KaptainKaybe

Was WOWS *also* having the exact same sale on doubloons? They are not the same game and do not use the same premium currency. If one was having sale and the other was not, then it's only normal they would exchange it for doubloons based on what you spent rather than on the opposite currency you received.

I first started play about a month after official launch. I stopped playing over a year ago. Reason: psychologically manipulative monetization practices. Allow me to explain. World of Warships has always been an expensive game. I've played several F2P model games that would sell ships or other important vehicles that were core to the gameplay. WOWS ships tended to be between 50% to 150% more expensive. Add on to that premium time and the whole thing adds up. But that's okay. Why was it okay? Because we knew EXACTLY what we were getting. I knew that I could spend, say, 60 bucks (I'm in Canada) and get a Tier 8 ship. I knew the stats, there were CC reviews that gave me an idea of what I was getting into, and I was more than happy to throw my credit card at the game. And man, was I a freaking whale. Easily 90% of premium ships that came out would hit my port within a few days, regardless of how good I was with the ship or how often I played her. Wargaming has made thousands off me and I would have been happy to spend potentially thousands more. BUT Then something changed. Something insidious. Something objectively evil. Their focus stopped being on What You See Is What You Get. And started becoming Let Us Mess With Your Head Until You Start Hating Yourself. - Loot boxes with unknown odds. I mean, loot boxes have ALWAYS been the plague of gaming existence and they are so prevalent everywhere. Why are they so common? Simple: Gambling addiction sells and sells well. Why sell 100 bucks worth of boats when you can sell 1000 bucks worth of crates to those guys who REALLY think they can win if they just roll those dice one more time ... just one more time! - Shipyard: Sunk cost fallacy is a wonderful thing, is it not? If you're forcing players to grind like mad during the holidays, those speed up boosts sure do sound sweet, ya? Not to mention that many of them are not optional, forcing players to not only spend a bunch of money on them, but also spend all their time, all their PREMIUM time, grinding like mad. - Loot boxes for brand new tech tree ships. Why not combine gambling addiction with competitive ego? Win win! Let's get those ships before anyone else so that we get experience playing them better than anyone else early! Especially if word gets out that some of those ships are horribly broken and unbalanced and that Wargaming will take at least several weeks to patch them. Note: I have nothing against grindy events to get ships early. I'm talking specifically about crates with random odds. Which adds even more sunk cost fallacy ... you could grind like mad for those random crates, not get what you're looking for, and feel compelled to purchase them in the shop to feel like your time mattered. Basically, making money for Wargaming went from being straight forward and presenting us with shinies directly to mentally manipulating people in the scummiest ways possible. Hell, people have been asking Wargaming to provide loot box odds for YEARS and S-O is only now saying they will seriously consider it. And therein lies the problem ... Wargaming only stops doing douchy things when not only the community, but the also the media gets involved. And when it takes horribly bad publicity to fix things, you know you're dealing with a very toxic money focused corporate culture. And THAT won't be easy to solve. It's certainly not just "poor communication". Basically, what players want to see (to use a well known example now) is Boeing, not McDonnell Douglas. We used to be proud of the WOWS team. Can we get back to the culture from four years ago, please?

Both are very good boats. T61 is a glass cannon with amazing torp power for her tier and decent guns. Z39 is a very tanky DD with great concealment for her tier (with the module), has 5km Hydro instead of the 4km one the other Tier 6 and 7 German DDs have, and average torps. Only her guns are weak, but not overwhelmingly so. Get T61 is you like running along a flank spamming torps and pissing off the enemy team. Get Z39 if you want to screen and support your team with a hydro boat detection range way better than any other DD it could ever come across, plus the health to survive getting focused.

Cossack is the better ship, tier for tier. Haida is more unique. Don't get me wrong, Haida is fun, and I'm especially fond of her because she's Canadian, but the IFHE and mid tier plating changes have really hurt this ship that's so very reliant on her HE dpm. The crawling smoke is great ... until you run into radar. Her torp DPM and range is not great, and her turret traverse and gun mount placement is bad. Cossack, on the other hand, is basically an overpowered british DD with amazing guns, good torps (fewer, but very hard hitting, great range, great reload), has the british DD acceleration AND speed boost. And of course, those oh so sweet british DD smokes. And her turret traverse is WAY WAY better than Haida's. Both ships have amazing concealment for their respective tiers. My suggestion? Get both and enjoy Kraft Dinner for a few days.

Players: Oh god, Roma is so frustrating to play, has miserably bad AA, secondaries that don't work, the worst dispersion in the game, and questionable armor. Could we get you guys to take a look and buff it a bit? WG: Thanks for the feedback, folks! We're not touching the Roma. Instead, we're just going to make a higher tier version of Roma, with all the same issues you brought up. :)

Oh my bad ... used to be 60% instead of 70, lol. You clearly need to read dev blogs. German base secondary dispersion was buffed by 22.5%. Devs state this change, with the 35% boost from the skill, adds up to 50% tighter dispersion compared to the 60% previously. But no CTRL clicking. No being forced to fire on ONLY a single ship. And longer range. So yes, this is a buff. https://blog.worldofwarships.com/blog/113

The devs buffed the base dispersion on German secondaries by 22.5%, and with the skill, it reduces dispersion by 50%. This compares to 70% previously ... but now those secondaries are firing in every direction, at longer range, without players having to remember to constantly CTRL click to target a single ship. It's an overall buff.

Heh, yeah. The Mass/Georgia/Ohio? have buffed base secondary dispersion, so I only use AFT on those ships. It does the job and I don't have to CTRL click anything, which is nice.

Good change. I like it. Note that the captain skill buffs secondary accuracy by 35% ... but that's *multiplicative* with the base dispersion. Plus with the ability for the secondaries to fire and forget on both sides rather than having to constantly CTRL click everything, which can be a hassle when a DD gets spotted while you're in the middle of a multi ship brawl, this is absolutely a buff to German secondaries.

I'm a big fan of 150mm guns on the German DDs. But these boats look ... not great. No smoke, no speed boost, and DFAA with bad long range gunnery. Good health, but poor concealment. Article says good armor, but who knows what that looks like. Both AP and HE dpm are horrid and rises to 7.5s reload at Tiers 9 and 10 AND drops in HE damage ... for reasons). On top of that, the Hydro range on the Tier 8 drops to 4km, same as the Tier 7 German DDs. Are they giving the AP the high tier french DD treatment by jacking up their pen to crazy levels or something? Because right now, the trade off doesn't seem worth it. Certainly won't be usable on other DDs, that's for sure. With the really bad HE dpm, even with the boosted health, other DDs will hurt them pretty bad ... again, depending on said armor profile. Guess we'll wait and see?

It's a bit complicated. It's definitely Pay2Advance, and that's fine, but it can't be denied that all non-Steel Tier 9 premiums are available in the premium shop for straight cash. Sure, you could grind coal and FreeXP like mad to get *ONE* every few months, maybe, but it certainly is easier to flat out buy them. And there's no denying that most, but not all, Tier 9 premiums are very strong and dominate the meta. Also note that in the case of coal, the vast majority of people prefer spending it on Tier 10 premiums that cannot at all be purchased for cash or doubloons (with the exception of the glowy ARP Yammy).

Honestly, hasn't been fun for a while for me either. Not only the large number of entirely one sided matches, but Wargaming's increasingly greedy monetization practices. Only reason I still play is to finish the rest of the coal grind to pick up Thunderer *just in case* before it leaves. After that, I'll probably uninstall to clear out the significant storage this game uses so I can grab some other games.

The only real problem with crates is that people are still gullible enough to buy them.

Thanks for the review! Been looking forward to this one :) I managed to get Z35 with discounted doubloons in the armory, which was really nice. So I felt it worth the risk. This is not something I can say about Z-44. Still, I'm sad about the lack of Engine Boost and usable torps. But the British DD smokes sure are nice.

Ugh ... could you imagine grinding 4 to 6 months (or much more for casuals) for this?