mrk421

LOL!

possibly... I don't know enough to say conclusively why T8 faces so many games where it's bottom tier nowadays. But I think that at least part of the issue is that: a) as time passes more and more palyers have ground their way to T9 and T10 and b) T9 and T10 are more affordable since the changes to the economy so more people are playing those tiers regularly - and it makes sense people want to play T10, because that's usually the ship you want to get when you start to grind down a certain line. Yet c) there are not yet enough players at T9 and T10 to regularly have 12v12 matches without including lower tier ships. I don't think there's much we can do to change this trend. Uness there was a good incentive to play lower tiers even though you have top tier ships unlocked.

Nice to see that all the haters haven't managed to completely put you off from interacting with the community. However I beg to differ. It seems that with 0.6.4 you made IFHE on the 150-class guns more-less mandatory. Because after the patch it's impossible to penetrate the armor of T8+ German CAs with HE unless you have that skill... And I wouldn't be at all surprised if a similar change was made to several other ships in the near future. Therefore in essence where it may not have been mandatory in the past, to be effective, it pretty much will be in the future.

To the OP: Like others have said, the correct solution is to NOT retaliate. There is a system in place - the damage mirroring one - to take care of jerks like that. If they continue being jerks, they'll continue killing themselves off and eventually they'll stop getting a kick out of it and quit playing. I recently had a funny situation regarding team damage. I was in my Scharnhorst in I think what was a T8 match on North. I was trying to hold the A flank or at least delay the enemy there, but eventually had to retreat due to overwhelming opposition. A friendly Kutuzov sails in and deploys smoke - presumably for his own benefits. I decide to borrow the smoke screen for a moment to catch a break from enemy fire. The friendly Kutuzov shoots at some enemies, but either I strayed too close to him or the other way around, at least one of his shells hits me and sets a fire (it seemed like every HE shell I caught set a fire that day). Since I had just recently used my repair, the fire stuck for the full duration. He hit me again with his next salvo, but I'm not sure whether that set a fire or not. Either way, after I'd lost some HP to the fire, the message about disciplinary action kicks in and the fire starts to DoT the Kutuzov instead of me. By the time it's finished, we're both on almost no HP and our team loses the game soon after. I dare say the game was winnable if it hadn't been for that incident, but I didn't feel too bad as the situation was kind of amusing in a strange way...

It seems to me that a lot of people tend to forget the fact that later in the game your higher calibre dual purpose guns are the ones that are likely to still be operational. So kudos to you for pointing that out

I see your point. However, if it were a bit easier to survive at the front lines, the people who go there would have comparatively higher impact on the game result that would show up in the post battle screen as much higher amount of experience gained vs the campers. That should be a big enough hint for a lot of players.

EXACTLY! That's my suspicion as well. So any "fix" that punishes this sort of play style or heavily incentivises getting closer and being more useful will not really work. Because such methods will not make them feel more confident, nor help actually improve their competence. What it might do, instead, is to discourage such players from playing altogether - which in the long term we don't want either. Which is why I believe the only solution that has the potential to work is to increase the number of hits a ship can endure before it is sunk. Not make the ships unsinkable by any stretch, but to eliminate the possibility of being one-shot by a single lucky salvo or lose half your HP pool to a lucky citadel penetration. Perhaps if that was the case the people we want to address would feel a bit more confident actually participating in the battle and maybe even get better at the game in the process

Why do you reckon people are hiding like cowards? What are they afraid of? If we can figure that out, maybe we can come up with a fix. If you read my posts in this thread you'll find I have my theory...

@pra3y Perhaps... Who knows. But what about the suggestion itself? Of reducing damage globally. Sure, it would remove some of the satisfaction you get when you kill an enemy with one salvo. However, for me at least a big part of the satisfaction is the sound effects - of scoring a citadel hit for example - so as long as the sound effects remain, I personally wouldn't feel less satisfied. AND by reducing damage you could consider increasing accuracy a bit thus removing a bit of the RNG element and making those nice salvos more common, which would in turn increase the satisfying feeling. Regarding re-spawning I'm actually not advocating that. I'm not even sure I like the idea. It was just an example of a solution which in my opinion would work more effectively than most other suggestions made here. My first pick would be to reduce damage output even though it probably has some flaws which I've failed to realise. AGAIN, the main reason people camp is not that they think that they can do more damage per salvo this way. Even the worst potato realises that getting closer to the enemy will increase your damage output per salvo. Problem is, the average player does not feel confident enough in their ability to survive any considerable length of time when they're in range of multiple enemy ships -> stay back. If it was possible to push forward and disengage and retreat without losing your ship if you get into trouble my guess is most people would naturally do that!

No, no, no, no, no to reducing damage done/exp gains from shooting at max range. I don't approve camping, but I don't think that's the right solution. It would make things too confusing and overly complicated. And most importantly it would not fix the issue, because at close ranges you would still die very quickly when getting focussed by more than one enemy. Since most people want to avoid losing their ships they'd still remain at the back, just get worse rewards... or stop playing. Best solution I can think of would be to reduce damage overall, so that you have less risk of dying instantly when you get to close quarters.

I think it's a much needed discussion and let's hope WG is actually interested in improving the situation and that we can come up with some solutions that have a chance of working. I have some thoughts of my own, but before I get to them I read the suggestions made so far and wanted to comment on the ones I thought looked serious. And why in my opinion most of them won't work. I'll hide them in spoilers because that's not the main focus of this post. In order of appearance with the suggester's name in parentheses: Although I agree to a lot of what's been said, I have a somewhat different view than most. Or at least draw different conclusions than others... The issue in my opinion, like someone also mentioned before, is risk. People don't want to lose their ship and go back to port 5 minutes into the match. It's frustrating, even if the penalties aren't too high. If you push and get focus fired by 3-4 ships or more even BBs won't last longer than a minute, not to mention other classes. In other words: making a small mistake can be very costly, often lethal, which forces people instinctively to sit back and avoid risking making a mistake. In a word - the ships are too squishy compared to the firepower available at high tiers. My solution? Improve the survivability of all ships by: 1) globally reducing the damage from all armaments by at least 20%, potentially even more in the case of citadel penetrations 2) AND make all ship classes able to repair and heal back some of the damage they've sustained with the heal being more effective on BBs Edit: and other ships that currently can equip a heal. My alternative solution? Introduce re-spawns like in most shooters. If you die, you can re-spawn in 1 minute and continue the battle. Of course a LOT of things would have to be adjusted to fit these changes - you could increase accuracy across the board for example which would arguably make it feel more rewarding to play. Bottom line: If you want to increase the pace of the game you need to introduce changes that make it more arcadey and get rid of the one-shot mechanics which discourage bold game play. Besides, I think it would still be quite satisfying to hear that you've scored 5 citadel hits on the enemy cruiser in one salvo, even if it didn't result in an instant deletion of that cruiser.

Hear hear!

If you want to maximise your AA potential, Manual AA would be the optimal choice. It will add almost 50% to your overall AA DPM and remember that it's on the long range dual purpose secondary/AA guns, so the effect will be even more pronounced. Plus you have to keep in mind that these guns are more durable than the dedicated AA guns mounted on the ship. Which means you'll keep more of them operational for longer during a match when you're taking enemy fire. AFT on the other hand will be the more versatile option as it will also increase the range of your secondaries - and the increased size of your AA bubble will also probably have a noticeable effect, while not as pronounced as taking Manual AA will. Since CVs in general are not that common, might be worth consideration. But purely for AA, Manual AA will definitely have the bigger impact.

Haha, lol! No, I don't think they're awesome at all. Apparently I didn't express myself clearly enough. What I was trying to say, was that according to WG they removed some of the less desirable drops from supercontainers and instead are offering these new upgrades, which according to them are awesome, from the drop pool. I find it despicable that they're trying to pass off a nerf to supercontainers as a buff. And I think we need to call them out on that and make them understand it's not OK. I'm not against nerfs per se. When they feel they need to nerf something they're free to do that. But it's NOT OK to try to mask up the nerf and say something like: "we listened to the community's wishes and have made such-and-such thing BETTER" when in fact they made it worse.

Waiting for someone to pop in with the standard "STOP COMPLAINING ABOUT FREE STUFF" comment. And they'd be partially correct of course... However what really ticks me off about the changes they made to supercontainers is the way they presented them. What they said essentially was that hey, we're making supercontainers even better than before by removing some of the worse items (like flags and camos I think?) from the drop pool and replacing them with the new awesome modules. Which is a load of bullcr*p and they need to be called out on that. That's no way to treat your customers, whether they're paying or not!

This is the counter-poll to the one I posted about the worst game balance changes. In this one we search for the best changes, as not all of the changes that have been made to WoWs have been awful. Cast your vote and let WG know what the actual players appreciate in their game. PS. The poll for the worst changes of 2017 so far can be found here

​2017 has already seen 4 major updates to the game. With them have come some notable changes to gameplay balance some of which have fundamentally shaken the way certain ships and ship classes are played. Some of those changes have been quite 'controversial' to put it politely or downright ill-conceived and stupid to be blunt. I thought I'd create this poll to find out which of these changes the part of the player base that actually cares about the game (at least enough to follow the forums) thinks is the worst. So happy polling and see you in the comments! PS. There will be a part 2 of this topic where we find out which ones have been the most positive changes according to the EU community. ​Edit:​ Link to the poll for positive changes here ​Edit2: ​Re-worded option 4 from 'removal of stealth fire' -> 'removal of stealth fire as it was implemented'

Indeed... That's why I added "so far" in the thread title :p The reason I started this poll (and the counter-poll) was to hopefully clearly point out what kind of changes the community feels are ill-advised and what kind of changes are welcome. Granted, one could argue, that WGs job is not to please the community so much as to create a balanced game that could be enjoyed with any class of ship. But this is exactly where, it seems to me and apparently to a large part of the community that WG are failing. Almost all of the recent patches have been straying the game away from a good balance between different ship classes and the rock-paper-scissors principle by either directly or indirectly making BBs in particular less demanding to play effectively compared to the other classes. Is that well justified? Are BBs underperforming? Doesn't look like they are to most people, but I invite anyone who has evidence to the contrary to come forward and present it. What could be the potential dangers if they keep going along this path? Most likely players that are not skillful enough to have sufficient success with the more difficult to play classes like DDs and CL/CAs will choose the easier path and resort to playing BBs where they can have moderate success despite not being very good. As a result, despite the efforts to the contrary, the average performance of BBs will start to suffer compared to the other classes - since the other classes are only being used by people who are very good at this game. What good would that do to anyone? We are a pretty big community. And even though we don't have all the statistics and resources at our disposal that WG has, we have a lot of collective experience in the game and can spot potential issues. If we keep pointing those out and are vocal enough, maybe, just maybe WG will take notice and stop ruining their own game - which we all love dearly. Peace!

I completely understand. It's like playing the lottery and hearing the bells that you've won the jackpot ...only to then find out that the jackpot was 20€! These new upgrades really don't belong in supercontainers. Or if you roll one, it should at least award you 10 of each per SC. Edit:​ Gratz to the OP

Let's see if they can trump that in the months to come LOL*! * I'm not actually laughing, but very wary that they actually might

Cmon guys, keep them votes coming!

I second SaxonHoliday's question of what the problem with the Scharnhorst was in your opinion? That it had 280 mm guns in game while it should have 279.4 mm guns according to your calculations? About the Gneisenau. You agreed that the upgrade to 380 mm guns was planned, but never carried out. If you have a little look around the tech tree you'll find that WG has gone much further than that on several occasions. In this game you can sail ships that didn't actually ever exist in real life. Now in some of those cases the ships were in reality at least laid down and detailed drawings existed, but on several occasions the ships we have in the tech tree were in reality only design concepts. You don't actually need to look further than the T9 and T10 variants of the German battleship line. Not to mention at least half of all the Russian/Soviet ships...

Did you just say about stealth firing that: "it was and is a broken mechanic. Not fun for any party involved.​" Then a few lines down you reiterated, that: "invisibly shooting at people is not really fun for either​." And then a mere sentence later in your analogy mentioned that: "yes they have fun shooting through the wall while you cant" ​Contradicting with the previous statements you made in the same post a little? Other that than I think Miessa3 took apart your post brilliantly! To me here's what the bottom line is: changes to game balance are good and welcomed as long as they improve the way different ships and ship classes are balanced against each other - you know, the rock-paper-scissors principle. However when those changes systematically favour one ship class over any other, which seems to be the case here, this needs to be called out! I mean you agreed yourself that removal of stealth firing increases the skill level to play destroyers in particular. Would you disagree that adding skills to the tree that make it impossible for a destroyer to ambush you or making them more visible more of the time reduces the need for situational and map awareness for battleship players in particular, thus making the game easier for them? I mean you probably would, but you'd be wrong... If this trend continues we might end up in an unwanted situation where only the most skilled of players will play destroyers and cruisers and the general player base will migrate to battleships exclusively. Which won't reduce the complaints of cruisers and destroyers being overpowered, as the average battleships player will continue to get raped by the more skilled cruiser and destroyer captains. ​Edit:​ PS. I would wholly support making the game easier for battleship players if the class was underperforming, which I don't think is the case no matter what metric you use to determine that.

​This is not a whining thread and I don't think I've seen any real whining here, so I don't understand why you thought you had to make that remark... Also, in case you feel uncomfortable picking the worst among the allegedly bad changes WG has implemented this year, I invite you to post in the counter-thread to help pick the most positive change

​Actually that's what I originally intended to write but forgot to as I was writing the poll. I modified the question accordingly...