Captain_Newman

I'm not trolling, and German CA's are literally the first cruiser line I grinded, like 3 years ago. For perspective, that means I played ships like the Karlsruhe and Yorck before the buffs (as in, Yorck AP was usable at short ranges only due to shell drag, it would literally pen nothing beyond 8km). Even then, the line wasn't "poor" nor particularly difficult, they basically play like kiters with a bit of additional tank and the ability to brawl late game. I don't mind the Hipper / Eugen either and think people understimate them, though with the power creep they could use a bit of a tuneup by now. If you're having doubts feel free to compare our two profiles, you'll find the differences easy to spot. BTW if you actually utilized those russian cruisers so you neither yolo nor stay at max range all the time, you'd find that you can actually radar dd's and deny caps, maybe that'd help with not having a 46% wr? Just a thought. Yea, Donskoi does need to be careful how he does it, but staying at max range until late game will make your radar useless. I'm not trying to be a d**k to you, but - no offense - with your stats you still have plenty to learn and shouldn' be handing out advice to new players, as it will more than likely lead them to having a bad time.

There you go! Currently need about half a mil fxp for the Friesland, myself.

Don't dump fxp in either, and use the battles required to get to t10 as a training opportunity.

They do. As the game gets older, more and more players get all of their lines unlocked (or at least ones they wanted). Once they have grinded everything they were interested in, some of them either reduce their play time or outright leave the game. This isn't good for WG - inactives and casuals don't spend money in the premium store. So, they introduced legendary upgrades to give these players something to do. Then they thought of the research bureau as a way to incentivize these players to go through their grinds all over again as a way of getting additional interesting reward ships. This move is nothing but offering further incentives for resetting progress and keeping people busy (and spending). However, the way it's done, and in particular when it's being done really shows you how out of touch they are with the community. Frankly, their inability to even predict that this would be pouring gasoline on an already burning fire is concerning to me.

Look, I'm not going to make an "I'm outraged post" here, there's too much of that already and it removes the ability to have a rational conversation. I will, however, say that announcing this move after the - and there's really no other way to call it while staying polite - PR disaster makes me worry about your decision making process, people at WG. Just like someone that's not performing well in the game should go back and reexamine their decision making processes, you need to do that now; I don't think you can argue that lately, you seem to just enrage the community time and again. Assuming that this is not your goal, what exactly were you hoping for when you announced this? Did you really think people want to grind their t10 ship, and then if they want to get it's unique upgrade, reset the line and do it all again? Here's a hint that should be obvious: when people spend a lot of time grinding a line to get to that t10, they will - and this might schock you - want to actually play that t10. This is why the current system works well - want the legendary upgrade? Just play the t10 you grinded. Instead, when someone reaches their t10, instead of being incentivized to play it, you push them into resetting the line and going through all of that again. This is, to paraphrase a streamer we all know.. questionable. I hope you realize this was never going to be welcomed with open arms? Did you even consider your fractured relationship with the player base at this time when you decided to announce this? Time and again you prove you have a PR problem. As has been said before, your heavy handed approach of "our way or the highway, deal with it" doesn't work. I worry that if you continue down this path you're on, you will have reached a point of no return where you chase away just enough players that the game can't recover anymore. Personally, I think that would be a shame, I still like the game, ridiculous PR event, terrible CV rework, this, and the probably disastrous IFHE nerf notwithstanding. Take this as well meant advice, you really, really need to stop and re-examine what you're doing. Get professional, outside help in the form of PR professionals. Make sure they actually understand the game and what they're doing. Listen to them. This is getting you nowhere.

Will I complete it eventually, so I can get Gorizia? Probably. Unless work gets nuts. But I probably will. Will I complete it in time to get the PR for free? P.S. I didn't vote, because I'm not sure if the questions is meant as "will you complete it in time to get the PR" or "just until the end of the patch".

Having gone through all of my free t10 boxes, all 29 of them, I decided to get mega ones using a bunch of doubloons sitting unused on my account (was initially going to use them for PR boosters but then the patch hit so.. yeano.) A bunch od t6 premiums, some t5, Lazo, Le Terrible.. and then this came out literally out of the last box. That's my RNG spent for the decade...

That's not a bug, that's state of the art Soviet Torpedo Technology.

Patches are spaced out, and most of them don't last nearly as much, and aren't as "big" in attracting players as the christmas one, when everyone thinks they'll get lots of stuff for "free" by buying lootboxes and generally grinding their behinds off. Usually, the standard patches have the worst teams on the first weekend after the patch - there is a reason why "patch weekend teams" is a meme. After the first weekend of a standard patch is done, things tend to settle down to normal levels. Christmas patch is a bit of an exception to this where you get the effect pretty much extended over a month. If there are more players now, they are either new, or people who are generally very inactive and play once in a blue moon that activated. Yes, of course their performance will be worse. They never play. OP made good general potato mistakes observations, no doubt helped by his time spent on NA as well, but I'd be genuinely interested to hear more about the actual differences between the servers than what is more of a "don't do these common mistakes" guide. Also, if you think sample size is irrelevant, I'm going to guess you're not employed or training for STEM fields, are you? That's not how data analysis works.

I don't have the slightest interest in insulting you, nor have I done that so far. A slightly sarcastic tone isn't an insult. Secondly, X for doubt for the same players being on. I see a lot more players that have accounts made in like, 2015/2016 and have a few hundred battles on them. WR usually in the low 40's, with xp and damage being equally horrendous. These kinds of patches usually get the otherwise inactive super casuals to flock to the game, and the quality of gameplay tends to drop as a result. It's a similar effect to weekend teams being famously worse, only magnified through the christmas patch prism. I definitely notice a difference.. and roflstomp matches (one team absolutely demolishes and 0 points the other in 5 min or less) happen a lot more during these kinds of patches and weekends. That's been my observation so far, and I think I have enough of a sample size in terms of battles played to make them and provide a reasonable general overview. Feel free to disagree, of course, not that it'll change anything, but there's a reason why most experienced players I know already expect an increase in the number of speshuls in the MM spread during these events. It's a well-observed phenomenon. So, I disagree it's necessarily the same players, like I said, the super casuals hop into the mix of the usually active players. Another point is that even if it were "all the same players", which isn't entirely true, most of these people are now playing to get directives done, not necessarily doing what's best for the team. Why shoot a full hp DD that's been radared when there is a 1k hp BB you can finish off and get a kill for your directive? That sort of stuff. These kinds of goals pretty much always lower the quality of the gameplay, so I would have to say that the christmas patch isn't necessarily representative of gameplay quality on this, or any other server.

When I saw the thread title, I was like "more like masochism". Makes a lot more sense now that I looked inside

I saw a profile linked whose only ships listed as having random battles on were two t1's.. and the Puerto Rico (with 0% win rate on it and the other stats appropriately horrid, ofc... I think average damage was like 9k, but I could be remembering it wrong).

> pretending that there's no difference between grindy patch days and standard weekdays. Must be fun in that alternate universe. Aaanyway... @The_Chiv, welcome to the EU server. Such as it is

There is an impressive amount of wrong in this post. Balti and Buffalo better than a DM? Russian high tiers cruisers are bad? Let me guess, you're one of those players that gets to a donskoi, then tries to charge bb's, turning full broadside 6km in front of them so he can do a bow-on torp drop, then when he gets blapped it's the team's / ship's fault? Regardless, you should probably focus on actually learning how to be effective in different cruiser lines before you actually go hand out advice. German cruisers being the biggest challenge? Wut? Can't even process this.

A good 1vs1 DD fight is about as much fun as I can get from this game. It's just annoying when the enemy DD is getting help from his team while my CV, cruisers and BB's are busy looking for someone's lost keys in a grid square safely behind an island.

All of the 3 options you listed are quite different: you have a cap lockdown island spammer, a long range kiter, and, well, a Mino (can't really describe her as easily as the others as her playstyle is more of a combination of different things, not to mention that depending on playing smoke or radar her playstyle will vary further). You can't really go wrong with any of them. If your clan plays CB and you want something for that, you'll probably want either Henri or DM over the Mino. For randoms literally any of them are a strong choice, so it depends on what you like best.

Yup, the player base is guilty of pretty much all of the above. Out of curiosity, would you say the NA community is better or worse on any of these points?

I liked the Izumo even pre-buff, the guns were always pretty strong on it, so I never had the hatred for it most community seemed to have. Normally, I would have voted for FdG for the flaming turd award here, but I never played her after the buffs (short of knocking off a snowflake in coop, but that doesn't count), nor do I have any interest to ever touch her again. So that leaves the Lion. Damn, I hated that inconsistent turd. Conq brings far more to the table than an extra turret, it's way more accurate. I can forgive a lot if the guns work - and with Lion, they just didn't for me, so it gets my vote for the flaming turd award. FdG may just be better than Lion after all the buffs. As for actually good ships in the tier, my favorite has to be the Jean Bart. I always seem to have fun in it, I love the mobile flanker playstyle, and when you learn when to use that booster she's incredibily potent. Objectively it may not be the strongest in tier, but if not she's damn close in my opinion, and definitely the one I have the most fun with. Don't have the Georgia yet, so maybe I'd enjoy that thanks to her great mobility, which I do enjoy in a bb.

First few times you get a witherer before the 5th minute of the match is done, and break 200k, you'll probably find fun - I did. I find I play her less and less now (haven't touched mine in well over a week, maybe two). Damage output is downright silly, chances enemy bb's will smoke blap you are minimal, especially if you don't just sit in the middle of one puff (far more often, if they aim well they might remove about half of my health which only serves to give me an AR boost more than anything), thanks to hydro it's fairly trivial to not get torped in your smoke, etc.. all in all if I have a high damage game in it I don't really feel a sense of accomplishment at all, which does ruin the fun a bit. It's not exactly a feat of amazing skill to get high damage numbers on it. Colbert might actually be more fun just because you need to have way more awareness and positioning skill to utilize her DPM.

I normally find coop quite boring, but given the amount of ships I have I found grinding snowflakes in it was the fastest, most efficient method. One battle literally played out like a bad random one for the first three minutes. 3 dd's on my team, all dead in the first minute and a half. Imagine the fun of getting these guys on your team in randoms...

ThEy JuSt PlAy FoR FuN

That's a definite improvent over the Danae, in which case a crewmember gave a docked Danae a sudden harsh look and caused a triple citadel / dev strike.

I have spent years not owning the Huanghe, and listening to how horrible she is. Then I dropped her this christmas. There is nothing wrong with that ship. I'd even say she's pretty strong if top tier, yes, only 6 rifles but I find they work fairly well.. plus you get smoke, hydro, very decent torps and AA. It might not be the top dog in it's tier, but it's most definitely not weak.

I mean, this did really need a lock, for example? So, we can't even have a thread that jokes around with what we could do with the money that'd be needed for the PR grind? Locking it will improve the situation how exactly? I've noticed you guys being pretty trigger happy with these locks, ofc not all are unwarranted, but some are just getting silly. Nobody was being abusive or rude, people were letting out steam in a fairly peaceful and non insulting way, joking around and relaxing, so could you kindly cut the absolutely unnecessary lock fiesta out? It's getting pretty annoying. Unless, of course, feedback on moderation practices is also "not constructive" and warrants a lock in and of itself? I guess we'll find out, won't we..

We'll see. If they do that, they're just proving my point, really.