World of Warships – Gamescom Q&A with Jacek Pudlik
4 min readHello everyone,
Thanks to Stefan Ba for sending me this info. An interview with Jacek Pudlik, Associate Publishing producer at Wargaming.net, all credits to Shipcomrade.com for doing the interview.
On Quality of Life Changes
Wargaming wants to add more convenience features.
For example, they want to use supply boxes to announce awards. Few players check their notifications and as a result, many player do not even realize when they receive rewards. The idea here would be to have a supply ship visibly deliver the award to your port to bring special attention to gains. So the next time you unlock something, such as by leveling your account, you’ll have immediate feedback that you were awarded for that achievement.
The karma system remains a work in progress.
They are working on a multi-cluster server system which will reduce, maybe even eliminate, down times for patches. They want to introduce the option of pre-downloading a patch. So you could set a limit for the download speed and simply pre-download a patch in the background, while doing something else.
Unfortunately, they have not been able to unify the currencies between World of Warships and World of Tanks. The economies between the two games are very different and one (or both) would need to be changed to account for this.
While launch dates for new ships are not synchronized, the idea is to have them happening within 9 days of one another.
On National Fleets & Ship Balance
There are plans to have a French tech tree at some point. Finding good mid tier ships could be a problem though. Wargaming just recently started looking into the Regia Marina of the Italian Navy. They do not have a connection to a museum or an easy way to get blueprints though. A premium is certainly possible but it is unclear at this point if they could fill a tech tree. Wargaming will not invent new ships.
US Navy Cruisers are doing fine according to Wargaming’s statistical data. They do not see the need for an immediate change. Similarly, the performance of the USS Flint hasn’t raised any concerns. If they come up, they will address them.
The Nikolai was a mistake. The ship looked balanced on paper and it seemed fine during testing. After the release, with increasing numbers of the ship, it became clear that it is too powerful, so it will not be sold again. Having one ship in a game is fine but with divisions it really becomes a problem. The ship will still be used for giveaways/contests on occasion.
In the future there will be more extensive testing to prevent another Nikolai.
Overall, they are pretty happy with everything except carriers. There are no concrete plans for a carrier overhaul yet but they want to change something. One idea may be giving carriers more direct control of planes in some way, but this is just speculative at this stage.
They want to reward personal performance, such as providing spots for your team or tanking damage. What exactly we will get is uncertain while they collect data.
Additional Gamemodes
They might add other PVE elements in a regular game mode. There are already forts. There is a possibility for radar stations or stationary AA. The bastion game mode is still in testing. The chance of getting it is currently reduced. There are no additional games modes planned at the moment.
“Unfortunately, they have not been able to unify the currencies between World of Warships and World of Tanks.”
*and World of Warplanes(!)
… just because you don’t like it, doesn’t mean it ain’t there. 😉
And concerning PvE: if it’s done right (eg like in AW), people will prefer it to PvP, because it promises success, fun, and freedom from the random-internet-people chaos, toxicity and competence.