Some details:

Stats from test;

Something like that will affect our decision making. How exactly - I don't know until we started.

If you, by any chance, have a ready formula which will somehow tell us 100% precisely how to move on or not to move on with the subs, please DM it to me. I will gladly shower you with Missouris, Belfasts and Kamikazes for the rest of your WoWS lifetime :)

Hint: there is NO universal solution to such cases. You need to love the game and the players, have vision for it, and have some guts to make a call in the end. And still, you can be wrong, and in this case you need to show ownership and work your aft off to fix stuff. That's tough dev life right here

I am sorry that our change of plans collided with your infinite hate (or phobia?) of submarines. I really do. But you have to understand that most people don't feel like that. For the most people submarines, even without track record of taking part in big fleet battles, are a part of WWII naval warfare. And our game is..about WWII naval warfare. There is demand for this class. Even the situation where we had to reply to "subs when" over and over again proves that.

No, top management people responsible for the game on company level do not interfere with game design. We work on the subs because we (WoWS team) believe they can be good and fun addition to the game. Also, have some faith please. We've made this game which brought all of us together and we've been keeping it hot for 4 years now. We had a lot of bumps and lessons learned hard way, but tons of fun and good updates as well. We (both players and devs) can handle some tiny underwater boats

Your theory, it is. Time will tell

Thank you for the feedback, I guess. Or was it a pointless rant aimed at us?
Historical aspect is quite strong in our game - models, lore and a lot of IRL specs applied to ships, how we work with ballistics and armor, etc, etc, however OF COURSE a lot of things work vastly differently because we're not a sim. That's fine, no need to see it as black & white. Hitsory is a part of this game identity, like it or not, it influences how game feels and plays, but it does not need to be 100%...even 75% accurate.

That's fine, we're scared too, and we don't want to ruin the game as well. You know, looks like here devs and players have a lot of same goals, which is good.

How do you know that? The above poster just commented on how people adapt (or not) to meta change. This does not prove absolutely anything.

(Taken from Reddit - Added by Fem)

I can understand why @NoZoupForYou feels that way and share some of the concerns, however, I respectfully disagree with some others. Here are my thoughts on the subject(s).

Russian Bias.

KOTS lineup is indeed skewed, but it's rather a combination of unfortunate circumstances and meta state at this period of time. Kremlin was indeed stronger than needed, while it was nerfed recently, due to tech stuff, KoTS was conducted on the server where Kremlin was pre-nerf. Of course I am not saying that alpha damage reduction instantly makes Kremlin bad lineup choice - she is still amazing in pushing, and it is needed at this level of play, but so far I see 1% of avg PvP WR drop after the change, for example, which is a step in the right direction at minimum).

At the same time we have Grozovoi, which is actually viable in competitive after the buff. At the same time we have Moskva, which is actually viable in competitive because good radar and rel...

I am not sure where "trumpeting" is. Yes, we would like to reflect the DD historical role, and ideally, avoid giving depth charges to the ships that did not carry them - ideally, I say, because if absolutely needed for the sake of game balance, we can live with that.

As for the speeds - all speeds in the game are scaled, including shell travel time. And the ships sizes are scaled (twice bigger than IRL compared to shooting ranges), so with all due respect, this is not hypocrisy, this is "we want to minimize the historical inaccuracy when possible, but game balance goes first". The OP seems like an attempt to pick on phrasing.

P.S. "Scale the speed" does not mean "totally discount historical accuracy". I can give you hundreds of examples where it is totally discounted in the game, but it is not here.

Cheers!

Plans change. It you (I don't mean you personally, of course, it is an abstraction) don't update the plans for your game which are several years old, you are either a prophet, or dumb.
Our "no subs ever" gently turned in "we don't work on them atm" very long time ago, actually. And still, we had a lot of things to do. Now, a year ago, in terms of our technical and production capabilities, was a good time to start working on them, so we did.

The only problem I see here is "never subs" which was our position back then. Because "never say never"

Nobody thinks you are. But you definitely like to pick on words. I explained this above. Historical aspect is already selective in the game, and it was like this from the start. It's a game based on history, and we reflect the history when we can, but if needed we're willing to sacrifice it for gameplay.

They will go to separate game mode for testing. If it has good results, they WILL be added to the main game mode with time. But a dedicated mode gives us the chance to collect a lot of viable feedback without changing the game experience for everyone overnight.

Nothing to be sorry about, it is your opinion we respect. You will not even be detonated more often in the game because of it, I promise

Let me just say that most of our budget goes to the playerbase in form of rewards in this case, and close the topic. I have no right to go into details, as there is 3rd party involved here.

As for recruitment, if only it was so easy. Unfortunately throwing money at at the screen (or in this case at HR) does not magically give you all professionals you need. We have open positions all the time, but it is hard to fill many of them (or to train a specialist internally). Even for my team, and we are not doing rocket science, I had to look for 3-4 months to fill a slot, and on most occasions so far I ended up with using recommendation from someone I know. Even though we're one of the very best places in the industry in our region.

And even if we had to make a choice for some reason, Amazon event budget would have less priority than actual g...

Hello,

1. Obviously the details of this cooperation are not to be disclosed, but this is more of mutual project, which gives us an additional flow of new players, while providing our veterans with some cool stuff, and we're happy that Amazon is on board and helping us to make this happen. We also have similar cooperation with PayPal on EU and with Yandex on CIS.

2. It is not the question of choice. I think it should be explained in more detail.

Our main value is our audience. The audience leaves with time, as it happens in absolutely any game, and the audience flows in as new players and returning players. We're very happy that our game has very good core playerbase, a lot of most active players are with us since Beta. Obviously for the game to thrive and evolve for years, there should also be inflow of fresh blood. Thus, if we look from this perspective, we should:

1. Work on retaining current players (so they stay in the game and enjoy it);

2. Work on recruiting n...

There are a...anchorholes in any part (port!) of the world. Most times I observe, Russian people are quite friendly actually. The thing here is that we don't really show excessive emotions. For example, here in US people tell me "How are you?" while they mean "Hi". In Russia, if a person says "How are you?", most likely he really wants to know how are you. And if he's smiling, he IS happy - not trying to be friendly There are different nuances here and there. But from my experience from travelling across US, to China, to Europe - most people have same values, same hopes and fears, and don't have real reasons to dislike each other. But there is always bad apple here and there. I'm sorry for your bad experience.

Lul.

Well take this in return:

Russian community is great, but has one challenging trait - these guys LOVE to get personal. Although, as for communities as a whole, our experiences seem to differ, but just to be clear: I mostly engaged in EN-language communities throughout my gaming life.

Dear friend, what did I just spend 4 minutes of my life on? I find it disturbing and strangely satisfying at the same time....

Actually, from my long experience with a lot of online and game communities, WoWS is the best, most mature and reasonable. Really.

I am not stamping anyone's voice or something. I don't tell you what to think. I don't ask you to change your views or do research or anything. I just ask you to chill out and stop bringing this up here. It is our rules. You accept the rules or you don't use Forums. You break the rules, you get banned. And the rules are not about criticizing the game or discussing navy history. They mostly restrict things that are not related to the game and things that Wargaming as game development studio has nothing to do with. It is done not to shut anyone's voice, but just to get rid of heavily loaded things that we don't have any interest in, as well as most of our players. Some things that are acceptable in a small community or some independent platforms are not necessarily okay for an official Forums, of the game, which is published by a big company worldwide...

I appreciate the American education and input on things happening overseas, but I believe you should still go to some relevant platform or club to discuss political history. There are quite a few of them. As for discussing what politically related things are or not are in the game, this discussion is not happening. We're not in position to engage in this debate, and trying to fuel it will result in ban. The game and forum is about navy, ships (and weeb stuff sometimes). Thank you.

Yes, comrade, да! By grinding RU BB line you are reinforcing the virtual navy of vitrual in-game RU nation. But fear not! If your color is not red, get into this good old Montana and citadel the hell out of these pixel commies with your 16-inch democracy dispensers!

On a serious note: what this question is about?

Guys, we don't have any strict rules of not mentioning other games, because we don't want to over moderate and want to give you as much space for discussion as possible. But overall, this is WoWS forums, and if you want to discuss other modern games, it makes all sense in the world to go to the respective communities. As a team, we're interested in hearing your feedback and experience in OUR game. If you make a valid point or question like "hey, do you like how X implemented in Z game", we will do our best to treat it loyally, as it can be useful and constructive. However, if a discussion of any other game will become a central topic or will go into advertising/promoting area, we will do some moderation to set the discussion back on track. It is not the case where we can have a perfect mathematically precise rule (as I said, we don't want to have just a restrictive no), so each case will be treated and evaluated individually.

@HorrorRoach sorry, but I will have to moderate your post, as it is highly political and goes beyond humor. Please let's not dive into this topic, as there are special groups and places for such discussions. Thank you!

Good tips here. And if you follow them and learn other things, you will be able to do this (this is just a joke RU player made long time ago, but IMO it is brilliantly satisfying):

The question is definition of "gain". If stats-wise Hak makes considerable battle contribution by absolute and relative damage and spotting, and has good WR in the groupr, why plane losses matter? Kaga has a lot of plane losses, too, but she is still strong, because she can send many waves. It's just a feature of a ship - weaker planes, but more of them. Still gets the job done. On the contrary, Saipan has fewer planes, but they are stronger individually. Gets the job done as well.