Clan Battles survey....

[YouSatInGum]

I think it's a good idea to take a survey of the burgeoning devstrike community...

My personal interest in this, is that Clan Battles is pretty much the only remaining mode that really motivates me to play.

That said, I'm curious if other feel the same as I do...

Also, it seems like the number of teams/clans participating has been in slow decline over the last few seasons.  While the devstrike community may not be the most representative

of the entire playerbase, it's better than nothing.

So.... I would appreciate it if those that answer the survey would also give a short answer on their motivations to play CB (or not play CB).

Additionally, if there is some practical change that could be made that would help you play CB more.... what would that be?

 

Edited October 15, 2023 by YouSatInGum

[YouSatInGum]

One more thing.... Apparently polls have a max of 3 questions.....

I also wanted  to ask about feelings of CV's being a part of CB...

[Type_93]

1 minute ago, YouSatInGum said:

One more thing.... Apparently polls have a max of 3 questions.....

I also wanted  to ask about feelings of CV's being a part of CB...

I don’t care if CVs are in CB. But to fair, when they were allowed our CV driver was pretty good.  

[I_cant_Swim_]

10 minutes ago, YouSatInGum said:

One more thing.... Apparently polls have a max of 3 questions.....

Now set to 5. You should be able to add items to the existing list.

[Kynami]

1) Usually its a fairly strong showing early in the season, but for the last 2-3 weeks it can be quite hard to get a full division without mercs. People burn out or just get very tired of the resulting meta. That was especially true this last season with tier 11 in the mix.

2) The group I'm in isn't super competitive so we generally get stuck somewhere in the middle of Storm currently.

3) Tiers 7 and 8 would be ideal in my opinion because you are far enough along to have some of the special quirks of each nation in play. But the ability to get cross-mapped is lower and you aren't dealing with the blink and you miss it nature of how the last season having super ships was. Torpedo soup in particular gets hyper-aggressive at tier nine plus which makes pushing obnoxiously hard when combined with the high ranges at higher tiers. Thus making the meta push hard into a certain style of map control.

[YouSatInGum]

7 hours ago, Kynami said:

1) Usually its a fairly strong showing early in the season, but for the last 2-3 weeks it can be quite hard to get a full division without mercs. People burn out or just get very tired of the resulting meta. That was especially true this last season with tier 11 in the mix.

2) The group I'm in isn't super competitive so we generally get stuck somewhere in the middle of Storm currently.

3) Tiers 7 and 8 would be ideal in my opinion because you are far enough along to have some of the special quirks of each nation in play. But the ability to get cross-mapped is lower and you aren't dealing with the blink and you miss it nature of how the last season having super ships was. Torpedo soup in particular gets hyper-aggressive at tier nine plus which makes pushing obnoxiously hard when combined with the high ranges at higher tiers. Thus making the meta push hard into a certain style of map control.

To me, the most ideal scenario would be all ships are allowed but are assigned a point value based on tier, general competitiveness, and recent popularity.  Unfortunately, the division and matchmaking mechanisms would require a fair amount of modification to do this.... which WG is unlikely to spend on if it cuts in to the Dubai vacation... er... I mean the company professional development seminar budget.

 

That said I love the idea of a T7 and T8 mix.... maybe allow 2 T8 and rest T7.  There's a big power gap in from T7 to 8 so do you spend it on a DD, BB, or radar cruiser? 

Of course you'd have the ban Belfast, Haida, and Lenin right off the bat...

[Kynami]

1 hour ago, YouSatInGum said:

There's a big power gap in from T7 to 8 so do you spend it on a DD, BB, or radar cruiser? 

You'd be spending some of it on a radar cruiser full stop. Otherwise you'd just die to people smoking up a Flint and similar shenanigans. And ships like the Atlanta would be on a restricted list. Though yeah, OG Belfast and a few others would need to just be straight up banned from play.

[Daniel_Allan_Clark]

For me, the core game is a meme shooter, not balanced for competitive play at all.

This is why I don't bother with competitive modes.

[a252]

If my answer is  Never.... don't care for the mode.

Then Question 2 should have a Not applicable option as an answer is needed

Edited October 15, 2023 by a252

[YouSatInGum]

12 hours ago, a252 said:

If my answer is  Never.... don't care for the mode.

Then Question 2 should have a Not applicable option as an answer is needed

Indeed....my oversight.  Corrected.

 

Also, thought about Bacon...but maybe that trope should stay with the old forums...

 

One other initial thought... only 11 poll results which is not enough for any meaningful conclusions.

....so....sorry to be brutally honest, but this site has a long way to go, but I sure hope it at least gets partially there.  Even getting 1/3 the activity of the OG forums would be a win....

Edited October 15, 2023 by YouSatInGum

[a252]

1 hour ago, YouSatInGum said:

Indeed....my oversight.  Corrected.

 

Also, thought about Bacon...but maybe that trope should stay with the old forums...

 

One other initial thought... only 11 poll results which is not enough for any meaningful conclusions.

....so....sorry to be brutally honest, but this site has a long way to go, but I sure hope it at least gets partially there.  Even getting 1/3 the activity of the OG forums would be a win....

Sorry, but now question 3 also need a non-applicable/ no comment answer cause it need a answer to submit the vote

[Verytis]

Storm player here.

Personally I think the meta is too stale. Or maybe its never been my thing. There are multiple balance issues I have with CB:

• The current 1 BB limit is pointless. Most teams just make half their players cosplay as BBs with Marseille/Moskva/Stalin while cycling hydro and radar.
• I'd comment on CV more, but I don't really have much experience of them in CB. What I'll say is that they're probably nowhere as busted as the average randoms make of them, but there are also major implications such as spotting, less surface ships and maybe even CV sniping. The gameplay would be drastically different.

 

It is impossible to balance for CB when its doing something completely different from the rest of the game. Just like how brawls exists to serve a fragment of the playerbase that wants to crash German ships while taking mind-altering substances.

Overall I'd just say we should try to make ship compositions in CB, more reflective of randoms/ranked. At the same time, we also have a few blatantly over-performing ships that need to be nerfed. We can't keep relying on restrictions to make this semblance of balance. Not to mention there seem to be clear biases involved in those restrictions too.

 

And no I still play randoms/ranked. CB is a completely different game mode rn with all the restrictions/rules.

Edited October 15, 2023 by Verytis
Add more personal opinions. Formating.

[Type_93]

4 hours ago, YouSatInGum said:

Also, thought about Bacon...but maybe that trope should stay with the old forums...

 

Bacon is an acceptable question or answer in any forum or media. 

[SgtSpud1]

Yeah if our experience this last season is any kind of an indicator it seems like interest in CB is waning a little. We consistently were pitted against Hurricane teams even in squall and Gale. Was not a fun time and as a mostly social Clan, it was all we could do to make Typhoon again....the struggle is real. 

[YouSatInGum]

30 minutes ago, SgtSpud1 said:

Yeah if our experience this last season is any kind of an indicator it seems like interest in CB is waning a little. We consistently were pitted against Hurricane teams even in squall and Gale. Was not a fun time and as a mostly social Clan, it was all we could do to make Typhoon again....the struggle is real. 

I've noticed it for several of the past seasons where the "middle class" has been hollowed out.  What I mean is that the more skill clans are continuing to play and you have quite a few social oriented clans more representative of you're average player.  The in between players seem to be becoming more rare....

[Hugh_Ruka]

would be nice if the CB times were moved ... unfortunatelly the window ends just as I am starting to play ....

I got to try once some 2 years ago and it was interesting ... would like to play more but no luck ...

[Yedwy]

I played most of the nights I was home and CB were on, not every night ofc as sometimes I was tired or not in the mood, we ended up collecting the storm steel and prizes as always, thats the limit for me and my clan at the moment, any tier is fine although most people in my clan prefer T10

[AkiraKurai]

Hurricane clan many seasons ago, a lot of us gave up on playing competitively either out of frustration or because we've grown up and don't have as much time as we use to.

I'll touch on some comments in this thread based on my perspective of the scene from T10+.

• 1 BB limit
  • This is and to this day even more needed due to the proliferation of 30mm overmatch. Originally this lock was due to teams fielding BBs as their primary firepower and 2 cruisers as radar coverage for the 1~2 DDs. This caused games to be an extremly stale meta of sit and wait where both side would do nothing but sit back and snipe at each other until a cruiser exploded from all 3 BBs looking at said cruiser.
    The ban on majority of the newer BBs as well in the current meta is a reflection of weegee deciding a proliferation of 30mm overmatch guns was great for the game, it wasn't.
• CV ban
  • Can in interesting but is also probably the most toxic for of gameplay due to the battle being 50% on the RTS CV and about 30~20% on CVs as we know it in a 7 man game where it's expected everyone will be able to impact things equally if skill level was normalized.
    RTS CV in comp roleplayed as the MC in almost every comp game due to how much power they had.
    In seasons with the CVs we know today, they where probably in their most cancerous form during the infamous T6 season where everyone was roleplaying a DD with everyone playing either Huanghe or Perth and everyone else a DD (those two cruiser specifically because they both had unusually high AA constant and range for their tier, rivaling even T8 AA) choice of BB was ise for it's excelent AA and meme plane or a 406mm BB, or the ocasional RU BB for quick DCP.
    T10 CVs where also on the cancerous side as every conventional strategy was thrown out of the window due to CVs being able to spot anyone and finish anyone off when needed, in this season everyone spammed AA petro and stalin due to their, again, unusually effective AA and the BB of choice was funny enough, montana or conq, former which was able to hold off itself against strike to some degree if AA speced and at the time iirc did get the improved healing, and the later being able to shake off any kind of damage and go dark thanks to superheal.

I think T11 may make things interesting as more power was given in the hands of cruisers, a dieing class imo in randoms and is only surviving due to the BB limit, I would be interested in them bumping it to T11 without the BB limit to see how things shape, still have CV banned though.

Edit: typos and grammar

Edited October 17, 2023 by AkiraKurai

[Verytis]

7 hours ago, AkiraKurai said:

1 BB limit

• This is and to this day even more needed due to the proliferation of 30mm overmatch. Originally this lock was due to teams fielding BBs as their primary firepower and 2 cruisers as radar coverage for the 1~2 DDs. This caused games to be an extremly stale meta of sit and wait where both side would do nothing but sit back and snipe at each other until a cruiser exploded from all 3 BBs looking at said cruiser.
  The ban on majority of the newer BBs as well in the current meta is a reflection of weegee deciding a proliferation of 30mm overmatch guns was great for the game, it wasn't.

 

This is completely out of date. Proliferation of 30mm overmatch is now just one of the old excuses perpetuated by the playerbase.

Most of the problematic cruisers being spammed now don't even have 30mm armour:

• Napoli
• Moskva/Petro
• Stalin/PR
• Marseille

As for cruisers that actually have 30mm:

• Des Moines/Annapolis are mostly used with smoke tactics so its often not visible anyways.
• Nevesky and San Martin both got restricted for being good at their niches. Wouldn't be needed if you had more overmatch.
• Only Salem is relatively common and face potential issues, but it also has a superheal to partially mitigate.

 

You don't need to completely remove the BB limit, just relax it to 2 or 3. Not to mention we now have other things such as DD wolfpacks, YY with TRB.

Reduction of CAs will also:

• Reduce hydro/radar spam
• Unironically alleviates some pressure on super light cruisers.
• Reduce some of the restrictions needed.

Edited October 17, 2023 by Verytis

[Yedwy]

59 minutes ago, Verytis said:

This is completely out of date. Proliferation of 30mm overmatch is now just one of the old excuses perpetuated by the playerbase.

Most of the problematic cruisers being spammed now don't even have 30mm armour:

• Napoli
• Moskva/Petro
• Stalin/PR
• Marseille

And why do you think thy are the ones that are spammed?

[Verytis]

23 minutes ago, Yedwy said:

And why do you think thy are the ones that are spammed?

Because tanky.

Moskva/Petro/Stalin/PR are pseudo BBs with radar. Likely can't ever completely fall out of meta, because there is value in radars are that hard to displace.

But Napoli and Marseille are ships that exist mostly just to be tanks.

 

So they're basically fulfilling BB roles, but unlike BBs, also simultaneously offering utilities that BBs usually aren't given for reasons.

[Yedwy]

2 minutes ago, Verytis said:

Because tanky.

Exactly and one of if not the main reason they are tanky is that they dont get deleted the moment a BB looks in their direction because their decks dont get overmatched...

[Verytis]

6 minutes ago, Yedwy said:

Exactly and one of if not the main reason they are tanky is that they dont get deleted the moment a BB looks in their direction because their decks dont get overmatched...

In that case, lets examine what would happen if we went opposite to my suggestion.

Would anything really change if BBs were banned from CB as well?

Edited October 17, 2023 by Verytis

[Kynami]

5 hours ago, Verytis said:

Would anything really change if BBs were banned from CB as well?

Depends on the tier that would be played. But if it was T10 you would probably just see something like Castilla being slotted for that long range fire support. And a few more lighthouse builds since over-match within a match would take a hit. You still wouldn't see too many very light cruisers around simply because the super heavy cruisers are just as capable of flattening them as an actual BB, or honestly better since less chance of over-pens.

[AkiraKurai]

7 hours ago, Verytis said:

You don't need to completely remove the BB limit, just relax it to 2 or 3. Not to mention we now have other things such as DD wolfpacks, YY with TRB.

Reduction of CAs will also:

• Reduce hydro/radar spam
• Unironically alleviates some pressure on super light cruisers.
• Reduce some of the restrictions needed.

Relaxing it to 2-3 and everyone will slot 3 BBs, why take 2 extra CAs that are usually stalins when you can slot something like a montana or vermont

DD Wolfpacks do not work unless they're french, it's way too easy to kill one of them if they don't have french speed boost, the acceleration and deceleration is just too important, and if you look at bans ever since a certain Hurricane clan abused it in NA, you'll see weegee has said never again, and thus the meta goes back to screening DDs.

YY with TRB doesn't change anything as there are better things to slot in there, it wasn't effective at all against CAs without hydro as just knowing the direction of the YY was enough to dodge torps for the most part or send a screening DD out to get it since its gun dpm is laughable.

1. there are so many BBs that also blend into the role CAs except for Radar, ever since Vermont, all the TT BBs have recieved DFAA for some unholy reason and then there's the problem with hydro also spawning outside of the KMS BB line (looking at you incomp and karl). If they don't have a cruiser gimmick, guess what they have instead, cruiser dispersion (see recent IJN BB split).
2. How does this alleviate some pressure, you're replacing CAs with BBs, arguable worse
3. Reduce which restriction?

6 hours ago, Verytis said:

Would anything really change if BBs were banned from CB as well?

Meta would change a lot, suddently cruisers such as Henri would probably come back from the dead (probably not due to the heavy nerf it recieved and was only reverted in RU). Worchester and 25mm bow and aft plated cruisers are fielded now beucase there isnt a single cruiser with a 358mm+ caliber.

Radar and hydro would be so proliferate that the only viable DDs would be ones that are capable of open watering, role may be relagated to leg mod kleber and probably smalland would be unbanned but that doesn't change anything since there are so many cruiser and without the threat of 25mm overmatch, they can be even more aggressive.