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After the current Puerto Rico outrage and the Naval Training Center outcry of a few months ago, many people are accusing Wargaming of being exceptionally greedy and trying to kill their Golden Goose, but I'm not so sure that is really what is going on. It is often said that the simplest answer is often the right one, but I don't think simple greed is the simplest answer, because that conclusion requires looking at a very narrow window of negative events. Now I have expressed this hypothesis before, usually in private Discords or chats, but I don't believe I have ever done a large forum post on it. I want to clarify, what I am going to suggest is a bit insulting and could be a serious wound to someone's pride internally, but I want to clarify that I am not talking about anyone in the North America office, as this problem originates from above them, and they are left stuck with damage control from the fallout, and I for one greatly appreciate the difficulty of what they continuously have to deal with. I am in no way asking any of you paid employees to comment on this, as I seriously doubt you can, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if some of you haven't noticed what I am about to call attention to. Despite being computer programmers or fairly successful business people, it seems like the top decision people in final game decisions seem to be very bad at math, and in fact nearly every major problem this game has had could be attributed to a failure to double check mathematical numbers and functionally considering them applied to a live game situation before the general gaming public discovered them. Allow me to take a look at some examples of this I personally know about, and many of which I was here for: 1) Kamikaze- This event happened before I began playing the game, but many people have described it as an early panic cash grab, hence why many people are bringing it up now. Mathematically, the number of Pearls was not enough to even come close to satisfy the player base, so after c=some community outrage, they increased the number. This example could be either possibility of a cash grab, or the planners not taking the number of players seeking the ship into full correct context in their event planning. 2) Graf Zeppelin- This ship was offered pre-order which was a mistake because it put them on a design deadline for a ship from a type they did not have enough experience designing premiums for. As a consequence, the first version of the ship was grossly underpowered, causing an emergency redesign after it had gone live that was then overpowered, which it remained until the rework. The main reason this wasn't a cash grab is because once it was redesigned and had clearly become overpowered, they were very reluctant to re-issue it, despite the money they could have made selling it. 3) Duke of York- The original version of this ship could yet make a return to the game slightly redesigned as the Prince of Wales, but it needed help. It was a battleship without a heal, and that means a very awkward play style that would be very difficult for players to handle. Ultimately, the design was changed before release, since it had seen enough press from the CCs so that a large amount of the market was acutely aware of the problems it was going to have. Despite this, it theoretically could be redesigned to appear in the future as a functional ship. The root of it's difficulties came from a lack of consideration of what it would take to make it playable. The math didn't work. 4) Eagles vs Sharks- This event came during the release of the US Cruiser split. The problem was the Sharks blew out the Eagles from day one on, making it an easy call what team to be on for more containers, and making the event fairly boring as a consequence. There was supposed to be a mechanic to give the losing team from the previous day extra help in winning, but it wasn't enough to make it even close. Literally the only reason to be an Eagle was if you preferred the Eagles permanent camo for Worcester over the Shark camo. The later Honor and Glory event for the Russian battleships would fix this event style, giving enough benefits to the previous losing team to encourage enough people to switch teams to keep it competitive. Really, there was no money for WG to release this event in it's dysfunctional state, so this was definitely a case of bad applied math. 5) CV Rework- Ah, the first major controversy of 2019. Not going to get into the intricacies of this one, except to say that while there was money to be made for WG, it couldn't have been enough to warrant calling it a cash grab relative to other events. The math problems came in so many ways like AA, torpedo damage, hit ratios, etc. that I don't even know where to begin. They said they needed the live server to be guinea pigs due to low PTS server numbers, but wow were there a lot of things to exploit early. 6 & 7) Naval Training Center and Puerto Rico- These are both so fresh in everyone's minds I don't really need to get into details, except to say that both events could be described in the context of being a cash grab and a case of WG failing to consider the real life math. Looking back on all of this, I offer for consideration that maybe the problem isn't just greed, but possibly the company has an issue at the top that they aren't using a discerning eye to consider the applied math before they do these things. I ask, are these mistakes something the company could fix by slightly changing their process and adding someone with practical experience in this field to proof check these events first?

I was inventorying all my special upgrades and came across a green '+' on the Duke of York. These were the mods that were unloaded from Clan Battles. Loaded it up and tried it.... IT WORKS... Didn't find any mention in the release notes... Welp.. There you have it.. Looks like a bit of a buff. That poor Perth really had a tough time with my secondaries... lol

Real intelligent design.