FixCVs_Nautical_Metaphor

Also, the Matchmaking for Tier VIII is still completely terrible. Uptiered almost all of the time.

In a slight variation on a contemporary addage, "Dumb down the game ever more and you get a game with lots of dumb players." Name any recent change to the gameplay and I show you a change designed to lower the skill threshold. What WG should be doing instead is introduce didactic changes to help even casual players learn what teamplay is actually about. Like a tanking achievement/reward for BBs or a spotting achievement/reward for destroyers. Something that more or less immediately pops up whenever players do something "right", and tangibly rewards it. Not long after a certain streamer voiced that idea in the past, WG introduced the spotting ribbon, as well as the spotting damage and potential damage displays. Which was a good start. But I don't think you even get more XP/credits for those. And even if you did, nobody would know it because the algorithm is kept secret. Which means they sadly do next to nothing for most casual players. And most players will forever remain casual players.

Also, even though I realize it hasn't been introduced with this specific update, I am not on board with planes carrying a label that tells you which ship launched them. Granted, it appears necessary in the current meta because there is even less scouting going on, but that is just because WG broke the meta by nerfing the DDs to death with the carrier rework. It gives players too much information, just like the "x marks the spot" minimap aiming feature. Both should be removed.

Other people's recommendations might not help you a whole lot, since the choice of mouse is a somewhat personal issue and depends heavily on your grip and individual hand anatomy. Especially if your hands are on the small side, though all in all, it's probably not as important for WoWs as for other, faster paced games. The best comparison shopping site imho is geizhals.de (I use the German domain but it has several others, skinflint.co.uk etc) which aims to have all the dimensions and equipment as filters. Still not perfect, there are errors in the database and some manufacturers just not publish all of the data, but it has been a great help nonetheless. I use a Logitech M500 laser mouse which I tried in vain to replace with something a little more sophisticated several times. Even some fairly expensive mice just didn't feel right, which is in large part because my hands are fairly small. So anything longer or much higher than the M500 - we are talking millimeters - was immediately out, and also the "hump", the highest spot, had to be fairly in the middle and could not be to far to the rear or I just could't hold it well. YMMV but the one other thing I took away from the experience is that no matter how many side and other buttons the mouse has, they are completely useless if they are in a place where I have to change my grip to reach them. On the M500, the only extra buttons I can use are the sideways clicks on the four-way mouse wheel, which I've both mapped to the same keyboard key, and the rearmost of the two side buttons which luckily falls under my thumb. They go a very long way already though and after 10K or so battles, I'm so used to it, and so frustrated with the search for an alternative, that all I'm concerned with for now is stockpiling enough M500s, should Logitech one day stop making them...

It does if you're in a division with them, but hardly anybody seems to use that option. Most players go for some other app, increasingly discord. If they use voice chat in the first place, that is - most don't seem to even have a mic.

Regarding the new "Open All Containers" Button, it is a perfect example of how Wargaming consistently refuses to automate boring, repetetive elements that are not core gameplay while they keep consistently automating more and more core gameplay elements that should in fact never be automated The latter are the actual opportunities for players to pitch their skills against others, which is the key point of an MMO. To make tactical decisions that can influence the outcome. IOW the things that constitute playing the game. Like hull control and consumables of the new carriers, AA control of the surface combattants etc. (by which I mean direct fire control, not this sector-based AA which is the exact opposite of fun and engaging.) Selecting the containers and watching the crane animation really loses its novelty value after you've seen it a few dozen times. And while the new "Open All Containers" button is a step in the right direction, it in fact automates the single most suspenseful moment of the process. And it doesn't even save a lot of time in the process. It takes about ten seconds or so. Players still have to manually select which type of daily containers they want. There should be a preset for that. Players should also get signal flag presets etc. These are the boring and repetetive elements that needlessly consume time. Not the actual gameplay.

Jim Crow.

So when does the next Clan Battle season start? Any educated guesses?

It all very much depends. Generally, these days it is my opinion that Free XP is too valuable for Commander Training. However, it is very easy to say that when you have almost a dozen maxed out commanders... as with most everything else, there is a certain snowballing effect with commander XP, once you have the first guy at 19 points, the next one will be so much quicker. So that is a desirable goal. Also the value has been diminished by WG's inflationary expenditure of special camos, signals etc that yield Free XP bonuses. One way of 'focusing' XP gains on a single commander without using elite commander XP is rotating him through several premium ships per day, to let him benefit from all their daily first win bonuses. You only seem to have one of those though, the OR. Soviet DD commanders are somewhat more viable on that ship than cruiser commanders, especially in the current meta with increased carrier presence. Also we will soon get a full Russian BB line. Still, it's only the one ship and it's only Tier V and I don't suppose your top guy is Russian, so maxing out a commander that way would take quite a long while. Nelson is a fun ship, even though a bit different than most other BBs, very good for both Tier VII operations, and you could get a lot of value out of her precisely because you haven't started on the RN BB line yet. What you do is hire Bert Dunkirk from the Arsenal or buy enough Dunkirk containers from the Arsenal to get Jack Dunkirk. The latter would be better if you have enough coal, because those containers also get you special signals, most of which in turn boost the commander XP yield. Then you put the Dunkirk commander successively on every new RN BB you unlock and immediately transfer him back to Nelson for the Retraining period. That way, you never have to play with retraining-restricted commander skills, and the Dunkirk guy gets at least the full amount of ship XP as commander XP out of each successive new BB grind. Most people seem to prefer spending Free XP on the enhancement modules of new ships. Many 'stock' ships are significantly weaker than fully upgraded ones. But the higher the tier, the more viable the stock ships generally are, and what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger. Playing with a stock ship can be viewed as extra training. I mostly just occasionally Free-XP the last quarter or so of the needed amount these days. Edit: Bear in mind there will be a free Commander skill point Redistribution period at the beginning of the next Update in three weeks' time. Those can be great fun but especially if you have many highly skilled commanders. Also I don't know if retraining will also be free, otherwise you could use that period mainly to experiment only with premium ships without paying a lot of doubloons for retraining.

Apparently a free retraining / redistribution has been announced for the next patch. so three more weeks of patience.

It is rather disappointing that the changes that were supposed to finally make the Port more responsive turned out to be a failure on the live server despite showing such great promise in the previous Public Test. I very much hope WG keeps at it, prioritizing this issue and several other GUI improvements that have been on players' wish lists for a long time over more spurious advances like developing "content" based on purely fictitious ships that never even existed on paper. Such necessary GUI improvements at the very least still include signal flag management, at the very least in the form of a basic „Demount All Signal Flags“ button which players have been asking for since the earlier stages of development. It can’t be that hard. Please give it to us. Also maybe a "Hoist flag X on all ships" button, which you could maybe add in time for the next Ranked Battle season. Other improvements that came up in the respective forum threads time and again: hotkeys for switching the AA sector deselecting auto-resupply by default for all items that cost gold doubloons. signal flag profiles or presets, possibly even full configuration presets for each individual ship and battle type which conceivably could include upgrades, modules and consumables as well, configurable limits for automatic in-game currency expenditures consistent hot key bindings for consumables inclusion of mods from the sanctioned Aslain Mod Pack into the game proper, specifically "Return commander to his ship", “Score Timer” and “Extended Tech Tree” be included into the regular game client, the last of which would even get WG some marketing mileage since players could easily look up premium ships right in the game that they might be contemplating to buy. Regarding the Battle GUI, it's great that we finally have specific detection icons for all the different forms of spotting. Now it would be good if they could all be displayed simultaneously as applicable.

Port is now as laggy and unresponsive as ever. I have a hard time understanding what happened between the Public Test and the live roll-out of the new patch because in the PT, the improvement had been really significant.

JFTR it took me nine battles, all of yesterday afternoon, and I got the vast majority of the plane kills in Emerald. Edit: Why is everybody in this thread mentioning non-UK ships?

I got this horribly distorted and much too loud BANG for the first time after today's mini-update...

Why hope when it is so easy to look them up? They are all in the news bulletin linked in the first posting of the thread.

Others have already pointed out how it is a bit frustrating to not even be able to get started on any of the quicker missions until you have shot down 30 planes with British cruisers and destroyers, since you are largely at the mercy of the matchmaker etc. I'd like to point out there is an extra dimension of needless frustration in the fact that the upper tier limit for this mission is not X as per usual but VIII, for which I really can't see any good reason at all. In addition to the RNG and MM poker inherent in the mission requirement, this also forces players to keep playing the lower tier cruisers long since unlocked instead of continuing their high tier grinds. Personally, I can't even use the best ship of the line in my possession, Fiji, because I of course transferred her Jack Dunkirk commander to my top ship of the line, Neptune. So that leaves only unfortunate and frustrating choices: 1) use the 3-point reserve commander transferred to Fiji just for the sake of snowflaking; 2) blow tons of Elite commander XP on that 3-pt commander when I need it far more urgently on other personnel; 3) waste credits and time on the transfer plus retraining of a better commander, and I can't even train him on another British premium cruiser because the whole point of the exercise is not having to buy Exeter; 4) waste doubloons on the transfer of a better commander; or 5) use ships other than Fiji for this grind. I'll save us all the sarcasm here but suffice it to say my original choice of adjective was a bit stronger than "unfortunate" and "frustrating". If you could at least use BBs, then it would be possible to do a few "Fly, Strike, Win"-Missions at the same time, But noooo... All just to milk our playing time for the sake of keeping the server populated. I am sorely tempted to skip all this entirely and revisit my more productive hobbies for a few weeks at this point. .

It is generally less advisable to buy Tier VIII premium ships than any other tier because Tier VIII gets the worst matchmaking. By far. WG have promised to improve it several times but so far to little actual effect. Should there be another Ranked season on Tier VIII, that could make this a better decision but it would still depend on the specifics of the format, especially regarding the question if aircraft carriers will be admitted. Also there would conceivably be discounts or at least bundles of some kind. So best wait and see. Generally speaking, I can only reiterate what I've said before, even though it met with a lot of criticism: this game is in flux. It is hard to discern stable directions the development and marketing might be taking. The game has changed fundamentally over the past few months, not for the better, and until things clear up significantly, best don't spend money on it.

I am glad the distinctive gunfire sound of some ships like the Friant, Gearing, Musashi etc have not been altered after all and if anything, Nürnberg seems to sound more unique than ever. If I weren't a musician and trust my ears completely, I'd probably be sitting here right now, thinking I must have been imagining things during the Public Test.

The new Port is nowhere near as fluid and responsive as in the public test. There does seem to be a slight improvement in places but the usual juddering in the transitions remains, and switching from Port to the Clan Menu took a full minute. Which is worse than it used to be. (Switching back and forth, it "only" takes five seconds the second time...) Edit: Clicking the News button takes three seconds to get a response. On the plus side, it seems to no longer revert to the Twitch port whenever the game client is restarted or the computer rebooted, and that annoyance had already been gone before the new patch arrived. So that's good. Edit: Regarding stability, I got disconnected during the fourth game today which unfortunately was the first Random battle. However, that could have been my router's / provider's fault because apparently there has to be a DC once per day from the DSL line for some stupid reason. The bad thing is that the damage counters were gone once I rejoined the game which I don't remember ever noticing after DCs in the past.

That's probably because they have deleted the check boxes to switch off the music, replacing them with sliders. As they did in the public test a few weeks ago. Even back then there was feedback about how it was next to impossible to find good sound settings.

I actually wrote the same thing a few weeks ago in the feedback thread while the new patch was being tested on the test server. <sigh>

The first thing to do would be to remove their "special" HE shell penetration, reducing it to regular 100mm or whatever levels. And give them Def AA consumable instead.

There's a lot more concerted team action in CBs, so Ranked is somewhat limited as an indicator. That said, I thought Tier 8 Ranked was very well balanced and without carriers, it would be even better. Even Tier VII could be good. Belfast players have been insisting the ship has been powercrept and against a well-balanced team of seven working together, it might not be a worse proposition than Stalingrad at Tier X.

A clan mate told me WG had currently no plans to admit carriers to Clan Battles, don't remember the source, could have been Reddit. My question would be though what are the chances that clan battles are held on a different Tier than Tier X. It might even be a business opportunity. All the premium ships you can buy outright are on lower tiers; people would conceivably use up doubloons to transfer their top commanders down there... smaller maps, closer distances = more action and excitement...

Nope, although it has been suggested several times. "Casual players will not learn effective team play all by themselves. You have to spoon-fed them the lessons." (flamu. Trust a guy from Finland to know how people learn stuff efficiently...) It doesn't even have to XP either. There could also be achievements for such things, ribbons and combat missions to reward them. That would facilitate making the direct mental connection between "teamplay actions" and the rewards, because you can easily see what it is you are actually being rewarded for. The exact XP formula is a closely guarded secret for some reason, so if it were just a bit more XP and/or credits, people would be kept guessing.