Shagulon

Ignore win rates and stats, let's just imagine we play this game for fun... I know weird eh? This morning I played 4 games, we got steam rolled three times which was boring. Then we won easily, which was - you guess it - boring. Now when a game is boring whether you win or lose, except for that one game in ten that is great and close, guess what, people WILL STOP PLAYING! ​This game could seriously up the amount of enjoyable games, if they just at least attempted to balance the teams. Fun games more often, I'd buy that for a dollar...

Interesting to see all this collated. I have often thought that maybe I should quit WG EU and play on NA servers as they have much much better freebies...

I would agree that many BBs that spec their capts into AA are strong, but... - AA gradually gets destroyed. Spot or go after DDs at the start. - The good CVs I seem to meet are very capable of striking BBs at top tier. - Good CVs can still dominate a match, just as good DD/BB/CA players can...

Does this track volumes of being top/bottom tier? I am always trying to work out which ships are most likely to be bottom tier but it is hard not to suffer confirmation bias... I think this would be a great feaure Downloading...

Any Tier 6 BB can surpise any tier 8 BB if it catches it off guard... Small buff for a ship that slightly underperformed. Move along...

In all honesty the "match" making is pretty much the one thing that will make me leave the game. Too many one sided games. It is rare to have a fun game. I hear they don't want skill based MM cos everyone would get 50% WR. First of all - bollocks. Show me the maths that means this is true, or the maths that means random skill somehow means good players get good win rates, and I will show you a poor skill based match making algorithm... Second, we want fun games, not 5% higher win rates.

To be fair traverse speed isn't 100% clear, it would be better if it were rotation speed.

OP has 3000 games, with only 200 in cruisers. They were OP in ranked due to the condensed gameplay. However, they are just strong in random. They seem OK.

I've read various comments that this was planned, but I don't see any changes? Anyone know what happened to this buff?

If you and the others on your team had played in the closed beta, you would know how to deal with a CV without the help from your own CV. Se haven't seen how you spec'd you ship/capt, did you go AA??? Did you form up and share AA. I suspect the answer to both these questions are "not really"...

I agree it is too easy to spam with saipan (and I have one). Not fair...

if you lost more than one karma point, everyone was reporting you.

Match making should be about more than just collecting ships together. At the moment all it does is match ship type and nation. We can see that this is just not working, and 50% of matches are frankly just boring. In order to truly make a "match" which will be interesting to play the MM should: 1) Match ship types, not nations. This may require some back end work labelling ships beyond what they have now with tags such as light cruiser, smoke cruiser, radar cruiser, DD gunboat, DD torp boat (ships could have multiple tags I guess). 2) Have a ranking for players, however WG wants to implement it, using factors such as overall WR, WR in the ship they bring to the match, average XP etc etc. I'm sure they could devise such a rating. They then need to distribute the good players, to actually make a match. Arguments against: 1) "Time taking to get into a match". At the moment unless you queue CV it takes 10 seconds? 30 seconds? I would happily wait double this (1 minute) for a decent match. You could keep the above suggestions light and in-strict to keep the wait times down. Any skill based MM would be better than none. 2) "Everyone would have a 50% WR". Sorry this is just bollocks. Skill based MM in other games does not lead to 50% WR. In fact it often leads to greater differences with people getting 80 or 90% WR, and equally others getting 20 or 30% WR. Let's have it so that we have more enjoyable matches please WG!

Everyone has seen one MM where they tried to "balance teams" and thinks that there is only one way to implement this. There are a million criteria you could choose from to create better matches, but no, everybody thinks that any change to the game will lead to everyone leaving and ruining the game (and the world exploding). RPF anyone? Stealth fire anyone? Oh look, everyone is still playing and the world is still turning. Maybe everyone needs to be a little more open to change?

Explain why this is not true of both teams? Both teams get 3 unicum, 3 great, 3 good and 3 bad. It is your own bias that thinks you have all the bad players. This is the job of the MM, create two (largely) even teams. This would therefore not lead to 50% WR, but lead to players playing well in a given match, winning. Any ladder system puts players of similar skill together, WoWS is the first game where it just doesn't bother. I should be clear and say that you shouldn't try to balance teams, but rather spread the players evenly. Best two players go in slot 1 of each team, next best two in slot 2 - and so on... Not have one brilliant guy with 90% WR balanced out by having the rest of the team all bad. I wouldn't mind playing against the same players more often if they were good. Just like ranked but without the awful meta.

It seems to me that a good way to promote the removal of stealth fire would be to offer the removal of RPF in return. This "skill" was there to give people the ability to hunt hidden ships, but there doesn't seem as much need for it now. The balance has swung more towards BBs in the PT (to whatever degree is arguable but it has swung) so would this go some way to mitigate that? I also strongly recommend a capt reset as another sweetener. More people would be receptive to the removal of stealth fire if the ships that lost power gained something back.

but if you are firing at a ship, it means you are inside spotting range so you will be seen once seen, their team mates see you too. this is the way spotting works isn't it? like detection, if someone comes inside your minimum spotting range, all their team mates see you too... there is zero reason to reduce your range other than to make it harder for you to dodge incoming fire (as you are closer). I really don't understand what you guys are talking about.

omg at what point do I say RPF was to combat stealth fire....

They set all the concealment after firing to exactly the same range as their guns max range... It says in the patch notes. How is this news to people? I do think it is a little silly though. It doesn't really make sense anymore. They have a bit more balancing to do. Perhaps if they said that you guns max firing range is your minimum concealment? The higher the calibre, the more your detection range increase beyond that. The screen shot above, you are higher spotting range if you are on fire - seems illogical.

I dunno seems fine. Played Farragut and Mahan and really didn't notice not having stealth fire overly much. I also just played the Zao and it is still a really strong ship. No real problems with IJN or USN CAs. Will try Benson upwards next. EDIT: skipped Benson but the Fletcher is absolutely fine, still a monster. Really not seeing the end of the game here guys...

I think that some of the range changes has made lower tier CAs a little easier to play now, giving more time to dodge imcoming BB fire. How come you stopped with range changes, and how come you stopped at tier 6? Do you plan on giving any help to higher tier ships that used to rely on stealth firing? Not the Zao, but US DDs with the bad firing arc do some a little badly hit. In addition, why was the warspite overlooked for a range increase? It is badly outranged by New York and Texas at the tier below now. In addition it still has that terrible gun rotation. I'm in favour of the removal of stealth fire as a concept, but the game was roughly balanced as it was, but following this change we can effectively throw away all statistical analysis prior to this change. Some ships will be badly effected and this could potentially hurt the game very badly if this change is not carefully balanced.

if the game is already broken, how can removing stealth fire break it?

I agree there may be more balance changes required. iirc many of the range buffs were for lower tier ships, but I agree I think the some changes are required. The poor manoeuvrability of certain ships with stealth fire like akizuki and chapayev may need rudder shift and turning circle tweaks. It is just round 1 of PT, things often change based on actual feedback. Download the PT client and make valid real world suggestions. Put the pitch fork down. The mogami cannot stealth fire as it is so if anything its detection on firing main guns has probably gone down.

Actually the increased ranges for ships like the Omaha have really improved its performance, so it is not just a BB buff, CAs feel better too.

how many of you have actually tried playing the PT? Lots sound as though they have just read the patch notes. Honestly so far it is fine. Of course that could change the higher up the tiers I climb, but tier 5/6 is just fine. I don't like not having Alt drop on the CV, but hey, stop seal clubbing - problem solved.