Aotearas

I'm more interested in preventing potatoes from growing alltogether rather than just not having them in the high tiers. Potatoes at any tier aren't fun. And it's squarely in WG's ballpark to adress that particular problem if they are encouraging the wrong mindset with actively giving people the opportunity to jump ahead of the natural learning curve by handing out free higher tier ships. Skillgaps are normal and desireble in PvP games, however it's the developers responsibility to ensure giving players the proper motivation and tools to acquire the necessary skills, not waive the whole concept away with a fistful of banknotes saying "look at all those ships you can have now without grinding if you just spend some money". What we have in WoWs is more like a skillchasm. The Marianas Trench of skillgaps.

Ah, the good ole' "no cap, kill all" mentality, losing games since too damn long ago.

Yeah ... you're going to have to explain that sentiment to me, because on first glance that just reads like a load of bullocks.

I believe someone took an educated guess and said you have about 30% chance to complete the collection with the 25 containers you can get from the missions. So, with so far absolutely zero information on whether WG intends other avenues to get collectibles from, that's a 70% chance that players would be forced to either dig into their wallet if they want to complete the collection (and since the reward is a unique captain with useful skills there's strong incentive to) ... or well, they won't be able to complete the collection at all. Which would of course be completely P2W BS of such blatantly unashamed magnitude that I can't help but think that this is just once again WG EU being simply incompetent at communication. The alternative is something that I quite frankly don't want to think about much if I don't have to because it's just utterly disgusting.

We know the requirements for the early unlock missions, they're listed in the linked news article. The mission for the tier VIII Richelieu for example is just getting 16000 base XP over any number of games in a tier V ship or higher and can be completed in every game mode. Missions go from 9th of February until April 13th (two months). So yeah, any potato can complete those missions. Zero filtering beyond the tier V ship threshold.

What he said. Of note is that only the extreme ends of the ship and the superstructure have less module HP than the ship has ship HP. So hitting a ship square in the middle won't damage saturate it, but hitting the bow or aft ends can. This can also be used to your advantage to migitate damage you recieve by pointing a saturated part of the ship towards the incoming torpedoes; say your ship has been getting a bloody nose thus far, so if you can't evade the torp, you catch it on the nose for minimal direct damage (floodings still apply though). Also of note: overpenetrations still deal their usual damage (10% of the listed maximum AP damage) even to damage saturated ship sections.

There is a difference between a potato that's playing bad because he's a n00b and a newbie who plays bad because he has no experience playing the game but got handed a free tier VIII ship and is naturally playing it. Players should be encouraged to learn the game in the low tiers and as they progress up the line, not be encouraged to throw money at WG to skip the learning curve and start at the high tiers. That might be a profitable business tactic, but is quite simply atrocious game design!

Let's see how much you like it when you happen to get a team full of Richelieus that play like crap because they literally started playing battleships with that ship and little to no prior experience. The numbers of potato Bismarcks sailing around trying to snipe from maximum range or doing the opposite and rushing into the whole enemy team so they can use their precious secondaries after WG gave away free Bismarcks like mad with that one collection should be telling enough why it's a bad idea to let people skip tiers.

Pretty sure that would require WG to switch to an entirely different game engine because the current BigWorld engine can't handle something like that.

Most Ops aren't exactly well balanced towards CV gameplay. Every damn ship that can mount DFAA has it and from the couple games in CVs myself I'm fairly certain those bots also get an AA buff. They also tend to come in blobs that will have overlapping AA auras by virtue of vicinity. I think there's only two Operations where CVs are actually a useful choice over raw dpm ships, for the rest you just want to bring something that dpm the bots to Ironbottom Sound.

It actually does a good chunk of damage to DDs. Against the bigger DDs where the AP has time to arm inside the ship, you can smash them for 4k+ damage with AP per salvo, also works against the smaller DDs if they are slightly angled. If not then the HE is plenty powerful enough, so you're looking at reliable 2.5k+ damage per salvo. Plus the 150mm HE is more potent in knocking out modules so if you're really cheeky you can aim for guns and equalize the dpm numbers in your favour. And the AP on those 150mm guns is absolutely filthy against cruisers and battleships. Anything gives you broadside and we're talking ~6k salvoes if you put the shells where they can pen. A Yamato found that out the hard way, thinking he can ignore a puny tier VIII DD firing AP at it ... Z-23 doesn't win dpm fights (unless you knock out a couple guns), but the alpha strike capability in an ambush is exceptional. And with the short reload on the torps combined with the nasty firechance with those 150mm HE you can easily proc DoT on enemies.

Blasphemy. Heresy! Burn the witch!!! If you'd put a gun to my head and asked me Ibuki or Roon, I'd say Roon every single time. Hell you could just threaten me with some milk chocolate and I'd say Roon as often as it takes to get that milky crap out of my face and give me some proper dark chocolate. Saying Roon is worse than Ibuki, something ain't right with that clopper. Been smoking to much magic hay or something *grmbl* ...

Only 4+? WG should really get on to allow clans to share ressources, then I could give you some of my 2kk+ free XP.

The nation state didn't. But the cultural identity very much. The modern nation state of Germany didn't pop up on the map just completely randomly after all. And a cursory wikiwalk told me one of the major architects working with the fortress in Kronshtadt was of baltic german ethnicity. But good ole' Pete also liked the Dutch a good deal so it's open for debate and I don't think one could say for sure without trying to necromance that old bugger and ask him directly.

So a Z-23 that trades a gun for slightly better concealment, eh? No deal. I very much liked the Z-23 with the 150mm setup, it packed a mean wallop and had that distinctive edge to how it felt playing that ship, but just that one gun less could very well tip the balance and not in its favour. Getting slightly better concealment doesn't feel like a good trade-off or even something I'd want on a ship like this. The 150mm Z-23 was a surpreme ambush DD that worked through its alpha punch, not because it was stealthy. Though there's no telling if WG won't try to offset that by giving it an overcharged hydro like with the Lo Yang, though again I don't think the Z-23 was as fun to play because it had hydro ... Highly sceptical of this premium.

Not sure what to think of it. For one, I'd like to be happy that we're getting a free XP ship that isn't a battleship. On the other hand, this ship very much looks like a BB for all intents and purposes. And because I'm some freak of nature, on yet another hand I can't help but wonder that if WG decided they wanted a battlecruiser, I'd have loved to see the Alaska-class instead. On yet another extremety, at least it opens up the possibility of the Alaska class making it into the game. At the very least I'll have to express my doubts as to why Kronshtadt is going to be a thing when the Stalingrad is already announced to be the same concept as a tier X reward ship for clan wars. Looks very much like another selfmade Yamato vs Musashi problem. But I'll get her if she's available for free XP. At the very least even if she's more or less a battleship with cruiser hull armour, she'd play well as an aggressive battleship which is something I very much like (which reminds me I have to play my Scharnhorst some more again).

Ibuki is a solid ship, just entirely unimaginative to play. Great concealment might look encouraging to play more aggressively and back up allied DDs by providing a smashing 10 gun IJN 203 HE in the face of contesting enemy DDs, but the simply matter of fact is an Ibuki doing that won't survive for long if anyone on the enemy team has a line of fire and solid aim. Only thing the Ibuki is really good at is a long, drawn out attrition fight, chipping away at targets. A pure kiting machine in the current BB heavy hightier meta. Boring to play imo, but not bad it.

Hmm, are you sure? Because quite some very useful advice was given in a civil fashion, the majority of it infact before you came along with this response: Do you know the difference between a newbie and a noob? A newbie is someone who's new to the game, who may be bad at it simply because he hasn't yet learned the mechanics, how to play it and other details such as maps etc.. Everyone starts as a newbie, people aren't born with instinctual knowledge on how to play World of Warships (or any other game) after all. But a newbie who learns will improve and become a competent player in due time. As of now, you're still fresh to the game, a newbie. A noob is somone who refuses to learn. No one starts as a noob, it's a deliberate decision to being willfully ignorant. A noob will never improve and become a competent player in time. Take the advice you've been given, learn from it. Don't be a noob. No one likes a noob, least of all the eleven people who're stuck playing with one on their team because it lowers their own chances at having a good game when one of their teammates is essentially dead weight. Alternatively, if you are truly satisfied with how you play now, consider playing CoOp instead. It's easier than PvP and though it earns less in the way of credits and XP, the effective difference from having a good CoOp match and a very bad PvP match isn't that substantial, so you'd maintain your current progress speed (based on average XP earned) but have more enjoyable games to it. Now, with that said I'll take your advice and stop wasting my energy on you unless you change that willfully ignorant attitude.

Then how come you're getting worse as you progress up the tiers? Something about that reflection process is evidently not working right. Do you know what a team is? Because I'm getting the distinct impression that you don't. The quintessentials have already been said. Learn to play rather than spending your way up the tiers with free XP and your wallet. You'll enjoy the game a great deal more once you actually know what you're doing and the people playing with you on the same side will also have a better experience for it. If you still insist on ignoring that advice ... well you say you're a psychologist by profession so I'm sure you've heard of Mr. Dunning and Mr. Kruger.

A clanmate of mine who had an NA accoutn but hardly ever played on it actually logged back into it by mistake and saw he had gotten a couple premiums, including a Cesare. Guess the pool for premium-baits is largely random, or perhaps tied to the lenght of inactivity and those who haven't played in a loooong time get more performant premiums compared to those who were inactive for a shorter period of time. Speculation. All I know is WG does gift premiums to people who've been inactive for a considerable time.

Because it doesn't. Most of that XP comes from the aircraft kills and afaik the winning team gets an XP bonus for each (active) player based on the total XP earned by the team. If you then also prioritized destroyers and cruisers rather than trying to farm damage on BBs that would absolutely explain why you got 2k base XP.

Normal WG practice. Players who haven't played for quite some time are being baited back into the game with premiums.

Well, at the very least it's not a ship that will be causing P2W sentiments anytime soon. No idea why they had to gimp the guns like they did though. If it kept the same guns and just traded the torps for 20km DWT it would at least have a somewhat fighting chance against other DDs, but giving her DWT that can't hit DDs or cruisers and neutering her guns makes her so laughably useless against literally half the enemy team it's not even funny. The current Kagerou isn't exactly something I'd put into a brawl with other DDs if I had other options, but at least you can do good damage in a pinch or at least reasonably defend oneself, plus you always have the option to throw torpedoes into smokes or a rushing DD's path to deter them, but with DWT that option is gone entirely. Not sure why anyone would want to buy the Asashio as she currently stands outside of being an obsessive collector. And for captain re-/training she wouldn't do much good with performance characteristics like that, even if she had a special captain XP bonus like the Prinz Eugen that would at best just counterbalance the average XP earned playing her due to her objectively worse stats, so that isn't really much of a marketing point either (especially not with the Shininome being available for free via a permanent campaign).