WoWS Q&A – 22nd June 2016

Thanks a lot to Carnotzet.

A quick comparison between servers coming slightly late. 

On the Russian servers, the battle of the Philippine Sea event awards players with 3 port slots for completing all three missions (which award 20 November Echo Setteseven (clear sky signal), 10 camo type 6, and 500k credits). They did that for players to have slightly more room for the upcoming German BB’s.

We on the other hand have x2 xp on the first win, a 50/30% discount on carriers and a discounted Saipan to buy.

Not sure we got the best end of that deal, but to have a clear answer, we’d have to compare all the events both servers had.

JamesWhite also said in a radio programme on Wargaming FM that they will increase the reduction on repair costs until the end of July on the Russian cluster. Tier 7-9 ships repair costs will be reduced by 25% and for tier 10 ships, it will be 40%. They are doing this so that even players with standard accounts can play at those tiers and earn some credits even if they aren’t the most skilled players.

So far, the experiment (reduced repair costs) has been positive and they saw a 11-12% increase in players playing at high tier. All in all, the experiment was successful and that is why they are expanding it to other tiers and increasing the reduction.

He also gave some statistics about the current season of ranked battles. Across all regions, 193k players have so far taken part in the new season, from which 97k are on the Russian server. At the time of the programme (19 June), Russian players were the first ones to reach rank 1 (157 players) whereas only one player reached rank 1 on the NA server. On the Asia sever, 28 players reached rank 5 (best rank reached at that time), and on the EU server (which started slightly later), 4 players reached rank 4.

1a. “XVM”-like mods are often encountered. I thought developers didn’t want them in the game. Did something change ?

A. Nothing. Currently, we don’t see the need to ban it. If you don’t like what this mod does, you always have the possibility to hide your stats. It should help.

1b. There’s often topics on the forums suggesting improvements regarding the rewards for players’ actions in battle (for example, spotting, indication about the damage percentage inflicted to enemy ships, etc.). Is there any progress done in that matter and when will we be able to see the first changes ?

A. Progress is being made, but it’s still too early to speak about what version it will be released in. Here is how it will most likely unfold: we will add hidden metrics into the game (in other words, we will start to evaluate the possible consequences on the economy, but only evaluate, everything will be the same for the players), after one or two versions, we will change the economy according to the data we collected.

1c. Can you give us more details about when the “smoke boundaries” mod will be implemented in the game ?

A. We plan to release it in patch 0.5.9.

1d. Can you explain why you added a tier 10 league for players who reach rank 1 in ranked battles ?

A. For players who reached rank 1 to experience a unique gameplay at the top tier. Moreover, it will be interesting to see what statistics we can collect from this experiment.

2a. When do you plan to differentiate the hit ribbons we receive in battle (divide them in penetrated, didn’t penetrate, bounce, etc.) ?

A. In 0.5.8.

2b. Do you plan to add a more precise ship characteristics scale ? On my Des-Moines, I have more than 100 AA value and I still can add more AA modules. When will be able to see more accurate numbers ?

A. We currently don’t plan to do that.

3. Is it useful to stack Victor Lima, Juliet Whisky Unaone and India X-Ray signals ? Is their effect additive or multiplicative ?

A. Their effects works together. Fire chance is additive, the rest is multiplicative. Regarding whether or not is it useful to stack them, you decide.

4. Does ranked battles matchmaker take into consideration players’ rank when creating teams ? Sometimes, I’m teamed up with rank 15 players only whereas on the other teams they are rank 12, 13, 11 players.

A. Ranks are taken into consideration but within a certain bracket. If we’d have chosen to make battles with players of the same rank only, the queue time would be extremely long. We will continue working on ranked battles matchmaker though.

5. If, when activating Defensive fire, I focus target one squadron, will its effect (panic) work on other squadrons too ? Similarly, regarding the catapult fighter, if I don’t focus target a squadron, will its effect work on all squadron in its area or only the one it’s attacking ?

A. The effect of Defensive fire works on the whole area your AA covers.

The catapult fighter only panics the squadron it’s attacking.