Hmm..... A ..."Flamu" video out. On the latest Q&A.

[SirTogII]

21 hours ago, ghostbuster_ said:

When a person is not able to understand what the video is actually about  

 "read the title its focus is flamu "

 

Still didnt answer the question:

what did he call you? or did he take you as a subject to his "animal research"? 

I can guess but lets hear it from you

How old are you? 12? If I didn’t enjoy Flamu I’d hardly watch his streams or praise him on his videos. As mentioned it was fairly obvious this section off his stream was to satisfy a specific part of his following. The fact that it was a stream recording rather than his normal well produced and factually sound videos is evident. 

[ghostbuster_]

13 minutes ago, SirTogII said:

How old are you? 12? If I didn’t enjoy Flamu I’d hardly watch his streams or praise him on his videos. As mentioned it was fairly obvious this section off his stream was to satisfy a specific part of his following. The fact that it was a stream recording rather than his normal well produced and factually sound videos is evident. 

old enough.

you still dont get it, do you? hilarious.  target customer of WG right here...

you are losing the focus point here. again, it doesnt matter what flamu thinks, what he says and how he says. the point, which is important and what you have to pay attention to, is the Q&A, in particular WGs answers. flamus only role is letting us know about the Q&A. i, personally wouldnt have heard about it if i didnt see the video in this topic. 

 

btw, you called me a flamu fan and yet its you who enjoys Flamu, watches his streams and praises him. me on the other hand, i cant stand to his streams at all. interesting  

[SirTogII]

3 hours ago, ghostbuster_ said:

old enough.

you still dont get it, do you? hilarious.  target customer of WG right here...

you are losing the focus point here. again, it doesnt matter what flamu thinks, what he says and how he says. the point, which is important and what you have to pay attention to, is the Q&A, in particular WGs answers. flamus only role is letting us know about the Q&A. i, personally wouldnt have heard about it if i didnt see the video in this topic. 

 

btw, you called me a flamu fan and yet its you who enjoys Flamu, watches his streams and praises him. me on the other hand, i cant stand to his streams at all. interesting  

Oh, so you’re butthurt cause Flamu called you names? <— Your level of communication. When your arguments fail try to make up a story and throw in a few memes *yawn*
 

[ghostbuster_]

2 hours ago, SirTogII said:

Oh, so you’re butthurt cause Flamu called you names? <— Your level of communication. When your arguments fail try to make up a story and throw in a few memes *yawn*
 

 this is where you notice that you have no arguments whatsoever and started to feel yourself a bit dumb and start spreading even more nonsense. Cool story keep it going. Meanwhile I might contact flamu and ask him how his research about you is going.

 

[SirTogII]

18 hours ago, ghostbuster_ said:

 this is where you notice that you have no arguments whatsoever and started to feel yourself a bit dumb and start spreading even more nonsense. Cool story keep it going. Meanwhile I might contact flamu and ask him how his research about you is going.

 

Considering you don’t watch Flamu (lol) you seem to have a special relationship with him 😂

[ghostbuster_]

14 minutes ago, SirTogII said:

Considering you don’t watch Flamu (lol) you seem to have a special relationship with him 😂

Lets see maybe because i have been in the same clans with him for more than 3 years?

[SirTogII]

2 hours ago, ghostbuster_ said:

Lets see maybe because i have been in the same clans with him for more than 3 years?

But we’re not supposed to listen to him, comment on his content (be it good or bad), except when you agree with him, although you don’t watch his content… Seems legit 🤔

[ghostbuster_]

6 minutes ago, SirTogII said:

But we’re not supposed to listen to him, comment on his content (be it good or bad), except when you agree with him, although you don’t watch his content… Seems legit 🤔

Its actually pathetic how you try to twist the topic. There is a saying from where i come from. "Listening with your .ss". Accurate for you, really.

Well you can listen him but you gotta be able to comment on things by yourself. In this video case, what he told didnt matter at all. Like i said, his only role is letting people, me included, know about that Q&A. What he said or did doesnt matter. Anyways we get it you are a special one. If you still need an explanation, pm me and give a dc adress. 

Here, back to the topic.

[SirTogII]

1 hour ago, ghostbuster_ said:

Its actually pathetic how you try to twist the topic. There is a saying from where i come from. "Listening with your .ss". Accurate for you, really.

Well you can listen him but you gotta be able to comment on things by yourself. In this video case, what he told didnt matter at all. Like i said, his only role is letting people, me included, know about that Q&A. What he said or did doesnt matter. Anyways we get it you are a special one. If you still need an explanation, pm me and give a dc adress. 

Here, back to the topic.

When you have to revert to insults you’re not really carrying strong arguments mate but each to their own. 
The thread topic was a new video by Flamu which in turn was about the Q&A from WG. I have not commented on the Q&A as I equal those to sales pitches by the company. Very rarely do they actually bring much clarity (10 years of tanks taught me that). However, I thought the video was way below the standard I expect from Flamu, hence my comment. 

[Andrewbassg]

So...somebody on the NA forum posted (finally!!) the Q&A so even people who  don't do Discord ( like me) can see the answers directly.

Oh my.......

 

14 hours ago, Moggytwo said:

Q1. Why has work on legendary upgrades halted, and are there any plans for rebalancing existing ones or adding new ones in the next few months? At the moment, quite a few are in need of rebalancing, and there are more T10 ships without a Legendary upgrade than there are with one.

A1. We are currently working on new unique upgrades. However, work on these is carried out with a certain frequency, which is caused by the production process of these upgrades. As such, players shouldn't expect the release of new unique upgrades too often. Usually, we would start working on a unique upgrade for a new branch ship only after a set amount of time has passed since its release. This is necessary so that a large number of players have had enough time to research this particular ship, as well as play a significant number of battles on it. With this information, we can then gather detailed statistics on the ship among all categories of players. We continue analyzing the data on the current state of the ships and prepare to create new unique upgrades, as well as focus on the balancing of those already present in the game. Right now, many of the design ideas for the unique upgrades are in an early stage of development, but we will be sure to share more details with you as soon as they're ready.

 

Q2. Why, with the potential addition of submarines, has the standard 12 vs 12 format remained?

A2. Currently, we don't plan to increase the size of teams in the main type of battles - Random Battles - because of a few reasons: - Every ship is balanced around the interaction with a specific number of ships. Changing the total number of ships on the map would require us to completely reconfigure all ships in the game. Even now, despite our attempts to balance across not only Random Battles, but other battle types as well, the performance of some ships still depends on the amount of players in the battle. - In addition to the ships themselves, maps and modes which are suited for 12 x 12 format would also require a complete overhaul if anything were to be changed. - The more ships there are in a battle, the less influence on the outcome each individual player has. We find the level of effective impact that an individual ship has in the 12 x 12 format to be optimal for Random battles. That being said, we are also aware that the matchmaking system may require changes with the addition of submarines. As such, we are now considering additional limitations that would affect multiple classes together; for example, both submarines and destroyers, or destroyers, submarines and aircraft carriers. E.g. no more than 5 destroyers and submarines combined. At the same time, the current limits on each class will remain.

 

Q3. In the last QnA, most of the changes suggested by the community--including good players--were dismissed outright as wrong/false by WG staff answering the questions. However, weeks after the QnA session, some of these suggested balance changes were implemented anyway. This begs the question why there is such a communication gap between those answering the QnA and those who are implementing balance related changes?

A3. Actually, in the case of questions/feedback related to the balance of the ships, there is no communication gap. When answering any questions about the balance of the game, we always consult with our balance team in order to share the most relevant information with our players. In these situations, balance changes that occur within weeks of a specific Q&A can happen for a variety of reasons. For example, such changes may have been considered by us already, but we weren't completely sure of their relevance, and as such didn't announce or comment on them earlier. The decision to make the changes could also have been made based on new statistics and feedback, including questions/suggestions from our Q&A sessions.

 

Q4. You keep claiming that you take statistics as well as player feedback into account when balancing ships, yet there appears to be a distinct lack of acting upon feedback I commonly see from top level players, ones who are most qualified to identify balance and gameplay issues. Many other high profile games such as DOTA, LoL, CS:GO, TF2, OW, R6S successfully incorporate top player feedback in a way that they make targeted changes to equipment or characters in a way that makes them not overperform at the highest level of play while also being reasonably well balanced for the rest of the playerbase. This begs the following question: Do you consider top player feedback more valuable than average player feedback (or even valuable at all, for that matter), and are there any plans to involve them more into your balancing processes? At least consider this approach for T10 ships if you intend to hold further competitive events with T10 ships. Your recent acquisition of the KotS tournament is another argument for this.

A4. We evaluate player feedback from various sources. While it may indeed be true that the players who share feedback do tend to be the most involved and skilled players, we take all levels of feedback into account - not only from our testers, but also from all of our players. Although we listen to feedback from top players, we cannot say that it is more important than any other feedback: opinion of any individual player is equally of value to us. We take into account constructive criticism from all players who are willing to share it with us. To further elaborate on this, we invite players to participate in both the public test and main server tests of ships (referred to as "prodtest") and fill out surveys accordingly. Additionally, we collect feedback from the main platforms of our community.

 Among our test groups we have had Сlan and Super test groups for many years, representing almost every group of players: from the most skillful and involved players, to the not-so-experienced ones. Their feedback is extremely valuable to us. These players participate not only in the standard supertests of new updates, but also in various tests of concepts and new features for the game. The reaction and feedback of these testers to new concepts have a significant impact on our decision and how we will work with the feature/mechanic. In addition, we periodically hold additional recruitment for our closed test groups, and any player, including top ones, can apply there in order to participate in the process of testing and balancing the ships and other content. We usually publish news about this on our portal. And--getting back to the topic of top players--a good example would be KotS: throughout such tournaments, which the strongest players take part in, our colleagues work closely with the tournament organizers to adjust specific rules and format limitations to be the most suitable for top players, since it won't always be representative for our normal game modes. While not necessarily related to the discussion of ship balance, we can also discuss our interactions with top (and other skill level) players, using clan battles as an example. We work closely with players on the results of clan battles and send them surveys. In particular, we are interested in their opinion of the matchmaking system - both the speed of matchmaking, as well as the quality of the selection of opponents. These are two related characteristics, and it is of the utmost importance to find a balance between them that suits both ourselves and our players. We also use the results of these surveys to select maps for the new season (by filtering out the ones our players found the most problematic).

Through the use of polls, we find out how much players like a certain feature that we have introduced. For example, with the introduction of mercenaries, we understood that this is what was missing from Clan Battles and knew that the feature itself would be well-received, but strongly worried about its UX-part. i.e. if there would truly be an intuitive interface. The survey showed that the vast majority of players using the feature quickly figured it out. Players in surveys often give suggestions, and we are eternally grateful for these. Unfortunately, said suggestions are occasionally not feasible given current circumstances. That being said, the idea of restrictions on certain ships during the season was ultimately made in part due to feedback from players. On a related note, you'll be interested to see how we have responded to feedback regarding CVs in clan battles. To put it simply, we have made adjustments over the past few seasons based on feedback, and player evaluations of seasons with CVs are now close to the evaluations of seasons without them. However, we are still working on this aspect of clan battles. We will happily explain our plans for future clan battles in a separate reply.

 

Q5. Players often judge a ship's power off based on statistics available to the entire WoWS community via 3rd party websites. Typically ship win rate, ship K/D ratio, avg damage, avg experience, avg frags, total number of battles are the common metrics available on these sites. However, in past presentations WG developers have discussed different metrics used for balancing such as ship effectiveness vs class and ship win rate vs player win rate. What objective metrics are used by WG when balancing ships? Do the metrics typically agree with the player base? For example, do the metrics show Khaba and Zao as under performing? Do the metrics show petro as over performing? And finally, is there a threshold in the metrics which will cause the team to look into rebalancing the ship? Some ships are rebalanced frequently, while other remain unchanged for years. I'd be great to hear your insights on this.

A5. We rarely share stats because they are a fairly complex internal tool for balancing ships. When preparing a ship to go live, many different factors and indicators are taken into account - it's important that we not only communicate these stats, but also that we do it in the most convenient and digestible form while providing thorough explanations. In general, this has been a possibility we've explored, and sometimes we do indeed share our data with players - but, since this requires a significant investment of time and resources, we do not plan to do it often. That being said, I am certain that we can share more information about the balancing of our ships in the future.

The story of what metrics we use for balancing is a topic for a separate discussion. Long story short, we take into account the percentage of wins, absolute damage, relative damage, average number of destroyed ships, interactions with key areas, potential damage, analyzing how a ship plays against each class of ships and a significant amount of other statistics. In addition, we analyze all of the above across each individual group of players, sorted not only by their skills but by other parameters as well. Our evaluation of the ships does coincide to some extent with that of the players, and to some extent it does not. For example, Zao and Khabarovsk are both within the norm in terms of combat effectiveness. Khabarovsk became very effective after the limitation on damage from large calibers, and Zao is one of the leaders in terms of the number of battles played on her. This may sound rather obvious, but you can always get an indication of which ships we consider to have statistics outside of the normal range by checking balance changes in the patchnotes. At the same time, we try not to touch the ships that are within the normal range, even if there is a slight deviation - this is so as not to unnecessarily change the game experience on a particular ship. Fluctuations of the win rate and efficiency of ships is normal - the game does not stand still - new mechanics are added, the popularity of ships changes (eg due to the addition of a new branch), and there are of course changes in the meta. Therefore, there can be some fluctuations of win rate/efficiency within a single iteration of a ship, even if she herself was not changed. If we see that a ship is steadily underperforming or outperforming in her tier for multiple subsequent patches, we start fixing it, though this is a process that happens gradually over the course of several updates so that there are no drastic changes in the gameplay of the ship.

This calculated, measured approach allows us not to make unnecessary changes. But there are exceptions when either major changes are necessary or when it is impossible to make minor changes (for example, to reduce the attacking flight - you can not remove a quarter or half of an aircraft). This approach applies to ships that are already available to all players. Test ships, by nature, are sometimes changed drastically - this is because their true effectiveness can be analyzed and understood only during testing on the main server, but not during the design and testing phases on the internal or public test servers. During these test phases, we always consider two main options: either bring the current concept to the desired effectiveness, or change it drastically enough. This depends on the feedback from testers and on statistics.

 

Q6. You said a while back that you don’t want to implement limitations to CV spotting because “it would confuse players”. Yet there are render delay and minimap-render-only mechanics in the game already which very few seem to complain about, which makes your reasoning pretty poor. Not to mention, many top level players have provided feedback that spotting is one of their biggest culprits. Do you see CV spotting as a problem that needs solving at all? And in connection to that, is it technically possible to test limited CV spotting (such as minimap-only or render delayed) in Brawls?

A6. While we do acknowledge that CV spotting could be improved, we don't see it as a critical problem right now - especially considering the recent changes to attack aircraft. Concerning this, our position on spotting has not changed: Carriers have excellent capabilities to detect enemy ships and can be overly effective in this regard, especially in competitive modes. We are engaged in this issue. However, recent tests of changes in the spotting mechanics have not yielded the desired results: the mechanics in the game should be simple and clear to everyone, and testing has shown that our latest ideas did not cope with this task and made the gameplay unnecessarily complicated.

To be as transparent as possible, we'll list a few of the mechanics that we have tested in an effort to fix this issue: - We have been testing changes relating to the detectability of destroyers depending on whether the AA defense is on or off. In theory, these kinds of mechanics should have greatly reduced the detectability of destroyers that were committed to turning off their AA defense. However, the usage of this feature was not the most obvious and it quickly became an inconvenience to most players, which made it impossible to add to the game in its current state. More details about this mechanic in particular can be found in our Devblog. - We conducted minimap spotting tests. Many players and developers alike thought that this would be a good solution, but it didn't work. For most players, this change added a significant amount of ships to the battle that were detected "only on the minimap." Players could not see or interact with these "ghost ships," while an allied aircraft carrier engaged in combat with these would appear to be attacking water. Of course, such mechanics would indeed suit the most experienced players who are familiar with spotting mechanics, but this felt very awkward and counterintuitive for the majority of test participants. Therefore, for the time being, we have decided to abandon this idea until we either find a way to eliminate all of the negative elements of such mechanics, or get an alternative solution. - We also considered the idea of spotting with a delayed rendering, as in the case of the radar consumable, but tests have shown that such mechanics have no significant effect on CV spotting.

Therefore, we are in search of new possible solutions While it is technically possible to test a variety of mechanics in different battle types, we should only do this when we have a solution prepared for whatever issue may arise. These then will have to pass all stages of internal and closed testing.

 

Q7. Excuse me, but would it be possible to make the American battleships faster ? for Tier VI, we have 26 knots among the French, against 18 among the Americans. and until tier VII the American battleships are slow (in short, I passed fr and germany).

A7. I understand you perfectly. Coincidentally, my Vermont never reached the battle area while I was writing this answer. We try to maintain a variety of approaches to ship customization, specifically so that each of our players can find the gameplay both interesting and personalized to them. US battleships also found their audience here. The speed of US battleships is not only a part of the original concept of the implementation of these ships into the game, but also is also an important aspect of their historical context, which we relied on when creating them. Please also keep in mind that, for the balance of the ship, its advantages in some characteristics should always be compensated with disadvantages in others. However, if U.S. battleships will be affected by the meta changes and other factors, we will consider balance changes to this ships, but I don't think we will do anything like that in the near future.

 

Q8. We all know that if a ship is to populair it is bound to be nerfed/removed from the shop (Examples would be Smolensk, Småland, Thundere). What about the not so populair ships (i.e YueYang and Khabarovsk) How few games needs to be played in order for the extremly unpopular ships like previously mentioned, would it take for Wargaming to look into if said ship might need a buff, and is infact, not balanced well enough. (and no, you cant say that YueYang and Khabarovsk are currently in a fine state of balancing, cause if they where, then i wouldn't be able to count with 1 hand how many of said ships ive seen combined in Random Battles over the cause of 6 months).

A8. We regularly evaluate all ships and make balance adjustments as needed. Popularity is one of the main metrics that we pay attention to. Low or excessively high popularity of the ship is a reason to analyze its effectiveness in detail. The outlying case would be if the ship is both strong and unpopular - in which case, we can't just give it a boost, we would need to rebalance it entirely. At the same time, we are also comfortable with having niche ships - ones that are not particularly popular, but with an interesting gameplay for a certain group of players. All of these principles also apply to entire branches of ships. For example, French cruisers were extremely unpopular among our players. To solve this problem, we tested a modified concept by adding a reload booster to these ships - and we were completely satisfied with the results. These cruisers became distinctive and interesting ships for our audience.

Speaking specifically about Khabarovsk and Yueyang, the situation is as follows: - Khabarovsk is a quite unpopular ship among other researchable destroyers. However, it has a unique, non-standard gameplay that does not suit every player, but those who do play her to her fullest potential show excellent results: the ship now has great combat performance indicators, such as win rate, average damage, K\D ratio. - The situation with Yueyang is more complicated. It's also quite unpopular among the other researchable destroyers, but this is partly due to the fact that its performance is now approaching the lower boundaries of the normal range. In the near future we will continue to additionally monitor this ship specifically and analyze whether it needs balance changes.

 

Q9(a). Consider this as both feedback and a question. Why was Dutch cruisers' balance subjected to airstrikes so much? Disclaimer: I am a tester, so I have a decent idea of what I am talking about. These ships are weak and unenjoyable to play. They should be buffed to an acceptable and enjoyable power level, while still keeping them subpar compared to their peers, and only then should the airstrike be fine-tuned to fit in. Right now, there is way too much emphasis on the airstrike which isn't even that strong or consistent.

Q9(b). Why do you always seem to balance the ship around a gimmick instead the other way around? is there a reason for doing this?

A9. One of our main goals in developing ships is not only to create new ships, but also to bring variety to the gameplay. After all, if it doesn't change, it will quickly become stagnant and bore our players. That's why we customize new ships not around "gimmicks," per se, but around the gameplay concept. If we balanced ships only around standard things like main caliber, armor, detectability etc. then the ships themselves would be standard and largely the same, meaning that gameplay would stand still. In this standardized meta, all of their special features would be sidelined and turned to be extremely weak, as the ships would otherwise be too effective, truly reducing their additional gameplay dynamics to "gimmicks." Going back to the Dutch cruisers - the airstrike is their main feature and this in turn distinguishes them gameplay-wise from other ships. The first thing we had to do when developing these ships was to make sure that the airstrike was set up and worked as intended.

Despite these unique mechanics we take all characteristics into account when balancing these ships. As such, these ships also have good armor and detectability range, and decent air defense. It's too early to draw conclusions about their overall combat effectiveness, as the early access is not over yet - but, judging by the feedback, many players have very warmly received these ships.

That's all for today, you can expect another pack of answers in a couple of days

[Camperdown]

Gawd, WG corporate communication makes me ill 

[Andrewbassg]

12 hours ago, Camperdown said:

Gawd, WG corporate communication makes me ill 

Yeah....they are full of it.

[Tanaka_15]

14 hours ago, Andrewbassg said:

A3. Actually, in the case of questions/feedback related to the balance of the ships, there is no communication gap.

There is no communication gap. Yeach if there is no communicatin there is no gap :D

[Andrewbassg]

This the best rebuke I;ve  seen yet of the "answer" numero 2 From the NA forum.

 

3 hours ago, eviltane said:

I am not suggesting a conspiracy  . WG doesn't have some evil plan beyond milking people for their money. What they are obfuscating is that they or most specifically Sub Octavian is stubborn. They have set their mind to randoms being best when staying at 12 V 12 then they give their convenient excuses.   EXCUSES like "All ships are balanced around 12 V 12 and that ALL ships would need to rebalanced around 12 V 12.  That is a bunch of hogwash. Its taking an issue that is highly questionable as to its truth.  This whole story that the game is balanced around 12 V 12 only EVER comes up when WG is asked to increase the number of players per map. It is never ever mentioned by WG when reducing the number of players per map when launching a different game mode.  

 

This becomes so freaking obvious when considering WoWs competitive is  played FAAAR away from 12 v 12.   Clan Battles, Kots and Ranked  basically every single mode that is sold as competitive works  just freaking fine ship balance wise. Competetive is the place where game balance becomes MOST important.  The imbalances that do occur almost exclusively from the organization and tactical control and the concentration of skill teams  bring to the maps.  

Gaishus clan is dangerous with 5 Marceuas precisely because they put in a team of pure high grade unicums. Put any lower storm clan in 5 Marceaus and they loose most of their matches. 

Then WG FAIL to consider any scenario like the one I mentioned. They act as if making  15 V 15 and keeping the current match maker is the only option. 

IF you actually had read my proposal you would soon realize that you can go beyond 12  v 12 without having to change all the maps and without having to rebalance the entire games roster of ships. Simply put keep 12v12 spots for surface ships.  Reserve spot 13 +14 specifically for submarines and Reserve spot 15 for a CV. If those special classes are available then put them in. If not then launch standard 12 v 12.  Submarines and CVs do not take up map space like surface ships do. They both exist on different planes of battle then surface ships. 

More over the whole excuse that adding a few more players severely or even markedly decreases a players Battle influence is another puff of great big smoke while its listed as a cornerstone of both your and WGs reasoning .  In a 12v12 Match a single player hold 8.3%  of the influence pie of their team.  In a 15 v 15  each individual player holds 6.7% of the influence pie.    That's 1.6% change for adding 3 more players per team.    

 WG knows that each ship type holds a completely different share of battle influence. CVs hold the most battle influence  DDs hold the second highest battle influence followed by BBs and CAs .  Yet WG has absolutely no problem doing stuff like putting in the higher influence Battle Cruisers instead of cruisers or putting in the new lower influence German DDs that cant actually play as DDs into the DD spots. If WG was actually that concerned with match balance then these ships would exist in a different MM slot. 

 Also NO its not perfectly reasonable to equate DDs and Subs and limit DD slots because someone else wants to play Sub. 

 

Lastly WG pretends to be experimental and they would try it if it just worked.  Yet they have never even once tested 15 V 15 to my knowledge.  They could easily make it some fun or stupid little brawl for a week or two to see if it CAN work. 

Yeah its WGs choice to make it 12 V 12. However when they give smoke screen answers to excuse their own stubborn and inflexible thinking on the Issue then I will call them and their defenders out on it.