Transcribed by MrFingersEU
On the EU-forums there is a “weekly Q&A”, on which players get to ask questions, and in an ideal world every week the most pressing issues are answered. That doesn’t really happen there, but as a surprise to everyone, Sub chimed in yesterday (out of the blue) and answered quite a lot of questions. Thought I’d share them with you.
Why have you not removed the Type 93 (Shimakaze stock) torpedoes or at least changed them to something more useful yet? Right now they’re basically worthless with their excessive spotting range, but they increase the torpedo stat in port, thus fooling novice players into thinking that these are superior to the other choices Shimakaze offers.
Hi. We’re in process, thinking about their future fate. They truly are not good choice, Shima would probably be much better with Type93 mod.3 as stock. Sorry it takes so much time, but we’re on it.
Any chance we will see a Scapa Flow port? Would be cool to be able to station my RN cruisers in the base of the British Navy in WW1 and WW2.
Hello. This location is not currently planned, but there is always some chance that plans will be changed.
Have you ever considered in game conversion of ( 1 ship xp -> 1 commander xp = the price is 300 credits )?
Hello. Ship XP -> Elite XP conversion for credits is not an option, unfortunately. That would de-value 19-pts commanders that work as Elite XP farmes very well right now. And generally, players don’t have trouble spending credits, if they keep up with new lines.
I would like to point out the interaction to land mass. Specific the vertical “stuck to island”. Now before i continue, I dont know if this was ment to be a feature.., but if it was, it is not very friendly. In my opinion the interaction with land should be like interacting with another boat (the actual slide). This way, it would create it more playable.
Hello. Our game design concept does not suggest any “stuck to shore” zones. If you’re stuck and cannot free yourself from hugging an island, please make a screenshot and report it as a bug to Customer Support. Such zones should be removed. However, complete stop (without being stuck) on terrain collision is a feature and shouldn’t be changed – that will create some very stupid tactics that doesn’t belong in naval warfare game. I hope I managed to make it clear. Cheers!
I wish to be able to monitor clan member activity, this can be done in WOT by looking at “Last Played” under clan profile. Is there somewhere on WOW you can see the same information? If not can this be added somewhere, maybe another column on the clan list I see when I click the CLAN tab in port, or on player profile to the right of the player name.
Hello. There is no such table, but I will take your question as suggestion. Thank you!
I’d like to ask what kind of balance of ship class distribution WG considers as optimum? Along with that question, I would like to ask for some kind of graph/histogram, that shows the relative distribution of how many ships of a class are in a battle.
We would like to see some reduction of BBs, some increse of CVs, and CL/CA being the most popular – in ideal situation. Official servers stats are not to be disclosed unless absolutely necessary. Sorry.
Could you please remove the text “You have not proved yourself in this battle” when the actual reason that I have “not proved myself” is that the first shots of the enemy have detonated me. It feels like an insult when I had very little to do with it – it’s down to the retarded but so-called “fun and engaging mechanic” of detonation entirely.
Hi. This text is not intended as an offence or blaming player, so I think there is misunderstanding caused by cultural differences. We’ll research this and take action, thank you for bringing this up. Detonations are actually not “retarded” – we had some ideas, and studied this topic throughout all regional forums and other sources. There is no general negative attitude – people normally like to detonate enemies and of course don’t like being detonated. This is a mechanics of spike moments that sometimes leads to epic fail or epic win. We will not remove it. However, we will make detonations much more colorful and epic, along with other FX.
Do u have plans to make game bit more realistic and less arcade?
No. Because making it realistic mostly means making BB even more powerful.
Please please make proper PvE so we can play some semi historic battles against bots or play campaign of one nation against other (controlled by bots).
PvE is in very active development, but at first, it will be a special challenge without “historical battles”. Although, if it is succesful – who knows. PvE might be the best place to experiment with “historical” combat.
I was wary about the introduction of RPF and it’s effect on the game. So can you tell me:
a. How many players use this skill and what percentage thats is of the playerbase?
b. Is this number/percentage in line with WG’s expected take up of the skill?
a. Official servers stats are not to be disclosed unless absolutely necessary. Sorry.
b. Yes. As many players (who were not heard during outrage) suggested, it has limited impact on Random battles (situational, but may be quite useful, like many other skills). And looks like it has good use in competitive meta. We are not satisfied with some things and want to improve them, but new skill tree, including RPF, works very well.
If you can implement historical elements, other than the ships themselves, without negatively affecting the game in any way, would you?
Surely adding historical stuff is great, if it doesn’t impact playing experience in a negative way / overcomplicates the game. For example: introducing torpedo bounce mechanics would contribute to historical accuracy, but also would hurt the balance and make using torpedoes more complicated (and there are already some good counters to torps, so this is not something we want to do from game design point of view).
Can you allow us to mod the 3D models please? I have a hard time with some non-historical refits and if I could modify the ships in question it would solve my main issue that is currently preventing me to enjoy the game as I would like to. Is that a possibility?
Do you mean permissions?
EDIT: addition of Tuesday morning:
While officially modding is against EULA, we of course support creativity and modders if they don’t hurt the game. If you wish to change some artwork for entertainment purposes, we’re fine with it. I believe 0.6.4 SDK is what you’re looking for. Here it is. Should help you with modding ship models, if you are acquainted with such stuff. Anyways, I will try reach tech dept and prepare a short manual. When I’m done, I will update this post.
When it is against the EULA… why is there an official Modpack by WG then?
Because our official modpack does not contain any mods that hurt the game or users. And we don’t combat any modders that don’t hurt the game/users as well. On the other hand, we have tool to work with those who have bad intentions and want to create some gameplay-affecting content or mess with users privacy. Your suggestion is too far from gameplay discussion, but I will pass it to relevant team.
Would you consider alternatives for capping as the basis for every game mode?
Would you consider something like a deathmatch mode, if a way can be found to make that work in WoWs? I see many players who seem to think the game works that way, why not accommodate them and make that an alternative game mode?
I think it would not just be both challenging and fun, but it would also be historically correct. If not, can you perhaps explain why capping is such a core mechanism? How did this come about?
And would you at least please add (perhaps mandatory) tutorials where the role each class is explained to you?
Capping truly make little sense from strictly historical point of view, and of course when you squeeze naval warfare into 20-mins rounds, some conventions are inevitable. However, capping is extremely important for gameplay. It helps creating points of interest and purpose of active play. Without it, most players would just camp – there are already some campers, but without the reason to control specific areas, polishing the map border, especially on BBs, would be viable choice. That does not mean we’re not going to do additional modes. We are experimenting with upcoming PvE, and working on several other ideas. But domination is core mode for Random battles, and I don’t see it changing.
Then there are another 2 concerns you raised: tutorials and teamplay improvements. We’re doing both. Right now we’re finalizing a kind of tutorial campaign though personal offers system. It covers the basics, but there are huge plans to expand it to classes, nations and other important aspects. However, we still need several checks to launch it, and if first results are successful (probably we will do lab testing and A/B testing with new players), that stuff will be continued. As for teamplay, we’re preparing quite massive quick commands update, that should give players more tools of simple, yet efficient interacting with their teammates. Stay tuned.
Is the crucial information – the % damage (damage in relation to full hp of targets damaged) – withheld for a reason or did it kinda just happen? Basically: is it a conscious design choice (and if so, what is the reasoning behind it) or is it something that potentially could be introduced in the future?
Well, the question is not new, and still, quite interesting. When we were discussing this last time internally, common opinion was that relative damage won’t work as main stat for the playerbase – that may sound funny, but the concept is too unfamiliar. On the other hand, adding it as additional metrics could be nice. I will get back to this question with the team when I have time. Thank you!
Several dev posts in a SINGLE DAY??? What is this witchcraft??? All jokes aside, thanks for jumping in Sub, means a lot to some folks that at least some peeps from WG still seem to care. Cant you make an intern browse the forum for an hour every day and link the higher ups to the important stuff?
Hi. Even with quite big company, we don’t have unlimited resources. Lots of service effort goes for CSC, social media activities and content for our website. It is very important stuff for the player base. Interacting with more hardcore part of community is also important, and we’re doing our best to carry it out – that’s why there is this topic, among other things. However, that’s not a job for intern, really.
Do your stats actually track training room battles, which is literally the only actual competitive battles right now? Ranked battles are just random games with 7 instead of 12 players. Yes we do, but we don’t use it much, as main balancing is done for Random battles. We use some highlights from competitive players, though. P.S. Ranked are definitely more complex than Random with 7v7, especially in high ranks. Actually, after the last season (ranked out with 1 for the first time) I had very interesting experience in Random.
Are there any plans/what do you think of lowering torps damage across the board but buffing the torp reloads to compensate.
No, there are no such plans, and we think that idea of introducing torpedo spam with low damage is not good. It is not going to happen, sorry.
Once again, thanks a million for the answers Phil!
