DevBlog 354 - 7th World of Warships Anniversary, updated Operations, Battleship mini-game and other news - 0.11.8 Closed testing

[tcbaker777]

4 hours ago, AdmiralThunder said:

Yeah, the description leaves me shaking my head going "WHAT???" 

I also seriously question it being an improvement. This just seems like another instance were they are trying to fix something that isn't broken and in the process make it complicated and worse for the players.

When are they going to learn to just leave the things that work, and no one complains about, alone and spend their time fixing the things actually broken and people want.

yeah, the only thing i understood from that was the Italian TT BBs are getting a baked in 30% version thatll stack with the captain skill

[AdmiralThunder]

42 minutes ago, tcbaker777 said:

yeah, the only thing i understood from that was the Italian TT BBs are getting a baked in 30% version thatll stack with the captain skill

Another instance of over complicating things. Just reduce ITL BB reloads overall by a few seconds. No need to mess around with the 30% baked in thing and such.

[DrHolmes52]

6 hours ago, AdmiralThunder said:

Another instance of over complicating things. Just reduce ITL BB reloads overall by a few seconds. No need to mess around with the 30% baked in thing and such.

After doing some deep thinking on this () this just feels like change for change sake.  Something to "spice up" captains skills.  

It's not something that will make me take (or not take) the skill, just chap my aft.

[Hellroach]

 

Spoiler

In Update 0.11.8, we have updated all Operations in our game so that players can participate in operations on more of their favorite ships and earn valuable rewards for it.

Now, Tier VI-VIII ships will be able to go into battle together at the same time, and the final composition of the team going in will affect the strength of the bots and post-match earnings. In addition, the fee for re-entering the battle on the same ship will be removed.

Noting this wording in particular, it looks to me that the old hated Ops, like Newport, will see an influx of VII&VIII’s participating, which might make those Ops a bit more bearable. If this isn’t correct, then back to the normal WG promised “X”, but added issues “A-5” instead pessimism, I guess.

[landcollector]

@Ahskance @Boggzy

 

With regards to the new common/special/rare/unique econ bonus containers, I find the language describing their contents somewhat ambiguous.  When talking about, say, a Rare econ bonus container, the text in the devblog says "...includes Level 3 bonuses, three of each type".  Does that mean 3 of each type of blue econ boost (ie 12 expendable boosts in the container) or are they like the current gift crates in that you get 3 of a single, randomly determined blue econ boost?

[Lert]

42 minutes ago, landcollector said:

generous

But entirely unexciting.

[landcollector]

7 minutes ago, Lert said:

But entirely unexciting.

What would you consider as exciting, out of curiosity?

[Lert]

1 hour ago, landcollector said:

What would you consider as exciting, out of curiosity?

Supercontainers are at the very least mildly interesting. Exciting? Maybe a t6 premium ship container for every 10 tier 10 ships owned or something.

<Edit>

Or something like a token for every snowflake knocked off a T10, where you can exchange the tokens in increeasing numbers for eco bonuses, permacamos, supercontainers or certain premium ships, tier depending on how many tokens you exchange. Could even offer rare premiums for tokens. Like, 30 tokens gets you Gremyashchy, 40 tokens gets you Kutuzov? Stuff like that.

@Ahskance @Boggzy Is this something worth passing up the ladder to the shadow council what makes all the big decisions? Make snowflakes exciting again.

[Ahskance]

1 hour ago, Lert said:

Or something like a token for every snowflake knocked off a T10, where you can exchange the tokens in increeasing numbers for eco bonuses, permacamos, supercontainers or certain premium ships, tier depending on how many tokens you exchange. Could even offer rare premiums for tokens. Like, 30 tokens gets you Gremyashchy, 40 tokens gets you Kutuzov? Stuff like that.

@Ahskance @Boggzy Is this something worth passing up the ladder to the shadow council what makes all the big decisions? Make snowflakes exciting again.

You are describing what happened last year during Christmas.  You would earn tokens that could be saved up to purchase Santa Containers of different sizes.

I'm sure we could use that format again in the future, though offering Rare Premiums for Tokens would quickly make them non-rare.

[Lert]

Just now, Ahskance said:

You are describing what happened last year during Christmas.  You would earn tokens that could be saved up to purchase Santa Containers of different sizes.

Yeah, that was a great event.

1 minute ago, Ahskance said:

I'm sure we could use that format again in the future, though offering Rare Premiums for Tokens would quickly make them non-rare.

That's a point to consider, though it would all depend on the cost of them, and you could carefully select which ship to offer. Like a Kamikaze for 50 tokens, not too many people would have 50 T10 ships to knock snowflakes off. I know I don't, and I'm a decently sized whale.

[sonoasailor]

44 minutes ago, Lert said:

Yeah, that was a great event.

That's a point to consider, though it would all depend on the cost of them, and you could carefully select which ship to offer. Like a Kamikaze for 50 tokens, not too many people would have 50 T10 ships to knock snowflakes off. I know I don't, and I'm a decently sized whale.

Or how about bunches more Distant Voyages containers - yea - that would be really exciting....(is my sarcasm showing here?)

[TheOneAndOnlyHellequin]

On 8/4/2022 at 2:00 PM, Konception said:

Hello, Captains!

A new DevBlog has been posted here: https://blog.worldofwarships.com/blog/354   

Please leave any feedback you have here. 

Thank you!

So, the festive rewards are much more complicated than they were, as yet, I've seen nothing special for all the T10's WG keeps adding to the game and hyping,  OPs have become pointless, because without a div you can't choose which one to play at all, so in order to avoid the OP you should have fixed/removed, Newport, one has to no longer play OPs, which is a truly dumb idea.

It's almost like we're being punished, instead of rewarded. 

[Ensign_Cthulhu]

1 hour ago, TheKrimzonDemon said:

so in order to avoid the OP you should have fixed/removed, Newport,

Newport this, Newport that.

1) If more people did their homework and knew how to beat it, it might not be such an enfant terrible. It's not hard to defeat if you've got a team that knows how it flows and can shoot straight. The problem with Newport is its reputation. To paraphrase what Wellington said of Napoleon, he figured that half the generals who faced him felt the battle was lost before they started; Wellington at least would not be afraid of him. 

2) Before writing off Newport as a random drop, we should first determine whether T7 or T8 ships in that environment offer qualitative advantages that can't be overcome by any reasonable buffing of the bots. This is as yet an unanswered question, as is what difference it might make to have one or two Tier 7 or 8 ships in among the T6, as is exactly what the win criteria are going to be now that Stars are being removed. Play the PTS, give it a crack, and THEN come back with some constructive criticism based on experience. 

3) I think WG reasonably expects that if random-drop players know they might get dropped into Newport, they will go do some basic research on how to beat it, and in fact I wouldn't be surprised to learn that it was WG's intent to encourage this. 

The elephant in the room is that there's a substantial portion of the playerbase that has never played Cherry Blossom, Hermes or Ultimate Frontier,  the rest of us haven't played them in over three years, and a good chunk of us will be going into those operations with ships that weren't even in the game when they were developed, let alone at the tiers for which they were originally developed (no wonder they were so long bringing them back). We're ALL going to be rusty, some of us are going to screw up horribly, and yet Newport is your hill to die on?

 

[DrHolmes52]

2 hours ago, sonoasailor said:

Or how about bunches more Distant Voyages containers - yea - that would be really exciting....(is my sarcasm showing here?)

Yes, or I would have scheduled an intervention.

[landcollector]

26 minutes ago, Ensign_Cthulhu said:

Newport this, Newport that.

1) If more people did their homework and knew how to beat it, it might not be such an enfant terrible. It's not hard to defeat if you've got a team that knows how it flows and can shoot straight. The problem with Newport is its reputation. To paraphrase what Wellington said of Napoleon, he figured that half the generals who faced him felt the battle was lost before they started; Wellington at least would not be afraid of him. 

2) Before writing off Newport as a random drop, we should first determine whether T7 or T8 ships in that environment offer qualitative advantages that can't be overcome by any reasonable buffing of the bots. This is as yet an unanswered question, as is what difference it might make to have one or two Tier 7 or 8 ships in among the T6, as is exactly what the win criteria are going to be now that Stars are being removed. Play the PTS, give it a crack, and THEN come back with some constructive criticism based on experience. 

3) I think WG reasonably expects that if random-drop players know they might get dropped into Newport, they will go do some basic research on how to beat it, and in fact I wouldn't be surprised to learn that it was WG's intent to encourage this. 

The elephant in the room is that there's a substantial portion of the playerbase that has never played Cherry Blossom, Hermes or Ultimate Frontier,  the rest of us haven't played them in over three years, and a good chunk of us will be going into those operations with ships that weren't even in the game when they were developed, let alone at the tiers for which they were originally developed (no wonder they were so long bringing them back). We're ALL going to be rusty, some of us are going to screw up horribly, and yet Newport is your hill to die on?

 

Newport's reputation is well deserved, as it can be rather harsh on teams.  Even studying the op does not guarantee good rewards, since one mistake lets one or more bots into the harbor zone and there goes your 5 star run (maybe even 4 stars gets nixed too due to the early reinforcements rush of the bots that results) in the soon to be old system.  Edit: Personally, it's an Op I avoided as much as possible after getting the 5 star.

[Crucis]

2 hours ago, sonoasailor said:

Or how about bunches more Distant Voyages containers - yea - that would be really exciting....(is my sarcasm showing here?)

Sarcasm noted.

My gripe with the Distant Voyages containers is that the only thing in them that I care about is the interesting perma camos.  The generic ones don't do much for me, except perhaps for the tier 10 ships.  I also don't like the "monster" perma camos, but the space and steam punk themed PC's are kind of cool.  (Yeah, I'm kind of picky.) 

And since the economic split, I'm not even sure if the DV perma camos come with the perma camo economics packages.  The perma camos without those packages suddenly become far less valuable.

Anyways, I don't spend any dubs to purchase DV containers because I don't want to waste the dubs on DV containers that don't give me a perma camo.

[Ensign_Cthulhu]

9 minutes ago, Crucis said:

And since the economic split, I'm not even sure if the DV perma camos come with the perma camo economics packages. 

As far as I know, they don't - although you'd have to talk to people who've actually got one or more permas in this patch. 

The only silver lining here is if I won a perma for a ship I'd already bought one for under the old system. It wouldn't make me wish I hadn't spent the money.

I'm going to keep on WG's case, politely but persistently, about reversing this change, and my argument is as follows:

While I agree with the decision to split camo and bonuses at the purchase level, IMNSHO at the prize level they should be awarded together as they always have been. The Distant Voyages containers with permacamos were giving out a unit of value beforehand that comprised visuals plus bonuses, and we ought to continue to receive both parts of that unit of value now.

Without this, the Distant Voyages containers and anything else that gives out permacamos are devalued, and engagement (especially monetary engagement) with those containers and those events will be diminished. Hell, even throw in the Kobayashis and their bonuses as an extremely rare drop (on the order of "I got a Fujin in a daily containers supercontainer") and I guarantee you the Moby whales would be spamming the hell out of that.

[Ahskance]

Update on the Bonuses Container:

The initial translation of the article was written as "[number] of each type" instead of "[number] of one type'.  This DevBlog has been updated to reflect the correct contents of the new container type for 0.11.8!

-

Example:  A "Rare Bonuses" container would be similar to a Gift Container and would have the following drop table:

[Mobius_111]

Ah, should have known WG would never be generous enough to give us each of the 4 types of bonuses in a container

[landcollector]

1 hour ago, Ahskance said:

Update on the Bonuses Container:

The initial translation of the article was written as "[number] of each type" instead of "[number] of one type'.  This DevBlog has been updated to reflect the correct contents of the new container type for 0.11.8!

-

Example:  A "Rare Bonuses" container would be similar to a Gift Container and would have the following drop table:

*sigh*  And that's what I thought would happen.  Not so generous after all, quite miserly.

[Ahskance]

40 minutes ago, landcollector said:

*sigh*  And that's what I thought would happen.  Not so generous after all, quite miserly.

Last year's Anniversary Event gave Gift Containers for Tiers 8 & 9.  The "Rare Bonuses" container is the same as a Gift Container.

[zubalkabir]

On 8/4/2022 at 2:30 PM, tfcas119 said:

Gun Feeder buffed(?) Once I see how this works on PTS it should make far more sense,

Ops are back, awesome. However, I fear everyone will just bring their T8s and basically make T6 useless (would make Newport better though). Plus, I really don't like the random Op. You could queue up in a ship that may be suited for one op (Canarias in Aegis, for ex.) but end up getting Killer Whale or God forbid Newport, where your lack of HE and torps causes problems. Its great to see them return, but couldn't they of just kept it op of the week and just opened up Cherry Blossom to all T8 cruisers?

Anniversary flakes, or a nice way to stock up on eco bonuses, and if you have a lot of ships and the sanity to do PvP,  a nice bonus

Coal and steel are Christmas, not anniversary.

Yeah, I hate the idea of random Ops also, and for the same reason.  It's kind of like my main problem with CV's:  you rarely know for sure if you're going to be up against one. If you take a ship that is heavily specced for AA and there are no CV's, you just wasted the opportunity to have something useful - say, hydro intstead of DFAA, for instance.   But if you take a ship that is not specced for AA and you end up in a game with 2 CVs per side, you are likely to have an unpleasant time.

[YouSatInGum]

On 8/10/2022 at 1:11 PM, landcollector said:

Newport's reputation is well deserved, as it can be rather harsh on teams.  Even studying the op does not guarantee good rewards, since one mistake lets one or more bots into the harbor zone and there goes your 5 star run (maybe even 4 stars gets nixed too due to the early reinforcements rush of the bots that results) in the soon to be old system.  Edit: Personally, it's an Op I avoided as much as possible after getting the 5 star.

Previously, I would have agreed....it used to be a PITA without a hand picked division.  

That's no longer the case.  I'm not sure what's specifically changed but I can now 5 star with random pugs at a 80 to 90% rate.  I now rate that op as more entertaining than KW or even Aegis.  KW annoys me with the silly number of T3 bots in it along with your team must exit or fail requirement.  Aegis seems a bit boring these days, partially because that particular map sucks, but also because it seems a bit too much like kill a few COOP bots and then your liberty ships sail off at realism stretching speeds to end the op just as it's getting good with a mini horde mode in the NE corner.

Some the secondary requirements of Newport should be improved, but it's one of the few ops that teaches a skill that is valid in PvP as well.  Get on a flank to get broadsides and once there, use islands as cover to stay alive.  Do that, and 200k+ damage is a piece of cake in this op.

 

[YouSatInGum]

On 8/11/2022 at 7:45 AM, Ahskance said:

Update on the Bonuses Container:

The initial translation of the article was written as "[number] of each type" instead of "[number] of one type'.  This DevBlog has been updated to reflect the correct contents of the new container type for 0.11.8!

-

Example:  A "Rare Bonuses" container would be similar to a Gift Container and would have the following drop table:

So the rare bonuses are still being given at the 60% rate that I previously calculated to being a 30 to 40% cut to FXP in aggregate and 20 to 30% less CXP as well.  That's after a significant number of additional games played.  If you do it on an equal number of games played the number is more like 50% and 40%.

Meanwhile, T4 bonuses have only shown up to be available for money, Mega Santa, firepower, and PR dockyard.  We'll see on upcoming CB where Spring Skies were given in the past.  Considering the very tardy announcement of CB rewards this season, I'm not holding my breath.

[dabot8]

Do not like the random Operations, some ships work great in some and are lousy for others, Fubuki is a terror in Aegis, but not really that useful until the end part of Sea Lion.  All WG had to do was add more Operations, not change everything around, quit fixing unbroken things (Economic Rework !)