CV Rework 2019 in graphs and where we are right now

[mcboernester]

Hello all,

 

So after i recorded player numbers week by week over the last Year and payed close attention to the whole CV Rework ( I was testing since round 1 in October 2018) i tried to sum up some results in Graphs, explain certain jumps in player numbers and also added personal statements to what has been changed so far and its efficiency, as well as the game development from a top view perspective. 

 

This is a translation of my text in the german forum so if you find any gramatical mistakes -> please be gentle 

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Time of data recording: 06.10.18 - 28.12.19

Source: Marplesyrup

Server: EU 

 

There were 3 periods  where Marple unfortunately did not provide data. I first thought about adding an average value here, but preferred the option of leaving so i won't falsify anything. 

 

Games per Class

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Games per class in percentage

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Total number of games played:

 

 

Rank Season 14; all players

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Rank Season 14, only players who reached rank 1

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My personal thoughts: 

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- CV game numbers:  For lowtier, the number of players has been significantly higher than in RTS for some time while for hightier the number of players has been around the same value as 2018. Im made some kinda roadmap where you can compare certain events with the patchnotes.

 

Unsurprisingly, nerfs reduce the number of games while buffs increase them. Patch 0.8.7 helped a lot for lowtier with the changes in squad sizes while aside from SKK buffs nothing happened in the hightier at the same time. If you have been playing in Tier 4-7 range over the last few months I think you can confirm that there are "CVs everywhere".

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Old criticisms and what has become of them:

 

Skillgap -> in my opinion, not much has changed. You only have one squad, but you can roam almost freely because the counterplay is missing. Even against +2 tier ships you always get at least one drop through which was not the case in the RTS. However, the lower third of the player base has much worse stats than in RTS which is most likely mainly due to the missing autodrop. 

 

Influence -> Nothing has changed for me and other Unicums. A lot of damage, high kill ratio and a lot of spotting.  Those are for example my last 3 weeks played. One could argue that I can get the same values with other ships too, but to be honest I can't bring these constant values to the table with non CVs outside of a 3 man division while as a carrier I don't care too much if I play solo because it feels like I have everything under control anway.  

Spoiler

 

 

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Apart from that I gladly accept donations for my prophetic statements . Much of what I once wrote when I created the original Fred in February 2019 is still an Issue. What has changed is the US DBs -> DD Interaction (fortunately) and the silver / premium story because I see the SKK on t8 currently on par with the Enterprise (also buffed in 0.8.7).

 

I think it's really weird how many people have already predicted this last year / beginning of this year and it still happened. This is also the case with the flooding part, for Graf Zeppelin and Midway the Torps were buffed again afterwards, but only months later. You just can't balance a game using an Excel spreadsheet, there's more to it. 

 

Spoiler

 

On 2/26/2019 at 12:52 AM, mcboernester said:

Other remarks / my 2 cents

 

@Wargaming please remember to adjust the flooding chances with 0.8.1 for CVs

 

- By the 3 hotfixes, CVs have been reduced in their effectiveness by a good deal. A huge problem which arises from this is once again the skillgap which is now back to RTS levels. It's not an exaggeration, I have had several rounds where I had 3 times the XP of the opponent CV or even 200 XP more than he had in a win. Especially the ability to fight DDs was reduced by the combination of  20% less spotting range and longer aiming times on Rocket Fighters for non Unicums (I prefer to fight DDs with Divebombers, most people won't be able to do that and that's not derogatory)   

- The 8 CVs are extremely imbalanced among each other. There are many examples of this, the Premiums are currently much stronger than the silver ships, stats are on wows numbers for everyone

- The CV numbers are constantly decreasing again, not sure if I mentioned it earlier. The main reason for this is - as before - the massive skill gap. It is simply too hard for many people to be effective in any way and I can understand it very well as I myself also had to struggle 

- The carriers have an identity problem. According to the statements of the streams they are supposed to be mainly spotters, but this role is becoming more and more restricted. Therefore I can't see where the journey is going at the moment 

- The lack of control over the CV itself continues to bother me a lot, the autopilot does confusing things and I can't even slow down my speed without giving up my planes

- A problem which I have noticed several times now -> if an opponent comes too close to you (approx. 6km) you can never aim properly. Until the planes are "sharp" from the start I am already past the enemy or just in his AA aura. Here one must see how it develops, also falls under "lack of man stop effect". 

- The games have already become noticeably more passive with 0.8.0, and this has not changed again so far. Everybody is afraid of being mocked and I can blame them for it. But a CV can't do anything against a bunch of 10 players except mocking, like a pat situation 

 

  

 

 

 

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General game development: 

 

This will certainly disappoint some Doomsayers but the game itself is still pretty healthy. There are no surprising swings in either direction, even the spike at Christmas is normal. The CV Rework did not make the majority of the players quit. For every one who quits, there is always a new one. This may hurt the general gameplay feeling (I find random games to be a pain because the players are so bad), but for wargaming nothing really changed.

[El2aZeR]

Sole reason why low tiers are more popular is because it is artificially kept alive via seal clubbing. For the longest time low tier CVs were actually less popular than during RTS before they buffed Hosho and Langley to be seal clubbing machines. This can easily be seen by their player numbers. Nobody is playing Hermes in comparison. "New" CV players do not exist.

 

As for population, there are quite a few reports of a pretty high number of players leaving due to the CV rework. Several clans have apparently bled pretty hard. That the overall population hasn't changed thus likely just means that the rework has pulled as many players in as it has made leave.

This in itself makes it a failure on that front however as it turned out to be a 0 sum investment. A new major rework of a class should make the popularity of the game rise, not stagnate.

[GarrusBrutus]

1 hour ago, mcboernester said:

The CV Rework did not make the majority of the players quit. For every one who quits, there is always a new one. This may hurt the general gameplay feeling (I find random games to be a pain because the players are so bad), but for wargaming nothing really changed.

And there you have it. What was reworked isnt carriers per se, but more a change of direction of the game itself towards a more quick-money-grabbing-direction. So all those who quit due to this, have been replaced by inexperienced wallet warriors with deep red stats. Hooray for wargaming! \o/

[Capra76]

52 minutes ago, El2aZeR said:

As for population, there are quite a few reports of a pretty high number of players leaving due to the CV rework. Several clans have apparently bled pretty hard. That the overall population hasn't changed thus likely just means that the rework has pulled as many players in as it has made leave.

This in itself makes it a failure on that front however as it turned out to be a 0 sum investment. A new major rework of a class should make the popularity of the game rise, not stagnate.

 

Surely it's a net negative, if experienced invested players are walking and you're replacing them with noobs who might hang around for a month or so, how is that stable?

[Garfield4]

2019:  farewell to PC game RTS carriers

2020:  farewell to PC game for surface ships

 

The signs are on the wall:  notice that submarines are a sticky  on this page in CAPITALS.

 

From what I have seen from the famous Youtubers/streamers about submarines, it will be the next step to  transform this game about ships into  a smartphone/tablet level of gaming, where surface ships will be ""just another target".

 

If and when they really introduce submarines into random/co-op battles,  experienced/veteran players  will  abandon this game  in droves, unless they are specifically  interested in playing  submarines in third person perspective i.e. without looking through a periscope, or with a surface speed of approx. zero knots..

[22cm]

7 hours ago, mcboernester said:

 

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The CV Rework did not make the majority of the players quit. For every one who quits, there is always a new one.

You must be playing on a different server.

The CV Rework did not make the majority of players quit, only a lot of them. 

What it did though, was to make many of the players cut down or stop spending money on the game. 

This, added to the players that left, made WoWs income sink this year. 

I am very interested to see their income difference between 2018 and 2019.

The number of new players is still low, even with all the Steam promotion. 

[22cm]

7 hours ago, El2aZeR said:

That the overall population hasn't changed thus likely just means that the rework has pulled as many players in as it has made leave.

It is not the rework that had pulled them, it is mostly to the Steam promotion. 

[El2aZeR]

24 minutes ago, 22cm said:

It is not the rework that had pulled them, it is mostly to the Steam promotion. 

 

That too is ofc possible.

[Hugh_Ruka]

So basically the resource investment did not make things better, so a net loss ...It was a change in gameplay direction for one class, but in the end it is no more popular than before. One of the main factors is the MM restriction (mirror MM) and the huge impact CVs have on the game that requires the MM restriction to remain in effect.

[mcboernester]

3 hours ago, Hugh_Ruka said:

So basically the resource investment did not make things better, so a net loss ...It was a change in gameplay direction for one class, but in the end it is no more popular than before. One of the main factors is the MM restriction (mirror MM) and the huge impact CVs have on the game that requires the MM restriction to remain in effect.

Well to be fair I cannot tell how much profit WG made out of the Rework till this point. Not only did the Graf Zeppelin become available again (trust me german guys love buying german ships...) but you also had ark royal pop up, though her population is really low in comparison, and the graf zeppelin black. As im unaware how much time and workers wg spends on those kinda stuff it's hard to tell but i guess they still made a profit out of it.

 

Regarding the MM part -> yes, i would hate to play double cv all the time in tier 10. That being said i think it's actually something with some more potential in terms of a CA / CL restriction. Multiple Smolensks have the same kind of cancer value for me, but that's just a sidenode.  

[BananaMo]

The impact of a good cv player vs a bad/average cv player for a game is still Way bigger then in any other class. 

 

and this while not risking anything. Who cares about loss of planes anyway?

 

 

[T3ddyBear]

The major issue is still the skill gap, CV's captained by a competent skipper can do a lot of damage, CV's captained by an excellent skipper dominate, but, for every great CV captain there are 10 bloody awful ones. I am not a great CV player but when I am doing 3-4 times the amount of damage in a game compared to my counterpart on the enemy team then there is a problem.

 

I'll keep saying it but there is no "teaching" done by WG, players have to learn for themselves. I was in a recent tier5 game with some friends and the CV on our team had no clue about arming distance for his torps, I checked his stats and he was relatively new, only 300 odd games, so rather than scream at them in chat I pm'd him and asked them if they knew. They replied they had no clue what I was talking about so I offered them a quick training room session to show them, took 5 mins but they then understood the basics. 

 

This goes for every class, WG do not balance to the unicums, they balance to the average, when you get 10 poor players for every great player then there will always be an imbalance at the top. The great CV players tell us that flak is avoidable, and it is, but for the majority of the players it isn't, they just lose whole squadrons when attacking. In essence, the great captains will always find a way to max their output, whilst the vast majority of the players just want to fire big guns at ships and fly around dropping torps on destroyers.

 

The recent 1vs1 ranked sprint is a classic example of just how poor the player base is on average, watch Flammu's vids or any of the streamers, the enemies appear to be sleep walking in to the battles, DD's smoking up in front of Lo Yang's with hydro running, cruisers yolo'ing around corners when they KNOW a DD is sat there waiting for them, BB's turning broadside to other BB's just to get their rear turret firing. These are the players that WG balances the game around, not the top 1%. The vast majority of players don't visit the forums, are not interested in watching youtube vids to get better, they just want to fire big guns. The player base is getting worse, maybe a lot of the great players have left, but to blame this all on CV's is wrong, WG is going after the money, and the players are coughing up. the PR fiasco is a great example, it won't stop the money income one iota and we are delusional if we think it will.

 

TB.

[Beastofwar]

I am happy to see the game is healthy. And amused to see how few high tier CV there really are making all the high tier CV whining sort of rediculous. It does make clear however why players don't want to go with an adequate AA build, so they would not be troubled by CV all that much. A build that works only 1 in 10 matches is not effective 9 out of 10 matches afterall.

 

The low tier CV menace and those low tier ships having little to no AA.....well.....players that get their "Unicum" stats using those CV's to sealclub almost defenceless players are obviously more concerned with how their stats look then playing the game. And the worth of those stats ?

 

But then again it is easy enough to see if someone has active low tier CV.....tells everything you need to know.

[ForlornSailor]

10 minutes ago, T3ddyBear said:

I'll keep saying it but there is no "teaching" done by WG, players have to learn for themselves. I was in a recent tier5 game with some friends and the CV on our team had no clue about arming distance for his torps

 

Its not like people care to learn. Thats something visible across all classes but the impact on the new CVs is just that much worse. During RTS times, the stubborn could just auto attack and atleast got some damage done - not that existance of auto attacks was a good thing per se, since it was part of the skill gap aswell.

 

13 minutes ago, T3ddyBear said:

The recent 1vs1 ranked sprint is a classic example of just how poor the player base is on average, watch Flammu's vids or any of the streamers, the enemies appear to be sleep walking in to the battles

 

I noticed that too. Its also fun to look through the stats of this ranked season - you literally find players with hundreds of games and below 1% winrate. Couldnt make this s*** up.

 

14 minutes ago, BananaMo said:

and this while not risking anything. Who cares about loss of planes anyway?

 

And after years of thinking about CVs thats one of the core problems with the class. In a PvP environment, you just cant have a class, that outscores every other in terms of survivability and kill-death-ratio that hard. And not only did that not change with the rework - it wasnt addressed in any way. So I can only agree with the conclusion in the OP: skillgap didnt change, influence didnt change, problems were not addressed.

[Captain_Newman]

48 minutes ago, T3ddyBear said:

I'll keep saying it but there is no "teaching" done by WG, players have to learn for themselves.

 

While I agree that WG could do more to teach players, this would only help those that are willing to learn (and they tend to find ways to learn despite WG's lack of effort in this regard).

 

Example? How about all the Asashio players out there with thousands of battles on their account, and hundreds in Asashio, that still try to torp me when I'm in my DD, all the while not using the great guns the ship has, much to my amusement. Players of this caliber won't be helped by any tutorial, as they're likely to skip it - they think they already know everything, and have an explanation for their crappy stats with the noob-team-no-support meme.

 

However, WG should still make more of an effort to teach new players, absolutely. Won't help with 42%-ers that have thousands of battles, but it might help with 42%-ers that have like 200-ish.

[El2aZeR]

28 minutes ago, Beastofwar said:

And amused to see how few high tier CV there really are making all the high tier CV whining sort of rediculous.

 

The percentage of CV matches has drastically increased as CV players are condensed into fewer tiers.

Actual reason why people do not want to specialize into AA is simply because specializing into AA has little to no effect regardless of whether the enemy CV is good or not. This is because most AA skills and upgrades increase the amount of or damage done by flak, however a terrible CV player will die to flak regardless of how many you spawn or how much damage they do while good CV players will simply avoid it all. Likewise the DPS increases are negligible as they do not prevent any attack runs, a player that will get two full attack runs on you without AA specialization will still get two full attack runs on you with AA specialization.

 

So regardless of whether a player chooses to specialize into AA, bad CV players will die to flak while good CV players won't care. As such AA skills and upgrades are all completely useless.

[Captain_Newman]

12 minutes ago, El2aZeR said:

So regardless of whether a player chooses to specialize into AA, bad CV players will die to flak while good CV players won't care. As such AA skills and upgrades are all completely useless.

 

Especially when you can just slingshot past the flak wall which removes the need to even dodge.. yea, AA is a joke atm.

[blackdagger_gk]

Low tier CV player number is increasing yes, because playing T4 CVs is really easy.

 

I started to play Hosho and Langley after the CV rework, but those matches were real pain for me because they were so boring. When I got Ranger and Ryujo I immediately sold those two T4s.

 

I got Kaga from a giveaway on twitch. I wanna try it and played a few matches. Living the experience of a scene that a JB, Worcester, DM or some ships like those shredding my planes was great! At high tiers AA is noticeable and in these matches skill of the CV player is more important. I will continue to play it after I get more experience on T6 CVs.

1 saat önce, BananaMo dedi:

The impact of a good cv player vs a bad/average cv player for a game is still Way bigger then in any other class. 

 

and this while not risking anything. Who cares about loss of planes anyway?

 

 

 

1 saat önce, T3ddyBear dedi:

The major issue is still the skill gap, CV's captained by a competent skipper can do a lot of damage, CV's captained by an excellent skipper dominate, but, for every great CV captain there are 10 bloody awful ones.

I completely agree with these. If my team's CV is potato, it will be very hard to win that match. Good CV players can make great difference in the match.

[Beastofwar]

50 minutes ago, El2aZeR said:

 As such AA skills and upgrades are all completely useless.

 

You keep saying that....as a CV ""unicum" concerned wth only your own stats you might never profit in any way from talking the player base out of a weapon that might make you less effective what ?

 

Well i will then keep repeating that AA does work. I did not see you playing last T10 ranked where that would have been undeniably obvious. Not at all a coincident is that T10 ships pack a lot more AA to begin with ofcourse, and in ranked you do not face lower tiers ships with less AA. No artificial stat boosting or "facts" claiming there, facing lesser tiers there because everone is max tier and max stock AA.

 

And even then flying into stock AA or skilled/moduled into AA was VERY VERY well noticable as you fight exactly  the same ships over and over again. Then you can't deny the significant difference.

[El2aZeR]

9 minutes ago, Beastofwar said:

You keep saying that....as a CV ""unicum" concerned wth only your own stats you might never profit in any way from talking the player base out of a weapon that might make you less effective what ?

 

Why I would be solely concerned with stats is beyond me but okay.

And no, I wouldn't actually profit because the reality is simple: Whether you have an AA build or not doesn't matter to me as the difference is negligible.

 

9 minutes ago, Beastofwar said:

I did not see you playing last T10 ranked where that would have been undeniably obvious.

 

If you had done a bit more research you would've seen that I actually do not play ranked in general anymore since, what, 2017?

And frankly pure T10 matches happen extremely often in randoms nowadays. Doesn't matter at all as T10 AA is simply inadequate to deal with T10 CVs. It is even inadequate in dealing with T8 CVs.

[HassenderZerhacker]

I came across this gentleman today, of course he was playing CV.

His record says everything about CV players we must know.

 

 

[Beastofwar]

9 minutes ago, HassenderZerhacker said:

I came across this gentleman today, of course he was playing CV.

His record says everything about CV players we must know.

 

 

 

There are DD specific ""unicums" too ( or any other specific class only ) so what does this say ?

 

Must you be equally proficient at all classes for some reason ? It does help to fight those other classes, but this says nothing about CV perceived OPness really.

 

Maybe it is the other way around.....those that never play CV do not understand it, and do not know what to do against them untill they are lit up in their gun range. Don't mewl you cannot do anything....you can, but you only know that piloting CV with some level of proficiency yourself.

[HassenderZerhacker]

15 minutes ago, Beastofwar said:

 

There are DD specific ""unicums" too ( or any other specific class only ) so what does this say ?

 

Must you be equally proficient at all classes for some reason ? It does help to fight those other classes, but this says nothing about CV perceived OPness really.

are there really DD unicums that are bad, not even average, with ALL other ship types?

 

my point being WG made the CV completely OP, even players that are bad at WoWS can excel in CV

 

recently I compared CV players with arty players in WoT, got criticized for it - I think the comparison is valid.

[Mad_Dog_Dante]

11 minutes ago, Beastofwar said:

 

There are DD specific ""unicums" too ( or any other specific class only ) so what does this say ?

 

Must you be equally proficient at all classes for some reason ? It does help to fight those other classes, but this says nothing about CV perceived OPness really.

 

Maybe it is the other way around.....those that never play CV do not understand it, and do not know what to do against them untill they are lit up in their gun range. Don't mewl you cannot do anything....you can, but you only know that piloting CV with some level of proficiency yourself.

Maybe it's nothing like you say. I'm an all round player and have plenty of CV experience to know that CV's are designed to be idiot proof as shown clearly by example in the post you are responding to. There is nothing you can 'do' against a CV focusing you other then wiggle around and hitting a key to activate a silly AA sector meanwhile cussing out WG designers for coming up with this nonsense while ruining all AA related skills and modules. Whoever is going to spec 11 points in AA captain skills only to have the CV break through and damage you despite that investment? It's stupid designed for stupid.

[El2aZeR]

47 minutes ago, Beastofwar said:

you can, but you only know that piloting CV with some level of proficiency yourself.

 

That's a rather ironic statement given that you have repeatedly ignored or contradicted CV players far more skilled than you.