Important message to the Player Community

[Adm_Lindemann]

At the beginning of last September, veegee sent a message to the playerbase, after the CC sh!tstorm has happened (https://worldofwarships.eu/en/news/general-news/wows-team-shout-out-to-game-community/) .

The anniversary of these promises are getting closer, let's see, how many of them are in place.

 

Random mechanics. There is not much to see here, the commitment is fulfilled.

 

Drop rates. The issues are starting here from the long commitments list. At the moment, the Ruckus sh!t offers you a lot of items like "30 depot tokens 0/18" - as you can see, there is no percentage at all. It suggests that you can have 18 bundles with 30 depot tokens, although your chance to get the first one is 1/300 (= 0,33334%), get the second one is 1/299 (= 0,334%) and so on. The drop rate would be only correct if all items in the Storekeeper's Packages would be shown as 1/300 and then mentioning that there are X amount of this bundle is available. No, veegee decided to hide the real chances and lie about your real chances.

 

Return of Missouri. I don't know anything about this as I don't have the ship (and definitely will not have until it's available for free).

 

Summer Sale. The main issue here is the "Sale". If you buy the depot tokens in the premium shop, there are two options available: buy 25 with 20% "discount" and another one contains 65 tokens with 20% "discount". Discount means that you are able to prove that such an item have had a higher price and now you are selling it on a lower one. As this is the first time depot tokens introduced in the game, no one can prove that the item have been sold for a higher price, therefore this advertisement can be illegal.

 

Age ratings. No any sh!t have happened here. The gambling rubbish and the double-gambling rubbish - in the Ruckus event case - is still advertised to kids (the most vulnerable part of any society) as the PEGI rating is still 7. Also, the Ruckus event doesn't mention anywhere that if someone would like to get something, he/she needs to do double gambling. Veegee have lied here.

 

More reaction to feedback on ships balance. If you wanna laugh out loud, please feel free. The original article mentioned Zao, Petro and FDR, my experience is the following: +2K health didn't really help Zao. Petro got a huge nerf by raising it's side (even in the current form, such a ship would be unable to sail at all); I have a feeling that the guns have also been nerfed in secret. FDR: no any change at all, if her torp bombers got you, you are dead - and the same applies to the russian scifi/fantasy CVs. These rubbish sh!ts are just implementing the RTS CV back into the current conditions, where you cannot have reliable AA and the CVs are just invulnerable to fire and flooding. Lie.

 

Aircraft Carriers. Ah, one of my "favourite" classes... There are endless discussions about the spotting and interaction with other surface classes in this forum but veegee wants to keep this griefer class as it is, although there were a lot of good recommendations, how to re-rework the class. LIE.

 

New gameplay experiences. The original commitment to introduce other game modes are kept, nothing to see here - but only from this perpective. We can bravely say that subs belong to this point - and I'm quite sure that most of us didn';t want such a horrible game experience. Even a sub or 2 subs in the game significantly crumbles down the battle experience but when you see 1 CV, 2 SSes, 4 DDs - then you know that sitting in a BB or CA means immediate Alt+F4.

 

Maps. Kept, the past little bit less than 7 months was enough to release 1 new map...

 

Operations. No clue, as the commitment is not clear enough here.

 

Other. No clue.

 

Community Contributor Program. No clue as I'm not involved (and there is a little to no chance being involved in it).

 

Future of the game. Kept.

 

Communications quality. This one is definitely a lie. Hey, veegee, not communicating doesn't mean that you have improved it. I have opened a topic (https://forum.worldofwarships.eu/topic/162364-changes-to-submarines-from-development-blog/?tab=comments#comment-4202260) about a difference between a Devblog entry (referred in the previous point by veegee) and the update news in-game. I also see a return of an old, the dirtiest practice of miscommunication: "...The launch of the Ruckus in the Depot event was not as smooth as we wanted it to be: An article went live a bit late and didn't include information on the limited number of purchasable Tokens. We understand that this info could have influenced your decision-making process..." It is the most disgusting tactic and it looks like veegee is returning to this.
Before the verdict, let me cite another example. A fellow captain opened a topic and requested the promised details about Zao and Petro performance (https://forum.worldofwarships.eu/topic/162558-wargaming-broken-promise-release-zao-and-petro-stats/?tab=comments#comment-4211686) . The communication has been directed to @Seraphice but another veegee staff member stepped in and told OP that Zao got a buff. Although the latter is true, this was not the original query - it's definitely a communication issue: possibly @Commander_Cornflakes doesn't understand english clearly or just wanted to divert the communication.

Furthermore: SSes have been introduced on the live server, although no one has requested this from the players. Veegee didn't want to accept the fact that the class is a griefer one and boring to play with, so the testers didn't play the class. Now veegee doesn't want to accept the fact that the class is there for griefers and crumbles down the whole battle experience for all other classes. And now, you can think about the HP buff (they have more HP pool than DDs), the torpedo dispersion buff (mentioned in the first link of this paragraph), their invulnerability to depth charges... and so on.

Lastly, releasing communication about the "miscommunication" of Ruckus event after 1 week and offering account rollback is definitely something that belongs to the dirtiest tactics - it's just disgusting and very sneaky. Taking into account that this has happened during a CB season (where the players already collected steel and coal and whatever), the rollback offer clearly shows that this is intentional, not random.

So this point is definitely a LIE.

 

 

General transparency. Unfortunately, no information released about the real, auditable number of players on a yearly/monthly/weekly/daily basis, so none of the players are able to see whether the game is falling down or raising up from the number of players perspective. Of course, it's an important piece of information for those, who are spending money in the game in any form as they should know, whether it's feasible to invest more money into the game or they will lose that money partially or entirely. Lie.

 

In-depth communications and insights. Lie. 2 CB seasons ago, Petro and Kleber were banned from CB because they were too popular and secured wins. Although this is not exactly true, for the sake of simplicity, accept this for a moment. Petro was still banned from the last 2 CB seasons (including the current one - and I've just read that it has been re-enabled), while superships can come in. So we, the players could have the feeling that Petro is somewhere at Tier 13 as it cannot fight against Tier 11 ships...

 

So, generally, veegee kept those commitments where they didn't have to do anything and the rest of these commitments are empty lies. I think it's clearly showing, how veegee handles their players.

 

PS: I have saved the whole text and made screenshots about it - just to make sure that the lie-tsunami is not continuing...

[Wulf_Ace]

[Wulf_Ace]

Just now, Wulf_Ace said:

You talking about this company? Wargaming? haha

[lovelacebeer]

Surprisingly WG have honoured some of the promises they made there but only as much as they felt they needed too in order to calm things down. 
 

WGs promises are not really promises and more like a politicians pledge ( sounds good but little more than that) for example take when submarines were first announced and WG said:

 

“We’ll add submarines into the live client as a separate battle type, similar to Arms Race, Savage Battle, or Space Battle. The third stage will last several months. This will enable us to make the final touches and adjust the balance of the new type on the live server. When we're done with all these steps, we'll be able to decide on the final fate of submarines.”

 

https://worldofwarships.com/en/news/general-news/submarines-announcement/

 

However a little later we get WG staff saying something extremely different, going from testing and then decision to we have decided and will keep testing:

 

 

[Hades_warrior]

TL;DR

[Aethervoxx]

It is important to be reminded of all the nails in the coffin. 

[Klopirat]

Vor 6 Stunden, Adm_Lindemann sagte:

as you can see, there is no percentage at all.

of course. It isn't possible to give a percentage because the rates change with every bundles received...so

 

is everything needed...

 

[Johnny_Moneto]

Vor 7 Stunden, Adm_Lindemann sagte:

General transparency. Unfortunately, no information released about the real, auditable number of players on a yearly/monthly/weekly/daily basis, so none of the players are able to see whether the game is falling down or raising up from the number of players perspective.

Did they promise that elsewhere? Most certainly not in the article that you linked.

[StraightUpYourA]

There was a war in between that changed everything, they had to leave the development company so i don't think it's a year they can do anything, on the other side premiums and subs keep pumping out so i don't know ...

[MannequinSkywalker]

5 hours ago, Wulf_Ace said:

You talking about this company? Wargaming? haha

Yes the person in the video made that statement in 2015. Back then the game was just released, mechanics were way more primitive compared to today, there were only two BB lines, etc. meaning, he said subs don’t fit in the game back then with certain conditions as they are too small to be visible and they have devastating firepower with low survivability. I don’t know if buffs or nerfs to subs until now are enough to address these concerns because I haven’t played them yet but once they are addressed properly, why shouldn’t the subs be in the game?

[Commander_Cornflakes]

@Adm_Lindemann

Since you pinged me, let's look at some of these topics:

 

Drop rates - The drop rates in the depot "event" are clearly mentioned, as "The drop chances of each individual bundle are the same." (which as far as I remember was the case for all the random bundles).

 

Summer sale - The depot "event" is not the summer sale, and wasn't advertised as such.

 

Age rating - The age rating is made by PEGI, not by WG. It would kind of defeat the purpose if the game creators could just set their own age rating. On the other hand, the Depot bundles in the armory explicitly ask for you to be 18 years or older. (And if someone ignores that, they would probably ignore PEGI as well.)

 

Balance changes - No changes to FDR, really? Check the Change Log at https://wiki.wargaming.net/en/Ship:Franklin_D._Roosevelt

Spoiler

Update 0.10.8:

• Torpedo bomber parameters were changed:
  • Torpedo arming distance increased from 517 to 545 m.
  • Torpedo launch spread increased by 5%.
• Bomber parameters were changed:
  • Maximum damage caused by an HE bomb decreased from 11,200 to 10,600.
  • HE bomb penetration decreased from 67 to 64 mm.
  • Chance of fire being caused by HE bombs decreased from 64 to 60%.

Update 0.10.10:

• Attack aircraft HP decreased from 3,200 to 3,040.
• Dive bomber HP decreased from 3,710 to 3,525.
• Torpedo bomber HP decreased from 3,690 to 3,505.

 

Aircraft Carriers - Quote from the post you linked "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." Where's the lie?

 

Communication - Communication happens between at least two people, and while we as WG can definitely still improve on that topic, maybe you should too. Some of your claims for example are simply not true, or maybe you are intentionally trying to misunderstand things? The submarine topic you linked is such a case. Please check the last part that's in basically every devblog:

"Please note that all information in the development blog is preliminary. Announced adjustments and features may change multiple times during testing. The final information will be published on our game's website."

Where is the problem when exactly that happens and a balance idea from devblog gets reworked according to the results from PTS?

The part where you pinged me is also such a case, the claim made by the poster was simply not correct and I just pointed that out. Asking why a promise wasn't kept last year when the promise was never made that year is a bit weird, isn't it?

 

General transparency - The post you yourself linked mentions nothing about player numbers, where did you take that from?

 

 

And since everyone likes disclaimers in these days: Everything I write is my own opinion and not WG's, I'm not one of the Community Managers and simply write from my own perspective as player.

[Andrewbassg]

10 hours ago, Adm_Lindemann said:

Operations. No clue, as the commitment is not clear enough here.

Well...there could be a commitment, however no communication. Other than brief mentions of working on the AI. Idk why is so hard to tell us a bit more. 

Like "we plan to bring back all operations by the end of the year".

[Yedwy]

Lets not forget removing permaflages without compensation of any kind

[Onsterfelijke]

24 minutes ago, Andrewbassg said:

Well...there could be a commitment, however no communication. Other than brief mentions of working on the AI. Idk why is so hard to tell us a bit more. 

Like "we plan to bring back all operations by the end of the year".

7 minutes ago, Yedwy said:

Lets not forget removing permaflages without compensation of any kind

What we heard from the NA there will be tier difference and the old operations into "new" but not this year.

 

Permacammo will be added and buidlinto your ship so you don't lose them...

 

[Yosha_AtaIante]

Very low quality punch at WG, most of your post is nonsense and you didn't do your research right at all. Also what exactly are you trying to gain with this topic in the first place?

[hellhound666]

49 minutes ago, Commander_Cornflakes said:

And since everyone likes disclaimers in these days: Everything I write is my own opinion and not WG's, I'm not one of the Community Managers and simply write from my own perspective as player.

while it is a step forward from "boring" it does not work like this and till you carry "wg team" sign you are wg (or lesta actually) lol ...

[invicta2012]

11 hours ago, Adm_Lindemann said:

The anniversary of these promises are getting closer, let's see, how many of them are in place.

WG's communication to the playerbase has been a little better. Whether their attitude to CCers (if there are any left) and non-CIS staff has improved, who can say? Last year they seemed like a rotten company to be working for or dealing with. 

 

The money side of the business remains poor. They still have a weak grasp of EU consumer law (the Premium Shop is full of discounted items which have never actually been available at their full price for the required period of time). Age-rating of the game hasn't changed, their labelling of in-game purchases and 18 rated areas is better but - and it's a big but -  their events continue to become ever more opaque, confusing and manipulative. We have gone from "progress faster in this event by buying premium ships" to "progress faster in this event by buying lootboxes to possibly gain premium ships" to "progress faster in this event by buying random bundles to have a low chance of drawing a chance to win a premium ship (and no, you can't just buy it)". The launch of the "Ruckus" event was a shambles, the "French Cruisers" event had to be massaged into acceptability with distributions of Community Tokens, the Black event is just nonsensical. Every time I look at the News page and it announces some new event, I'm reading it thinking "Where's the hustle? Where are they trying to get me to spend more than I would want to?". Can't give them any credit there, I'm afraid, because I'm not seeing any improvement; really, I think they've got worse over the last few months.

 

 

[Karasu_Browarszky]

Well... the game is experiencing many old issues, some gameplay related, some promotional, economic.... there are so many that I wonder if there's anyone at WG who actually keeps track of all them. Do they prioritize any? Do they even see them as issues like us players do?

 

As for gameplay, the biggest problems from my PoV currently are the subs and the 'good olde' (no not really) HE spammers... in smoke... the dodgy spotting mechanics... but I'd be a little happier if the subs were 'fixed' at least. I also don't like the maps we have, we had better maps in rotation in the past and I can't see any good reason for removing those. Also, the Ocean is too rare.

 

The combination of questionable monetizing and dodgy gameplay mechanics makes this game feel like a toxic concoction at times.

 

There are still good battles there, dynamic, well paced and fun... interestingly they have something in common. The 'griefer' ships and boats are missing. It's straightforward positioning, maneuvering and gunnery with no gimmicks. That's the 'winning' recipe and it's IMO what this game originally was like.

 

[ghostbuster_]

2 hours ago, Commander_Cornflakes said:

Summer sale - The depot "event" is not the summer sale, and wasn't advertised as such.

For something to be in sale, it have to be sold for a higher price before. Advertising something, which has never been sold before, as a sale might be illegal but its also scamy af.  Thats the problem with all of these WG "sales". 

Quote

 

Communication - Communication happens between at least two people, and while we as WG can definitely still improve on that topic, maybe you should too. Some of your claims for example are simply not true, or maybe you are intentionally trying to misunderstand things? The submarine topic you linked is such a case. Please check the last part that's in basically every devblog:

"Please note that all information in the development blog is preliminary. Announced adjustments and features may change multiple times during testing. The final information will be published on our game's website."

Where is the problem when exactly that happens and a balance idea from devblog gets reworked according to the results from PTS?

 

Oh there is no problem with that at all. A balance idea getting reworked after being tested on PTS. Thats perfect. (No sarcasm). The problem is this: 

On 6/14/2022 at 6:53 PM, ghostbuster_ said:

So at this point I have a question. You have no problem with introducing unfinished products into live server. For example Subs and reworked CVs. You have no problem with testing everything possible in live server so that you literally turned live server into a testing ground. And your excuses were that PTS not being a healthy testing ground and randoms being the most played game mod that you claim, where you can gain most "data" from.

But you didnt see the need to test this 10-16 degrees dispersion nerf in live server? No no no. There was absulutely no need for that. You need to test s.ht ton of broken stuff in live server but a slight nerf to subs? No no no. For that PTS is enough. For that PTS has became a very healthy testing ground and for that you dont need to "ruin" players experience by testing it in live server. Hypocrites...

PTS can be enough to twist some balance changes apparently. I hope you dont contradict with that in future. 

 

 

 

[Redcap375]

16 hours ago, Youshanai said:

Very low quality punch at WG, most of your post is nonsense and you didn't do your research right at all. Also what exactly are you trying to gain with this topic in the first place?

 

I agree and I've not exactly WG's best fan with some of the stupid money fueled decisions they have made.  In certain aspects they HAVE improved.

 

But considering the bar was set so low, it was hard not too, even by mistake.

 

We don't have to use WG as a punch bag all the time. We as humans tend to focus on negatives more than positive, as it's an inbuilt learning process. WG have opened up ships that were currently out of bounds to those that didn't want to pay, chances of winning stuff are more transparent, cupon's to help get these ships, last season CB's, more balances ships arguably (but some still slip the balance net ££)?

 

Now that doesn't make a saint out of a sinner, as some of their decisions and shoehorning stuff that doesn't fit are beyond stupid, even after their coming clean week. The way they screwed LWM, massive walk out of streamers and CCs and people falling on their own sword within WG. But we have to remember that WG purpose is to earn money and keep shareholder's happy. 

 

Balance and fairless is all well and good, but profits trump it every time. Words and promises are expendable. Balance is done on ship/line popularity and initial money squeeze (would explain but it's basically ££), not because it's actually needed. It's not good business if you are happy with the ships you have. Hence why ships and lines go in and out of favour, most starting strong only to get nerfed later and when they arnt played, buffed again.

 

However cutting their ties from Russia/Belarus due to the ongoing war was a smart move and gets a thumbs up, regardless of their actual reason for it.

 

 

[Yosha_AtaIante]

14 minutes ago, Redcap375 said:

Balance and fairless is all well and good, but profits trump it every time

the issue is that scummy sales and monetization is currently used almost everywhere and far more aggressively than what WG does and WG would be a fool not to also attempt to cash in at the height of lootb9ox and rng monetization before it gets banned by governments. So many others are getting away with it with much larger communities and nothing is being done about it so why should WG be the morally right being that cares for their players more? Its obviously becoming the norm at the moment to screw the customer because the customers clearly signal with their wallets that they like to be screwed

 

 

So WG is actually one of the companies that are truly transparent compared to Blizzard, EA and all the mobile games companies that earn 10x more than WG does and all employ far more outraging monetization.

 

WG would be stupid not to try to cash in too.

[Corpsetaker]

10 hours ago, lovelacebeer said:

Surprisingly WG have honoured some of the promises they made there but only as much as they felt they needed too in order to calm things down. 
 

WGs promises are not really promises and more like a politicians pledge ( sounds good but little more than that) for example take when submarines were first announced and WG said:

 

“We’ll add submarines into the live client as a separate battle type, similar to Arms Race, Savage Battle, or Space Battle. The third stage will last several months. This will enable us to make the final touches and adjust the balance of the new type on the live server. When we're done with all these steps, we'll be able to decide on the final fate of submarines.”

 

https://worldofwarships.com/en/news/general-news/submarines-announcement/

 

However a little later we get WG staff saying something extremely different, going from testing and then decision to we have decided and will keep testing:

 

 

Hello,

 

 

So what we have here is just basically "we don't care how many problems this creates in the game we are not backing down because we spent too much money on it". 

[Corpsetaker]

8 minutes ago, Youshanai said:

the issue is that scummy sales and monetization is currently used almost everywhere and far more aggressively than what WG does and WG would be a fool not to also attempt to cash in at the height of lootb9ox and rng monetization.

Hello,

 

The problem with this is the moment Wargaming turns up that aggression they will not only lose customers but cause governments to speed up the process of following Belgium and banning them. It would not be a smart move as quick gains are never better than long term losses. 

[Yosha_AtaIante]

1 minute ago, Corpsetaker said:

Hello,

 

The problem with this is the moment Wargaming turns up that aggression they will not only lose customers but cause governments to speed up the process of following Belgium and banning them. It would not be a smart move as quick gains are never better than long term losses. 

they have ramped up patch after patch and haven't lost customers yet.

Did you know that 3 years ago this forum predicted a customer loss already which has yet to happen? You know what happened instead? stable player counts.

Also im all for them speeding up the process of banning this.

 

Let then continue and monetize more aggressively so government takes action faster so this crap is gone forever.

 

Don't get me wrong I don't defend this monetization but I'm all for total escalation because without it nothing will ever happen 

[Karasu_Browarszky]

16 minutes ago, Youshanai said:

the issue is that scummy sales and monetization is currently used almost everywhere and far more aggressively than what WG does and WG would be a fool not to also attempt to cash in at the height of lootb9ox and rng monetization before it gets banned by governments. So many others are getting away with it with much larger communities and nothing is being done about it so why should WG be the morally right being that cares for their players more? Its obviously becoming the norm at the moment to screw the customer because the customers clearly signal with their wallets that they like to be screwed

 

 

So WG is actually one of the companies that are truly transparent compared to Blizzard, EA and all the mobile games companies that earn 10x more than WG does and all employ far more outraging monetization.

 

WG would be stupid not to try to cash in too.

 

This is why my original take on WG was so overwhelmingly positive, because I had seen what other game companies were doing, and WG seemed a lot more straightforward and honest by comparison. For reference, we are talking about something like 2013-2017 period here.

 

3 minutes ago, Youshanai said:

they have ramped up patch after patch and haven't lost customers yet.

Did you know that 3 years ago this forum predicted a customer loss already which has yet to happen? You know what happened instead? stable player counts.

Also im all for them speeding up the process of banning this.

 

Let then continue and monetize more aggressively so government takes action faster so this crap is gone forever.

 

Don't get me wrong I don't defend this monetization but I'm all for total escalation because without it nothing will ever happen 

 

Well.. scummy monetization does not necessarily drive me away or make me stop playing, but it does discourage me from spending much on the game. It's kind of balanced with the state of the gameplay meta which is another factor discouraging me from opening my wallet.