Syrchalis

Will CVs be made a bit more like the Saipan? It's such a nice balanced and fair ship, causing so much less frustration for enemies and the player as well. Will the Ark Royal be a prem CV and do I get one for free because it's my favorite ship ever? <3

True, though my Essex captain with 17/19 points makes it a lot of fun for me, demolishing the poor guys without a high level captain.

Yeah so I tried the Shokaku and the planes are really quite fast. It's alright. I can't say much from one game. However, since I've got a bit more money now I actually invested in the Saipan. Not because it's strong or weak or premium or not, but because I think it's an experiement by Wargaming and they tried out pretty much what I suggested. I totally support this "trying something out with a premium ship first, but already on the official servers". A lot better than what some other companies do. And of course, given that it matches what I suggested I was very curious to see it in action. <My suggestion> -> <Wargamings Implementation> Reliable planes -> T9 planes on a T7 CV are very fast and can take a lot of damage, so you can reliably attack ships without fearing bad AA RNG Weak damage -> Just 6 torpedo bombers total and no DBs at all (or only 8/9 DBs) means MUCH lower maximum damage per game possible than with the outrageous old Midway/Essex Quick Iteration -> Low reload times, fast speed means you get to do many strikes, weak ones, but reliable ones And to be fair, after trying the Saipan in 3-4 games, I have to say, I do like it. You can't do that much damage, but you won't go out with low damage. My average damage in Shokaku e.g. fluctuates wildly between 30k and 170k or so. My damage in Midway fluctuated between 100k-300k back when it had 2 torpedo squads. It's a huge difference if you're sunk immediately or kill 5-6 ships. In my Saipan games I always did 90k. Never much more, never much less. (Check my stats for it, 90k average, 100k max) WIthout this high fluctuation balancing is a lot easier PLUS it's a lot more fun. You don't have to hope for a good game anymore. You can just play well and do well as a result. I didn't try the AS setup yet, I am just not a fan of DBs (or AS gameplay). To summarize: I don't take back any of what I said, and I'm not convinced by most changes, however the Saipan looks like a total success in my eyes. It's definitely not a 35€ instant win button, no it's... perfect. Balanced, versatile, experimental, pretty, fair, everything you could ask for good gameplay. In fact, I'm so excited by this CV, that I'll write a topic about it (also to keep this thread clean of any indepth Saipan discussion).

The others can probably give you up-to-date information, but I can still give you a general impression, despite not having played for a long time, because the majority of my games is in CVs and i've become pretty good at them. It's a lot more strategic than the other ships. When you play BB you have to think ahead where you want to go, because you are too slow to quickly run around the map - yet this is just a tiny part of BB gameplay. Things like that are pretty much most of what you do as CV. You have to manage your ship (you autopilot it nearly always, still you have to watch where you go carefully). Then you manage your squadrons, send them where you think targets will be, relocate if you spot a cruiser with their cancerous AA ability (imagine your shell spread becoming 15 times worse so you hit 1 shell at most at a perfect shot, that's what AA ability does to CV aim) and find a new target. Unfortunately when I left the game was all about sniping the other carrier aka running your planes along the border to stay hidden and bomb the crap out of the enemy CV, hoping to sink it in 1 go, because running your planes along the border costs a lot of time. At the same time try to survive enemy CV's attack run. Stale and boring to put it in words. With mirror MM that "stale and boring" part quadrupled and I mostly went on to DDs and BBs. Knowing that you WILL face one of two possible ships is just boring - increased wait times are boring too. Since most setups are not viable, you can't even be surprised by his plane setup, so again, boring. Edit: Since this sounded so negative I want to give some perspective - I think every role in WoWs is comparatively boring. I'm a game developer, so I compare it to every other thing out there, not just to each other ship class. The slow paced gameplay has something to it though, it's casual and relaxing. CV is by far the most difficult of the roles. While other ships have much deeper gameplay (= you need to think of more things, more tactics are possible etc.) CV is just mechanically challenging - you have to keep an eye on everything. Planes are MUCH faster to die, so in 1 second your squad can be gone, unlike ships that can see threats coming long before it's too late. While losing a squad doesn't kill you, it can be rather devastating to your game impact.

I was still around when that happened. So, I basically would only try the US Prem CV. But since I'm not going to spend 35€ randomly just to enjoy the game again I'll probably watch some videos of the ship first. If it looks fun enough I'll consider it. Maybe after they implemented defensive fire for CVs there might be a reason to come back - the stale boring sniping gameplay might be gone.

IJN Bombers were already really fast from Shokaku onward and I hated how I couldn't get any real damage with the Shokaku due to the insanely strong AA of all ships at that tier. With AA buffed I doubt I will have any fun. The torpedo speed skill surely is nice, especially to have a shot against DDs again. Ishiro, what CV do you enjoy the most right now and why? In special regards to the changes. P.S.: I left after IJN got the converging spread. I liked it, but AA was just too dominant at T 7/8 to have any fun. I averaged much more damage in my Amagi as novice BB captain than in my Shokaku as expert CV driver, which really upset me. Not to mention I managed to get clear sky with the Amagi quite handily.

Hm, most of what you're saying sounds awful, maybe I'll not come back after all. Defensive Fire for CVs and less boring fighter fights in T7/8 are the only positive things I can see here. And as I said, maybe the prem CV is fun. But overall it sounds like the game has became even worse for CV players. And I thought we were at a low point when I left... .

I always prefered the Essex over the Midway. I doubt I will be playing WoWs again though. It simply is too little fun. I can play skinner box heaven (World of Warcraft) and still have more fun. Then there is games like LoL, Starcraft or HotS which are pure fun, no grind, no exploitation - not even considering amazing single player games like XCOM2 or Fallout4 here. The amount of fail design in WoWs makes me rage too much. Ezymodo knows what I'm talking about.

Shatter, North, Atlantic, all those maps are INSANELY DD friendly with their incredible amount of islands. DDs already are the prime force in ranked due to caps being more important than anything else. But with caps always being in absolutely tight areas where DDs can ambush any ship, it just gets ridiculous. More DD-hostile maps should be made for ranked, to counter their really over-the-top importance in ranked. Then we might stop seeing 4 of them per team, dominating everything around the caps.

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The hydro search sadly does not do much against that. You can just as well drive into the smoke. Due to the low range of the ability you are so close you can't dodge anyway, so no point in taking it. It should be at least 5km to be useful.

Yep, that's how I see it too. WG as a whole to be honest. They are about Money Historic feel Fun Gameplay In this order, which I think is not good. Can't trump money (not in this world) - but that fun is below pseudo realism... meh. Exactly, that's the only one thing in LoL that is really random. In Warships EVERYTHING is random - that saves them a ton of balancing work, but makes gameplay ... well random, aka non-competitive (which is btw a plus for me). Sadly the degree of RNG is so high, this game isn't just "non-competitive", it's utterly random. Add to that that a random crit in LoL is around 5% of someone's health in this scenario - quite significant in a fight, yet still just a tiny edge. A detonation is absolute complete, unconditional instant-death, no questions asked - in LoL you respawn and can make a comeback, even if severly behind. In Warships YOU HAVE TO WAIT UP TO 18 MINUTES TO EVEN PLAY AGAIN. And yes, this warrants harsh words. There is so much crap in this game, bad UI, bad systems, bad balancing, bad tools and yet they have to top it off with a mechanic that does NOTHING ELSE but make people rage.

Are you dumb? Did you see the replay? - Yes, no. Why? I didn't get jumped on, It was very far away and a single shell hit me randomly as I was driving away. The first in the game, after I dodged 40+ salvos completely. And that one shell was lucky.

You absolutely missed the point. I don't care about LOSING because of it. I mind the whole mechanic as a whole. The joy I get from detonating someone is gone in 2 seconds and it's minor. The rage I have from getting detonated, having to wait up to 18 minutes to be able to use the ship I want to play again is ENORMOUS. So no, I do NOT benefit from it as much as it has a negative effect. If this was a PvE game and I would detonate others 50x as much as I get detonated, then we could talk about it being balanced in this regard. That is my point - it causes ENOURMOUSLY more bad feelings than good ones, and thus it should be removed.

Okay, here a few gathered problems: Giving cruisers both abilities is boring and in a game with so little choice it's bad to remove even more Sadly, there is no choice, even with CVs being super rare, every cruiser STILL uses the AA consumable - because hydro search is THIS bad Hydro search is supposed to aid in killing DDs, but the range on it puts you in the "can't dodge anything anymore" range, making it useless as a tool BBs cannot ever approach an area with DDs <10km without fearing to die instantly (only if they can see the DD or know 100% where it is) This makes BBs unable to participate in caping in most cases (I usually only ever see BBs capping at the end if at all) CAs cannot hunt DDs because BBs will oneshot them easily, plus DDs are far too stealthy The problem basically is, that CAs are not stealthy enough for DD hunt and DDs are too stealthy to be hunted In other words, the whole system of balance WG is using doesn't work out. CAs dont have the tools necessary to counter DDs. They only do that if the DDs get spotted by a CV or another DD (the only ones who can do it reliably). DDs can't reliably attack BBs, because of how easy it is to dodge torpedos in a 1vs1 scenario (especially without islands and objectives). BBs can easily wreck CAs - which is a problem, because they can do their job well, while the others can't. The whole system would work if all parts would work (obviously) and it might work, if no part would work right, but the problem is that some parts work well, others work a bit and some do not at all.

Thats why its so infuriating, I usually hard carry every game, even low tiers. I never die early. And just because of this BS mechanic I have to suffer through watching for minutes or playing another ship I dont want to play right now. The fact that it's rare makes it just worse. Why does it need to happen to me? Now? If it was common you could brush it off as usual business.

Just in the last weeks I had two games were I died RIGHT AFTER THE START by 1 single shell. If WG wants to keep that idiot mechanic at least they should make it so it can't happen in the first five minutes, it can't happen above 75% health and it needs to be at least a certain caliber. The difference of being detonated 2minutes into the game at full health or after 15 minutes at 20% is the difference between "yay 10 free flags" and "screw this piece of crap game".

Because you only have so much? I can't level my DDs, because I don't have the flags, I can't play ranked without the flags - you see where this leads. Solution: Remove that crap.

That's exactly the point. WG is a giant troll. "Oh you just had a horrible experience because of our shitty game design, so here 10 flags to prevent you from having the same shitty experience for a measly 10 games, before it can start all over again". Try again, forum troll.

It's not my job to give them ideas. I don't work as a game designer for them.

It's weird, you would think all the idiots play on sunday, but monday is way worse. I've not seen a single cruiser or DD doing their job today, except for a few on the enemy teams. No matter how hard you carry, if you have BAD LUCK with teammates, you just won't rise. Not without playing 1000 games when the RNG of matchmaking is finally averaged so much that you win simply because you have 1 good player on your own team every game.

Correct. When a ship is repairing I can score 7 fires with divebombers (even though only 4 are possible on a single ship) because they get extinguished immediately. This makes carriers excellent for the challenge.

Essex? ^^ (Not at all biased opinion)

Never ever think your teammates are worth anything. You have 13 enemies in ranked and zero allies. All allies either have no torps and are worthless (Pensa/New Orleans) or they do and TK because they are too bad to realize their 10km torps wont reach the 20km distant BB and they might hit the 3 allies inbetween. So man up and carry hard.