Should DD players at least get spread evenly between teams according to their DD stats?

[SolanumTuberosumRex]

2 minutes ago, Spellfire40 said:

Does the teams get players balaced on actually shoting spoted targets too? If you want to have skill based games play Clanbattles. You cant even balace Destroyer types most of the time. Why should they be able to balace by skill ?

Why are you asking me? 😂

[Captn_Crap]

12 minutes ago, PsychoClownfish said:

It's not about the DD's players, it's about balancing out the team they're in.

I don't really know what you mean by that, but I have a question for you:

 

If there are 2 60% players and 2 40% players, how would you distribute them on the teams?

[Hirohito]

4 hours ago, invicta2012 said:

If you want something doing properly... do it yourself. Bring your best DD and make the difference. 

This is the catch though.
I dont play much of BBs or cruisers, although I'd especially like to try getting good at cruisers one day.
But, when my game is headed down the drain after 3 minutes because our DDs decided to rush the cap and smoke up in front of a radar cruiser, I feel like I'm always forced back to playing the DD myself, just for my own sanity's  sake.

 

It's really when I play cruiser/BB that I notice how absolutely atrocious about 90% of random DD players are.

[Spellfire40]

46 minutes ago, Hirohito said:

This is the catch though.
I dont play much of BBs or cruisers, although I'd especially like to try getting good at cruisers one day.
But, when my game is headed down the drain after 3 minutes because our DDs decided to rush the cap and smoke up in front of a radar cruiser, I feel like I'm always forced back to playing the DD myself, just for my own sanity's  sake.

 

It's really when I play cruiser/BB that I notice how absolutely atrocious about 90% of random DD players are.

So are 99 of all players you just dont feel the impact of a crappy BB or cruiser as fast as a DD.or god forbid CV so why exactly penalize DDs with a skill based mm when all the rest can behave as braindead as they like? Heck 30%+ of all players are not able to tap the W key before half their DDs died .. or able to understand what the big circle in epicenter is for.

[SodaBubbles]

There are several non-skill balanced things they could balance, like radar and the distribution of divs, that would make a difference in MM fairness.

But, it's more important to invest dev effort in making the playerbase eat subs and superships. That's become a matter of WG never admitting it was wrong, so they have to waste even more resources on that idiocy to prove they were "right".

[FlyingBender]

Balance not only DDs in MM, but all ships.

[Redcap375]

6 hours ago, invicta2012 said:

If you want something doing properly... do it yourself. Bring your best DD and make the difference. 

 

Hell yeah this ^^

 

Have said this from the very start of Alpha.........DD's WIN GAMES.  Not only with caps but the flow of battle.  Seldom do people push or do much if there is no DD spotting for them.  It's a domino effect. 

 

If you div up, make sure at least one of you is a competent DD player.

 

And they cant even balance the game and MM, never mind DD's in each team.

[Ubertron_X]

My take on this is that before they look at the players they should look at the ships and how the matchmaker is treating them, simply because the intra-class balance in WoWs is not very good. And I am not talking individual ships here, like FdG versus Mushashi but the basic classes the matchmaker uses to create the matches. Currently there is no distinction in between large cruisers, heavy cruisers and light cruisers, and for DDs there is no distinction in between gunboat or sneaky torpedo boat, which I at least find a huge contributor when it comes to team disparity.

 

I don't use XVM or similar mods, however even without knowing each players individual skill, I can often (but not always of course) already tell how the match will probably end by just looking at the line-up and map mode.

[Lootboxer]

14 hours ago, COPlUM said:

The only good solution to this can come from within the community, please don't play destroyers at high tier until you're reasonably good in them in low tier.

The part of a problem is that tactics that kind of worked very well at lower tiers are suicidal at high tiers with radars and 6km hydros and rocket fast EU torps.

You can't also yolo BBs as easy (if at all) CV hunting is a waste of time on big maps, smoke suddenly is useless against radars, etc etc.

You need to learn a lot of a new staff and adapt your game. Those that adapt fast will succeed, those that not will either die first or play too safe spamming 20km Shima torps sitting among own BBs.

[Panocek]

9 hours ago, Bender76048k said:

Balance not only DDs in MM, but all ships.

And only way to actually achieve that is replace all DDs, CVs, BBs etc with single "ship" and let players apply Gearing, Yamato or Minotaur skin to it, with no gameplay changes.

 

The moment you start differentiating ships, some combinations WILL be better than others and players will start gravitating towards these.

 

14 hours ago, MarChil said:

Pls don't ask WG to fiddle with MM. It always makes things worse. We must accept the fact that it's a piece of garbage and deal with it.

 

Its not really going to happen, as WG stated repeatedly Random games are NOT going to have any sort of skill based MM to keep things Random, as game mode name implies.

 

16 hours ago, invicta2012 said:

If you want something doing properly... do it yourself. Bring your best DD and make the difference. 

At the same time, you can play Cossack only so many times before she gets dull too. And to make things worse, the moment you bring any other not-hyper-carry-DD you will moan "if only I had Cossack/Lightning/something similar here, I'd win this"

 

9 hours ago, Redcap375 said:

If you div up, make sure at least one of you is a competent DD player in competent destroyer.

Added relevant part. You can have quality "DD main" but the moment he brings out Tashkent, odds aren't going to be stacked in your favor 

[invicta2012]

10 minutes ago, Panocek said:

At the same time, you can play Cossack only so many times before she gets dull too. And to make things worse, the moment you bring any other not-hyper-carry-DD you will moan "if only I had Cossack/Lightning/something similar here, I'd win this"

Well, they're buffing the Pan-Asian DDs soon, so you can enjoy Radar-equipped ships with Torpedo Reload Booster.... should add some variety.

 

But I understand what you mean about the ship choice. WG could do with having a look at Tier VII DDs, IMHO - if this is the Tier where players are supposed to start learning high tier DD play skills then it's a tough gig - you're generally outspotted (because of the Tier VIII concealment module), out gunned,  and still dealing with low-tier balancing gimmicks like short range/limited weaponry (Jervis's 7km torps, Luca Tarigo's 7km gun range, a total lack of AA on many lines). And there's a fair few older DD lines (like the US ones) which could do with a refresh. Ships like Benson are still very serviceable but not hugely competitive any more, especially as higher tier DDs have got faster, bigger and more gimmick laden over the last year or two. 

[Yosha_AtaIante]

1 minute ago, invicta2012 said:

Well, they're buffing the Pan-Asian DDs soon, so you can enjoy Radar-equipped ships with Torpedo Reload Booster.... should add some variety.

 

But I understand what you mean about the ship choice. WG could do with having a look at Tier VII DDs, IMHO - if this is the Tier where players are supposed to start learning high tier DD play skills then it's a tough gig - you're generally outspotted (because of the Tier VIII concealment module), out gunned,  and still dealing with low-tier balancing gimmicks like short range/limited weaponry (Jervis's 7km torps, Luca Tarigo's 7km gun range, a total lack of AA on many lines). And there's a fair few older DD lines (like the US ones) which could do with a refresh. Ships like Benson are still very serviceable but not hugely competitive any more, especially as higher tier DDs have got faster, bigger and more gimmick laden over the last year or two. 

Why change a working system though?

[GulvkluderGuld]

Random battles is where you (used to) grind lines, it's not supposed to be a competitive mode like ranked or CB or brawls. It's where you grind ship lines without camo if you're strapped for credits and try out hilarious builds and if you are wg, experiment with introducing new classes atm. 

 

I think the MM could use an update but not skill based MM, rather a way to distribution ships based on roles rather than current 3 fiction classes. Khabarovsk and Kleber vs 2 stealth DDs? Lost before the game even begins. All supercruiser lineup vs light cruisers lineup? also lost by the CLs before it begins. 

[Panocek]

3 minutes ago, invicta2012 said:

Ships like Benson are still very serviceable but not hugely competitive any more, especially as higher tier DDs have got faster, bigger and more gimmick laden over the last year or two. 

Uhh, Benson is last US destroyer that can be considered "decently fast" with 38kts speed. Fletcher and Gearing are in 36kts. Benson also combines good firepower with decent concealment of 5.8km, substantial torpedo pack and amazing agility. Only ships that seriously "outcompete" Benson, like everyone else at tier 8, are Brits thanks to their concealment, utility consumables and solid-to-great gunnery. And concealment is a trait that uptiers amazingly well in Randoms.

 

Average speed goes down as destroyer tiers go up, settling at not-so-cozy 35kts in quite a few ships. "Bigger" isn't really a trait you want either, as it makes bigger target (duh) but also reduces maneuvreability

[MarChil]

49 minutes ago, GulvkluderGuld said:

I think the MM could use an update but not skill based MM, rather a way to distribution ships based on roles rather than current 3 fiction classes. Khabarovsk and Kleber vs 2 stealth DDs? Lost before the game even begins. All supercruiser lineup vs light cruisers lineup? also lost by the CLs before it begins. 

This.

[Sir_Sinksalot]

13 hours ago, Bender76048k said:

Balance not only DDs in MM, but all ships.

 

Ideally yes, I think most would want that since there's enough scope between ship types and a 3 tier MM system to always add more than enough variables without adding random abilities to the mix too which gives rise to battles where one team has a lot of good, experienced players while the other team has more weaker and inexperienced players... that's just too much and can absolutely snowball into a total shhhtshow of a battle and that's what we're often seeing.

 

But I'm trying to be more realistic in expectations, which is still a laughable meme tbh. 

 

Here's the reasoning behind my DD focus here, and by all means point fault and hands up I'm not a heavily experienced player here. Actually, it's because I'm not an adept DD player and because I have so much respect for the highly important role they serve for their team is why I have the good taste NOT to play them in PvP modes very often, certainly not at higher tiers. 

 

Imho, and I have no problem saying this and believing this based on my own experiences in battle, DD's are the MOST IMPORTANT element to their team, the keystone(CV's not withstanding and lets not digress in another direction). Kill the DD's and the house of cards, aka their team, comes crashing down. This is not to play down the importance of all classes, they are all important in this rock paper scissors game where one class is supposedly designed to counter another and be weaker to another... but unless both teams have no DD's or unless both teams have a CV for fill the role of a DD, a team suffers more when they lose their DD's than they do if they lost any other class of ship.

 

Sure, losing a cruiser or BB early on in a battle is a bit of a kick in the nuts to a teams efforts and might become a telling factor as the battle develops and progresses into it's latter stages but you won't feel the effects of that loss immediately and can most likely adjust to the loss. BUT, if your DD's aren't up to the task or aren't supported enough and they die early you'll sure as F feel the effects of their loss real soon, almost immediately as the enemy ships disappear while your ships remain spotted by the enemy DD who DIDN'T die! Even as a noob DD player myself I've experienced this pure joy of being one of the surviving DD's against a team without any.

 

So that is why I am focusing on DD's here. Also, balancing DD players to their ability does NOT derail or unreward the time and effort it took for better DD players to get that good, because there's already plenty of scope and differences between the DD's themselves to make genuine variables. Also, I'm not suggesting that every single DD player in the battle has to be of the same ability unless there's only 1 per team. I'm just suggesting to match the teams DD players so that they both have DD players with roughly the same ability but that doesn't mean they all have to be the same ability. In other words, if one team has a unicum and a weak DD player, then the other team will ALSO must have a unicum DD and equally weak DD player. 

[invicta2012]

3 hours ago, Yuu5Eleven said:

Why change a working system though?

The comments on this thread would suggest it *isn't* working very well, though. That's hardly surprising given that DD play has become considerably harder since 0.8.0 - there is just a lot to think about.

 

3 hours ago, Panocek said:

Uhh, Benson is last US destroyer that can be considered "decently fast" with 38kts speed

I did say she was serviceable! But perhaps fifth or sixth choice these days, especially with Hsein Yang being buffed? 

[Panocek]

13 minutes ago, invicta2012 said:

The comments on this thread would suggest it *isn't* working very well, though. That's hardly surprising given that DD play has become considerably harder since 0.8.0 - there is just a lot to think about.

Again, WG will NOT introduce any form of "skill based" into main game mode being all about being RANDOM.

 

14 minutes ago, invicta2012 said:

I did say she was serviceable! But perhaps fifth or sixth choice these days, especially with Hsein Yang being buffed? 

Hsienyang gets TRB, but otherwise she will still be Benson with one turret less? Same torpedoes but with DWT flavor, so while they can smack, I don't think she will turn into prime choice of a torpedobote unless you're into business of dumping 20 fishes every two minutes.

[SolanumTuberosumRex]

17 hours ago, Captn_Crap said:

I don't really know what you mean by that, but I have a question for you:

 

If there are 2 60% players and 2 40% players, how would you distribute them on the teams?

Depends on the rest of the teams. You'd want the TEAMS to be roughly of equal strength. Which was the point of the post you responded to but apparently didn't quite understand.

[Captn_Crap]

22 minutes ago, PsychoClownfish said:

Depends on the rest of the teams. You'd want the TEAMS to be roughly of equal strength. Which was the point of the post you responded to but apparently didn't quite understand.

You don't seem to understand that my response showed what "equal" matchmaking would result in: good players will be punished with bad players in their team and bad players rewarded with good players regardless of class.

 

Example: You're are a 60% player in a 5vs5 game. The other players in the player pool have all 50% WR except one player with 40%. In the current random matchmaking the 40% could be either on your team or on the enemy team. If the MM would force "equal" teams the 40% player would always be on your team to compensate for your strength. Skill wouldn't matter anymore as the matchmaker would make sure that you would always win around 50% of the games.

[COPlUM]

8 hours ago, Lootboxer said:

The part of a problem is that tactics that kind of worked very well at lower tiers are suicidal at high tiers with radars and 6km hydros and rocket fast EU torps.

You can't also yolo BBs as easy (if at all) CV hunting is a waste of time on big maps, smoke suddenly is useless against radars, etc etc.

You need to learn a lot of a new staff and adapt your game. Those that adapt fast will succeed, those that not will either die first or play too safe spamming 20km Shima torps sitting among own BBs.

The game is designed to become harder as you go up the tiers, everything hits harder. This is especially true for DDs. Wargaming did a good job of designing it in such a way that you learn as you go, you're introduced to some mild radar at T7, bit more at T8 etc. The problem is everyone is rushing to T10, they stay there, learn bad habits and never unlearn them. This is a problem for every class, but it's a huge problem for DDs. If you play DDs at T10 the way you would at T6, you're gonna have a bad time, about 2 minutes worth of bad time

[HMS_Kilinowski]

On 5/11/2022 at 5:00 PM, Sir_Sinksalot said:

Anyway, while there's a great argument to be made for teams to have ALL players balanced somewhat evenly between them based on their stats with the particular class of ship they are currently playing in that battle, I feel the consequences of having very imbalanced player skills with DD's between teams is just detrimental. By contrast, sure, a good and bad cruiser or BB player will start translating into a telling difference across the course of a long battle but not almost immediately as is the case when a team losing all their DD players almost instantly.

 

What you suggest would balance out winrates for DDs around 50%. It would imply there is no reward in playing well as a DD, as you cannot get the 50%-baseXP-bonus more often than a bad player. Both would get it ~50% of their battles. If, as a DD player I do not get rewarded for winning my battles more often than if I play bad, what's the point of me playing the objective? I would just do what every Thunderer-main does, farm for my selfish benefit and not give a rats rectum about supporting my team.

 

Your suggestion implies that players of all other classes would continue to get rewarded for winning, while DDs wouldn't. That would lead to a hazardous self-selection of good, win-oriented players away from DDs towards most likely CVs and radar cruisers, i.e. the classes where they still can impact the outcome of the battles. Subsequently, bad and selfish players would turn towards playing DDs, as only then they would be matched against an equally bad mirror. Is this the kind of player you want to play DD in order to fix what you see as a problem, DDs dying too early?

 

In this game you got 2 ways to go. Either you balance by skill, then players must get an incentive to play with a higher skill penalty by means of getting some multiplier in terms of XP and credits. Or you leave it as it is and the reward for playing well is winning more often and getting higher rewards for better performance. Anything else is a flawed concept.

[Redcap375]

10 hours ago, Panocek said:

Added relevant part. You can have quality "DD main" but the moment he brings out Tashkent, odds aren't going to be stacked in your favor 

 

Better him in a tashkent than a 34% window licker in even a smaland. 

 

I'll take the tashkent...The red stats I have seen in tier 10 games from DD players will make you wanna pull your eyes out.  The very first thing I wanna know on the load up is how good the DD players are, that then gives you a good indication how the battle is going to go. 

[Sir_Sinksalot]

3 hours ago, HMS_Kilinowski said:

 

What you suggest would balance out winrates for DDs around 50%. It would imply there is no reward in playing well as a DD, as you cannot get the 50%-baseXP-bonus more often than a bad player. Both would get it ~50% of their battles. If, as a DD player I do not get rewarded for winning my battles more often than if I play bad, what's the point of me playing the objective? I would just do what every Thunderer-main does, farm for my selfish benefit and not give a rats rectum about supporting my team.

 

 

Possibly but there are far more variables in a battle that cannot be ever factored for, that would naturally alter what one might expect to translate into a 50% winrate over time. For example if there's 4 or more DD's per battle, which certainly isn't uncommon, their tiering might be different so the two "better" DD's players might feature at different tiers. Then there's the DD themselves, lots of scope in that class, torpedo boats, gunboats, high camo, brawlers, high hp, low hp and have different tricks. Not only that but their teammates are all still randomly drawn variables so while the DD players might be balanced, you will still have imbalances throughout the rest of the teams players along with imbalances and variables that come by different types of ships possessing different attributes. There's also CV's and now subs but lets not go there, worth a quick mention though. 

 

So just because DD players might be better or worse and balanced between teams accordingly, this is only a small peace of a very large puzzle. But by balancing DD players I would hope this translates into less complete shhht-shows we often encounter purely because one team has better, and perhaps only slightly better DD players on one team and I think most players are experienced enough to tell the difference between bad DD plays and bad teammate support... like when we see weakish high camo torpedo boat pick a gunfight at the very start with a low camo brawler DD with way better guns and hp he can never hope to outgun. Or the DD player that choses to spend the entire battle shooting from behind his teams cruisers instead of spotting since his team is getting farmed to death by the enemy team who's DD player IS spotting. A DD player that spots a radar cruiser but doesn't know its a radar cruiser and sits in the cap, soon dead unsurprisingly... and so on.

 

No it's too important a roll, the most important imho, just to lump randomly skilled players into teams with. If there's not CV, which most players would be happy about(I don't actually mind tbh), then whatever team loses their DD's first, especially early on as is often the case, is going to be heavy favorites. Now like I said, even balancing DD players based on their DD rating will still not stop this, one dies, the other doesn't, depending on the support they get, the DD's they're playing, RNG bs, and a whole lot in between so we will still generally always end up with one team having a DD or two while the other doesn't but I would hope that manifests much later in what's hopefully a long and enjoyable battle, when team numbers are massively reduced and there's better countering plays to be made. Just to reduced the frequency in which we get these early DD on one team and not the other team manifestations. 

[Sir_Sinksalot]

3 hours ago, HMS_Kilinowski said:

 

In this game you got 2 ways to go. Either you balance by skill, then players must get an incentive to play with a higher skill penalty by means of getting some multiplier in terms of XP and credits. Or you leave it as it is and the reward for playing well is winning more often and getting higher rewards for better performance. Anything else is a flawed concept.

 

If needs be, adjust the XP and bonuses accordingly. In fact, what if DD's were given huge amounts of XP and credits for spotting assist? Would DD's be more inclined to passively(or depending on the DD occasionally actively spot)? Now you might say that would discourage aggressive DD plays, well maybe in ways but aggressive doesn't mean better and passive scouting is still risking and in a way also aggressive but you have to think and formulate how you're going to go about your business a little more and I don't see how that's a bad thing. 

 

Anything else would be a flawed concept you say?

 

Funny you should say that because our experienced WoWS devs who mull over stats and players feedback and such have taken all that information and created the following scenarios for the current brawl. Apparently this is balanced according to our devs, a reflection of players feedback and very enjoyable as such. Me requesting DD players to be skill balanced evenly per team? Wow, that's a far cry from this.

 

Try 2 DD's on one team while the other team has no DD's at all.

 

 

Not enough imbalanced fun where one team is blind and farmed to death? Not at all, lets ramp it up a notch, try FOUR DD's on one team and ZERO on my team... of course my team obviously.

 

 

Oh come on Sinksy! That was just very unlikely scenarios, try another battle! It will be better this time I promise! But no, no it won't be better.