250swb

I can't help but think the reset plan isn't some sort of pathetic halfway house between starting a new account and being a bonafide re-roller and an official (but sad) seal clubber. It's like you have all your toys, such as game experience and 19pt Commanders (and you don't want to throw those out of the pram), and you still want some 'official' titty and a rattle to make you grow up bigger and stronger.

If the server was crashing on Patch Day you would have many many posts about it from people who had already confirmed the problem is at Wargaming's end. Follow the advice posted above, use Pingplotter to see where your problem is.

WG want to ramp up spending even in new players by creating a new arms race. Given stats apparently aren't reset for the ship when re-grinding I hope there is some other notification to new players as to who they are playing against, then they will know what to complain to WG about.

Why don't Wargaming just start spoof threads about log in problems when servers go down on Patch Day, then nobody needs to be embarrassed by starting one?

I think Wargaming have done an internal review using an endoscope and decided the model they are using for WoT and WoWs isn't sustainable in the longer term. So instead they are going for player burnout in both games, milking as much as possible as quickly as possible. It may take another three or four years to work through before the game losses so many players it isn't sustainable. If in doubt answer this for yourself 'if submarines are being introduced now, alongside new tech trees, even more rapidly appearing Premium ships, more and more overlapping events, what is left for the future?'

I don't know, it's not a simple decision. I watched a CC vid last night who said how devastating for CV's the new AA will be, so on the one hand it's obvious you will want it. But on the other hand it means nobody will play CV's anymore, so a reset could be pointless and actually be better if you don't do it. It depends on how many CV's you are seeing after a month or so, but by then the reset will have come and gone. So clever work WG, get everybody to reset but then they realise they need to go back, and repeat, destabilising the game and keep the doubloons flowing.

The idea behind depth charges is that you don't need to 'hit something', they work because of the compression wave in the water caused by the explosion, trying to hit a sub with one is an inefficient tactic. But this opens up an interesting question, if you have a friendly sub in the area dropping depth charges could damage or kill it, and also what if a friendly ship runs above the depth charge as it explodes, it would break the ships back. So plenty opportunity for 'friendly fire' .

Nobody is, that is the problem. The speed of a U-boat on the surface was around 17 knots and underwater it was 7 knots, now work out how Wargaming are going to fudge that? Even if you assume a sub can make ground on the surface when it submerges it behaves like a brick, so changing direction to attack and keeping within range are going to be impossible to achieve, unless of course we go even further down the arcade/paper ship route.

I don't want to embarrass you but if you are looking for realism tell me when submarines were last used as an intrinsic tactical arm in an ongoing naval battle? WoWs is about naval battles happening in the moment, submarines are about stalking and ambush.

Too many special events running concurrently, too many ships being introduced, not enough attention paid to perennial modes such as Operations, not enough balancing. There is plenty to make a player wonder what to do next and which line to follow, but more likely they think 'this is all getting to much'. Overwhelming players with stuff to be done, missions, events, CB, Ranked, is similar to what is burning players out in WoT, but most really just want the basic game to work properly and to be entertaining. I'm engrossed in the game, I always have my own projects to do, grind a tech tree, train a Commander, etc. if only there wasn't the persistent distractions. So you could say I'm happy with the game now, but like WoT I can see where it's going and it's not a good place.

Yes WG could make a great job of anti submarine balancing and RNG, or not. But what they can't make a good job of is to stop players roaming the map on lone anti-sub hunts in valuable DD's or cruisers. You think wandering off to the edges of the maps is a problem now, well you haven't seen anything yet, it will become even less of a team game.

I got the Jaguar and Guepard from missions, Guepard not to shabby. Then bought the Bayard, great fun. Now it gets hazy, did I win or buy the Siroco? Either way I'm not too keen on it. And then the Mogador, fantastic fun! So far I've done really well in Ranked with it, not that it can last but being top or near the top of the team seems eminently doable. A great DD if you like your kiting cruisers with a similar style of gun-and-run play except much closer to the enemy.

I see what you mean, I admit I'd only read your first post and realise you nuanced your message since. The lack of camo on a DD does say something simple about the overall mindset but it's the sort of thing Wargaming is encouraging along with all the other short cuts to success. I think the reason is that Ranked isn't seen as special anymore, it is just one of an ever growing series of overlapping events that encourage players to skip and skimp from one to another and not commit all they should to one event.

I'd put all those things on for Random battles never mind Ranked. I don't see why you'd need to 'buy' any of them other than earning credits in other battles for your upgrades such as radar etc., flags and camo you can win by simply playing, so why is using them 'pay to win'? I agree that players should think twice about not mounting them or playing a stock ship. But expecting success from the wallet is buying the full £140 four tier IX ship package in the Premium Shop, each of which would cost a massive amount of credits to upgrade and equip, credits also being available from the Shop. That is pay-to-win.

I've not been playing nearly as long you most of you, but my initial feeling is that when I'm eventually bored with the game grinding a tech tree twice isn't going to improve things very much. I got bored with WoT because of all the new layers they kept adding to the game, adding variety is one thing but keeping a player unbalanced and unsure is another. It's like the recent events WG have run for ships such as the Benham, they've invented a sort of imaginary 'sod it' button that they are tempting players to press to relieve themselves of the grind by using doubloons, loot boxes, free XP, or whatever it takes to stop the pain. I think the Research Bureau will become an extension of this policy, ensuing there is always a certain amount of pain in playing the game for players to want to short cut it, but it may also make them put strike a pose with their extended middle finger as well.

Should we all run around waving our arms in the air screaming and panicking? I'm worried, somebody tell me what to do!

Trolls will always find a way to troll so removing team damage won't affect a players enjoyment of the game at all, trolling will continue unabated with blocking and ramming and probably divisions now ganging up on other players. If Wargaming think team damage is a problem now just wait until they see all the replays being sent in reporting new forms of unfair play. Removing team damage will definitely dumb the game down, lack of care, not bothering to aim properly, even more collisions, etc. So instead of removing team damage just remove the trolls for repeated offences or make their sentence feel like it hurts and not just a couple of battles in Co-Op. Remember, team killers are cheats, if team damage is removed they've won, the game has been changed to accommodate them and keep them in the game instead of banning them.

It's the magician who is waving his hands and fingers around in the air before tricking you into choosing the wrong card. The explanation alone is smoke and mirrors, everything being a great opportunity until you realise on resetting you only get half the credits you put into a tech tree and ignoring your time, boosters, missions, and mental health put in during the process. As I've said before, this is nothing to do with re-invigorating the game, it's all about WG dredging for an new cash cow where you need to spend boosters, signals, time in missions, and your mental health all over again.

Fantastic, I'm sure there was lots of hard work coming up with that, but where do I sign up for the tutorial that explains the explanation?

I'd like to see a mechanic where if 'the team' say 'go take a cap', and you do, and then they allow it to be retaken all the teams XP goes to the DD for having his time wasted. I'm being only slightly facetious, but as a new DD player I notice the team doesn't always back up its mouth and sometimes says things to cover for the pretence of competency.

Watched it the first time around, but being a teenager at the time it was for the beautiful women and less for the plot lines.

In a special game mode then fair enough, subs could be fun. But in Randoms there's the rebalance needed to destroyers and cruisers for anti submarine work, we'd have the BB's claiming they are defenceless (and they would be, unlike say against CV's where they have AA), and would fast ships become the new meta for the game so sidelining much of the tech tree? I can't see this being easy or fruitful.

People in clans abuse compliments by giving them out to each other to boost each others karma on a regular basis whether they played well or badly. But it only takes some bright spark at Wargaming to imaginatively reinvigorate the karma system and make it useful for all hell to be let loose. We'd then see plenty of people openly questioning this newly invigorated stat where 40% players have 500 karma for 'playing well'. So it's best not to fiddle with it by opening it up to even more abuse through unwarranted compliments, or drop it completely. In any case if karma is meaningless why make even more meaningless by being able to hand it out like confetti, the current limit should at least make you think before handing a compliment out and for it to be appreciated by the recipient.

Just so you know kid I don't want to play CV's.

Because it was a competition even if it was chosen by myself and self imposed. I'd done the whole grind and missions, so quitting just before the finish line for the sake of a few doubloons would have been to let myself down and make that effort valueless. I'd have thought you would understand the principle of trying to do as well as you can, and while I may not be great in Random battles or any other type I could at least get myself within striking distance of the Mogador.