WoWS Gamescom Q&A

Source: shipcomrade
Questions answered by Jacek Pudlik, Associate Publishing Producer at Wargaming.net

On Quality of Life Changes
Wargaming wants to add more convenience features.
For example, they want to use supply boxes to announce awards. Few players check their notifications and as a result, many player do not even realize when they receive rewards. The idea here would be to have a supply ship visibly deliver the award to your port to bring special attention to gains. So the next time you unlock something, such as by leveling your account, you’ll have immediate feedback that you were awarded for that achievement.
The karma system remains a work in progress.
They are working on a multi-cluster server system which will reduce, maybe even eliminate, down times for patches. They want to introduce the option of pre-downloading a patch. So you could set a limit for the download speed and simply pre-download a patch in the background, while doing something else.
Unfortunately, they have not been able to unify the currencies between World of Warships and World of Tanks. The economies between the two games are very different and one (or both) would need to be changed to account for this.
While launch dates for new ships are not synchronized, the idea is to have them happening within 9 days of one another.
On National Fleets & Ship Balance

There are plans to have a French tech tree at some point. Finding good mid tier ships could be a problem though. Wargaming just recently started looking into the Regia Marina of the Italian Navy. They do not have a connection to a museum or an easy way to get blueprints though. A premium is certainly possible but it is unclear at this point if they could fill a tech tree. Wargaming will not invent new ships.
US Navy Cruisers are doing fine according to Wargaming’s statistical data. They do not see the need for an immediate change. Similarly, the performance of the USS Flint hasn’t raised any concerns. If they come up, they will address them.
The Nikolai was a mistake. The ship looked balanced on paper and it seemed fine during testing. After the release, with increasing numbers of the ship, it became clear that it is too powerful, so it will not be sold again. Having one ship in a game is fine but with divisions it really becomes a problem. The ship will still be used for giveaways/contests on occasion.
In the future there will be more extensive testing to prevent another Nikolai.
Overall, they are pretty happy with everything except carriers. There are no concrete plans for a carrier overhaul yet but they want to change something. One idea may be giving carriers more direct control of planes in some way, but this is just speculative at this stage.
They do not see a good way to introduce playable submarines. It might be possible to have them in PVE content as NPCs. They are looking into PVE but only a small percentage of the players are using this game mode.
They want to reward personal performance, such as providing spots for your team or tanking damage. What exactly we will get is uncertain while they collect data.
 
World of Warships at the gamescom.
Additional Gamemodes
Wargaming is looking to have have clan battles but not like clan wars in WoT. Who would like to fight about a piece of ocean? How clan battles will look like is still uncertain. We will get customization options. In what way is not clear yet. It could be a clan flag (there would be an additional flag slot in that case) or maybe a paint. You will also see clan tags like in WoT. This is still very much in the works.
They might add other PVE elements in a regular game mode. There are already forts. There is a possibility for radar stations or stationary AA. The bastion game mode is still in testing. The chance of getting it is currently reduced. There are no additional games modes planned at the moment.
There are game engine limitations preventing the immediate addition of rolling, stormy seas to World of Warships. The ocean surface is currently a two-dimensional plane, so there’s no possibility of introducing waves which interact with ships. It would be limited to a visual effect if it was implemented. While Wargaming would love to have a stormy ocean, the time investment to change the engine is too big currently. They would rather direct their resources to other matters.
Unlike in World of Tanks, there are no plans to introduce an option to limit the different game modes (Bastion/Domination/Standard Battles) that you queue for in World of Warships. This would only cause delays on queue times for the Matchmaker.
Ranked Battles is still a work in progress. They are trying different things and collecting feedback. The last season was a big change to find out what works and what does not. There are no concrete plans yet how the next season will look like.
We can expect to see new maps continually being released. There is a dedicated team that works on maps.