Verblonde

There does seem to be a bit of a testing frenzy going on at the moment: I saw an Alaska last night (I was being filthy and playing Asashio, so avoided it), plus a Cossack, and one of the new RN DDs (Daring?). This is good - new toys imminent!

I won't be holding my breath on this - they tried something similar with WOT, and the T8s still continued to have a torrid time with MM...

I'm guessing that WG feel that 'not enough' people are grinding to the top tiers; if so, I'm not that surprised - the vast majority of the historically interesting ships are no higher than T8, plus the gameplay at high tiers is very risk-averse (=boring), and rather constrained by radar these days. As others have pointed out, high tier gameplay is one area where WG make their money; so, rather than fix the problems that make people want to avoid high tiers, they're apparently trying 'excessive encouragement' to get more people to play at those levels. I'd love to see WG's numbers - I would think (as others have alluded to) that the current 'enthusiasm' for T10 (especially) would rather devalue a lot of premium ships, so making them less reliable profit generators...?

I doubt very much that all clans are the same. I gather there are a number of 'training' clans out there; if they're even remotely worthy of the name, they should be able to help teach you a few things. If you want to asses how good (or not) someone is, just look them up on the WOWS webpage; if they haven't hidden their stats, you'll be able to see how good they are, and in which ships, and so on. This is me, for example: https://worldofwarships.eu/en/community/accounts/526131254-Verblonde/!/pvp/overview/ - I clearly suck (47.89% WR - eurgh!), play far more DDs than anything else (62.08% of battles at time of writing), play an average tier of 6.5, have far too many premiums, and so on... It might be worth investigating voice comms: using typed chat, it's quite hard to get ideas across with any degree of nuance. If you find a good teacher, it'll be much easier to understand the 'why' of instructions; for example, there is at least one map I can think of (can't remember the name) where one particular cap is death if approached from the side your team spawns on - I've almost given up trying to tell people to avoid that cap initially, because people always ignore the "don't go there" type of typed message, whereas something properly explained might have more impact. Personally, I'd rather get on with playing than waste my time typing; things might be different with voice comms.

This was what I was alluding to with my 'updated AI' comment - I haven't played coop since the last patch, but one of the recent changes was to how the bots behave. Supposedly, they now play less 'dumb' than previously; hopefully, this should be a change for the better, although it may remove the possibility of using coop as an easy mode to burn off accidental pinks and/or just chill out a bit.

Yup - sorry, I didn't make that clear. For anyone who is interested, this is the relevant news story: https://worldoftanks.eu/en/news/general-news/t-25-event/

I believe it's mainly for WOT: it's a collective challenge thing; if enough people play consistently enough, it'll bag you a free T-25 (the T5 German medium premium), amongst other things... Edit: if you play WOT, it's a pretty decent premium (perfect trainer for the Panther/E50 line, from memory).

Randoms is very different to coop (although the differences should be shifting a bit now, with the updated AI on the bots); I can't see your stats, so I don't know which ships you're playing, but in general, it's often sensible to drop a tier or two in randoms, compared to what you might be playing in coop. Apart from a few seal-clubbers (or not, depending on your battle count - very inexperienced players get protected MM), most people playing lower tiers will have a moderately low level of experience, and will provide more reasonable opposition. Plus, up to and including T4, you get +1 MM i.e. the worst you'll face is enemy ships one tier higher than you. I personally think T4 is a pretty decent learning tier - besides the MM, you're starting to get ships that begin to show the 'flavour' of their respective trees, so you can start to hone your technique in a fairly benign environment. It is worth persisting with randoms though, at least a bit, as the rewards are so much greater than in coop (although there are players who play almost exclusively coop). As others have said, perhaps join one of the 'teaching' clans and/or see if you can connect with a more experienced player, who can provide you with some pointers. If you don't want to spend money, a good use for coop is to grind the more essential upgrades for new ships, before venturing out into randoms - that way you aren't fighting real people with an excessively gimped ship. If you haven't already, read this: http://wiki.wargaming.net/en/World_of_Warships There's a wealth of information (most of it reasonably accurate) on all the ships in the game, and how the various mechanics work. Personally, I've not read it end-to-end, but it is my first port of call when I don't understand/can't remember something.

On ships that you haven't fettled before i.e. especially new ones, the tick box defaults to 'spend doubloons' - I find this very annoying (in the way trivial things sometimes are)...

Many thanks! :)

As a bad-tempered misanthrope, I can dig that...

Really? Even when they're being pleasant?

If I thought that there was the slightest chance that people would be nice in post-game chat, I would be an enthusiastic 'yes'. Sadly, pretty much everything I've seen leads me to the contrary view, so (with some gloom) - no!

OP you may find the following of use; you seem a trifle tense:

Asashio has been done to death already: you're dead in seconds if the rest of the enemy team is remotely awake; the only BBs I slaughter in mine are usually the dopey ones loafing around at the back - they're usually not using WASD hacks. Shima's concealment is great (for its tier), but that doesn't help much in the current radar meta, and the IJN torps can (mostly - not Asashio) be seen from the moon. Unless one is a really good player, the only BBs one can reliably hit with IJN torps are the distinctly tuberous ones.

Sadly, the perception among a lot of players is that all the adapting and evolving has to be done by all the other classes, but never the BBs - so many changes have been driven by BB drivers' complaints that you can't be surprised that others start getting a little tetchy about it (especially IJN DD drivers, given what was done to their torps)...?

Isn't it a bit early to be calling for nerfs (for those who are)? The new DDs have only been out a week or so! Give it a couple of months, and people will have the new ships worked out. Or not, in which case tweaks may then be in order. I've only met a few so far (low double figures, at a guess), and they don't seem too ridiculous - lots of dakka, true, but they can be seen from space, don't have a particularly scary torp armament, and aren't terribly manoeuvrable. They're certainly a threat (what T9-10 isn't?), and that's probably enhanced by the fact that more experienced players will tend to have them first, but I still think it's too soon to be having conniptions about the things...

Normally, I would be extremely cynical about a story such as the OP's, and my initial reaction wasn't entirely sympathetic for the reasons you hint at (sorry, OP - like I said earlier - trust issues). In this case, I do feel that there is a lack of clarity as to what does/doesn't get you banned, and that's the main thing I'm highlighting. I don't have a strong view about the OP's specific case, as I don't have the complete picture (and I'm fairly sure there are forum rules regarding discussion of WG's specific disciplinary decisions anyway). What I certainly don't recall is reading anything regarding what is not allowed in Ranked that differs from what is allowed in randoms (say) in the official blurb for the mode, although I may just have been blind... Edit: let's imagine the worst (from WG's perspective) - the OP and his friend did count in, and were conspiring wickedly to pervert the course of Ranked by playing in a certain cooperative way (emphasis: not saying they did); where has the player base been told that you can't do this in Ranked, when cooperation is pretty much a key part of randoms?

My personal answer to this is 'no'. Edit: then again, the WG folk who have opined on this have made it fairly clear that this shouldn't happen; it's only playing differently because there are clan mates present that should get you banned - the issue here seems to be largely one of trust. I do think that there are a number of problems with how Ranked works, in terms of making it a fun and desirable mode to play - but that's an entirely different kettle of piranhas.

That's what needs to be done, to fix this potential issue for the future; I was merely summarising the position (as I understand it) right now, and highlighting a couple of issues... Might ding the queue times a bit, but that's better than the risk of arbitrary bans.

From what I read, the wording from @MrConway, and @Crysantos is consistent: Counting in is fine, and shouldn't get you banned. Being in the same game as a clan-mate by blind luck is also fine, and shouldn't get you banned. Changing how you play in either event is not fine, and should get you banned (if you are reported). There are (to me) several potential problems with this: As I said earlier, it's subjective e.g. I'm a lousy player; should I be banned for my usual incompetence if a fellow SM0KE player is on the other side? It can't be enforced by algorithm, so punishment (or not) can't be consistent, raising issues of fairness. Players are being asked to trust WG to implement this fairly and impartially; older players (especially those who have played WOT too - yes, I know they're run by different teams) may well have, how shall I put it, trust issues with this...

The danger I see is here is that there is potentially a significant risk of grey-area subjectivity in enforcing such an edict. The problem is that there has been no 'all channels' announcement describing in clear detail what is/isn't permitted; net result of that is that the risk-averse approach is to simply stop playing Ranked - the rewards and fun are simply not worth risking a ban for. Dropping the mode is almost certainly an over-reaction, but given the cost-benefit analysis, it's still the prudent approach. I suggest that if the design of the mode allows a behaviour, then you'll struggle to enforce a ban on that behaviour if it can't be done in a rigorous and fair manner (it could be worse - at least the rewards for cheating are not even close to those that triggered the T-22 rigging fiasco)...

I suspect you aren't the only one - Ranked is damned annoying at the best of times, and if there is a risk (however small) of getting banned just because one got unlucky, it wouldn't surprise me if the mode was killed stone dead as a result - if enough people got wind of this...

I don't think I've ever seen odds published for this sort of thing (ditto WOT too); it's slightly curious too - in a recent thing in WOWS Blitz, the containers did include odds...

I don't recall seeing any notices posted anywhere about 'counting in' not being permitted for Ranked, but I could have not been paying enough attention, as it's not something that impacts me personally? If the usual 'counting in is fine' policy has been changed, it would have been sensible of WG to broadcast such a change widely. Besides which, any such change is asking for trouble - I would imagine the larger (by membership) clans are quite likely to have more than one member in games quite a bit...?