WoWS Q&A – 6th August 2017

Sub_Octavian:
Hello, dear players. We finalized the discussion on the Nelson battleship. She will be avaliable as a free XP ship, like Missouri, and will become 2nd free XP ship in the game.
The price is yet to be determined, but we will do our best to make it balanced and reasonable.
Thank you all for your input.

Source: https://www.facebook.com/WorldofWarshipsAsia/?fref=ts

20 Questions With Philip Molodkovets & Sho Hatai, compiled by Boris_MNE:

Q: When will USN CVs have their Loadout be adjusted?

A: In one of the near future updates. We would like to join this with adding AP bombs for USN CVs as a choice, so overall, some interesting changes for USN CVs are coming.

Q: Will there be another PvE missions to be planned?

A: For now, we see that players like 1st PVE season and Dunkerque event, so yes, we would like to continue developing PvE content.

Q: How does WG view the potential overbuffing of premiums, given how some premiums receive very heavy-handed buffs instead of slow-and-steady?

A: The Lo Yang is now unquestionably one of the best (if not the best) DDs at T8, to the extent that competitive rules require caps on it. We may also see this phenomenon in randoms with the T7 Indianapolis (being a straight up better Pensa overall). –  Lo Yang in its current state is viable and good, but not the best T8 DD. It has become more universal, but still loses in terms of separate specializations – you can find a better torpedo boats, gun boats. As for premium ships tuning, we don’t want to do micro invisible buffs to them, we calculate safe and sufficient value and apply it. That’s all.

Q:  In patch 0.6.0, Air Groups mod.2 was buffed to have a +50% fighter ammo modifier, a significant change. When asked as to why it was done, Sub_Octavian answered that it was to “buff the less skillful playerbase (of USN CVs)”. I have asked many times since then on how it has affected the balance of CVs and all I got was either “we don’t know the answer to that” (WGNA facebook Q&A) or “the change has affected balance positively”, with no specific stats whatsoever. Did the change indeed buff the less skilful players? Since then, I found that a good player will now use the extra ammo to utterly whack enemy CVs that are less skilled. Did it even buff USN CV WR in the first place?

A:   The cost of mistake when using strafe has lowered, and also, USN fighters can deal some damage not only to the 1st strike wave, which is good. We think it was a good addition, but as for USN CV, more changes are needed, and they are coming.

Q:  Concerning the Enterprise, it would be nice if WG could explain how AP bombs work in detail. Certain BBs such as KM BBs and Fuso seem to take huge damage while others might take less. Also, the autodrop and panic drop is tiny and it seems braindead (no-skill). Why was it released in this state? We now have a no-skill CV (vs BBs, that is) that has near-infinite fighter reserves.

A: Enterprise AP bombs arm at 70 mm and penetrates around 184 mm. So horizontal armor of a target really matters. Later, we may add AP bombs with different values and they will interact with other ships differently. The difference between auto drop and manual is around 20% which is nice for premium ship in our opinion. However, the angle of approach really matters, as the drop pattern is very stretched. So I wouldn’t call it no-skill.

Q:  Greetings spotter, who do the developers believe are better suited to balance the game; a good player who uses an objective approach or a highly subjective average/bad player? Following this, how do the developers believe they really can balance carriers, because it’s been two years since the game has released and from the perspective of a decent carrier player, the patches towards carriers has been horrible, and not to be rude but from the public stats of the developers, nearly none of them play high tier carriers.

A: Hi. Overall, ships should be balanced based on those players who are most frequent in randoms – sad but true. However, taking skill into consideration is a must, that’s why we have tools for that. However, the majority of playerbase is primary, we cannot balance the game around 10% of audience. As for playing CVs, well, I am definitely not good at it for now, but those developers who play CVs and do Game Design, are quite good at it. No offence too, but our goal is to create a good game, not to be top players and play all day long instead of working. You don’t expect a piano creator to be the best piano player, right?

Q: Will Scenario be expanded to other tiers? (as in, Tier 8-10, as well as Tier 4 and below).

A: We would like to add more tiers in the future, yes. ( Sub_Octavian said that they are looking at tier 7 as intresting choice)

Q:  Is there any plans to provide even more detailed statistics about a ship? Things like a Gun’s Sigma value, their Horizontal/Vertical Dispersion – these are hard to find, and providing them help players to understand the game better.

A:  For the most proposed changes, the answer is no. Thing is, it requires much work with very tiny output. Most players are not interested in even basic port specs, and more hardcore guys who are interested are using wiki articles and other high-level sources. For example, showing sigma value in port would confuse and not help the majority, and I am talking like 90% of players – so why add it? To sum up, we don’t want to spend resources adding something most players are not interested in.

Q: Do you think HighTier Cruisers are not in their right place? In lower tier when a cruisers approach a BB, if they not careful they can be devastate, but in hightier cruisers have longer gun range and dont need to get near BB to shot and easily dodging BB’s shells with skill incoming fire alert. BB now cant go into fight and force to sniping each other from >18km away. A BB can be kill in about 3 minutes when she get near a Cruiser without damaging that Cruiser.

A: I think, at high tiers, the cruisers have the same power as battleships, and this is very good. They are still more difficult to play, but at least they are absolutely viable.

Q: I was wondering if Gearing will have her historical speed in the game? Originally she had 36.8knots but in game was 36knots.

A: We will look into it, thank you.

Q:  USS CL techtree will it be a possible update in the future?

A: Yes, it is possible, but not in the next few lines – it may happen a bit later.

Q: Will Mahan have her concealment slightly buffed? After the changes of the commander skills, most of the ships will have access to CE (Concealment Expert) earlier. As of the current state, she probably had the worst concealment among all her peers.

A: We would like to buff Mahan, and your suggestion is one of the possible options. Thanks!

Q: Since we already have naval mine in operation mode, is it possible for DD and CL in game access it ?

A: Not in the near future, and not in this form. Actually, not everything that is good in PvE should be fetched to PvP – these are different modes.

Q: Every nation have perks, quirk and trait that differentiate the factions. However  secondaries armanent seems to be neglected (aside from german line).its unfortunate, considering there were already a unique path of secondaries as viable option to every factions not just german but was………………………………. underdeveloped or maybe neglected ?(currently German secondaries have longest range, and reliable penetration as major trait

A: The Japanese secondaries seems a mixed bag of HE and AP that can be somewhat usefull – US secondaries is somewhat weak but very survivable and have best fire chance(at montana))is there a plan to further developed those ideas around ? At least sligtly put more effort into secondaries sound effect (it sound muffled) –  we don’t want secondaries specialization to be viable on all nations, so no changes are planned.

Q: TRB on Shima when? I wanna trade repair for it.

A: We did consider this, but it is too toxic –  30 torps at once from one ship, and then imagine a division!

Q: Is there any plans to introduce the single fire torpedoes to the other lines to counter the  hydro and radar rich environment at high tiers? If not, why? 

A: No, because currently it is planned as Royal Navy trait.

Q: About IJN CA. They, no, only the Mogami received a great buff for the 155mm turret traverse. But the 203mm variants of general IJN CAs, notably the Ibuki, are about the same as Aoba-Mogami 203mm in terms of the shells and arcs. Is there any plan for the devs to buff the Ibuki so she can has the Zao 203mm shells and arcs? I know Ibuki historically was an upgraded Mogami. Therefore in-game Ibuki needs to have an better version of IJN 203mm shells, which is Zao’s shells.

A: Ibuki is probably not the best fun ship to play, but it is fine combat-wise. Sorry, but there is no need to buff her.

Q:  I have managed to hook a friend into playing, he has moved up to Fiji and is doing pretty well now.  You could make this game much more friendly by adapting your scenarios to some single player tutorials for each class of ship.  Could give the player a reward for completing them like scenarios, also use of higher tier ships to get a “taste”. Could put all the updated CV play here too.  So yeah, tutorials…when?

A: That is a good idea, and we’re working on it, unfortunately not as fast as we want, but thanks for bringing this up anyways.

Q: Are there any plans to make AA mechanics more enganging for the non-cv players?The current AA mechanics is one of most terrible mechanic in the game due to its hard to balance;either the AA is too strong or too weak. Are there plans to at least make the secondary armament controllable to use as flaks against CV  plane attacks? The secondary armament damage may be reduced in exchange for a ”scatter like  effect” (similair to Defensive fire & fighter attacking)  and punish concentration attack from 1 direction ,forcing the CV to take multiple angle to attack.Furthemore,forcing  non-CV player to actually stick together to cover multiple angles . The CV can be compensate with more option to attack (ex;adjusting altitude that affect AA effectiveness such as higher altitude less prone to small AA damage but longer drop time in exchange , torp range & speed). I doubt the dev will ever change the AA Mechanics anytime soon.However ,its essential to improve AA balance and make it more enganging for both non-cv and cv players .

A:  Overall, we think AA mechanics can really benefit from improvements, but we cannot afford it right now, and busy with other CV-connected problems.

QUESTIONS FROM FB CHAT:

Q: Can we expect line of Russian BBs?

A: There are already 2 Russian BBs in the game. Teoretically it is possible, but they are focused on another things now.

Q: Please don’t let another ships  (I think question was about Conqueror) to overmatch BBs frontal Armor…
A: Even with 457, Conqueror will not be able to do it. That is Yamatos gimmick.

Q: Do you have any plans to help ships like the Pensacola that get too easily citadeled ?

A: Problem is not in citadels but in BBs doing heavy damage to lightly armoured ships with AP , without need to switch on HE. They are working on solution for this, where BB will have to choose shells just like cruisers.

Q: Whats the plan on RN DDs to be unique?

A: RN DDs are not in production right now, no answers.

Q: When RN BB will be released?

A: Pretty soon . ( He answered this like 1000 times, quite soon)

Q: When you will fix damn MM for ranked battles?  ( Person asked if we will get balanced teams by SKILL)

R: For random battles, never. For ranked it already counts player league. They are going to introduce some intresting choice for  clans regarding ranked battles.

Q: Any buffs for IJN cruisers?

A: No.

Q: When we can see clan wars coming to us?
A: We are into internal tests, soon we will be heading toward supertesting. Sub_octavian hopes it will be this year.

Q: Any plans to make commonwealth tech tree?

A: We have some plans and discussion to add mixed and not  full brances into game. We might see them but not commonwealth tech three.

Q: The latest updates to the Russian destroyers have been lowered in terms of their concealment and maneuverability, for example the khaba is no longer a destroyer

A: We buffed Ognevoi and Grozvoi. But Khaba had to be nerfed as she was too powerful.  Sub_octavian hopes that they will NOT have to nerf her more. (Maybe maybe maybe there is chance to be nefred somewhat more)

Q; Can you  let us to custom manage camuflages?

A: No. But we have some ideas and  you will see in future update.