Important message for the community

[ColorsOfRainbows]

3 minutes ago, piet11111 said:

 

A cynic might say its because they want to do another round of satan crates.

 

Hold up i am a cynic on this matter Hmmm indeed.

to be fair i got basicly all ships i own from santa crates by a [edited]good drop chance in the old days when they rly did drop xD nowadays a blind can see the drop chances are MUCH lower ... and by not showing they bring people to spend money.

still i dont get why no one sues them ... its just illegal.

 

also the thing that makes me angry the most is that wargaming is BREAKING THEIR WORD over and over and over and over ... they say stuff like "no we never do" and then they do ...

you have stuff like missions "forever" and then they remove them put them behind money cash grab stuff and remove end game content in favor or money spending ...

they said the missions stay forever when u unlock them with the T10 and then they were gone and now they tell us the missiouri mission stays and i dont believe a single word this company says

 

they talk about "monetisation" ... dont please DONT tell me this game didnt finance itself fantasticly 2015-2019 ... people spend so much money.

but you just got greedy and now you defend your money grabbing new methos with "monetisation" ... you by some miracle was able to monetise this game fine without them for 4 years but then i feel some people came to power who just like money more then quality and now this game goes down in quality for every cent more even if it means you kill it in the long term ...

 

you KILLING your golden egg laying chicken for a few more golden eggs a month and i cant have words of how *** that is

[Probabilistyk]

Talk is cheap. No real promises. 

[Wannna]

2 hours ago, Crysantos said:

Thank you for your answer. We're doing our best to improve things - but we also don't want to make promises we can't keep. We're sorry to hear that you don't want to have submarines in the game and we respect that position but there are a lot of players who do want them in the game. Who asked for them for years, who are testing and playing them right now. We're working very hard on improving them and incorporating a lot of the feedback over the last iterations, adding a new layer of gameplay and experience in the game. But we won't be able to make everybody happy in our game. Every player has a personal expectation, experience and vision for the game.

Ok thanks for the confirmation you wont change or listen, just like with CV when many of us spent hours testing, giving feedback and doing your (WG) job. you guys ignored everything and pushed a broken thing in game. Good luck with subs.

Somewhere deep down in you there is a spine or some guts, look into your memories how it felt.

[piet11111]

4 minutes ago, Probabilistyk said:

Talk is cheap. No real promises. 

 

Hold up this is some expensive BS they clearly got a new PR guy/gal/attack helicopter

[anonym_cwVecOS6ecVy]

The next blatant lies Removed* will air soon. Mark my words and do not get mislead by empty phrases.

[Geekbane]

...for example, many of you stated the term "Sale" suggests direct discounts on in-game items.

 

epic. BTW: in russia are "SALE" signs on every corner, and guess what, they promise discounts. How can you make a mistake in translation when there is absolutely no need to translate?

a mistake that happens on purpose is no mistake, in my country that is called fraud. easy as that. same goes for russia btw.

[HypnotoadYT]

@Crysantos

 

Quote

Drop rates. We plan to publish all drop rates for all Containers and Random Bundles, and are already working on it. It will take some time, but our hard commitment is that it will happen over the course of next year.

No, this needs to be addressed as soon as possible, not just "next year". With all the skewed values of thousands of community members working together and bringing together information, it's looking more and more like you're manipulating the values of dropboxes, whereas certain content (especially premium ships) are hidden in the last 5-10 loot boxes, while selectively others who aren't whaling get better / fixed results. We're not talking about slight errors, we're talking about Multimodal distribution, which only happens when an outside force is applied to what should be normal distribution. 

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Summer Sale. Unfortunately, we made a translation mistake in a sensitive description. We fixed it ASAP and to protect you from such mistakes in the future

This is not the first time where something "mistakenly" happens in the favor of WarGaming. Please tell me about something that "mistakenly" favored the community recently. I'll wait.

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Random mechanics. As a business, we always follow laws and comply with new regulations as they appear. Therefore, our position on containers and random bundles is always consistent with governments' decisions on this matter and will keep being so.

No, it isn't. Let's just take one example, the Christmas containers. You rigged them to always give ships from a specific shortlist that wasn't declared and never really addressed the issue. This is exactly why a report has been filed against WarGaming by none other than me, to the European Parliament of Economy and Science. This is not off the table yet and just one of many issues with the loot boxes (see above, heavily skewing results in a multimodel distribution.

Quote

More reaction to feedback on ships balance. We know there are several ships you want to be addressed, and we'd like to confirm: balance changes are planned for Zao, Petropavlovsk, and FDR in 0.10.10.

Do you mean the feedback you gave regarding the Zao just recently, that according to spreadsheets it's fine, while the Petropavlovsk is a hard ship to play? Or am I missing something? Please address further what KIND of balance changes you have in mind and how you want to reimburse people who bought the nerfed ships, such as the FDR, with the hardest-to-get-in-game currency. Remember, you're not in Beta status anymore to hide behind.

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Aircraft Carriers. Despite many other things happening in the game, we haven't forgotten that there are still questions to be answered regarding CVs. We've implemented a lot of changes to this class since the rework, but we acknowledge more changes may be needed. CV spotting is a good example - we conducted several tests before and did not find a good, adequate way to address it.

Oh, what kind of changes have you done besides the rocket one? Please name a few. Also there are community members with a LOT of good ideas who already aggregated several things you could try. Almost like the community could... I don't know, contribute to that program or something. If only you'd listen. 

Quote

New gameplay experiences. We will keep evolving the game by introducing new game modes and mechanics, both fiction- and history-based. For example, in 0.10.8 we will have a new mode - Convoys - inspired by historical events.

I'm actually happy about this. Well done. Took a while but I'm glad it's coming. What I'm not glad about is that the community said "yeah, it's a fun mode and it seems balanced!" and then you nerfed the HP of the convoys by 50%, making it imbalanced. Not sure if you have trouble with data engineers and data scientists being wonky or not knowing their craft but I can hook you up with some good ones that actually analyze the data.

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Future of the game. We'd like to offer you a deeper look into the future of the game. Right now we have Devblogs (where we basically announce everything that comes to Supertest) and the Waterline series (quarterly updates). To complement these and expand the horizon of events, we want to share a general roadmap with you, 

Give us a deadline for the roadmap. You say you have one. How about sending it to the graphics department to make it look nice (they are doing amazing work by the way) and then share it with a big fat disclaimer saying: "Our plan, but subject to change, please give us your input on our ideas"
That'd be swell, right? 

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Communications quality. There have been a lot of communication mistakes and incidents on our side recently. 

After denying vehemently that there are NO communication errors for years, then claiming there are community errors, well done. Now let's hope you don't hop back to "no communication errors ever!"

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For example, players did not understand why the latest torpedo bug took 2 updates to fix, while a CV bug (plane losses in 0.9.9) was fixed almost instantly. They are in fact very different: the CV bug was fixed by quickly adjusting some parameters, while the torpedo bug involved game logic, and even though it was technically fixed within a week, it had to go through all regular quality assurance processes.

As a software- and indie game developer, this is a pathetic excuse. This is exactly what tests are for. And I'm talking Unit- and Integration Tests. Before you deploy your software, have it check if torpedos actually go where they go. For every...single...ship. Put in some expected values and if they deviate too hard, well, get to debugging. I get it, some project managers are pushing for a release and you don't have the tests ready, but tough crap, these are essential. So to the project managers: Either get the commitment from your dev-team that tests have been successful or don't publish broken software. I really hope you're working agile.

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In-depth communications and insights. When it's necessary we will use more specifics and will provide deeper explanations of our decisions. For example, we implemented the system for CvC ship bans, which helps us to keep the meta fresh, and we want to tell you more about how and why we use it, as it's something that our hardcore players are interested in.

Here's an idea, how about letting the players decide, like in other games, such as MOBAs. 
Before the match, the two clans set rules which ships (or class) they want to ban, then they fight it out.

[undead42]

@Crysantos In this post I'm using "you" to refer to the company, not you as a person.

 

Some topics:

 

a) "We're doing our best to improve things - but we also don't want to make promises we can't keep."
Its not about the promises you couldn't keep, its more about the ones you decided to not keep. Examples are plenty, like no bigger guns than Yamato, no tier 10 to buy etc. People need to be able to trust you again if you want to keep them involved. The easy way would be to shy away from statements altogether but then communication would deteriorate to marketing level without use. I'd understand that you avoid long-term statements or everything out of your personal control but things need to be true and you can improve in your short-term statements. No Puerto Rico being said to be obtainable by everyone etc. Or Santa Crate terms, Missouri earnings, ... do I need to list stuff?

 

b) CVs and Subs are debated, to say the least. I don't know the reason why you shy away for giving them a separate game mode. I guess its the fear of people waiting too long for a matchmaking but thats guessing your reasoning. You already have the ability to restrict game modes to times, so try it out in the rush hours of the game and see how the people choose. Have a "random" with all ship classes and a "classic" mode with only DDs, CC/CA/CL, and BBs. And after the event, be honest and transparent with the number of players and MM waiting times. Or do you fear that ships get specialized for a mode,  making it a balancing issue? Speak up and give your reasoning. Involve the community in the way forward, not just announcing how it is gonna be.

 

c) I'm writing this post since you actually responded to people in this thread. Otherwise, I'd have just seen the OP as another PR press release with apparently little meaning. There are dedicated suggestion threads in your forums and they have no replies. It feels like a /dev/null device and that is why I stopped posting my thoughts and suggestions there. Here, I make a last effort. I understand that it is costly to dig though all postings and give dedicated replies. But there would be ways that are cheaper. For example, implement a voting system and the posts with more than X votes are then addressed by someone actually making decisions (no PR guy please, that would ruin it right away).

 

d) The CC program events were a disaster. Right now the community observes that even a crap-storm of Puerto Rico size wasn't cutting it. Back then you gave words and carried on like nothing had happened. It had to be personal decisions, PEGI rating, streamer switching elsewhere etc. And still it is not sure you'd really change. Although I tend to give everybody a 2nd chance, I stopped counting chances with you. I don't think you can really heal this. Trust needs to be earned. Maybe you can heal things a bit over time, though I have little hope until I see real action.

 

A very disappointed player.

[Toivia]

Hmm, the good news is that finally, we have a post adressing at least some concerns (really not all of the problems, subs, LWM, long term bugs, looking at you there).

The bad news is that A) it took weeks if not a month for WoWs managers to even acknowledge the issues. B) the post is still (again and always from WG) vague and only affirms that they "want to change" this or that (in the coming years) instead of actually doing it, see below:

Quote

One of the main topics we want to address is how your feedback influences the game. Regrettably, it was not always clear how we use certain types of feedback and where it fits into our decision-making process. We've always taken it into account, but looking back, we see that in some cases it was not balanced well enough against other equally important sources of information: large volumes of data and the team's creative vision of the game. We want to change this situation and make sure we pay more direct attention to your suggestions and opinions while also giving you more insight into how the decisions are made.

Seriously what can be stopping you from just saying that you will change this situation? Someone is holding you hostage?

 

And I am sorry, but what in seven hells is this supposed to mean?!

3 hours ago, Crysantos said:

World of Warships operates in all regions of the world, including China. As you may know, in terms of video games and random monetization mechanics, China is especially regulated region. We want to disclose drop rates for Containers and Random bundles in a consistent way in all regions, so we have to do a fair amount of legal and technical work to make it happen and to make sure we are compliant everywhere. We commit to do it no later than 2022, and will do due diligence to do it as soon as we can.

You maintain that you are currently following all applicable laws, right? I mean, somewhat questionnable, but let's say...

Now that being the case, how could it be complicated in either a technical or legal way for you to disclose drop rates?

 - Technically, you only copy a sheet of numbers, the biggest hurdle is formatting.

 - Legally, the only issue could come up if you were in fact not in accordance with laws regarding RNG boxes and disclosing drop rates would only draw attention to the fact.

 

Seriously, neither issue is acceptable and reason enough to publish them "over the course of next year". Drop rates for lootboxes and random items need to be published (EDIT:before the end of the year) ASAP! Preferably before the introduction of yet another lootbox.* (EDIT: Honestly end of year is immensely generous and the company doesn't deserve it.)

 

 

*The cynic in me strongly believes you are merely buying time for the next Anniversary, Black Friday, Christmas and gods know what other lootbox events to bring in more money. It's on you, WG and @Crysantos, to prove that part of me wrong.

[piet11111]

Yeah the "what we do is legal" argument does not fill me with confidence i am dealing with a moral company, for instance what if murder was legal  ?

 

[Ghesthar]

3 hours ago, Crysantos said:

World of Warships operates in all regions of the world, including China. As you may know, in terms of video games and random monetization mechanics, China is especially regulated region. We want to disclose drop rates for Containers and Random bundles in a consistent way in all regions, so we have to do a fair amount of legal and technical work to make it happen and to make sure we are compliant everywhere. We commit to do it no later than 2022, and will do due diligence to do it as soon as we can.

Forgive me, but I don't understand: certainly, if you are marketing the boxes, you are already complying with whatever regulations exist in that region. I can understand that you may want to retroactively change some probabilities if they have varied across regions, and won't begrudge you that, but I do not understand why, going forward, it would not be very simply to disclose odds.

 

Seriously: if your loot boxes comply with local regulations, what prevents you from disclosing odds? If there is an issue in China that prevents this, why not roll out odds everywhere else? WG has done this before - the Chinese server in WoT differed substantially from the other regions, though maybe this has been resolved.

 

Is there something specific you can point to as a legal, technical, or regulatory issue here, or at least an example/illustration if not a specific regulation?

[Amarretto]

Read the original post, and thought,

 

     ... 'oh..... OK........ this looks promising..... maybe?''

 

Then I read the replies that pointed out all the holes in the claims and promises, watched Flamu's video, and realised that I'm still being lied to, even now.

 

Bugger......

 

 

The claimed inability to publish the drop rates by the way? Someone mentioned earlier on, and Flamu touched on it - you guys KNOW that if you did that, this current shitstorm would be like a soft summer breeze compared to what would come, don't you. And that's why you are desperately looking for a way out....

 

A lot of us could overlook some, if not most, of the dodgy stuff going on, because as mentioned in this thread we DO have a choice whether or not to open our wallets. But WG, you are pushing 'surprise mechanics' onto impressionable and sometimes vulnerable kids, and you are doing so in full knowledge that you are acting against the spirit of the law in many countries, even if you are careful to not (at least not always) blatantly break those laws.

 

And for that alone, you should be ashamed of yourselves.

 

You want to do the right thing? Then if you insist on sticking to your self-proclaimed business model, self regulate and slam a PEGI 18 rating on yourself, proactively, immediately, voluntarily.

 

Until then, we reserve the right to point at you and call you out for being predatory, and taking advantage of kids for monetary gain.... wow, that sounds bad, doesn't it. The cap fits WG, so wear it with shame, or change.

[Ashmodiel]

37 minutes ago, Carandraug said:

 

Very nicely summed with all the shady formulations and misleading stuff pinpointed.

 

Flamu has explained perfectly, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, with examples, how many of these explanations are outright absurd and are treating the community like idiots. I don't know how these explanations can be treated as apologies. This is an attempt to silence the criticism that is spreading ever further.

 

The best example, one of very many, is the time it takes to publish the chances of drawing something in lootboxes. Wargambling has all the data, it shouldn't take more than a week to publish it. For some reason suddenly lawyers have to be involved and it is supposed to take months. Really? After all - as you yourselves say in this statement - you have everything done legally, so it is purely a question of publishing the data. There is absolutely no reason why this has to take months.

 

Of course, we know full well that you will not publish them before Christmas because you intend to continue aggressively selling loot boxes. You will delay as long as possible, trying to squeeze as much money out of players as possible.

I really recommend listening to the entire recording for anyone who thinks Wargambling is truly apologetic in this statement. It won't be a wasted hour.

[Zemeritt]

Nicely written. But:

 

The damage is done. You'll fall back to your old habits soon after "the change".

[Hugh_Ruka]

Well, this looks like a start of  ... something ...

 

Unfortunately you (WG) have conditioned us to distrust EVERYTHING you say as the first step. That will be very hard to repair. I am really curious how you want to do that.

 

Anyway, I have watched the EU stream with Sub_O and came out very disappointed. Lots of words, no real answers to anything. If that is how you plan to rebuild trust, well that's the wrong direction. On one hand you are claiming that the majority of this games playerbase is in the 30-40 year average but you still treat us like children.

[cpt_halvar]

Thank you for taking the time to write this post Crysantos.

To me this is definitely a step in the right direction.

I am still not going to play CVs or submarines, but the numbers will ultimately decide their fate anyway.

Putting double CVs in clan battles and a virgin class like submarines in a competitive mode was a mistake in my opinion.

Anyway, I wish us all, players and WG staff alike, good times ahead.

 

 

[Ashmodiel]

8 minutes ago, Hugh_Ruka said:

I have watched the EU stream with Sub_O and came out very disappointed. Lots of words, no real answers to anything. If that is how you plan to rebuild trust, well that's the wrong direction.

 

I feel that the first basic step to regaining credibility should be to get rid of this individual from the company.  I don't know if that would change anything, but at least it would show a real change of attitude within the company.

 

Of course, nothing of the sort will happen. We will not find out who is responsible for several years of this chaos, which has "gone unnoticed by anyone" all this time. All the transparency they talk about, the internal processes, the analyses and so on, are one big empty promise.

 

And I have no illusions - old players know very well that these are empty promises. Players with less experience will write that this is an important announcement, that the company will change and so on. And some will probably even write for months that the company is changing so much, although already in these announcements you can see a lack of desire to fix the mistakes that the community has been talking about for years.

[NaikonP]

"All we do is always legal in all countries, but also we cant show you the drop rates right now because we need to be sure its legal in all countires."  Lmao.

[Karsar]

5 hours ago, Hyzedan said:

This game is not e-sports - Sad ya, knowing WG wants to make it but would never success because of many drawbacks. Players are not athletes, we may not need pay to win, but most of us would only have an hour or two everyday after work to chill out, not to play something that will make us even more stress and depressed.

Greetings

 

I do not know if I ever wrote a single comment on this form. The fact that I am reading and writing instead of just playing my favourite game is truly remarkable for me. Frankly, at the same time it is very concerning as it means to me that the my favourite game is not improving but it is changing and I DO NOT like the "new direction" WG has chosen to implement these changes. I reached for the news in order to find the answers for the things that became irritating for me in WOWS. Most of these things were implemented during recent updates. Instead of answers I found a whole community of upset people with different reasons and most of these people are sharing my concerns.

 

Let me put it this way...

I am working full time and do not mind spending money on this game and I did. However the most recent events (in my head it started with "Pay to Rico") are just ridiculously expensive! The drop rate vs money spent it is not acceptable. I understand the matter of luck but this is an absolute scandal (I mean the cost of containers!!!)

I am father of two children.....  ......I have MAX 2h a day (if even that for the cost of my sleep time ) to play games. My choice was if not always then most of time to play WOWS, since it was released. The amount of time you are asking to play in order to achieve something is disgusting. I understand the aspect of initial pay in gold for the 3 shipyard levels in order to be able to build the ship but the time you are asking me to spend playing to complete another missions is a misunderstanding.

I am a PC games player with tons of different games in my catalogue on all major gaming platforms.

 

The points in bold above are nothing else but true and real description of an average paying gamer you have within approx. 25000 (this is now approx. 15000 for last couple of days) gamers still choosing WOWS.

There is nothing I could write that you do not know WG apart from one... ...if I will write another post, then only to say good bye. Trust me I wont be the only one.

 

I love this game and I'm sure that most of the the people that are still here are of the same opinion. I will continue to play it and support it financially for now... ...radar is on!

 

[The_Chiv]

8 hours ago, Crysantos said:

 

• Drop rates. We plan to publish all drop rates for all Containers and Random Bundles and are already working on it. It will take some time, but our hard commitment is that it will happen over the course of next year.

So you already do this for The console versions because Sony and microsoft demand it. You have been doing these loot boxes for 3 years and now you want another year to post information you already HAVE AVAILABLE. Seriously it takes a year to copy paste a %/ RTP? 

[Hugh_Ruka]

1 hour ago, NaikonP said:

"All we do is always legal in all countries, but also we cant show you the drop rates right now because we need to be sure its legal in all countires."  Lmao.

Ah another Flamu type drama queen ...

 

What they are saying is, they need to have a look at the legal requirements of publishing the drop rates. Some countries may mandate %, some may mandate 1:X while others may have even different requirements. That's what they need to make sure is legal in the whole process. They cannot simply assume % is valid for all jurisdictions and suddenly get government fines because in some countries there are other requirements ? Hard to follow ?

[Thanks_for_all_the_fish]

Actions, not words. PROVE to the community you deserve us.

 

Until you do, may you bathe in the crap you've created.

[Mr_Gibbins]

I don't expect this to make much difference, I didn't leave the CC program expecting that to make a difference either, I don't expect WG's latest statement to be indicative of any difference in their course either.... here's why.


Dear players,

 

Lately a lot of you have been upset with various incidents, our decisions, as well as a general state of things in the game and community. Before we continue, we want to apologize to all of you, players, content creators, moderators, testers, and other volunteers, to those who support us and those disappointed with us.

Apologies are cheap, action is costly.  This is just another cheap apology without any action, just like the cheap apologies to LWM without any action.  The easiest action you could ever have undertaken was to add their Yukon camo, the fact that you didn't do that one thing then shows how little you appreciate  the value of actions versus words, and yet here you are again without action, just words.

Everything that happens within the game and the community is our responsibility, and we are sorry that we let the situation come to its current state. 

You had every opportunity via CC feedback to avoid this, you dismissed that advice, mocked it, mocked CC's, belittled the most valuable CC you will ever have, all in defence of your magic money boxes.  Are you sorry for the circumstances, or the consequences?  I suspect the latter.
 

We want to take this opportunity to be more transparent about how we will take actions to improve our internal processes and our relationship with you. It will be a long read, you will see items of different scales and with different times required to see results. No doubt more news and announcements will follow, so please don't treat this as a final plan and the ultimate solution to everything. Instead, please treat it as a list of things we're currently working on and a way to show our intentions to make the game and community a better place. Also, please note that it is not comprehensive, as many other measures are revolving around internal processes.

Here's what we are going to do, but it's not a plan, don't measure our performance by it, it's not final, it might be something different that happens.... Some serious commitment being shown here, good start........

Seriously, this vagary is the best you can do?

Monetization

World of Warships is a free-to-play title following the game-as-a-service concept with substantial monthly updates and a constant evolutionary cycle. To support this model we rely on a multitude of monetization tactics considered to be standard practice in the industry. While we believe it's unreasonable to expect to discuss our monetization strategies in all but the most general terms - this is business-critical information - we do understand that there are specific details that are a cause of concern for some of you. We will address them as best we can below.

• Random mechanics. As a business, we always follow laws and comply with new regulations as they appear. Therefore, our position on containers and random bundles is always consistent with governments' decisions on this matter and will keep being so. In some cases, we will even try to work ahead of industry practices. We are aware that there are slowly progressing trends to regulate the digital space more and more, to catch up with technical solutions and business models built on them. With that in mind, we appreciate your feedback and commit to the following: from now on for all new ships, if they are distributed via Containers or Random Bundles, there will be an alternative way to obtain them. Methods may vary and may include timegating (i.e. early access or time delayed offers), direct purchases, completing in-game activities, etc. 
  
  How about making the game more compelling to play, more effort to balance the matchmaker and grip players attention with nail biting matches where everyone feels that playing their best matters at all levels of ability?  How about working on the quality of the product instead of so much focus on loot boxes at all levels of the game experience, like the introductory "you'll get used to it" loot boxes that are "free to obtain" in the armory.  The candy at the school gates approach to introducing a harmful substance or activity.  Gamble for new tech tree ships, for tokens to unlock more ships and camoflages, "surprise mechanics" for submarines, summer "sales" that are just more loot boxes and preparation to to push more loot mechanics etc.  At every turn players are confronted by gambling mechanics, so much thought and effort goes into it, and the game is neglected.
  
  It isn't just players that get addicted to gambling, it WG as well, you simply can't live without the great ships casino now can you?
   
• Drop rates. We plan to publish all drop rates for all Containers and Random Bundles and are already working on it. It will take some time, but our hard commitment is that it will happen over the course of next year.
  
  Why does this take a year to implement?  You already know the drop rates, you set the crop rates, how is this information not available for publication right now?  You publish drop rates for Xbox and PS5 because you have to, I don't see any reason this can't happen now, except of course your reluctance to show us.
   
• Return of Missouri. The initial concept of the event was perceived negatively, and we should have known better. The case was a learned lesson for us and we added an alternative way to purchase the ship. We're also addressing the situation with the ship's earnings to make sure that those who owned Missouri before 0.10.7 will on average receive not less credits than before the changes to the ship's economics. We're grateful for the battles you played, these helped us to collect sufficient data. This amount of data allows us to add a +10% bonus to the special Missouri combat mission (from 20% to 30%). Additionally, we will issue appropriate amount of credits to all the affected players as a sign of appreciation; details will be published in Devblog separately.
  
  You did know better, you had warnings from CC feedback weeks in advance.  You chose to ignore those warnings, dismiss them as irrelevant in pursuit of your greed, an opportunity in your eyes to aggressively monetise a desirable ship.  Having said just a few weeks previously that it would be available for doubloons you obviously had a change of heart and went for the money shot.
  
  Also, you we're warned ahead of time about concerns over the ship earnings, again you chose to ignore CC's and push ahead anyway.  Again, you we're wrong, and not just wrong but rude in the process to the most valuable CC you will ever have.
   
• Summer Sale. Unfortunately, we made a translation mistake in a sensitive description. We fixed it ASAP and to protect you from such mistakes in the future, we will add additional checks and approvals to our internal processes. If anything like that happens again, we will offer refunds to all of the affected players. We did it before and we will do it again to make sure that you are compensated. We will also pay more attention to the positioning of such events: for example, many of you stated the term "Sale" suggests direct discounts on in-game items.
  
  There was one reason only that the Summer "Sale" was structured this way, to pump large amounts of doubloons into the system ready for Missouri loot boxes, in exactly the same way World of Tanks flooded doubloons into the economy prior to black market auctions. This was another way to obfuscate the cost of the Missouri when buying boxes, not only is it seperated from reality by making the purchase via doubloons, it also seperates it in time, an additional break in the connection between real money and the end cost of the ship.  None of this is accidental or coincidental, it is planned out ahead of time in a rather cynical fashion.
  
   
• Age ratings. We've already added disclaimers about in-game purchases with random items to our PEGI ratings. We're also in touch with other rating organizations to adjust our ratings everywhere in a consistent way. While our game was never popular among minors and we adhere to legislation in all countries where we publish World of Warships, we plan to go beyond what is required of us by laws and we are working on our own in-game measures to additionally protect children who interact with our game. We will share more details on this point once we're ready to announce them.
  
  No mention of addressing how the loot box issues may be harmful to military veterans?  Conveniently forgotten in all of this are the veterans who suffer from problem gambling at far higher rates than the general population, do veterans make up an insignificant or significant part of the game population?  I suggest significant, and that you have no intention of addressing this as the revenue is huge, prove me wrong.

Feedback

One of the main topics we want to address is how your feedback influences the game. Regrettably, it was not always clear how we use certain types of feedback and where it fits into our decision-making process. We've always taken it into account, but looking back, we see that in some cases it was not balanced well enough against other equally important sources of information: large volumes of data and the team's creative vision of the game. We want to change this situation and make sure we pay more direct attention to your suggestions and opinions while also giving you more insight into how the decisions are made. Things we are considering and evaluating right now:

• More reaction to feedback on ships balance. We know there are several ships you want to be addressed, and we'd like to confirm: balance changes are planned for Zao, Petropavlovsk, and FDR in 0.10.10. Moving forward we will try to increase the promptness of addressing released ships in a similar way and when it is not possible (for example, changing a ship will move it out of the interval of normal performance), we will put more effort into giving you insights and explaining our reasoning.
• Aircraft Carriers. Despite many other things happening in the game, we haven't forgotten that there are still questions to be answered regarding CVs. We've implemented a lot of changes to this class since the rework, but we acknowledge more changes may be needed. CV spotting is a good example - we conducted several tests before and did not find a good, adequate way to address it. That does not mean we will not continue to improve it. It's not something that can be done quickly, please keep that in mind. Another common question is regarding odd-tier carriers, which were previously mentioned as "support CVs". Right now they are in an early prototyping stage (developing document concepts), and we want to honestly tell you that they are not to be expected in 2022.
  
  Can you honestly say that after all the feedback you have had publicly on many elements of the game that you take any of it into account at all?  I know for sure I am not the most qualified person to comment on ship balance, but I do know how often the "spreadhseet says so" emote was used unironically in response to CC balance questions, then all the feedback ignored.
  
  I think we all ganied a useful recent insight into the old adage "the dev's don't play their own game" didn't we, and how close to the bone WG's response showed it to be.
  
   
• New gameplay experiences. We will keep evolving the game by introducing new game modes and mechanics, both fiction- and history-based. For example, in 0.10.8 we will have a new mode - Convoys - inspired by historical events. We will keep exploring new game modes in the future, - it's one of our priorities. Expanding permanent types of battles (primarily Random battles) with new modes is also one of the long-term goals to keep the game fresh and entertaining. However creating a mode suitable not just for a short gaming period, but for a permanent presence with high replayability is a much bigger challenge, so it takes many more tries and effort. 
  
  I would suggest you have spent so much time focusing on building a casino that you have forgotten how to make a game.

 

• Maps. We've slowed down with adding new maps to the game recently because the team focused more on the game's visuals in general (updated visual effects, new water, and other improvements) as well as introducing a whole new level of underwater world. That said, in 2022 at least one new map will be released, and another one has some chances to make it in time. Spoiler: we're also going to try a new mechanic with the first of these new maps not previously used in the game.

One new map in 2022, that is how many years since the last new map was added?  So long I can't even remember, and all due to development of underwater environments.  Did development of new premium ships slow down due to submarines modelling and testing?  Did the gamblebbox monetisation of new tech tree ship lines slow down due to submarines?  No, neither did.  I don't think anyone would argue that monetisation is unimportant for a free to play game, but there needs to be a game to play and not just monetisation.  You can't build a healthy long term business on an old shaky foundation.  FOr far to long the base fundamentls of the game have been ignored as laser focus down on turning the game into a casino.

• Operations. CV rework rendered a lot of AI-related internal tools obsolete and made working with AI-aircraft-related stuff very difficult or impossible. Right now we're in the process of removing this obstacle. It's being worked on for many reasons, not just for the sake of Operations, but one of the benefits we will have when this project is done is that we will be able to return some of the old Operations in 2022.
  
  I don't know how the huge number of "miscommunications" on this have occured, but it is only a few weeks ago that Lord of Droid was telling the community that Ops were a thing of the past, that no work was planned, a few weeks only since Mr Conway said the same I believe.  All that on top of repeated statements in non-nda channels in answer to CC questions, a clear, across the board answer that Ops not part of the future of development for the game...... and all of sudden here we are.  How has this consistent, across the board, clear, re-iterated "miscummication" taken place?
   
• Other. There are plenty of other things we know you're interested in, and quite a lot of them are being worked on in different stages of development. We haven't forgotten about things such as secondary builds for cruisers, the update of some old ship models, Tier IV CV tuning, Huron (coming 2022), West Virginia'44 (coming 2023), addressing the chat system, improvements for Ranked Battles, and many other small and not so small changes to the game that will make your experience with it better.

Communications

We are a large, distributed team of over 500 people working across more than 4 countries. Coming from all walks of life, culturally varied and hindered severely by the pandemic from travelling to see each other in person to be able to align on certain matters, we are bound to have organizational challenges in the realm of communication. However, these internal challenges should not be visible, much less influence the player experience. Improving communications is a never-ending process which needs to be evolutionary and not revolutionary, so you will see those improvements incrementally over time in many areas, rather than as a one-time institutional overnight change. But we want to address a few specific points you pointed out in this area.

We have heard the above statement how many times now?  Over how many years?  It doesn't matter how large an organisation is, it will be what it's leaders desire it to be, and without that desire in leadership the changes won't happen.  We haven't seen any changes in this regard, and from my own experience WG has doubled down on previous mistakes rather than any improvement for the better.  More words won't make any change at all.

• Community Contributor Program. When we created our CCTP, our goal was to help talented folks interested in our game create content and grow their channels. Right now it's clear that a lot of things in the Program do not work as they should, which leads to frustration and failed expectations even though some other parts are running well. We will update the Program, both in terms of rules and the way we work with it internally. We expect to have some sort of internal plan and first action points ready in the second half of September, and then proceed with the changes during this Autumn.
  
  The only failed expectations I ever saw were based on expectations WG created and fostered, maintained those expectations over time and then failed to meet them again and again.  Also interested to see if that CC rework contains any more attempts to promote specific creators content above others.  Something that I have realised by part of the CC program is that it is utterly valueless in the long term in comparison to the genuine support offered by my peers, other creators, people that genuinely care for and support each other.  Nothing about the CC program ever came close to the joys of collaborating with people having a mutual interest, because it never felt like WG had a mutual interest.  That was cultural, and it came from the top.
   
• Future of the game. We'd like to offer you a deeper look into the future of the game. Right now we have Devblogs (where we basically announce everything that comes to Supertest) and the Waterline series (quarterly updates). To complement these and expand the horizon of events, we want to share a general roadmap with you, of what you can expect to see in World of Warships in the far future. It will give you an idea of what we want to focus on - but please keep in mind that things can and will change. At the same time, we want to show the progress World of Warships achieves. The game evolves a lot each year and it will make it easier for you to follow what we are doing.
   
• Communications quality. There have been a lot of communication mistakes and incidents on our side recently. While mistakes always happen and we're all human, we acknowledge that we need to improve in this area. We've already launched a full internal review of all related processes. We want fewer mistakes and translation errors, more answers, and productive conversations. We want to improve the way you interact with us in any place, be it Forums, Customer support, Discord servers or official streams. 
  
  A lot, and some of them where WG was found to have breached advertising codes of conduct.  Mistakes where WG directly attacked a creator via a giveaway code.  A culture of mistakes, mistakes on top of mistakes and miscommunications.  It isn't just recent either, and another "review" will get you nowhere, we know it, you know it.  The only way to change.... is to change, just get on with it.
   
• General transparency. We need to work hard on it: on the one hand, we need to pay more attention to the community sentiment, on the other hand, we have to be more transparent and explain our positions. We will create a series of publications to make our development process more transparent and to show the logic behind what we do. For example, players did not understand why the latest torpedo bug took 2 updates to fix, while a CV bug (plane losses in 0.9.9) was fixed almost instantly. They are in fact very different: the CV bug was fixed by quickly adjusting some parameters, while the torpedo bug involved game logic, and even though it was technically fixed within a week, it had to go through all regular quality assurance processes. Deploying such change through a hotfix is extremely risky for the game. This should have been communicated transparently and we will do our best to do so in the future.
• In-depth communications and insights. When it's necessary we will use more specifics and will provide deeper explanations of our decisions. For example, we implemented the system for CvC ship bans, which helps us to keep the meta fresh, and we want to tell you more about how and why we use it, as it's something that our hardcore players are interested in.

 

All of it is just our current, first plan. We will keep looking for other points of interest and challenges. We want to show you our responsibility, care and desire for the game by the way we communicate and through our actions - to make the game better for everyone.

 

A final word on passion and communication. While we are working hard to improve the way we communicate and interact with you, we want to take a moment to address your passion and the way that we communicate with each other. We know that you care about the game a great deal and ask you to remember that there are people - community managers, support staff, developers and volunteers - that read your communications and posts, wherever they may be made. While we as a company certainly need to work on the way we communicate with you, we ask that you treat the people you interact with fairly and with respect. Your voice will carry as much – or more – weight with them if you present your feedback and opinions in a reasoned and constructive way.

I don't condone or encourage any direct attacks on individuals, but WG has a very recent history of direct attacks on individuals, you really need to get your house in order because it is frankly an endemic problem throughtout the organisation.  You manage to stiffle all enthusiasm and excitement about the game with ignorant, rude, dismissive responses time and time again, you mock CC's who make passionate arguments with "spreadsheet says so" or shout them down when you don't want to be wrong... even though you are wrong.  You play a large part in setting the tone, and learning to listen would work a lot better for you than simply spewing out more words.

 

Yours sincerely,

Mr G

As a footnote, why does it matter making a big reply if I don't care?  Well, I did care, I had a great time playing ships in years gone by, most of it before joining the CC program and seeing the cynical side of things from the inside.  For good or for ill I am moving away from the game steadily, not an easy decision as a content creator that made their content solely on WoWs for so long, but I am doing it as someone who is happier now.

The truth is WG threw down a gauntlet in the weeks before we all left, I don't think they believed we would pick it up... we did, and in the process drew the worlds gaming media, and some mainstream media attention to the issues at the heart of the problem.  Has it resulted in significant change?  Time will tell, but for the sake of people that still love the game I hope so, and many of us that left the CC program, and many that didn't, are still watching how this works out.

[99942Apophis]

11 hours ago, Crysantos said:

While our game was never popular among minors

There are a large number of teenage players in Asia.Due to their lack of sufficient recognition and self-control, they are the main component of players who engage in impulsive consumption. Please don't pretend you don't know their existence.

[Amarretto]

33 minutes ago, Hugh_Ruka said:

Ah another Flamu type drama queen ...

 

What they are saying is, they need to have a look at the legal requirements of publishing the drop rates. Some countries may mandate %, some may mandate 1:X while others may have even different requirements. That's what they need to make sure is legal in the whole process. They cannot simply assume % is valid for all jurisdictions and suddenly get government fines because in some countries there are other requirements ? Hard to follow ?

 

Jeeeeez.  

 

So what YOU are saying, is that they need to suddenly, right now, for the first time, CHECK that what they are doing and how they report it is legal, because they maybe don't KNOW if it's illegal, and they don't want to get caught if it is?  Have you any idea how backwards your logic is?  Maybe their lawyers might have been able to brief them on that, what with them being a billion dollar company and all. Maybe before they trade in a country, those lawyers would have CHECKED the laws of that country to ensure compliance, both in interpretation of the law and in reporting their adherence to the same laws.....

 

They shouldn't be 'assuming' anything as far as their legal responsibilities are concerned. They should KNOW, and I am 100% sure they DO know, which is why they are delaying releasing the drop rates.

 

Hard to follow?