Some interesting info around the world

[Admiral_H_Nelson]

 

 

Actually, i think most of the regular forum members read this thread and in particular, your translations!

We owe you a lot because nobody else does this and also because WG staff don't communicate with us about game development.

Personally i read whatever you translate and appreciate your effort and the (precious) time you take to do that. Cheers!

 

 

 

 

+1. Perfectly put.

 

In particular, this point cannot be made firmly enough.

"We owe you a lot because nobody else does this and also because WG staff don't communicate with us about game development."

 

Why is it that EU people find out useful and important information only because we are lucky to have someone with the skills to translate items from the Russian forum?

Why can't Wargaming do this translation and publish it on the EU forum?

 

Wargaming's Head Office communications with their paying public in the EU are appalling. The EU staff keep us up to date as much as they can but lets face it they themselves are in the dark (and I don't think that any of them speak Russian)

[Carnotzet]

This is the next part of the thread with mal_h (Malik).

 

A player writes: "it seems that developers-programmers seem to be much more active since Malik lately spoke on the forums"

 

Answer from Iwao (game designer):

"I just want to remind you that there aren't only programmers working in our firm.

Let's then go back to the topic at hand.

I cannot speak for everyone, but many developers regularly visit the forums on their own and not only when there are serious problems. And when a serious problem arises, we search for a way to get rid of it. The bothersome thing about it is that when we solve a problem, it usually leads to the discontentment of those who the problem helped.

Take, for instance, invis firing. For some, it was and still is a blast, but the implementation of hydroaccoustic search nerfed the ships that were used to fire from smoke one way or another. We all remember that, before their release, several Soviet DD's had a significant invis firing window, which impacted negatively on the gameplay. It's the same with launching torpedoes from stealth at high tiers, which leads to the so-called "torpedo soup" (or torp walls) since the range of torpedoes if far greater than detection range. The safety windows is tremendous, which leads to the belief that DD's wreak havoc and stay clear of what could destroy them. In fact, several DD's get obliterated when facing an advancing cruiser, but in order to do that, cruisers need to advance to the front line which isn't safe for them since they get obliterated by BB's there. As for BB's, without cruisers, they fall prey to CV's, against which they aren't as efficient as cruisers.

All of this is only a hypothesis and it requires thorough research, however, there is a little drawback. There aren't a lot of players at high tiers compared to mid or lower tiers, thus the statistics regarding high-tier ships we need to draw conclusions is collected very slowly.

 

Please excuse me for my digression but I wanted to explain that. Do we read the forums? Yes! We read them and try to do it regularly but by the time we examine the consequences of the problems raised there and find their causes, seas have already risen and fallen several times. Do we act upon your feedback? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Feedback is an open account of its author's experiences, who shows in written form that something is wrong with the statistics, for instance.

 

Finally, not all problems are solved painlessly, those who need to have a tooth removed will prove it to you, but we'll be as gentle as possible. 

 

PS. Regarding the excuse saying that we don't want to change, online projects need to change radically quite regularly otherwise they stagnate. Too frequent changes (particularly drastic changes) will often cause a negative response from the playerbase since people prefer stability and comfort."

 

[Takru]

I do wonder if they have a look at other forums, too. The Redshirts have told us that they do collect feedback and send it over to Russia, but I wonder how that process looks like in practice and whether or not it actually adds something to the thought processes of the development team in general.

[Comrad_StaIin]

I do wonder if they have a look at other forums, too. The Redshirts have told us that they do collect feedback and send it over to Russia, but I wonder how that process looks like in practice and whether or not it actually adds something to the thought processes of the development team in general.

 

like that

WGEU:lets look at the forum

Forum:whine whine whine

WGEU:Hm ok nothing intersting

WGRU:whats going on an WGEU

WGEU:nothing special

WGRU:ok

[Takru]

 

like that

WGEU:lets look at the forum

Forum:whine whine whine

WGEU:Hm ok nothing intersting

WGRU:whats going on an WGEU

WGEU:nothing special

WGRU:ok

 

There's some threads and posts which are at odds with your 'idea'. Nevertheless, I'd applaud any effort to make the processes behind the scenes a tad more transparent. I don't want to be in bcc of all their mails (well...), it'd be good to give people a bit more insight, it might even help getting them to understand one or two things... Well, that's naive me speaking :-/

[Takeda92]

I like how this guy try to explain with nice words how they handle forum feedback, unlike a certain "your feedback is a grain of salt" dev around our forum.

[D7v]

 

like that

WGEU:lets look at the forum

Forum:whine whine whine

WGEU:Hm ok nothing intersting

WGRU:whats going on an WGEU

WGEU:nothing special

WGRU:ok

AHahaha Exactly Checked US forum much less whine there and more constructive posts with less toxic members. Here put an opinion and toxic members come out of nowhere and make cynical comments so that they look interesting. And others just whine rng this that stealth etc. Cryboys and toxic membrs are plenty here.

[Takeda92]

AHahaha Exactly Checked US forum much less whine there and more constructive posts with less toxic members. Here put an opinion and toxic members come out of nowhere and make cynical comments so that they look interesting. And others just whine rng this that stealth etc. Cryboys and toxic membrs are plenty here.

 

I wouldn't say NA forum is any more constructive either.

[Carnotzet]

More on the same topic.

This time by Turing_Bombe (GD Analyst):

He responds to a player saying that developers often give contradictory answers to one question.

"Well, if the developers have different positions, they will give different answers; if there isn't a specific guideline established by the company (diverting from this guideline will lead to the boss kicking your butt). Fortunately, I haven't heard of any team meetings teaching us "how to respond on the forums".

 

A game is a complex world and none of the developers knows everything about it. Generally nobody. We are all human after all and each of us has his own opinion on certain things. Let's take a specific case: what causes battles to be drawn out until the end of the timer (20min)? If you ask the people who are in charge of game modes and maps, their expertise will focus on what was the map, in what mode and where did the ships sail. If you ask the people in charge of ship trees, they will see look at it from their own point of view (battleships are a bit too large, guns are slightly weak, players are firing at each other for too long without destroying each other). In order to draw precise conclusions, we need to spend a lot of time on analysing our data. And again, in order to perform an analysis, we need to understand what we need to look at; is it a map problem or a balance problem, for instance. We have a list of hypotheses."

 

"Not every question is worth exploring. Examining it and finding its place in a larger mosaic requires resources in the form of man-hours. And there's not always the guarantee it will give positive results. We can ask ourselves a huge amount of different questions.

"What percentage of the player base uses mods?"

"Does the age of the players taking part in team battles differ from the age of the player base in general?"

"After how many consecutive defeats do players quit the game?"

We can ask ourselves dozens of questions like this. Analysts are necessary to answer these questions, the director needs to understand which questions need an answer for him to make decisions."

 

A player asks : "Why is it so problematic to tell us where the game is heading for the next six months? For instance, you can just say that "we will add weather effects" and everyone is instantly happy."

 

Turing_Bombe: "Is it better for developers to say something that could eventually not be implemented? Regarding weather effects, it's been in development for a long time. Now, it's clear we can release it to the public. Incidentally, in all the surveys where we ask players what  they want to improve maps, the most requested feature is "adding weather effects". Well, the developers know that what will improve map immersion the most is adding weather effects. Rather than, let's say, a flock of flying seagulls screeching in your ear. But I, for instance, want to hear seagulls. There isn't enough seagulls. Developers, you're reading this topic, add seagulls. I want to look in my binoculars and see a giant seagull and hear how its screeches.

 

For a lot of features that are being developed, we generally need to see if they can be shown to the public first. Or, for whatever reasons (for instance, it uses too much resources) a feature is released but not at its full extent, players won't be so pleased because the reality doesn't meet their expectations. And in the end, developers will be hated because they "didn't keep their promises".

Naturally, it's an active work which should tell us rather early if we can meet our deadlines. Which in turn will allow us to make an early announcement to the public."

[Takru]

What he and mal_h wrote actually is bloody obvious, yet often forgotten. People can come up with all kinds of ideas and the more people you get involved, the more mutually exclusive ideas you get. Add to that the lack of manners by a portion of the community and you get a quickly deteriorating environment to work with.

May be I'm just old, but in my experience, trying to be polite to people, especially when you're the who wants something from them, usually pays off. At least you more often than not get a polite response, even if it's an eloquent version of "no".

[D7v]

 

I wouldn't say NA forum is any more constructive either.

 

I havent written there but here the community is extremely toxic with high egos. Reading some threads there I did not had the same feeling. Should sped some time on RU & Asian forum too to see behaviors of different cultures on same topic it is interesting. 

[Takru]

 

I havent written there but here the community is extremely toxic with high egos. Reading some threads there I did not had the same feeling. Should sped some time on RU & Asian forum too to see behaviors of different cultures on same topic it is interesting. 

 

I wonder how many different cultures you find on the RU Server or the NA Server for that matter. EU really is a mixture of a lot of different countries and cultures, wouldn't know about Asia, though. Games such as this are probably extremely interesting for social research ;-)

 

 

[piritskenyer]

 

I wonder how many different cultures you find on the RU Server or the NA Server for that matter. EU really is a mixture of a lot of different countries and cultures, wouldn't know about Asia, though. Games such as this are probably extremely interesting for social research ;-)

 

 

 

Funny you should say that,  friendof mine actually considered doing his thesis in sociology on online players, but then he went with something else. I't's a nice thing to research thouh.

[Kurbain]

 

You can post my translations wherever you like as long as it's credited. The more people can benefit from them, the better. At the moment, I don't have the time to post on all the different forums and sites so if you (or anybody else) wants to do that, I'd be delighted. Maybe when my time schedule is a little less constrained, I will be able to do it myself but I can't tell when.

 

I just posted one of your translations to Reddit but got informed shortly afterwards that somebody is already busy doing that.

 

I might create an account for the American forum and instead take care of providing the translations there.

[Trigger_Happy_Dad]

 

I just posted one of your translations to Reddit but got informed shortly afterwards that somebody is already busy doing that.

 

I might create an account for the American forum and instead take care of providing the translations there.

 

Why bother with Reddit?

 

You'll just get downvoted if you write something informative / interesting / helpful there while some "funny" guy posting some lame joke gets upvoted to heaven. ;)

 

(for example that thread on reddit about the Nagasaki port Mod? disgusting jokes about nuked Kindergarten Kids in Nagasaki get all the upvotes while the guy posting the Mod gets downvoted)

[fnord_disc]

It isn't even Nagasaki...

[Takeda92]

Takru did it on the NA forum too.

[WhiskeyWolf]

Some information coming from mal_h (general manager)

BEWARE, WALL OF TEXT INCOMING

The following discussion is very interesting (and quite different from what we're used to) but contains a lot of text which takes me forever to translate. If you want to see more news about this topic, let me know. If nobody is interested, I don't want to spend precious time on translations nobody will read. Cheers!

 

The thread is about the lack of communication from WG developers. In the thread, a player compares WG with a bortsch (kind of soup) company. "It'd be as if all your customers told you every day you need to put less carrots or more onions in your soup. Would you react after every comment? Well it's the same for WG".

 

This is mal_h's answer:

"The analogy is rather good, but at the same time, we don't want to offend anyone. Players make suggestions out of interest for the game. I instantly discard some of the suggestions I read....I'd like to explain in details why the suggestion cannot be accepted, and could even be more harmful than helpful to the game. I start to write, but then I realize that the person I'm writing to will not understand what I'm talking about and will only get irritated thinking that I'm showing off. Let me make an analogy with the "Orange revolution". It happens when problems inherent to a society are artificially inflated and instead of trying to solve them, the society plunges into self-destruction. In those situations, there are always opposing groups. In this case, there are two groups, one from Ukraine, one from Russia.

They are incurable. They don't need anything or report to anyone, they just need destruction. They don't know what it is to work to earn money. It is even more frequent on forums as people are hidden behind a nickname.

It is important to see this and understand it. They destroy game communities, not on their own, but by manipulating sensitive persons. That is why we have a hard time discerning who is who. Whom is it worth speaking to, who isn't. That's why it's hard (sometimes even useless) to speak to people who are overwhelmed with negative emotions. When the forum finally reaches the point where any dialogue turns into a slaughter, who will be the victims? The constructive part of the community will be the first victim. And no Community manager or developer can do anything about it, no matter how hard they try. Only those who really like the game, those who understand what is happening and can make the difference between the terminators and the victims, will be able to bring the forums back from the point of no return.

I'd like to change your Bortsch analogy into an airplane analogy. The game is at least as complex as an airplane. And experienced passengers' advice is valuable but not always implemented. We gladly listen, think, speak and explain. But without your help, we can't make the difference between passengers and terrorists ready to blow themselves up. You're the only ones able to do that. 

By the way, here's a video showing the evolution of WoWs over the course of its many versions. [it's in Russian but it shows some nice screenshots for those who don't know how it looked like before]. VIDEO"

 

A player's answer to that : "It's a good analogy (with the plane) but to know how passengers can be more comfortably seated, you need to ask them and not decide for them. For instance, nothing was done or is planned for the interface (I'm not talking about TB, RB functionalities). And the old one doesn't work that well."

 

mal_h: "I will likely trigger a new wave of angry mob but I'll try to explain. Be patient and try to hear me out. Let's keep the plane analogy that works rather well.

You pretend it's obvious "passengers know best how they can be more comfortably seated". Well let me take the role of the passengers (we all were once in their shoes), how can we be seated more comfortably?

This will be a perfect analogy for the suggestions found on the forums, I will be the passengers and you, the aircraft developer.

1. There should be enough room for tall, small and corpulent passengers.

2. There should be enough room for passengers to stretch their legs and adjust their chair in a lying position.

3. Air conditioning and light switches needs to be easily and comfortably reached by tall, small, corpulent and thin passengers.

4. Every seat should be near a window and the window should be centered so the passenger can easily look out of it.

5. Seats must have armrests and an adjustable headrest, and preferably be equipped with heating/air conditioning and massage. As usual they should fit tall, small, corpulent or thin passengers.

6. Seats must be next to an aisle so passengers can get up or sit down without disturbing others.

7. The heating and air conditioning system need to provide specific air humidity, temperature and pressure.

8. Spaces between rows must be large enough so passengers can easily pass each other (including corpulent passengers).

9. Luggage compartments must be large enough to contain all types of luggage.

10. Cumbersome luggage should be loaded and unloaded quickly and should not have any damage, be placed on top of each other or be dirtied.

11. Windows should be large enough and preferably square for passengers to see outside easily. Preferably, it should have a sliding panel to have some ventilation.

12. Seats for children should be separated from the others with soundproof partition.

13. Passengers should have the option to choose their neighbour - man or woman, nationality, religion.

14. Meals on board should take into account each passenger's health, tastes, traditions, including religion. Meals of every kind should be provided, kosher, halal, gluten free, vegetarian, even human meat for cannibals.

15. Obese people should be able to expand their seat to a size which they're comfortable with.

16. Flight cost should be appropriate for all passengers, preferably free.

17. Purchase of a premium flight should provide a flight twice as fast and its price should be affordable for all social classes.

Well, with all the suggestions I got from the passengers, there should be 78 points in total but I think that 17 is enough.

 

Now tell me, as an airplane developer, how you will fulfill all of those wishes and if you can do it by tomorrow?

And tomorrow, I'll start to complain about your laziness, your stupidity and your greed.

 

I'd like to mention two areas in which, according to my long experience, everybody seem to be an expert: 1. Interface. 2. Game design.

A few words about the interface.

The interface is how the game interacts with you, in other words, it's the game itself. In order to change it, we usually have to change the game. Let's take the plane analogy once again and talk about windows. They are the plane interface with passengers. And they are also part of the plane. See point 11 (above), why aren't windows centered with each seat? I have to tilt my head to see something? This interface is crap! And the form is strange and not to my liking. It should be square, centered with my seat, with a sliding panel in case my neighbour farts.

Everything evolves and some of the points I listed above are without no doubt already implemented in airplane services in one form or another. 

And we're making sure the game is evolving. Once again, go watch the video I linked to see how the game evolved.

Moreover, I'm very grateful for all the players who post their suggestions and don't get angry if we don't respond to every one of you, we are several thousands less than you are and we have to develop a game on top of that. We make the game according to our capabilities and your advice.The more emotional conversations become, the harder it is for us to develop the game and answer to your suggestions.

It's possible that I'm becoming a Buddhist but I think together we can improve the communication between us, both in form and content. At least, on our side, we will try."

 

 

 

Fascinating, he could be talking about the actual WoWs game design and it's inherent problems but instead let's make an analogy even more remote to some people than the actual game they are playing. I don't know, is publicly discussing WoWs design punished with life imprisonment on Syberia?

[Babykim]

I found the above reasoning by mal_h [edited]. Why such convoluted and ultimately far-fetched comparisons?

[Takru]

I found the above reasoning by mal_h [edited]. Why such convoluted and ultimately far-fetched comparisons?

 

When people have a lot of knowledge of something, it often appears easier to them to use analogies to describe the issues instead of telling you about the issues straightforward.

[Takru]

Takru did it on the NA forum too.

 

Damn, I thought my cunningly chose nickname there would hide my true identitiy better.

[Takeda92]

 

Damn, I thought my cunningly chose nickname there would hide my true identiy better.

 

You almost got away.... almost 

[Carnotzet]

New Q&A. Source 

[Next Q&A is on the way, be patient]

 

Q. 1. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), I wasn't playing at the time when Furutaka was really crappy. Now it's an enjoyable ship, which needs some time to adapt to and a little bit of skill. After playing a few dozen battles with her and Omaha, and reaching a comfortable skill level, I'm quite enjoying both of them. But I wonder: after quite a lot of battles fought on both of these ships, my average stats are lower in my Furutaka than in my Omaha (including average damage). At first, I though I just needed more practice but then I saw some unofficial stats (I know you don't like them) and noticed that Furutaka's average damage, kills and win ratio are considerably lower than Omaha's or other tier 5 ships.

It lead me to ask two questions: could you please provide official stats concerning Furutaka, and compare them with Omaha's? If Furutaka's stats are lower, do you plan to do anything with her?

I like Furutaka a lot and I think it's a very interesting ship at tier 5 but I find it hard to be in the top 3 at the end of a battle.

A. At the moment, Furutaka's average damage is 1170 less than Omaha's. Win ratio is practically the same (0.4% less than Omaha). The reason for these disparities is in fact not because of each ship characteristics but because of the gameplay. Furutaka is the first heavy cruiser in the line, and thus requires different tactics and a change in habits. US cruisers have the same problem when going from Cleveland to Pensacola. The gameplay changes, players have to relearn the way they play, and thus their performance decreases a bit.

 

2. Most of the ship lines are well thought progression wise and allow new players to learn the ropes of the game and the role of their ships from at tier 1-4. Except BB's. They really start to shine at tier 5 and new players have a really hard time crawling through tier 3-4. Could you please look at the statistics of players who started the BB line and stopped before tier 5? Are you happy with this situation?

A. We're keeping an eye on that kind of stats and we're fine with it. There are two points I need to raise. First: BB's are the ships that benefited the most from gunnery research and development in the first half of the 20th century. Their gun performance improved a lot. Secondly: tier 3-4 BB's were created specifically in such a way as to make them harder to sail than CL's and DD's. Bigger ship, bigger responsibility. In fact, not every player can play BB's efficiently and enjoy their gameplay. We prefer most players choose the cruiser lines (and DD's, but they're slightly harder to play).

 

3. I come from WoT and there's a very interesting premium light tank - AMX Chaffee. I'd like to know if there's a similar ship in WoWs.

A. There's a ship that plays a bit like that (Atlanta). However, at the moment, we want to release balanced [as in opposed to niche] ships that every player can enjoy. "Singularity" is difficult to explain to players and, most often than not, leads to negative feedback and misunderstanding.

 

Q. Have you changed something with the detonation chance from air dropped torpedoes on BB's? It seems I get detonated much more often (about once in ten battles).

A. We haven't done anything regarding this matter. I will still check though.

 

Q. When will you release the next part of the Arpeggio event?

A. Not this month, but there will certainly be another one.

We first need to analyse how it was perceived by players. In general, players on the RU server gave neutral or positive feedback. Since new content is ready to be released, we decided to start working on the next stage of this event.

 

Q.  Do you plan to add a second airplane on ships with two catapults? Do you plan to add visual effects to AA guns when they fire (or at least to some of them)? Current tracers rounds are not really impressive and don't give the impression of working properly.

A. No. Currently, only one takes off. And no. At the moment, we need to be very careful with performance issues. Maybe later.

 

Q.  Don't you think that, after the buff to torp focused DD's, the game is broken in random mode? It's not unusual to see 5 or 6 DD's on each team and the number of BB's is steadily decreasing. Now, it's a rare sight to see more than 2 BB's on each team. BB's are "food" for all the classes and the less BB's there is, the worse it gets for everybody. CV's and DD's torp them, CA/CL's burn them, other BB's citadel them. So, here's my question:

What is your ideal class representation?

For me, it's something like this:

1 CV, 4 BB's, 5 CA/CL's, 2 DD's (3 DD's if there's no CV)

If everyone has a favorite target, they are all happy.

And another question, how will you balance the number of DD's in random and will you do anything about it?

A. We're considering limiting the number of DD's on each team. We're also considering changing high tier IJN DD's stats.

 

Q. How did Kawanishi N1K turn up on Shokaku? It's quite obvious that Kyofu's were the sea fighters, N1K were land fighters. And where did you find the N1K5?

A. It's a very difficult question for me to answer. I'll have to ask my colleagues.

 

Q. When will you improve the detailed statistics screen? And make the achievement screen more convenient?

A. We plan to change some things. Regarding the statistics screens, our priority is to improve the post battle screen.

 

[edit: grammar errors and such]

[Takru]

 

A. We're considering limiting the number of DD's on each team. We're also considering changing high tier IJN DD's stats.

 

 

Any idea what he might have in mind? Changing their stats as in... trade better guns for worse Camo / longer Torp reload time for example?

[piet11111]

 A. There's a ship that plays a bit like that (Atlanta). However, at the moment, we want to release balanced [as in opposed to niche] ships that every player can enjoy. "Singularity" is difficult to explain to players and, most often than not, leads to negative feedback and misunderstanding.

 

So what niche is the atlanta supposed to fill ?

The only thing i consider it good at is anti air but there are not enough carriers to justify bringing it.

And for hunting dd's i consider it too fragile because the enemy team will destroy you if they spot you.