I have edited the grammar of this Q&A in order to make it readable. Because it is quite long as a whole, I am doing it in several parts.
Q: Why T 5&6 French CLs in game got 152mm guns, I found in Wikipedia they were armed with 155mm guns?
A: Well then…
Source: John Jordan. “French cruisers 1922-1956”
I’d trust it more than Wikipedia.
Q: When is the balance of CVs going to change? I believe IJN CVs have more advantages than USN CVs at least in 0.6.4
A: Hello. Working on CVs is a challenging task. On one hand, many things seem to be needing complete rework. On the other hand, the community tend to hate any global changes, and rough changes are not desirable. Balancing CVs are a part of the bigger task – of making CV class better and more friendly to players as a whole. I cannot tell you any ETA, but surely I can tell we are working on it and plan to improve CV experience.
Q: Hi, Sub! Glad to have you on board! I got a couple CV-related questions for you.
1. How has the fighter ammo buff from patch 0.6.0 affected the performance and success rates of fighters against targets of all kinds (clicking, strafing, spotting, etc) and air superiority loadouts? It has been 4 patches already, surely there should be data available on whether the buff has achieved its intended purpose (“buffing USN CVs, especially the less skillful part of playerbase”). If possible, can you disclose how each server (ASIA, EU, NA, RU) is affected by this buff?
2. How has the “exit strafe” addition affected the game? Personally, the Saipan has become extremely (read: overly) powerful in contesting the air, perhaps a nerf of some sort should be introduced? Maybe consuming more ammo per exit strafe (say, 1.5x-2x the normal strafe ammo cost) JUST for the Saipan so it cannot just spam strafes left and right? I know that for other CVs, you can also pull off some really excellent strafes, but at a higher cost.
A:Hello. Thank you for the welcome.
1. It affected the balance in a positive way, but we don’t consider impact to be too big. Seems like a comfortability buff, mostly.
2. It added a new trick to master, and we currently don’t see any problems with Saipan. No changes are planned.
Q: Did WG consider on lowering the bloom time for DDs? Currently its like 20secs iirc. This is same with the BBs and CAs. Sometimes after engaging DDS in a knife fight. Due to good range of guns means it will get detected at max range. And in 20secs. Chance of detonating or getting devastated is 50-50. So I was wondering when are you removing the invisifire. Did the dev came across this matter?
A: Yes we did, as this was quite popular suggestion. Eventually, we are not going to reduce the bloom time – the timer is here for a reason. It prevents ships from constantly “blinking” in and out, which may be quite frustrating. However, we may increase this timer for battleships – still thinking it over. Cheers!
Q: Anyways, Wargaming mentioned they were having player retention issues a while back for Warships, and these days you hear a lot of complaining about various issues from people, from matchmaking, to balancing and certain ship lines or general game enjoyment. Is Wargaming actively working on looking into this issue?
A: Of course. We’re working on “Player retention” both by researching and solving (if it is acknowledged) problems that are bothering players and creating new content/features to play with. We’re also trying to improve our services to create a good experience wherever we can.
Q:Glad to have dev’s attention in here. I have several questions:
- Will Akizuki be given Defensive Fire AA in the near future? Since on paper, she was designed as an AA Destroyer escort, and rightfully deserves it.
- Will IJN DDs ever get back their old HE alpha? This is because dev buffed the RU HE on DD from 1600 back to its 1900 original alpha.
- Will there be any future similar events (currently, the clash of elements), but with another premium ship as the ultimate reward? Do you like the event in its current state?
A: Thank you!
1. No. Her design is reflected in her base AA damage – it is very high, and if built properly, she shows outstanding AA efficiency for a T VIII DD. Adding DefenSive Fire would force us to cut her base AA damage, as it would simply be too much and imbalanced. Aside from that, she is a very strong ship even after the latest changes, which we like, but don’t want to make her more powerful.
2. No. This change is not needed from the balancing point of view.
3. There will be more events in 2017, but the details are not to be disclosed. IMO, the event is more or less fine, problem is, everyone wants free premiums ships and ignores smaller rewards, which are very useful. I’d reserve the verdict for now – the event is not over, and to make solid conclusions, we will be doing a big analysis on feedback and stats.
Q: So my question is why is the torpedo damage listed in port not the same as the torp’s “alpha damage” value? Or why not use “alpha damage/3” and leave out “base damage”? Is there any purpose to the “base damage” other than for the calculation of the damage value we see in port?
Sorry for using a screenshot from GM3D, but this would help in referencing what I’m talking about:
A: I am not going to comment on any external sources and data mining 
However, I will gladly comment on what you see in the game.
Torpedo damage shown in port is base damage. To achieve it you need to hit any part of the ship, but there are several factors that prevent you from seeing this exact number in combat:
- There is “damage saturation” – so, if the part hit is already damaged, it simply may lack hit points to “execute” full torpedo damage. Hence the cases when you catch the full torpedo volley with aft / bow only and still survive.
- There is anti-torpedo protection on many ships providing some damage reduction, in case the torpedo hits the protected part of the ship.
- There is torpedo splash damage. Unlike HE shells, torpedo splash does some damage if it affects a neighboring part.
Q: Recently, in WoT, they’ve introduced an improvement to the matchmaker.
This would definitely improve the gameplay of lower tier ships (because being the only tier 8 in a tier 10 game is very sad)
Could we see this in future WoWS MM?
A: We are interested in their experiment, but the potential use for World of Warships is yet to be seen. So for now, we are watching them closely and wish them all the best
Q: Im just wondering why german destroyers are easily penetrated by battleship guns 38 cm and up+ even if my sides are exposed, one shell managed to land for 7k dmg or feels like they eat more damage than usual.
A: German DDs tend to have a more bulky structure, so, they sometimes get less over-penetrations and more normal penetrations. We are fully aware of this and designed the line with this weakness in mind.
Overall, after all changes and tweaks, we consider them to be viable, competitive, and performing greatly.
Q: I want to ask why is AA on ijn yamato turret 2 and 3 lost ?
A: First, I am not sure these were present on turrets. And even if they were at some point, Yamato is definetely not the ship that needs buffing.
Q: this is about KM DDs, they are sufferring by BBs AP too much, unlike others DDs. Any change for KM DDs?
A: Right, as I answered above, they tend to have slightly more impact from AP shells. That was accounted for when we designed the line, and right now, in their current state, KM DDs look very good. No buffs or nerfs seem to be needed.
Q: 1. I got A question regarding Anti Aircraft special effect, are there any plans for it to be “enhanched” to be more visually appealing (especialy with future planned changes into carrier play). Even with maximum graphical settings, the visuals were only borderline (*ehem) passable. It looks good only when DFAA were active, which is quite the shame since, not all ships have DFAA. even battleships with hunderds of AA guns don’t look desperate enough, avoiding bombers attack – it looks like a half assed effort to shoot aircraft down.
2. I read, it is because WoWS focused on Ships to Ships battle.
But aircraft have been an integral part of naval warfare, especialy in the last stages of the war, and personally, that kind of thinking is the one that makes CV gameplay – and implementation of aircraft particularly underdeveloped
3. The Whole AAA system which is based on aura is quite ridiculous too in my opinion, since it is based a lot on RNG. Will we expect an improvement in the future ? like Dual Purpose guns able to fire at aircraft – even if it is just for a visual cosmetic effect.
A: 1. We’re working on major visual improvements right now, however, AA effects are not something that seems like a top priority. We’ll see what can be done, but now it looks like “Explosions & main caliber shooting -> Water FX -> the rest”.
2. We don’t think AA mechanics are perfect, and maybe we will address it along with CV improvements at some point.
3. Dual purpose guns are already firing at aircraft (in terms of dealing damage). For example, take Montana:
Visually, all guns but dual purpose ones track their targets if you enable this option:
Dual purpose guns do not track planes visually because that would conflict with their ship-to-ship shooting animation.
Q: My question is how many of your developers actively play the game and on average, the time that those developers play the game? I ask because I have seen your answers on how you believe the game balance is somewhat balanced yet since OBT, there have not been many good balance changes in my opinion and seemingly, many other players who have recently started expressing their concerns on balance.
A: All developers who participate in game design play the game actively. Most developers who participate in tech and near-game design, play the game too. I am sorry you are not satisfied with our balance decisions, but, you know, linking it to personal stats is a bit irrelevant. Also, there are thousands of players who are happy with what we do.
Q: Hey Sub_Octavian, I would like to ask about the logic behind the Ru DD HE buff to improve their damage done to other nation’s DDs (when the damage done to other classes was perfectly fine) and then later on you nerfed the rudder shift of the Khab because it was far too strong against DDs at close range?
Why not just roll back the HE buff?
The Khab is considered one of the more broken ships ingame, and to-nerf if you didn’t touch any of its real strengths…
A: Hey. Most of the line uses these shells, so making an exception for Khaba would not be very nice – while buffing other RU DDs was necessary. And, what’s most important, Khaba OP-ness is connected mainly with her high protection by dodging shells. Thus, we are nerfing her real strengths, and needed drop is already seen on server stats. Will it be enough? We don’t know yet.
Q: Will you consider implementing separate Random Battles; Solo Queue a.k.a Random Battles without divisions and Div Queue a.k.a. Random Battles with divisions only?
1) Newcomers will not face sealclubbing divisions so they will find their gameplay more comfortable.
2) Players in divisions will likely find their gameplay more exciting, strategic and tactical because these players tend to be more cooperative and coordinated. So, essentially a Team Battle but a 12v12 variant of it.
A: No. The audience should be much, much larger for this to work properly, without long queues in Match Maker.
Q: First I would like to welcome your presence on the Asia Server.
As an avid German Cruiser player, I’ve been monitoring the performance of these ships, which the WG devs has recognized that they’re “experiencing problems” .The 0.6.4 patch saw welcoming changes to the bow and stern armour of the Cruisers Hipper, Eugen, Roon and Hindenburg, which strengthened their protection against 380/381 mm AP shells and non-IFHE 155 HEs. However, as players have lamented in forum posts and polls, most of the players found that the protection least of these ships’ concern and that the buffs has limited improvement. A good number of them has voted to have buffs regarding the performance of their shells, or alternatively, the utility of the ships. Hence my question(s):
1. Are there plans from the devs to enhance other perimeters, say the penetration of the AP shells and the bounce angle/normalization, or the general utility of the German cruisers, considering that the line heavily relies on AP?
2. Or at the very least, are there plans to further adjust the parameters of German cruisers, particularly but not limiting to high tier ones?
Third question, if you would indulge me:
This being a boat game, I found it very underwhelming that we can only view the ships from a distance and from a inward perspective, which create the impression that the ships are rather small. Although it’s possible to mod the game client such that the camera can be moved on board the ship and solve (part of ) the problem, it would be logical of WoWs to include camera angle so the player can immerse better in the huge size of the ships, and ultimately, the naval setting. Which led me to the third question:
3. If it’s possible of the devs to add more camera angles and allow the player to zoom close, such that a player could virtually “stand”, “walk” in the port interface.
A: Hello. Thank you, I’m happy to be here, finally.
1.Right now, we are considering different improvements for German cruisers starting from Nurnberg. I cannot hint what will it be and to what degree, but we are on it, so chances for further improvements are pretty high. Thank you for providing additional information.
3. We were thinking about additional cameras for more immersion, and even did some prototypes, but right now, other UI improvements seem to have higher priority. So..not now, sorry.
