question

Quite a few players feel that T5 and T6 are being handicapped since they currently see +2/-1. Is there any potential insight you could provide? Are those tiers likely to see +2/-2 ever again?.

answer

We do realize that after matchmaker tuning T3-4 and T7-8 got more fun and T5-6 got more difficult to play. It was preidctable, and this was our conscious decision. We’re conducting a dedicated research on that to see what action is needed (if any) to soften the effect.

Personal remark: one guy from my team has started a new account, so we play on low-mid tiers weekly to help him with advancing. I have to say, T5-6 are still fun (IMO).

question

Well, let me give you an example. While grinding the new German BB line, I played 17 battles in the Konig until I unlocked the Bayern. In those 17 battles, I was top tier exactly ONE time.

Yes, SOME ships in tiers 5-6 remain fun – while others it is a bit of a painful grind.

answer

But then you go to Gneisenau/Bismarck and get more easy targets than prior to change, right?

However, “one time” sounds strange, as we have a MM script that breaks series of matches in low position. Will check that later.

question

Can we have a Dasha Perova voice option?

answer

I will ask her about it.

question

so.. you have contact with her.. follow question, does she know how popular she is and her videos??

answer

Sure she does.

question

Compring Mogami and Myoko, the number 5 turret on Mogami doesn’t turn all the way to broadside on Mogami, while it does on Myoko (and on Atago and Ibuki as well). This means that Mogami has to show more broadside to fire her number 5 turret. I’ll post screenshots below. Is this intended or a bug? Are the turret angles changed for balance reasons (eg: nerfed for overperforming ships) or devs always try for the optimal angles for all ships?

Also, the same question for Tenryu’s number 2 gun. Compared to the other 3 guns, it can only turn slightly more than 180 degress.

answer

Sooo..checked both cases with devs. You are right. This will be fixed in 0.5.13, thank you so much for yor help.

Turret angles are normally NOT used as up/nerf method, they are more about comfort and historical accuracy.

question

I think the question that’s bugging most of us is what the hell is going on with the British Cruisers.

answer

The initial concept implied too much “HE-smoke-spam-click-click” meta gameplay, which we really don’t want to support more. We want each line to offer some unique experience rather than being clone of previous lines.

We are testing a new concept, the 2-nd edition didn’t show good results on production test, then we improved it and will tests 3-rd edition. For now, it seems to be much closer to what we want. I am not sure the line will be ready by 0.5.13, though. We’ll see.

question

jingles mentioned on monday that WG was unhappy with the way they played and have pulled them for a rework

answer

That’s right.

question

Are we ever going to get a Detonation animation that actually makes everyone on the map go ‘Wow!’ and gives the mechanic at least some visual value – rather than a little bang and a footnote in the chat whilst someone rages behind a keyboard somewhere?

Or is it too taxing graphically for most users?

answer

It is too “taxing graphically”, but we’re thinking about it.

question

• Training Room – why is this not a fully implemented game feature? Currently, everyone needs to install a mod to unlock the training room

• Chat in port – chat history will seem to just “magically” disappear – yet this is not an issue in WoT. Why are there still problems with the chat history?

• Is there an estimated timeline for Team Battles?

• Will there be something similar to the WoT Strongholds implemented in Warships?

• When will the Wargaming Clans be updated to include Warships (currently has WoT and Warplanes…)

• And finally, we have a unified account only in regards to premium time. Why has Warships back-tracked on a previous promise to unify gold/doubloons across platforms?

answer

Training room will be implemented later in production quality. Chat – it is automatically cleared sometimes, triggered by inactivity or conversely, by messages limit. Team battles – not yet. Strongholds – let’s say, managing something in port is being designed as a concept. Clans – no comment yet. Unified currency – not possible now due to several implementing reasons, but will hopefully be worked out in future.

question

Might not be within your ability to answer but misght as well ask.

Any plans to reduce the amount of BBs in game and improve CA/CL to make them more desirable?

answer

We would like to make cruisers more popular. This is why they get rudder mod.3 in 0.5.12. Other tweaks will be introduced later.

In our concept of ideal class distribution, BBs should have 25-30% of popularity. It works more or less, but on some realms/tiers they exceeded this limit.

We don’t want global nerfs and will try to avoid them at all costs – this is why we cancelled bow plating reduction. But some smaller, more precise actions will be taken.

question

Are you accounting with that 25-30% popularity with:

1. CV limit, so there is more room for other ships.

2. Outside of the game popularity of battleships, which are just much more popular than other classes, which can easily be confirmed by reading forum speculation threads – most of the discussion is about battleships there.

answer

Yes and yes. The 2nd one is especially difficult – battleships are epic and attract many players, but in-game they must be balanced with other classes.

question

first, I want to thank you for taking the time for these Q&As, as they are very appreciated.

My question would be:

In the CV command interface, you seem to select your ship (no.1 squadron) each time you issue a lot of commands to your planes in a short timeframe. This can be very troublesome, not only because you might lose vital time in commanding your planes, but also because it might put your ship in danger, without you realizing it.

This feature is very rage inducing. Are there any plans to change how this works?

answer

There are plans to re-work the whole CV UI, as it actually causes more problems then just someone pushing the wrong button. CV UI is very complex, it does not contribute to learning curve in positive way. We want to change that. However, for the next upcoming updates all major plans are complete, so I can’t tell you when and how exactly this will happen..yet.

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Will there be an option to toggle the ARP ships in the menu instead of just using Yokosuka? I really want to use the other ports but I also want to use the ARP ships.

answer

Comment on it can be found here

question

First of all, THANK YOU, for doing this. Also, please pass along to your team to keep up the good work. I am amazed a the pace of development you all put forth.

answer

Thank you for your kind words. Will do!

question

Thank you very much! Here’s my question: What is the situation with the Italian ships? Can we hope in at least a premium ship soon?

answer

There will be SOME Italian ships – this is logical and expected. But…no leaks on that from me. Sorry.

question

Question: When will the game add proper support for higher resolutions such as UHD? Currently, the chat, minimap etc. does not scale to the resolution so 4k is, for all practical purposes, impossible to use as central UI elements becomes tiny.

Secondly, how about some proper AA solution? The current FXAA leaves a lot to be desired from a game in 2016.

answer

Answered both questions here.

question

Do we also have somebody like you for the EU server? We are pretty deserted there regarding official contacts and DEV – information.

answer

Community specialists are present in all regions. I am not much into it anymore (used to be a community manager initially, but then went to ST and now this..), but I will gladly answer your questions here.

question

With the recent announcement of the IJN DD line being split into 2 lines, can you give us any insight on what other potential lines may be split in the coming months/year?

answer

I can, but I won’t do it. I am not willing to ruin future official announcements and spoil the surprise for everyone. I hope you understand.

question

Stats question: What are some interesting statistical anomalies that you’ve encountered?

Are there any broad (ship or line) wide interesting stats that you wouldn’t have expected?

answer

A nice topic to have over coffee (or beer). Sometimes overperforming ships are considered to be absolute garbage by the community and vice versa. That is always interesting to research.

question

Why are only some people getting in game personal offers? i have over 4k games played and i have not gotten a personal offer once since day one

answer

Sorry, but triggers for personal offers are under NDA and won’t be disclosed.

The number and diversity of offers will grow with time, I am sure there will be something for you as well. Cheers!

question

I’m surprised to see you making your own Q&A thread here, much appreciated. My questions:

1. What is aircraft’s speed boost after dropping? And fire chance for each type of aerial bombs?
2. How many more premium ships can we expect to get from now till the end of the year (except Leningrad, Belfast and Perth)? I guess it is not possible to disclose the name, but how about the nation or class?
3. Is Phil your real name or just an English nickname? I have never seen any Russian with that name before 😀

Thanks for your time mate !

answer

1. That should be 25% boost. I will check it, just in case. Fire chance..it is HUGE. Just..HUGE. Depends on bomb specs. This information is not in Port UI because it doesn’t matter when this chance is so high.
2. Uh-oh. Nope. They’re watching me!
3. Phil is Филипп in Russian, I am real and my name, too. You’re welcome and sorry for not answering all of your questions. Fair seas!

question

Ha I got one:

UI scaling: When will the overall UI be reworked to fit higher resolutions than FHD? On top of that, does this need (or lead to) better AA for e.g. the wiring on the ships?

answer

Resolution: it is in “backlog”. Definetely nice to have, but we have very little number of people with such resolution, and this improvement is quite costly.

Better AA on wirings etc: the solution is ready, it is being optimized now. Will be introduced to the game in some time.

question

Thank you very much. Looking forward to the new looks of my ships.

My apologies for asking a few more questions though:

• Are you happy/satisfied with the current fire chance and HE DMG setup? Any plans on reworking this?
• Is the captainsskill “Fire prevention” included in the mentioned captainskill rework?

answer

No apologies needed.

Yes.

I hope so, I insist on that when talking with colleagues. I may even blackmail some of them for that, huh!

question

Hi, and thanks for coming over here, here are a variety of questions:

1. Are there any plans to improve the replay system in the near future? Aside from making it less of a hidden feature it would be nice if zooming in and out was less juddery and one could use the spectator cam in replays, perhaps also toggle being able to see all ship positions (though for that the replay would have to be sent to the clients after each game I guess rather than recorded locally, assuming that’s how it works).

2. Is there any chance that additional consumables will be added? (In addition to stuff like radar, hydro, defensive AA, smoke, etc.)

3. (This one’s more of a bug report) I have all my quick commands bound to the numpad. For some reason the game keeps forgetting that I have set “Requesting Support” to Numpad 5 each time I relaunch the game since version 0.5.5, and since 0.5.11 it also keeps turning off division voice chat. It would be nice if those two things could be looked into. (As a Sidenote: I think binding those commands to the numpad makes them way easier to remember and should be the default setting for keyboards with a numpad)

4. Why is the Standard Battle Interface still a thing? The only people I know of who use it are people who don’t know you can permanently enable the alternate battle interface (just look at all the YouTubers who recently tried promoting the game with no idea how to actually play it).

5. (This one’s less of a question and more of a feature suggestion I just came up with) – The new armor viewer is great, but I think it could be taken to a whole new level: How about letting people see where their ship was hit after each battle? It would be really cool to see what shells/bombs hit the ship where and how much damage they did. Not only would that be quite interesting, but might actually really help with teaching new players which parts of their ships they shouldn’t expose.

Edit: came up with some more questions:

1. Some of the older ships are starting to look a bit dated in places, is there any chance of them receiving a visual overhaul? (e.g. higher resolution textures)

2. On a scale from 1 to 10, how much do you rage when someone detonates your ship through splash damage?

answer

1. Yes, but I am not sure about the definition of “near”.
2. Conceptually – yes. Not planned for the nearest updates now, though.
3. Not my specialty, sorry.

4. Not all WoWs players need this, however. Casual and hardcore audiences often have different preferences.

5. Yep, very gradually.

6. 42

question

Thanks a lot for coming here and doing this! Here’s a few questions.

1. It seems like Commonwealth and British ships will be separated (Perth, etc.). What was the reasoning behind this? It seems to somewhat clash with historical reality of WW2.

2. Will we ever be able to dismiss ARP commanders (and/or recruit new ones)? They often were obtained multiple times while ships were not (I have 3 Hiei), meaning they are currently stuck in reserve for many people, taking up a slot.

3. Any chance of ARP ships to be able to benefit from camo bonuses?

4. With the upcoming Haifuri collaboration, will we still toggle anime content by using the Yokosuka port, or will it be done differently (i.e. in the menus?)

Once again thank you for taking your time to do this Q&A session!

answer

1. But there are too many ships in both “factions” that might be introduced to the game. They won’t fit into one screen:D
2. Uh, I think your best shot might be support ticket – maybe they will help you and remove unwanted commanders.
3. Small chance (or not in the nearest future) – we are thinking about special camos for these ships, but, for example, hight tier permanent camo are more important (and more demanded).
4. Don’t know about this event, but I’m pretty sure all “stylized” content should be toggled, and it’s logical to toggle anime with one port.

You are welcome.

question

Do you plan to revisit the New Orleans T8 Cruiser armor model before Ranked Season 5 and restore it to its historical setup as pointed out in this thread by /u/drowned_man?

Thank you very much for taking the time to listen to the community.

answer

Part of it is planned to be fixed, and the rest will be checked ASAP. I guess the whole bunch of fixes is coming. However, it won’t go to 0.5.12 – only to 0.5.13 (hopefully not 0.5.14).

Thanks a lot!

UPDATE: fix planned for 0.5.13.

question

I bet your bi role gives you access to some great tools and analytics so I’m rather jealous.

Questions:

How reflective are the public trackers of player / ship performance to internal metrics of performance?

Do you have any extra statistical insights you can share on where ships or statsare performing differently to how they are often perceived? E.g average hp% dmg being higher or lower than public avg damage stats or how concealment is more or less relevant than expected?

answer

Hello!

Sometimes they are reflective, but very often players bring me some stats in argument, I go check them and see that external trackers miss huge chunks of data, and thus, are inaccurate. I cannot say for sure which trackers and what values are correct.

I do that sometimes when Q&A’ing, if there’s certain demand and I know it’s appropriate to disclose the data.

question

Do you believe the Khabarovsk’s reduction in range was too much?

I play this ship and I completely understand that it needed to be nerfed. But I feel like reducing it’s range by as much as you have will significantly affect its survival as it is such a big ship. Which at it’s new maximum range (even with AFT) can be quite consistently hit by other ships.

answer

We currently believe the changes are adequate. If we believed them to be “too much”, we would soften them.

question

1. KONIG ALBERT EU WHEN????

No actually I don’t have any serious questions (that wouldn’t be better addressed to WG EU reps, or questions that you wouldn’t be able to answer to begin with for NDA reasons), but I’m glad Lesta/WG consider their Reddit community significant enough to do developer Q&As on here. Keep on rocking!!

EDIT: I HAVE ONE

Why Sub_Octavian? Why not something like Bus_Octavian? I think Bus_Octavian rolls better and sounds funnier.

answer

1. GIVE IT TO ME ON RU THEN, TOO, I COLLECT SHIPS. SHIPS!!!!1

Sub_Octavian because I play bass guitar. Or used to play, before I got into GameDev (starts crying again). Sub octave, you know. There’s no Bus octave, as far as I know:)

question

Thanks a lot for the Q&A!

Some patches ago the Tobii Eyex (eyetracker) library was added to the game, however it seems to be unused. Are there any features planned in order to support it?

I can’t think of many uses for eyetracking in WoWs – keyboard/mouse controls are a lot more precise and faster.

I sometimes use the eyetracker when playing Elite Dangerous to free look in the cockpit, however it is not as comfortable and easy to use as I expected.

But I am curious what’s planned for it in WoWs.

answer

We implemented several features as camera control, aiming, contextual UI. But currently this project is on hold.

question

Thanks for taking the time (your own time, no less) to do this. I hope it works out.

I have a question regarding game-play.

Everyone knows it’s a great feeling when you are in a battleship and instantly delete an opposing cruiser from the game with two or three citadels.

The problem is that it’s not fun for the cruiser player.

Now, you are introducing an enhanced rudder shift module for high-tier cruisers so they can ‘dodge’ fire easier but I have a few problems with that:

1. dispersion being so random means that even if you dodge, there’s a pretty good chance of getting hit regardless.

2. this mod takes the place of concealment mod, which everyone is still going to take anyway as if you can’t be seen, you can’t be shot so there’s no need for increased agility.

3. What about low-tier cruisers? What help do they get? They are just as prone to being deleted as high tier cruisers, yet they get no love?

So I suppose my question is where do you see cruiser gameplay going forward? Are they just fodder for battleships (and carriers I might add) and hope they get into a battle where their consumables will be worth taking? Or there are only a few battleships a side and they ignore you until you annoy them by setting them on fire?

To me, cruisers seem like they should fill a supporting role but lack the means and rewards to play them as such – some high tier battleships have much better AA and are stealthier, destroyers have smoke for aiding the team and cruisers have… radar?

Would you consider something for cruisers that would allow them to contribute to a battle meaningfully without the need to go full stealth for fear of being deleted?

Off the top of my head I can think of maybe an AoE/targeted ability that improves dispersion for allied guns in range, or a map-wide ‘ping’ that shows up enemy fleet disposition for a few seconds on the mini-map or the ability to put out fires on ships within a small range (probably all suggested before).

I love cruisers but I always feel like it’s a race to see how much damage I can do before I inevitably get unlucky a couple of times and sink.

Sorry for the long post, but it is bothering me in the battleship-heavy game at the moment.

answer

1. Dispersion is calculated with normal distribution. More shells land closer to the center of dispersion ellipse statistically.
2. We are absolutely not against reduction of concealment builds. That is one more reason to try something new, as being invisible all the time is not that easy.
3. According to server stats and ship popularity, their life is easier on low tiers.

This doesn’t mean there are no problems and doesn’t mean we’re not going to make future balance changes, though.

We don’t want World of Battleships/Cruisers/Destroyers/CVs either.

question

Thank you and the entire WoWS crew for working tirelessly to build and improve on the game we all love! I’m curious as to if you (plural) are satisfied with the current in game economy, probably not since you’re tweaking repair costs this coming patch, but as another idea to consider in regards to changes, it seems XP and credits don’t scale evenly in terms of your rate of acquiring each.

I’ve seen several posts in the last few months about how XP seems much easier to earn than credits in particular; part of this seems to be that, no matter how well or poorly you do in battle, you always gain experience, but you could potentially lose 20k+ credits even at tiers 5 or 6 if you have a sufficiently unlucky game (detonation, lag spike with torpedoes approaching, etc). Are there any plans to buff credit earnings some time in the future, or is the current system intended?

answer

Economy is planned to be buffed by one major feature this year (and I’m talking about plain buff, not re-balancing). Then, we’ll see.

Grind is a part of game concept, but it should be adequate, and we are absolutely not against tuning it to everyone’s advantage.

question

Are you looking into bringing Montana’s armor (deck armor etc) on par with the blueprints that are widely available?

Are you happy with the way USN ships perform (aside Gearing, all of them seem to underperform looking at Warships today), any plans on the table?

answer

Yes we are, thanks to NA community contributors. Other than that, no Montana buffs are planned currently.

Overall there are some problems with particular ships, including US – they will be solved gradually.

There is no global “US Navy” problem, however.

question

How about giving cruisers ability to choose between regular and super-heavy AP shell (since they don’t have torpedoes anyway)?

answer

If you’re talking about US cruisers (because others do have torps mostly and Moskva has rail guns), than this is an idea I cannot evaluate right now. They already have better bounce angles, and some US cruisers problems are likely to be solved with re-balance later.

question

Thank you for doing this!

I see Wows as a team-based game. Whenever someone complain about matchmaking, I try to point out its the best team that’ll win, not the matchmaker. And I’m happy that you implement changes that benefit those who contribute to the teameffort

However, the visualization ingame is not teambased, its induvidual for the most part.

• Will you implement assist-ribbons?
• Will you implement ribbons for other team-efforts, like spotting?
• Will you implement a bonus for those who actually fire at the called-out target? (Really frustrating that no one fires at the called out DD at the cap, but instead fire at a hull hp BB far back)
• Will you please, for the love of god, stop making more kill-based missions and challanges?

We salute players who gets the Kraken, not knowing how much they actually did. A kill is just the last hit. Securing a kill on a low health target is ofc beneficial for the team if no one else bothers, but it’s frustrating how much you encourage individual behavior in a team-based game.

answer

These are good thoughts. Assist ribbons and achievements: it is more likely to be done in 2017 Bonus: will discuss it with the team, interesting Frag-based challenges: feedback accepted, thanks!

question

thanks for doing this! I have a few questions:

1) Are there any plans to implement something similar to the “Marks of Excellence” in World of Tanks? I feel it adds a lot of enjoyment and something to work towards in the game, plus I imagine the development effort would be relatively small.

2) How is the potential damage calculated?

3) Are there any plans for adding new in-battle achievements and related signal flags? For example: – One for causing a detonation. Then players could see how many times they have been detonated and how many times they have caused a detonation in the achievements page, could reduce salt around detonations. – One for torpedo spotting. Signal flag would increase torpedo spotting range by X% – One for potential damage over a certain threshold. New signal flag could increase rudder shift speed by X%. – One for spotting and spotting damage (like patrol duty in World Of Tanks). New signal flag could reduce detectability by 5%.

Cheers

answer

1. Yes. Something like – but different.
2. It is alpha damage of all projectiles (shells, bombs, torps) that hit 700 m around the ship or hit the ship itself (with any result).
3. Yes there are. You are welcome!

question

Hey Phil! Thx for this change to ask you questions here 😀

As you can see from my “verry special flair” i’m one of those guys that makes changes to your beloved game. I’m evil for doing this… i know.. sry for that

You said, you work on game analysis. Do you guys actually analyse all clients around the globe or is the “chinese” client from kongzhong not part of your field because it gets released from a diffrent publisher (thats at least what i know)?

Since you work closely with devs: Did someone mention when we can expect the new extractor? Can’t work on an update for my mods to make my tiny evil changes :/ and is this the final stage? Or are we going to see more changes?

answer

This is not evil. Actually, you are contributing to the game, so have my sincere thanks for that.

We usually stick to RU, EU, NA, ASIA servers – CN is not our job right now. There’s dedicated people for that.

As for modding stuff – you may want to contact Medvedev, our new RU ST guy and Modder coordinator. I will help you with that, just PM me please, and we will work something out.

question

On a slightly more personal level, I think there must be a couple million players in love with Dasha Perova. What can you tell us about her. I really liked her 1940’s hair style in the last video..nice touch if you ask me. Does she play WoWS?

answer

She plays sometimes, but she is not a passionate gamer. But she’s very serious about her job, and I always explain/show everything about every update to her so she realizes what she is going to speak about.

Also, Dasha is a good (IMO) theater actress. We work often on her video scripts, and she gave me tickets for 2 of her shows – she is good on the stage, I can say. As a person, she’s very energetic and joyful. Having her aboard is nice!

question

She plays sometimes, but she is not a passionate gamer. But she’s very serious about her job, and I always explain/show everything about every update to her so she realizes what she is going to speak about.

Also, Dasha is a good (IMO) theater actress. We work often on her video scripts, and she gave me tickets for 2 of her shows – she is good on the stage, I can say. As a person, she’s very energetic and joyful. Having her aboard is nice!

answer

It will happen at every plate. Here, check this out.

question

How does Wargaming organize patch #s?

When will we get out of 0.5.x.x limbo? 🙂

answer

we roll the dice It’s quite simple: 1st digit is something like apocalypse or alien invasion. 2nd digit is project milestone. 3rd digit is major update 4th digit is minor update 5th digit is hotfix

question

I just wonder why there are so much disparities across different servers in terms of events and contents. For example the Asian server has long been referred as ‘the worst server(.jpg)’ due to its comparatively sub-par premium shop deals (e.g. anniversary bundles and flags) and in-game events. Also in recent months even premium ships come later to Asia than NA and/or EU (still no sign of Konig Albert as of date). Can’t you guys at least make paid contents more homogeneous across the regions? This could greatly reduce unnecessary frustrations and feelings of getting second class treatments from your paying customers especially when the RU server already get the best deals always? I understand giving Asia and NA servers have much lower population than EU and RU, that some degrees of differences in pricing could be justifiable, but in current state it can hurt the game’s long term success in said regions.

answer

This kind of stuff is determined by each regional team, depending on their strategy and knowledge of the audience. I don’t feel it’s right to speak for them in this respect. Sorry.

question

Has any consideration been giving to games ending very quickly and people having to pay full repair costs even though their ships are not damaged and they have not had a chance to do enough damage yet?

answer

Yes. There’s some % of excessively quick games, we are reducing it gradually by different balance changes.

question

I did some testing in the training room and noticed that high tier destroyers are immune from 105mm he. Their deck and side armor take no damage, which is majority of the ship.

Is there going to be another way of balancing this, either by adjusting he penetration at range, so he penetrates more at closer ranges because the shell has more kentic energy..

Because it seems unrealistic a 100mm he shell @ 900 ms can’t pen 19mm of armor…

answer

That is because most HE shells have 1/6 AP value of their caliber. We will have to figure alternative (to DD plating nerf) solution later.

question

Hey Octavian ^{.^}

This might not be your specialty but I was wondering if you could explain the game engine limitations surrounding submarines. The game actually has an icon for them and two “accessible” sub’s on the tech tree, is there at least a framework to implement them?

In any case, thanks so much for hosting this Q/A! Pass my regards to the dev team because you guys do awesome work.

answer

If we decide to introduce this class, we would be able to do it. Subs are not in the game not because of engine limitations, but rather because they are not needed in current state from gameplay point of view. You are welcome!

question

Im probably a little late to this party, but i need to ask this. In one of your PT, you had a co op game mode, Assault, that i thought was absolutely amazing. It was 7 (i think) of our ships against 14 bots. I thought it was really fun to play and people had to stick together to survive. Was the mode scuttled? What went wrong?

Oh and thanks for the Q&A.

answer

It was very difficult to scale in terms of difficulty level, and there were several medium-size problems as well. But we saw its potential and want to re-work it.

You are welcome.

question

You guys make a ton of awesome gold temporary camos but we rarely get to see any of them in game. Are there are plans to make them more accessible either through adding a silver purchase option or as rewards from missions?

answer

Hello! No such plans for the nearest updates.

question

Is there any info you can provide on Tone? From what I’ve heard it sounds like they’re trying to implement full carrier gameplay on her. Which I feel wouldn’t actually be a good idea because then that’s a cruiser where most people might be tunnel visioned in carrier mode. While a catapult squadron similar to current catapult planes would keep the cruiser gameplay but make her plane squadrons more powerful and maybe capable of bombing. I’d just really like to know if we can even expect to see Tone released by this point. :/

answer

Hi, I already commented on it here.

question

On the Prinz Eugen, the camo for the spare pontoon for the floatplane doesn’t match. Can we get that fixed?

answer

I will bring this to the team, thanks.

question

Another question. Are there any plans to fix ARP Kirishima commanders voice pack bug? Currently when playing with Kirishima as the commander in an ARP ship, it still plays iona’s voice even though the other commanders have their unique voice pack. I heard that the Kirishima bear commander plays Kirishimas voice pack so we know she has a voice pack. But the bear commander was never released.

answer

Nope, no plans and as I can understand there’s nothing to “fix” in this respect.

question

Will you do any fix is to MM? At least do max 3 battelship, max 3 destroyer and max 1 carier that is how it shold be. This days dosen’t even pay to play cruser cuz you only one on your team aganst 5+ bb and 4+ dd’s. Tell me pls. How crusiers are to do their job in that inviorment?

Pls. Remove not lusing a star in rank Bullshit, put 1st on wining team get 2 stars. You ruened rank for me and i wont even try to play it ty for that. You made one of most fun aspects of the game to one of the wurst. Ty for that.

answer

Feedback accepted, but we are not going to make more MM restrictions and “star” feature actually improved ranked battles as we see.

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Heyo not sure if the QnA will be checkedout after the patch but

Can we get an explanation on scouting? does it earn credits yet? Because it appears to do nothing. I mill potential damage in a battleship, what is the credits earned from that?

answer

Hi. Scouting does earn credits and exp. We will probably prepare an article about income breakdown in some time – by the moment some fresh stats are gathered and players got acquainted with the change.

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Hello @Sub_Octavian!

If some questions already might have been answered, please bare with me.

1. Are there ideas about restricting a maximum number of DD and BB for each side? There is already a system in place preventing to have more than 2 CV on each side. For example not having more than 3-4 DD and 4 BB in one match on each side? Too often I see 5 DD and 5 BB on each side, making Cruisers and CV rare and the gameplay results in sniping campfests.

2. Is Wargaming happy with the manual abilities of CV? Right now I am more or less forced to manually drop my torps in the face of enemy ships, making it either impossible to dodge them or letting me miss entirely because I dropped to close or at wrong angles.

3. Do you guys think Air-Air battles need to be improved (too much rng and US fighters are vastly superior to IJN fighters?)

answer

Helloes!

1. CV are too unique. Doing this limitations for other classes is not desirable and will surely mess up matchmaking.
2. We are not quite happy with CV state and UI. Will work on it.
3. We think this class will eventually be re-worked in general, as I said a few times even in this thread.

question

Knowing you can’t do specifics and it’s not your department…

Anything ‘coming soon’ for co-op? I do notice you guys are constantly tweaking the AI nearly every major patch (it’s not documented but the behavior differences are noticeable over time).

Following up on this question, are you guys planning to make PvE more rewarding? As it stands now you get a ton more exp and credits for PvP than you do for PvE, so i dont really see a point in doing Coop games. Any plans for bringing more PvE incentive on the table?

Oh, and any plans for a Dutch ship of any kind in the foreseeable future? 😀

answer

Yep, at least one experimental thing is likely to pop up soon. Then…we will see. I can safely say this: we have a separate dev group that works primarily on PvE evolution concept. So we do want to improve PvE.

PvE could become more rewarding when it will be properly evolved and will offer some unique experience.

Dutch..uh-oh. No leaks 🙂

question

1. Thank you for taking the time for doing this
2. Will we see a rework of Captains Skills to make certain skills more viable/have independent skill tree’s for the various ship classes?

answer

1. You are welcome.
2. Yes, it is in design / no, there will be one perk system according to the plan

question

1. How is the hybrid UI coming along? I understand that has to be fleshed out before ships like Tone or Ise, Hyuuga and Mogami in their half-CV conversions are released. Is it going to be similar to a CV UI being able to be switched to normal mode (i.e. those used by all DDs, cruisers and BBs), or perhaps an entirely new UI?

answer

Hello! We’re not working on this UI right now. It is a very interesting stuff with potential, but UI team has several major features incoming, each of them requires full UI support.

question

Given how you guys at WG have all of the data to look at when balancing, what stats do you tend to consider the most? Is it win-rate? Average Damage? Another category?

Often we as the players just pull up the stats on warships.today, but that is neither the complete picture nor tell us what stats you consider when balancing.

answer

Thank you for the greetings, too.

There are tons of data to consider. Win rate and avg. damage are important, but there also so-called “hand dependance” – the comparison between ship effeciency and player effeciency, and other particular values like lifetime, range, done/received damage structure, and so on.

And all of that cannot be used without exploring the ships ourselves and/or with help of ST and community feedbacks to get the impressions, the feeling of the ship.

There are some ships that are fine but are not comfortable for most players and vice versa. So “human factor” is always taken into account to some extent.

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WOWS is very much a team-based game. I therefore find it strange that the tools and incentives for team play are still so rudimentary.

Take the quick radio commands: Why is there no command for “I want to attack/retreat” to better signal one’s intentions? Why are there no commands for “I need smoke/radar/AA cover”?

In a second step you could then reward players fulfilling these requests with XP and credits, similar to how the Battlefield series works.

answer

We added voice chat. We are going to get improved dynamic divison back in one of the future updates. We are going to improve quick commands, too but this is probably 2017.

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Dear Phil,

Thanks for doing this, we appreciate the effort you put out, that’s a lot of responsibilities.

1. Previously you have given some answers about what Krupp value is, it’s something about the “hardness” of the shell. For AP shells it is self explanatory: harder shells penetrate better. But what is the function for HE shells as they explode on contact?

Japanese HE shells have better Krupp in general than other nations and they seem to do more relative damage along with better module damage. While Yorck HE has the extremely low value of 1 for example.

answer

Krupp value for HE shells is a redundant parameter. It is not used in game.

question

I have a very specific question about my favourite ship, the Des Moines. Is there any reason why its 3″ AA guns are not classified as dual-purpose secondaries? I don’t think there is any doubt that these guns would be effective at close range and many other ships have secondaries of a similar calibre.

I don’t think anyone would argue that the Des Moines is the most effective T10 cruiser, but amplifying its image as a close range terror would be nice.

answer

We normally do not include small-caliber secondaries, especially if they are not vital for balance. It is usless server load (because each shell from secondaries is calculated individually as if it was fired from main gun).

question

Hi Octavian,

Thanks for the Q&A.

I have a question about the citadel on the Warspite.

Looking here for example:

The area in front of the turrets, eg. marked 65, 40 and so on seems to be included as part of the citadel in-game. However, this is marked as 65: cool room and 40: water-tight compartment (num ref. off image) here, for example. Unsurprisingly, this area of the citadel is also not covered by the main citadel protection.

Is this intentional (ie. is there any insight behind these extra citadel zones)? Or could this be a mistake? Would it be possible to check this? This does not sound like it should be counted as citadel, hence why it is poorly protected.

Players have complained before about being citadelled through the front/back of Warspite and it seems that these questionable ‘citadel’ areas that extend far beyond the turrets may be the culprit.

answer

We double checked that – seems to be fine. These compartments are protected. There is armor transverse of 102 mm (sum of layers, actually), and anti-torpedo bulkhead covers this part.

question

Is Dasha single?

answer

I still want to live and have kids some day, so I will skip this one.

question

Hi there thanks for your time.

1. In the last week-end played i had 2 matches at tier 10 where there were 13 Destroyers (so 7 in one team and 6 on the other). There were several other matches with at least 10 DDs… Don’t you think this is a little too much since this is what is the best example of a “torpedo soup”? Shima was nerfed due to this same “problem” but since Fletchers/Gearings can spam just as good you can imagine how fun those matches were. Any chance we could limit the DDs to 3 per team?

2. A while back there was a post from someone (i forgot who exactly), about us (regular players) being able to play the upcoming lines on the Test Server. This still stands right? And if yes, will this come into effect with British ships?

Thanks in advance.

answer

Hi, and you are welcome.

1. No, but we will buff cruisers, so they will be more popular and will be able to hunt destroyers.
2. No “test drives” for general audience are currently planned.

question

Q: any plans on tier 7 or 8 premium BB and/or DD for IJN?

answer

Yep.

question

Does Wargaming have any plans to counter the battleship spamming meta we have on basically every tier? Seeing five battleships is a common sight and the sad thing is, most of these ships aren’t even new German battleships, so it’s not a problem with a recent line being played. If there isn’t an aircraft carrier, it is usually replaced by yet another battleship. As a cruiser player, this is extremely frustrating. Any plans to limit battleship matchmaking or incentivizing carrier/cruiser gameplay? It’s bad when the battleships out number the cruisers and even the destroyers sometimes. The new steering mod is nice and all but you have to sacrifice the vital concealment mod to get it.

answer

Yes, as I answered several times, meta will be tuned to be more balanced. This is a must for us. Thanks for your feedback!

question

Hello and thanks for taking your time with answering our questions. As I am with the game for nearly a year now, I have observed a major shift in WoWs from balanced timeline to represent WW2 period more. A year ago, an early era ships had bigger representation with Albany, Aurora, Diana, Nikolai, Mikasa and others in early Tiers, but this stopped abruptly. Nowadays we have the early tiers infused with WW2 era ships and modifications, the most notable being the fictitious upgrades on German BBs, which some players (myself included) don’t really like. You mentioned it yourself in previous Q&A that this is to keep the game more consistent and also that balance comes first, before historicity. The question is, do you guys have any guideline on how far away are you willing to go with discarding the historical accuracy of the ship for the sake to keep it balanced? I mean what decides that the ship gets fantasy upgrades instead just simply down-tiering it and keep it more in line with how it historically looked? Do you have any limits on how many ships in a branch can be papers? Can we expect that in the future we will get branches entirely made of paper ships?

answer

That’s a “philosophical” question. Historical context is very important to us, as it creates naval battles vibe and this is one of the major strenghts of the project.

However, in IRL battles there were no such things as time-distance scaling, health points, controlling a 2000-crew ship with one player, MMO progression system, etc, etc, etc. So historical dissimilarity is bound to happen.

If Arizona, for example, needs not real, but better AA armament to be competitive at T6 (while it would be bad at T5 for the game overall), we can live with it.

Whenever it is possible to stick with historical facts not worsening player experience, we’re likely to stick with historical facts.

question

Do Devs pay attention to population of ships, how many owned and how often played, do they get concerned when 1 tree of ships is played beyond expectations?

answer

We pay attention, sure. Any new line is huge amount of work done, and thus it should contribute to the game adequatly.

question

Hey there Phil/Sub_Octavian!

I’d like to ask about two things, in particular: 1) Depot when? I’d like to liquidate all my extra hulls n guns hehe

2) Will we have commander customization like crew customization in World of Tanks? It would be nice to have someway other than the recruitment re-rolling to select portraits and names.

answer

1. No comment yet. But we know about the problems that were not solved after “no depot” solution.
2. Probably, but this is very cosmetic stuff outside gameplay, and not exactly in priority now.

question

Before the battle starts and before you throttle up, if you press Q or E there are two distinct tones for 1/2 and full turn; once you throttle up or the battle begins, the tone for 1/2 and full turn becomes the same. Can the two tones remain active during battle?

answer

Feedback accepted, will send it to sound team. Thanks.

UPD: fill be fixed, probably in 0.5.15+

question

Over the past month I’ve witnessed a Yamato get detonated by Shimakaze torps 3 times. Then during the WG Bday weekend sale I finally bought my own Yamato, and on my 4th game in her I was detonated by a Udaloi torp from 3/4 health….. This is not a “fun and engaging” part of the game especially with high tier repair bills the way they are…. Can you guys please consider reducing the frequency with which the Yamato detonates from torps? Thanks.

answer

Feedback accepted.

question

Hello there~ first of all I would like to thank you for doing this Q&A. I know its takes effort to answer tons of questions and I appreciate it.

Now from SEA WoWs website, rank starts from 2 Oct to 14 nov. My question is that would balance patch 0.5.13 comes after the rank season (after 14 nov) or be released while rank season 5 would still be ongoing? I am asking this primarily because I am hyped for the new Japanese Destroyers which will be undergoing testing in 0.5.12 and I hope they will be released on 0.5.13. If the new patch comes in during the rank season, do you think it will affect balance and maybe the meta?

I am not sure if this question can be answered without violating some confidential information for the near future but if it does, its ok I’ll understand.

Again, Thank you

answer

I cannot promise you this, but if you look at latest history, you will see that we launch major updates on solid cycle…so…

I think if new IJN guys OR the Britts are released in 0.5.13, they WILL affect meta. But if not…0.5.13 for now does not look as an update with a lot of balance changes. It will be more about adding one very nice feature to the game.

question

How much of the suggestions made by the playing community, be it here on the subreddit or one of the forums, does the development team consider for implementation? I’m not talking about pure game mechanic complaints, such as “OMG fix high tier economy pls”-stuff (but thank you for giving us a new game economy system smiley face), but rather more focused on additions to the game, such as this proposed second IJN carrier line? Would be interested to know whether community contributions in this manner are valued by the development team.

Thank you for taking time to answer our questions.

answer

They are valued, because the game is obviously being developed for the audience. However, there may be difference between one popular proposal (which appeals to a limited group of players) and one popular trend (which is distinctly seen througout the while community).

And we do try to react as quick as we can – even yesterday, working here in comments, I was able to start three tasks for New Orleans, Tenryu and Mogami improvements – which is great. And today, two bug reports came from this community.

question

Any chance we will see a Tier 8 British ship before the end of Ranked Battles? I like playing just as the British! If not, are there any future plans for a T8?

answer

If you’re talking about the line, we don’t know yet. Depends on PROD test. If you mean T8 prems – there will be more, but no comment on details.

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Hi, Any chance of a In-Game Dasha Perova flag for ranked season 6? 😀

answer

Jolly Roger is more brutal and manly. Waaaagh!

question

Will there be any reduction in duration in smoke for US DDs anytime soon? They have some of the absolute highest DPS in the game, combined with the longest(by far) smoke duration, it makes some games utterly miserable due to burning to death before dealing real damage.

Yes, I get that radar exists for this, but very few players are ever using it right now due to the torp spam and the recent increase in CVs. About 1 in 3 of every game I play in a German BB is filled with US DDs just spewing rainbows of fire from what is practically an area of invulnerability with nothing I can do besides dying a terrible death

answer

No.

question

Hi Octavian, thanks for doing this! My question: Are you satisfied with the performance of the Bismarck? Some consider it overpowered, especially its secondaries. Are the developers considering a nerf?

answer

We are not considering it now. German BBs, in our opinion, look good. We wanted them to be good brawlers, and they seem to work that way. What’s more pleasing, is that players tend to understand that and enjoy them.