Thanks to Babykim, EU
The digest by getfun and z1ooo of the Q&A session with developers at WG Fest
Source (WG Fest): https://www.youtube….h?v=JOi5OC0LT28
Source (getfun digest): https://www.youtube….h?v=-nQkWCfEFBk
Source (z1ooo digest): https://www.youtube….h?v=W5vdbymhYiU
1. The game takes the 30th place of all MMOs in the world in terms of the size of the audience, and 13th place in terms of sales. Some 8mil players played the game in the past 1.5 years.
2. The German destroyers are coming this week.
In 2017 will be the year of clans (functionality, scenario battles), high tier content and carriers. We will see.
3. Soviet Cold War era destroyers, with leaders forming a sub-branch of the main branch.
4. Scenarios, competitions and even items for Clan members will come. There will be no direct integration of WOT clans. Existing WOT clan tags will be reserved for a while, so that WOT clans can migrate to WOWS.
5. A rework of captain perks. The set of skills leaked thus far is not final. The excess of XP over the last level will probably be convertible to free XP for money.
6. Other special captains. Seagal may get a double citizenship in game.
7. The release of the escort mode based on the success of the Halloween event, and other scenarios.
8. Due to the whine of the Western player base (Seb: thanks everyone), the USS Alabama will be for sale later. The supertesters will get Alabama ST. It will be relatively easily to obtain the ship as a supertester upon the conclusion of a test season.
9. New carriers or rebalance of existing carriers are not forthcoming before their interfaces has a revamp. The developers want to radically simplify the carrier interface, making it more accessible to the average player.
10. The carriers farm less for damage, because they are the easiest class for dealing damage, the most difficult being the destroyers. Therefore, if carriers would get the same XP for damage, they would farm significantly better than other classes. But the structure of the farm will be changed, with data being collected till the end of the year.
11. Other issues include the balance of some cruiser branches and the lack of higher tier gameplay.
12. Further tournaments are planned. The Clash of Servers format was immensely popular, with ten times the audience of other tournaments (3000 versus 300 followers). The rules of the next tournament will be coming soon. The tournament is scheduled for february-march.
13. The content of containers is determined at the moment of opening them.
14. It is not possible to equip all premium ships with special features. That is why some of them simply receive an economy bonus (Prinz Eugen, which will be not the only premium to have a regular sister ship).
15. When fighters pursue an attack group, it sometimes happens that the widened template returns to the normal narrow one. This happens when the attack group looses etched from it pursuers due to superior speed.
16. The developers are not satisfied with the first season of team battles. After some changes, the new team battles will be available for clans as well as solo players.
17. The developers are satisfied with the format of ranked battles. But an experimental shorter season with new rules may be tried in January or February.
18. They are working on a service to transfer gold into doubloons for the near future. However, if you currently have at least 5000 gold in tanks or planes, you can ask the support to transfer it manually. The 5000 gold minimum may be reduced in the future when the number of requests abates.
19. The game engine is under development. A Linux client can be developed in a distant future.
20. The developers believe that +1/-1 matchmaking is unnecessary under the current meta.
21. If the removal of firing from invisibility would significantly reduce a ship’s performance, that ship will be buffed subsequently.
22. Mastery stripes, faster captain leveling on elited ships are not planned.
23. An official preview video for 2017 is coming in January.
24. DirectX 11 support and optimization are coming, with an increase in frame rate.
25. The training room will be reworked in 2017. Its features are still open.
26. The developers are looking for ways of giving the IJN Kitakami to experienced players, without enraging beginners.
27. Torpedo single-fire mode will remain a speciality of the RN.
28. The developers are against earning based on the share of enemy team total hit points damaged by a player. This would give an incentive to sealclub, as the average share steadily falls with tier.
29. Smaller hangars in lower tier carriers leave little room for error, large hangars on higher tiers are more forgiving. But giving larger hangars at lower tiers will make the low tier carriers even more powerful.
30. Further reducing ship characteristics due to damage is not planned, as no-one likes playing crippled ships.
31. The forthcoming depot will allow selling things that could not be sold individually before, but not stocking consumables for the future.
32. Further port optimization is coming in a medium term. Customization of port is not a priority.
33. Performance of ships in cyclone is balance so that each class loses something. Previously the carriers had the upper hand in cyclones. The cyclones are not universally popular and therefore will remain a special feature for increasing gameplay variability.
34. In 2017, the USN heavy cruisers Pensacola, New Orleans and Baltimore will be buffed, without losing their better AP rounds.
35. Night battles will not work on lower-end computers due to lighting features.
36. In four to five months measures will be taken for reducing the attractiveness of carriers on lower tiers and raising their attractiveness at higher tiers.
37. Historical battles may come as scenarios in PvE. Historical battles are unsuitable for the PvE, because historical battles were rarely balanced and the ship performance in game is not historical (arcade).
38. Mines may be possible in PvE but not PvP. Mines cause sudden deaths of enemies or suicide of allies, both of which are not popular.
39. Personal training missions for beginners are planned, for example how to avoid torpedoes if the player gets torpedoed often.
40. The Graf Spee will be an award ship of a Christmas campaign.
