Camperdown

Quote removed And the point of your post is exactly what? You don't have the foggiest idea of who I am or how I play and you do a drive by stat shame?? Pathetic.

I for one do not mind at all if you steal my kill, esp if I play DD and can't afford to keep pressing my attack. I see too many ships with 2-4K HP limp away and live and heal. The only good red ship is a dead red ship.

1. Not always. Shoot at the ship which will reduce the enemy's assets as quickly as possible. Shoot DDs, radar cruisers and CVs even when they are further off. Always shoot at ships with low HP to finish them off. A dead ship will never do damage to your team any more. 2. Mostly correct, but not always. If you have an opportunity to surprise the enemy team, it may pay off: capping, torping CVs or BBs etc. But those are the exeption to the rule. 3. Yeah, esp enemy DDs and radars 4. Ask not what your DD can do for you, but what you can do for your DD.

Contrary to what some posters suggest, stealth is still very much alive. But CVs and radar cruisers have qualified stealth quite a bit. @Verblonde has already made many good points, so I will just mention a few key ones from my pov: No stealth is absolute any more. When waiting for the game to start, check the enemy lineup for CV and radar cruisers. More than 2 radars combined with a CV make for a difficult game. RU radars are short but 12km range, US 9 or 10 km but much longer. Watch out for the occasional radar Mino. After game start you need to be more cautious in approaching a cap. Try to see where the radar cruisers are. OC dont just yolo in, make sure you know what you are getting into. Baiting radar is useful, try to have a good exit (island, nose in right direction to your team). Most CVs are not that good. DDs with multiple smokes have advantage (RN, PA). Use one smoke at game start if you have to. CV and rest of enemy team are actively trying to catch a careless DD at game start, so a smoke is well worth it. After planes go, get out of smoke, it is torp and radar magnet. If you are to hard to hit for enemy CV, they will mostly move on. You dont need to beat the enemy CV and radar cruisers, you just need to be better at it than the enemy DDs. Be more cautious than you may have used to be a couple of years back. Try to avoid 1 on 1 fights with enemy gunships, try to be supported. Many teams suck bad these days, so try to get the measure of your team early in the game. Bad team, abandon any great ambitions and make the best of a bad situation. So, in short, yeah, you can still stealth boat, but it's tougher than it used to be. Tone down your ambition till you got the hang of it. It's still the best fun in town imo, but not every ones cup o tea. GL HF!

If I were to summarize the problem with the current player base it goes like this: I have to study my own team harder than the red team, cause the chance of me dying as a result of my own teams (in)actions are much higher than me dying as a result of what the enemy team does

I agree the MM does reasonably well. WG simply is not addressing some fundamental flaws in the game because they have a short term commercial focus

Hey, I have great idea! Why don't we pin this topic to the top so we can have a gazillion pages of discussion about it. I am sure then WG will notice and improve it

I am sure that if you keep being rude you will convince me. In fact, I believe it is already starting to work

Interesting how you excuse MM from its failing to create balanced matches because players are bad. Isn't a proper MM system supposed to be able to cope with the reality of the player base? So in my view, WG has managed the totality of the game badly. It's too late to fix the player base, because WGs greed has led them to let new and bad players to progress too much too quickly. So what's left to fix this mess?

Nope

Ah, thanks, as a win oriented player I had overlooked the XP and credit point. Sorry, just now I realise that would negatively impact very good players. I assume you would have to compensate for that. I dont know how the math would work on this, but could you increase the rewards for higher class players to compensate? As for everyone having a 50% WR: no, I dont think that would need to be the outcome. If you are a unicum now, you would be a class 5. Expert in the new system, and you could also show your relative position in classes. So you would be top rank in the expert group. I guess that would be enough distinction. Why I would like to have a better random MM: I am a solo player, I dont want the restraints of clan battles. Random is the standard play type, and I think it stinks that MM is so poor in randoms. But that is just my preference. The question I responded too was: it cannot work. I think it can. But WG wont do it, and many people here seem to prefer the current system. So, there you are

Your incentive to win is the same as now: it is fun to win and it will improve your standing. If you dont want to win, why play this game? If you want to try to manipulate the system: go ahead: statistically the impact will be manageable. Your incentive to play a ship you are bad in is no different from the current system. If you play a less successful ship your WR suffers. Divisions is a good point, I think there are various ways to handle that. You could average the ranks of the div and match based on that, or perhaps limit the difference in class within a div to 1 or 2, e.g. if you are 5. Expert you can only div up with classes 3-5. Many people like playing in divs, so there should be a good solution for that.

Yes, new players will start at the bottom with the 40% WR crowd. This gives them much easier targets than the unicums they may also face now. Once they get better, they will quickly promote to the next class. I see many new players with quite decent WR (low forties). That will already qualify them for the 2. Meh class. Your other point I have addressed in my answer to Excavatus. Yes, players will have varying results with different ships. But that is already the case in the current system. My proposal will not make it perfect, but improve the MM enough to avoid the worst cr@p.

Well, thats a classic strawman attack and a gratuitous insult to boot. I remember now why I was reluctant to re-enter this discussion No, if waiting times get too long, the MM will broaden the range of players you are matched with. So, in busy hours, you will be matched to your own skill class and perhaps 1 adjacent class, so 20-40% of the player base. During low traffic hours the MM will broaden to 60, 80 or even 100% of the player base and waiting times will be managed. And how exactly does this reward bad players ???

No system is going to be perfect. I think my proposal trades a bit of extra waiting time for more evenly matched teams. As to your 1st point: this is no different in my proposal from the current situation. At some point teams will start to lose ships and the battle becomes unbalanced. However, this will happen much more quickly and decisively in the current system, because glue sniffers play unicums. With all players on both sides having roughly comparable skill, it will happen less quickly. So it will not fix it, but it will improve it to the point we will see much fewer stomps as we see now. As to your 2nd point: I propose to simply use average score (ELO, WR within class, however you arange it). Yes, everyone will have quite some variation in WR between classes and ships. Again, it will not be perfect and fix this completely, but it will be enough of an improvement to avoid some of the worst MM mess we have now. Yes, if you play a ship that you are not very good at, you will do worse. But you are on average a very good player, so even in a less suited ship you will not be as terrible as some of the 40% average WR players. On average, the teams will be better matched.

No, I will not try to convince you why it would work. I don't like repetetive discussions. But I will try to explain once more why I think it would work and why the arguments it won't are invalid. Do with it what you like. So here goes nothing. My proposal is: All players shall fall into 5 classes: 1. Noobs and glue sniffers 2. Meh 3. Average 4. Gud 5. Expert When introduced, players are distributed on current winrate, each class 20% of players. New players start in 1. Noob. If you win, your rating within your class rises, until you are top of your class, and you promote to the bottom of the next class. Same, if you lose, you rating drops untill you hit the bottom of your class and get demoted to a lower class. Each class keeps 20% of the players. This is a sort of ELO rating system. Matchmaking takes place preferentially with players of comparable rating. So within your class if there are enough players online. If there are fewer players online, you may be matched with adjacent classes as well. So, if you are 3. Average, you may be matched with 2. Meh or 4. Gud as well. So you will be matched with 40% of the player base. If there are not even enough players for that and waiting times become to high, you may be matched with any player, basically the current frustrating mess. But that will only happen at slow hours. The rest of the time, you will be playing against opponents of much more comparable skill level. Now the arguments against. - No no no no, if you match on WR, everyone will converge on a 50% WR. No, in this system the old WR is no longer relevant, it is replaced by class and rating within class. - This no possible, waiting times will skyrocket cause you can only match with part of the player base. No, if there are too few players available, the MM system will dynamically broaden the players you can be matched with, so that queue times stay acceptable. Waiting times will go up a bit because you are matched to a smaller section of the player base, but worst case you have the current yuck and you play against all comers. - But but but, I have a 30% WR in ship X and 60% in ship Y. So I will be cr@p in ship X. Yes you will be, and your rating will sink when you play, just as your average WR will in the current system. - But but but, my cherished, polished WR will evaporate. Yes it will, but you will be 5. Expert and may rank top of the tops instead. Let me know if I missed any relevant objections. The great advantage of this system is that most of the time, you will be matched with teams of more or less comparable skills. The current rofl stomp frustration of noobs playing with unicums causing games that are brutish, nasty and short* will be gone most of the times. Game experience will get a lot more satisfying for all. You want to goof around and have phunTM? Go ahead, knock yourself out in the 1. Glue sniffer class. You want to play seriously and have serious games? Go ahead and conquer my lad. You are an average guy? Noone is yelling at you any more (at least if you play on busy hours). Now for some reason WG and a lot of players and a certain moderator that shall not be mentioned dont like this. Why, beats me. I would love to be rid of the current mad house MM. * yes, educated readers, that was a reference to Hobbes

We shall have to agree to disagree

And it has been explained multiple times on this thread that if you do this with an ELO rating system it will work.

Well done, Sir! I just reached 100 this week. Still some way to go

Coop & sec spec BB. Good luck!

I like the idea of more numerous bot teams in coop. Now it's too often a silly yolo rush to score your damage/directive. Also, if random limits DDs to 4, coop should have max 3.

Would you mind not casually using deadly diseases? As one who has lost a brother to cancer it is a bit distasteful. Thanks and no worries.

Thank you for your constructive response. In an attempt to provide constructive, if critical feedback I will write up briefly here what most frustrates me about WoWs and WG. But let me start with the positive. I really enjoy WoWs as a game and think it has some very attractive fundamentals. I love warships and think WoWs is a very good implementation of a naval wargame. Sure, it is not fully realistic, but it is very good and immersive. I love the historical ships and the game manages to strike a pretty good balance between realism and adjustments to provide a reasonable pace to the game. Noone wants to play 3 hour battles all the time. Technically, I dislike the silly HE pen focus the most. Too much of the gameplay is determined by a few mm of bow or superstructure plating which was irrelevant in real life. Light plating should be penetrable by regular ammo, this would also make the balance between tiers much better. However, what really troubles me is the imo very poor communication of WG about issues that bother committed long term players on this forum. CV meta, match making, ship balancing etc. WG does in my experience not really engage with their most committed player base on these issues that are commonly viewed as grave. My suggestion would be to really engage in dialogue with your long term player base and explain why WG takes certain decisions in these areas. It would relieve some of the frustration of the player base and I truly believe it would enable WG to develop the game better too. And don't be afraid to be open that some decisions are commercial. We understand that you run a business and need to make a profit. But for me for one, understanding when you make a business decision not to fix something or to implement something in a way that reduces player enjoyment but improves revenues is very important to respect you as a responsible business. Your silence on many important issues just fuels our worst suspicions about your business ethics. Kind regards.

I don't mind that some ships are more powerful than others. Apart from The Class Of Ships That Shall Not Be Mentioned, I really dislike ships that cannot be played in any reasonable way. Quite a few cruisers fall in this category, which are so short ranged and squishy that they get blapped all the time unless you act indecent with random islands. Also some BBs are very frustrating because of their lack of penetration. Thus you are forced into excessive passive play, which I find detrimental to the meta.

Camping is mainly a problem with BBs. When DDs stay back and do not spot, it is a similar problem, but is usually not called camping. You describe hugging an island in a cruiser. That is not a problem imo when you have a good line of fire to support your DD. If you cannot support your DD by firing at the enemy DD or an enemy cruiser that is attacking him, you are camping and it is a problem. There are exceptions to this, if supporting your DD would get you killed or badly damaged, say losing over half your HP in seconds. In that case your DD should be aware that he is overextended and cannot be supported. BBs often camp by staying at long range when the tactical situation clearly requires them to push or tank. In that situation you see cruisers taking the damage which a BB should tank. It really irritates me when they combine that with spamming F7