Verblonde

I wish it were... I don't, alas - I'm clearly cursed. I feel a carefully graduated program of sacrifices to the wrathful volcano gods is called for...!

This, alas...

Suggestion: actually read the extended discussion on this subject that has been going on for the last few days. There are two key points of view: WG's, which you basically repeated. Many others', which can be summarised as having paid for a thing that was sold with certain parameters and characteristics (notably, being a permaflage for a T10 tech tree ship), and then having those parameters etc. changed without compensation. In the context of 'everyone' getting the semi-premium Mosvka, this can be viewed as having something taken away. Because I'm far too lazy to do a poll, I would conservatively estimate about two thirds of forum contributors (including some without the Moskva permaflage) fall into the latter camp, if they have a strong view. I'm pretty sure you would too, if you'd just had done to you what has been done to those with the permaflage (unless you have far more money than sense). I personally think that a doubloons refund was an unrealistic hope (WG only do that in major extremis), but it was not remotely unreasonable to expect some compensation such as a permaflage for another tech tree T10 - that would balance out what is being taken away. This is all moot however, as WG have apparently decided to embrace the Richard move wholeheartedly.

Thank you - you're far too kind!

Depends on the person; anyone who is *obsessed* needs to get out more and meet some girls/boys (delete as applicable), lockdowns permitting. That said, it's a very useful indicator of how good a player is over a large enough data-set, and is especially useful - in conjunction with other metrics - when doing self-evaluation. The large data set matters as the bulk of games are won/lost almost regardless of your personal actions (kind of), but a better player is more likely to result in a win in the 'edge' cases, whereas a less good player will have the opposite effect.

Not really; in general, a 'not-CV' has to be exposed to danger, to a greater or lesser extent, to do meaningful damage, while CVs don't really - unless their team messes up badly. The CV's planes which can be destroyed are semi-akin to other ships' shells/torps. Only if you get insanely close - longer range AA is usually of the order of 6 km (+/-); if you get that close to a CV that CV or his team messed up badly. CVs do have unlimited planes *but* how important this is depends a lot on how good the CV player is and how long the game lasts, not to mention what the opposing team does with any windows where the CV is having to regenerate planes (good CV players will keep the windows to the absolute minimum, or non-existent). They dumb down the game and make the clever use of vision/manoeuvre much less important; there are other reasons, but that's the key one for me. That said I don't loath CVs; I just wish the ship-plane interaction was better balanced - if it were, they would be an interesting addition to the game for both surface ships and their own players.

I find the 'recognisable forum member = good player' method to be almost 100% effective for me personally, for the simple reason that the howlingly obvious exception is me...!

Irrelevant. People paid money (to suggest that doubloons are effectively not money is specious, to put it mildly) for a thing; that thing was sold as having certain characteristics - in this case that it was permanent camouflage. 'Permanent' in the context being widely understood as for the duration of the game, and nowhere in the marketing was permanent sold as 'until WG decide that it was actually early access after all, but thanks for your money. Suckers!' In most sensible jurisdictions selling one thing and changing it for another thing of less value is generally illegal. Are you really remotely surprised that people are annoyed? It's not even just the Moskva permaflage owners either - I have Moskva and no permaflage, so I'm ahead in the case of this particular transaction, but I'm worried about the precedent this sets. If this is accepted/encouraged, it'll embolden WG to do similarly (and worse) sh*tty stuff in future. The other aspect that bothers me is that this whole business suggests breathtaking stupidity on the part of someone important at WG (see the pages and pages on this for why), and to have someone that thick in charge - or in a position of significant influence - of one of my favourite games is deeply troubling for the future viability of that game...

Which tier were you playing? F2P starts to require a better performance to make useful silver from about T8. With premium account, it tends to be about a tier higher. The other thing to keep an eye on is that relative damage rewards you better than purely bigger damage numbers i.e. if you take 10K hp off a BB, you'll earn rather less than if you take the same damage off something small like a DD. Basically, the game is built to strongly encourage you to pay for things like premium time at the higher tiers. A decent F2P player can make a profit, but they'll often have to play more at mid tier to generate extra silver; you have to be pretty good to consistently make a profit at high tiers on a F2P basis. BTW in an upcoming patch, premium consumables are scheduled to become free, which should also help. If you do feel the urge to spend real money, premium time is the most useful thing to buy as it works on every battle you play; besides that, premium ships can be useful if you play them a lot (the most cost-effective method is to get one of the T9s that you can pick up for coal/free xp - they're some of the best earners in the game and only cost the time it takes to earn the relevant resource). I used to also suggest considering permaflage for your favourite T10 silver ships, as this turns their economy into something not too far from a premium (although the semi-premium T10s are certainly better in this regard, as they have reduced service costs); in some regards I still do think T10 permaflages can be worthwhile, but recent events suggest that the long-term value of these just nose-dived (familiarise yourself with the Moskva row that blew up over the last few days for why) - only buy one if you think you'll get good value from the spend in maybe 3-6 months, just in case WG pull another 'Moskva' on you (plus, your T10 might get nerfed which is another consideration).

I think quite a lot of people may well do that already, possibly on my own side, and in the adjective sense on the other side (accompanied by sniggering)... Because WOWS is a wholesome family entertainment (apart from the blatant gambling) and no-one's heads explode when you shoot them there...

Just unlocked the Pz III/IV on my EU account; most of my battles are on NA, so I'm evening things up a bit... Edit: it's pretty too -

Firstly, stop skipping tiers, and learn the game and - most importantly - its mechanics. Also, play some things that aren't CVs and BBs; playing cruisers and DDs will give you an insight into what such classes can/cannot do, and what they're trying to do to you (and so how to stop them). Also, also, 83% of your battles in one nation (KM) isn't terribly conducive to picking up the breadth of knowledge about the game needed to get better at it. Suggest having a look at the more recent iChase videos on YouTube, and having a read of the wiki: https://wiki.wargaming.net/en/World_of_Warships Finally, you'll find you get better quality answers if you couch your posts in terms of sensible questions, as opposed to "waaaaaah, I got sunk; the game needs changing" - people tend to be more sympathetic towards the former, and less likely to extract the urine mercilessly. On that note...

<waves> Yoohoo! I'm afraid that today I are be mostly shooting Nazis (Wolfenstein) and pratting about in WOT...

I fear you may be being over-generous; my suspicion is that the decision maker in this case licked the cover at best (not knowing it was printed with lead-based ink or similar)...

Sadly, I suspect this is the short version of what many will take away from all this. 'Sadly' because I don't want the game to crater, and this idiocy could have so easily been avoided (and still could if WG actually engaged brain). In my personal case, I take the view that - with this precedent set - I should not buy any T10 permaflage where I won't get the value (13.86 UKP at time of writing) in, say, three months as that's a conservative estimate of how much notice we'll get (now we know what to look for) of future similar behaviour. So, by extension, that effectively means I'll buy very few in future as I have a main class, and already have permaflage for almost all of them (only one missing is the French). My hypothesis is that WG currently have a semi-captive audience and, consequently, their turnover is up - this makes them believe that they can get away with much poorer behaviour vis-a-vis customer service than usual. Who knows - they may be right...

This. It took me a while to work it out though... (Plus, sometimes the game just throws a wobbly)

I guessed that might be the case - even WG are not *that* crass...! (Coincidentally, I was chatting with someone yesterday about the difference between a translator and an interpreter...)

Besides @ForlornSailor's excellent words, I might mention that because of Z-39's guns, she's a good match for the Ernst Gaede's captain - assuming you take the big guns on the latter. I take BFT on most of my KM DD captains, so that is a bit of a waste on Z-39, as all you're doing is boosting your AA, rather than your dakka.

Just curious: can the Russian speakers confirm this is exactly what the sense of the original Russian is? For starters, I would hope the phrase they're after would be something like 'despite this', otherwise it reads that they're deliberately doing things this way to anger recent purchasers. Mind you, this is WG...!

@MrWastee Thanks for the translation. Ye gods, WG are idiots if they believe there will be no ramifications from this (particularly with the thing coinciding with the early access patch, which they - presumably - would prefer people spend money on). Oh well, I could be wrong, and they are in fact marketing savants. However, on balance of probability:

I doubt I'll stop spending entirely - I'm not *that* offended on others' behalf - I imagine I'll just not spend a discrete amount roughly equivalent to a T10 permaflage (so no cruiser early access crates, for starters), and not buy any more T10 permaflages unless I'm *really* sure I'll get a lot of use from them in the lead time for WG to pull this sort of stunt again. We also now have more confirmation that what a lot of people have been saying about WG is accurate...

Oof, this is spectacularly incompetent customer service, if true... Well, if so, now everyone knows and can take this into account when assessing value of future purchases, permaflage especially...

It's the SE bit - it makes the planes harder to kill (more hp), I believe. Most applications of the Ovenchickens tend to use only one of the enhanced skills (EM for BBs, SE for DDs/CVs and so on); the exception is Russian DDs, where you can sometimes make a good case for both...

They kind of do, but they don't go out of their way to be helpful (What? WG unhelpful?! Surely not!): New patches have recently always gone live in the wee hours of Thursday (presumably, to give at least one complete working day to fix any unforeseen issues). If there are directives running (which there aren't at the moment), you can infer when the next patch is - it's usually the Thursday that falls around a week after the last directive opens. Developer Bulletins (example:https://worldofwarships.eu/en/news/public-test/bulletin-094/) are usually released roughly in the middle of a patch's lifespan; when that happens, you normally have of the order of two weeks until the next patch. The definitive notification that a new patch is about to be launched generally only happens a couple of days before the event (example:https://worldofwarships.eu/en/news/game-updates/update-093-europen-destroyers-part-2/). As you get used to the cycle, you can generally predict quite accurately when patches will swap over; be cautious though - you'll have noticed a lot of vague language in the preceding ramble; WG have been known to be distinctly capricious. If I have something time-frame critical in the game, I tend to start double-checking as my predicted date gets closer (and don't worry too much the rest of the time, beyond keeping a vague eye open). As you probably know, the other thing to be mindful of is WG's lunatic approach to dates e.g. when they say a mission ends on the 10th, say, they actually mean the last useful playing day is the 9th (as the end will happen in the very wee hours of the 10th).

Who play with battleship's what? Isn't that sort of thing frowned upon in polite society? Is this some sort of weird Young Person thing that I'm unaware of....?