Answered by Sub_Octavian on Reddit.
Kirosawa
Thanks for doing your usual Q&A. Question for you:
HE was removed from RN CLs because apparently devs and feedback was they didn’t like invisible flamethrowers. Historically RN CLs carried both HE and CPBC. If fire was the issue, then why wasn’t HE implemented with a 0% fire chance or even 1-2% fire chance. This could have still made them viable against angled targets which make the “special” AP useless but still make the AP much better to use when the enemy ship moved back into a suitable angle. At this time a RN cruiser has no means to force a ship to turn broadside and thus the gimmick of the special AP is rendered pretty useless. Torpedoes on RN CL are neither long enough range or viable due to the fact getting to a suitable range for them to be effective is basically sucide. Is this going to be addressed, as if the enemy has more BBs left over mid to late game and your team has less BBs but more RN CLs its effectively a auto win for the enemy team since the enemy BBs can just angle and delete the RN CLs one after another. I and others are not asking for RN cruisers to be overpowered, just viable, which means conforming to the current meta and actually having HE on a cruiser, even if its a 0% chance to set a fire HE round put on RN CLs.
Hello. You are welcome!
With RN CLs we would like to introduce gameplay different from other CLs. No line could be released without later adjustments, but for now, we consider the new ships viable. They don’t need fully broadside target; if main armor penetration is not possible, they can deal decent damage to superstructure. We also don’t think their torpedoes are obsolete. On the contrary, it is safe to say they have important place in RN CLs offensive capabilities. According to last week stats, RN CL deal significantly more torpedo damage than other cruisers with torpedoes, while having one of the best average total damage stats.
They also have good maneuvrability and, of course, smoke screen – fighting BB solo is not a good idea, but they can evade it. So, answering your suggestion – no, we are not going to make global changes to these ships right now, and not going to add HE shells for them. We will monitor their performance carefully, especially when the audience is stable (right now, low tiers are overpopulated, and high level British cruisers are mostly hardcore players or free xp users). If there are problems with these ships, we will solve them.
HM_Bert
Why have you made the first line of one of the most important, effective and anticipated navies in the world into a gimmicky, ineffective and difficult to play group of vessels, with the lower tier (2-6) ships especially being downright awful, and completely outclassed by same or even lower tier ships of other nations? Do you plan to do anything to correct this?
Furthermore, how can you justify making a premium ship, Belfast, clearly so much superior to her tech tree counterparts? Finally, why do the Russian cruiser guns of the same 152mm calibre so vastly outperform those you have given the British, especially in terms of shell travel time? (not even to mention the fire chance they can use)
Thank you.
They may be difficult to play, but with all respect to your game experience, I cannot agree with “ineffective” or “awful”. For now they look quite good. Probably RN battleships would make more easy-to-play line, but we wanted to refresh cruiser class and at the same time, cruisers are less expensive in terms of production (I mean both development and IRL reference available) – we would not be able to introduce RN BBs that soon, for example. However, other RN lines are being developed gradually, so they are coming, too.
As I said above, we’re planning to do exactly what we do with other lines – to monitor their performance closely and tweak the ships that turn out to be too weak (or nerf the ships that turn out to be OP). Right now, there is no such indication.
Belfast has no torpedoes and no heal. But she has HE shells. Thus, she offers more habitual cruiser experience, which is not bad.
In terms of shell travel time Russian cruiser guns preformed better IRL, according to our sources. If that would have negative effect on game balance, we would give up historical accuracy (gameplay is more important, for sure). But this is not the case.
You are welcome, and I really hope you will have positive experience with the line when you get accustomed to it.
Cheers!
MrFingersEU
I’ll probably go ahead and address the elephant in the current room… Royal Navy Cruisers. What is your (personal) opinion on them, and what do the (preliminary) numbers say about their competitiveness compared to the others ships, divided across the tiers (Tier 1-3, Tier 4-6, Tier 7-10)? I got as far as them being “highly situational ships that can absolutely wreck in the right situations, and can be absolutely wrecked in the wrong ones, and they have a quite steep learning curve combined with them not being “fit for the masses” by having a very peculiar playstyle”
Oh, and thanks again for your time and effort you invest in this Q&A. Stuff like this should not be taken for granted by everybody, it’s very generous of you!
Okay, my personal opinion is actually similar to yours. I had both extremely rewarding and extremely unlucky battles during production tests. After release, I advanced to Edinburgh, using free XP I stored in advance. In current ranked season, I was more stable with Atago and Bismarck so far. On the other hand, two my colleagues set their personal records on Endinburgh and Minotaur. And I enjoy the gameplay, which really forces to be super aware of the situation around. These ships are fun to play, in my opinion.
Current stats for all tiers look quite good. However, we should remember that it is too early to make solid judgments on server stats because they are not established yet – it will require more time.
You are welcome. It is also very pleasant experience for me. Have good time!
Enginero0m
I have two questions I would like to pose to you today. This post will be for question 1.
Question 1: A hidden stat that is found on roughly 75% of all the ships currently available in the game is the chance of causing flooding on a successful torpedo impact. For some ships flooding is seen as an added bonus to the damage done (think RU cruisers who will only really use torpedoes in an emergency situation), while for others the flooding caused contributes a significant portion of the average damage done during battle (some destroyers, all carriers). Is there maybe a consideration to show the chance of causing flooding on torpedo hit in the client, similarly to the way the fire chance is currently displayed for the HE ammunition for all surface-combat ships (except the RN CLs)?
Thanks for the time and effort you put into answering these questions.
Thank you for minding the rules. Very nice of you.
It’s not like we are hiding this stat. Problem is, we don’t want to add information which is not usable to general audience. As you know, anti-torpedo protection can reduce flooding chance greatly (if torpedo hits it). So having “100% flooding chance” in port will not necessarily mean 100% chance in battle. I think even with fire chance, the situation is not perfect, as each ships has fire protection value, which multiplies with fire protection bonuses (from modernizations and skills). And this value then multiplies with shell fire chance each time it hits the ship. I believe we have to find smart way of showing such aspects in client first. Otherwise, we will cause confusion for people who just played by instinct and were fine with it.
Thank you too, for reading and for good question.
Takeda92
I will feel ready bad about pressing the issue about this ship, but let me say thank you for listening to the feedback on this very Q&A which resulted in a buff for 3 of some of the oldest cruisers in the game, and it came very fast as well. I can already say that I did enjoy playing Mogami again with the 203mm and I had some very fun games with it after the buff.
Since you mentioned that no plans to split the 2 guns Mogami, will the issue regarding the penalty after firing the guns be addressed? As it stands right now, the penalty is tied to the hulls, not the guns. So if you use 155mm on C hull, you will get the same penalty as 203mm guns. Are there plans to address this issue?
You did absolutely right thing when pushed the issue to my attention. Balancing huge pool of ships may be very complex, as there are numerous stats and aspects to consider. You and players like you help us to make the game better for everyone. So you should be feeling good about it.
I am afraid to disappoint you on your current question, though. We of course know about this issue (Bogatyr also has it, as she has 2 calibers). But it cannot be changed quickly (technical reasons). And, as it is not a serious issue (from general point of view), we cannot allocate resources to it now. So, penalty will remain the same on Mogami and Bogatyr – based on the highest caliber available. When we have time for major mechanics rework or more reasons, we will address it.
Hirumaru
“Her main problem is the same as Furutaka – she is the first 203 mm gun cruiser in line.”
I respectfully and vehemently disagree. It’s not the guns or the playstyle but the utterly ridiculous detection range. She’ll always be the first spotted and therefore the first fired upon. In addition, she’ll continue to be spotted as her allies cease firing and become undetected. This means she’ll face the anger of every ship in sight far longer than the rest of her team.
For a ship as fragile as the Pensacola, this is unacceptable. Why is it that you can buff the detection range of British cruisers for the exact same reasons you ignore in the Pensacola? When British cruisers had massive detection ranges they were reportedly getting swatted left, right and center, because their citadels were so weakly protected. Why is the Pensacola not given the same regard and consideration? https://na.warships.today/vehicle/4282300400/Pensacola Apparently, it’s doing so poorly it isn’t even on the first page of stats . . .
I got your point. I will see what we can do, but I doubt we will be able to change anything before 2017. P.S. English is not my native language, but I doubt you can disagree both respectfully and vehemently. But I may be mistaken, of course:)
CVN_Enterprise
Hey there! Thank you for implementing so many great mods into the game like smoke screen boundaries or the transparent minimap.
Can we expect you guys to add shipnames on the minimap like in one famous mod? It’s incredibly usefull.
Helloes! You are welcome.
Unfortunately, we were not able to add ship names to minimap smoothly yet. The mod is useful, but in terms of UI consistency and visuals we cannot accept this solution. Too many overlaying information, too messy for vanilla client. Although, it is probably very good for hardcore players.
On a brighter note, we will add ship names to tactical map ([M] by default), hopefully, in 0.5.14.
Cheers!
Dunk-Master-Flex
For me and I can imagine a few other players, the RN cruiser grind is utter hell at the moment. Tier’s III, IV and V are basically all obsolete compared to their counterparts.
For example, Leander (Tier VI) is the contemporary of all other Tier V ships such as Kirov, Konigsberg and Furutaka. Only Omaha, a ship left behind by the meta is comparable and even she has a much better armament than Emerald with it’s laughable single mounts strewn around the ship.
My question is, could Leander be bumped down into Tier V, Emerald removed entirely and something like the Dido class cruiser take Leander’s place at Tier VI?
No, she could not, and will not be moved. There is no solid arguments for such change currently.
Dido class may have some appearance in World of Warships later, though.
ipodtouchgen4
Do you think a lot of mid-high tier maps are too…empty or was it the design rule of WG? I mean, there are a large portion of the map that has completely nothing – no island, no cap and therefore provides no strategic value to the match except acting as the space for long range snipers to camp. For example, I think you can completely remove the nearest 2 horizontal lines from the northern and southern border on North, Hotspot, Shatter, Two Brothers, etc…then move the spawn to right at the borders and the gameplay would stay largely the same as it is now. Imo a good map should be like Trident (minus the close spawn in ranked) or New Dawn, where you have islands cover across the whole map and have room for both teamwork and 1vs1 plays. A further compliment to you guys on the work of Trident: the map feels really close to the 36x36km maps at tier 4-6, despite its much bigger true size of 48×48 – I always see and enjoy a lot more of close distance fight on this single map than any other 48×48 maps.
We always seek to create maps which would be exciting for all ship types. At the moment we only use “square type” maps. So, speaking about your example with North: if we remove some area you are talking about, we will also need to remove something from left and right side of the map. This is not a viable idea, since we have Domination game mode with 4 capture points, and we definately need some space around control points.
We also have completely different classes in our game, and some of them have very good visibility (like CVs and BBs). CVs always need some space, because if they got spotted by the enemy, they can retreat and hide again. By the way, Okinawa map has less space than North map (42 square km) but feels almost the same in terms of gameplay area. We tried to use diagonal control points arrangement there, and we really like this idea since players better use map corners and don’t have much chance to go far from active gameplay area. For the maps like Trident we added some islands to the top and bottom bacasue the map itself is quite open in the middle and these islands can be used to survive / hide, depending on situation. Going back to the North map, it has more territory in the middle. No need to add more islands there in our opinion.
Cheers, and thanks for interesting question.
webba84
This is not meant as snark, I am genuinely curious about the decision making process – why is it ok for premium cruisers to have the smoke and HE combination but not regular tech tree ships, and why was it decided to have the RN tech ships with more ‘quirky’ gameplay than the premiums, when generally premiums are the ships that deviate more from core gameplay?
There is no rule for premiums to “deviate”. There is no rule for line ships to be “average”. They can offer unique experience, or they can be simple workhorses. With the huge pool of both researchable and premium ships, we are working to achieve diversity. There is nothing bad in having a line with unique gameplay, if this line can be viable with right tactics.
Abject-Testament
Hi there WG,
What’s the deal with the RN cruisers? The Royal navy throughout history had always above all else, been known for their versatility, however the absence of HE completely ignores this fact.
I do barely ANY damage to ships once they angle, yeah I can aim for superstructure with my AP but for what? 500-700 damage… per salvo? Battleships… Laugh at me, nothing more then XP fodder to them. Destroyers… This line of ships were supposed to be the ultimate DD hunters, nope. The idea of implementing AP only light cruisers in a BB/DD heavy is not good. However I do say you have done a great job with the Belfast, very good ship, playing it felt like this is what RN cruisers were meant to be, although that does present a problem of it’s own in the fact that the only way to get a good British cruiser at this time is to spend money, enforcing the “Pay to win” argument a little bit more.
Thank you for taking the time to read my question. I appreciate that I may appear annoyed But I know you are a good developer and that you listen to your players.
Hello,
I elaborated both on Belfast and British cruisers in several replies above. Frankly speaking, there is nothing I can add at the moment, so let’s summarize:
- For now, the line looks good in terms of stats (all tiers), however, we will keep monitoring it, because right now it is too early to make solid judgments.
- The new line offers unique gameplay, which requires new approach, and we don’t consider it bad decision. On the contrary, we wanted to introduce something new to cruiser class.
- We don’t think Belfast is pay to win. She has no torpedoes and no heal, which balances her merits. Of course she has potential to wreak havoc, but she does not seem to be OP.
- Even if you strongly believe that Belfast is p2w and line British CLs are bad, you can choose among many other lines, which you think are better. There is nothing wrong in playing for free in f2p/f2w game. There is nothing wrong in finding the right ship line for you, when there is vast choice.
Cheers!
Coldini
Like many players I have a very beefy pc I play on and would love support for more ultra graphics settings without having to use nvidia inspector to override the games native settings. Common adjustments are these kind of SGSAA settings Which make the ships look miles better, render the ropes/wires better and I can look at my pretty new belfast in port without seeing jagged lines everywhere. It does have a couple of issues on some maps with shaders but otherwise works great. It does shift my gpu to 60c when running all this in battle but copes with it fine.
Hello. We do realize that the game can use technical buff for better visuals. We plan to enable MSAA (2/4/8) in 0.5.14 update. Wires and ropes will require additional model rework to be neat, though. Hopefully, we will start this rework in 0.5.14 too and will re-export all ships models gradually. As for 2017, we are working on DX11 support (which will allow us to improve visuals further on) and major FX update. So, I believe there will be some useful load for your PC and you will enjoy better looks in World of Warships in the near future.
Elimer
As always thank you for answering! 🙂 My question is: Now Moskva has the largest caliber(220mm) in ‘world of cruisers’, Can we see bigger main gun in future?(Like Deutschland’s 11″ guns or 10″ guns of Ansaldo large cruiser design for Soviet navy)
Is it under NDA? 🙁
You are welcome!
Yes, we can, and most likely, we will. It is under NDA, so don’t tell anyone;)
jonasnee
at the moment torpedoes are kind of in a bad spot and it seems to happen often that even something like a BB is capable of completely avoiding torpedoes after it spots them (with no previous indication there where fishes in the water) this is due to the incredibly large detection range on esp japanese destroyers, are there any chance we might get a commander skill or module that decreases the range at which torpedoes are spotted to make torpedoes a bit more likely to hit? (and kind of as a counter to the vigilance and other torp detection bonuses).
There is very little, almost zero chance. Talking about IJN destroyers and especially Shimakaze, I don’t recommend using long lance torpedoes, as they are too specific after the nerf. And other available models are more then viable and efficient.
zkuzku
Dear Sub_Octavian. I have a suggestion. Would you buff the American Cruises’ secondary armament so that they can get an improved close combat ability? Only few American Cruises have torpedoes and their naval guns are not enough as well. I think improving their secondary armament will successfully fill the gap. What if your team reduce 127 mm/38’s reload time to 3.3~4 seconds and increase its maximum firing range by 6~7km? How does that sound?
Hello, dear zkuzku. That does not sound like immediate plan either to me or to Game Design Balance team. However, we will consider it. Thank you for the idea.
