WoWS Q&A – 29th August 2016

From this video:

 
Transcription by Redditor godzilla5549:

  • Premium ships are not strictly balanced as “weaker” or “stronger” than their tech tree counterparts. Premium ships are meant to be valuable to those who buy them, so they should be able to “perform.”
  • British Royal Navy Light Cruisers will go into public testing soon, with a planned release by the end of September or early October.
  • Royal Navy Cruisers will typically be fast, have good concealment, and have lots of dual purpose artillery (good AA).
  • The ability to single fire torpedoes out of launchers is being tested alongside the release of Royal Navy Cruisers, as that was part of the naval doctrine. At the start, this will only be available on Royal Navy cruisers.
  • If the ability to single fire torpedoes “improves torpedo gameplay for British cruisers so much,” then it could be expanded and given to all ships.
  • Arthur (Global Publishing Producer) himself is “scared” of how single fire torpedoes would work on destroyers.
  • They are not happy with the dynamics of Tier X gameplay.
  • Arthur commenting on Bastion: “I am not a big fan of Bastion as it currently looks. I think it needs a lot more polishing.” Talk of more environmental changes (other than just “something that spots you and something that shoots you”). “More interactions.” Talk of “captureable airbases.”
  • When Bastion is made better, it could possibly be made to appear more often. Possibility to be made as a “separate choice” but Arthur does not like having that as an option.
  • No more Aircraft Carrier trees “for a while.” The next one would be a British carrier tree. Likely no German or Russian carrier tree would be made. “Nothing to build them from. Lack of material to use.” They do not want to make carrier trees that are “all projects.”
  • On more premium carriers: “None were planned for this year.” “We do not want to sell the ‘carrier experience’ right now, as we are not happy with it.”
  • On Saipan: “We needed to see how people would react to the idea. People still react positively to it, even though we freely admit that it is not as polished in terms of carrier gameplay.”
  • More premium carriers are planned for next year.
  • On carriers as a whole: “It is not entirely a UI issue, it is also about controls. […] If we can improve on it, we can make carriers less hardcore to play.”
  • On carrier balancing: “It is a never-ending story. I do not see it being any different in the near future. What we will do next is look at American fighters, especially at high tiers so we can get it a bit more balanced again. Not quite sure what we are going to do. It is always a step-by-step process.”
  • On the new devlopement cylce (rapid patches every three weeks): “The ability to react is good, but it doesn’t mean that we should be making stupid changes all over the game just because we have the chance to fix mistakes very quickly.”