Verblonde

Before your MM people do something stupid, I would strongly suggest that they go and talk to their counterparts working on WOT. If you reduce the maximum number of T10s (say) in each game, it is inevitable that the overall number of games with T10s in them will increase - unless you do something to *heavily* reduce the T10 pool waiting to get into games. To put it in terms that the suits will understand: assuming the mess is similar to that in WOT, do you really want several years of people telling their friends not to buy T8 premiums because they will get rogered in MM?

Something else to have on the radar, that's WOWS-specific: in WOT people like to play T10s because they're the most powerful things on the board, however there is no particular economic reason to do so (if you aren't good, it's easy to lose silver playing T10s) as WOT doesn't have the equivalent of the WOWS economy-boosting permaflage. If you have a T10 with permaflage in WOWS, it'll be one of your better earners (assuming you can be minimally competent with it) - I would imagine this alone would make the T10 pool in WOWS even bigger than for WOT, so meaning that the situation for T8s could easily be even worse, in terms of facing T10s the whole time (ignoring the different differential between tiers).

3-5-7 in WOT was, to use a technical term, a complete and utter rat-screw; I can't believe WG would ever be so idiotic as to introduce it to WOWS too (they've spent the last few years trying to fix WOT MM after the mess of 3-5-7). There is probably a bit less cause for alarm in WOWS though, but only because the power differential between the tiers is less pronounced (in general), although not universally so and varying with class somewhat (a Kagero will do better against T10 opponents than a typical T8 cruiser, for example).

Not a complaint, but I'm a little surprised that (apparently) the snowflake reward for T8 and T9 is the same - I would expect WG to use this kind of thing as a lever to get people to grind as many higher tier ships as possible (as this probably increases sales of doubloons for xp conversion etc.). I'll be interested to see what (if any) paid-for mission(s) we get this year too...

I hope there isn't - XVM is one of the more poisonous influences on WOT...

It's a terrible affliction - I'm hoping it can be remedied with ointment...

As a matter of interest, how have people found WOWS run through the standalone launcher versus when it's run through the Game Centre? I probably got unlucky, and WOWS has been flaky anyway since the last patch, but I've found that since I installed Game Centre, WOWS seems marginally more prone to falling over, and seems slower to change between screens etc. Has anyone else seen something like this, or am I going mad? BTW I only installed Game Centre in the first place because you are now *required* to if you want to play WOT, which is a whole different topic and grounds for some fairly harsh language (IMO anyway).

More Dev Blog stuff: https://medium.com/@devblogwows/st-new-german-commander-and-test-ships-476a21f88431

This rings bells; I vaguely recall too that if you had the 'vanilla' version already, you got a mission for it that awarded you doubloons when you got the 'whips and leather' version of each relevant ship. (I also recall a certain amount of whinging because said mission was only doable with the vanilla version, and the wording wasn't hugely clear somewhere)

Isn't the argument something to do with making the game more friendly for potatoes by giving them the chance of occasionally doing catastrophic damage by pure fluke? I'm not convinced I buy this, although I do recall being pleasantly surprised when I first started playing - a single HE round from my DD (?) exploded an Atlanta; both he and I were as surprised as each other...

I have both (and suck in both!); for me, it comes down to a few elements of practicality: Which game-play style is likely to be more fun for you - brawling BB, or (radar equipped) super-cruiser. MA has the dubious pleasure of T8 MM; just something to be aware of. Do you have a particular use for either of the tiers they belong to e.g. AK was quite handy in a T9 season of Clans not too long ago. Which one will you tend to do better with; better performance obviously generally producing better rewards. What does your captain availability look like - as others have said, MA pretty much requires a dedicated captain (although I think you might be able to use the same one effectively on Georgia, if you ever get her) with the emphasis on secondaries. If I were going to pick just one, it would probably be MA, but only because she is different to most other things in the game (and I like playing things with good secondaries); YMMV of course!

This would be quite high on my personal list of 'stuff I like about the game'... Being a bit more sensible, to my utter surprise, regrinding the IJN DD torp line is currently providing me with rather a lot of fun; I think it's mainly because I haven't played them for so long (reework), so they're now something a bit different, plus they're one of the first lines I played, so I was even more spectacularly incompetent back then - playing them with a merely sub-par skill-set is quite fun.

I tend to think this is a pretty decent way to solve the issue; presumably, the objection would be that an average player might be confused: facing a balanced version of Enterprise might be a rather different kettle of fish to facing the full-fat version, and if you haven't been paying attention, it might present difficulty in that regard?

From a purely procedural point of view, it would be fairly straightforward. From a PR point of view, it would be about as sensible as dangling your joy department in water infested with hungry piranhas - have a search for the various forum topics from when the GC nerf/changes were proposed (and that was only a T5 BB...)...

I think that describing it as overpriced is a little unfair as there isn't any filler, as such: Harekaze itself (including port slot). Isoruku cammo, which does provide something extra, compared to the default (extra captain xp). 10 point captain, the usefulness of which will depend on what captains a player has already (plus, you have to burn doubloons/elite xp to use it on a silver ship). I'm seeing 36.78 UKP for the bundle; a normal T8 DD is roughly in the 26-28 UKP range; I'm seeing 4.22 for a single captain; so, you're paying of the order of 4-5 UKP for the cammo. Whilst I'll be the first to make 'beer and ladies of negotiable affection won't buy themselves' jokes when WG take the pi$$ on pricing, I don't feel this bundle qualifies. All of which said, it would have been sporting to sell the ship alone; presumably 'spreadsheet says' that WG will make more money overall doing it this way though...

Opinion will vary; however: Harekaze is more or less universally agreed to be excellent. Graf Spee is identical to the regular one, so your view will depend on what you think of the original (the HSF one includes the standard cammo as well, or at least mine did); opinions seem mixed, although she's glorious in Ops a lot of the time. Isoruku cammo for Harekaze is quite worthwhile as it gives you a captain xp boosting option. Musashi cammo: only of interest if you already have Musashi, of course. 6 10-point captains are extremely handy if you're short of captains, less so if you have plenty already (and/or have several 19 pointers). You can switch off the voices if they vex you. The signals are useful, I guess, but I count them as 'filler'. My feeling is that if you like both the ships and have a use for the captains, then it's worthwhile; *however* the only reason it gets the '21% off' tag is at least partly because of the filler... FWIW I have both Harekaze and HSF Graf Spee, plus several of the captains.

This is what I do - it's magnificent (provided MM blesses you with an abundance of BBs and a dearth of CVs)... That said, I wouldn't object to a variant that was in all respects an upgraded Kagero, only premium, although if Harekaze is back, the need is rather diminished.

For any Young Persons in the vicinity, this is what we're joking about: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/64689/never-forget-time-dan-quayle-misspelled-potato I'm not sure we can, really, not for the entire player base anyway. Bear in mind that those of us on the forum are a small minority of the totality of players, and take the whole thing far more seriously than most (and some of us still suck at the game i.e. me). The key thing is to try and separate each game from the one before, to minimise the emotional 'carry over' from whatever went horribly wrong last time. Take breaks. Drink tea. If you finish a game fuming, try and wait a bit before plunging into another, or let off steam in Coop for a bit.

If it's good enough for Dan Quayle... (if I'm not the only old git around here)

Being a Brit (DD/MM/YYYY) who moved to North America (MM/DD/YYYY), I'm pretty used to being regularly confused by date formats. I would suggest that the simplest way to avoid confusion, for a game that covers a large chunk of the globe and multiple date formats, would be to use a three letter abbreviation for the month - 8 Nov 2019 say. That's pretty hard to misunderstand...

<the occasional permitted bump>

There's nothing wrong with being F2P; by merely playing, you are helping keep server numbers up. The key downside of this approach (obviously) is that you need to have quite a bit more patience! There are several things you can do to make life a bit easier: If time permits, try and do any/all 'get premium ship' type missions, especially if you have the ship already - at the least, you gain an extra port slot; also, depending on the mechanic, you sometimes get doubloons for the duplicate ship (most missions tend to be silver these days though). Save any doubloons you do win in containers/missions etc. until one of the periodic 'cheap port slots' offers - typically, you can get slots for 150 doubloons apiece (rarely, less, or slightly more). You're already collecting coal, it seems - try and do this is much as you can; the T10 coal ships are *very* good from an economic standpoint, and worth waiting for, mainly due to their having permaflage, which cuts the repair bill drastically. Keep as many higher tier ships as you can: besides the economic reasons already mentioned, if the 'anniversary'/snowflakes type mechanics continue, they'll occasionally net you some decent rewards - for example, during the recent anniversary thing, each T10 you had got you a supercontainer. With almost 3K battles (at time of writing), you probably know most/all of this already, but just in case...

I did (and might do again this year), but only because I have far too many premiums, so making it more or less a certainty that I got the 'rare' ones. For more sensible folk who have fewer premiums, the chances of getting a Belfast (say) are far to remote to be sensible...

FWIW I - like just about everyone else it seems - run the hull with the 100 mm guns, but I do have a 19 point IJN dakka DD captain to put in her; I also generally take smoke over TRB, as you're very fragile. The 'basic Kagero' hull is essentially worthless, so should be avoided. You can perhaps make a case for running the 'American Guns' hull if you have a lower point captain (although 10 points is the practical minimum), although since the 100 mm guns got buffed a while ago the case is rather weaker, especially since the ballistics on the 100 mm option are noticeably better (although it's much harder to island hump than with the US option).

Bear in mind, also, the 'snowball effect': this discussion happens a lot in WOT too, only I get the impression that the effect is perhaps more pronounced in Tanks. Essentially, when one side loses a ship, the other has more guns to bring to bear on the survivors, so increasing the likelihood of one of those survivors being killed off as well; this process then repeats, if nothing is done to arrest it, so resulting in a roflstomp. Obviously, massively over-simplifying, but that's the general gist. It's the bit about arresting it that's crucial - a good player can sometimes prevent a few casualties turning into a roflstomp; having the right ship can help too. If you want to win, knowing this illustrates why (in general) you want to remove enemy guns from the game as quickly as possible, and why focus firing is so important too...