FixCVs_Nautical_Metaphor

They are probably laying the groundwork for an older suggestion of mine, which is to turn carriers that don't move anyway into semi-mobile air combat groups that simply can move into the air fields that are sprinkled all over the maps.

Once again, the game has started to randomly switch back to the Twitch port. This time, the actual port I want is the Black Hole mod port, which is less laggy than the in-game ports, even less than Ocean, while also not producing annoying bell buoy sounds all the time. I'd really like to know how I can just delete the Twitch port from my system completely...

AR has no effect on anti-aircraft armament. It says so in the small print of the Wiki. To the OP I'd like to point out that the first question to ask , as with every statistic, is of course what the actual parameters are. Are these average plane kills per game? Because there isn't even a carrier in every game. Just even assuming there's a carrier in half of all the games, and from personal experience, that in roughly half of those games the carrier will avoid the Atlanta, that means you get on average 10.8 plane kills in every game where there actually is a carrier and planes do actually get sent your way. No matter what the tier of the planes. And that corresponds fairly well with experience. Atlanta AA is effective but it doesn't "shred" higher tier planes, especially if you fall for a higher tier CV player's trickery, say, proudly blowing your def AA on a first wave of fighters and dive bombers, only to then get blapped by a second wave of torpedo bombers. It can and does happen. If a higher tier carrier player wants to blap you, he can. The only question is how many planes he's willing to expend.

It looks like a lot but I don't think it is, really. Clan Battles are only on four days of the week and not even every Clan member plays them, or plays many of them. "In the Name of His Highness!" is basically just like the RN arc, so you'd cover most of the directives just with your normal gameplay. In much the same fashion, the "Mighty Prinz" campaign is specifically for Tier VI ships only. So it will probably be possible to cover most of those missions in Ranked Sprint or in the Random/Co-Op battles people use to train or prepare for Ranked Sprint, or just to try out their new Eitel Friedrich. Edit: Also this campaign is mainly directed at new players who either haven't unlocked those fairly standard T VI ships yet or who have recently unlocked them but want the perma camo for the grind to the following T VII ships. Although those New Year perma camos for the Tier VI ships look absolutely hideous imho. And people should be positively drowning in Halloween and Union Jack power camos at this stage. But there you go. Never pass up a free lunch... In any event, something similar goes for "Nerves of Steel", especially if "Ranked" is another of Wargaming's typical silly slip-ups and they actually mean "Ranked Sprint". And Ranked Sprint, well. The last one went by a lot too quickly even. It is a sprint after all, as the name suggests. The new round will have stronger aircraft carriers but will not have edited broken OP premium ships, so on balance, I'd say it should be on more or less the same difficulty level.

Introduce Fire damage saturation Once a fire in a certain area of a ship has burned out - not damage-conned - make it so you cannot get another fire in the same area due to lack of combustible material. At least not before the fire damage has been repaired.

Yes well but there's this "bug fix"... The question is which potential targets have any 37mm armor and thus can now receive pens where they couldn't before.

The ship will still remain Kitakaze fodder because the secondaries need to see a target to fire at it.

So the lock-on bug does actually exist after all.

Wow... I'll take it... usually my team mates call it "moronic yolo rush" (while the opponents, I suspect, talk of "XP pinata flambé")

There is no helping people who fetishize their stats. From all you've, er, "written", WoWs is just not for you. Best just play something else.

So where on reddit? Do you have a link? Where did the person who put it on reddit get it from?

They don't block any skills. You can still pick them if you so choose. And they better keep it that way because this is what still allows you to distribute the skills of any newly acquired unique or reward captains on the ship he is specialized for (often his nation's Tier I ship) before you assign him to the ship you actually want him on. Even if you don't have a premium ship of that nation. Example: You get the Ovechkin captain, whose special skills are obviously destroyer focused. If you put him on a destroyer immediately, you can't let your new unique 10pt hockey player captain master any skills at all until retraining is completed. So what you do, especially if you don't have a premium ship he can go on, is put him on Orlan/Erie and distribute his skill points and then assign him to the DD of choice. If the skills WG deems ineffective on the Tier I ship were really blocked, you could at that stage not give him things like Torpedo Armament Expertise.

If you can notice that, then by WG's definition you have left the "babysteps" stage behind (protected beginner matchmaking) and reached Account level 13. You are now all growed up and ready to face the music. Yes, but on Tier 1, that's not a real big problem. There are some such seal clubbers there but not many, and you only need super little XP to unlock the respective Tier II cruiser, which is all that normal players want out of Tier I. Two or three games max will do it, even if you get slaughtered each time immediately. Or you can just go Co-op to grind the Tier II cruisers. It is very similar on Tier II. I'd say the worst seal clubbing goes on at Tiers III and IV, which most people find the funnest of the low tiers; the waiting times in the queue there are usually the shortest. For one, that is not true, and also it's not that bad. I do usually take the side of the seals here but if you want to see bad, try World of Tanks. Get the Matchmaking monitor and have a look how many players actually qualify as sealclubbers. You might be surprised.

What is the source of this information?

Should I be worried? I have a fanless video card (passive cooled 1050).

I would hire a full time editor whose tasks would be things like these: bring the Wiki up to snuff, and after that, keep it up to date by working in every change on every patch; write a complete and an abridged game manual and keep them current; proof-read all the copy that gets put into the game to catch silly slip-ups; proof-read all news bulletins, press releases and stuff; check and rewrite all translations for idiomaticness

Frankly, after watching the latest Claus Kellermann about all the changes planned in WoT for 2019, some of which sound eerily similar to QB's suggestions, you could almost get the idea the QB video was a stunt planned in coordination with WG marketing. Were it not for all the stuff they usually pull and which is quite the opposite of viral 4D chess marketing stratagems.

Let me direct your attention to a popular streamer's latest video about our brother Wargaming title, World of Tanks. "How absolutely insane is it that a popular #Game that has been out for eight years does not even have a #tutorial system?" A pertinent question that also has some relevance for WoWs. Being a fairly newish player (even though it's already been a little over a year now), from what I heard and read about the old days, things have come a long way since the beginnings, and they are a lot better now than they used to be three years ago. Still though, the fact is things are inadequate, and even though Wargaming have started the commendable "How it works" series about the game mechanics, they leave most of the new player education to the community. They let unpaid people do the work who just can't stand by any longer and watch the state of things but feel compelled to do something about it - whether it is youtubers, streamers, forum folk or Wiki editors. And Wargaming is of course raking in all the profits. And they are not just benefiting from these people's unpaid labor but also from the player's ignorance, which is a consequence of the sketchy education new players get of necessity from such a crowd-based system. In short: it's the good old capitalist exploitation system that has worked so well for oligarchs and tycoons (and so badly for the many) throughout the course of a lot of history. https://youtu.be/PVtWcEC9i7k

Replays Make it so you can open and play back replays from within the game. Seriously. Having to shut down the game first to play a replay is a bit 1986. Especially since it then proceeds to launch the game. In Replay mode. In fact, while you are at it: Make it a menu where you can select the replay you want. Having to use a file manager to rummage through folders for your replays is a bit Windows 3.11. Make it so you are shown your ship, Battle type, Map name, possibly the teams' line-ups of the selected replay in that menu. Having to guess from tags in the file name which replay is the one you want is DOS 6.0 (and we are lucky to have longer file names available than 8.3.) Edit: Ideally, make the menu so you can search your replays for these items... and more. Have an on-screen menu while the replay is on. Make it so you can toggle it on and off with the same key that toggles the advanced GUI in the game. The menu should have play/pause, fast forward and rewind buttons at least, possibly a jog shuttle. Speed controls. It should also tell you which keys are the hotkeys and the camera controls. Make the camera controls the exact same ones that you have in a battle after you get killed and hit Shift. Also, let players toggle through the other players' perspectives during replays with the mouse buttons, the exact same way as in the game. (Until you finally make it so you can select players to follow from the team line-up with your mouse.)

I have posted that three times on this forum, in different subforums. It also happened on Flambass and Jingles. You are only supposed to get doubloons if you already have all the ships on the list in your port, so it can't reroll to one you do not already have. That said, up to now, my own 40 crates behaved exactly like WG said they would and gave me eight premiums, many from supercontainers, one of them a Giulio. I really don't get why WG first allows this to happen, in public, on the CC's channels and streams, and then doesn't even put out any sort of statement or clarification.

Last night was one of the better days, but the greatest achievement was this: near the end of the session, I was in a Tier VI epicenter game with a T-61 on my team apparently looking for a pissing contest or something. I didn't notice what exactly went wrong but after a few minutes, the guy, which I would really be embarrassed to call "my team mate", went into a chat fight with the opponent's CV player, starting off by calling him the N-word and wishing cancer on him. Those two then pretty much kept at it the whole match, with the guy on my team actually stat-shaming the other one. Meanwhile, this potato struggling to cling to a 50% WR, killed the enemy Kamikaze, did a bunch of other stuff and in the end, came first, some five places ahead of stat-shaming top-tier OP premium ship guy. And the thing is, I originally hadn't even wanted to play Random but Co-op after a long day of Clan battles, just to farm some quick and easy base XP for the Dreadnought grind, but forgotten to select the right battle type. So I was bottom tier, in the Podvoisky, which I really don't like and haven't been able to make work so far in Random, and which is therefore permanently set up for Co-Op farming, and so I hadn't even brought any signal flags or Premium consumables. And in the port chat after the game, before blacklisting the moron, I asked him to remember that last part the next time he is tempted to stat-shame other players.

Well, many CV mains made suggestions. Many of those were well thought out and thoroughly substantiated. Others were really easy to implement and absolute no-brainers, like supplying decent tutorials and manuals. They did this over and over again. Lots of very constructive feedback. However, for some reason, Wargaming never tried any of this and if I understand correctly, sometimes even did the opposite. And I have a feeling the reason includes unwillingness to spend money, in order to maximize profit over the short term.

I am fairly certain I read somewhere that egging others on to report someone is considered a rule violation, though it was not in any of the official documents. Possibly a post by WG staff on reddit or this forum. Can't find it any more though.

Quickybaby, a well known World of Tanks (WoT) streamer and youtuber, put up a video titled "How I'd Fix World of Tanks" yesterday. It may not be as critical for WoWs, whose player base is still growing, as it is for WoT which apparently lost 20% of players over the past 12 months. But still, some of his points are also issues in WoWs, at least to a degree. They resonated with me. These issues are more relevant for the future of the game than radar and the ridiculous new HE spammer ships combined. Possibly on par with the CV problem. Therefore, the following is my attempt to translate the most important issues and his proposed solutions to WoWs for discussion. It's a long post but I hope it will be worth it. New player experience * Garbage tutorial system * Habitual sealclubbing. Paraphrasing a tiny bit here. "I'm sorry, guys, but you [seal clubbers] do not deserve to have overwhelming advantages against low tier ships." - "Isn't it enough that the seal clubber has his vastly superior gaming experience on his hands? Why does his [ship] also need to be vastly superior?" (In WoWs that would be mainly due to the maxed-out commander the seal clubber is able to put on it, and to a lesser degree due to the premium consumables he is able to afford.) Solution: Create a true safe space where new players are still challenged but can grow - reduce the advantages that seal clubbers have in the low tiers. At 5:56 in the video, QB states he initially pondered separate matchmaking for seal clubbers, probably based on a parameter like total number of battles played. This has also been frequently suggested for WoWs. In view of the dwindling server population though, this wouldn't even work for WoT, which still has a vastly larger player base than WoWs if I'm not mistaken. So that can't work for WoWs either. Wait times in the queue would skyrocket. They are already atrocious on Tiers I and II once players reach Account Level 13 and are thrown out of the initial protected matchmaking (with "dumb" bots even in random battles.) So he dropped that idea and suggested a different solution: "It is more important that we arm the seals!" 1) Crew skills. In WOWs: Commander skills. I've frequently stated that experimenting with those is among the funnest things I've done in WoWs, and that it is bad and self-defeating of WG to abuse it for the sake of short-term revenue, charging doubloons aka real money for every commander skill redistribution. It's partially pay-to-win and partially pay-to-have-fun. Those that can't or don't want to pay, take the short cut to some youtuber's or forum writer's captain build, and miss out on some of the fun. Evidently, some people at WoWs came to a similar conclusion, so they went a different route in WoWs Legends, the newly released console counterpart, where experimenting with Commander skills is encouraged and where it does not cost real money. But I digress. A similar solution for WoWs could comprise a commander skill cap for the low tiers, say max 1/3/6/10 point commanders allowed in Tiers I/II/III/IV. Alternatively, give players a ten-point commander on every low tier ship and completely drop any redistribution fees on Tiers I though IV (or charge credits instead), along with possibly locking those captains into the low tiers. Or another idea, which QB introduces in the next section about consumables, would be to maybe couple skills to a tutorial system. Help new players understand how, say, spotting and concealment work by mandating they watch tutorials and possibly complete missions or even special tutorial operations in order to unlock a crucial skill such as concealment expert. Now this would, on the other hand, delete the insane fun that can be had with maxed-out captains on low tier ships. Which would be a shame. However, this could easily be addressed with Ranked Sprint, which could be held periodically every quarter or so, each time on a different low-to-middling tier, and to which players could be allowed to bring any captain they have. 2) Consumables. Maybe less important for WoWs that WoT. But still. Generating enough credits can be hard for players that don't want to spend any money on the game or can't afford it (F2P). It might be worth considering to lower the cost and/or the benefit of premium consumables on the low tiers, or possibly even to abolish them altogether on the low tiers. Or make them free for everyone. Next, he goes on about fixing the Matchmaking, which is not as big a problem in WoWs and they even recently made an earnest attempt to fix the infamous Tier VIII, so I just skip that whole part in favour of something much more important: Overpowered premium ships "If it was up to me, I would do one of two things. Firstly, nerf the overpowered premiums [here: Belfast, Gremyashchy, Kamikaze/Fujin, Giulio Cesare, Mikhail Kutuzov, possibly others.] Sure, a lot of people would be very unhappy, but at least I could continue to sell [these ships] in their balanced state. If that's not an option, then never sell them again." Which brings us neatly to Sales Tactics As we all know, Wargaming is fully aware of the OP premiums problem. If any more proof was needed, they themselves provide it by dangling them as a carrot in front of players to make them buy Santa gift loot boxes and maximise their short term profits. Which is a crappy thing to do. Let me give a personal example. Even though seeing through it, and despising WG for it, I'm weak enough to let them manipulate me into spending almost 200 Euros on boxes so far. Others have spent more. Now in one way of looking at it, I absolutely got my money's worth of stuff, including eight premium ships, all of which are nice, and lots of flags and gold and coal and camos. In another way though, most of the stuff is just nice to have, no more. From this perspective, they made me pay 200 Euros for the Giulio when that is not even the OP premium that I covet the most. Paraphrasing slightly again, "Trust me, all of these [ships] are absolutely toxic for the matchmaker, and every single time they are sold, they make the game worse." "Sure, Wargaming is making some money off of them now, but the worse you make the matchmaker, the more of your player base you make quit the game. So I would strongly encourage Wargaming to think about whether they want a quick buck now or whether it wouldn't be better to have a healthy game for the next five to ten years." "The very least to avoid having your loot boxes condemned as gambling would be to make all of the contents available for purchase outside." The issue is perfectly illustrated by comparing the aforementioned OP premium ships to the likes of the T-61. Besides being not nearly as OP as any of the Notorious Five, the single thing that makes the T-61 so much less infuriating is that everybody who wants one can just go and buy one. And because it is well balanced, it doesn't make the MM worse and can stay on sale indefinitely, no problem. "Why not make more money and also give people more choice? Isn't that win-win?" OP Tech Tree ships They certainly exist in WoWs: Clemson, Isokaze, Shenyang (still? I think it has been nerfed a little), Furutaka (as of the latest, unnecessary buff), Worcester, Kitakaze, Harugumo, Jervis, probably more. "Not useful in the hands of a new player who does not know how to exploit its mechanics to be able to dominate (...) The reason why [ship X] is incredible is once you have a maxed out commander on it, and maxed out consumables and upgrades, you have an unfair advantage and/or are able to use its flexibility to dominate the game. For a new player, the [ship] has none of the attributes that give that person the chance of fighting back, or being successful in it." Sound familiar? Economy It seems a bit of a contradiction to the credit pinch mentioned above but somehow, both seem to be able to be true: things like lower credit prices of tech tree ships, combined with WG doling out special flags and camos left and right that give massive bonuses, "have now allowed people to grind through tech trees faster than ever. Now when people grind through tech trees more quickly, that means they actually spend less time playing the game and learning how their tech tree develops, and thus their skill is going to be less once they reach the top tiers." "Also players are able to activate these boosters when playing their bad [ships] to be able to accelerate their progress in them. And so we see fewer "bad" [ships] in the matchmaker, you know, like the ones you want to meet occasionally. I don't know about you guys, but it's quite infuriating to constantly meet [this and that OP ship]. Where are all the [Izumos? Neptunes? Friedrichs? Farraguts? Yugumos?] They're all gone because the boosters enabled players just to free-XP them. In addition, players earn more credits than ever because of the boosters, and need less than ever because of the lowered prices, so they can afford all the [ships] they want without really having to play the game." Sounds like it might be a minor WoWs issue but the fact is the level of basic competence in gameplay at times does leave a lot to be desired and this might be a reason. "I would argue that one of the best things about WoT is that it actually takes a substantial amount of time to grow from Tier I to Tier X. It was probably one of my favourite things about the game - collecting the tanks, slowly working my way up the tech tree, investing lots of time and effort in grinding the tanks out. I really looked forward to things like 'maybe next weekend I'll be finally able to get that last bit of XP to unlock [Tank x] and then get to play it.' Now it feels like WG skip you up as quickly as they can towards Tier VI even if you are a new player, throwing enough boosters at you to let you grind up to Tier VIII in just a few days." Steel, other ressources and OP Reward Ships What QB actually talks about here are Bonds in WoT, which he disagrees with because the only thing you can actually spend them on are advantages in battle like superpowered upgrades. Thus, players that are highly talented and/or put in an inordinate amount of effort are rewarded with things that reduce the challenge for them and make them even more daunting adversaries for the others. This of course immediately made me think of the Black and Flint issue, and the rat race for steel in order to get a Stalingrad. I can witness that now in my new clan, where many mates seem to be quite badly fixating on that ship. While it doesn't seem a big problem in WoWs, I still include it for personal reasons because there seem to be positive side effects. These include that my new clan mates seem to be quite happy to have me, despite my lack of skill, because I'm always there and usually willing to help out in Clan Battles, so they have a better chance at getting their steel. And even though I'm not really into high tier game play, CBs are certainly its most appealing form. Everybody makes a great effort at good teamwork. If I'm being made the stooge, or sacrificed as bait in my rental ships, my mates at least appreciate it. And you're never uptiered, and best of all, there are no carriers. But I digress. QB suggests to "completely change the ideology" of these rewards, away from giving the best or most dedicated players an additional edge over their opponents, and toward cooler cosmetics, which are a much bigger part in WoT anyway - a very wide range of colours, patterns, symbols and signage is available to deck out and individualize the look of your tank - but currently, you have to pay actual money for them. "They should never be sold for money but only be available through player effort." So much for now, skipping the last part where he brings up issues he is still in the process of figuring out.