World of Warships

[GDS_Starfury]

lol @ your complaining.

you should see what this weeks patch did to Tanks.

[Nefaro]

lol @ your complaining.

you should see what this weeks patch did to Tanks.

Well... I expect Wargaming to regularly screw up WoT.  It's a tradition as far as I remember.

[Tuna]

Jeez, Nef takes a 4 plus month hiatus from PC gaming.. just hops on WoW.. and plays like he's been going hardcore all along!  O0

[Nefaro]

The LOLknob was cranked to eleven.

World of Battleships™ ftw!

[Tuna]

We kicked ass in the Tier Ten game as DDs though as well!  ;)

[Shelldrake]

Nice work Nef and crew!  :bd:

[Nefaro]

We kicked ass in the Tier Ten game as DDs though as well!  ;)

Nice work Nef and crew!  :bd:

The three of us often had most of the kills on our team. 

Did pretty good overall.  Was a good time.  <:-)

[Tuna]

He's baaack!

[steve58]

Update 0.6.6 incoming tomorrow (7JUNE).  Very large ~4GB

New stuff includes scenarios, German cruisers HE armor penetration capability increased (my T5 & T6 cruisers will like that!), reworked torpedo launch functionality: if your ship is destroyed while launching torpedoes, you'll now launch all your torpedoes... if you give the order in time!

more here.

[Shelldrake]

I am looking forward to the scenarios.

[Nefaro]

So a preliminary British battleship list is floating around.

... and some of them will reportedly be having radar consumables. 

:pullhair:


I'm about to drop World Of Battleships like an angry snake. 

WG's prolonged pandering to the people who only play battleships in the game has been ruining the meta.  Now it's turned into a huge battleship camp-fest in nearly every match.  Fun drain, well done.   :clap:

Destroyer gameplay has been regularly nerfed , due to battleship players complaining on the forum, and their higher tier play is a frustrating shadow of it's former enjoyment.  Cruisers were already glorified "loot piñatas" for BBs to pummel, but now their distinctive special abilities are all being given to BBs too. 

WG's efforts to make each new line of ship somewhat individualistic is ruining the balance the game had.  For a match-based team game, it's poison to have a specific subset of plaintive forumites consistently running the nerf bat. 

WoT got bad enough for me to leave long ago.  This one has had more promise since keeping out the Gold Ammo, and other such annoyances.  But WG is still slowly screwing up the game play.   

[Destraex]

Nefaro I have to say that most of what you have written is complained about in the opposite fashion by my clan most :)
They think:

- Borg Spotting is not done well.
- Smoke clouds with pew pew HE ships are op
- Carriers manual drop is more like a dive bomber than torp run and impossible to avoid with skill but is more luck
- DDs dissappearing at will while right next to you is silly

Basically they are more playing an arcade game but wanting a little more suspension of disbelief. I don't necessarily agree with them, but do agree that their are so many things that BBs just cannot counter.

I am looking forward to the coop scenarios. It will be a welcome break from the herp derp.

P.S. That score of yours above is amazing!!!

[Slick Wilhelm]

- DDs dissappearing at will while right next to you is silly

This is what drove me away the last time I played. Disappearing DDs is just nuts.

[Nefaro]

Nefaro I have to say that most of what you have written is complained about in the opposite fashion by my clan most :)
They think:

- Borg Spotting is not done well.
- Smoke clouds with pew pew HE ships are op
- Carriers manual drop is more like a dive bomber than torp run and impossible to avoid with skill but is more luck
- DDs dissappearing at will while right next to you is silly

Basically they are more playing an arcade game but wanting a little more suspension of disbelief. I don't necessarily agree with them, but do agree that their are so many things that BBs just cannot counter.

I am looking forward to the coop scenarios. It will be a welcome break from the herp derp.

P.S. That score of yours above is amazing!!!

Oh, I have other complaints.  Especially regarding the high tier manual torpedo drops by CVs.  You can't do anything to stop them from murderizing you from across the map.

I just chalk up the CV junk as yet more WoT 'Space Laser' Artillery type nonsense.  At least the CV players have to take a few seconds to fly their planes over from the other side of the map, though.

People shooting from smoke is annoying, but doesn't last.  Plus it's fairly easy to hit them when you learn how.  The Cruisers that use smoke are the most annoying (Brit Cruisers, Kutuzov) but they're squishy as all hell.  One big floating hitbox, especially at T9 & 10.  Even random blind hits will do huge damage, so at least there's a backside.

The sighting system has been an integral part of all WG games.  Including the 'Borg Spotting'.  It's never been perfect, but WG has included their black & white spotting system as the strength in whole lines of playable vehicles.  Without it, those lines have no relevance.  When it comes to destroyers first being sighted at shorter ranges - it's their main defense.  A sighted destroyer will be a dead destroyer if they remain so;  they have a fraction of a BB's hit points and no armor with which to bounce hits.  I'm sure you know this well, if you've played them.

I've never had a destroyer disappear "right next to me" unless they were in smoke.  Even then, there is a minimum detection range where they will show up, no matter what (~ 3 km, can be boosted with optional module).  The only way a destroyer gets that close to you, without being detected, is if he was sitting in smoke and you charge at him.  But you can see the smoke, so you'll know something's there. With the buffs on secondaries, the ease at which DDs are destroyed at short range, and the proliferation of Hydro & Radar for detecting them at decent range no matter what, sighting destroyers isn't all that difficult these days. 

Especially considering the hordes of catapult planes, and CV planes, that are always flying around ships these days.  Aside from all the Radar & Hydro, the worst is the preponderance of aircraft which sight your destroyer AND any torpedoes in the water, at range.  Add them all together, and I'm surprised any DD players bother to go forward and scout or cap zones anymore. 



All these factors come together to promote passive, campy gameplay.  Much more so at high tiers, due to the power and ability creep.  That is the main reason for my complaints about the meta. 

I remember a long stretch, after WoWS was released, when you would regularly see aggressive gameplay from most players on both sides.  Lotsa good brawling going on.  Lately it's been a rare match in which I've seen the majority of both sides pushing in and fighting hard.  Instead, they huddle up in the rear, often behind islands, and camp.  While the few people playing the objectives get killed, one side inevitably getting more killed, and then the piecemeal roll-up of the side getting outnumbered in that initial exchange.  Because many wouldn't bother getting stuck-in. 

That such a large portion of players are running battleships these days just shows which class provides best results, on average.  I've regularly played all classes except the CV.  Battleships are Easy Mode compared to cruisers and destroyers, and it's only been getting easier due to the updates in the past year.  The number of BB players waiting in queue are multiples more than any other, during primetime when there are over 14k people on.  There wasn't such a high discrepancy a year & more ago.  Pretty good indicator that something's off with the balance.  Hell.. I even play BBs much more - because they're so much more cake nowadays.


I don't think Co-op is the answer.  It will just divide the player base even more.  There has been a long history of MMOs further screwing up game balance when mixing both PvP and PvE stats into the same bowl.  Saw it many times.  I don't really see the draw of playing a competitive match-based PvP game as PvE, either, but whatever floats 'em I suppose.



TL;DR:

WG's targeted nerfs, coupled with expanding power creep in other areas, has caused the game play to become increasingly static.  Often a camp-fest.  Noticeably less fun than in the past. 

I don't see that trend reversing, or even stopping, with each new list of updates. 

[Destraex]

Nef I agree with most of what you have said. You do see more BBs. I used to see games where half the freaking team on each side were DDs. That was when the game was at it's most annoying for me.
I have played all classes including carriers- I am very bad at carriers and don't have much time on them, but do have a tier V carrier. My son love his carriers though. I still like playing cruisers and find DDs to be the easiest play style for me. But I hate DDs as they play more like submarines than destroyers and thus try not to play them.
BBs and cruisers are my main squeezes simply because I just love the look of their lines. Rather than the gameplay.

The playerbase is huge and the coop missions don't give you the same vibe as human vs human. The same excitement. So I don't think you need to worry about the player base being split. Even if they were the main grind for some I don't think the XP would be great. The main attraction for me is 7 of my friends in one game finally!!!  Half the problem with WOWs is the fact that team play is severely limited by strangers in each game. Even if they did clan battles they would not suite the casual playerbase who wanted beer n pretzel teamplay vs similarly skilled people. Having said this, thank goodness its not the ROFL stomp fest MWO is. I would like missions eventually to include ones that are PVP.

A few of my ideas towards fixing the game would be to:

* Make destroyers into flotillas much like fighter squadrons. People turning and controlling perhaps 5 ships at once. This way you can lose a couple and still keep playing without having to have the silly advantage mechanics currently in for DDs. You could put them in formation and the dev team could have them act more naturally than schools of fish. They would have their realistic torp reload of NONE or ONE per game!! So that massive spread would be very important and spotting/scouting as well as other assorted roles would be much more important.
* Extensively re-working carrier mechanics. Making runs at least look longer like torp runs should be amongst other changes. Carriers are never going to fit perfectly unfortunately because map sizes can never be as huge as they need to be. Carrier ops are much more strategic usually. Although their are a few cases like the HMS Glorious getting sunk at close range gun battle and another battle where an Escort carrier got ambushed and sunk iirc. Carrier were usually striking from afar. But I guess we are simulating these few short range carrier kills and the few BB battles of ww1 and 2.
* Damage control such as listing and a much more complex damage model. Currently ships do not show any effects of damage if they have 20 hit points left. They are fully functional unless a critical component has been hit. I would like to see some semblance of the player being allowed to send damage control parties to control flooding or fire etc. Fixing things. That R for repair button is seriously flawed. Like half your damage control parties somehow go on holiday every now and then.The cost might be less efficiency in other systems.
* Many more ocean maps. Combat rarely if ever occurred in anything but open ocean. Islands are fun but for the most part these ships did not have the draught to operate near them. They would have run aground.
* Change the scale of things so that they are more believable?? MAYBE? I don't know here but the ranges are correctish on the stats but I think the ships may be much bigger on the map than they should be??
* Give cruisers a role by making maps big enough that they can fight without being in battleships range. By this I mean perhaps limit BB numbers in a game so that cruiser MUST be used for some roles where the map is not covered. Or so that they have a place in the battle line next to battleships. Similar to what they did with red orchestra 2.
* Change the spotting mechanics so that borg spotting is no longer accurate. For instance one ship radioing another ship and spotting shots for them would not be that efficient. Radar would, but until ww2 that was rare. Also radar sees through smoke, so technically radar should go both ways at a fair distance negating smoke at least in part. Radar directed fire should be more at spots on a radar console than having perfect information about the detected ship as if you saw it. Ships smoking themselves and then somehow seeing out of their own smoke by having others direct their fire, did happen in one battle where the japanese used spotter planes to direct fire from behind smoke.... but guess what!!!! I think it was pretty freaking inaccurate still. I don't think that in ww2 using an FOB on another ship outside of the smoke would be very accurate either. Considering even today it's something that they have not got perfectly correct. Direct LOS should be much better. So anyways. If you want to fire out of smoke their should be a cost. Because in some games people co-operate to keep smoke going for a really long time, taking it in turns to smoke. This makes it impossible to fire back unless your undivided attention is on where the shells are being fired out of the smoke and whether the ship is moving within the smoke.Most people are not good at blind fire.
* Imbalanced scenarios where objectives for the weaker side are lesser. Points for winning would be amazing. Sick of perfect mirroring like we are playing soccer or rugby and each team has perfectly equal ships.

As for some ships relying on particular mechanics. That can be fixed.