qna WG DevQnA Transcription [RAW]

[Hayashio]

DEV QnA WG 15/06/2018

 

Here's my transcription of the latest Dev QnA with WG's balancing department. I left out some questions (some intentionally, some unintentionally) but I did get most of them. Bold is the question normal font is the answer, and finally any little additions from me are in italic. Note that this isn't 1:1 what the devs said, as it is my personal transcription (apologies in advance for any dents I didn't manage to buff out).

 

Is the tendency of powercreep intentional, or is it a side effect?
A hard question - during the years we develop new ideas and mechanics. We don't want to powercreep the game with new ideas, but sometimes it happens.

 

Why is it harder in BBs to punish other BBs broadsiding?
From a historical standpoint BBs were supposed to withstand damage from other BBs.

 

Will Zao receive HP buffs?
from the survivability point of view, Zao is okay. She has good agility, stealth and range. She will, however get the 12km torpedoes

 

Will CVs get rebuffed again?
We're currently working on a new version of carriers, so of course they will be rebalanced. Therefore everything in regards to carriers and planes will be revisited, that includes AA, captain skills as well as the CVs themselves.

 

Do you have any plans to buff Gearing?
She was kind of buffed with the Fletcher torpedoes. She's kind of in a nice spot, since she is needed in competitive games. She is also in a good spot for Randoms.

 

Will upgrades and modules receive buffs/nerfs?
We don't have such plans.

 

Will BBs overpenetrate with no damage, and if that is the case, what about AP German DD and others CAs and CL?
CA AP will no longer bounce on DDs, due to the rework of the destroyer armour layout. We will investigate how BB AP will deal damage to destroyers i.e. Japanese AP.

 

Comeback mechanics for ships of tier 7-8?

The reason why not all ships have a heal, is that most nations already have it at t9, and the new module slot.
We're looking into making t7-8 cruisers receiving something to allow them to come back. But it will likely not be a heal.

 

T9-10 seems to promote sitting at range and sniping, will this be addressed?
It's difficult, you see. The game is more interesting to play if you push. In theory, it sounds like a good idea to cut down the ranges, but that leads to a difficult situations. For the majority of players, playing as safely as possible seems to be the obvious choice, pushing requires quite a bit of understanding of the game, and carries risks. It might be considered for the future.

 

Combined arms (WoT+WoWs/WoWp)?
Not possible at the time. What could a tank do to a ship? ;)

 

 

Rework to Radar for Line of sight instead of going through islands?
It has been discussed. Radar is pretty straight forward, if the DD is undetected, you pop the radar and you spot him, providing he's inside the radar's range. (we don't want to overly complicate it). There are considerations for radar countering consumables.

 

Clan Wars with rewards like in WoT (gold, etc.)?
We want to develop clan activities further. We've been discussing Global Map, many times. It might not necessarily be the greatest for world of warships. It is possible to have something like this in the future, but not for now.

 

Battlecruisers as a custom class?
They're in the game right now, and they function as such, therefore creating a separate icon is a bit of a redundancy.

 

Will we get destroyers with a choice of DWT/Normal torpedoes?
With Asashio, we wanted to minimize confusion.  Therefore a single choice of torpedoes can be picked, or rather, is available.

More accuracy for secondaries?
The secondaries are viable as they are right now. It's quite powerful but not overpowered. So, no.

Pan-Asia Hsienyang same setup as Benson?
DWT torps are quite effective, therefore she isn't in a bad spot, not over or underperforming. We'll look into this if anything changes.

 

Conqueror top guns, reload buff?
We don't want to buff straight away. That would mean that instead of using the smaller guns, players would just switch to the other guns and spam HE anyway. We do want to do something different

 

Short range AA gets destroyed really quickly, deliberate?
Yes, Mid and short range AA was very lightly armoured, therefore it makes sense that HE splash knocks them out quickly.

 

Have any ships had their matchmaking weight adjusted?
No, nothing affects the matchmaking of ships, nor do player stats.

 

What criteria do you use to determine what bracket a premium will be placed in?
First, it's a guess, then it gets set up, and it goes into the balancing/testing process.

 

Do stats and abilities come first?
The stats go first of course, since it's directly from the ship's history, then we can do adjustments according to the tier it fits best.

 

How much time does it take to see whether a ship doesn't perform as desired?
Depends - Normal ships 1-2 months. We of course check the stats from the first week, but generally better players get the ship first.

 

How long does it take to determine whether changes to a ship are successful?
Sometimes too long!
Difficult, sometimes. For instance, conqueror, stat-wise, it's not the greatest ship. From a community perspective, it is infamous.

 

Radar performance effect on Destroyer population?
the DD population is currently affected by the American-arc. A lot of cruisers, less DDs. That goes for any new branch though (i.e. BBs and DD influx, etc)

 

How are hitpoints determined?
Formula for every class (displacement, different factors) from that an approximate health pool is determined, and is later tweaked.
There are rules how we calculate parameters of a ship, generally we leave it at that, but sometimes we need to tweak it (buffs, nerfs)

 

Izumo getting some love?
Regards of the Izumo - We will look into her, she's not that bad off, even though people like to complain. It is however somewhat underperforming.
It is a bit hard for people to ajust to the new playstyle from the good old Amagi.
Keep in mind that this was the first BB line. similarly with Nelson, which was considered with the RNBBs, but was not chosen due to different playstyles.

 

Is the Giulio Cesare the Nikolai of T5?
No, at the moment it doesn't look like it, but we will look into it.

 

Ships that are highly reliant of IFHE, do you make specific changes according to ships that rely on this skill or not?
We look into the stats of our supertesters/production testers, and then we decide what to do with the ships. Com Perks are part of balance of a ship, of course we want it to be well balanced on average.
Of course we're not just looking at average numbers. When we release a ship to production test, we benchmark the performance. We look at how players do in similar ships, and how these compare.

 

When balancing a ship, do you factor in divisioning?
The divisioning factor is not a primary part of the balancing. Although we do consider this.

 

Do you think, the future CV rework will have an impact of every t4+ ship?
Yes. Absolutely. The AA will be reworked, we'll see what else we need to change, hopefully not too many drastic changes.

 

Why is it that post global changes, certain ships were not adjusted? i.e. Blyska and Kutuzov?
 Kutuzov was balanced initially with skill rework in mind. Blyskawica's performance is okay, she isn't the best on her tier, but it works.

 

Will Roma get buffed?
No, that is not planned. She has trade-offs.

 

Shima 20km, WHY?
Players like the 20km, and many players still use them, they are easy to play with, and they don't overperform.
It's a perfect example of ship that is super popular, but not powerful. The opposite would be a carrier, who has a lot of power, but isn't particularly popular.

 

Plan to nerf the HE penetration of german CAs?
It's kind of a national trait to have improved HE penetration. We do not plan to nerf it.

 

Montana has got the worst guns for a T10 BB. plans to improve?
No, Montana is in a good spot.

 

Will there be compensation after the CV rework is implemented?
Absolutely, we try to compensate players accordingly (note generous compensation).

 

HE drag value nerf?
It would be an option. But for the time being RNBBs are not overperforming. Long range HE spam would be less effective, but it will most likely not change the playstyle of the majority of players that like to practice this kind of play.
It would also punish players that don't practice this playstyle, as they'd have to readjust.

 

With the amount of radar, will DDs receive stealth fire again?
There are no DIRECT changes to radars planned. We have considered adding consumables to counter it.

 

Tweaking AP bombs to deal more damage to t8+ BBs as opposed to no damage?
Not for the time being, we're currently focusing on the CV rework.

 

 

Upcoming special modes:
Is there a timeframe for their arrival?
We have a seperate team that dedicate themselves to test new game modes. It is quite difficult and requires a lot of experimentation. As you know the most successful tests come with events. (no ETA)
What tiers will they be at?
There are currently multiple tests on different tiers, but that has not been decided yet.

 

Manual secondary control?
The biggest issue is the change of context. Even with the 30 reload, there is still a lot going on.
WoWs Blitz has this feature. Stats show that not a lot of people actually use this feature.

 

Changes torpedo dispersion?
It's worth taking a look into.

 

Tier 9 ranked?
Very few people keep their T9s. Therefore we have to take this into consideration. We're asking people to spend a lot of credits for them to rebuy ships just to participate.

 

How are premium ships decided on?
That opens up several questions.
Does the community influence the choice of premium ships? Yes. Perfect example would be Haida. Another example: Roma. Of course we do listen to players and we try to accommodate to this.
As for the roadmaps on premiums. There are many different factors.
Community, distribution of existent Premiums, which classes and nations have premiums already. Among other factors.

 

 

How successful did you find for this ranked season?
The best season was s.4, the current season, s.9 was the second most successful ranked season. The general reception was good. some players loved t10 others hated it.
There is an experiment to make a more casual season this year.

 

Are there any other changes for the Supercontainers?
Something that we want to look at, but not just the SCs, the whole logic behind the regular containers. We're not satisfied with how the work at the moment.

 

Stalingrad staying in the arsenal forever?
Stalingrad will stay there, if we *do* plan to remove it, we'll notify everyone in a timely fashion.

 

Are you willing to reveal what the next big line for WoWs is going to be?

We can't reveal the exact ship lines here. It will be revealed quite soon, though. (Gamescom??)

 

Rewarding players for playing the objective?
We have already added quite a few features which incentivizes players to play closer to the objective, and we plan on adding missions to reward this.

 

Individual specific keybinds for consumables?
Difficult with 8~ consumables and only 5 maps. We did consider allowing to swap the slots in which consumables can be placed. No decision have been made yet.

 

Dedicated spectator mode?
It's in works, there are changes already on the server-side. The biggest issue to add this to the production environment, is there needs to be a fundamental rework of the in-game HUD. The basis is 6 years old, so changing it is very work intensive and takes a lot of time. I wish I could say that we can deliver this year, but I doubt it.

 

Teaching players to improve?
the problem with education is that it is entirely up to the person themselves to improve, people who want to get better will always find ways to improve, people that don't, won't.
We do want to create a place where people can learn, with tutorials, and hints, more of that in the future.

 

What about the render changes, how's the progress?
It is progressing. It is much less of a render problem, than a client filter problem. We want to introduce it in 0.7.7, but there are issues with it. We're are trying our best to fix it, and we're working on it. If not 0.7.7, then it will be a must for 0.7.8?

 

CV Rework open the ability to field BBV and CVE?
Yes.

Radar to be taken into account for matchmaking?
Difficult. Matchmaker is very sensitive. It might work at some peak hours, but not at all times, therefore not planned.

 

Multiple Spotting Icon info?
We need to look into it.

 

Carrier sales on hold until Carrier Rework?
Yes.

 

Game really slow in port, as well stuttery, is this going to be fixed?
It's a challenging thing, but we are working on it.

 

Carrier input limited by UI?
Yes, we're working on improving it. No ETA.

 

Do we want to increase the role of support activities in terms of credits and experience points?
We don’t want to go too far into this. You will still get a decent amount of credits and XP for spotting and tanking, but at the end of the day we still want to reward the actions that lead your team to victory, which is, capturing points, sinking ships and dealing damage.

 

Any chance of allow this to be displayed in game or at the end of the game?
With the current system it is impossible to say in real time what amount of what is calculated in which way in real time, therefore displaying this is impossible.
The problem is, it had been tested in World of tanks, displaying what actions reward the player the most, he will try to exploit the system.

 

Adding premium ships as bots in training room?
More customization for the training room can definitely be considered. We need to bounce back with the team.

 

How about giving XP by giving a smoke screen to your allies?
Unfortunately these hardcore economy questions I cannot answer. Perhaps these can directly be asked in a QnA for economy.

 

Consumables like an AOE heal?
Yes, we’re considering looking into consumables like this.

 

Special captain on carriers with plane trails?
Absolutely possible (Fara: Doit).

 

Is the introduction of Steel and Coal the new way of receiving reward ships for CB and Ranked seasons?
Yes, the rewards were getting somewhat out of hand. Steel and coal should streamline it.

 

 

 

[AkosJaccik]

50 minutes ago, Strefs said:

Why is it harder in BBs to punish other BBs broadsiding?
From a historical standpoint BBs were supposed to withstand damage from other BBs

Come on, WG! You know I love you and all, but pulling the "historical accuracy"-card whenever suits you? Come... ooon! Especially when...

 

50 minutes ago, Strefs said:

Consumables like an AOE heal?
Yes, we’re considering looking into consumables like this.

Really. Really. With a repair ship maybe. However....

 

52 minutes ago, Strefs said:

CV Rework open the ability to field BBV and CVE?
Yes.

Yes. Yes. YES. My body is ready. More or less.

[NoirLotus]

What is BBV ?

[Hayashio]

Just now, NoirLotus said:

What is BBV ?

ABB I'd think (Aviation Battleship).

[NoirLotus]

ah ok so hybrid ships like Ise.

[Hayashio]

correct

[loppantorkel]

Nice! You do all this manually?

[Hayashio]

11 minutes ago, loppantorkel said:

Nice! You do all this manually?

The questions? Asked by fellow CCTs. The transcription is mine. Some of it is original (the exact wording that was used), but most of it I have altered to be shorter (hence the up and down in quality). This is until the original recording is out, which, has a few more questions and is about 2 hours and 30 minutes.

[loppantorkel]

"Changes torpedo dispersion?" - Worth looking into...

 

Exactly what is the question and what is worth looking into?

[Zemeritt]

1 hour ago, Strefs said:

With the amount of radar, will DDs receive stealth fire again?
There are no DIRECT changes to radars planned. We have considered adding consumables to counter it.

 

Yes, just throw even more gimmicks into the fray. Do WG and you`ll soon need to add a 10th consumables key for all the consumables on the next gimmick line you`re planning.

[Zemeritt]

Just now, loppantorkel said:

"Changes torpedo dispersion?" - Worth looking into...

 

Exactly what is the question and what is worth looking into?

 

I guess those holes that are produced by RNG sometimes.

You know, throwing 5 fishes into the water and 4 of the cuddle so much, that there is a convinient gap for a BB to turn into the spread unharmed?

[Hayashio]

3 minutes ago, loppantorkel said:

"Changes torpedo dispersion?" - Worth looking into...

 

Exactly what is the question and what is worth looking into?

 

Torpedo launchers, especially quadruple tubes are notorious to throw huge holes between the mid section of the torpedo dispersion.

[wilkatis_LV]

2 hours ago, Strefs said:

Is the Giulio Cesare the Nikolai of T5?
No, at the moment it doesn't look like it, but we will look into it.

No, ship that's performing far far above any other ship of it's tier is perfectly fine. Just the thing that WG forgot to stick a Russian flag on it (or is intended that you'd have to find out on your own that this ship served in Russian navy under the name Novorossiysk (literally "New Russia") so it's perfectly fine to call it balanced when it's absolutely broken?)

 

Hell, the ship is so stupidly strong you can't even compare it with tier 6s, you have to take it up to t7 to start getting some actual comparisons.

 

Drink more domashniy vodka comrade, and zakusaj a pickle on top! Then stupid s**t like this will make perfekt sense!

 

2 hours ago, Strefs said:

Rewarding players for playing the objective?
We have already added quite a few features which incentivizes players to play closer to the objective, and we plan on adding missions to reward this.

 

You don't need any missions or whatever for it, start finally awarding XP and Credits for it! And I, of course, mean in ammounts that make it worth while.

 

Right now the situation can be summed up like this:

• Every second I spend farming dmg and / or making sure I don't get a single scratch on my ship I am earning $$$
• Every second I spend spotting someone for my team and / or taking hits so others wouldn't have to I am losing $$$
  • "You are not losing anything! You are still earning!"
    • Compare it to that same situation if I was a few km back and letting someone else do that exact thing while freely farming myself some more dmg - would I be rewarded more? Yes. That means I'm losing my potential earnings

 

2 hours ago, Strefs said:

Individual specific keybinds for consumables?
Difficult with 8~ consumables and only 5 maps. We did consider allowing to swap the slots in which consumables can be placed. No decision have been made yet.

What exactly is difficult about giving the ability to rearrange those same consumables in the order that we want? Like you have with the Repair / Extinguisher / Medpack in WoT?

 

2 hours ago, Strefs said:

Radar to be taken into account for matchmaking?
Difficult. Matchmaker is very sensitive. It might work at some peak hours, but not at all times, therefore not planned.

What is so difficult about that same +/-1 that basically everything has?

 

1 radar? 1-0

2 radars? 1-1

3 radars? 2-1

4 radars? 2-2

And so on and on and on...

"Oh but divisions"

Div of 2 radars = enemies need 1...3 radars

Div of 3 radars = enemies need 2...4 radars

Yeah, "difficult"

 

2 hours ago, Strefs said:

Do we want to increase the role of support activities in terms of credits and experience points?
We don’t want to go too far into this. You will still get a decent amount of credits and XP for spotting and tanking, but at the end of the day we still want to reward the actions that lead your team to victory, which is, capturing points, sinking ships and dealing damage.

Define "too far". Is making them give you anything called "too far"?

Define "decent". Is those rewards being so low you could completely remove them and leave next to no impact on the final income called "decent"?

I don't think they understand either of those 2.

 

 

Actions that lead to victory:

• Unspotted ships don't tend to get sunk. Spotted ships do. Sure, they can run into torps, but that means that they were:
  • Super obvious position (like smoke)
  • Were spotted when those torps were launched at them
• Sunk ships don't keep fighting, living ships do. Ally tanking hits is ensuring his teammates live longer, thus keep fighting, instead of dying and losing the battle

 

Teamplay leads to victory, not that mong who sits 20km behind everyone else farming his precious damage. Funny that those who will be rewarded for it won't be those who focused on teamwork...

 

10 minutes ago, loppantorkel said:

"Changes torpedo dispersion?" - Worth looking into...

 

Exactly what is the question and what is worth looking into?

[Hayashio]

12 minutes ago, wilkatis_LV said:

What exactly is difficult about giving the ability to rearrange those same consumables in the order that we want? Like you have with the Repair / Extinguisher / Medpack in WoT?

 

As stated, they will look into this second alternative. They elaborated on the first point of having INDIVIDUAL keybinds for each consumable.

 

12 minutes ago, wilkatis_LV said:

What is so difficult about that same +/-1 that basically everything has?

 

1 radar? 1-0

2 radars? 1-1

3 radars? 2-1

4 radars? 2-2

And so on and on and on...

"Oh but divisions"

Div of 2 radars = enemies need 1...3 radars

Div of 3 radars = enemies need 2...4 radars

Yeah, "difficult"

 

They were referring to the matchmaker itself. Might be overbuilt, might be too fragile. As it stands getting a match is prioritized over having equal distribution of radar ships. Sure the idea itself might seem simple and straight forward, but putting it into practice might not be. Whether WG built themselves in with the way they handle the MM is a subject in and of itself, but from my understanding, it is not doable, or not worth the amount of possible damage it can do if it doesn't work out.

 

12 minutes ago, wilkatis_LV said:

Teamplay leads to victory, not that mong who sits 20km behind everyone else farming his precious damage. Funny that those who will be rewarded for it won't be those who focused on teamwork...

 

Yes, but at the end of the day someone has to do the damage. Don't get me wrong, I don't condone the sit back damage farm. Someone still has to sink the ships though. Spotting alone won't kill an enemy, even though it might cause a DD captain a heart attack.

 

 

[Wildf1re]

3 hours ago, Strefs said:

There are no DIRECT changes to radars planned. We have considered adding consumables to counter it

Oh please, please don't. Talk about over complicating stuff! Now, see we add this cool new gimmick and now we can add one more to counter it. Hmm, did'nt I see somewhere that WG used the argument for keeping stuff simple that they did not want to confuse the players... what the heck!? Next up, a counter for the counter of the counters counter... What's the point then, giving us more buttons to push, just to have some more buttons to push?

[eliastion]

Oh God.

WG actually look into the dumbest possible way to deal with Radar overabundance.

Anti-Radar consumable, so that DDs without it will be even more screwed while DDs with it will have a gimmick with no use beyond screwing with somebody else's resource (Radar cooldown)

[Profilus]

4 hours ago, Strefs said:

Combined arms (WoT+WoWs/WoWp)?
Not possible at the time. What could a tank do to a ship? ;)

Not important what tank can do. Important is what a ship can do to a tank

[_LordLucan]

6 hours ago, Strefs said:

Combined arms (WoT+WoWs/WoWp)?
Not possible at the time. What could a tank do to a ship? ;)

about the same as a T4 ship can do to approaching strike planes..but that didn't stop you did it   

[IanH755]

7 hours ago, Zemeritt said:

 

Yes, just throw even more gimmicks into the fray. Do WG and you`ll soon need to add a 10th consumables key for all the consumables on the next gimmick line you`re planning.

 

Ah but you forget, lots of people use doubloons to pay for premium consumables as they don't know about using credits ,so the more consumables a ship has, the money WG gets - Russian Thinking my friend!!!

[159Hunter]

7 hours ago, eliastion said:

Oh God.

WG actually look into the dumbest possible way to deal with Radar overabundance.

Anti-Radar consumable, so that DDs without it will be even more screwed while DDs with it will have a gimmick with no use beyond screwing with somebody else's resource (Radar cooldown)

Don't worry, not a single DD will get this consumable. They are reserved for the new RU BB line (together with smoke, radar, hydro, DefAA and better heal than Monqueror).

[Sub_Human]

11 hours ago, Strefs said:

DEV QnA WG 15/06/2018

 

Here's my transcription of the latest Dev QnA with WG's balancing department. I left out some questions (some intentionally, some unintentionally) but I did get most of them. Bold is the question normal font is the answer, and finally any little additions from me are in italic. Note that this isn't 1:1 what the devs said, as it is my personal transcription (apologies in advance for any dents I didn't manage to buff out).

Just wanted to say thank you for all the info and great reviews that you give us.

[AkosJaccik]

7 hours ago, eliastion said:

Oh God.

WG actually look into the dumbest possible way to deal with Radar overabundance.

Anti-Radar consumable, so that DDs without it will be even more screwed while DDs with it will have a gimmick with no use beyond screwing with somebody else's resource (Radar cooldown)

"What is the counter to for example, cruisers?"

"WoWs 2020 - Uuh, destroyers that burn them down down by consumable-countering radar what counters smoke what counters BB AP what counters whatever it dearly pleases, but this also helps agains some battleships they are barely able to outrun plus those might have radar, and let's not forget the radar destroyers, though some of them have consumables that counters the radar counter, but oh well, there is active sonar also activated by button pressing and the "pressbuttontowin"-counter to that and..."

"WoWs 2015 - Battleships."

[ImperialAdmiral]

Still, best question about Montana buff.

 

I loled so hard when I heared it.

[El2aZeR]

12 hours ago, Strefs said:

CV Rework open the ability to field BBV and CVE?
Yes.

 

Pretty sure you mean "CAV" not "CVE" as CVEs are Escort Carriers and already in the game (Bogue).

Also quite honestly I fail to see how manual aircraft control can be merged with normal surface combat. It maybe could've worked with the current RTS playstyle but with how the rework looks like now it'd be impossibly micro intensive or make any hybrid ship camp in the back like a normal CV, defeating the purpose of hybrid ships.

[_DeathWing_]

here's the video of it if someone wants...