HMS_Kilinowski

You are right. I remember I bought the Cleveland camo and the one for the T8-New Orleans. So I spent 4000 doubloons altogether to buy two camos and get another two for free, for ships that I never would have bought a camo for otherwise. That itself was a good deal for Wargaming, since I spent about 16€ to get these camos and wouldn't have spent money otherwise. In my mind, I thought I make a good deal since I get camos for T6-Pensacola, T7 New Orleans, T8-Cleveland and T8-Baltimore, all for 4000 doubloons. In the end I got the aforementioned two free camos from events for Pensacola and Cleveland, plus another one from the 2017-anniversary collection (you can get it from crates for coal in the armory). So the only camo I actually needed was the one for the Baltimore for 3000 doubloons. I think Wargaming rather made a profit from that compensation policy than losing out on camos that people might have bought. I understand what you are saying about the premium ship. In my case it is easy, i lose nothing and I clearly see the value of Mosvka being a special ship. But for other players it's maybe like somebody orders a glas of bear and gets a crate of whine. Yes, it's higher value, but it's also an act of imposing one's preferences on others.

So RU-server failed, hu? The only good thing about this is that I never had a perma camo for the Moskva. I find it noteworthy that the reasoning presented by Wargaming differs from the reasoning given with the USN-cruiser line-split in Mai 2018. What was different about the Cleveland being moved, that made owners of a perma-camo for Cleveland eligible for a replacement camo on Pensacola? If the reason behind this - as WG has stated - is, that Moskva owners had years of fun with their perma-camo, didn't that apply to Cleveland owners back then, too? And beyond that reasoning, what could the true reason behind that be? That an additional perma-camo for the Nevsky has to be physically produced in a sweat-shop in the WG-basement? No, it's just a graphics-file, it could be handed out at no cost. So there is only one reason, why they don't want to do it: They think that many of the owners of a perma-camo for Moskva will now pay real money for an additional camo for the Nevsky. As initially stated, this doesn't concern me, as I don't have the camo, I just gain a special ship, so thanks. It actually concerns all the people complaining about that decision. So, you people with perma-camos can decide for yourself. If you want to be the people who complain in a contrived manner about something, only to then cheaply reward that with spending your money, you can do that. It's not gonna impress Wargaming and certainly won't help your credibility for future complaints. Or you consequently make a conscious choice to not get that perma-camo. Finally, I don't want to rob you and Wargaming of a key historical insight: Wargaming, you played this way smarter in the past. In the USN-cruiser-line-split, you gave people a free camo. People knew in advance, so they bought the camo with real money. Then, later, you had events, where people got rewarded with different free camos for exactly the ships concerned, Pensacola (the "Bionic"-space camo) and Cleveland (the "Freedom"-camo for finishing the American cruisers collection). You nullified any benefit of granting players the compensation. These free camos generated an additional incentive to get involved into the game and people bought premium time. People who bought the camos before, tho compensated officially, gained nothing from the compensation apart from the aesthetics of different camos. They spent money and Wargaming made money. And at the end, nobody could even complain. Really, i pull my hat, how smart you tricked people into spending doubloons on camos, thinking they would get something additional, when in fact they didn't. That was truly well played. If you were as smart as back then, you would now give all the Moskva perma-camos a second camo for the Nevsky and then simply make some grindy russian-cruisers event or collection, where you get some other fancy perma-camo for the Nevsky as a main reward, again rendering the old Type-20 camo useless. You would have people spend signals and premium time to comfortably finish that event and at the end you would be the big winner and still have kept a reputation of being generous. Instead you are acting painfully ungainly. I guess that happens when one reads the marketing textbook upside down.

Also if you still go IFHE, you might want to rethink the range mod on Smolensk. That was bases on spamming BBs at long range. Cruisers are not that easy to hit at 18km, but they are the only ones you can pen with IFHE, and good luck aiming for the 27mm-armor sections at that range. I find it funny, since with the rework I also changed a few secondary builds into survival builds. So getting spammed by IFHE-Smolensk, unable to pen and, thanks to their low fire chance plus my Fire Prevention, unable to set a lot of fires, that starts to be much ado about nothing. If you still want to go for range, fire chance imo now is the way to go.

I especially like that bit about the Legendary Modules now costing 19200 RP. When Wargaming announced they would remove the mission chains for LMs and move them to the armory, for some weird reason, there was a subconscious reflex to immediately try to unlock as many of these missions as humanly possible. And that reflex proved to be the right reaction, as unlocking these modules via the missions is much easier than regrinding at least one entire line to unlock a module now. Well, "easier" is the wrong expression, since it wasn't easy to do the missions either. It's rather a pretty expensive grind to unlock them now. To unlock every LM for every line, theoretically a player will need to regrind every line at least once, given he can get the double bonus, which is renewed every 4 months iirc. So getting all 30 LMs will take the player around 10 years. Or the player can do it without the double bonusses, if he wants to finish earlier than 10 years. Then he will need to regrind every line almost twice. Mind, I am not saying you have to regrind the line you want the LM for, I am merely making a statement as to the volume of grinding involved in unlocking a LM now. The mission chain for a LM usually took me around 80 battles, a bit less if I used the right signals and camos. (Re-)Grinding a line takes me around 160 battles, also using signals and camos. So for a player who did not unlock any LMs before the change, that means doing around 4800 battles, to unlock all LMs. Thats about the double the amount of battles, double the amount of signals spent and ofc 30 times the cost of rebuying the ships. I'd say almost a billion credits, given you would use the double-RP-bonus. I am very glad my reflexes with news about this game are working as they do. It's a bit sad tho, that as soon as changes are announced, the first reflex is "They are trying to hide a change to the disadvantage of the player base. Better try to mitigate what you can while you can."

There was no proof. I watched the replays and I at least saw a couple of good hits that a user of the mod could have evaded. But the speculation about cheating in a major tournament is just the tip of the iceberg. It doesn't change the fact the mod exists and is priced reasonable enough to attract whales. I know it sucks, but hey, it's a compliment, tho you probably got reported. I can see people being accused of cheating if they e.g. played LM-DesMo or pre-nerf Henri. The exceptional acceleration on both ships complements perfectly with the incoming fire mod of this mod pack and I have seen some players hitting the brakes or kick-down just in time to dodge each and every salvo. But Smalland is still rather a torpboat and DD-hunter. Damage is done mainly with torps. How can one cheat with torps?

I agree. I understand many of you defend WG here cause yes they need to make money and, from a certain perspective, nothing changed for the owner of a perma camo for the Moskva. But the practice of the USN-cruiser line split clearly shows there is a change in compensation philosophy. I think that is exactly to the point. Cleveland also plays very differently from its successor, the Pensacola. Still back then the understanding was that Wargaming could not guess the motives of each player to buy a camo? Did he want a camo for his T6-ship cause he likes the mid-tier meta? Did he like the playstyle of the Cleveland? Did he want the camo for its aesthetics or for the bonusses? So as a catch all solution, Wargaming granted owners of the Cleveland perma camo two camos for both ships. That was a clean solution. Nobody could feel cheated. It was even more noteworthy since players had paid for a T6-permacamo (1000 doubloons) but the additional camo was T8. So they got perma camos worth 4000 doubloons for an investment of 1000 doubloons, the equivalent to a 75% discount. That even worked out perfectly for Wargaming, since I and lots of other players then invested real money into perma camo for the Cleveland that they never would have bought, had they not known of that generous compensation in advance. With the Moskva, players have invested into a T10 camo for the T10-silver ship and they would get a second camo of equal value. So like double the value instead of four times the value in the USN-cruiser line split. It is reasonable to assume at least some of the players wanted just that, a perma camo for their T10 silver ship of the russian cruiser line. I think it's generally a good philosophy to not tell customers what they want but to be open-minded and accept they might have motives you can't comprehend. Also keep in mind, the camo has no cost of production, WG does not lose money granting players with that perma camo to keep that camo on the new T10-silver ship. One might argue they lose the money of players who right now have the camo on the Moskva and would buy another camo for the Nevsky. But that proves the whole point, that these players wanted to have the camo for their T10-silver ship and not the Moskva specifically. So no matter how you argue, the point made by @VIadoCrostill applies. And ofc, allow me the disclaimer that I do not have a perma camo for Moskva. I am not arguing for my selfish benefit. I rather believe the old policy, as practiced in the USN-cruiser line split, was of superior integrity and beneficial to WGs image as a fair company, an image that after the Puerto Rico-disaster, the steep price increases on FreeXP-ships and now the disappointing pricing of Legendary Modules could need a bit of a "buff".

I think it's unfortunate that all the links to videos showing the mod were removed. I was referring to some observations to be made in these videos. Removing the videos makes the references now pointless. The video material did not give any hints as to how to get and install this mod. It doesn't advertise it. It merely proves its existence. Any child can enter the search phrase in google and find the mod within seconds. Not mentioning the mod does not help preventing its use, it only helps Wargaming downplay its existence and incidence Maybe that is why these videos are removed so carefully, so that this mod remains an urban myth, so that people discussing it appear as conspiracy theorists and no costly measures need to be taken.

USN-BBs indeed have better accuracy at mid to close range in comparison to e.g. IJN-BBs. Nevertheless, they have superior range. That defines the play style. You should prefer punishing cruisers or doing drive-bys on BBs and that sort of thing. But if all ships are perfectly angled or unspotted, it may be beneficial to target ships on the opposite flank. If they push into your team on that flank, exposing their vulnerable sides, one citadel hit may hurt them more than 9 bounces on your flank. I don't know what you mean. Some ships do damage with HE. Is that HE spam? Some ships fire multiple small calibre shells rather than bigger ones. Are they spamming? Are they supposed to hold their fire? HE spam is a vague expression. What people mean, when they complained about HE spam, was originally ships like the Worcester, that did direct damage with their HE pens and indirect damage with fires on top of that. Ships were melting in no time. That was due to the old IFHE skill, where you got pens on most ships at a minor cost of having a slightly lower fire chance. Players would navigate into a vulnerable position, not knowing an unspotted island hugger like the Worcester was waiting for them. The rain of HE shells would begin and the ships would either be burned down within 2 min or make a risky turn, likely getting citadelled by other opponents. That has largely been overcome by the IFHE nerf. I know, some players will say there still is HE spam, but it is more of an an empty threat. You still got the bad memories haunting you, when a Smolensk opens up on you, but the effectiveness is much lower now. You now either face a player who doesn't use IFHE and gets some fires, but does no direct damage, or you run into IFHE, but you will get less fires. In any case you will survive much longer than before the IFHE-nerf. The effect is more psychological in nature. It's the fear of the team to push into such fire, where a decisive push would easily make an HE spammer run in panic. It's not the HE, it's the players wetting themselves. We'll see. "Russian" is a myth. We have two very underwhelming russian DD-lines, pretty much the worst DD lines in the game. Russian cruisers up to now were okay. Some ships were decent, others were underwhelming. Some russian BBs are very strong, but that is one line only. And then we had Stalingrad, a ship that is not as powerful anymore with other battle cruisers in the game. Puerto Rico is superior. At distance a Yoshino can melt a Stalingrad. Smolensk is overpowered but heavily hit by the IFHE nerf. And the new russian BBs will need to stand the test of time as well. CCs tend to make dramatic statements on new ships. In reality, ships can turn out quite differently.

Ich werde etwas müde, bei Fragen nach hochstufigen Premiumschiffen zu betonen, man sollte auf niedrigen Stufen seine Fähigkeiten optimieren, bevor man sich auf hohen Stufen überfordert. Als noch unerfahrener Spieler tut man sich mit keinem der genannten Schiffe einen Gefallen. Aber i.d.R. interessiert das die Fragesteller eh nicht, weil man sich von den dicken Pötten Wunder verspricht. In diesem Sinne is die Empfehlung ganz klar: Jean Bart. Gerade weil sie vermutlich für immer verschwindet, ist sie eine gute Investition in die Zukunft. Wenn man auf dem Niveau angekommen ist, um sie routiniert spielen zu können, was auch für mich zuweilen eine Herausforderung ist, hat man ein Schiff mit dem man Gefahren vermeiden und Chancen nutzen kann. Wenn man versteht, was das bedeutet, ist man reif für die Jean Bart. Georgia is auch solide, aber inkonsistent. Tolle Sekundärbewaffnung, aber eher zum Flankieren als zum Nahkampf geschaffen. Die hohe Geschwindigkeit bringt unerfahrene Spieler schnell zu weit nach vorne und dann zurück in den Hafen. Und Yoshino ist ein Horror für Anfänger, weil sie sehr reaktiv manövriert werden muss, ansonsten schnell Schaden nimmt und wegen diesem Ruf gerne fokussiert wird, was das Problem noch verschärft. Yoshino ist was für Liebhaber, die den Spielstil verinnerlicht haben. Objektiv ist sie eher enttäuschend.

If you look at the cost (16€/ month), two things seem reasonable to assume: (a) it's a subscription, so it is likely used by players who play regularly, and (b) the mod is a bit pricy. So it's users probably are players who already spend a lot on the game. Whoever uses the mod, risks having his account banned. For a frequent player with thousands of battles, lots of premium ships and ressources earned that is a severe penalty. So again not knowing anyone who uses it, doesn't mean nobody uses it. It can also mean that whoever uses it, is smart enough to not talk about or admit using it. What would they gain, admitting it? That their clan colleagues start belittling their qualities and they lose their reputation within their social group. That the word gets out to Wargaming and suddenly they are banned and hundreds of € spent on the account are lost. That you get kicked from the team for competitive clan activity. That would defy the whole purpose of the mod.

Don't worry, I didn't take offense. I just wanted to try and be constructive, which is not the strong suit of the forum. Nobody knows how widespread the mod is. Isn't that a key issue? We can't even assess the magnitude of the problem. If I told you that once a day you run into a guy who outplays you using the mod, you might be upset. If it happened once a month, maybe not so much. All we can do is guess: 1. We know a lot of people are willing to pay insane amounts of money for content. A mod charging 16€ a month is certainly within that budget. 2. We can assume, some people are afraid their account gets banned if they were to use that mod. That will reduce the number of potential users. 3. Whoever is selling this mod must be earning enough money to continue maintenance. Would they do that for a Handful of users, paying a few hundred Euros per month? Probably not. So the numbers must be sufficient to keep this operation running.

If it works or not, I don't know. At least i gave it a shot instead of whining like others: "WG do something about cheating. I don't know what you can do, but I won't spend any more money on the game, if you don't solve what I can't even offer a solution for." Also I think, as you argued, to estimate the physics out observation, would be much more complicated than just use the transferred information. It might mean a lot of work and again, the makers of this mod do it out of financial motives. Everxy step that increases the effort you need to put into such a mod, makes it less profitable.

May I say, I find it pretty cheap if some people downvote every post I make, without offering the courtesy or respect to post their opinion with the same diligence as I do it. I understand that booing out from the masses is much easier than presenting ones own arguments, if one has such. Thanks, I appreciate this. Even more so, since we do not always agree on things.

I am puzzled, why you would disagree. The OP criticised the RNG on main battery salvos, not the MM. I state that the parameters defining the RNG haven't changed. I did not say anything about MM. So how can you possibly disagree with what I say about dispersion and then argue with MM? This is like me saying vanilla is the best ice cream and you replying you like pizza.

Certainly that's not the reason. The game has not become a lottery, it has always been a lottery. One might even argue that ships with great accuracy like e.g. Stalingrad, Thunderer and Georgia have been added rather lately. If inaccuracy hasn't bothered you for 4 years, why is the same (in)accuracy bothering you now?

I worked my way through the Iowa about 6 weeks ago. It seemed alright to me. Not great. Not a thrilling, unique play style. But it works. They buffed the heal on USN-BBs, so you get more heath back. The thing is the game might have changed, so what you are experiencing are also changes that affect all ships, not just Iowa. Every ship has tu adapt it's play style to a change in the meta. Knowing hte other ships, helps fighting them. If I get spammed by a Smolensk, i retreat a bit. When I'm out of range, the Smolensk leaves its smoke and is very vulnerable. Also you don't shoot the smoked ship, you shoot the ship that spots for the smoked ship. That ofc means you cannot sit way back but must support your cruiser and also shoot the destroyer he encounters. And HE-spam is not a huge problem anymore. It was nerfed with the IFHE rework, since many HE spammers used IFHE and now have their fire chance nerfed in half. The Iowa has become a Jack of all Trades. You want to go full survivability build. It can tank. It can flank. It can brawl. It can push. It can do everything needed. but you will find better ships for each job. Doesn't mean it's useless, since it can perform all these tasks better than most other ships. I wouldn't want to risk a drive-by with an Iowa in a russian BB or brawl it in a Yamato or engage it long range in a german BB. It is what it is and if you play it to its strengths and avoid its weaknesses, you can have fun in it. Iowa is great at killing cruisers.

Maybe this is a naive idea but: Does the client need all the relevant physics data? If you look at navigational data. The data appearantly sent to the client is the current location, course and speed. There is no data concerning the rudder position, change of rudder position and acceleration/deceleration, which would enable the client to replicate the future position much more accurately if lag occurs. Subsequently this modpack can only use that basic information and gives a predictor based on the current speed and course, which is flawed. I can clearly see it in the videos to this mod. You can see the target is decelerating and will already be in reverse long before the shells would even hit, while the predictor, much like the torp predictor in the game still suggests aiming ahead. As a good player, I would never shoot at the predictor. The auto-fire feature uses that predictor, so it misses a lot. For the client ofc this means a slight loss of comfort. In case of a short desync, the client will show the ship going straight. When the connection to the server is reestablished, we get ships jumping to a new location. Happens even now. That is a simple example of how not all relevant info is needed for the client to work, the amount of transferred data is not excessive and the lack of information leads to a flawed mod. Now if we apply that to the incoming fire mod, does the client need to know all the characteristics of a shell-type? Does it need to know how a shell will decelerate due to air drag, does it need to know the entire physical equation system to forecast the trajectory of the shell in cases of a desync? For the player the shape of the visible salvo as it has travelled from its origin to the currently observed point is enough to make a call, how to evade those shots, based on vision. To have the complete data is maybe a luxury. In case of lags, the shells would fly straight and hit a different impact zone. But that full data is also vital for this incoming fire mod. That it can work with the full physics of gun fire is what makes it so accurate and powerful. Without even one of the variables it would become utterly useless. That would make the mod (a) less attractive, making less people use it. It would (b) result in less subscriptions or a lower price and (c) as revenue for the mod-makers drops, at some point maintenance of the mod would become unprofitable. When you say "there are far less than (I) might think", how do you know? Based on what numbers in comparison to one another? I haven't guessed any numbers or proportion, so how many do I think are there? You are saying the number of accounts using this mod is less than a number that is unspecified. And then obviously WG has trouble detecting them so far, so you don't even know the number of accounts using that mod. You are comparing two unknown numbers and concluding one is less than the other. Also I am not spreading rumors, I am suggesting what is imo common sense. Mind you, I am not tin-foil-hatting Wargaming would actively promote such a mod, if you or anybody at WG misunderstood me and felt accused of that. The paypal rewards were 20€ per bot account. There were 6, sometimes 8 in one battle, it must have been hundreds, if not thousands. WG would have had to pay 20€ from its liquid assets per account from what it had already earned. The economic harm of such a mod in comparison is of an indirect nature. You will never have to pay money already earned, you might lose future revenue. And even that is solely dependent on the reaction of the player base. If all players think these mods are fine, and continue playing as if nothing happened, revenues of WG are untouched, no harm whatsoever. Why would that mod be a big point on WG agenda? Even if all players oppose these mods, but nobody thinks they exist, all players continue playing as if nothing happened, revenues of WG are untouched, no harm whatsoever. Again, why would that mod be a big point on WG agenda? And for years it was a rumor. I myself have typed many times in ingame chat "there is no aimbot. it's a myth" to players accusing others. I have come across some great dodging skills and very accurate shots and never have I suspected a specific player to use a mod. So the mod itself is not a problem for WG. It starts becoming a problem, when both things add up, when (a) the word is out that it exists and (b) a sufficient number of players feel it ruins their game experience. When they stop spending money on the game or leave it altogether. So you see, I am not spreading rumors. I am summing up, what I observe and what economic thinking suggests. For years the modpack was a minor rumor that did not harm the success of the game. Who knows, maybe it even helped, maybe some bad players only stick to the game cause the mods make them perform. Maybe it had a positive effect. Anyway, there was no obvious harm to the financial side of the game and the mod continued to exist. Whether it was not a priority for that reason, I do not claim to know. I merely say: From an economic perspective, it totally makes sense. And of course, if measures against that mod were neglected for that reason, you would still defend your employer and that too, from an economic perspective, totally makes sense, no? You or the reader may draw whatever conclusion you see fit.

I am trying to be empathic and get you to calm down a little and you jump in my face. When you can't tell friend from foe in my book that is overreacting. You see I am not arguing about numbers. Where the flying intercourse would I get empirical evidence from? If I had numbers I wouldn't doubt anything I would specify the proportion of players using the mod and that would be an objective information to base your decision on. Also when I say you shouldn't overreact, it is my understanding I am not demanding you to do anything, I am rather consoling. If me consoling leads to many ills, I must admit i didn't know I had that effect on the world or even this game. All I am trying to say is that it might be an overreaction to say the existence of this mod calls for personal sanctions against Wargaming. The nature of how this game communicates information between client and server is I presume pretty similar for most client-based online games. This nature allows to implement external programs that process that information. I am not sure how much WG can do to prevent this. I hope they are trying. I would expect that. And yes, at a certain point not acting would be equivalent to tolerating this behavior. But it's imo also noteworthy that this is not a problem generated by Wargaming. When WG messed up the CV rework or the Puerto Rico, those were actions deliberately and actively promoted by WG. That is imo a different quality of voluntary disrespect. That is when I as a player take the appropriate measures, i.e. stop spending money on the game. WG is not allowing these mods. They do not help their business interests. I think they know that, even more so as the urban myth is not a myth anymore. The community being increasingly aware of the existence of cheating, will make players stop playing and that hurts WG financially. Wargaming will need to adjust their client in a way that it prevents these mods from working. It may take some time. Yes, it would be nice, if we heard a couple of words on this from WG.

Divisions are matched against divisions. Divisions of good players share relevant information and thus as a collective become more efficient than the sum of individuals. Divisions of bad players appearantly excel at sharing non-essential information, aka chatting, so they don't focus on the game and usually have a worse impact on the game as the sum of individuals. I got a nice example a couple of weeks ago, where a german streamer took his entire triple-BB-division to the 10-line on North map. So no, the divisions work both ways and there is no conclusive data that suggests they skew the distribution. This off-topic discussion about minutiae is killing the topic. I would suggest we do not deviate further. My initial point made was that mods are more effective the worse you are as a player and that the motivation is not one of vanity and elitism, but rather of convenience and efficient grinding.

Again, let's not deviate into technicalities. I might have talked about the average damage or average k/d ratio. I was talking about the average outcome of the game. I deemed that is pretty much consensus.

I didn't specify the average to be the average of winrate. 50% of all games are won, 50% are lost, minus a tiny bit for draws. That is the average outcome. 65% of the players do not reach that average outcome. Subsequently their contribution to the outcome is rather harmful to the outcome of the team than helpful. Subsequently they are more in need to compensate that lack by using mods augmenting their decision making process. I don't get what you're aiming at. If you disagree with the point that would imo help the discussion. Deviating into discussing definitions does not.

The average is 50% by definition. What you are talking about is the median.

Do you really want to split hairs now? I did not make a statement as to the average winrate. I said exactly what I quoted above. To me, that and your statement is pretty much the same, give or take 1.666666666666666666666666666666666% difference.

Technically you're right, 65% is a bit less than two thirds. Not worth disagreeing, tho. The principle is the same. All players in a team get punished for actions of individual players. If some players of your clan decide to retire from the team, but you were willing to continue, is it your fault? Sounds like collective punishment to me, not exactly best legal practice.

Worship me, love me. I did it! Who would have thought a minor remark could have such effect? Feel free to name your first-born after me: