UnterSeeBot

it certainly looked like panic stations for a while.

I don't think the NA crowd are docile, it's just that regular purges means that there are only docile boot polishers left to ask questions. Europizza for captain! (A CV captain obviously)

you are a beauty spot (an old wrinkly mole with curly hairs sprouting out), your very presence prettifies the forum sir!

That was part of what made it so interesting. And probably why the Q&A is better held on a separate platform (Twitch, Reddit) than on the forum.

I don't think so, the NA forum has been locked a toxic cycle, of who's trolling who, for years on end. The treatment of the NA community by WG, of which the hyper attentiveness of WG staff, contributes to the hyper anxious toxic environment, which in turn, cannot be nice for NA WOWS staff either. The EU forum is a better place for being more reserved, allowing CMs greater liberty to choose their moments to say something, without undue pressure, and so being forced to say absolutely any old codswallop to appease the masses of basement dwellers. Ironically, without a Q&A EU CMs do intervene on the forum, quite regularly, and let their opinion known, directly or more diplomatically, on a range of issues, which NA staffers won't touch. In NA we are more often met with a wall of silence and/or "please take a vacation from our forum". That is not to say I don't appreciate, from afar, the efforts that @Ev1n is taking, with a moderate and professional tone I haven't seen on NA for a few years now. I hope he succeeds, but I fear he is just feeding the furnace of expectations, and trolls. It isn't to say EU forum is perfect, far from it, but I better not say too much about the downsides of EU just here :) tldr, just put EU CMs on follow, and read up their comments once a week. Best place for a Q&A was Reddit, neutral moderation on a neutral platform.

Not really. PEGI 12 makes practically zero difference to their ability to advertise. What they want to avoid is PEGI 18 which would have an effect. Oh, and welcome to the EU forum. Beer is in the fridge. So we are safe for now /

It would be funny to see your kids trying to get into a casino, I can imagine the door bouncers reaction. Obviously expecting Casinos to enforce a zero child policy is mightily unfair, blame the parents when the kids get into debt and owe a month's worth of pocket money after spending too long at the poker table. Likewise, alcohol and tobacco, it's the job of the parents to ensure their offspring do not spend their weekend salary on cigarettes and whisky, totally unfair to expect shopkeepers to enforce the law../s

PEGI 12 or 16, probably. So much depends on how lootboxes are interpreted. I am sure that it is only a matter of time before PEGI has to cede more ground on this. It will require influential and populous countries such as Germany or France to force EU wide change, (the French state is on the board of PEGI, maybe we should be shaming Macron about this ) Many parallels with the tobacco industry. Until the law catches up, there will be many victims, and them some.

I am not convinced we share the same understanding of the word "Respect" as WG. We are repeatedly told the playerbase is (mostly) adult, yet the playerbase is repeatedly treated as a school playground with supervisors yelling at the kids to stop running and to speak nicely to their teachers. This kind of (overall) behaviour by WOWSWG is the best way to attract the opposite of civil exchanges between responsible adults. The request for "respect" in the recent "Important Message" was a mistake, it is entirely the wrong context for that, and gives a bad impression, because it sends out the signal, that WG "disapproves" of the behaviour of any who read that mesage, not a very small (I mean tiny % of the 1 million active players worldwide) minority of players who harrass staff or who send offensive to WG employees pms (probably the 6% of the playerbase who are under 18). As such I disapprove of the OPs message. And will continue to strive to be civil in my comments on this forum, as elsewhere. This does not automatically equal respect, people have to earn my respect as I have to earn theirs*. Disrespectfully yours, LoveZeppelin. *obviously I do feel respect for some people at WOWS and WG who have been with the company for a long time, not all, but some. I don't expect respect to be reciprocal, I am sure (certain!) that some staff don't feel respect for me. That is ok, we can still be civil and polite, WG staff can still be as professional as they are able. (edit : I have downvoted the OP, not because I disagree with the sentiment, but with the message. I'll try and repair hurt feelings another day)

drop rates are already revealed on console WOWS (because Playstation requires this), and WOWS still sells lootboxes on console (Legends).

I just think WOWS has boxed itself into a corner, it has become addicted to these methods of monetization, and so has limited options. Also it's UI devs can only work with the tools they already have if we want a reasonably quick solution. I don't expect Mr Conway's "like" to mean I am right or that he 100% approves, just that he agrees options are limited, the solution to the riddle is in the riddle itself, WOWSWG has to find itself a way out of its own maze of monetization and marketing. He has "liked" (very rarely!) past comments on other issues, nothing came (as far as I am aware) of those comments though ;)

this does not deal with the free lootbox "simulated monetization" content, which has the effect of preparing, young minds for spending real money as soon as the opportunity presents itself. It is for this reason that most countries ban simulated cigarettes (when I was a tiddler we could buy chocolate sim cigars with our pocket money!)

Your options are (have I missed something?) : a) remove lootboxes altogether and all forms of spending money (real/virtual) on random rolls of dice equivalents. (I understand WOWS would only do this if forced by law or industry regulations, so I don't expect you to volunteer for this). b) place an 18 + banner on lootboxes (which defeats the purpose of your stated aim of retaining access to general public advertising spaces and marketing events ) c) render lootboxes inaccessible to minors by putting them on the top shelf (is it possible to create a virtual top shelf for adults only material? A parental password protected "hide all monetization content" option? It would need to hide free lootboxes too to have a hope of satisfying my concerns. You can do this, as you already turn off lootboxes to comply with regional laws such as in Belgium).

there is one useful change, concession, drop rates will be published. Also we can read between the lines of this announcement, and the declarations made on NA forum about it. statements include : Ev1n "Console platform operators require us to disclose drop rates" and Ev1n "We will disclose drop rates. However, this is not a technical choice or problem (of flipping a switch or writing code) - it's a legal and logistical one. We need to make sure that a change like that is consistent across all the jurisdictions we publish the game in" and Sub "We of course know the drop rates. (...) We want to disclose drop rates for Containers and Random bundles in a consistent way in all regions, so we have to do a fair amount of legal and technical work to make it happen and to make sure we are compliant everywhere. " 2 things I takeaway from these statements/attempts to clarify : WG already has the ability to disclose drop rates, right now. It will not disclose them now because it is afraid that their current drop rate algorithms might flout laws or regional regulations, disclosing them would cause them legal trouble.

is that a lootbox? sorry, they all look the same to me /s

https://blog.worldofwarships.com/blog/198 clumsy timing.

"No doubt more news and announcements will follow, so please don't treat this as a final plan and the ultimate solution to everything." understood, so we can expect further announcements? "Therefore, our position on containers and random bundles is always consistent with governments' decisions on this matter and will keep being so." Bad, you will continue to use gambling as a way to monetize content "Drop rates. We plan to publish all drop rates for all Containers and Random Bundles and are already working on it. It will take some time, but our hard commitment is that it will happen over the course of next year." Good news, except you should publish drop rates, now, not next year. There is no obvious or good reason why it should be difficult to do. But there are plenty of bad reasons (e.g you are not in a state of compliance with all regional laws) "Age ratings. We've already added disclaimers about in-game purchases with random items to our PEGI ratings. We're also in touch with other rating organizations to adjust our ratings everywhere in a consistent way." Good, but insufficient. As long as WOWS includes simulated and/or real money gambling via lootboxes and access to premium content via games of chance (lootboxes and similar), in my opinion, then WOWS should be PEGI 18, in line with all existing games that have undergone significant revisions or the introduction of gambling in the period since they were launched. I'm sure your legal department will be trying for PEGI 12, which is why we all have good reason to distrust your statement. Stop marketing content that relies on the mechanics of gambling, to young people. You don't condone real world violence, real world discrimination, real world drug abuse, so stop enabling gambling abuse. Feedback Good you are looking at many issues surrounding communication that have been present since the day the game was launched, it just goes to show how bad your internal communications and how bad your handling of community feedback is, that so many years have gone by until today without the problem of poor communications management by WG, being taken seriously. we want to share a general roadmap with you, of what you can expect to see in World of Warships in the far future. Good, we have been asking for this since the day the game launched. See previous comment. General transparency. Effectively, greater transparancy in all areas of WOWS operations, management, and decision making will reduce misunderstandings, and make misunderstandings easier and less painful to resolve. IF this transparancy = honesty, rather than misinformation and manipulation to win community arguments on the back of cheap comments, by WG representatives that toxify relationships! (EU staff are generally innocent in regards to this criticism)/ While we as a company certainly need to work on the way we communicate with you, we ask that you treat the people you interact with fairly and with respect. Badly put in light of recent community interactions. I have often heard from WG that the majority of the playerbase are adults. Well treat your customers as adults in your interactions with them. Telling a customer to show some respect is the best possible way to LOSE respect. A fundamental problem with WG management culture is present in your statement. Your priority should be to express respect to your customers in all circumstances, to be professional. Doing so you will earn respect in return. If you will insist in treating your customers (supposedly average age of 40) as kids, you should expect your customers to treat you like a bunch of pouting adolescents in return.

From News & Announcements This will take a while to digest and dissect, so I'll hold my fire for now (probably for as long as ten minutes). Plenty to get our teeth into (and tear apart!)

This will take time to digest, and to offer a fair (obviously outraged ) reaction. In the meantime my initial reaction the section which interests me the most : The response to concerns about monetization and gambling is clearly an insufficient response to our complaints. It also contains some questionable statements. (e.g the claim that WG is being pro-active about ratings has been debunked quite recenty, in fact WG is overdue for a ratings review and adjustement according to both 2014 and 2020 PEGI regulations in Europe.) Until then the fact that a carefully written response to player concerns has been published, is something (not a lot, never enough, but something)./ Thanks to CMs for channeling the news our way, sorry if we seem ungrateful (we are ungrateful, but the feeling is not aimed at yourselves).

but what does this tendatious analysis hope to achieve? The OP makes no constructive argument for an alternative to current arrangements, but picks on the easy notion of low win rate"red" players. This is a giveaway, an honest study would not focus exclusively on lower WR players (the -47% according to the OP), behind the facade this is the usual toxic bs. I quote Why not track the 57%+ players too? What about the 70%+? I can only see this kind of discussion going round in a circle, going nowhere. What we can see is that both Red tomato and Purple unicum players are equally responsible for blowouts, either for playing too badly or for playing too well. How does that help us? it doesn't.

a lot of young people lie about their age, on discord, smart kids can convincingly pass as adults. It's important to be wary of that. I have also teamed with a number of young (sub 18) people (by their own admission) over the years in WOWS. A common age group, in my experience, for young people in WOWS is in the 15-17 range. Also WOWS communities tend to = clusters of people with similar interests/social outlook, this means younger players are more likely to cluster with likeminded people of the same generation, (there will always be exceptions). For example, you will likely cluster, instinctively, with people of a similar social outlook/generation, just because you find it easier to understand people who share similar responses to the game.

So you believe something to be 100% true because somebody said so? You accept without questioning something you have no way of verifying?

they do conduct these surveys, but how represenbtative can they be? At the end of the day, they are surveys, only as accurate as the pertinence of their questions, as the time and place they are conducted, and as the honesty and willingness to respond of their targets. Plenty of margin there. How often do political polls get it right? They often get things wrong, I doubt customer surveys are any more reliable.

show me the evidence. All we have so far, is opinion, hearsay and generalties by trustworthy (hic) WG staff. WG does not (doubtless for commercial reasons) publish detailed statistics about its customer portfolio. Anything said on the forums, is said for the purpose of rhetoric, it cannot be cross checked. Indeed it is doubtful whether WG even knows for sure, the precise age or gender of its clients. There is no way for WG to (legally) aquire this data on a systematic basis. Customer surveys are unreliable, and have a considerable margin of error/ I don't think WG is sure, I don't think it CAN be sure, it has no way to be sure. All it can do, is guesstimate. edit : your point about the forums is quite pertinent.

I'll just leave this here : Very big youtuber (1 million + subscribers) takes on this latest news, with a strong reminder of both the absurdity of the current situation (e.g summary : pokemon bad, FIFA good) and the nature of PEGI (a regulatory framework financed by game developers)/ The implication being, game devs that lobby PEGI with generous pizza deliveries and/or cash stuffed envelopes recieve favorable ratings, while those that fail to "pay protection money to the racket" get a visit from a couple of bruisers. (metaphores and sarcasm, obviously).. Sounds quite ugly.