WoWS Q&A – 27th October 2016

Answered by Quemapueblos on Reddit.
Q:When are you going to provide a detailed breakdown of how I earned credits in game?
Please note the answer “People will try to game the system” does not work. When earning credits and XP is from playing the game right. Those truly “gaming the system” wouldn’t they be the players playing the game the best? (going for objectives, spotting ships, tanking damage, etc). Since that is what you’re trying to encourage players to do, maybe you need to SHOW them that’s what gets them their earning?
In line this question – How much do we actually earn on potential damage and spotting damage as well as capping? As It appears like at least potential damage and spotting damage dont’ do anything??
I get this impression because if I division up with some buddies we puzzle over how one person earned more over another. It used to be NO QUESTION that if I capped, or if I did lots of damage, I know I was going to earn a lot. Now it feels like a total crap shoot, unless I did everything (earning 100K + on a ship with kraken confed, high cal etc).
A: In short, anything that earns you ribbon, get you rewards but your question is more about the breakdown between the actions. We detailed some of the additional changes we did recent in our econ article for 5.12. Here is a few new things that change how income is earned.
Maximum potential damage taken from hits.
Number of ships, aircraft, and torpedoes detected.
Amount of damage dealt to targets detected by player.
These are in addition to the ways you earn credits already, Capturing a Point and Dealing Damage
As for actual numbers for each of these, I’ll have to dig them up. Let me check with the team and see if I get a more detailed breakdown.

“Those truly “gaming the system” wouldn’t they be the players playing the game the best?” Yes. Our game should be balanced so that playing well rewards you the most. Is this always the case? The reality is we would hope so but probably not all the time. Sometimes players can find a way to exploit the economy through some very poor tactics that are not what we want to encourage. In those cases, it is still on us to figure out how to change the incentives so the “proper” play is reward.
Questions from the Announcement thread:
Q: So I built a new computer recently and I have a 4k display. Whenever you change the resolution to anything over 1920×1080 things get a bit small and hard to read with the UI. Can we expect to get UI scaling? (Valkyrie417)
A: Right now 4K adoption is pretty low so its not a huge priority to fix but I’ve got a 4k monitor at the office and its nigh unreadable so fingers crossed for both of us 🙂
Q: Are there any plans to re-examine the matchmaker changes made earlier this year? Specifically, the issue of Tier 5 and 6 ships being uptiered far more consistently than ships at other tiers. (Lolita_Eden)
A: It’s not something specifically we are working on but I believe it’s still an issue for newer folks who get to tier 5 for the first time. Early drop outs are something we are taking a look at closely at (like most video game companies) and these change in the future might impact this problem
Q: Second, one major issue of modern gaming is the concept of “power creep”, where developers constantly feel the need to make new content better than old content, lest nobody utilize the new content. Does Wargaming have a plan in place to avoid this issue, whether by buffing older content or introducing subpar content? (Lolita_Eden)
A: Our idea is to introduce new gameplay and ways to approach the battle. Kind of like side grades instead of straight upgrades. Something like Tone won’t be more powerful (from a stat or gameplay stand point) than the average cruiser but it will hopefully have some new and unique gameplay
Q: Regarding the Arpeggio of Blue Steel content, was there ever a plan in place to “diversify” the content from the tech tree counterparts rather than making them direct clones? (Lolita_Eden)
A: We have kept them similar mostly because of the the way the non-historical on/off switch works technically but maybe on the future
Q: So, I’ve heard that each cluster’s staff will have the ability to gift Kitakami to people at their own discretion soon™… Is this true?! Would you be oh so grateful and gift me one? Who do I need to beg to get her? (Take a Guess)
A: MAYBE
Q: Hyuga’s 1942 refit as a Premium (PsychicTandemWargoat)
A: Cool suggestion. I don’t know much about that ship in particular but I’ll take a look
Q:How satisfied is Wargaming with the current implementation of the RN cruisers?
From tier 2-5, many players regard RN cruisers as some of the worst ships in the game. They are very very squishy and are generally helpless against BBs. Their AP shells deal pitiful damage to BBs and torpedo attacks are usually suicidal. The RN cruisers are ok against DDs and other cruisers, but they don’t perform much better than other nation’s counterparts.
Many players say that the RN line gets much better starting at Fiji, but that doesn’t explain why the low tier CLs feel so painful to play. Especially when 5 BBs per side matches are not uncommon.
A:Right now we are still watching the data closely but the higher tier ships seem to be in a fairly balanced place. RN Cruisers were particularly difficult to balance as they are the first full line of Light Cruisers.
They are fragile with great RoF and they are a very feast or famine in terms on success. Sometimes you get to the right spot at the right time and its glorious, other times you are really struggling to find a place to make an impact on the map.
All that to say, we really want to see how these ships perform over time as we know they can be amazing in a right spot but can we learn to find that consistently is the question.
Q:Are there any plans to allow a player to view their spotting and potential damage in battle?
The information would allow a player to feel engaged even when they’re forced into a more passive role. CVs especially could use the indicators, though they legit need a credit and XP scaling buff more.
A: Thanks for the suggestion. It’s not something we have plans for yet but I like ideas that give players more info on how they are doing. I love seeing that damage counter climb in a battle!
Q: Is the Halloween event a sign that WoWs might finally have an escort/convoy gamemode implemented permanently in the future?
A: It’s possible, especially for some sort of PvE experience. PvP generally we found turned into a DPS war, boiling the game down to can you deal damage faster than your opponent to the enemy’s convoy since there is very little way to protect your convoy from incoming fire (other than just eliminating all threats)
A2: I really like the difficulty level and the multiple objectives. I think we should go even harder though 😛 There are some really fun ideas bouncing around right now for what we can do for PvE/Raid style content and it seems like the reception to this is mostly positive so we shall see…
Q:Right now it’s difficult to tell a ship’s main battery firing arcs inside of the game.
Are there any plans to show this information inside of the game, maybe similar to the armor layout viewer?
A: It’s an interesting idea and it would have helped me a few times but it’s not something we have been working on. I’ll pass the suggestion to the team
Q: Can we have team battles back during the ranked offseason soon? Even without any rewards or large scale game outside the individual battles, my group of friends found the battles very fun, and we never had trouble finding a match during peak hours… I’d love it if team battles got some kind of reward structure around them, but quite frankly we’d be pleased as punch just to have them back as they were in the spring.
A: Team Battles rework has been brought up quite a bit lately and we know its a sore point for folks like us that want to team up with more than 3 people on a regular basis. Rewards definitely needed a rework considering the amount of effort to get a team and the difficulty of the battles. Hopefully we can get something fixed up for Spring but I’m not sure we’ll make it so no promises unfortunately.
Q: When can we have RN destroyers? And will HMS Glowworm be a premium ship?
A: In the plans for 2017 but nothing final on dates yet so things may move around HMS Glowworm.
Just looked her up and that’s an awesome bit of history. Thanks for the suggestion
Q: Are there currently plans for better replay integration? Record and view within the client without restarting, better camera control, etc.
A: YES! The current system is just a temporary hold over which is why we don’t have it in the game by default. We want a much better replay system that works between patches, doesn’t need to you exit the client, can be shared on social media easily…. the list goes on. Possibly something more web-based might solve many of the issues. We are aware of this one 🙂