Operations are a hot mess now

[ARE_YOU_HUMAN]

Hermes is a big sunk cost fallacy simulator, reminding us the horrors we have been going through for years. Cherry blossom is a skill wall (yeah you can just dodge, but up to 5 dds skill walling you everywhere? take the ijn cruisers into account too) and akizuki simulator. And some other small annoyances in other operations.

[LiveWire___]

I'm not sure what you're doing bud, but I win cherry blossom more often than I don't. 

[LukkaiCH]

Cherry Blossom basically needs two things.

- Ships that can kill DDs fast enough for the initial ones to not launch twice and at least one regimental post to survive.

- At least one BB with enough range to not have to (fully) drive into the killbox at the end (North Carolina is perfect. Massachusetts should do. Would need to check for others.)

If those two are fulfilled and you're not saddled with complete imbeciles, you will win Cherry Blossom. That is not to say you can't win without the second, but having it around makes it basically a guaranteed win.

 

Hermes is hard, but absolutely doable. As long as the team members stick to the flurgen mission objective! And that is escorting that BB. So one BB to the left of it, one to the right, shielding it from torpedoes and too much gunfire. Everyone else keeping close enough to support them and sink anything that's coming too close. And in the final push, go in front with a few ships to trigger the DD torpedoes before they target Ruan. Then if necessary ram the DDs out of the way so that it can pass. You do that, you will win. Not guaranteed as with Cherry Blossom, but your chances will be very high.

[Shirakami_Kon]

I don't know man... Maybe it's because Massachussets is my main BB pick for scenarios if I jist don't pick a CL to begin with, but my Massachussets almosts clears Cherry Blossom by itself alone. And well, a CL just feasts in Cherry Blossom. I guess you need a team of complete monkeys to lose that one.

 

The scenario I find that some people seem to struggle a lot how to handle for some reason though is Aegis. The first group seems to be some sort of hellish spawns for... A surprising amount of the playerbase, because I notice people likes to go behind the island to the south next to spawn instead of fighting them and then they just get pushed and picked up one by one because they did nothing about it. I don't know what the deal is but I'm seeing it a lot, is it just me?

[arttuperkunas]

I don't recognise this. Cherry Blossom isn't hard at all. Hermes is doable if you have a few players who know what they're doing. Aegis on the other hand is much harder than before, very difficult to get 5 stars.

 

But overall, I don't agree with this take at all. Operations are in a better place than they have been in a long time.

[arttuperkunas]

34 minutes ago, Shirakami_Kon said:

The scenario I find that some people seem to struggle a lot how to handle for some reason though is Aegis. The first group seems to be some sort of hellish spawns for... A surprising amount of the playerbase, because I notice people likes to go behind the island to the south next to spawn instead of fighting them and then they just get pushed and picked up one by one because they did nothing about it. I don't know what the deal is but I'm seeing it a lot, is it just me?

It's not just you. Aegis clearly was not properly rebalanced when operations changed, several elements of it are IMO visibly broken (like the DD in the beginning smoking too soon, the second group breaking through and killing the liberty ships, general balance of ships). It's not just hard, but depending on your luck, potentially quite unfair.

[RenamedUser_92906789]

26 minutes ago, arttuperkunas said:

It's not just you. Aegis clearly was not properly rebalanced when operations changed, several elements of it are IMO visibly broken (like the DD in the beginning smoking too soon, the second group breaking through and killing the liberty ships, general balance of ships). It's not just hard, but depending on your luck, potentially quite unfair.

 

@Seraphicesaid it's fine, practically too easy....

[arttuperkunas]

25 minutes ago, RenamedUser_92906789 said:

 

@Seraphicesaid it's fine, practically too easy....

Well that's just plain wrong. Aegis used to be too easy. On the other hand, Newport was very hard.

 

After the rework, Aegis is somewhat difficult (and very difficult to get 5 stars), whereas Newport isn't that hard anymore.

[invicta2012]

I played a few last night (including a GZ Secondary build in Cherry Blossom, Flandre in Hermes, Cheshire in Narai) and all was well. No Aegis though, which was a relief, as that's a toughy and not well balanced at the moment esp. If anyone is bringing a slow Tier Vi BB. 

[Panocek]

1 hour ago, RenamedUser_92906789 said:

 

@Seraphicesaid it's fine, practically too easy....

Operations are easy, when players participating play with screen turned on...

[lup3s]

Most Ops are fine imo, it's the playerbase that needs reworking

 

Though there are still some bugs here and there; yesterday had a new one on Defense of Newport Station but it didn't stop us from getting a victory.

[NewHorizons_1]

The balance of Cherry Blossom is just fine. A tough challenge, but certainly possible to complete the mission objective in the time allotted.

Hermes is better than it used to be (when the BBs bots dropped everything to target a cruiser as soon as it was detected) but I find the result less certain.

I still isn't a operation I look forward to.

 

Aegis is the problem one at the moment. I'm not sure if it's a change to the bot AI, the upscaling of tiers (when there's T8's in your team) or the player base.

But when you're in a cruiser it can be quite hard to survive even past the second wave.

 

 

[LukkaiCH]

Vor 5 Stunden, Shirakami_Kon sagte:

The scenario I find that some people seem to struggle a lot how to handle for some reason though is Aegis. The first group seems to be some sort of hellish spawns for... A surprising amount of the playerbase, because I notice people likes to go behind the island to the south next to spawn instead of fighting them and then they just get pushed and picked up one by one because they did nothing about it. I don't know what the deal is but I'm seeing it a lot, is it just me?

I actually like to run around that island of the middle range, just South of spawn at full speed. Since it allows me to catch the first group in a crossfire. Taking a cruiser or a BB with speed, it also is done quickly and does not actually take you out of the fight. And afterwards I'm in a position to cross the rim of the Eastern islands, providing me with a position to crossfire again on the second group and escorts. And from where I can quickly move between the freed escorts and the last attackers if necessary. Also the islands provide me the chance to go into cover for a few moments should I get focused too hard (which in turn means my teammates aren't focused, so that's okay).

 

But then I guess the key words here are "at full speed" and "go around". And that I use it as beginning of quick and usually forward positioning. No hiding of any kind involved.

[Ronchabale]

Cherry blossom, hmm, I disagree

Aegis and even Killer Whale are trickier but as usual it all depends on the team

[invicta2012]

Well, I fancied a quick go at Ops and Aegis was what came up.

 

Found this little Japanese DD (Shinonome B) in a Black Friday crate a little while ago and fancied relieving the golden age of Fubuki. A good result but a tough game - finally getting sunk drawing fire from seven different ships (including some hyper-accurate Mogami HE spam).  Attempts at helping some team members with smoke screens etc were roundly ignored but had a good Mogami and Bismarck to see things home (compliments given).

 

 

 

[bai7200]

The main issues with operations is the players that simply refuse to play as a team, or is playing worse then the Bot`s they are supposed to kill.

[lafeel]

"Now"? News flash: they always have been.

[Seraphice]

On 12/17/2022 at 9:20 AM, RenamedUser_92906789 said:

 

@Seraphicesaid it's fine, practically too easy....

Please do not twist the words I said.

What I said was that some players are reporting that the operation is (still) too easy, and others are reporting that the operation is too hard.
I also already mentioned a large factor in this: new players.
Before the changes to operations, most of the people playing operations played a lot of operations, but now that operations has become more popular, there are more people playing operations who have less experience in the game in general, and less experience with the operations themselves.

And as we mentioned in a recent devblog, we are considering adding different difficulty levels for operations as future action point.

 

Happy holidays Captain!
~Sera

[Ronchabale]

29 minutes ago, Seraphice said:

And as we mentioned in a recent devblog, we are considering adding different difficulty levels for operations as future action point.

 

Happy holidays Captain!
~Sera

 

As long as it doesn´t effect queue times too much

 

 

[Ubertron_X]

On 12/17/2022 at 10:52 AM, Panocek said:

Operations are easy, when players participating play with screen turned on...

Though I would say that most players play with their screens turned on, one cruical requirement of operations is not dying early and randomly. And anybody who plays any game mode (including random battles) knows that not dying early is apparently not something that player captains get taught at their local naval academies.

[BlackYeti]

Only problem with Cherry is people IGNORING THE AIRFIELDS, on the other hand Aegis is the hardest one now to do with a random team, nearly impossible to 5star. I think the bot HP and damage buffs need to go away and see how it goes then. I hate these artificial buffs because they are counterintuitive and disqualify any ship knowledge a player could previously have. I want to expect a citadel from a Colorado to hurt me for 12k and not 15... @Seraphice could you pass this suggestion higher up?

[Seraphice]

1 hour ago, Ronchabale said:

 

As long as it doesn´t effect queue times too much

 

 

We'll have to see in due time. For now it is only a consideration.

 

3 minutes ago, BlackYeti said:

Only problem with Cherry is people IGNORING THE AIRFIELDS, on the other hand Aegis is the hardest one now to do with a random team, nearly impossible to 5star. I think the bot HP and damage buffs need to go away and see how it goes then. I hate these artificial buffs because they are counterintuitive and disqualify any ship knowledge a player could previously have. I want to expect a citadel from a Colorado to hurt me for 12k and not 15... @Seraphice could you pass this suggestion higher up?

This is at the moment the balancing for higher tiers works.
It is possible this will change if we introduce various difficulty levels and more tiers, but for 'tis what it is.

 

Happy holidays Captain!
~Sera

[NewHorizons_1]

1 hour ago, Seraphice said:

And as we mentioned in a recent devblog, we are considering adding different difficulty levels for operations as future action point.

Does that include changing the matchmaker to try to form up same tier teams?

[Seraphice]

8 minutes ago, NewHorizons_1 said:

Does that include changing the matchmaker to try to form up same tier teams?

I'm afraid I have no details to share on this at the moment - there are no plans set in stone about this yet.

 

Happy holidays Captain!
~Sera

[BlackYeti]

27 minutes ago, Seraphice said:

We'll have to see in due time. For now it is only a consideration.

 

This is at the moment the balancing for higher tiers works.
It is possible this will change if we introduce various difficulty levels and more tiers, but for 'tis what it is.

 

Happy holidays Captain!
~Sera

Still IMO it's better to tweak ship tiers, upgrade Myoko to Mogami etc. instead of buffing tech tree ships to levels unachievable and unexpected by players.