What happend to Ashitaka?

[Mucker]

Did she sink on trials? Hasn't she been laid down yet? Canceled due to budget concerns? 

Seriously, are there any news about her? I hope that the Hood sales disaster did not leave a bad mark on the concept of T7 Premium Battlecruiser.  

[Earl_of_Northesk]

She was halway confirmed and never reached any testing stage. What did you expect. We also knew Graf Zeppelin would be coming since at least fall of 2015, see how long it took them to come around for that? Before there's an official announcement of anything, just don't get excited.

[MK1D]

It's funny to see the oldest battleship line still waiting for a tier 8 premium.

[1MajorKoenig]

YES YES YES! I would love to see her finally making her way into my harbour!!!

 

WG, please get her ready - the stock model for Amagi was such a beauty back in the days!

[Earl_of_Northesk]

19 hours ago, MK1D said:

It's funny to see the oldest battleship line still waiting for a tier 8 premium.

IJN is just lacking candidates. Maybe Tosa, but she's hardly significant.

[Trainspite]

26 minutes ago, Earl_of_Northesk said:

IJN is just lacking candidates. Maybe Tosa, but she's hardly significant.

 

Tosa should be a tier 8 regular anyways.

 

I'm guessing Ashitaka has not shown up because of the relatively poor reception to Mutsu, which could have been an expriment to do something with the stock dreadnought hulls that have been culled. Pity, I would have preferred said hulls to stay in game, and not all thrown in as a smattering of underwhelming premiums. Mutsu is a pretty good ship, but she is not played that much.

[1MajorKoenig]

1 hour ago, Trainspite said:

 

Tosa should be a tier 8 regular anyways.

 

I'm guessing Ashitaka has not shown up because of the relatively poor reception to Mutsu, which could have been an expriment to do something with the stock dreadnought hulls that have been culled. Pity, I would have preferred said hulls to stay in game, and not all thrown in as a smattering of underwhelming premiums. Mutsu is a pretty good ship, but she is not played that much.

 

I hope that this is not the case! Ashitaka would certainly sell better than Mutsu so if it was an experiment it was a bad one!

[Mucker]

Interestingly, it's not just Mutsu that sold poorly lately, but also Hood and Alabama did pretty much fail in terms of sales. I really wonder why? BB saturation? 

[ImperialAdmiral]

13 hours ago, Mucker said:

Interestingly, it's not just Mutsu that sold poorly lately, but also Hood and Alabama did pretty much fail in terms of sales. I really wonder why? BB saturation? 

More like people are waiting for Roma and Jean Bart. 

The ones you mentioned were just fillers.

[anonym_MfZ6T7iwWpUC]

I can understand why Mutsu & to a point Alabama didnt sell. But I expected Hood to have sold a bucket load. 

[fgibert]

I may be mistaken, but from what I've seen of Hood, she doesn't seem to offer anything special (ok except the unrotated projectile launchers :D).

I mean I probably wouldn't play it even if she was a regular ship.

 

Same for Alabama.

Of the three, Mutsu is probably the one I would have chosen if I had to choose one.

 

As ImperialAdmiral said, Roma (1st italian BB and damn beautiful) and/or Jean-Bart/Richelieu (A tier VIII Dunkerque in a real BB hull) will probably sell better.

[ScouserLes]

Have both hood and mutsu both I find are good ships and I do well in both worth every penny in my eyes 

[VC381]

I feel battlecruisers are pretty unique as far as BBs go in game, and yes I'm counting Mutsu in with that label just from a playstyle point of view. For me it's something unique to have BBs that are that fast without giving up something about their armament. Only Kongo, Amagi, Ishizuchi, Mutsu, Hood and Iowa fit that style relative to their peers in my opinion, so I for one welcome premiums along this line.

 

As for Ashitaka specifically, I expect they are just delaying while they were rolling out some more exciting premiums over the summer (Enterprise, Gallant). But also, it's a fairly low effort development item (the model already exists) so I doubt they would cancel it when it wouldn't take much to implement. I hope so at least, I would be interested for one.

 

Kongo and Amagi have been some of my favorite BBs in game, and now Hood and Mutsu are right up there as well. I guess most people just look for something else in a BB though. I expect part of the reason why some of these ships didn't sell well is because they aren't straight up OP. That's really sad, and I hope it doesn't put WG off doing similar interesting things in the future.

[Nightdare]

5 hours ago, atlasapl said:

I can understand why Mutsu & to a point Alabama didnt sell. But I expected Hood to have sold a bucket load. 

 

I'm guessing WG took quite a PR beating after the Chrysler drama

 

I tell you, if that little chapter hadn't played out like it did, I'd have bought the Enterprise (which would have been my first ever F2P purchase,... not even playing or interested in CVs)

[Mucker]

5 hours ago, fgibert said:

I may be mistaken, but from what I've seen of Hood, she doesn't seem to offer anything special (ok except the unrotated projectile launchers :D).

I mean I probably wouldn't play it even if she was a regular ship.

 

Same for Alabama.

Of the three, Mutsu is probably the one I would have chosen if I had to choose one.

 

As ImperialAdmiral said, Roma (1st italian BB and damn beautiful) and/or Jean-Bart/Richelieu (A tier VIII Dunkerque in a real BB hull) will probably sell better.

 

Indeed, the last successful premium BBs sales-wise were Scharnhorst and Dunkerque, both pretty unique BBs. So your typical run-of-the-mill premium BB seems not be that tempting at all. Question is though. Which bill does Ashitaka fit then?   

[Earl_of_Northesk]

8 hours ago, ImperialAdmiral said:

More like people are waiting for Roma and Jean Bart. 

The ones you mentioned were just fillers.

I doubt that.

 

22 hours ago, Mucker said:

Interestingly, it's not just Mutsu that sold poorly lately, but also Hood and Alabama did pretty much fail in terms of sales. I really wonder why? BB saturation? 

Probably saturation. We have a lot of premium BB's. And most people don't buy more than one of them per tier. Like, I might have considered buying Hood, but I already do have Scharnhorst. There's only so many ships you can play.

[LastButterfly]

7 hours ago, atlasapl said:

I can understand why Mutsu & to a point Alabama didnt sell. But I expected Hood to have sold a bucket load. 

 

Their super technique of selling Hood at hyper high price only in bundle for at least 2 months before the ship alone must have thrown off some potential customers.

[1MajorKoenig]

14 hours ago, LastButterfly said:

 

Their super technique of selling Hood at hyper high price only in bundle for at least 2 months before the ship alone must have thrown off some potential customers.

 

This staggered release strategy caused a big crap storm on NA last year with Prinz Eugen and it wasn't well received here either even if I expected ppl to be even more upset if it is about their holy HOOD. I wasn't really hyped about her and don't find her particularly interesting but picked her up as barebone boat just because she is a battlecruiser. 

 

The one I am truly hyped about is Ashitaka though and I am kind of sad that it got relatively quiet. 

 

@Mucker thanks for this thread and bringing her back on the radar

[Ev1n]

I'm curious how you guys assess how well sales of premium ships are going. What do you base those opinions on?

[_BubiHartmann_]

12 minutes ago, Ev1n said:

I'm curious how you guys assess how well sales of premium ships are going. What do you base those opinions on?

 

The same way they "assess" everything else Ev1n.... projection of subjective impressions, thereby declaring them valid.

 

Everybody not involved directly with no access to significant data is an expert these days, haven't you heard?

[Takru]

19 minutes ago, Ev1n said:

What do you base those opinions on?

 

On the good old "felt times they saw ship x in a battle" most likely.

[Mucker]

1 hour ago, Ev1n said:

I'm curious how you guys assess how well sales of premium ships are going. What do you base those opinions on?

 

By comparing how much the ships are played recently. These stats are offered by 3rd party websites. Here some examples:

 

Battles played (last 2 Weeks):

Tier 7

Scharnhorst: 46.364

Hood: 8.689

Ratio: 5,3 : 1

 

Tier 8

Tirpitz: 89.740

Alabama: 10.057

Ratio: 8,9 : 1

 

With a rather big sample size like this, one can assume that on average the motive and frequency of taking a these ships into battle is roughly the same, thus the difference in numbers can only be attributed to the pool of available ships, which points to sales. And yes, missions can screw the (recent) results big time, thats why I'm leaving T6 (Dunkerque) out of this.

 

It's by no means a perfect measure, but it gives some good pointers.

 

 

 

[CaptainThunderWalker]

2 hours ago, _BubiHartmann_ said:

 

The same way they "assess" everything else Ev1n.... projection of subjective impressions, thereby declaring them valid.

 

Everybody not involved directly with no access to significant data is an expert these days, haven't you heard?

So true.

 

However, some valid (and some less valid) reasons were cited, but even then I have to state it are all assumptions.

This means that I do expect the sales for Wargaming premium ships to go down; whether that already happened or is going to happen in the future or means the decline of the game already set in is anyone's guess, though the game developers probably know better than I do.

Except from the subjective observation that I rarely see these premium BBs that multiple people already made throughout the thread backed by the statistics, but the recent premium BBs are worse than the Germans which may skew the observation a bit (in other words; the recent BBs spent more time in port).

 

But let's go over the reasons cited:

 

- There's only so many ships you can play:

Well, this reason is probably the most valid. There's only so much time in a day, and of that day there's only so much you want to spend on World of Warships. There's really no point in buying a few dozen premiums when you can only play a few of them each day.

Note: Wargaming realized this, but if Wargaming makes the premiums much more interesting than the free ships, the F2P players are scared away and the advantage for paying is pretty much gone. And without fresh blood in the form of those F2P players, the game is doomed (and less players also leads to a downwards spiral). This will lead to less sales in the (very) long term. The process obviously has already started, but I have no clue what the 'progress' is, if you can call it that. However, the queue times for Tier II ships seem to lead to the (subjective) observation that there's definately some already.

 

- Chrysler Debacle:

Not very valid reason, though it matters for some players. It mattered for me as well, especially since part of it applies to World of Warships as well (the not-nerfing of Premium vehicles/ships, OP premium ships like the Belfast (World of Tanks having the Defender)) and Wargaming clearly can't be trusted with game balance. Their response may have tipped things over the edge for some.

It's not a major reason for players not to spend.

 

- The staggered release of the Hood with the Bundles:

I write this directly after the Chrysler Debacle, as it is also a marketing blunder from Wargaming. It was just too blatant of a money grab, and while that works in some countries, I know this is detrimental to sales in Europe. It matters less in other parts of the world though, which is relevant to mention because it means there may be a lot more Hoods on the other servers.

To what extent however sales were affected in Europe is something only Wargaming knows.

 

- BB oversaturation:

What? This reason just doesn't make sense. BBs oversaturation happened because of a whole lot of underlying reasons from the Wargaming Balance Department (drunk on Vodka), and that doesn't really make the premium BBs any different. There's no reason for BB oversaturation to make premium BBs sell less well (if anything, ships vulnerable to BBs should sell less well - ie; cruisers, and recently DDs as well). They also benefit from the background behind BB saturation, after all.

There is a catch though - BB oversaturation is something that annoys the experienced players, and reduces the income from them as well. Not so much because they spend less individually, but because a player that has quit or seriously considering to do so, is no longer going to spend money on a game. Simple as that. However, this is a slow process, further slowed down by the fact World of Warships has no real competition in its niche.

 

 

Conclusion: Wargaming, get your f*cking act together!

 

However, Wargaming's primary market is Russia. Which basically leads to the conclusion that Wargaming will tell us that they are going to get their act together, and then do perfectly nothing about it.

[1MajorKoenig]

3 hours ago, Ev1n said:

I'm curious how you guys assess how well sales of premium ships are going. What do you base those opinions on?

 

Number of battles in a certain time is the best indication we have. At least it hints at the popularity of a certain ship. 

 

I am not aware of any official numbers from WG - would be interesting though. 

 

As you have apparently read this thread... is there anything you can share with us with regards to Ashitaka...? Some here would definitely appreciate to see her :-)

[Vanhal]

4 hours ago, Ev1n said:

I'm curious how you guys assess how well sales of premium ships are going. What do you base those opinions on?

 

Hey Ev1n.

 

Could you please inform us about whereabouts of the October Revolution event? It was strangely run only at one server, and the rest of them haven't got anything even remotely comparable.