UPDATE 12.8

[Gaelic_knight]

whats everyones views on the new update 

im wondering if there wanting to  farm credits of us for the signals , and will the cost be for 1 or 20 like the armoury .hope they dont take them out of the armoury because i mostly use up coal  and rarely use credits 

[Aragathor]

The whole update looks boring.

The only highlight for me is the Dupleix, as I wanted a Suffren or Duquesne class cruiser for a long time.

There's also an issue with some parts, as Bounty events are not a thing on EU. So for me it's a non-change.

Otherwise there's nothing of interest, no balance changes, no exciting content. And last but not least, WG ignored the sound issues save for the camo bug.

Edited September 12, 2023 by Aragathor

[Admiral_Karasu]

4 hours ago, Aragathor said:

The whole update looks boring.

 

The Sea Lord (who apparently has some fans here too) says it is interesting, though.

[Malum0ne]

Going into Randoms and landing in an Airship Rescue is going to be disappointing, and frustrating. 
If I click on Random Battle, that means that I want to play a Random Battle. Not an Airship Rescue.
If I wanted to play an Airship Rescue, I'd have clicked on Airship Rescue. 🤷‍♂️
Clicking on Random Battles and getting Airship Rescue just doesn't go over well with me and a few others.
I hope I'm misunderstanding what they are saying. But, that's how they had on the Public Test Server.
And they say it's to cut down on waiting in Random Battle cue.
But I'd rather wait a few seconds more and go to what I clicked on rather than, get a roll of the dice to see which game I get, regardless of what I clicked on.. 😤

[Efros]

16 minutes ago, Malum0ne said:

Going into Randoms and landing in an Airship Rescue is going to be disappointing, and frustrating. 
If I click on Random Battle, that means that I want to play a Random Battle. Not an Airship Rescue.
If I wanted to play an Airship Rescue, I'd have clicked on Airship Rescue. 🤷‍♂️

I don't play either of these modes but I sympathize as I would be pretty pissed off if I clicked COOP and ended up in Ops.

[Sailor_Moon]

13 hours ago, Gaelic_knight said:

whats everyones views on the new update 

Sad. Just...sad. ZERO balance changes that I was looking forward to. Airship Escort being added to Random Battles even though lots of players don't want it there...But I guess I'll see what free stuff I can get from the update, that'll be something at least.

Edited September 12, 2023 by Sailor_Moon

[Sailor_Moon]

6 hours ago, Admiral_Karasu said:

The Sea Lord (who apparently has some fans here too) says it is interesting, though

I like Mountbatten (we've chatted before in the past) but I really don't see what's so interesting about this update....maybe I'm missing something?

[Admiral_Karasu]

22 minutes ago, Sailor_Moon said:

I like Mountbatten (we've chatted before in the past) but I really don't see what's so interesting about this update....maybe I'm missing something?

Apparently, it's part of the ongoing speculation exactly how close or distant are WG and Lesta currently, and are they intending to keep the core of both games relatively close to prevent them from going into wildly different directions. Of course, he and many others are hoping this would mean that those California (etc.) buffs would eventually also be made available for the non-RU versions as well.

[Verblonde]

3 hours ago, Malum0ne said:

Going into Randoms and landing in an Airship Rescue is going to be disappointing, and frustrating. 
If I click on Random Battle, that means that I want to play a Random Battle. Not an Airship Rescue.
If I wanted to play an Airship Rescue, I'd have clicked on Airship Rescue. 🤷‍♂️

I hadn't registered that this was happening; it doesn't impact me personally, since I was driven out of Randoms a while ago now, but if I were still playing that mode this would be a Richard move by WG...

Edited September 12, 2023 by Verblonde

[Estimated_Prophet]

Having an issue with the Launcher, saying it can't access something? (The pre-download.) (4019)?

Anyone else? Did a check and repair. Still there.

If there's something wrong, guess I can spend my Navigator and Spanish tokens through the main site.

This and that happened. Just never got around to spending them.

[Gaelic_knight]

Did you do a check and repair 

[Admiral_Karasu]

36 minutes ago, Estimated_Prophet said:

Having an issue with the Launcher, saying it can't access something? (The pre-download.) (4019)?

Anyone else? Did a check and repair. Still there.

If there's something wrong, guess I can spend my Navigator and Spanish tokens through the main site.

This and that happened. Just never got around to spending them.

Could be a connection/DNS issue.

[Estimated_Prophet]

5 minutes ago, Admiral_Karasu said:

Could be a connection/DNS issue.

Yay.

Looked at help. Rebooted. No change.

Sent a ticket.

[Sailor_Moon]

2 hours ago, Admiral_Karasu said:

Apparently, it's part of the ongoing speculation exactly how close or distant are WG and Lesta currently, and are they intending to keep the core of both games relatively close to prevent them from going into wildly different directions. Of course, he and many others are hoping this would mean that those California (etc.) buffs would eventually also be made available for the non-RU versions as well.

Yep, that's my hope as well. It just makes logical sense to implement those buffs. This isn't about differentiation of the two games. The buffs benefit BOTH games. Therefore, they should be applied to BOTH games.

[Ensign Cthulhu]

4 hours ago, Malum0ne said:

And they say it's to cut down on waiting in Random Battle cue.

No, that is not what they said.

This is what they said:

Quote

Our goal is to add variety to Random Battles without incurring long queue times for an additional game mode. 

It's to cut down on waiting times for Airship Escort battles, since they will now draw from the main Randoms pool.

[Admiral_Karasu]

1 minute ago, Ensign Cthulhu said:

No, that is not what they said.

This is what they said:

It's to cut down on waiting times for Airship Escort battles, since they will now draw from the main Randoms pool.

Does that mean the Airship Escort battles weren't overly popular?

[Ensign Cthulhu]

Just now, Admiral_Karasu said:

Does that mean the Airship Escort battles weren't overly popular?

By virtue (or vice!) of the tiers they were restricted to and the fact that it was a separate mode, there was a reduced player pool available for them. Not everybody who found the idea interesting had the ships for it. Now the tiers have also been altered so that Tier 7 and up can play. I'd have made the tier change first and lumped it into Randoms later (if at all), keeping the number of variables to a minimum.

Personally I think lumping it in is unwise. Lumping in Arms Race I had no problem with, as it is really just a variant of Standard Battle, because most Standard Battles are kill-all affairs, or at least kill-most before capture of the enemy base is possible, and Arms Race tends to end in the same way.

Airship Escort is a different kettle of fish because the win condition demands specific goal-directed behaviour, including the unavoidable taking of risks (pushing forward to stay in the circle and keep your blimp moving). It's more like a PvP operation than a sandbox-ish free for all. Keeping it separate meant that everyone who signed up for it knew what was expected of them (supposedly) and agreed to do it (supposedly). Putting it in general rotation is going to cause friction. 

The other focus of discontent is the fact that when it was a separate mode, stats weren't tracked and one could do tech tree grinds there without ruining one's precious win rate (if one was so obsessed). Now people's reputations are on the line and everything is not so cozy! 

[Admiral_Karasu]

Having given the airship escort a go a couple of times, I don't fancy running into it in randoms. Good thing I don't really play randoms, since WG saw it fit to shove the subs in there. I wasn't a big fan of Armsrace, either, but it was less of on issue when it happened, as the gameplay doesn't actually change all that much.

[Daniel_Allan_Clark]

It really is too bad that the game isn't popular enough to avoid having to make suboptimal choices to keep queue times low...

[Nevermore135]

WoWs doesn’t have the population to support healthy queues in three permanent PvP modes (Random Battles and Ranked Battles already compete for players during prime time). That’s why we only ever have very short term battles modes like brawls and longer running temporary game modes like Arms Race and Airship Escort to test new mechanics before they are folded into Randoms. To argue over the reasoning for folding Airship Escort into Randoms vs. implementing it as a standalone game mode being to prevent long queue times in the latter vs. the former is meaningless and completely misses the underlying point.

The main draw of Airship Escort in its own mode was that it facilitated the play/grind/enjoyment of ships and builds that are arguably poorly suited for the current (especially high tier) PvP meta. It presented a fundamentally different gameplay experience that rewarded a new set of strategies and tactics to build and plan for.

Edited September 12, 2023 by Nevermore135

[Estimated_Prophet]

4 hours ago, Admiral_Karasu said:

Could be a connection/DNS issue.

No idea.

Recalling something I saw clicking through the ticket process; deleted, and redownloaded. (Haven't needed to do that for a while...)

Seems to have solved the issue, though setting were messed up, and took a while to settle back down.

[Daniel_Allan_Clark]

1 hour ago, Nevermore135 said:

The main draw of Airship Escort in its own mode was that it facilitated the play/grind/enjoyment of ships and builds that are arguably poorly suited for the current (especially high tier) PvP meta. It presented a fundamentally different gameplay experience that rewarded a new set of strategies and tactics to build and plan for.

I agree...that's why it's a bit of a shame that we don't have a big enough set of players.

The marketing strategy isnt getting enough people to play.

[Admiral_Karasu]

8 hours ago, Daniel_Allan_Clark said:

I agree...that's why it's a bit of a shame that we don't have a big enough set of players.

The marketing strategy isnt getting enough people to pay.

FTFY

[yss_turtleship]

14 hours ago, Daniel_Allan_Clark said:

It really is too bad that the game isn't popular enough to avoid having to make suboptimal choices to keep queue times low...

Arms Race is my least favorite mode, especially as a DD main.

[Guest]

Game freezing on loading screen. Mouse cursor goes away and I've got nothing but the team lineups. Game is going because I see ships getting sunk but I'm stuck. Deleted mods and it works but I have no idea which mod caused the problem. Gotta love WG breaking some part of the game with each update. Last update brought he red sky of doom, now this.

Edited September 14, 2023 by Kalishnikat