CV rework + introduction of new class - subs; how much of the game/interclass/ships/mechanics should be rebalanced?

[loppantorkel]

The game has expanded a lot since 2015. New ship lines, mechanics, consumables, etc has been implemented. Now cv-rework is getting near and possibly submarines. Some major changes are needed to have these lines implemented into the game. New consumables will be added, old will be changed, some captain skills will be changed, ships will have new roles added to the old ones. At the same time there are mechanics that aren't working as intended atm, bb AP on dds for example, another pet peeve of mine is the heavy cruiser on light cruiser match up that in theory should favour the heavy, but that's very situational.

Even if I understand that a complete overhaul of the game is out of the question, I'm wondering if it's not the time to take a step back and look over the game and its concepts now that 2 'new' lines potentially can be released in the game? Should the old lines have their old roles?

 

I think the game is good at the moment. I also think that introducing new aspects/ships/concepts to the game has increased the complexity and that the balance and roles of ships could be looked over and maybe improved upon, maybe now when there's a need for some rebalance regardless. Not just looking at stats how various ships perform but more from a conceptual perspective.

For example - At close range a bb or a heavy cruiser should, imo, annihilate a broadsiding cruiser. Often you get plenty of overpens through the citadel. It's a mechanic in the game, but is it intuitive and good? (I know some of you think it is, because it's in the game).

Or radars - should it penetrate islands? Maybe it should because the game is more fun that way, but maybe, with the possible introduction of subs, the game would improve from less radar spotting? DDs role could gravitate more toward counter subs and could perhaps be able to move in island areas more safely than now.

 

The game is getting more complicated, it's getting more inaccessible for newcomers due to this. The majority of the players will never learn from tips or tutorials but play the game from what seems reasonable in their minds. The game shouldn't be dumbed down but the game and the mechanics needs to be intuitive.

 

What's your take?

[wot_chikor]

i think things are going prety well , you shouldnt worry about submarines because there is a great chance they wont even make it at all , for now its all about cv rework and what it means for the overall ballance of the game , and maybe later a radar rework ,

[DFens_666]

14 minutes ago, loppantorkel said:

For example - At close range a bb or a heavy cruiser should, imo, annihilate a broadsiding cruiser. Often you get plenty of overpens through the citadel. It's a mechanic in the game, but is it intuitive and good? (I know some of you think it is, because it's in the game).

 

This is something i agree with, and always thought its pretty stupid. But it doesnt work otherwise with current gamemechanics.

The same question could be asked when broadsiding is a more valid option than angling even at greater distances. Broadsides need to be punished, not rewarded.

 

18 minutes ago, loppantorkel said:

Should the old lines have their old roles?

 

One thing is imo AA ships. Do they need to be changed? What about AA cptn skills?

Imo a greater rework would benefit the game.

 

 

22 minutes ago, loppantorkel said:

The game is getting more complicated, it's getting more inaccessible for newcomers due to this.

 

This. If i look back 2 years when i started the game, there was like half the content we have now. It was much easier to learn all different values and stuff. Now if you have to start from scratch? Dont even know where to start...

[Capra76]

Without knowing how the CV rework is going to turn out and subs likely to be restricted to scenarios for the forseeable future, how can you form an opinion?

[SV_Kompresor]

1 minute ago, DFens_666 said:

This. If i look back 2 years when i started the game, there was like half the content we have now. It was much easier to learn all different values and stuff. Now if you have to start from scratch? Dont even know where to start...

I think they just need to make the port UI less messy (not like that's gonna happen any time soon considering their past dealings with the UI). By itself the port is actually really simple to understand, but it does throw a lot of information at the player at once which can confuse them. Better grouping of different informations (like missions and news) would most likely make it a lot easier for players.

[loppantorkel]

20 minutes ago, Capra76 said:

Without knowing how the CV rework is going to turn out and subs likely to be restricted to scenarios for the forseeable future, how can you form an opinion?

You can form an opinion based on the current state of the game and its mechanics. If you're of the opinion that the game and the mechanics are good now and that only minor changes are needed, go with that option. I gave a few examples that bugs me, but the game is still good imo.

 

My concern is what I brought up in the OP, the growing complexity and mechanics that seem to have gone less intuitive over the years. Adding new things, especially larger aspects/mechanics, may add to the current issues even if the additions are good by themselves. WG will rebalance the captain skill tree if the cv-rework makes it into the game. Should they look at IFHE and RL too? Does IFHE add much to the game other than complexity and increased difficulty to balance the ships?

 

There have been so many things added to the game and plenty of patchwork to balance things out. Maybe the game would benefit from having some things cut off and rebalanced, if other larger changes make it through?

[Azalgor]

CV rework is basically comes down to this:

 Now a CV crossfires a DD or any ship with no DAA and kills it some 90% of the time.

 We will have a CV with infine plane reserve that will circle around a ship and that will use rockets, bombs, torps and just be like: first i brake a leg, then arm, then the second leg and arm...

I wonder how instand deletion is better than slow crippling death, concidering the alied CV will have little do do with it anyway?

 

And still an open question: what compensation there will be for those premium CV's some people will be asking a refund of? Its not a minor smoke change that happened to Kutuzov and Belfast, this is a major 180 degree revamp and simple dubloons wont be suficient.

[Capra76]

36 minutes ago, loppantorkel said:

You can form an opinion based on the current state of the game and its mechanics. If you're of the opinion that the game and the mechanics are good now and that only minor changes are needed, go with that option. I gave a few examples that bugs me, but the game is still good imo.

Okay, but the poll is pretty meaningless, since the CV rework and subs (if they come) could require anything from a few minor changes to a total re-work of the game.

 

 

39 minutes ago, loppantorkel said:

My concern is what I brought up in the OP, the growing complexity and mechanics that seem to have gone less intuitive over the years. Adding new things, especially larger aspects/mechanics, may add to the current issues even if the additions are good by themselves. WG will rebalance the captain skill tree if the cv-rework makes it into the game. Should they look at IFHE and RL too? Does IFHE add much to the game other than complexity and increased difficulty to balance the ships?

 

There have been so many things added to the game and plenty of patchwork to balance things out. Maybe the game would benefit from having some things cut off and rebalanced, if other larger changes make it through?

 

My feeling is that the game would benefit from a major re-think about what it is, what the various classes do and how they interact with each other, but that's not about new mechanics or complexity but is instead down to various balancing decisions made by WG over the years and some problems with fairly basic game mechanics that have been in the game since day zero.

 

I mean (ignoring CV for now) the game was originally supposed to be rock<paper<scissors with an ideal battle mix of 3-6-3 (cruisers being most numerous), but WG made the BB>CA counter far stronger than CA>DD or DD>BB, which resulted in 5-2-5 games and the infamous torpedo soup.

 

The big mistake IMO was that instead of looking at why there were so few cruisers in the game WG tried to force players out of DD by nerfing them thus resulting in even more players moving into BB, then WG tried to make CA more relevant by giving them more gimmicks (radar most obviously), which kind of worked but resulted in a campy high tier meta.

 

So what do we have now?  A rock paper scissiors game where rock beats paper and scissors and is only balanced by being not all that enjoyable to play?  A free for all where all classes are equal but some are more equal than others?

 

TLDR: the game feels stale and unbalanced.

[loppantorkel]

16 minutes ago, Capra76 said:

Okay, but the poll is pretty meaningless, since the CV rework and subs (if they come) could require anything from a few minor changes to a total re-work of the game.

 

My feeling is that the game would benefit from a major re-think about what it is, what the various classes do and how they interact with each other, but that's not about new mechanics or complexity but is instead down to various balancing decisions made by WG over the years and some problems with fairly basic game mechanics that have been in the game since day zero.

 

I mean (ignoring CV for now) the game was originally supposed to be rock<paper<scissors with an ideal battle mix of 3-6-3 (cruisers being most numerous), but WG made the BB>CA counter far stronger than CA>DD or DD>BB, which resulted in 5-2-5 games and the infamous torpedo soup.

 

The big mistake IMO was that instead of looking at why there were so few cruisers in the game WG tried to force players out of DD by nerfing them thus resulting in even more players moving into BB, then WG tried to make CA more relevant by giving them more gimmicks (radar most obviously), which kind of worked but resulted in a campy high tier meta.

 

So what do we have now?  A rock paper scissiors game where rock beats paper and scissors and is only balanced by being not all that enjoyable to play?  A free for all where all classes are equal but some are more equal than others?

 

TLDR: the game feels stale and unbalanced.

Well, this is part of why I made the poll and thread. I have noted some issues and examples why there might be cause for a larger interclass overhaul, not all. You already seem to feel the game is due for one and why not redraw the rock-paper-scissors aspect when potentially 2 new classes are being balanced into the game?

 

I'm not sure on what level this should be done, but I hope WG takes a step back to look over the current meta and interclass balance, as well as captain skills and consumables.

[El2aZeR]

Subs would most definitely necessitate a complete overhaul as they push additional roles on already overloaded classes while the most popular and easy to play class still has no other role than damage farming and soaking. Imagine if you had to do ASW in addition to scouting, fighting for caps, fighting enemy DDs, fighting pushing ships while evading radar cruisers and so forth and so on. All the while BBs are screaming "OMG SUB THERE LOOK MINIMAP GO KILL HIM NOOB DD!!1111".

Quite frankly it'd make DD play impossible.

[22cm]

I was thinking this game will slowly die in 1-2 years. Subs may add 1-2 more years.

CV ? Not that important.

[22cm]

4 hours ago, Azalgor said:

CV rework is basically comes down to this:

 Now a CV crossfires a DD or any ship with no DAA and kills it some 90% of the time.

 We will have a CV with infine plane reserve that will circle around a ship and that will use rockets, bombs, torps and just be like: first i brake a leg, then arm, then the second leg and arm...

I wonder how instand deletion is better than slow crippling death, concidering the alied CV will have little do do with it anyway?

 

And still an open question: what compensation there will be for those premium CV's some people will be asking a refund of? Its not a minor smoke change that happened to Kutuzov and Belfast, this is a major 180 degree revamp and simple dubloons wont be suficient.

Chill out.

The CV "rework" is planned to be a completely different type of nerf, because all the classic nerfs so far were not good enough. Not a buff at all. So the infinite planes reserves will be the first thing to dissapear in the early stages of testing.

 

Same. Price in dubloons.

[ghostbuster_]

6 hours ago, 22cm said:

Chill out.

The CV "rework" is planned to be a completely different type of nerf, because all the classic nerfs so far were not good enough. Not a buff at all. So the infinite planes reserves will be the first thing to dissapear in the early stages of testing.

 

Same. Price in dubloons.

Its not gonna dissapear. You are gonna get longer reload time for your planes after losing them. So you are gonna have infinite reserve but you are gonna wait longer if you lose many planes.

[Juanx]

12 hours ago, loppantorkel said:

The game is getting more complicated, it's getting more inaccessible for newcomers due to this.

 

Nope, if anything its getting even simpler by the patch, with the new "warnings system".

 

Game started off being a bit more complicated than it is now...

 

And just to point out, subs are an event thing. And to your complication point, there is none? There are few mechanics that are shared amongst most / all classes. The fact that WG has been scrapping the bottom of the barrel for more than a year now does make it harder to find decent players, but that will not change by oversimplifying what is already simple.

[El2aZeR]

52 minutes ago, ghostbuster_ said:

Its not gonna dissapear. You are gonna get longer reload time for your planes after losing them. So you are gonna have infinite reserve but you are gonna wait longer if you lose many planes.

 

Kind of a moot point considering you can send your squad back and launch a new one at any time, no?

I can already imagine some very cheesy scenarios such as

- approach AA cruiser

- cruiser uses DFAA

- send squad back, launch a new one

- new squad arrives within a minute, long after DFAA has run out

 

The new shown CV mechanics are ironically all to the detriment of surface ships. It's gonna be interesting to see how WG will attempt to balance them, if only to watch it all burn down in the end.

[ForlornSailor]

2 minutes ago, El2aZeR said:

I can already imagine some very cheesy scenarios such as

- approach AA cruiser

- cruiser uses DFAA

- send squad back, launch a new one

- new squad arrives within a minute, long after DFAA has run out

 

Good point. In any way, I think the whole AA-System needs a rework aswell. It needed one since forever, even more then CVs needed a rework (if they needed one at all). And WG better think about this NOW. Its going to be way too late, once the rework is out on the live server and crap hits the fan.

 

Im not sure how ships with super-AA vs ships with hardly any AA are justified after the rework anymore. atm it looks like this: Ships with super-AA (say Minotaur, Worcester but also Texas and stuff like that) create some kind of no-fly-zone. But since the CVs have loads of squads and loads of jobs to do, you will make use of your AA at some point. Ofc depends on the skill of the enemy CV-Player - and it should be! If he manages to avoid your AA-bubble, then thats fine. The next level is, beeing able to strike these ships, which only really good players can do. But striking a Texas f.e. that is AA-build comes at a hefty price for a low-tier-CV. Now lets take a look at the reworked CV. You will not have a hard time staying away from stron AA-ships. Well, one needs to have an IQ bigger then a slice of bread, and some will fail that, ofc. But these players are besides the point, they feed their planes atm aswell and are useless. Point is: You control one squad, you pick your target accordingly and ofc its going to be a ship with low AA. You wont be caught by accident in AA-bubbles, cuz simply you will never be busy somewhere else. So, if AA-strenghts of ships stay like they currently are, its simply a "dont touch me" vs "im free to farm" mechanic. I dont think there is much more of an option then to level the playingfield and give every ship an AA-setup, that is sufficiend for selfdefence. And if some ships turn out to be untouchable, this needs to go aswell.

 

Stays the thing about the Def-AA-Consumble. I wonder if it would be too powerful to turn it into some sort of on/off-mechanism. Say you have XXX sec of Def AA for the entire round. You can turn it on at any time, you can turn if off at any time. No cooldown, no charges in the traditional sense. Just a timer that runs down, once its active.

[El2aZeR]

1 hour ago, ForlornSailor said:

I dont think there is much more of an option then to level the playingfield and give every ship an AA-setup, that is sufficiend for selfdefence. And if some ships turn out to be untouchable, this needs to go aswell.

 

Meh, the more likely option is that they're gonna go the GZ route. Just make everyone a target so that BB Kevin can finally play CVs.

Remember that the primary goal as stated by WG time and time again is to make CVs more popular. It's pretty much the only consistent thing that they've so far said about why they're reworking CVs. You don't make something more popular among the playerbase that WG caters to by making it balanced as we've seen time and time again.

And if anyone thinks that a community test is going to fix things, just a friendly reminder that GZ was "community balanced" as well. Did they listen to the experienced players telling them "Oh yeah, this is bad, don't do that"? Nah, they listened to the average  who couldn't stop screaming "OMG IT'S NOT POWERFUL/EASY ENOUGH". Look where that led us to.

Quite frankly neither WG nor the average player is interested in balancing the CV rework the right way.

 

On the bright side it does look like reworked CVs will be especially capable of punishing camping, far more so than current CVs do. That's gonna put WG in a bind. Listen to the average BBaby inevitably whining about it or risk murdering CVs once again and fail the goal of the rework?

I'll be sure to prepare enough popcorn for such a spectacle.

[loppantorkel]

5 hours ago, Juanx said:

Nope, if anything its getting even simpler by the patch, with the new "warnings system".

 

Game started off being a bit more complicated than it is now...

 

And just to point out, subs are an event thing. And to your complication point, there is none? There are few mechanics that are shared amongst most / all classes. The fact that WG has been scrapping the bottom of the barrel for more than a year now does make it harder to find decent players, but that will not change by oversimplifying what is already simple.

Really..? and you base this off your own experience in the game? How much have you played it over the past year?

[El2aZeR]

40 minutes ago, loppantorkel said:

Really..?

 

Honestly you can argue both sides as they're both true.

The game is becoming simpler but also more diverse, meaning game mechanics for veterans get simplified while newcomers are being crushed under the weight of having to learn what each individual line can do (without guidance from the developer) or potentially face the consequences in the field.

 

Or in other words the skill floor & ceiling are being lowered while the amount of crucial self-taught information has vastly increased.

[Panocek]

6 hours ago, ForlornSailor said:

Stays the thing about the Def-AA-Consumble. I wonder if it would be too powerful to turn it into some sort of on/off-mechanism. Say you have XXX sec of Def AA for the entire round. You can turn it on at any time, you can turn if off at any time. No cooldown, no charges in the traditional sense. Just a timer that runs down, once its active.

I wonder if DFAA could be more of "passive" consumable - tack "overheat" mechanic to AA mounts, ships equipped with DFAA have lets say, +50% longer AA fire till overheat. Overheat could be a nice way of bringing BB AA down "for balancing reasons".

 

When I think of it, Hydro could work similarly - when equipped, it gives passive torpedo/ship detection, but its range degrades the faster ship is going. So to enjoy German 6km lolsonar, you have to be stationary or crawling at 1/4. But then, 6km lolsonar might be tad too much anyway.

[Ouzo11]

1 hour ago, El2aZeR said:

while newcomers are being crushed under the weight of having to learn what each individual line can do

These faks should use google a little bit more often for anything other than latest viral vids on youtube and pornhub because although this information is not provided by wg is easily available with a simple search query.

[loppantorkel]

2 hours ago, El2aZeR said:

 

Honestly you can argue both sides as they're both true.

The game is becoming simpler but also more diverse, meaning game mechanics for veterans get simplified while newcomers are being crushed under the weight of having to learn what each individual line can do (without guidance from the developer) or potentially face the consequences in the field.

 

Or in other words the skill floor & ceiling are being lowered while the amount of crucial self-taught information has vastly increased.

I fully understand the argument of simplification and 'dumbing down' that people bring up, but you can't honestly tell me that the game was more complicated at the start than it is now. That veterans sees some mechanics being simplified or streamlined does not outweigh the huge number of mechanics, ships, skills that have been added from the start and the knowledge that is required to understand the game and play well.

 

WG is trying to lessen the gap between skill floor & ceiling for very good reasons. In some instances it could be interpreted as dumbing the game down. Still it's for a good cause that I hope players understand...

[Capra76]

8 minutes ago, loppantorkel said:

huge number of mechanics, ships, skills that have been added

 

What new mechanics have been added?

 

Captain skill rework was Feb 2016 so that's not exactly new either.

[loppantorkel]

2 minutes ago, Capra76 said:

 

What new mechanics have been added?

Since the start of the game? I'm sorry, I'm too lazy to list them, but there are plenty of patch notes to go through.

[invicta2012]

1 hour ago, Ouzo11 said:

These faks should use google a little bit more often for anything other than latest viral vids on youtube and pornhub because although this information is not provided by wg is easily available with a simple search query.

Rubbish. WG 's videos are considerably more up to date (and much better written) than most community contributors and while it's great that they did them, they are long, long overdue. Things like spotting mechanics and shell penetration are not simple or clear and they need proper explanation which the community can't give.  There's also stuff which is just left out... when I started playing things like activating secondaries and AA weren't explained at all - I had to ask in game the first time I saw a CV - and I'm sure there are a lot of people in the same boat.

 

As for complexity - I still get those moments when I get uptiered into matches with Tier IX and X ships. Because I don't play those Tiers much I have no idea what ships do what, and I am really supposed to know the ins and out of fifteen lines of ships, which ones have radar, which hydro, what the torp range on a Neptune is, etc? Who knows. We'll work it out as we go.

 

With regards to CVs and defensive AA - one of the things I find most annoying about CV play is when they get to buzz around a ship, changing their lines, flying from side to side with no regard to defensive AA. This, I think, is one of the most annoying things a CV can do - it's basically showboating - and is one of the things which generates most hostility to the class. Destroyers don't get to do this - why should planes? As I think that rebalancing ship AA is the key to the CV reboot and whether it works, I would float the idea of a Target Lock / stacking buff for AA damage rather than the flat values we have now - AA increases over time based on the defending player's aim and the time the attacking planes are within the AA range of a ship.  It needs to be made so that even low AA value ships have a chance of knocking planes out of the sky if the CV player takes too long to focus their attack, and that high AA value ships don't become instant no fly zones, even if the ship player isn't paying any more attention than hitting Defensive AA. A CV player really should be able to damage a Cleveland without getting shredded if the ship player is asleep or otherwise occupied.