It’s a bit old (1 week), some questions were already answered, but a good few are new. Enjoy.
General
A: Players seem to be mostly happy about the Cyclone effect so our first step is to increasing amount of cyclone maps in the game and continue testing. You will see several maps with Cyclone added with 0.5.7. For the future, we are looking into possibly expanding weather effect but it’s still in discussion at this time
Q: Is there any update on the in-port armor layout viewer?
A: Currently we are reworking our older models so the internals accurately show the armor. Some of our older models were not made with this viewer in mind so this is taking some time
Q: Is there plans for players to be able to fly several of their flags, like ranked, special event, and AT/CBT/BW flags, and if so, do the devs. intend for any bonuses the flags provide to stack?
A: No plans at the moment but we are thinking of what to do with this system
Q: The Citadel Sound
A:We follow the threads very closely on this issue. At first there was a very small amount of people complaining but then we saw it continue. 0.5.5 we did some tweaks to the sound to make it more low pass. In 0.5.8 we hope to have a redesign of the sound system
Q: Kitakami
A:Most likely going to be a high tier reward for experienced players
Q: Division Tier Spread Exploitation
A: We really want to address this as soon as possible. We want to add this feature after improving the matchmaker in 0.5.8
Q: Smoke Screens
A: We aren’t happy with the quality of the smoke effect in our game currently and are working to improve it. Part of the visual improvements is also to make it easier for players to understand where a line smoke is and if they are in or outside the smoke.
Q: Unbalanced Battles Due to Matchmaker
A:We are working on a new matchmaker hopefully for 0.5.8 and it will be much effective at tuning battles
Q: Follow Up on the 3 second SA “bug”
A: To be clear, there were no changes to Situational Awareness in recent patches but players became more aware of how inaccurate the current system is. We plan improve the notification in future patches so it more accurately reflects when you are spotted and when you disappear from your enemy’s sight.
Q: Will we see a rework or more mountable upgrades in the future?
A:Yes! coming in 0.5.7 see the Public Test Notes
Q: Are there plans to add more Commander skills?
A:Yes for sure. We want players to have more options and support a diverse set of “Commander” builds
Q: An In-Port Ship Comparison Tool
A:Good idea but not currently in near plans
Q: Will Co op or single or PVE ever get improved on, so that we can reenact Jutland for example
A:We have tons of plans for PvE for something interesting. Design has not been finalized
Q: ARP Takao and Maya
A:Takao model is ready but we are working on determining the final balance. We also want the historical Takao to be available first
Q: Will we see a depot in the game like WoT where we can manage our spare equipment?
A:Right now it’s not a top priority as it doesn’t add to gameplay or economic progress. It would be nice to have
Q: What is the reason that Wargaming has made the RNG so heavy in WoWS?
A: Better question is, do we want the game to be this way? Right now we have a few ideas on how to make it more skill based but nothing to announce. In short, we are working on it
Q: Will Radar be an exclusive VMF/USN ability or will you add it to other nations later on?
A:We limit it right now but we may expand it to all cruisers potentially
Q: Will there be more premium aircraft carriers?
A: Yes, Saipan didn’t destroy the game 
Q: Royal Navy
A: The team is correctly working on this ship and they will be soon in the game. – Cruiser tech tree will be the first
Q: What does it takes to make a new ship
A:It needs around 6 months of work with the following steps involved.
- Checking if a specific ship could work for the game
- Collecting reference materials for the ship (blueprints and pictures)
- Modeling of ship’s hull and structures
- Texturing
- Technical pass for functionality
- Art pass (include rust and others to make the ship more realistically looking)
- In-engine implementation
- Implementation of ships functionality systems
- Pre balancing phase
- Super test and tweaking
- Bugfixing phase
- Final balancing and release
Q: Will it be possible to look around from the crows nest?
A:A new camera system is planned for an future update that will allow the player to look around freely after and there may be more features but not specifically from the crows nest.
Q: Do you plan to add minor naval powers?
A:It is possible that we will see ship from such powers in the future but the development takes time and for the moment completing the major powers has a higher priority
Q: What’s the weirdest ship you have worked on?
A:Emden because of the fake funnel. Admiral Graf Spee will not have a fake turret at its introduction but this can may change lateras its a cool idea
Q: Will we see more Halloween events and possibility of the introduction of PvE Boss fight mode?
A:They are some plans in how such modes could work but nothing concrete yet. There is a chance that we will see such a mode in the not so distant future.
Q: Status of Clans
A: We are working on them, likely to come this year but we do not want to disclose more details until they are settled – we are are gathering experience from clan system on all our platforms and just recently we launched them n Blitz – it may bring interesting insights
Balance
A: We feel that they are very powerful as is and if they are too effective then we aren’t encouraging skillful play
Q: Do you feel fire mechanics as they are stand fine? or are there plans to rework then?
A: Fire mechanics are something we are paying close attention to. Right now we don’t have any significant changes to announce, but as for all mechanics, they can change and will change as our game grows. This is not necessarily because we did something wrong but our gameplay is constantly evolving and we prefer to validate our concepts
CV Related
Q: Could we see a rework of the Captain Skill grind?
A: There are a couple things we don’t like about the Captain skill grind. Most players are using many lower tier perks and the higher tier ones aren’t very accessible. We would like to make perks a little more accessible and give players more choices.
Q: Why is Fubuki’s potential damage greater than Kagero’s?
A: Our tech trees generally follow the trend of increasing damage potential corresponding with the higher a ship’s tier but you have to take into account all parts of the ship. The main caliber is better on the Kagero and the torp spread is tighter, making it easier to land more on your target
Q: Is there any special reason for 45s for Myoko’s turrets traverse speed?
A: I believe this should be set by historical specification
Q: Do we plan to modify Mikasa? Adding these older ship in the future?
A: Mikasa was kinda experiment with this. If we buff the secondaries any more, it could be used by bots for free kills. Destroyers will die easily but they won’t be very strong. It would be painful for everyone.
Q: Are there plans to remove the CV limit from Divisions?
A:No, at the moment we plan to keep limiting them to 1
Tech
A:We are working on improving it at the moment. It’s not actually a change to video tech, but actual changes in model. We are thinking on how we can do this quickly and with high quality. 0.5.8 there will two ships with these improvements
Q: Introducing New Wave Mechanics
A:Waves are technically very challenging and it would add too much complexity to firing mechanics – maybe hardcore mode one day
About The Team
A: When we release a new patch each dev is looking for what players think of their changes. We read through all the posts and look forward to making players happy. We are influence by player opinions but we have a core design we want to stick with. Besides impacting game design, our players are great at finding obscure bugs!
Q: Do you have any favorite posters or community contributors?
A: ATSF is our favorite in the office right now. Can’t get enough eurobeats
Q: Any favorite silly moments during development?
A: Game development is hell! There is no fun at all J! We were thinking of doing a video on some fun moments because there were a lot of them but we asked the team and no one can remember!
Q: What are developers top 3 concerns with gameplay? (From a few different developers)
Ev1n:
1. Too much influence of RNG on gameplay
2. Too much influence of Carriers on battles results – due to lack of RNG of Torp bombers
3. Carrier Gameplay is “boring as shit”
Lead Content and Balance Game Designer – My day to day is obviously focused around balancing new and existing content so my top concerns are:
1. It’s difficult to balance adding new nations and not create huge issues such as needing to rebalancing all other ships
2. Also want to creating unique content that’s not as simple as balancing the numbers
3. Overall my goal is to weigh balance vs attractive
Performance QA Lead:
1. Battle performance – User interface is laggy and a big point of pain but it’s something we are working on it! Right now some actions need server response
2. FPS drops – There are occasional drops in performance on some hardware during a battle and we are working to even out the workload
3. Server performance – We are always focused on maintaining the stability and performance of our battle servers. This is the key place where we need to ensure there are no hiccups otherwise the player experience really suffers.
Q: Is the ocean wet?
A:I don’t even know… Is there some sort of American I’m missing? Logic dictates yes
Q: Why does the majority of the developer team only play Nikolay?
A:This is not true, we play all the soviet ships. And we may division 3 nikolais after a hard day
