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World of Warships: Developers Q&A

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Massive thanks to Strefs for doing the transcript of last Friday Q&A with the Developers from the Balancing Department.

Source: World of Warships Forum

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Is the tendency of powercreep intentional, or is it a side effect?

A hard question – during the years we develop new ideas and mechanics. We don’t want to powercreep the game with new ideas, but sometimes it happens.

Why is it harder in BBs to punish other BBs broadsiding?

From a historical standpoint BBs were supposed to withstand damage from other BBs.

Will Zao receive HP buffs?

From the survivability point of view, Zao is okay. She has good agility, stealth and range. She will, however get the 12km torpedoes

Will CVs get rebuffed again?

We’re currently working on a new version of carriers, so of course they will be rebalanced. Therefore everything in regards to carriers and planes will be revisited, that includes AA, captain skills as well as the CVs themselves.

Do you have any plans to buff Gearing?

She was kind of buffed with the Fletcher torpedoes. She’s kind of in a nice spot, since she is needed in competitive games. She is also in a good spot for Randoms.

Will upgrades and modules receive buffs/nerfs?

We don’t have such plans.

Will BBs overpenetrate with no damage, and if that is the case, what about AP German DD and others CAs and CL?

CA AP will no longer bounce on DDs, due to the rework of the destroyer armour layout. We will investigate how BB AP will deal damage to destroyers i.e. Japanese AP.

Comeback mechanics for ships of tier 7-8?

The reason why not all ships have a heal, is that most nations already have it at t9, and the new module slot. We’re looking into making t7-8 cruisers receiving something to allow them to come back. But it will likely not be a heal.

T9-10 seems to promote sitting at range and sniping, will this be addressed?

It’s difficult, you see. The game is more interesting to play if you push. In theory, it sounds like a good idea to cut down the ranges, but that leads to a difficult situations. For the majority of players, playing as safely as possible seems to be the obvious choice, pushing requires quite a bit of understanding of the game, and carries risks. It might be considered for the future.

Combined arms (WoT+WoWs/WoWp)?

Not possible at the time. What could a tank do to a ship? 😉

Rework to Radar for Line of sight instead of going through islands?

It has been discussed. Radar is pretty straight forward, if the DD is undetected, you pop the radar and you spot him, providing he’s inside the radar’s range. (we don’t want to overly complicate it). There are considerations for radar countering consumables.

Clan Wars with rewards like in WoT (gold, etc.)?

We want to develop clan activities further. We’ve been discussing Global Map, many times. It might not necessarily be the greatest for world of warships. It is possible to have something like this in the future, but not for now.

Battlecruisers as a custom class?

They’re in the game right now, and they function as such, therefore creating a separate icon is a bit of a redundancy.

Will we get destroyers with a choice of DWT/Normal torpedoes?

With Asashio, we wanted to minimize confusion.  Therefore a single choice of torpedoes can be picked, or rather, is available.

More accuracy for secondaries?

The secondaries are viable as they are right now. It’s quite powerful but not overpowered. So, no.

Pan-Asia Hsienyang same setup as Benson?

DWT torps are quite effective, therefore she isn’t in a bad spot, not over or underperforming. We’ll look into this if anything changes.

Conqueror top guns, reload buff?

We don’t want to buff straight away. That would mean that instead of using the smaller guns, players would just switch to the other guns and spam HE anyway. We do want to do something different

Short range AA gets destroyed really quickly, deliberate?

Yes, Mid and short range AA was very lightly armoured, therefore it makes sense that HE splash knocks them out quickly.

Have any ships had their matchmaking weight adjusted?

No, nothing affects the matchmaking of ships, nor do player stats.

What criteria do you use to determine what bracket a premium will be placed in?

First, it’s a guess, then it gets set up, and it goes into the balancing/testing process.

Do stats and abilities come first?

The stats go first of course, since it’s directly from the ship’s history, then we can do adjustments according to the tier it fits best.

How much time does it take to see whether a ship doesn’t perform as desired?

Depends – Normal ships 1-2 months. We of course check the stats from the first week, but generally better players get the ship first.

How long does it take to determine whether changes to a ship are successful?

Sometimes too long! Difficult, sometimes. For instance, conqueror, stat-wise, it’s not the greatest ship. From a community perspective, it is infamous.

Radar performance effect on Destroyer population?

the DD population is currently affected by the American-arc. A lot of cruisers, less DDs. That goes for any new branch though (i.e. BBs and DD influx, etc)

How are hitpoints determined?

Formula for every class (displacement, different factors) from that an approximate health pool is determined, and is later tweaked. There are rules how we calculate parameters of a ship, generally we leave it at that, but sometimes we need to tweak it (buffs, nerfs)

Izumo getting some love?

Regards of the Izumo – We will look into her, she’s not that bad off, even though people like to complain. It is however somewhat underperforming. It is a bit hard for people to ajust to the new playstyle from the good old Amagi. Keep in mind that this was the first BB line. similarly with Nelson, which was considered with the RNBBs, but was not chosen due to different playstyles.

Is the Giulio Cesare the Nikolai of T5?

No, at the moment it doesn’t look like it, but we will look into it.

Ships that are highly reliant of IFHE, do you make specific changes according to ships that rely on this skill or not?

We look into the stats of our supertesters/production testers, and then we decide what to do with the ships. Com Perks are part of balance of a ship, of course we want it to be well balanced on average. Of course we’re not just looking at average numbers. When we release a ship to production test, we benchmark the performance. We look at how players do in similar ships, and how these compare.

When balancing a ship, do you factor in divisioning?

The divisioning factor is not a primary part of the balancing. Although we do consider this.

Do you think, the future CV rework will have an impact of every t4+ ship?

Yes. Absolutely. The AA will be reworked, we’ll see what else we need to change, hopefully not too many drastic changes.

Why is it that post global changes, certain ships were not adjusted? i.e. Blyska and Kutuzov?

Kutuzov was balanced initially with skill rework in mind. Blyskawica’s performance is okay, she isn’t the best on her tier, but it works.

Will Roma get buffed?

No, that is not planned. She has trade-offs.

Shima 20km, WHY?

Players like the 20km, and many players still use them, they are easy to play with, and they don’t overperform. It’s a perfect example of ship that is super popular, but not powerful. The opposite would be a carrier, who has a lot of power, but isn’t particularly popular.

Plan to nerf the HE penetration of german CAs?

It’s kind of a national trait to have improved HE penetration. We do not plan to nerf it.

Montana has got the worst guns for a T10 BB. plans to improve?

No, Montana is in a good spot.

Will there be compensation after the CV rework is implemented?

Absolutely, we try to compensate players accordingly (note generous compensation).

HE drag value nerf?

It would be an option. But for the time being RNBBs are not overperforming. Long range HE spam would be less effective, but it will most likely not change the playstyle of the majority of players that like to practice this kind of play. It would also punish players that don’t practice this playstyle, as they’d have to readjust.

With the amount of radar, will DDs receive stealth fire again?

There are no DIRECT changes to radars planned. We have considered adding consumables to counter it.

Tweaking AP bombs to deal more damage to t8+ BBs as opposed to no damage?

Not for the time being, we’re currently focusing on the CV rework.

Upcoming special modes

Is there a timeframe for their arrival?

We have a seperate team that dedicate themselves to test new game modes. It is quite difficult and requires a lot of experimentation. As you know the most successful tests come with events. (no ETA)

What tiers will they be at?

There are currently multiple tests on different tiers, but that has not been decided yet.

Manual secondary control?

The biggest issue is the change of context. Even with the 30 reload, there is still a lot going on. WoWs Blitz has this feature. Stats show that not a lot of people actually use this feature.

Changes torpedo dispersion?

It’s worth taking a look into.

Tier 9 ranked?

Very few people keep their T9s. Therefore we have to take this into consideration. We’re asking people to spend a lot of credits for them to rebuy ships just to participate.

How are premium ships decided on?

That opens up several questions. Does the community influence the choice of premium ships? Yes. Perfect example would be Haida. Another example: Roma. Of course we do listen to players and we try to accommodate to this. As for the roadmaps on premiums. There are many different factors. Community, distribution of existent Premiums, which classes and nations have premiums already. Among other factors.

How successful did you find for this ranked season?

The best season was s.4, the current season, s.9 was the second most successful ranked season. The general reception was good. some players loved t10 others hated it. There is an experiment to make a more casual season this year.

Are there any other changes for the Supercontainers?

Something that we want to look at, but not just the SCs, the whole logic behind the regular containers. We’re not satisfied with how the work at the moment.

Stalingrad staying in the arsenal forever?

Stalingrad will stay there, if we *do* plan to remove it, we’ll notify everyone in a timely fashion.

Are you willing to reveal what the next big line for WoWs is going to be?

We can’t reveal the exact ship lines here. It will be revealed quite soon, though. (Gamescom??)

Rewarding players for playing the objective?

We have already added quite a few features which incentivize players to play closer to the objective, and we plan on adding missions to reward this.

Individual-specific keybinds for consumables?

Difficult with 8~ consumables and only 5 maps. We did consider allowing to swap the slots in which consumables can be placed. No decision has been made yet.

Dedicated spectator mode?

It’s in works, there are changes already on the server-side. The biggest issue to add this to the production environment, is there needs to be a fundamental rework of the in-game HUD. The basis is 6 years old, so changing it is very work intensive and takes a lot of time. I wish I could say that we can deliver this year, but I doubt it.

Teaching players to improve?

the problem with education is that it is entirely up to the person themselves to improve, people who want to get better will always find ways to improve, people that don’t, won’t.
We do want to create a place where people can learn, with tutorials, and hints, more of that in the future.

What about the render changes, how’s the progress?

It is progressing. It is much less of a rendering problem, than a client filter problem. We want to introduce it in 0.7.7, but there are issues with it. We’re are trying our best to fix it, and we’re working on it. If not 0.7.7, then it will be a must for 0.7.8?

CV Rework open the ability to field BBV and CVE?

Yes.

Radar to be taken into account for matchmaking?

Difficult. Matchmaker is very sensitive. It might work at some peak hours, but not at all times, therefore not planned.

Multiple Spotting Icon info?

We need to look into it.

Carrier sales on hold until Carrier Rework?

Yes.

The game is really slow in port, as well stuttery, is this going to be fixed?

It’s a challenging thing, but we are working on it.

Carrier input limited by UI?

Yes, we’re working on improving it. No ETA.

Do we want to increase the role of support activities in terms of credits and experience points?

We don’t want to go too far into this. You will still get a decent amount of credits and XP for spotting and tanking, but at the end of the day, we still want to reward the actions that lead your team to victory, which is, capturing points, sinking ships and dealing damage.

Any chance to allow this to be displayed in the game or at the end of the game?

With the current system, it is impossible to say in real time what amount of what is calculated in which way in real time, therefore displaying this is impossible.
The problem is, it had been tested in World of tanks, displaying what actions reward the player the most, he will try to exploit the system.

Adding premium ships as bots in training room?

More customization for the training room can definitely be considered. We need to bounce back with the team.

How about giving XP by giving a smoke screen to your allies?

Unfortunately these hardcore economy questions I cannot answer. Perhaps these can directly be asked in a QnA for the economy.

Consumables like an AOE heal?

Yes, we’re considering looking into consumables like this.

Special captain on carriers with plane trails?

Absolutely possible (Fara: Doit).

Is the introduction of Steel and Coal the new way of receiving reward ships for CB and Ranked seasons?

Yes, the rewards were getting somewhat out of hand. Steel and coal should streamline it.

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15,466 thoughts on “World of Warships: Developers Q&A

  1. “Will CVs get rebuffed again?

    We’re currently working on a new version of carriers, so of course they will be rebalanced. Therefore everything in regards to carriers and planes will be revisited, that includes AA, captain skills as well as the CVs themselves.”

    They keep saying that for almost two years now and there are just no tangible results to be seen anywhere, except that the game gets increasingly harder and harder for CVs. Their newest idea of the “Grand CV Rework”? Give the US light cruisers 8km AA firing range with absurdly high DPS and an air spotting range below the 8km. Oh and throw on DFAA for good measure, because CVs apparently didn’t get ****ed hard enough yet. I begin to think, that Murazor was promoted away to the WoWS balancing team. That or his twin brother.

  2. It should honestly be the opposite for AA DPS. They have crazy long ranges, but lower DPS values for cruisers and battleships. It’s kinda silly when a cruiser, as you mentioned, has 8km AA and also benefits from having ludicrous damage numbers. Pick one or the other, not both. 😛

  3. “What could a tank do to a ship?”
    Wrong Question. Instead, ask what can a ship do to help a tank and what can a tank do to help a ship? Swap in plane/tank/ship where needed to create the right questions and you have the foundation of what you need in order to create combined arms game play.

  4. “Combined arms (WoT+WoWs/WoWp)?
    Not possible at the time. What could a tank do to a ship? ?”

    It’s really not impossible at all. It just requires more work than WG is willing to throw at it though.

  5. Ships can provide coastal bombardment much like arty can in WoT except 50 times more

  6. They have obviously never heard of the KV-2 lol

  7. For the entire QA I kind of agree and understand. Except the player stats not baked in the MM, they may say are not included but “stats” indicate otherwise.
    But, whatever

  8. “Players like the 20km, and many players still use them, they are easy to play with, and they don’t overperform. ”

    And here the devs miss the point. No, Shima’s 20km torps don’t overperform. That’s almost certainly the opposite of what the questioner was getting at. The 20km torps UNDERperform. They’re freaking awful. Many players still use them simply because many players are potatoes.

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