all that to a single DD at a time. It's pretty clear which version has more spotting power. - servicing time irrelevant since you don't need to go back at all - new CVs have limited aircraft as well, the absolute hard limit for each squadron can be calculated as starting_planes+1200/restoration_time and for Hakuryu at the very least this limit is quite similar to the RTS era limits, the difference being that the player needs to wait for the new planes instead of being given all of them up-front like previously. So, in fact, at t10 you get less planes now that they are "unlimited" - it's true that friendly fighters were capable of chasing the spotters away; on the other hand, however, it was very easy for one CV to shut down the less skilled opponent, leading to a situation where one side had all the spotting in the world and the other team was blind. At least now the balance between teams is rarely this one-sided, a CV can be only in one place at once and planes don't spot torps; double CV matches are a problem but this should be temporary