[Review] World of Warships in 2016 (7.3/10)

[__Danger___]

As this year will meet it's end soon and due to recent issues with the game, I decided to write review of WoWs in it's current state and how it performed during 2016. And while this is my favorite game that as a fan I would love to give 10/10, I need to put off the purple glasses and stay objective, which is what you will be reading now. Thank you for understanding. 

 

TL;DR - Overall Rating: 7.3/10

Excellent game with amazing graphics, variability of ships, and great potential. It's pleasure to play and my favorite long term game, but random battles are broken very often, ranked battles are broken completely and overall there is a lot of punishment when playing alone. And finally, the game is lacking serious content for competitive and more seasoned players.

 

Last year it was acceptable and I would probably give it 9.5/10 but this year it simply didn't improve as much as expected. There was a lot of additions and new stuff, but not the kind of stuff we all are waiting for. The priorities are kind of wrong and we need to express ourselves. However, 2017 is very promising and if Wargaming listens to it's player base (clan content, matchmaking improvement, ranked battles, skill revamp, new special commanders, more campaigns, maps and much more stuff), WoWs should easily reach the MAX score next year.

 

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Gameplay: 10/10

We all love this game. It's core design is awesome, it allows strategizing, rewards good planning, aiming, angling... simply your skill matters much more than ship of your selection. There is many ship trees, they all have unique traits or strengths, it's pretty much balanced over all ship classes too and the outcome is based only on the player. You need to think what you can do with your ship and adjust your strategy during the battle. This way you can outplay ships even 2-3 tiers higher than you and become the top player in a battle. Throw the bait and make the enemy play YOUR game. RNG sometimes screws you, but the statistics are accurate enough.

 

Graphics: 10/10

Superb. Ship details, water, shells, explosions, you never have enough and need more. No more words needed here.

 

Audio: 10/10

There is nothing wrong I could mention so I need to use max score again.

 

Matchmaking: 4/10

This depends if the MM is currently drunk or not. Bots, AFK players, not mirrored teams, 2man division against 3+3 (4 players difference) instead of 3 vs 3+2 (2 players difference) or 3 vs 3 (equal), not balanced DDs, battles with 5v5 DDs, tier 8-9 battles against t10 CV, but most importantly, system that hardly punishes any good player stupid enough to play solo. I can't believe this is really just bad luck and random game with any programmed mechanics. You can have average damage (over 50 battles for example) 110k+, amazing rating, but 30% win rate. Whoever looks at such stats will immediately know that there is something wrong. Such player couldn't have so low WR, ever... well, I thought so too, but MM <insert your favorite insult here> players really hard, in the <insert favorite part of your body here> of course.

 

Anyway, I love tier 10 battles personally and play them as much as possible for the experience and preparation for clan wars. But too many players are lacking situation awareness, either are running to sides, ignoring objectives, hunting single ship over entire map (sometimes even 4 ships are pursuing one), staying all at one position while getting flanked, showing broadside, locked in tunnel vision and/or many more unbelievable things. And you can't do anything. You are the only player who realizes where this leads and if you decide to risk everything (change 0% win chance to 1% win chance) and try to go against many enemies alone, this is not often working very well. You are then punished even more because you die fast.

 

And this is why this game badly needs better matchmaking. But it doesn't need to be reworked completely, it would be just fine if something was done with the kind of players we can only call as plague. We need to filter the player base and have a system where player skill matters. Wouldn't it be nice if there were groups where players fight similarly skilled players: <48% WR, 48-56% WR, 56%> WR.

 

Competitive play: 2/10

In middle of 2015, players started asking a lot when the clan wars will come in. At the end of 2015 there were rumors this is going to happen at beginning of 2016. At end of 2016 there is official announcement that clans will be able to fight each other in 2017 and clans (only the rosters) are already being tested. Well, out of all WG games, WoWs seem to be waiting for competitive modes the longest. One would think that they learned something and development will be faster, but maybe they are trying to achieve something much better and more different here. Who knows, hopefully we get it in first half of 2017, because when you sum all the issues we are lately experiencing, there is not much to play now without getting constantly annoyed. Excellent game with absolutely random (yes, that is the name) battles and zero competitive play. And only player-made tournaments using training room (that is not even available in the game by default) are saving this game a bit. But overall this is still epic fail and needs to be resolved asap.

 

Ah, I didn't mention team battles because no-one is playing them. It was nice addition at first, but it's lacking so much that people have no motivation to play it.

 

And finally, there is ranked mode, right. That's just random battle on steroids. It's terrible as only thing that matters is your time, not your skill. 3 seasons ago I posted suggestion where winning team players would get 0 to +2 stars and defeated players -1 to +1 stars, that all based on differences between team players, not just some static number. Star collecting would be much easier, for bad players not much would change, but good players would be able to get rank 1 faster. And that's where the real fun would start. Rank 1 would be super-league with tier 10 battles and online leaderboards (in various stats) and nice season ranking rewards. If this was done earlier, quality of battles and mood of players would improve dramatically.

 

Maintenance: 8/10

Wargaming is doing quite good job. They update the game frequently, keep adding new ships so there's still something new to look forward to. There is also many events and contests, some are simple, but there were also more complex ones with own website. Only problem is that Wargaming priorities are wrong focus too much on new ships instead of improving game modes, clan content and other things that community wants. Ships are nice, but won't keep you in the game forever. Communities will do this much better.

 

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As I put the overall rating on the top, this is the place to tell you:

Thanks for reading up here and wish you merry Christmas and happy New year with WoWs:-)

[SerPurr]

Graphics: 10/10

Superb. Ship details, water, shells, explosions, you never have enough and need more. No more words needed here.

 

Really? The game doesn't even have proper SSAO. It looks cool most of the time but in essence things haven't changed for years.

 

[__Danger___]

 

Really? The game doesn't even have proper SSAO. It looks cool most of the time but in essence things haven't changed for years.

 

 

It's my own opinion. I don't need the game to look like Battlefield 1 to appreciate the details of these giants

[SerPurr]

 

It's my own opinion. I don't need the game to look like Battlefield 1 to appreciate the details of these giants

 

Sure, point taken and agreed. Even though it's a bit dated, it still looks fairly good. Just saying I wouldn't object to things looking like Battlefield 1 a tad more ;-)

 

[Juanx]

You should change the title to [My Review], since it looks like someone important made a review of the game. Also, no 7.3, its a flat 7.

Nice to know you are so easy to satisfy. And somebody pointed the grafix out, would like to point that sound iis nothing to write home about, frequent glitches with it.

[Jethro_Grey]

You should change the title to [My Review], since it looks like someone important made a review of the game. Also, no 7.3, its a flat 7.

Nice to know you are so easy to satisfy. And somebody pointed the grafix out, would like to point that sound iis nothing to write home about, frequent glitches with it.

 

Must be something on your end, i don't have any glitches in regards to sound.

[__Danger___]

You should change the title to [My Review], since it looks like someone important made a review of the game. Also, no 7.3, its a flat 7.

Nice to know you are so easy to satisfy. And somebody pointed the grafix out, would like to point that sound iis nothing to write home about, frequent glitches with it.

I'm afraid that such people would be doing reviews on their site instead of this forum And score system is only my own thing. Trying to be just fair and objective. Still, to some extend, this will always be little bit subjective and will express my own experience with game that can dramatically differ from others. Still, thank you for opinion

[Naatibus]

We need to filter the player base and have a system where player skill matters. Wouldn't it be nice if there were groups where players fight similarly skilled players: <48% WR, 48-56% WR, 56%> WR.

 

How would this thing work with division play? So your buddies who by some chance dropped below the threshold would not be able to join your Div or there would be no option to even start a game that way?

[RenamedUser_92906789]

since when is WR==skill ?

skill is such an subjective variable in this game ... it could be basexp, could be WTR, certainly not WR ...

[anonym_EFwxJOPWzlER]

A player review is very important for WG feedback, so i think it's a positive giving that feedback

 

I will not leave feedback though as i think i have said enough already, i would probably need 2 pages to complete it with my honest opinion, so i will give it a miss this time round

 

 

[__Danger___]

 

How would this thing work with division play? So your buddies who by some chance dropped below the threshold would not be able to join your Div or there would be no option to even start a game that way?

 

since when is WR==skill ?

skill is such an subjective variable in this game ... it could be basexp, could be WTR, certainly not WR ...

 

Just mentioned the issue and suggested one possible way. Replace WR with any other suitable statistics, I can only tell you that it won't be simple decision and there will be many internal discussions behind. There is many more edge cases than these two you just mentioned but it's for WG to decide and I'm pretty sure that they will use brain, so no worries about division restrictions. People seem to be focusing too much on details that they won't be able to impact any way, instead of focusing on the core idea which is that something should be done about MM and it should take player's skill as input.

[CruleD]

Gameplay 10/10? I would want some of those drugs.

[__Danger___]

Nice to know you are so easy to satisfy. And somebody pointed the grafix out, would like to point that sound iis nothing to write home about, frequent glitches with it.

There is enough of toxicity on the internet for me already. If I like something I say it and support the devs to counter the loud negative users, because majority of satisfied users won't post anything. And I do the same about things I don't like without insulting anyone, because constructive criticism is good criticism.

 

I'm calm, kind, efficient and analytic type of person, but also very picky. I've seen countless of games that had good idea but small thing ruined it. WoWs has the core done right and that's important for me because it all fits nicely together. It might not be so awesome graphics in eyes of some users, but for me it's pretty good experience and I like it.

[RUSSIANBlAS]

I'd give 6/10 to WG themselves. Amazing customer service when I submit tickets but awful regional differences and illogical choices of ships have harmed what's otherwise been a decent year of development. Very nice updates, punctual and the PT is always nice to have a preview.