High Tier is broken

[Syrchalis]

High Tier should be the goal for all players. It shouldn't be the only thing they play once they reach it, but it should be a goal regardless. This goal has become unattractive. While you can still show of your cool Yamato or Midway, when it comes to the two main motivators for playing a game, high tier is a bust.

 

Now, if you managed to read past the first paragraph I'll just assume you are actually interested in this topic and can bear with some game design.

 

What you need for a player to play a game is motivation. There is two kinds. Intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation means joy and fun by the game itself. You like the sound of your big BB guns firing? The destruction caused by shells landing on enemies? The vast tactics of the game intrigue you? Or you just have fun playing a ship? That's intrinsic fun. You play to finally get rank 1? To show off your cool new ships to your fellow captains? You do your best every game not just to win, to maximize XP and credits? Those are extrinsic motivators.

 

High tier matches fail to deliver on both.

 

Let's talk about the extrinsic motivators first because they are easier to pin down:

• The XP rewards seem tiny, since you need more XP to advance in high tiers
• On T10 you don't even really get XP (except if you want to spend money)
• Credits rewards are extremely small compared to lower tiers, since you need more to advance, but also since repair costs go up so hard
• To make it worse, you often even lose credits on T10

 

WG is a company. And WG is not Riot Games. They have a small playerbase and thus cannot monetize in a friendly way like League of Legends can. I work as a game designer myself, so trust me on this (you can do the math if you don't want to believe me, you just need to know some benchmarks in the gaming industry and the values that matter, like ARPU).

 

Now, enough defending WG. While they have to make money, I think they go the wrong way about it. If you monetize in a way that steals the motivation from players, you will lose players, reduce the lifetime of your game (that's the average duration a player plays before moving on) and thus your revenue. Since high tier is so dull and unrewarding, they clip their lifetime hard once you reach T8-10. I cannot provide them with suggestions how to improve, because I would need accurate data for that. I can however say that they need to put some effort into WoWs if they want it to make reasonable money.

 

 

Now the more important part - the intrinsic motivation.

Why is it more important? Because it's stronger. Would you rather [insert your hobby] for 1 hour and get nothing or work hard for 1 hour and get 100 Doubloons? How strongly extrinsic motivation affects people is very different (some will rather work the hour, even for 50 Doubloons), but enjoying something works for everyone.

 

The causes here are very difficult to pin down, unlike extrinsic rewards. This is because the extrinsic rewards are planned by the designers and given at very specific moments (e.g. reaching a new level, rank, or the end of the battle). Intrinsic fun simply happens, it's not planned. You can make an edjucated guess what will be fun, but you can't be certain.

So what do players actually do in high tier games? This isn't 100% true for everyone and some points are a bit exaggerated

BB

• Drive far away from the middle
• Plan were you want to be in 5-10minutes
• Click planes
• Click every 30 seconds infront of enemy ships
• Hope that your shells land somehow properly

CA

• Give AA support
  • Drive near someone
  • Click planes
  • Press AA ability
  • AFK for 4min until CV has reloaded
• Fight other ships
  • Charge and run from ships
  • Shoot every 6-15sec
  • Zigzag

DD

• Drop torpedos
• AFK 2 minutes
• Cap

CV

• Wait 40sec for planes to ready
• Wait 1 minute for them to start
• Send them somewhere
• Wait 2-4 minutes for them to arrive
• Meet 5 cruisers with AA ability
• Wait 40sec
• Go snipe enemy CV
• Hit it or
• Curse at the screen for 1 minute because you clicked the chatbox, your planes decided to do ridiculous circlejerking, some US DD hidden in a smoke 5km away activated AA and you missed everything or the interface simply decided you're unlucky today
• Wait 2 minutes for planes to return
• Wait 1 minute for them to land
• Wait 1 minute for them to be ready again
• Wait 1 minute for them to start again
• Go for CV again or if dead something else
• Die to enemy CV

 

Now all this is not very exciting except for the CA part of fighting ships - which is why no CA ever wants to AA support. (They do it to win, but not because they WANT to).

 

Add to that the bad balance of some ships (DDs being nearly useless with a CV and much stronger without one; CVs being nerfed from OP to okay to trash that is worth more points than any other ship (wtf); BBs demanding they can keep oneshotting cruisers from 20km but may never ever be a victim of airplanes, especially not if alone - and they got their wish) and the randomness of so many things (BB spread, DD torpedos hit or miss). And you got yourself something that isn't fun at all.

Oh and let's not forget major bugs like the the dogfighting skill that right now makes T4 planes better than T10 planes - in other words, reverses the strength curve. Bugs like these are gamebreaking to a class. Do they get hotfixed? No. Fixed in a reasonable timeframe? No.

 

I won't propose any changes. WG would never listen. I can only try to show what's the problem.

[Mr_Mistery]

agreed with you the money reward is too low i experienced in WOT to 4 year even i make 3k damage and 1-2 kill my AMX f155 or AMX 50B always  -15k kredit not matter how hard i try to stay alive and make damage,if i make money in t10 only 512 or 1000 kredit plus and this is very very low and not motivate me to play WOT anymore.

and i hear many rumor the yamato repair cost is 200-230k so if you want profit you need make 100k+ damage if you dont have premium and this cant be do always for other reasons(like the battle begin and enemy CV you want to kill at all cost or DD go close to you and torp storm come)

most player is not pro just regular little weak(like me).

but the WG not care this and i dont think this will be change in sort time,but the fact is not change the t8-10 ships are too expensive like the modult on this ships and i not rich to buy prem.

[OVanBruce]

I personally think that the big problem of this game lies elsewhere but those points are also true. Specially about motivation, which is simply reduced to getting to the next tier. Combined with the money grabbing policies, lack of anything interesting ever happening to the game and, at least on this server, utter lack of dev presence.

[Raskeria]

They've ruined xp and money making completely, normally I made 500-700k on a good battle with my cv, now 250k in damage and I get 360k silver....I make that on a t5 dd battle, same for t10 bb,ca's.

and if you don't perform very well you will lose between 50-300k  a battle.

[JocMeister]

They've ruined xp and money making completely, normally I made 500-700k on a good battle with my cv, now 250k in damage and I get 360k silver...

 

Buuhu. Cry me a river. 

[Mister_Greek]

CV income was nerfed cause many people reached T10 within a week or so.A friend of mine reached Midway in 5 days....

 

Comparing previous CV income with the income of other classes,the CV earning were outclassng every other Ship Type.

 

You could do the same Dmg in a BB and still earn a lot less than a CV (With same DMG output)

 

I agree though that on high tiers the economy is problematic,especially the repair bill on T10s

 

 

[IamTroublemaker]

They've ruined xp and money making completely, normally I made 500-700k on a good battle with my cv, now 250k in damage and I get 360k silver....I make that on a t5 dd battle, same for t10 bb,ca's.

and if you don't perform very well you will lose between 50-300k  a battle.

 

To be fair, the CV income was too high, now its on par with other classes (from what I've heard).

 

And yeah, some things need to be changed, at least to be similar like in WoT (economy-wise) + the thing they are doing with bundles and premium shop is just outrageous at the moment. WoT probably got more premium tanks and stuff (or at least it did before) in 1-2 patches than we since the OBT (or official game release) even though it does take longer to model a ship than a tank, but still , hire more people then. There is no way they lack money considering all the bundle prices and how much people buy them...

[Mr_Mistery]

 

To be fair, the CV income was too high, now its on par with other classes (from what I've heard).

 

And yeah, some things need to be changed, at least to be similar like in WoT (economy-wise) + the thing they are doing with bundles and premium shop is just outrageous at the moment. WoT probably got more premium tanks and stuff (or at least it did before) in 1-2 patches than we since the OBT (or official game release) even though it does take longer to model a ship than a tank, but still , hire more people then. There is no way they lack money considering all the bundle prices and how much people buy them...

 

the WOT economy is horrible too

[IamTroublemaker]

 

the WOT economy is horrible too

 

I disagree there, I think it suits this kind of game. If its horrible in WoT, how would you describe it here? The repair cost should be reduced at T9 and T10 (and by that in T8 probably) so a good battle ends up in some earned credits, instead of losing credits after doing relatively good, which feels more like a punishment.

[Fruitinator]

This is one of the better posts that i've read on this forum.

I use Premium all the time and it really feels like the game was meant to play with premium, its the only way to make higher tier playing work.

I would love to see that they did the same thing as Blizzard did in hearthstone and have "10 gold/3 win". If WG did that then alot more people would play and use Premium time and therefore play higher tier battles.

And again, great post.

[Tyrendian89]

 

DD

• Drop torpedos
• AFK 2 minutes
• Cap

 

while that may describe some IJN destroyer captains, it's all kinds of wrong for the other DDs in the game - which is why I'm having a lot more fun with my Mahan than my Hatsu currently, and am strongly tempted to go up the SN DD line at least to the Kiev.

Other than that, this is definitely one of the more thought out and well-formulated threads on the matter! Kudos to you sir!

[Raskeria]

 

To be fair, the CV income was too high, now its on par with other classes (from what I've heard).

 

And yeah, some things need to be changed, at least to be similar like in WoT (economy-wise) + the thing they are doing with bundles and premium shop is just outrageous at the moment. WoT probably got more premium tanks and stuff (or at least it did before) in 1-2 patches than we since the OBT (or official game release) even though it does take longer to model a ship than a tank, but still , hire more people then. There is no way they lack money considering all the bundle prices and how much people buy them...

 

Yes the income was a bit to high, but the way it works now, I play more than just cv, and pretty much only 10's so my income has been hit very hard as I now I need to grind money again on lower tiers which is pathetic, as you win a battle and still lose money.

 

Oh well we shall see how WG will handle this, probably when more people will quit.

[Mayv]

I havent found the high tiers to be that bad, but my views are probably skewed.

 

Without a premium account I was able to make money with the Fubuki and had games with 100k profits regularly. I have gotten a premium account since and am having no real problems staying afloat with the Kagero either (probably helped by the 70% survival rate). The games where I failed to break even were where I did a miserable amount of damage and sunk.

I actually enjoy high tier IJN DD game play, even more so than low tier game play.

 

The one thing I dont like is the base repair cost, that is paid even when you take no damage.

[Panocek]

I havent found the high tiers to be that bad, but my views are probably skewed.

 

Without a premium account I was able to make money with the Fubuki and had games with 100k profits regularly. I have gotten a premium account since and am having no real problems staying afloat with the Kagero either (probably helped by the 70% survival rate). The games where I failed to break even were where I did a miserable amount of damage and sunk.

I actually enjoy high tier IJN DD game play, even more so than low tier game play.

 

The one thing I dont like is the base repair cost, that is paid even when you take no damage.

 

On other hand, even with premium its not easy to break even in US cruisers when you're sunk

[Syrchalis]

I maybe should say again - the horrible balance and gameplay is the real issue with high tier. The economy is secondary.

[anonym_hqO9wrVAEQYQ]

High Tier should be the goal for all players.

 

Not for people like me mate. I haven't got the time or the energy or the skill or the money to get to a high tier. I am happy wallowing around mid tier. If people need the epeen of having Tier X then good luck to them. I never reached tier X in WOT after playing that for years. I just don't see the point or feel the need.

I play to have a laugh and chill out while on TS with my RL mates. I sit around mid tier and then when new ships come out I play them up til the mid tiers again. I am at tier 5 and 4 on the new nations. Fingers crossed there will be some new ships out soon.

My highest ship at the mo is tier 7.

[IamTroublemaker]

 

Yes the income was a bit to high, but the way it works now, I play more than just cv, and pretty much only 10's so my income has been hit very hard as I now I need to grind money again on lower tiers which is pathetic, as you win a battle and still lose money.

 

Oh well we shall see how WG will handle this, probably when more people will quit.

 

I guess that's the whole point of this economy system, its like that so people wouldn't stick just to their T10s

[TheJezna]

IMO The biggest failure of high tier game is that it's pretty much the same as all other tiers, just a bit "bigger", meaning longer ranges, more hitpoints, bigger damage numbers, bigger maps. At the same time, playing at high tiers is much more expensive, meaning you have to play a much more serious game and can't afford to take as many chances, which makes playing at high tiers make little sense: why would I pay more for a game that's pretty much the same and where I can't "play for fun" as much as on a lower tier? Knowing this is why I never rushed for high tiers after CBT ended and am only currently at tier 8, there's just no reason to crunch to get anywhere, and in fact, many of the most enjoyable games are IMO at tier 5-6.

 

This is a problem of course, for the game not to grow stale there needs to be something to feel that it's worth an effort to achieve. When the reward for getting further in the game is more of the same but for less gains there's just no reason to progress and once gameplay at those golden tiers (wherever that is, 5-6 for me, maybe 3-4 to someone else) gets old there's nothing really to do. This also becomes a serious problem for WG, primarily because a main driver for people to spend cash in a game like this is to speed up advancement to higher tiers, but also of course because of retention, as I said, people are likely to quite when they are done with certain tiers rather than advance.

 

In most other games, getting to higher tiers are rewarding. Making money is easier at max level than at level 2 in WOW. The gameplay also change markedly in many games, and often there is some kind of end game content that you need to get to max, or at least near max level to access. WoWs has no end game, and I think the big reason people are still working hard to get to higher tiers is that they haven't yet realized this. Sure, there are some other factors like feeling of completion or wanting to get that specific high tier ship, but the big driver to advance just isn't there.

 

The best way to enjoy WoWs economically would realistically be to pick a class where you like the gameplay at the first tier and then just play that first ship and enjoy it, forgetting about advancing and certainly forgetting about spending any money. If you don't enjoy playing IJN DD's at tier 2, this won't change at tier 5, 7 or 10 but if you do like it you will like it at least as much at tier 3 or 5 as at tier 10. Sure, upgrade when you have the XP and money, but never play to upgrade. The fact that this is the case is however a bad failure for WG.

 

Like the OP, I really can't suggest how to fix this, just say that they need to do something if the game is to stay alive. There needs to be some actual, tangible change in gameplay for the better as you get to higher tiers and there certainly needs to be some kind of end game.

[Kenliero]

I am having fun in tiers 4-8. I can not think anything that would await me in tier 9-10... The gameplay just gets worse(with million sniper BB's), so why even go there... I like brawling with BB's and you can do that in tiers below 9...

[Syrchalis]

I am having fun in tiers 4-8. I can not think anything that would await me in tier 9-10... The gameplay just gets worse(with million sniper BB's), so why even go there... I like brawling with BB's and you can do that in tiers below 9...

 

That's exactly the point. WG made this game so. The players are just reacting to what they made.

 

It's like with warding in LoL. It's something noone did, because it was a job teams forced one person to do per team, who had to buy wards and got no other items. Noone wanted to be that person obviously. So what did they do? They capped wards at 3 per person, forcing all members of the team to ward. That worked in competitive play and on higher skill levels, but not for your run-of-the-mill game. So they gave free wards to players and consistently buffed these free wards to become better and better.

 

My point is - it's not the playerbases job to change. They can't. It's like you standing in the ocean, trying to change the way the waves flow. You can yell and kick but the community won't change because of that. The game developers are like god in that scenario. So if they throw a few big rocks into the ocean stuff will flow differently.

[Atris2nd]

Well, alot of my incentive simply came from the fact I was interested in the ships. The Zao/Senjo looked like the climax of Japanese cruiser engineering, combining everything that was good from all the previous vessels into one excellent cruiser. I really can't compare it to the Aoba and say ''I'd rather be playing the Aoba.''. Getting the Senjo was satisfying, playing her is satisfying, learning her is satisfying ( Still not very good at it, but is my primary goal currently. ). Unlike WoT, I find that the rewards in this game are -much- more personal and you get rewarded for your performance, not whether you won or lost.

 

Being able to pull 250k credits on defeats with Myoko is glorious compared to my performance being overall irrelevant in WoT, depending on whether I won or lost. And it's the same in high tier games. Defeat or no, if I've played well and survived in my Senjo, I'll still make money. If I haven't, I'll lose 100k which I can easily make double in the Fuso. In one game. I really struggle to see what's so problematic about the ingame economy. You aim to unlock legendary vessels like the Yamato, famous ships like Des Moines, or fantastic designs like Senjo. You're expected to have earned that right, thus you need to be playing well and to give it your all. It's a good idea to go into the tier 10 mindset as ''I've reached the top, there's nowhere else to go but to start all over again with another line.''. You play tier 10 for the ships, not the rewards. Those are at lower tiers. The incentive is... once again, the ships themselves and the feeling of satisfaction that you've reached the peak. 

 

Gameplay wise, you're largely spot on. That needs further addressing than the economy, atleast in my book.

[Syrchalis]

I'm a huge enemy of extrinsic rewards in a way that they can destroy intrinsic fun and that's an issue in many games. So the broken economy might be crappy, but overall contribute to the game being more fun, because you really only play for the fun of it not for rewards.

 

The problem is - it's not fun.

[PzAbteilung]

my motivation was never get the high tiers, maybe the yamato, but simply my motivation is play for fun, and do it in the real ships (no the prohect ones)

[Kyovee]

Honestly this game is fun until you reach tier 6. Any match above the 4-6 tier is just the same crap. 3/4 hang back at 15+ km, both teams go 100% one direction.

[edited]I just had 5 games with my t7 premium DDs in a row where we capped or the enemy team capped out with less than 2 ships sunk in total most of them I didn't even fire a single shot. 

Aiming is way to easy, I can hit any highly maneuvering DD with 80% accuracy from 9-13km with my cruisers (even if I miss my first salvo, I got the next one off within 7secs) and I'm not even talking about getting citadel pens on other cruisers where I don't even have to aim.

Torpedos are useless unless you meet a fully retarded captain even if you stay undetected or fire them concealed from a island with less than 2km range.

Camping gets rewarded, offensive plays get penalized. 

 

[Trigger_Happy_Dad]

High Tier should be the goal for all players. It shouldn't be the only thing they play once they reach it, but it should be a goal regardless. This goal has become unattractive. While you can still show of your cool Yamato or Midway, when it comes to the two main motivators for playing a game, high tier is a bust.

 

Now, if you managed to read past the first paragraph I'll just assume you are actually interested in this topic and can bear with some game design.

 

What you need for a player to play a game is motivation. There is two kinds. Intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation means joy and fun by the game itself. You like the sound of your big BB guns firing? The destruction caused by shells landing on enemies? The vast tactics of the game intrigue you? Or you just have fun playing a ship? That's intrinsic fun. You play to finally get rank 1? To show off your cool new ships to your fellow captains? You do your best every game not just to win, to maximize XP and credits? Those are extrinsic motivators.

 

High tier matches fail to deliver on both.

 

Let's talk about the extrinsic motivators first because they are easier to pin down:

• The XP rewards seem tiny, since you need more XP to advance in high tiers
• On T10 you don't even really get XP (except if you want to spend money)
• Credits rewards are extremely small compared to lower tiers, since you need more to advance, but also since repair costs go up so hard
• To make it worse, you often even lose credits on T10

 

WG is a company. And WG is not Riot Games. They have a small playerbase and thus cannot monetize in a friendly way like League of Legends can. I work as a game designer myself, so trust me on this (you can do the math if you don't want to believe me, you just need to know some benchmarks in the gaming industry and the values that matter, like ARPU).

 

Now, enough defending WG. While they have to make money, I think they go the wrong way about it. If you monetize in a way that steals the motivation from players, you will lose players, reduce the lifetime of your game (that's the average duration a player plays before moving on) and thus your revenue. Since high tier is so dull and unrewarding, they clip their lifetime hard once you reach T8-10. I cannot provide them with suggestions how to improve, because I would need accurate data for that. I can however say that they need to put some effort into WoWs if they want it to make reasonable money.

 

 

Now the more important part - the intrinsic motivation.

Why is it more important? Because it's stronger. Would you rather [insert your hobby] for 1 hour and get nothing or work hard for 1 hour and get 100 Doubloons? How strongly extrinsic motivation affects people is very different (some will rather work the hour, even for 50 Doubloons), but enjoying something works for everyone.

 

The causes here are very difficult to pin down, unlike extrinsic rewards. This is because the extrinsic rewards are planned by the designers and given at very specific moments (e.g. reaching a new level, rank, or the end of the battle). Intrinsic fun simply happens, it's not planned. You can make an edjucated guess what will be fun, but you can't be certain.

So what do players actually do in high tier games? This isn't 100% true for everyone and some points are a bit exaggerated

BB

• Drive far away from the middle
• Plan were you want to be in 5-10minutes
• Click planes
• Click every 30 seconds infront of enemy ships
• Hope that your shells land somehow properly

CA

• Give AA support
  • Drive near someone
  • Click planes
  • Press AA ability
  • AFK for 4min until CV has reloaded
• Fight other ships
  • Charge and run from ships
  • Shoot every 6-15sec
  • Zigzag

DD

• Drop torpedos
• AFK 2 minutes
• Cap

CV

• Wait 40sec for planes to ready
• Wait 1 minute for them to start
• Send them somewhere
• Wait 2-4 minutes for them to arrive
• Meet 5 cruisers with AA ability
• Wait 40sec
• Go snipe enemy CV
• Hit it or
• Curse at the screen for 1 minute because you clicked the chatbox, your planes decided to do ridiculous circlejerking, some US DD hidden in a smoke 5km away activated AA and you missed everything or the interface simply decided you're unlucky today
• Wait 2 minutes for planes to return
• Wait 1 minute for them to land
• Wait 1 minute for them to be ready again
• Wait 1 minute for them to start again
• Go for CV again or if dead something else
• Die to enemy CV

 

Now all this is not very exciting except for the CA part of fighting ships - which is why no CA ever wants to AA support. (They do it to win, but not because they WANT to).

 

Add to that the bad balance of some ships (DDs being nearly useless with a CV and much stronger without one; CVs being nerfed from OP to okay to trash that is worth more points than any other ship (wtf); BBs demanding they can keep oneshotting cruisers from 20km but may never ever be a victim of airplanes, especially not if alone - and they got their wish) and the randomness of so many things (BB spread, DD torpedos hit or miss). And you got yourself something that isn't fun at all.

Oh and let's not forget major bugs like the the dogfighting skill that right now makes T4 planes better than T10 planes - in other words, reverses the strength curve. Bugs like these are gamebreaking to a class. Do they get hotfixed? No. Fixed in a reasonable timeframe? No.

 

I won't propose any changes. WG would never listen. I can only try to show what's the problem.

 

Unfortunately, this is true.

 

 

High tier gameplay ist just boring to me, that's why I prefer low and mid-tier gameplay.

 

Imho, the smaller maps in low- and mid tiers are also better suited for teamwork and ensure quicker action.

 

 

high tier gameplay is pretty often exactly like this:

 

DDs fight for their lives in caps, BBs snipe @ max range, CAs are afraid to support DDs because BBs don't support the CAs but hug the map edge instead.....CVs torp any ship single ship that's not surrounded by AA....