jss78

If you think of the long-term view of WoWS, the game arguably has a problem -- there isn't an endless amount of lines you can add. US/Japan/Germany/UK/USSR/France are essentially all in now, with the exception of potential parallel CV lines. The stuff that remains to be added is mainly a handful of lines from small countries, with little historical mystique attached to them. So all "high interest" ship line launches are now done. So how you do keep the veteran player interested? WoWS has arrived at this stage surprisingly quickly, considering it's not an old game for a F2P title. The historical catalogue of ships is simply small compared to planes or tanks. WoWP is only beginning to scratch at France and Italy, hasn't added British bombers yet, etc., despite launching 2 years earlier. IMO this is where the research bureau comes in: you can add another long-term goal for the veteran player, while leveraging the entire existing tech-tree ship catalogue. They can play all their ships, enjoying the game as normal, but with a new long-term goal.

If it has to be a town, how about HMS Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch?

It's not the ludicrous PR event but their response which reaches the breaking point for me. Simply doubling down -- they really don't get it. I will never spend another cent, and it's the first time I ever make such a proclamation in any game. I feel truly sorry for the EU community management folks though. They seem like a good bunch of people. What a sh*tty week it must be at work.

My Lion has a W/L of 43.4%, despite decisively above average DMG and ship kill stats. Even the # of games is 106 which is conventially considered a sufficient sample. I have no explanation apart from persistent bad luck. I do fine with other RN battleships (Conqueror win rate 63.4% (n=154), Nelson win rate 71.2% (n=118)).

I liked the Colorado enough to play almost 200 games in her. The guns are really good for her tier, and that's really all you need in a battleship. The slow speed is a drawback but one I strongly feel is overblown. If you do put yourself in an altogether bad position, that's it as far as your influence on the game. But if you play centrally and mindful of your limitations, 9 games out of 10 it's not a big issue. My last game must've been 2 years ago, which may bias my view. Back then T7 had super friendly MM. You'd be sh*tting on Kongos etc. all day long. Also back then she had really strong AA for her tier, although back then, alas, you didn't have many CV's. The old "A" hull was a cruel joke, but modern players don't have to deal with that.

The suddenly favourable MM for T9, compounded by availability of ships like Musashi, definitely makes for some "interesting" games. Yamato-class going against USN standard-types (Colorado) was basically the IJN naval planners' wet dream, and that's exactly what it is in this game too.

Translating can be a tricky business, sometimes a word here or there can shift the meaning. Possibly he actually said: Reward [to WG] *from people with *mental health issues. That'd actually be an honest and truthful statement.

My suspicion is, it's costing them less than we'd think. This is all about forum/reddit penetration vs. size of player base. The sh*tstorm is real when you come to the forums and reddit. But what percentage of WG's customer base actually comes here? Not trying to belittle the issue -- my wallet's closed too, and I am angry. Meanwhile, right now, there's a casual player, ca. 45 years old, out there buying a Tirpitz. He'll go and play it -- not terribly well by our standards. Then he'll go tend to his garden, unperturbed by, and likely unaware of, the ruckus on the forums.

Just came from a 12-month hiatus to the Puerto Rico sh*tstorm. I was thinking it's once more the forums/reddit being melodramatic over nothing. But hoooly sh*t. WG, you really need to stop and think hard what you're doing here. Please tell us to our faces that the PR grind wasn't designed to be unachievable. Note that if PR was not meant to be free-to-gain, that's fine -- just BE UPFRONT about it. And when you're confronted with the details of the PR grind, what do you do. You respond with a plain LIE that at least Gorizia is easier to get than P.E. Friedrich (when a quick look at the numbers show it's ~five times harder to grind). Please note, this is not about ship costs but about how you communicate them. I am fundamentally FINE with a F2P title having very expensive top-tier premiums. Just ask that lawyer or consultant 200 EUR for his very special ship -- this is stuff for memes but not the end of the world. Hell, make the ship cool enough and I might pay you 200 EUR myself. But please be OPEN about this and do NOT lie to our faces. I've supported WG through stuff like the the CV rework (which had its own problems but had valid reasoning behind it), but with bullsh*t like this it's over.

Wouldn't König Albert at T5 kind of break the whole chronological progression across the tiers? T5 ships, at least with hull upgrades, tend to be WW2 heavy lifters generally. Now you'd have a WW1 era dreadnought in contemporary spec there. And you'd have the tech-tree Kaiser, WITH fantasy AA upgrades, at one tier lower. It'd just be strange. Wouldn't a more natural fit at T5 be Bayern's sister Baden? Put her there in the authentic WW1 spec. So she'd be the to Bayern what the König Albert is to Kaiser and the West Virginia to Colorado. The real problem is the placement of Viribus Unitis at T5. I figure WG just realized there'd been frequent requests for the Viribus Unitis, and they'd rather charge T5 premium money for her instead of T3 or possibly T4.

Someone posted this obviously harebrained/humourous napkin scribbling in another thread. So, this got me thinking -- what is the hypothetical maximum size of a warship? Let's assume there are no limitations during the construction stage, or with logistics. So you would have a large enough dock, a harbour to take the ship, and no need to consider what Panama/Suez/Kiel etc. canals can take. Would it, in such a case, make sense to go bigger than has historically been done? Would it actually be economical, or is there a point of diminishing returns in terms of ship capability? Or some technical/structural reason why you just couldn't go past a certain size? Have there been any concrete plans for a ship decisively bigger than the Yamato?

I'd argue tier does have something to do with this. It's not a simulator, but WG's modus operandi, so far as I understand has always been to maintain historical accuracy to the point possible -- where it doesn't come in the way of gameplay. A fair amount of "what if" and speculative scenarios are naturally acceptable. But IMO, Stukas flying through T10 American AA would be pushing it.

The problem with the Stukas is, a Graf Zeppelin with Stukas is not a feasible T8 CV. The most natural place for the GZ would've always been T6. It's a big joke that this ship is at the same tier with Enterprise etc. -- it's in no way an equal tier CV hull. And down at T6 you could've reasonably given her the historical Stukas, and it all would've worked out fine we'd have the GZ facing Ryujos etc, with a similar-sized air group of similar-capability, early-WW2 planes. But you can't really re-tier her, can you, when you've already SOLD her for T8 money. So we're stuck with this thing we currently have, and that's a shame.

As far as the mystique, well she was a Yamato-class hull. You can argue about the general success of the Yamato class, but nonetheless lots of us have a *ard-on for this class, and in this case it's not only the weeaboos either. As far as Yamato class in general, AFAIK she was kind of a dead end. I recall reading about wargaming of various outcomes of the Battle off Samar. In one very specific scenario the Yamato ended up facing a line of USN standard types in clear weather. The result was absolutely horrible for the Americans. I guess something like this scenario was what the Japanese had in mind with the Yamatos. But then radar happened, and radar-guided fire control was fielded by BB's significantly outpacing the Yamato, and that was that. So yeah, "fascinating but overall kind of crap". This actually describes a fair number of ships in the game, as I understand. Either design dead ends, or designs forced out of necessity (e.g. Japan's case of needing to make CV's, even bad ones, out of anything that's available). Being a completely horrible design doesn't stop many in the player base asking for the Ise. In the game we can always tier the ships appropriately to let them achieve something. With the Shinano, Ise, Graf Zeppelin, etc., a game like this allows us bring to life scenarios that never really came to be -- and that's just fun, isn't it?

Shinano, as I understand, had only a small active air group while most hangar space was used for transporting planes. However the planes operated would've been the latest types. I think she'd be most natural fit for a "Saipan treatment". Put her down in T8, with a small # of planes (= small initial deck complement, slow replenishment from hangar) compared to Shokaku and especially Kaga. But make the planes same as Hakuryu's. IJN currently lacks such a carrier, so there's a niche right there. Plus she'd have the gimmick -- occasionally hilarious but mostly inconsequential -- of a 400 mm armour belt.

I feel like a lot of time we just need to accept the "Random" game mode is where "everyone plays". Some people seem to approach it as some highly competitive e-sport thing, but that's really not what it is. You get a bit of XP and credits, and maybe some visual bling for your ship, but that's all that's at stake. Sure we might feel attached to that purple number we extract from a third-party website, but that's our own decision to go there. These forums (for all games) tend to be an echo chamber of the most engaged small segment of the player base. We're the right-hand 2% tail of the bell curve. This stuff is VERY important to us, but while not unimportant we may overestimate how important we are to the game. And we act stunned that the left-hand tail of the bell curve exists. In the middle you have a ~95% hump of players. They regularly face players both notably better and notably worse than themselves. Together, they buy LOTS of Tirpitzes. While they're largely absent from these conversations, how they feel about things is all-important. I feel a little cynical/detached because it must be 20 years since I first saw the equivalent of this conversation on an online video game forum. No game ever failed because the player base was "too bad".

Forums like these tend to look at things from a narrow, specific viewpoint. We're the 2% most engaged section of the player base, who get REALLY invested into a video game. We tend to be borderline (or possibly full-blown) Asperger types. I'm not trying to be insulting -- I'm also describing myself here. It's completely unfathomable to people like us -- because it's the diametric opposite of how we approach things -- but a lot of them might simply not give a *hit. They like looking at a ship go around and blow *hit up, so this is what they do. A lot of them might be fairly old (based on polls there's probably something like a 10% segment of 60+ year olds in this game), or might be playing with some kind of a handicap. Either way they suck. And it's probably not the end of the world for them. They'll play for a bit, and then go hug their grandchild or tend to their garden. A video game was lost, but life goes on.

...I'd take this over the the anime stuff. A bit of honest-to-god capitalism never hurt anyone.

Let me expand on the old player's angle. I understand WG believes there are old players in a position where they have "nothing to grind for". They've gone down to T10, in the trees they're interested in anyway, and the ships are fully "tricked out" with 19-pt captains etc. I believe this to be true, considered in isolation. Probably a good number of people would start grinding those new bonuses for their mid-tier ships. But there's a crucial difference between a fun grind and a forced grind. Nowadays, I have my dozens of fully maxed out ships waiting in port. I can play them for 100th, 200th etc., time when it pleases me. And that's a fun, relaxing good time. I can do stuff, I don't HAVE to do stuff. If you introduce a grind for a new set of performance-affecting bonuses, I am forced to do a new grind on ALL of my ships. I am "forced" because I am naturally not willing to play without bonuses others have, so I'd play to un-**ck my ship which used to be good but no longer is. This is not a fun prospect, and I am frankly not sure I'd even start the process -- i.e. I'd just not play at all. And beyond that, this system hurts the new player. I'd urge you to find us a fun grind. Something we "can" (but not "must") do, and we get something cool to show for it. E.g., give me a mountbatten pink special camo for my UK ships by doing some mission, and I'll be playing that thing like there's no tomorrow.

Here's what I don't understand. Who WANTS this? Surely not the new player. They're going to get ****ed so hard that they can't walk upright for a month. There's just no way around this. And the old player? I'm in this camp. I have my old favourite ships, which had 19-pt captains years ago. I guess in principle I'm supposed to be the target here. Well I don't WANT a new grind, nor do I NEED a new grind for these ships. The way I approach the game is -- I log in the game, I pick a ship with a play style which feels like a pleasing thing at the moment. It might be the 100th game on that ship, it might be the 500th game. Doesn't matter. Give me a fun game, and I'll play it. We're completely screwing the new player for something I don't see the old player asking for. Maybe I'm wrong and maybe my perspective isn't shared by other old players. Maybe WG has some arcane F2P economics formula that robustly predicts this is the thing to do. And maybe they're right. But I will not play this thing.

Emphasis mine -- I'd add that even from a history buff's perspective, paper ships can be fine. In this game, we're reliving the World Wars in endless iterations. I think it's the perfect place to also explore alternative outcomes which for various reasons weren't realized. What if the German high seas fleet wasn't scrapped following 1918? What if an alternative design for a BB class won? What if the Soviets had an opportunity to go ahead with their naval programs? All the historical classics -- the Warspites, the Enterprises, and the Yamatos -- are the heart and soul of the game. But IMO it'd be a missed opportunity to not take a look at all the designs that never came to be. Just need to maintain a "reasonable" steel-to-paper ratio.

All this talk of 45% WR players kind of misses the mark IMO. That's not remarkably below average and I wouldn't over-analyze what's going on with them. They're somewhat below average players of a video game, and that's all there is to it. The 40% or below guys are more interesting. I've run a few a times to ~40% players who were actually talkative in chat. What unified them is they were constantly blaming their team, to the point of getting abusive. Nothing was ever their fault. They sucked, and beyond that, had a mentality where they would never learn anything either. I suspect this is common with the ultra-bad players. Some of the players who struggle might be really old guys (there's a fairly strong contingent of retired age people playing this game) or people with some kind of a disability. I have no issue with these. The Random queue is explicitly the place where everyone's welcome, and we should all accept that when we go there.

It was demonstrated months ago that (a) the planes are not infinite and (b) that the maximum # planes a CV can launch over a 20-minute game is similar as before 0.8.0. (and also, similar to to the historical hangar capacities) If you want to make a CV whine thread, please make a legitimate one and not repeat this falsehood over and over again. Also, I wonder how exactly you determined that the enemy CV's ability to deal damage wasn't at all affected. It looks to me like the enemy CV's didn't achieve much in this game. What's the problem here?

First-worldunicum problems.

It's just that snowball effect. The team losing the first 1-2 ships becomes more likely to lose the next one. Not guaranteed to lose, but more likely. It can a tiniest, near-random thing that tips the balance -- 1-2 guys putting themselves in a locally outgunned position and getting sunk early etc. Sometimes there might be a MM imbalance, but you don't need that to explain most steamrolls. I think there's a false expectation that steamrolls should somehow be less common, and then people get disappointed. We want that close Hollywood finish. Also in "real life" what happens is the losing side would disengage at the first signs of a steam roll, say after taking 20% casualties and finding their position poor. Here we can't do this because any "surrender" button would be prone to abuse. So we're forced to fight these near-hopeless battles quite a lot. All things considered there's still a fair amount of really close games. And even games where a team manages to win from a shorthanded position. I have never known of a multiplayer death-match game which didn't have a similar conversation pop up regularly.