Was WoWS a better game back then or is it a better game now?

[Admiral_Karasu]

The question whether World of Warships was a better game at some earlier stage as opposed to how it currently plays popped up again on Discord and I think the discussion merits a proper forum level treatment as people may have different perspectives on this, regardless of how long they've been playing.

Was WoWS a better game back then (whenever back then was) or is it a better game now?

This is how I phrased it on Discord:

I'd say the game was at its peak from about early 2017 to January 2019. Up until then it developed favorably, following that 'golden age' it began to unravel and flounder making the gameplay progressively worse the closer we come to present time. That's my take, at least.

Where do you stand on the many reworks which I consider to be the major missteps taken by the devs?

CV rework (which broke the gameplay mechanics when it came to AA and AA builds, particularly the cruisers, altered the battle balance and the roles for CV's and other classes).

Captain skill rework (which broke the diversity of builds and seriously gimped several ships which had their stats, abilities and strengths designed around the pre-rework captain skills).

Map rework (which butchered many of the original maps and replaced them with cookie cutter type of lame and intrinsically more boring maps across board).

Finally, the issue of the implementation of the subs (which, although not a rework per se, again produced a similar disintegrating effect on gameplay integrity as the CV rework had achieved previously).

 

This conversation was between @Dareios and me there, but let's have a wider discussion here for everyone interested in the topic.

Discuss!

 

You don't want to go heer, but if you should here's the Discord link.

Spoiler

https://discordapp.com/channels/669128285527080961/1144513046237171812

 

PS. I'm hoping @Dareios will copy paste his replies on Discord and post them here.

 

[Dareios]

yes, yes, I got the wink-wink reference.

[tm63au]

2 hours ago, Admiral_Karasu said:

The question whether World of Warships was a better game at some earlier stage as opposed to how it currently plays popped up again on Discord and I think the discussion merits a proper forum level treatment as people may have different perspectives on this, regardless of how long they've been playing.

Was WoWS a better game back then (whenever back then was) or is it a better game now?

This is how I phrased it on Discord:

I'd say the game was at its peak from about early 2017 to January 2019. Up until then it developed favorably, following that 'golden age' it began to unravel and flounder making the gameplay progressively worse the closer we come to present time. That's my take, at least.

Where do you stand on the many reworks which I consider to be the major missteps taken by the devs?

CV rework (which broke the gameplay mechanics when it came to AA and AA builds, particularly the cruisers, altered the battle balance and the roles for CV's and other classes).

Captain skill rework (which broke the diversity of builds and seriously gimped several ships which had their stats, abilities and strengths designed around the pre-rework captain skills).

Map rework (which butchered many of the original maps and replaced them with cookie cutter type of lame and intrinsically more boring maps across board).

Finally, the issue of the implementation of the subs (which, although not a rework per se, again produced a similar disintegrating effect on gameplay integrity as the CV rework had achieved previously).

 

This conversation was between @Dareios and me there, but let's have a wider discussion here for everyone interested in the topic.

Discuss!

 

You don't want to go heer, but if you should here's the Discord link.

  Reveal hidden contents

https://discordapp.com/channels/669128285527080961/1144513046237171812

 

PS. I'm hoping @Dareios will copy paste his replies on Discord and post them here.

 

Its bottoming out, WG still have a bit of work to go before it completely craters into oblivion, but I have complete faith in them to perform such a task in the coming new year.    

Edited September 10, 2023 by tm63au

[SunkCostFallacy]

I arrived too late for many of the changes/reworks ... so I can't comment on them.

But I can comment on some of the later changes.

Elimination of friendly fire. It's never good when a developer dumbs down a game, and to my mind that one change reduced the skill level necessary to play drastically. Not only that, but it changed the very nature of the game.  I had a game earlier today in COOP ... I was hit by at least TEN friendly torpedoes because I was close to (and hammering the broadside of) a bot GK. I know that WoWS is an arcade game, but that's just ridiculous.

Submarines. I'm fairly blase about subs ... because they aren't that big a deal in COOP. That having been said, I persist in my opinion that an effectively infinite 'attack' like the ping should not be countered by a VERY limited resource like the Damage Control Party which has other, much more important, uses.

The proliferation of 'events'. This has already been discussed in another thread ... but I think it's getting out of hand. We recently had so many temporary currencies that I was having trouble keeping track of what was what. And, to be frank, I was having more trouble caring in the least bit about the events anyway. I may be wrong, but I don't recall there being so many events when I first started playing.

And finally ...

Closing the forum. I don't CARE what their justification for it was closing the forum was just bogus. I should note that my actual opinion can only be fully expressed using stronger words than that, but rules are rules.

 

[Silence_CN]

Well, for this kind of question, you can be pretty sure that you'll have very different answers according to the time players have spent on the game. Newbies not having know the previous game, will probably not agree. (Mere assumption form my part of course).
As for me, it's quite a long time since I began the game (though i have had a 2 and a half year of interruption), but to make it simple, I agree with your sentence.
Got exactly the same feeling.

1 hour ago, Admiral_Karasu said:

I'd say the game was at its peak from about early 2017 to January 2019. Up until then it developed favorably, following that 'golden age' it began to unravel and flounder making the gameplay progressively worse the closer we come to present time. That's my take, at least.

As far as I can see, CVs were a mistake: Not in the fact of introducing them to the game, but in the way they were introduced with a "very arguable balance".

As for maps, I don't consider it as the main problem. In my opinion, the map rotation has been the main trouble.
As for captains' rework, the suppression of Dead Eye was a ggod thing

And, finally, introducing the subs was another nail on he coffin.

 

Unfortunately WG doesn't have the same semantic field than me and "rework" doesn't mean the same thing for them and me. 😁

And agree with my previous hereabove neighbor : getting rid ot the forum was sheer contempt.

[Admiral_Karasu]

Different perspectives, as is even the case with long time players not to mention the newbies who don't know any better, or any worse, depending on how you view the many changes WG has made in the game. Mind you, I think we still have not only the same game engine but essentially the same core mechanics in the game. That can be a good thing, because it keep the game 'alive' in a sense, or it can be a bad thing because it essentially may be a major factor in why we can argue that the changes break the game.

On the practical level, as I mentioned on Discord, for me the captain skill rework is the pivotal mistake they did. I'm not talking about Deadeye, because that's just one detail, I'm talking about how I made use of the pre-rework captain points to help me adapt to the changing meta. When WG pulled off the rework, they essentially removed one major tool set from me which had helped me to maintain my ability to play the game in a way that made sense and remained more on the positive side of the in terms of being fun and engaging.

 

[Jakob Knight]

As has been said, different players will have different opinions on what the various changes meant to their views on the game, in large part because each person's definition of 'fun' is different on many levels.  Some enjoy gameplay that challenges them, while others want a laid-back environment where they can just shoot things through a crosshair.  Some want accurate, historical performance of equipment and ships of the era, while others want battles that can be fought without hours of training in every aspect of ship operation and which can be concluded inside five minutes.  WOWS strikes a very good middle ground, but the result of being open to as many players as possible is that it won't satisfy everyone in all aspects.

 

What many forget when discussing the changes to WOWS over the years is that, in most cases, those changes were driven by a need in the game for the change to occur.  Those needs have disappeared or changed due to those changes, and so are readily forgotten in the view of the game as it is and the needs required to play it currently (which is a problem in almost all evaluations of history, not just of a game).

 

The CV Rework was the accumulation of all the player demands for changes to Carriers following a line of changes that saw the removal of Air Superiority loadouts on the USN line (because Carrier players complained they were not being allowed to do damage in a battle), the laying down of the law by WG that CVs on opposite sides should not collaborate with mutual agreements to avoid attacking each other, complaints by surface players that they were helpless against a good CV player who could sink -any- ship in a single attack, complaints by CV players that the AAA of ships were too powerful (again, keeping them from being allowed to do damage in a battle), complaints by both CV players and their teams that CVs that lost all of their planes were nothing more than floating targets occupying the space of a combatant on their team, and player complaints that the RTS game mode of Carriers did not belong in a third/first person perspective game like WOWS.  The Rework tried to give everyone what they wanted, and resulted in what we have now (which is actually quite balanced from an objective viewpoint as CVs are now allowed to do damage in an attack but lack the single-punch, unavoidable destruction attacks they could previously).

 

The Commander Skill Rework was similarly the result of problems that came up in the game.  Prior to the rework, there really were no diversification options in skills.  Certain skills were the only practical options at each level for each kind of ship, and there were not enough skill points to deviate from this significantly (with the higher-Tier skills costing five points apiece, and 19 points being the cap).  The current lines do allow for individual choice in what a player wants to do ( I personally almost never use Adrenaline Rush, and do quite well without it despite the prevailing opinion that it must be taken at all times), with the notable exception of the Submarine line which is too new to have gone through a Rework cycle.

 

Map Reworks are also the result of experience gained from the point the game went live, and is always a challenge in any competitive game that is not going to be held in an physical arena building.  In many maps, there were positions that provided one side a distinct and very powerful advantage over the other solely based on starting position.  Yet, exactly mirroring each side's terrain and conditions on map after map makes the game dull and unrewarding to play in.  The map reworks try to again strike a balance between mirroring advantages on each side while avoiding too much mirroring, and I think any good commander can work with the ones we have now.

 

These are my own opinion, of course, but I do think looking back and saying 'X was better then' is a personal opinion and can lead to not remembering the problems that existed that drove those changes.  I think the game -is- better today than when it went Live, from an objective standpoint.  Do I think I personally would have preferred if alot that used to be had not been changed?  Sure, because I am a person who distrusts changes in general, and I have my own preferences for fun.  But that is just my own viewpoint, and I can see why these changes were made and have to agree with most of them.

 

 

[Gillhunter]

I've been playing since 2015. Really enjoyed the game. I still enjoy it, but not as much. I only play PvE these days.

These are the what I believe has made a less enjoyable game.

The destruction of low tier play via economics. I'm not sure what the point of doing this was other than revenue.

CV rework. This may have been a self inflicted wound by the players. I remember almost daily complaining about CVs on the forum, pre-rework.

Captain skill rework. Why, just why?

Submarines. Not so much that they were introduced, but how they were introduced.

Elimination of friendly fire. Stupid, just dumbing down the game.

Closing the forum. This may be a blessing in disguise. This forum is proving to be more honest and enjoyable to me.

[Admiral_Karasu]

@Jakob Knight Two points where I would readily disagree with you.

I don't remember the pre-rework maps being a huge issue, and also I'd rather take 'unfair' maps over 'boring' maps any day of the week. If it's random, it doesn't need to be fair, it only needs to give a fair chance, and if rework was required, I'd much rather they had made the spawn points more random as well to keep the players on their toes, as it were.

Even more I disagree with your analysis of the situation with the captain skills. True, you had the same skillset for every ship class, but it was up to you how you decided to make use of what they gave you. In other words, you were able to tailor the ship gameplay to your requirements to match your preferred playstyle. That 'perk' was entirely decimated in my opinion with the rework.

[ZeuSueZ1337]

Three things have made this game less-enjoyable for this signature:

• 3rd place, AA+CV reworks. Wanna say ofc, but thats probably to harsh, but for players whom were here before this rework the majority will agree that this war/is a major clusterf***.
• 2nd place, The constant addition of fantasy-boats/branches when sooooo many real boats ships are overlooked. They (being WG) wanted to nerf Missouris’ credit advantage yet keeping her available, a somwhat reasonable change, why not add “her” as either Wisconsin or New Jersey? Also they wanted to add Nelson again and gave us Collingwood. Why not re-introduce her as Roodney but with the chosen nerfs implemented. This seems dumb.
• At last for me, on a clear top podium finish; Removal of team damage is a massive admission on WG’s part that this is an arcade game LARP’ing as a simulator — dumbing the game down like this is just pathetic. Firstly you could bait torps to inflict catastrophic damage to the enemies team-mates, but even more importantly you couldn’t play with your head up your own be-hind. You needed to pay way more attention to the game in general and your own team-mates in particular.

My two cents.

 

Edited September 10, 2023 by ZeuSueZ1337
Added paragraph, typos etc.

[Wolfswetpaws]

7 hours ago, Admiral_Karasu said:

Was WoWS a better game back then or is it a better game now?
<snip>

I started playing World of Warships in 2018.
Within a few weeks or months, I was given a survey via a pop-up notification in my Port.
Among the my responses was a sentiment that said a game without Aircraft Carriers and Submarines was "boring".
That was 2018.

There have been numerous changes since then. 
Some changes were lamented, some were desired (but not implemented in a manner that everyone enjoys), and some were welcomed.

World of Warhsips has remained committed to their 20-minute time limit.  

The changes to the team-kill/damage system have been interesting, but I feel have been beneficial overall.
1.  Player "A" cannot sink Player "B" anymore. 
If I am Player "B", then I don't have my match cut-short merely because Player "A" decided to behave like an excrement extrusion orifice.
2. WOWs never appointed players to be "Referees" anyway.  And the elimination of friendly fire being able to sink friendly ships reduced the workload of WOWs staff that were adjudicating replays sent-in via Customer Service tickets and etc. & etc. 
3.  Bottom line, this was a WOWs labor-saving change, but it's also a change I can live with.  
4.  While some may lament the lack of realisim, I point out that WOWs decided to depart from realism earlier, via radar that works through islands and repair-parties that function during the heat of battle (among other stuff).  WOWs has taken the Arcade Game approach time and again.
5.  If WOWs really wanted to curtail friendly fire, but not eliminate it entirely.  Then they would have implemented "damage relection" as a percentage value.
If player A does any damage to player B, the percentage of the hull total on player B's ship would be calculated and then immediately reflected back upon Player A.
Thus the Players who don't commit team-damage acts won't have their ship damaged by them and players who even accidentally hit an ally are immediately provided with a consequence.  The intended effect being that misbehaving players are hoisted upon their own figurative petards while well-behaved players are shielded automatically from team-damage.
6.  "But what about when someone intentionally sails in front of my torpedoes?"  I'm guessing that WOWs thought about #5, but decided not to implement it and instead implemented an elimination of team-damage/sinking to make the game more forgiving of accidents and to keep their workload to a minimum.
7.  The timing of the introduction of Submarines and the elimination of team-damage/sinking was observed and noted by many people.  

Moving on ...  🙂

RTS CV's compared to our current First-person-shooter CV's.
~RTS CV's were better at modeling flight operations and logistics.  ~FPS CV's were pitched (by WG/WOWs) as being easier to learn and more immersive.
1.  People who want realism should prefer RTS CV's, in my opinion.
2.  AA in-game was and remains more effective than it was historically (from the research I've done online in the past, which I won't repeat here).
Again, I think the people who want realism should count their blessings because they're getting AA that is more effective than it was in real-life, both in RTS CV's and with the current FPS CV's.
3.  FPS CV's merely make the swarming and deletion of an opponent's ship much more difficult than RTS CV's.

Moving along ...  🙂 

WOWs had had a number of collaboration and in-house-created events over the years.
Overall, I've enjoyed these.

And we're moving ...  🙂 

Could WOWs be better?  I say, "Yes".     

1.  For me, a "side game" was participation in various topics of the old forums (which have been shutdown).
Thankfully we have this forum, now.  Yay!  
Examples of topics include the "Who have you seen in game", "Word association", "Waiter there's a <blank> in my soup!", 'Caption the profile picture above you", various role-playing topics, and "If our commanders could talk ..." which has been reborn as "If our captains could talk again ..."
https://www.devstrike.net/topic/40-if-our-captains-could-talk-again/
https://forum.worldofwarships.com/topic/221037-if-our-commanders-could-talk/

2.  ~In the past, I've posted how I think the game could be expanded in several ways, such as exploring our own and other player's ports with avatars of ourselves and/or our commanders (similar to how people play and create in the game "SIMS" and/or how landing-party missions are done in Star Trek Online and Elite Dangerous Online). 
~From a frivolous "pub crawls" to perhaps more complex and interesting side-quests which are part of a larger story, eh?
~Being able to customize our Ports and our in-game avatar appearances could be fun, I feel.
~It would be nice to have our Ports populated with all our Commanders and a number of non-player-character Citizens in the daily life of keeping a port operational and our fleet of ships maintained.
~I'd like our ships to be able to conduct search & rescue missions, in addition to the scenario operations we have now.  Either as a single-player thing or as a cooperative effort with players during a scenario operation.

3.  And ArIskandir wrote some interesting stuff about traveling and invading/defending areas of the seas or becoming a Privateer or a Pirate with Letters of Marque & Reprisal on some sort of global map and having affiliation with guilds or major powers of some sort.  I may not have completely understood his concepts, but I did find his creative efforts interesting and felt they had potential.

4.  In short, I feel that World of Warships is limiting itself by having only an "arena battle" format.  Growing beyond this could attract more players, I feel.
Sure, it would involve an investment of money & labor by WOWs to add new features to the game. 
But it would also be adding opportunities for players to spend in-game currencies and real money.

5.  Larger maps & areas and additional methods to explore merely for the joy of exploration and appreciation of what the Art Department has created.

6.  Are there perhaps more ways to expand World of Warship that I haven't thought of?
    

 🙂  

Is WOWs more complex than it was when it first appeared?  I say yes.
Is WOWs better now?  I think this is mostly a player opinion phenomena which depends upon a player's preferences.
There are some things I'd like to change, such as the same gun/projectile performing differently merely because it is mounted on a different tier of ship.  I'd research the real performance of equipment and then model it properly and let chips fall where they may, if I were going more towards 'realism'.
The problem is that real-time simulations take hours instead of 20 minutes.  WOWs has repeatedly decided to appeal to pew-pew-pew and "not-boring" instead of realism and simulation.  🙂
 

Edited September 10, 2023 by Wolfswetpaws

[Wolfswetpaws]

3 hours ago, Admiral_Karasu said:

@Jakob Knight Two points where I would readily disagree with you.

I don't remember the pre-rework maps being a huge issue, and also I'd rather take 'unfair' maps over 'boring' maps any day of the week. If it's random, it doesn't need to be fair, it only needs to give a fair chance, and if rework was required, I'd much rather they had made the spawn points more random as well to keep the players on their toes, as it were.

Even more I disagree with your analysis of the situation with the captain skills. True, you had the same skillset for every ship class, but it was up to you how you decided to make use of what they gave you. In other words, you were able to tailor the ship gameplay to your requirements to match your preferred playstyle. That 'perk' was entirely decimated in my opinion with the rework.

Were it up to me ...  🙂 
I'd allow every Commander to access every skill, regardless of which ship they're the Captain of at the moment.
I'd keep the decision to allow every commander to have a skill-set for each ship type.
This, I feel, would increase the variety of skill-builds.

Plus, it ticks me off that Submarines cannot improve their concealment by 10% like other ships can.  🙂 

[Admiral_Karasu]

@Wolfswetpaws The removal of FF is considered controversial by some and something that 'dumbed the game down. I'm not necessarily that criticical of the change itself, but if there's really a connection between this and their intention to implement the subs... I gotta wonder.

Quote

5.  If WOWs really wanted to curtail friendly fire, but not eliminate it entirely.  Then they would have implemented "damage relection" as a percentage value.
If player A does any damage to player B, the percentage of the hull total on player B's ship would be calculated and then immediately reflected back upon Player A.
Thus the Players who don't commit team-damage acts won't have their ship damaged by them and players who even accidentally hit an ally are immediately provided with a consequence.  The intended effect being that misbehaving players are hoisted upon their own figurative petards while well-behaved players are shielded automatically from team-damage.
6.  "But what about when someone intentionally sails in front of my torpedoes?"  I'm guessing that WOWs thought about #5, but decided not to implement it and instead implemented an elimination of team-damage/sinking to make the game more forgiving of accidents and to keep their workload to a minimum.

I think there was a mechanism but it was 'buffered' in a sense. You could, IIRC, 'nuke' yourself by doing team damage in battle. Maybe some people also sailed into your torps on purpose, but it was far common that you ended up intercepting torps fired by the 'second line torpers'. Still happens, but there's no damage other than wasting someone's torps.

Quote

RTS CV's compared to our current First-person-shooter CV's.
~RTS CV's were better at modeling flight operations and logistics.  ~FPS CV's were pitched (by WG/WOWs) as being easier to learn and more immersive.
1.  People who want realism should prefer RTS CV's, in my opinion.
2.  AA in-game was and remains more effective than it was historically (from the research I've done online in the past, which I won't repeat here).
Again, I think the people who want realism should count their blessings because they're getting AA that is more effective than it was in real-life, both in RTS CV's and with the current FPS CV's.
3.  FPS CV's merely make the swarming and deletion of an opponent's ship much more difficult than RTS CV's.

Well.. yes and no, I think. As a non-CV player I prefer the RTS CV's because of how they impacted the gameplay and were better integrated with the game mechanics, which is hardly surprising as the mechanics were probably designed around the concepts they had initially launched, although the changed the CV's going from closed beta to open beta. No idea how, though, I only joined up in open beta.

The AA may remain more effective than in reality, but the CV players know how to fool the AA and evade the flak entirely, so it's not working as intended, unless that is intended. Also, the present carriers contain a plane factory, they'll never ever run out of planes, they are also able to keep launches waves of squadrons even if their flight decks are ablaze with fires. Obviously, they are also effectively untouchable and are typically among the last ships in the team to survive, whereas they ought to be priority targets.

They can still very well delete ships, that's not a problem for them in terms of CV potential, it's a player issue more than anything else.

[Wolfswetpaws]

4 minutes ago, Admiral_Karasu said:

Obviously, they are also effectively untouchable and are typically among the last ships in the team to survive, whereas they ought to be priority targets.

 I'd like to introduce you to the Aircraft Carriers in my fleet who have each earned a Close Quarters Expert achievement.
Some of them have earned it multiple times.
Perhaps my CV play is an example of a "statistical outlier"?  🙂 

The only CV's who haven't earned the achievement in my fleet cannot do so because they're not equipped with secondary-battery guns (Saipan and Sanzang).  🙂 
 

Quote

I think there was a mechanism but it was 'buffered' in a sense. You could, IIRC, 'nuke' yourself by doing team damage in battle. Maybe some people also sailed into your torps on purpose, but it was far common that you ended up intercepting torps fired by the 'second line torpers'. Still happens, but there's no damage other than wasting someone's torps.

Pretty much correct.
Under the old team-damage system, a player who repeatedly caused team-damage would be warned and they would "turn pink" and be restricted to Co-op (as if Co-op players wanted to have an aft-hole foisted upon them?  Puh-lease, no! Anyway, moving on ...).  Further repeated team-damage infractions could cause the game to make a player "turn orange" and invoke the "damage reflection" penalty.  Repeatedly shooting at allies while the damage reflection penalty was in effect could cause a player to send themselves back to port and may invoke other penalties that i cannot recite from memory.  But being banned from the game for a period of time or permanently was possible, as i recall.
 

[PrairiePlayer]

I was originally ambivalent about removing team damage, but now realize that it was probably necessary and has helped the game.  Unfortunately, there are WAY too many players who, not only ignore where they shoot (or launch torps), but uniformly think it is someone else's fault if their shots hit a teammate.  Take responsibility for launching torps behind teammates - not a chance.

Does elimination of team damage make the game more "arcadish"?  Yes, of course.  Was it an improvement?  Also, yes, because it eliminated a lot of toxic behavior.  

[Asym]

8 hours ago, Admiral_Karasu said:

The question whether World of Warships was a better game at some earlier stage as opposed to how it currently plays popped up again on Discord and I think the discussion merits a proper forum level treatment as people may have different perspectives on this, regardless of how long they've been playing.

Was WoWS a better game back then (whenever back then was) or is it a better game now?

This is how I phrased it on Discord:

I'd say the game was at its peak from about early 2017 to January 2019. Up until then it developed favorably, following that 'golden age' it began to unravel and flounder making the gameplay progressively worse the closer we come to present time. That's my take, at least.

Where do you stand on the many reworks which I consider to be the major missteps taken by the devs?

CV rework (which broke the gameplay mechanics when it came to AA and AA builds, particularly the cruisers, altered the battle balance and the roles for CV's and other classes).

Captain skill rework (which broke the diversity of builds and seriously gimped several ships which had their stats, abilities and strengths designed around the pre-rework captain skills).

Map rework (which butchered many of the original maps and replaced them with cookie cutter type of lame and intrinsically more boring maps across board).

Finally, the issue of the implementation of the subs (which, although not a rework per se, again produced a similar disintegrating effect on gameplay integrity as the CV rework had achieved previously).

Discuss!

A good topic:  if Game History is something you are interested in.......and, since this is why I started this game in the first place;  and,  have been comparing other game's antics to this game's antics to illustrate that what have seen and are seeing, simply are industry standards !  And, not necessarily good industry standards....

For me, and this is my opinion based on the reason I am even playing this game:  the focal point of change was the Cruiser Line Split (CLS)....  That's where this corporation departed from the game's original "Vision Statement"....  An entire group of player stopped playing and left the game at that point;  because,  we'd seen this exact same type of "paradigm shift" in the previous game we were a clan in !  I stayed. 

And, this game made the decision to "change markets" at that point.   I can see why truthfully:  the lure of "pay-as-you-play" in games like LoL and others simply were too strong to refuse.... 

To do that, the CLS was the opening gambit; Update 8.0; the Dockyard and the PR event; the Skill Tree Change;  the economy rework; the death of COOP and Friendly Fire ; the death of COOP mechanics with the introduction of subs;  the escalation of "chance sales tactics where you have to buy to complete"; and, the endless clones of clones of everything (events, ships, etc...) simply were done to encourage "very young children" to play this game with mommy's credit card.....  again, just my opinion.

The older game I left to come here was sold about three years ago and to this day, that games has the same population it had when it imploded.   This game is no different and has an even stronger business footprint - because, our host has several other titles to rely on !

Is it better or worse>?  Worse.  Because, I can't recommend it to those whom are seriously looking to home school their teenagers....  The conversion to an eSales arcade shooter for kids versus a solid, first world quality Naval shooter, based in WW histories that delivers quality events and daily play, is what makes recommending this game impossible for me....  Just my opinion as one whom gets a lot of calls and questions from parents......

Edited September 10, 2023 by Asym

[_KlRlTO_]

8 hours ago, Admiral_Karasu said:

Where do you stand on the many reworks which I consider to be the major missteps taken by the devs?

CV rework 

Captain skill rework 

Map rework 

Implementation of the subs 

 

1. CV Rework: It needed to happen, but what WG gave us was a total hatchet job. Simple removal of strafe and manual drops, leaving only the exit engagement mechanic from strafe would have been enough to balance, but that's obviously not what WG wanted.

2. Captain Skill rework: I don't get the complaining over this. In the bigger picture, this has been almost all positive, once the Deadeye problem was dealt with. I count this as a true game improvement.

3. Map rework: yeah, it may make some of the maps feel more bland, but it also needed to happen.

4. Subs: mostly unfairly demonized. The early testing was brutal, but subs are really more bark than bite, except for the players that pretty much walk into them because they hate learning new things, which seems to be fairly common among longer time players of this game.

5: The thing you left out, the alienation and loss of most of the CCs: Now this is the thing that really hurt the game. With so much less content available, newer players have fewer resources to fall back on to properly learn the game. It's no coincidence that play has gotten so much more toxic with the most watched players being known for being toxic. The best content producers dialed it way back when the CC fiasco happened. The worst things about the game now are a direct result of bad publicity decisions.

So overall, I believe the game is actually mechanically in the best place it has ever been, but all of the intangible things affected by their marketing strategy have severely hurt the quality of gameplay.

And yes, the forum shutdown is obviously the worst call of all, doubling down on the same problems caused by the CC exodus.

Edited September 10, 2023 by _KlRlTO_

[Admiral_Karasu]

@_KlRlTO_

I probably left out a lot, I only brought up in my opening posts would I could with good conscience point out as reasons why I felt we had been going in the wrong direction, and what I saw as the pivotal points. The CC exodus, IIRC it wasn't down to a gameplay development issue, and in my post I didn't even touch on any of the community related issues, or monetization which is either the root of all evil or a symptom of the game design itself failing and the need to address that. Smoke and mirrors, again, in other words. The monetization has been linked to WG contracting MachineZone to carry out an under the hood economy rework, meaning they substantially changed the game economy aspects of the game.

The predatory monetization is an issue, but it's not a severe issue for me, and it has little effect on my gameplay in any away. I don't have to go along with it, and in fact I do not. I'm not buying any of their event related stuff, I'm not buying satan crates any more, I'm not even buying premium time or dubs. Nada. I'm probably missing out on some overpriced goodies, but I can do fine without them. No prob.

On the other hand, I wish people would start to play more attention on the gameplay deficit we are experiencing, and try to sort out the reasons why that is so. It's probably fair to say that this varies from individual player to player.

I'm rather forcefully bringing up the captain skill rework and how disastrous it was, at least for me, potentially for others well. For one thing, because for some strange reason people don't really talk all that much about it which I find .... curious. For another thing, because I find the situation now far more limiting than before the rework. Back then, I could decide which skill to pick for whatever captain for whatever ship I wanted to place them. I decided, not WG. Now WG gets to decide much of that for me leaving me only with the illution of choice.

One crucial reason more. Think how much better, how much more effectively we could deal with the subs in randoms, if we still could choose RDF and secondary skills for any ship we play. Let that sink in for a moment...

Curiouser and curiouser...

[Asym]

9 minutes ago, _KlRlTO_ said:

5: The thing you left out, the alienation and loss of most of the CCs: Now this is the thing that really hurt the game. With so much less content available, newer players have fewer resources to fall back on to properly learn the game. It's no coincidence that play has gotten so much more toxic with the most watched players being known for being toxic. The best content producers dialed it way back when the CC fiasco happened. The worst things about the game now are a direct result of bad publicity decisions.

And yes, the forum shutdown is obviously the worst call of all, doubling down on the same problems caused by the CC exodus.

I liked 5. 

If you want to eliminate the actual "cost" of older players complaining;  because,  the quality they expected and invested in for went to heck:  you eliminate where the angst is created because of the product change....  And, that was everyone of us with an educated opinion - vis-a'-vis young adults whom simply don't care.

Paradigm shift:  check.   👍    Less expensive way to make money:  check.  👍

[Dareios]

4 hours ago, Admiral_Karasu said:

@Jakob Knight Two points where I would readily disagree with you

I don't remember the pre-rework maps being a huge issue, and also I'd rather take 'unfair' maps over 'boring' maps any day of the week. If it's random, it doesn't need to be fair, it only needs to give a fair chance, and if rework was required, I'd much rather they had made the spawn points more random as well to keep the players on their toes, as it were.

 

now.. take that philosophy and apply it to a ship.

so, A ship doesnt need to be fair, or balanced, so long as it isnt boring. so long as theres a chance. Ergo if the mighty spreadsheets shows that after eleventeen thousand recorded matches taking into account all skill levels, if a ship has an overall win rate of 69% then thats fine, as theres still a fair chance to kill it.

While I dont have exact numbers on hand, I believe its something like 'more than 3-4% above median needs a balance pass'.

However ships are fairly easy to balance.. tweak a few numbers, play with the reload, or alpha, or conceal and voila youve nerfed the overperformer by a couple of percent. A map takes a huge amount of effort to rework it, and thats not even taking into account whatever heat maps or data WG uses to work out where and why a map is not balanced. Ergo you need to get it close enough to 'right' the first time. Which leads to the 'boring, same, same' map trope.

[Asym]

17 minutes ago, Admiral_Karasu said:

On the other hand, I wish people would start to play more attention on the gameplay deficit we are experiencing, and try to sort out the reasons why that is so. It's probably fair to say that this varies from individual player to player.

I'm rather forcefully bringing up the captain skill rework and how disastrous it was, at least for me, potentially for others well. For one thing, because for some strange reason people don't really talk all that much about it which I find .... curious. For another thing, because I find the situation now far more limiting than before the rework. Back then, I could decide which skill to pick for whatever captain for whatever ship I wanted to place them. I decided, not WG. Now WG gets to decide much of that for me leaving me only with the illution of choice.

One crucial reason more. Think how much better, how much more effectively we could deal with the subs in randoms, if we still could choose RDF and secondary skills for any ship we play. Let that sink in for a moment...

Curiouser and curiouser...

You reap what you sow ! 

Ever hear the comment that the PVP community wished the PVE players should simply not visit Randoms or Clan Battles or Ranked because they.....[add a negative thought].   If COOP was neutered to the point of uselessness (from a game experience and training aspect) how in the world can new players grow and work through endless losses and toxic comments???  It's a self defeating methodology....   And, this game "eats their own young".... were you here when the Cruiser Line Split started the Radar proliferation?  Where Barney (purple) level players migrated down to farm tier 5 players with radar....  It was a disaster for retention.

You reap what you sow...

Ah, if it is almost impossible to keep new players because of an immense learning curve that is almost to the point of having to spend real money to even play, ah.......again, you get what you deserve comes to mind. 

We see new players everyday in Random Operations that have tier 8 ships and don't have a single idea how to play them.  Or, the watch YT for the exploits and that's all they know how to do......

So, if 80% of the PVP population are "veteran players" and the MM creates a team.......80% of that team are better than the 20% and you get: endless stomps which, drives players away.  Self defeating paradigm.

Edited September 10, 2023 by Asym

[MnemonScarlet]

WoWs is probably more balanced now than it was in the golden days (aside from like 2018), because all of the really bad old bugs or 'features' are gone. And they generally don't release widely applicable overtuned premiums anymore (sometimes we get overtuned specialists, but those ships can't carry games as easily on their own).

But, the game feels less fun, because the gameplay environment has been cluttered up with too many gimmicks and too many unfun or disruptive interactions. The elegance of the old triad of class interaction is more cloudy nowadays, we just have so many weird ships/lines, nevermind the asymmetric classes.

[Wolfswetpaws]

I figure it is useful to distinguish "the game itself", the "drama surrounding the game" in the news and youtube content, and "drama on the old forums" affecting our enjoyment or our enjoyment/disappointment with game programming features affecting our enjoyment of the old forums.

Or, is it just me?
 

[Admiral_Karasu]

14 minutes ago, Dareios said:

now.. take that philosophy and apply it to a ship.

so, A ship doesnt need to be fair, or balanced, so long as it isnt boring. so long as theres a chance. Ergo if the mighty spreadsheets shows that after eleventeen thousand recorded matches taking into account all skill levels, if a ship has an overall win rate of 69% then thats fine, as theres still a fair chance to kill it.

While I dont have exact numbers on hand, I believe its something like 'more than 3-4% above median needs a balance pass'.

However ships are fairly easy to balance.. tweak a few numbers, play with the reload, or alpha, or conceal and voila youve nerfed the overperformer by a couple of percent. A map takes a huge amount of effort to rework it, and thats not even taking into account whatever heat maps or data WG uses to work out where and why a map is not balanced. Ergo you need to get it close enough to 'right' the first time. Which leads to the 'boring, same, same' map trope.

Yes, well except that there are no random picks when it comes to ships. Maps, on the other hand are random, as is the fact which team you spawn with. We've got a lot of RNG in this game, a ridiculous amount in fact, yet we got the same maps, same positions, time after time. Rinse and repeat. Of course, those who like this sort of thing, can fine tune their performance over time, same as in WoT they can learn where every bush, rock, nook and cranny are. It's only fun if your objective is keep raising your WR. Maybe some people play for the sake of stats, I've never bothered with that.

Which... would be easy to believe if you had a look at my stats, but that was not my point.

[Sailor_Moon]

Overall? I say back then. Lots of great mechanics were lost or watered down over the years. Even build diversity has decreased since the Commander skills rework. Secondary builds took a hit, and cruiser secondary builds were annihilated. AA builds are worthless and not worth building into on all but a SELECT HANDFUL of high-AA cruisers and maybe a couple destroyers. Additions of subs was NOT a positive for the overall game balance (positive for Wargaming's bottom line, sure), as they still require an overhaul in their mechanics and gameplay. Economics took a big hit too. I cannot think of much recently (aside from Wee Vee '44 and anime collabs, personally speaking) that I was TRULY excited for in this game. Yes, they're adding more and more and more to the game. But is it what the players want added? Is it what we need? Those are the questions. Did anyone honestly ask for Scharnie '43 and it's literally a clone of Scharnie when it shouldn't be? Wargaming has gotten lazy and complacent I think with their game (balance AND content).

My two bouncy 356mm AP shells.

Edited September 10, 2023 by Sailor_Moon