(inb4 someone calls captain obvious on the title) It is rare I make an effort to focus on a specific point in my posts. So there is no TL;DR for this one. I recently played some WoWs after a long break. During my games, something I observed was that the players playing CV in my games were mostly from one of three types:   1. Total noob. Doesn't move the CV for the whole game. Makes the most random decisions in what to strike or not, and doesn't listen to advice.  2. Below-average Dumb player. Moves CV, sends planes to cover allies, tries to manually strike a good target. For the first wave. Then any semblance of coordination vanishes after that, they leave planes hovering unattended all over the place, doesn't react with urgency to enemy strike planes heading to allies even though allied ships spotted them incoming miles away, and their fighters are literally just hovering nearby too, and doesn't really listen to advice or requests for spotting (or are too "pre-occupied to help", or just don't know what spotting means), and loses all their planes striking an AA-covered target while failing the strike anyways because they approached from a bad angle. They don't even start running when an enemy DD goes at them, they just keep their CV camped against the rock (I mean, running should be a natural reaction). Maybe they just gave up. They still keep sending planes to auto-bomb the DD to no effect though. Luckily the DD is so dumb it launches torps at the CV, misses, dodges CV drop but then circles around to wait for its torps to load. Teammates yell at it to shoot the CV, so it does, with AP. But without much gusto either (like, it shoots 2 salvos then just gives up). "God, just shoot it, you're a Lo Yang..." Teammates cry Edited and wonder aloud what they are witnessing. "Ranked, gentlemen." I reply. DD: (first response for the whole game) "[response edited for privacy]". So these players are mostly left to their own devices, striking this target or that, but completely unpredictable and unreliable for the team. 3. Unicums. They proceed to spot, strafe, Edited  DDs, then wipe out the opposing CV in two strikes. Not very fun for the opposing team to play against at all, especially when their own CV decides to take the no-fighter loadout.   In other words, the people who play CV are either ppl who are actually skilled enough and comfortable enough to dominate in CV, or total clueless nubs who don't give a damn about their performance. Most average players with self-awareness or self-responsibility shy away from the CV, not even because they are that unskilled at it, but because they are tired of the toxic experience of CV MM and gameplay, and the lackluster appeals of playing CV.   I used to remember CVs on teams being mostly dependable and fairly skilled, back 1.5 yrs ago, and I remember CVs mostly being such a large threat in CBT and the earliest stages of the game (almost 3 yrs ago), that ppl would purposefully huddle up, cover each other with AA, advance carefully, when there were CV present in the game, because not doing so almost guaranteed getting on the bad side of both the enemy CV who will decimate you and then your teammates, and the friendly CV, for making it very hard on him to try to protect you. In other words, they still took this game as one that should be played as a team game, one with respect to its design, with strategic and tactical depth, and would be a better experience if friendly and cooperating with the team. Nowadays, ppl don't even care. Least of all, the CVs. Both the atmosphere of the game, and the actual gameplay, is far from ideal. Even though ppl say glhf and such, it's more a formality than anything else. And only happens in ranked, where the same players recognize each other over conescutive games, but never in randoms anymore. And even in ranked, there is no "gg". Even amongst the consecutive players. "gg" just isn't fitting to be in this game anymore, due to a complex combination of many factors of cultural, emotional, personal, and structural problems. This saddens me. (I mean, ppl in this game once tried to perform just so they wouldn't hurt each other's feelings. They "had enough EQ" to recognize, and be nice, to the CV who was already in a pressured spot for taking the most crucial role for the team. In some ways, this was the environment my CV experience accumulated in, and to this day I still swear by the ideal of playing CV to support/protect the team. Yet, the grim realities I observed more recently cannot be farther from this cheery vision.)   Of all the games I played, few and rare did ships move up to support the DDs, at least within danger range. Ships tended to not want to be any closer than anyone else for fear of being focused. At this rate, DD gameplay will suffer some of the same dilemmas as CV, for being a bad experience. Even though it will be much less severe, as DDs are not yet designed into a corner like the CV warranting dire measures such as mirrored MM, and they are still generally appealing, in the sense being a "desirable" ship experience for their torpedoes and stealth, while the CV on contrast faces tough skill barriers, team focus and criticism (I imagine some less social ppl wouldn't even stand that spotlight pressure regardless of skill), and a generally frustrating experience (same for some ppl who absolutely flip out at frustration). The desirability of BBs and CAs, as reflected in actual data in one of my polls earlier, supports this observation. Thus I hope the point of being alert for potential vulnerabilities and shortcomings in the game design based on hypothesizing the experience for DDs based on generalizing from CVs, will be point taken and considered. And that this may reflect deeper, core flaws in the design philosophy of this game which will be harder to pin down, and even harder to address, but should not be dismissed if we still are to believe in and wish the best for this game in the future.   Musings: I recently made a troll topic about how the "great player diaspora" which saw drops of 600k to the about 40k we see today, could be partially in a representative theory how CV gameplay was a symbolic turn point in "falling short of expectations". I also mentioned that the reason it was so lethally potent, was that it was dual-angled and a self-reinforcing process of aggravation. While that theory (and post) was troll, this one is not. Of my conclusions since playing again, CV gameplay has taken a turn for the worse since I remember, and the self-reinforcing and aggravating conditions may already be at work for the present issues at hand. The lowering of CV population, and this polarizing-skill phenomenon, as well as general criticism popping up regularly on forums, could be interpreted to support this hypothesis.   I really hope that whatever overhaul or CV changes WG is planning, will prove to address deeper issues such as this. Back at the beginning 2017, when they first considered overhauling CV, I though it was just to optimize the mechanics and experience. But nowadays, it is clear that such a thing by itself would no longer be sufficient, by far. If it were only mechanics to be designed, they'd better be state-of-the-art mechanics nothing short of genius, to be able to turn this situation around via only subtle, intricate and precise changes in game mechanics, eventually shifting back the paradigm to something more ideal. I recently read an idea of creating "legacy" WoWs server of CBT just like World of Warcraft, but to be honest, even that will not achieve the time-machine level changes to re-enact the high expectations, eagerness, community spirit, and moral of players back then.    I've binged myself on enough ranked and randoms for a while now, and will likely take another long hiatus from WoWs. This concludes the "1.5 yrs later" line of thought and posts. (Which there wasn't much of anyways to begin with, so nothing lost here XD and please don't take me too seriously.)   Edit: I realize that in some cases DD ap may be desirable against a CV, especially a camped one against a rock, and while it is good to be vigorous and nitpick on the details, pls don't nitpick on the details this once and focus on my point.   This post has been edited by the moderation team due to swearing.