mrk421

that's why I added the sixth option

I wouldn't go as far as to say they'd be very nice. E.g increasing the time how long smoke is deployed while reducing its duration is a downright negative effect for all ships in the game bar one. Or increasing the Repair Party duration from 5 seconds to 7... quite meh. But yes, at least some of them could be used and would provide a minor benefit.

Am I the only one who thinks the stars are currently awarded (and subtracted) makes for a very frustrating ranked experience and does not reward/encourage good team play as well as it could?

I don't see how having the cap zones arranged in a ladder would in any way affect the one team snowballing out of control like is so frequent in this mode, as I described in my post. Or do you disagree that this is an issue with this game mode? "BBs cover from the rear" and "players to do their job" in the same sentence? I'm sorry what? It seems I have misunderstood something again. To my understanding the roles should be: 1) DDs scout ahead for enemy light ships and early torpedo detection - as well as cap in the appropriate game mode 2) BBs lead the charge and draw enemy fire, as they have the durability to withstand heavy fire 3) CLs and CAs closely follow the BBs and support everyone with their superior DPM + help provide AA cover in case they are of the appropriate nation. Cruisers should not be forced to lead the charge, as they get deleted far too easily. Or is that not how it's supposed to be? I completely agree that it would be so much fun to have some battle scenarios that resemble actual historical naval engagements! If they did something like that and combined that with the campaigns how cool would that be!?

I don't think the main issue with Bastion is that people don't understand it. From my experience, when one of the teams gains a slight early advantage - like kills an enemy DD and/or a cap advantage - 8/10 times they then snowball out of control and end up completely steamrolling the opposition. The way this mode is set up, there's very little chance of recovering from an early disadvantage, and even less chance of a miracle comeback. This is because it takes a lot more time and effort to conquer enemy forts than regular cap points held by the enemy. And contrary to regular domination it's not possible to drive into enemy fort and stop them from gaining points even if you don't manage to cap the zone yourself - in bastion you'll just get shot down by the fort and die. So since forts are more difficult to conquer it takes more time to mount a proper attack. However time you don't have as all the while the enemy team is ticking into the points lead - so you need to hurry up. Which is why most of the time people mount desperate attacks to gain control over the fort and end up going in alone and dying. At least the battles tend to not take very long... In my opinion, at the very least, forts should not generate points while you're holding them. Perhaps instead award a lump sum for capping, but that's it. This way the chasing team has a bit more time to mount a proper counteroffensive and a chance to turn the battle around. However this could lead to some very long and boring games, which would not be much fun - as opposed to battles which are decided in the first 2-3 minutes or so that are also not fun. I had a crazy idea recently. What if the forts were not at the center where normally the cap zones are, but instead there were a lot of them near the borders of the map. And they were aggro against everyone who got into their range. This way they'd force people away from map borders and to get close and personal. I haven't really given this idea a lot of thought so it might actually be terrible, but I thought I'd throw it out there...

Honestly you could increase that to 100% and it would still be too situational and generally not worth it over the other options. Good job on the other changes tho!

You said it man! A very good suggestion. The only way the special upgrades would be anything but a very niche product would be if there was a separate upgrade slot for mounting them. Even if the effects would be greatly increased (like +100 % duration instead of +20 %) they'd hardly ever be worth considering.

To elaborate on my proposed system for awarding stars. The idea is NOT to enable members of the losing team to gain stars. While this could technically happen, chances are there would be members on the winning team who did better and contributed more - hence why they won - and thus occasions where members of the losing team are awarded stars would be very rare. Instead, what such a points awarding system would aim to achieve is the following: - to efficiently weed out players from higher ranks who consistently are not able to contribute to their team's success. They couldn't advance, since even if they happen to be on the winning team, if they didn't perform, they would lose stars. - reduce the element of "luck of the draw" for most players and make advancing in ranks more skill-based compared to what it is now. Because if you perform well, but just happen to be on the losing team, chances are you'd at least retain the stars you have accumulated until then. Also, since fewer players would gain stars, you'd have to perform very well in order to do advance in ranks... In my personal view it feels better to stand still and not advance than move backward, especially if the latter is not due to your own bad performance. Mind you, bad performance would get punished either way. Even more fairly with the proposed system...

I'll not comment too much on the T7 choice. I agree with a lot of the comments that it's the most P2W tier and I'm not sure it's such a good idea to have ranked with T7, but I don't want to dwell on that further. Instead I had a question and possibly a suggestion. I noticed that (unless they changed it with a recent patch) this time around all the members of the winning team gained a star and ALL the members of the losing team lost a star - unlike in the last few seasons on live where the top player of the losing team didn't lose a star. Is this how you plan to keep it for the actual season? If so, I would urge you to reconsider! On to the suggestion: The main aspect, for me at least, that can make ranked a frustrating experience is the yo-yo nature of advancing through the ranks. Because if Lady Luck is not on your side and you get teamed up with a bunch of people who can't really play that well, you will lose stars regardless of how well you play. Now I know the idea of ranked is supposed to be about people being able to work together as a team... However I fail to see how a situation where someone who's completely useless to their team could by sheer luck advance through the ranks if they keep getting capable teammates - a situation entirely feasible with the current system - serves that purpose. I would therefore propose that gaining stars as well as losing them should be less common in ranked battles. This would help smooth out the curve of advancing through the ranks and also make it reward skilled play more. Perhaps a 4-6-4 or a 4-5-5- system, where 4 of the top players gain a star, 6 (or 5) of the rest maintain their stars and 4 (or 5) of the bottom players lose a star. The rewarding of stars should be based on base XP and account players of both teams equally. Meaning that a player on the winning team might stand to lose a star if there are enough players on the enemy team that contributed more. Which I think is fair. I believe that would help alleviate a lot of the "salt" ranked battles tend to generate.

With patch 0.6.0 imminent and with it the controversial Radio Location or Radio Direction/Position Finding skill added to the game I had a thought. Like most people I don't think this skill will improve the game and would rather have it not exist. But assuming WG insists on leaving it in, we have to find a way to make it work. Many have said and I agree that one of the issues with this skill is the fact that it cannot be countered - the only way to somewhat protect yourself against someone with this skill is to have that skill as well. So what could be done to counter RDF? I have heard suggestions that there should be another commander skill which negates the effect of this one. In my opinion that would not be the best option. Here's what I would suggest instead: Add an extra consumable called "radio silence" to all ships of all classes from T4 or T5 upwards, or potentially even all tiers. It would be an extra consumable slot on all ships and would not compete with or replace any other consumables. Like the name says the consumable would switch off your ship's radio thus making you immune to being located by the RDF skill for the duration. A side effect would be that while the consumable is active you'd also be unable to spot targets for your friends. If you have the RDF skill yourself, you'd still be able to get the direction to the nearest enemy AND see targets spotted by your friendlies - you'd be listening with the radio, but not broadcasting... The consumable should have a rather long duration of perhaps 3-4 minutes and a short cooldown. The premium version would increase the duration, but not affect the cooldown. Assuming RDF is here to stay, do you think something like what I suggested would help restore some element of stealth play to the game?

By what I've read so far it seems the best ways to "deal" with this skill would be: 1) remove it from the game 2) remove it from the game 3) ... 4) ... . . . N) give an option for the players to toggle radio on/off at their discretion N+1) add a "radio silence" consumable. Unfortunately it seems unlikely WG will implement options 1 through N-1 since it's their brainchild and they probably feel quite attached to it. Assuming the above I personally like option nr N, but this would essentially make the RL skill completely useless because its effect could be completely nullified. Which is why I don't think WG will be keen to implement that solution either. Which leaves us with option nr N+1. Which I guess would be a somewhat acceptable way to go about it assuming the more desirable options will not be used.

Indeed that would be even better if you had full control via a button over whether you are broadcasting or not. I don't think that switching off broadcasting would mean you can't receive spotting information from friendlies. Because listening to the radio waves is passive and you're not emitting any signal while doing that - thus it won't give off your position. You would, however, not be able to share spotting information with your friends - at least not with those who you don't have line-of-sight with like you said.

There are 5 (!) bastions in North?!? I'm sorry, but that's just too many. This is counter-productive towards teamplay by forcing the teams to fragment their fleets too much. In my opinion 3 bastions should be the maximum, perhaps even 2. For me personally bastion mode does not feel very exciting or interesting - in fact it feels more like an annoyance - so I'd get rid of it altogether. BUT if you insist on having it in the game, at least it should feel like the bastions are meaningful. By having so many of them all over the place detracts from that. Edit: The map was Hotspot, but my argument stands.

With some recent additions and proposed additions it has become more and more confusing as to what kind of a game WG are trying to create in World of Warships. Is it because there's a lack of communication between different departments and perhaps overall leadership OR, perhaps more worryingly, because they don't know themselves. What do I mean? On the one hand it seems that conforming to the natural laws of nature and having a level of realism is taken very seriously in the game: - they spend a great deal of time and effort (according to their own words) on researching the different warships to make their in-game representations as historically accurate as possible or 'reasonable'. - they use realistic models to calculate shell trajectories and impacts and who knows what else - heck, even the available consumables, upgrades and most of the captain skills could be reasoned within a realistic physics model. On the other hand they have introduced and are possibly contemplating adding even more elements which clearly contradict the above. Some examples could be: - the AP shells of the British cruiser line with normalisation angles that would be physically very unlikely, or so I hear (I could be wrong here, because I'm by no means knowledgeable in this subject) - another property of the British cruisers in which they're able to complete tight turns at full speed without losing a noticeable fraction of their forward momentum. I don't know what it is they're sailing in, but it certainly isn't water and they certainly aren't touching it - a proposed captain skill which allows airplanes to take off from a burning carrier deck... WHAT!?! - and everyone's favourite - the proposed 'keen intuition' skill. Which, ignoring the gameplay impact it would have, would be pure magic i.e. not explainable under a realistic physics model. Considering the above begs one of two questions. EITHER: If a level of realism and conforming to the natural laws of nature is important, why would they introduce elements to the game that contradict those laws? OR: Why would they waste so much time and effort on realistic ship and ballistics models when in fact following the laws of nature is not an important aspect? What's your take on this? And what sort of effect could this schizophrenic tendency have on the long-term success of this game?

I take it your answer to the question as to how such things would affect the success of the game would be that they would help improve the chances of success? Do you agree though that changes like this are alienating the die-hard warships/naval history fans? I would argue that these kinds of people are potentially far more loyal customers than the people who just like to shoot at things - assuming you don't piss them off with stupid decisions. I don't think there are any examples in the business world of companies who piss on their most loyal customers and achieve long-term success. I'm not a die-hard naval history fan BTW. I picked up this game some months ago because I thought the idea sounded interesting and figured I'd give it a go. What got me hooked was the feeling I got while playing of sailing an actual warship and fighting actual ships. Every time WG introduces more magic into the game that feeling is slipping away and making me less keen to play. I'm sure there are others that feel this way and they are the ones that would really be a great asset for WG to have on their side.

The skill's called 'keen intuition', right? Here's a thought: what if it actually worked like that - intuition. Intuition can be wrong. So what if with this skill you got the direction to the nearest enemy. ...except sometimes it would give you the wrong direction - a totally plausible one, but incorrect. Now that would be a troll skill to have!

I don't want this skill in the game, because in my opinion there should be no place for magic in this game. However, I hope you do realise that it's not mandatory to fire all of your torpedoes at once, immediately when they become available, and all of them where the indicator tells you... You CAN hold off firing them until the right moment. What I'm trying to say is that a tactically minded DD captain could use the existence of such a skill to increase their success rate rather than have it decreased by its existence. Can you imagine the impact it would have if you could deny areas to enemies as if you're sending torps without actually having to send any! Overall I think it would lead to a much more static gameplay which noone wants. So because of that and because it's 'magic' I vote no.

Judging by their recent actions and this leak, if it turns out to be true, I really don't like the direction WG is taking this game. They seem to be steering away from a game which to a significant extent respected the natural laws of the world and introducing more and more magic with the justification of making the game more 'interesting', 'diverse' and 'accessible'. Just look at the British cruisers with their AP shells that defy physics or their ability to make hard turns without losing any speed (I don't know what they're sailing in, but it certainly isn't water and they certainly aren't touching it). Add to that the potential new skills which allow CVs to launch planes from burning decks or the potential ability to 'know' where the enemy that you can't see is approaching from, for example. For me this is completely the wrong direction and makes me have to work hard in order to enjoy the game - because in the end what I want to do is feel like I'm driving a real warship and fighting against real warships not some cartoonish childrens' toys. For the above reason I strongly oppose the controversial 'Keen intuition' skill. However I have a different view as to it's power than most. In my opinion it has the potential to greatly increase the utility of the IJN torpedoboats (and torpedoboats in general). Think AREA DENIAL. If the enemies know the exact location where torpedoes might be coming from they're forced to take evasive action or risk the consequences. This allows the torpedoboats to influence the enemies' heading without having to launch their torpedoes allowing them to save the salvoes for when they have a higher chance of hitting someone. While at the same time potentially also forcing the enemies to turn their broadsides to friendly ships.

I agree that it's a better reward system that daily missions. Largely because it's based on XP and thus can be earned with any ship while not forcing the player to do things they might not enjoy. I don't necessarily agree to everyone saying that the XP requirements for the third crate should be lowered. I get the impression it's not meant for everyone to be able to get three crates every day. I'm fine with that, considering that getting even one will give you rewards that are about on par with completing 3 daily missions. And most people who play a fair amount every day should be able to get at least two crates, especially when using premium account and perhaps other XP boosts. As it was on the test server it felt like the third crate was there more as an extra reward for people who play extremely well rather than something that should be ground for. I'm fine with that. With that in mind I'm opposed to the idea of progressively better rewards for higher tier crates. That would make the third crate more-less mandatory which in turn would make the game feel less fun and rewarding for the average player. And lastly. I don't know what the chances of getting some really good rewards are at the moment, but they should not be too low. For this system to be really successful at keeping the playerbase engaged I believe it should not be a total lottery, but there should be some predictability in it. Not predictability in the literal sense, just that the chances of getting a good reward after opening a certain amount of crates should be high. For me a reasonable level would be that a person who has earned 2 crates per day for a month would on average earn at least some dubloons. And after keeping it up for a year the chances should be fairly high of winning a premium ship.

Description: In the Settings->Controls menu, enabling the "Always start the battle completely zoomed out" button does not work. Reproduction steps: Have the option enabled and start any battle (I've only tried with random battles) Result: At the start of the battle, the camera is fully zoomed in Expected result: Camera should be zoomed out at the start of the battle

I think more diversified options would be good. But I'm not sure adding crew members with skills to train is the way to go about it. In my opinion reworking the captain skill tree in such a way that there are no useless skills and all skills would be beneficial depending on the play style you choose would be the better way. Is that why everyone more-less always picks the same captain skills for the same ship classes? For most skill tiers, there's only 1, at most 2 skills that are viable for any ship class. To me that does not seem to promote varying play styles. Unless by "style" you mean choosing a useless skill to intentionally handicap yourself... I agree with the rest of your points though. I like what they did with the new steering mod they added in 0.5.12. With this addition players can potentially make a real, viable choice based on their play style of whether they like to sneak up on people or go pew-pewing from the distance and avoid incoming fire with their maneuverability. I think it would make a lot of sense, if the captain skill tree had the same characteristics: a good choice at each skill tier which suits different ways people prefer to play. Can you explain the useless skills then? Like e.g. the "Expert loader" or "Expert rear gunner" @ T1, "Fire prevention" @ T2, a lot of T5 skills etc? I sure can't. Unless they're just noob traps. There was a thread about a month ago or so where the poster made suggestions to overhaul the skill tree to make all captain skills useful and thus force the player to make a choice depending on their play style. I believe something like this would be the way forward. And to those who argue that this would make the skill tree OP I disagree. There already are OP skills in the tree - the ones everyone chooses. What such a rework would do instead, would be to allow people to make a choice and have viable options to support their preferred play style (I seem to be using that expression a lot...) instead of forcing everyone down the same path. my 2c...

Why isn't there a way to consistently earn dubloons in-game - other than some one-time rewards or reaching rank 2 and 1 in ranked. In my opinion there should be. I've been thinking about it recently and frankly I can't see a downside. Hopefully the forum will help point it out to me... - I think it would be a really good way of doing things in a F2P game where all the perks that could be obtained could be obtained without spending real money. While being able to instantly obtain the perks if you're willing to spend money. - If properly implemented, I believe it would actually help increase WGs revenues from the premium shop rather than cut them. I understand that the main argument against rewarding dubloons in-game would be that it would reduce the revenue from the premium shop. It's a valid argument, but I'd like to offer a different perspective. I have spent money on the premium shop before and am likely to do that again in the future, but like (I suspect) many gamers out there I find it hard to justify spending hundreds and hundreds of euro on a computer game. Yet I do like to have as many goodies as I can. Is there a way to have both? I think there is. Looking at the prices of computer games in general I think it's safe to say that there are a lot of people who're willing to spend 30-50€, maybe even 60€ a pop on a game. The amount of people willing to spend more than that in a single purchase is significantly less. Looking at the premium shop, currently 30€ will give you 7000 dubloons and 50€ will give you a premium ship plus 6000 dubloons. Unfortunately those 6-7000 dubloons are not enough to buy you many of the premium ships you might like to own... My point? I believe a lot more people would jump at those 30-50€ offers if it was possible to earn the missing dubloons in-game. Therefore instead of decreasing them it would help boost the sales in the premium shops markedly! Plus it would probably liven the servers by increasing the number of people playing, which would probably indirectly help increase revenues further - and improve players' experience of the game. Everybody would win! How would it all work? Thank you if you stuck through to the end of the post. And I'd really appreciate your take on this idea! Let me know where my logic is flawed

Since the thread seems to have all but died out I thought I'd take this time to share some of the thoughts I got from it, before letting it fade away. But first I want to thank everybody who participated in the poll and replied to the thread. You were not many, and while I don't fully agree to many of the suggestions your thoughts are still very much appreciated! Hopefully WG has noticed and will consider these results when making future decisions. What did we learn, from the poll especially, in my opinion? First of all, the results to the first question are probably not a surprise to anyone. Almost everyone likes free stuff, so it's no surprise that more than 75% voted "yes" as to whether dubloons should be obtainable in-game. The answers to the second question, however, are quite interesting. They show that almost 3/4 of of the people who replied would be more likely to use the Premium shop if there were a supplemental way to earn dubloons in-game. This seems to support my claim that rather than cutting into their sales, such a move would help increase WGs revenues. Granted, the amount of votes cast was not great, but IF Wargaming are interested in running a successful business, they might want to investigate this possibility.