Verblonde

These are the settings I have: It happens almost every single time (for some reason, one of these pages opened on a single occasion several days ago); functionally, it's every single time. FWIW I have three accounts, two on EU, and one on NA; I log into all three in sequence to collect the daily rewards, before settling on the one I'll actually play that session - all three are exhibiting the same behaviour, so - for me anyway - restarting the game doesn't help, alas. Edit: I'm not running any mods either.

Per @Seraphice in another thread: most 'webpage' bits of the game are not loading, and haven't been since I downloaded the new version (so, of the order of a week). This includes Armory [sic], naval battles, recruitment station, inventory, and so on. Missions tab does work.

Recruitment station isn't loading either, I've just noticed...

For me, cruisers (even super ones) against real people is probably not going to go too well, so mine have been living in Coop so far. I actually vaguely like them so far (I voted 'mostly positive', although I didn't whale the T10 - even I have limits to my lack of impulse control!); a cruiser that thinks it's a JB is quite fun (assuming you can aim), and the engine boost makes them fast enough to do stuff in Coop. The heal is nice as well; might even justify my trying them out in proper game modes if ever missions call for it. My only whinge is that you can't do fully manly builds for cruisers any more; such a thing would probably be a giggle in PvE.

Do you mean we have fewer bad players than in 2015 (or not), or that the players we do have have got less bad?

Mine's been doing the same thing (both EU and NA servers) for the bulk of the last week - I'm guessing since I downloaded the latest 'update'. Does anyone know if the 'Inventory' bit of the game has an online analogue a la Armory [sic] etc? Besides being a pain in the 4rse, there is another down-side to this: when whoever came up with this whole 'Ruckus' business has the high voltage electrodes clamped to their person and is told to explain the promotion's poor financial performance, they'll blame this outage, rather than the fact the promo is poor. So, we're likely to get more of the same, even if the present one tanks...

Speaking for the DDs, it's basically what @ollonborre said: the only actively good Russian pick for the mode (IMO) is Neustra. These are all the Russian DD options in tiers 8 and 9: For me, I tend to find that concealment is valuable on the smaller maps of Ranked, and only Neustra is properly sneaky; the closest of the silver options is Ognevoi and other nations have plenty of superior choices.

I think that's a bit harsh; it's probably fairer to describe her as 'meh'. You can do a lot with the torps (fast reload notably: 65 secs with full torp build, pre-AR, is pretty ferocious), despite the relatively modest damage. Guns are okay, if not spectacular. Stealth is better than most at the tier - 5.9 km is enough to make use of the vision mechanics. My problem with her is that she's not very exciting; she's 'just' a torp truck (more or less; the guns come in handy now and again). Apart from being fairly sneaky, she misses the hydro that her sisters get (although she'd probably be OP with it), or the extra sneakiness that things like Yugumo and Jutland (and Neustra) get. Still, the sheer volume of torps she can chuck out, on a comparatively hard to detect platform, isn't to be entirely sniffed at. Mind you, I do have a 21 pointer to put on mine, which does take the edge off a bit.

Depends a bit on whether Cherry Blossom really returns, or if it's a casualty of, well, WG being WG. Assuming it does return, there might be something to be said for Bagration in that she's versatile - you'll probably get more use from her torps in Ops than against real people (true for Bayard as well, and Belfast), plus she gets a heal. I can't cruiser to save my life though, so I tend to err more towards idiot-resistant ships, especially those with a heal. I get the impression that Bayard rather rewards the more skillful (which, alas, I'm not), so if you're good, she might be a worthwhile option.

I gather you didn't see the 'which DD?' thread that was going on recently before buying her? Believe it or not, she's already been buffed (!); she now at least has semi-workable stealth (mine's showing 5.9 km surface detection), which makes her marginally less disastrous. Sadly, ignoring the silver economy, one is still rather better off just buying a permaflage for Yugumo...

I think others have covered off the 'why'. In more general terms, if one is ever confused as to exactly the reward of a mission like this, it's worth looking at the amount of effort required to get said reward. In this case, the mission chain was pretty painless; that's unlikely to net you a T8 premium ship (you're normally talking dockyard levels of grind, and they're not entirely free either)... In a similar vein, the other potential trap is where the reward is a permaflage for a ship, rather than the ship itself: the graphics for permaflage often look a lot like you would expect for the actual ship.

Bagration: she has a heal, and is generally less prone to the usual cruiser malady of blowing up when someone sneezes within 20 km of you. Of course, this is the perspective of someone who can't cruiser for toffee. That said, I much prefer Atago to both of them...

Nah - nothing here (yet). I do like that Atago paintjob too; if an AL Atago is coming down the line, I might be tempted (submarines permitting) - I only have three Atagos at the moment; clearly not a sufficiency...!

'Woke' is just one of those over-used words where certain sectors of society think they're being terribly clever and cutting when they use them (narrator: in fact, they were not being terribly clever and cutting); as far as I can tell, it simply means having marginally more empathy for one's fellow man than the average concussed whelk. It's like 'snowflake' - to be called it by the sort of person who thinks they're insulting you is usually a compliment. Anyway, returning to the matter in hand: This here is why WG should knock this stuff off; just because many of us may be able to resist WG's blandishments to a greater or lesser extent (at least when the offer is poor, as in the current case) doesn't mean all of their punters can.

FWIW I find Arms Race more fun than epicentre, but the former should not be in Randoms for the reasons outlined by others (mainly that it buggers up stats)...

Out of interest, I was just checking if I'd bagged this chap yet (I have); I see that he comes pre-specced for cruiser skills: I presume I missed some text in the mission blurb, and assume this is what happens as a result of the questions you answered during the missions. It's only the cruiser skills, and they aren't entirely stupid picks, but if I want a different layout I need to pay 250 doubloons (or 100K elite xp) to get it. This strikes me as somewhat poor form by WG; it's not 'PR Grind' levels of Richard move, but more akin to spend gold options defaulting to 'on' in the signals/cammo tabs...

This. The only effective action you can take is to not spend money on it; if enough people do that, WG will be more likely to dial things back in future. I'm not optimistic though; from what I see, WG have rather embraced the whole 'mobile' monitisation model. Full disclosure: I spent a little on this thing, because it was in my interests to do so. I may not approve of the model, but I'm not sufficiently free of hypocrisy to make use of it when it benefits me. That said, if the offer had been better (and involved less gambling) I would have spent more.

You see, this is the side of the weeb community that you never hear about - helping the old + bewildered with their memory loss...!

FTFY. You'll note that the bulk of the people talking about reporting submarines on general principles tend to be very experienced players; this doesn't automatically make them right, but it does open the possibility that their views are - at the very least - well informed. The other thing that I might draw attention to is the likelihood that the majority of active players pre-date submarines; be careful what you wish for - the loss of a significant chunk of those players would result in increased queue time for people like you, and a possibility of less support for the game due to corresponding reduced income. Personally, I would view reporting submarine players as a useful activity: unless WG are complete idiots, they will be tracking who and what gets reported, and for what; if this sort of thing happens a lot, I might draw business conclusions apropos submarines. Of course, it may just be a tiny minority who despise the addition of submarines in their current form.

I've slightly lost track of which weeb captain is which, so some of these probably aren't AL: The cat is fun, obviously. Quite fond of the pink teddy bear (I think I have him set up for use with manly build cruisers). There's one that goes entirely bonkers when almost anything interesting happens (although I'm not convinced that narrows it down) - she's vaguely entertaining. Definitely not AL, but the captain that came with HSF Graf Spee is a favourite, if only because she was one of my very first (back then) 19 pointers. A lot of my weeb captains get less use than they might otherwise because I tend to use 21 pointers when playing premiums, and most of those are uniques of one sort or another.

The other three Kobayshis? Not so much - per my update above. Edit: apologies - I misunderstood. Yamato Kobayashi gives the same bonus as a regular T10 permaflage, which is the same as the T7-8 Kobayashis...

Doesn't this one give the same bonuses as a regular T10 permaflage? Edit: and

Means you're doing it right!

Just a reminder: @SkipperCH (and the other mods) aren't employees of WG; we should generally couch our remarks in terms that reflect that...

Purely hypothetically, if it locked out the submarine players, I might call that a result. Purely hypothetically...