WoWS Q&A – 31st July 2016

Source: Quemapueblos

Q: Do we have an ETA on any more CV changes? I would like to see the CV interface fixed (I know that it has been promised) as well as CVs in general.

Also, is there any way that we can get some use out of the IJN DD C hulls on Fubuki and Kagerou? Right now, they serve no purpose other than to take away precious firepower and be an XP gate to the next ship.

A: Sorry no big updates on CVs reworks since last QueNA but to reiterate there are two major changes we are trying to squeeze in this year that will dramatically affect CVs.

First, including more bonuses for teamwork like spotting and second, reworking the UI so it’s more responsive. Our goal is a quickness and responsiveness something similair to a fast paced RTS like starcraft.

Q:

  1. How’s Kitakami doing in the retirement home? Will we be given visitation rights?
  2. On NA, after the Mikasa event, would it be outside the realm of possibility to get a similar event for Katori or Smith?
  3. Which destroyer is your favourite destroyer?
  4. How did you get the name Quemapueblos?
  5. How do the developers currently feel about high tier destroyer and cruiser balance?
  6. If and when Kitakami gets added back to the client, can I get her for all my hard work? ๐Ÿ™‚

A:

  1. She sleeps well, though not much has changed for her recently so she’s getting a little bored
  2. There will be more big events like the Mikasa or Project coming this year but no announcements for now if Katori or Smith will be there. Maybe sometime soon ๐Ÿ˜‰
  3. UGGGGGHHHH this is like picking between children. Kamikaze R or my Shim give me the most joy. Probably Kamikaze R in suicide mode
  4. It was a nickname given to me while doing demolitions and construction in Baha. It was too awesome not to keep
  5. I’ll have to ask the team how they feel about this directly but for me, one of the main issues is that teamplay incentives are not properly rewarded so it encourages bad gameplay and helping your team by spotting is not “worth” most players time when they want to be effective in earning credits/exp
  6. For you and only you, maybe.

Q: Will we have another chance to obtain a Kamikaze R? Or will Kamikaze/Fujin join the shop?

A: It’s something the team is considering how to do best for NA. Maybe another mission? Should we do add them to the premium store for a bit? I’m not sure given how it was an exclusive gift for hardwork. What are folks thoughts on how it should be available again?

Q: Regarding your favorite Shimakaze, any plans to restore it to it’s former glory somewhat?

A: The shima is still very powerful right now and will get better if/when we add bonuses for spotting. It’s the only ship I feel I can close a game in if it’s down to me but hey, I suck at BBs and I’m ok at Cruisers.

Q: Funny thing is, I’ve seen so many ships blink in and out of concealment. The 3 second delay is definitely gone now, and the SA icon reflects that.

A: It’s sorta half fixed. There is still a delay in some instances (mostly smoke) but the icon is accurate now. The occasional delay is something we are working on removing as well in the future.

Q:

  • Why wasn’t the +1 MM for t6/7/8 CV implemented on live ? I was actually surprised to see this on PT and thought it was an extremely good change as CV are affected by MM more than other classes.
  • Does WG development team pay attention to CV captain skills and experiment changes actively ? 90% of CV players all have a similar build these days. Air Superiority is too strong and players with no AS cannot compete with AS owners at all in terms of fighter vs fighter. I thought WG approach of captain skill is to put more important/game-changing skills at lower tier while make t5 skills more attractive/diversified rather than a straight auto-win skill.

A:

  • Ultimately it didn’t improve matchmaking in the ways we wanted it to. We found creating games for CVs players that give a better opportunity to be effective is more complex than just restricting the tier spread and we are going back to work on CV matchmaker improvements for a future release
  • Commander skills CVs but in general need to be reworked with that philosophy more in mind. That is our goal, these skills should enable more interesting gameplay options and not be a one size fits all and I’m better than anyone else no matter what they have. It’s something we are working on for future patches so stay tuned.

Q:

  • Why got the MM changed for Imperator Nikolai? Isn’t that some kind of a buff when she only see T5 and lower?
  • Are the devs planing to rewrite the captain skill system? I think that it would be a win win situation for both sides and it could prevent future forums and subreddits getting set on fire.
  • Drafts on a lot of ships are too high or am i only imaginating stuff? Observing them floating in the port shows quite often that their ass stucks out of the water?
  • You guys offered a new thing for port mods that I’m already using and did my first ones… I’m in love with it already as you can see here. I still have one huge issue: I can’t move & rotate the position of ships via coordinates. They spawn basically always in the middle of the provided map. Is there a way to do it which is included but never used and so not viewabel in the setting files?
  • I heard you guys want to add some Austro-Hungarian ships when you have time for that. Can you confirm that?
  • There is a certain ARP cruiser that fans from arpeggio would like to see… in the recent patch you added the captain of her already but do you have plans for the ship too? If yes what’s the plan and is Mogami also part of this plan?
  • You guys added, compared to the amount of ships, a lot of high and low tier ships on germany. Mid tier when? Hightier is too expensive and lowtier just not suitabel for captain retraining..

A:

  • While the Nikolai is very strong, but it has no AA short of a guy of the deck firing a pistol wildly into the air. Seeing a tier V CV was pretty much instant death for this ship
  • In short, yes. Commander skills are something we want to overhaul in the future. It has a few really annoying spots for players, especially for our free to play folks, that make the system not what we intended. Commander skills should open up opportunities for additional gameplay while also not being so restrictive as you progress through ships
  • There have been some requests for improvements in the port mod functionality we recently added. I’m looking into what else we can do to open this up more.
  • ??? Not in 2016 at least but maybe one day
  • No announcements on this yet but keep your eye on the portal. Something may catch it ๐Ÿ˜‰
  • We have some high tier DE ships coming soon but nothing tier 5-6 range which I’m assuming that’s what you are looking for.

Q:

when can we expect the in game armor model, or are there any updates on how it is going so far?

are you guys still working on a british cruiser line release for this year?

do we have an eta on the next ranked season?

what is your favorite food?

A:

  • Getting close. This last patch we reworked Battleship armor and you can see a preview of it on our portal article. We are hoping to release it in the next patch or two, bar some catastrophe that is lurking
  • Still on track to get RN sometime this year but not announcements to give yet unfortunately
  • We are reviewing the stats from this season and also working on team battles but we haven’t finalized when Ranked Season 5 will start though we want to get some sort of competitive mode back up and running for the players who want to compete in that.
  • Waffles and Breakfast Sausages. Sausages cut in half usually so they lay flat on the waffle for a waffle sandwich. No syrup or butter. Yeah I’m weird.

Q: With the recent additions to the Premium ships in the game, USN, Russia, and Germany have gotten a lot more entries to their name (Germany getting BBs rather). However, there seems to be a distinct lack of higher-tier premiums for the IJN, seeing as there is nothing above T5 bar Atago. Tone is known to be in the works, and Kitakami in some Iku-fueled stasis, but is there any light you may be able to shed concerning the near future of IJN higher tier premiums ships?

Also, any news on having Light Cruiser and additional destroyer lines to the game for USN and IJN?

A:

  • Right now we have a few ships like the Katori and Tone that will come when they are ready but nothing IJN high tier planned for 2016 but we have a ton of ideas for 2017 and some really interesting new ships like Tone if we can work on how to represent it’s unique gameplay in battle.
  • New lines for USN and IJN are behind a few “other” sought after nations where the hell are the brits so don’t count on them coming in 2016 for the moment

Q:

Royal Navy? Will cruisers be the first line?

CA/CL split?

Second BB line for the Americans? BC/CB line for the Americans?

German DDs?

A:

  • RN is coming, don’t worry! Cruisers are planned to be first
  • Not planed for 2016 at the moment
  • Not this year either
  • German DDs in progress and we are expecting to finish them by this year but no promises!

Q:

  1. What is WG’s reasoning for allowing fail divisions?
  2. Will any other premium ships be added to NA skill tree in near future?

A:

  1. It’s something we are working to remove in the next patch or two.
  2. Yes! There will definitely be more premiums available in the in game tech tree. Is there some ship you particularly want to see moved to the tech tree?

-Flint is going to be only a reward ship for now.

Q: Does Lesta/WG have any plans of implementing XP-penalties for “fail divisions”, like it’s done now in WoT for “fail platoons”?

 

A:How about in the next few patches let’s remove them all together? I despise fail divisions!

Q: With the recent controversy over the recent captain point resets and such, can we expect that WG will be more transparent and consistent in future in regards to these situations? Will something like the current temporary discount become standard for a short period after patches when captain point changes are made?

A: Yeah, this patch with skill resets was a mess and I’m sorry for all the miscommunications. Our main delay stemed from technical roadblocks. We were trying to figure out what we could do given the technical constraints but something that sounds seemly simple, like removing a point from the skill tree and crediting it back so players couldn’t place it anywhere was not possible. We wanted to move quickly which meant adding a new feature to deal with this would have pushed the patch back further so we went with the solution we have now.

It’s not something we want to do again I can assure you! We are working on a better solution for skills changes in the future so we don’t have to deal with problems like this.

Q:

  1. Some captain skills like (5pt) Last Chance and (3pt) Dogfighting Expert are almost never taken due to their limited effects and superior alternatives. Is there any plans to rework these skills?
  2. Is there any plans to rework dive bombers? I posted a video yesterday in which I failed to damage a enemy destroyer despite 3 perfect drops.
  3. Is there any plans to allow side-by-side ship comparison while in port? I would like to view the ship stats simultaneously without having to jump around the tech tree. Ship model comparison would also be nice.

A:

  1. We are actively looking at how often skills are picked and how effective they are compared to others. In the future, we will rework skills to increase the number of viable options for all classes including CVs.
  2. Dive bombers right now have very unsatisfying gameplay compared to Torpedo bombers. Torp Bombers can reduce their RNG with skillful placement while Dive Bombers really don’t have much options. It’s something we are busy discussing the best way to resolve.
  3. It’s been a repeated request recently so I’ll pass this along to the dev team as a bigger priority. You can compare modules in port and ships while loading into a battle but not in port which sucks.

Q: While the Refer A Friend Program is a nice way to incentivize veterans to recruit and coach new players, what is WG currently planning on to further improve the new player experience? (and especially for players that have little or no prior knowledge of warships.)

A: Oh boy, I won’t lie and say our new player onboarding and early experience really helps players grasp the game’s fundamental concepts because… well it doesn’t do that very effectively.

It’s something I’m personally really passionate about and working to create videos and in game content that helps this alleviate this problem. Ships is a really complicated game. Much like tanks, I don’t think players really grasp some of the core concepts until hundreds if not thousands of battles.

TLDR; It’s critical and we are working on how to best provide players will all this information

Q:

  1. When will fail divisions be fixed? It’s just unacceptable that we still see people dropping a high tier ship with a Mikasa in their division.
  2. I finished rank season 2 and 4 and i’m not seeing the Flint in my port. Does that mean we really need to finish ranked seasons twice in a row for this prize?

A:

  1. Yep, it sucks. Working on removing it entirely in the next patch or the following
  2. For the first season of reaching Rank 1 you get Jolly Roger I, for the second season you will receive Jolly Roger II. After the third season of reaching Rank 1, you get USS Flint.

Q: Will it be possible to implemente more tier 2 Battleships for example the german pre dreadnought sms Deutschland and sms Schleswig Holstein ?

A: Tier II BBs are quite hard to balance but I wouldn’t rule out it ever happening in the future. Dat Mikasa secondary powa!

 

Q: Why can’t the Atlanta have a flatter arc and more range at Tier 7? She is pretty much outclassed by every ship at that Tier including some destroyers?

A: The arc has it’s advantages and it was buffed this last patch with radar which is pretty awesome for tier VII.

Q: What is the point of ridiculous default repair cost of T10?

A:Heyo, it’s something we are actively tuning. Check out this article for more info this month’s test reducing repair costs even further. Please let us know if it’s still not at a level you are happy with in the article comments or on the forums!

It’s an ongoing experiment to get the tuning right. We’ll keep discounting higher tiers at different levels until it’s in a good spot and then possibly make it permanent. Does it feel comfortable right at this moment?