Random Feedback from Departing Player

[anonym_sW3OiK4vakRf]

Signed on about six months ago, I am a huge warship enthusiast and amateur historian.  I had fun for about a month, but the level of enjoyment has waned steadily since.  Yesterday, I uninstalled.  I'll leave my feedback for the developer, if they desire it.  They can do whatever they want with it, it's their game.

• Despite the lower level of realism, I do enjoy the arcade-type style of play and understand the needing to balance gameplay for each class of ship.  That's not easy to do and they've done a decent job with it.
• I find a Premium Account worthless.  I had the free Premium for the better part of a month and after it wore off, the XP and credits were harder to come by.  But if you enjoy the game, playing through the trees at a slower pace is not that big a deal.
• I love participating in events in these types of games, but the events are punishing.  As a newer player, I got a couple of ships to Tier V, but grinding out the weekly requirements felt like an odyssey.  In fact, on some days, I spent more time in the game than in my job, trying to get those tough criteria.  This significantly lowered my enthusiasm for game over time.  I like the events, it's a good idea and they could be fun.  But playing game after game to accumulate 100 fire flags or 400k damage on spotting was really frustrating.  I found I was no longer playing the game as it should be played.  I was trying to compile a stat that didn't always line up with the team's need or goal at the moment.  You're incentivizing the wrong behaviors in the game.  I think what made this glaring was this past weekend's invitation to play on the Test Server.  The developer dangled tons of Community Tokens for participation.  The lion's share came if you destroyed 30 ships.  In each game, I'd burn ships down to low health and some enterprising cruiser or destroyer would quickly finish them off with their high rates of fire.  I found getting 30 kills under these circumstances to be difficult.  I played in games where no one fired at full health ships, instead saving the salvos for the near-dead.  I got to 28 and finally gave up.  I wasn't going to spend my whole holiday weekend doing this.  Again, incentivizing the wrong behavior.
• The Tier system should reflect a historical progression only, not a skill progression.  Right now, as newer tiers are reached, players rarely come back to the lower tiers.  I think part of the reason for this is that the credit and XP reward system are skewed toward the higher tiers.  And if you're grinding out events or XP, you're gravitating toward the Tier X games.  The developer should really reconsider this.  I would love nothing more than to play the WWI era ships that clashed at Jutland.  I can, but my event grinds would suffer and regular XP can only be used to buy the next tier ship.  If you already have it, too bad.  My suggestion would be to put the Tiers on an equal footing and allow XP to used anywhere in the tree for that nation.  And remove the tier requirements from events.  My poor Tier IV carrier got no love on the dailies.  Scale XP and credits to be an equal reward at each tier.  Make older ships great again!  
• If it can at all be helped, don't place players in +2 tier disadvantages.  Loving history, I was happy to finally buy and play the Bismarck.  Unfortunately, since most of the player base has progressed to Tier X, I got placed in IX and X games almost exclusively.  Makes for a rough game.  Having finally purchased my first Tier IV aircraft carrier, I was quickly introduced to Tier VI anti-aircraft fire.  Those poor biplanes didn't last long.
• Make premium ships rewards of historical "quest" chains.
• Rethink your subscription model.  As stated about, I found Premium to be a nice to have, but I could do without it.  I suppose the real money is in your doubloon system, which buys the premium ships.  I found out in the first month that the free doubloons dried up fast and at the rate a free-to-play player earned them, it'd take about four years to buy the USS Texas.  By the time I got through Month 1, I was pretty certain I wouldn't ever pay to play this game.  Consider a subscription.  I'd pay a flat fee to play if premium ships were available as rewards for gameplay.
• Finally, I'm not the type who gets off on PvP.  I'm not a terrible PvPer, but I've outgrown that sort of thing.  I enjoy the ships.  If it were up to me, I'd play Co-op type games exclusively.  But, as with the draw toward higher tiers, the draw to Random battles is higher XP and credits.  Again, if you're trying to grind out an event, you want a game that will maximize your Base XP or damage done.  So you're forcing me into a type of game I'd rather not participate in. 

So that's it.  I was excited to install and play and it was fun for a bit, but lacks the replay for me.  When a game starts to feel like a job, time to go.  Was neat to see and play with all my fellow warship enthusiasts, though 

Take care!

[40902nd]

o7

Smooth sailing.

[Boomer625]

47 minutes ago, JPJ_1776 said:

the free doubloons dried up fast and at the rate a free-to-play player earned them, it'd take about four years to buy the USS Texas.

If you get to t6 I think you can start earning doubloons at a much faster rate in Ranked, 200 doubloons per week if you get 14 wins during that time. In the past, it was much harder to get free doubloons.

I for about two or three years had only a constant free 600 doubloons. Now I am at 5,600 doubloons from about 1 year of doing dockyards, getting doubloons from the captain skill tree resets, and Ranked battles

[TheBudster]

I have been here 3 years and for most of the reasons you are leaving, I have been very happy with.

 

I will be leaving in a month or so just because of Submarines.

[Von_Sharer]

On 7/8/2021 at 12:22 AM, JPJ_1776 said:

Despite the lower level of realism, I do enjoy the arcade-type style of play and understand the needing to balance gameplay for each class of ship.  That's not easy to do and they've done a decent job with it.

overall disagree, though the level of realism gets lower and lower constantly.  They could get more complicated and stop forcing the game to be like a rigged casino.  The game outcomes are controlled excessively by WoWs and little by the players themselves, especially in coop.  The CV play is a disaster, again, especially in coop, and the modifiers that tier X players get in random battles are ridiculously stupid.  They can drop in the wrong direction and still hit their targets (exaggerated, but the point is true); yet, the CVs will be lucky in a single battle to get high XP.  Get more complicated come up with better algorithms to make the game so that players can really show their skills and can really improve without the artificial negative and positive modifiers that WoWs use to make players suck or good at their whim