I took about nine months off last year then came back for the free ships at Christmas. one of the free containers had 180 days of Premium in it and then the community tokens they were handing out turned into another 90 days.
I’m basically playing until the free premium time they’ve given me runs out.
Last year I opened a couple of those 180 days of premium and a Tirpitz. They’re currently rotting away for one reason.
“We’ll never put submarines in the game. Never.”
Yep.
I’ve played a bit with the earlier test runs of subs, and they were kind of stupid. Carriers don’t fit the game either, but subs are at a whole 'nuther level of dumb.
It’s not even what subs can or can’t do, it’s that they exist after years of telling me they won’t exist.
“Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown.” Or in this case, it’s Wargaming. How do you know they are lying? Their lips are moving.
As someone playing both Warships and Tanks, this is by far their biggest failing. I play with some older players in both games and most have just given up trying to worry about their ratings, etc, which I’m sure exacerbates the issue. Since their matchmaking is so poor, I’m wondering if they should add a risk/reward style player chosen queuing method? I dunno, I’ve just been in so many lopsided games for both titles that I really have no idea how they are attempting to put people together, beyond matching vehicle type to vehicle type and sometimes vehicle model to model. It doesn’t really appear they use time played, WN8, win percentage or anything else, unless perhaps they do but all of us have been extremely unlucky in getting long chains of losses with short chains of wins.
I watched a WoT video not too long ago, by Claus Kellerman I think, where he showed that Ranked Battles had great matchmaking. No more than one arty per team, no more than one EBR per team, and the rest of the tanks were well balanced. He was wondering why WG didn’t implement that same matchmaking for Random Battles. We’ll never know, but probably because they are too busy fixing things that aren’t broken.
Ranked in Warships is a complete shitshow, though, with no one being satisfied, and gameplay levels at least as bad as Randoms.
Wargaming has been pretty clear in their actions about their priorities. Low queue times, fast matches, wash/rinse/repeat gameplay cycles to fuel the grind seems to be their bread and butter. All suggestions for improving matchmaking involve longer queue times, longer games, and less pressure to grind grind grind.
Really, though, I’m not sure how you would improve things anyhow. “Skill” is nebulous, given the numerous ways to game the system to get good metrics, and the extreme variability imposed by the vastly different quality of ships in matches. I suppose you could figure out a handicap system based on different ships, as well as metrics for more or less “good” play, but why bother (from the perspective of WG)? What does it get them? Nothing.
Again, they are not in business to make a good tank or boat game. They are in business to make money. The game is important to the company only in so much as it accomplishes that task. Sure, the people actually developing stuff may well be creative types who relish creating a good game, but they have no say in what ultimately happens I think.
I mean, if players can queue, nothing hurts THEM (WG) really. So my thoughts were along the lines of the experience people want:
Casual Tier - Same tier only, rewards a .75% of norm.
Experienced Tier - +/- only one tier so a spread of only 2 tiers (8 and 9 as an example.) Rewards 1.0 of norm.
Advanced Tier - +/- two tiers so a spread of 3 in total tiers (8, 9 and 10 as an example.) Rewards of 1.25% of norm.
With the caveat that if any of the queues are too low, you can get auto-queued to another level.
No baloney with how long you’ve played, your win percentage, etc. Just pick the type of game and competition you want that day or game. The problem is that triples the queuing and also causes issues for same-tier games where maybe 15 tier 10 people want to play casual but they are all a specific vehicle type. They -could- make this a bit better/worse with bot fill-ins, but that would mean them working on better bot code, which also isn’t going to happen.
I spend enough on both games already, they don’t need to make grinding for a good game part of that monetary model. These are all just wishful thoughts I guess.
I don’t have any quibbles with what you propose, but I don’t really think the tiers are the issues. It’s the quality of play–understanding the rules, understanding the ships, understanding the goals–that is the issue. I love being undertiered, because the experience rewards are boosted a lot. Being a VI in an VIII match and doing well means beaucoup rewards. And given how terrible most players are, it’s not impossible to do pretty nicely depending on the ship you’re in. Most of the time, though, even on even-tiered matches, player quality is so low it’s painful.
This is where Warships shines over Tanks. In tanks it is a lot harder to penetrate the armor of an upper tiered tank. In some cases, even with good gameplay (i.e. circling or finding a weak spot within the armor,) it’s still damn near impossible. And that leads to almost required use of premium ammo, another item that Warships thankfully doesn’t have an issue with.
Uptiering in Warships is doable, if sometimes difficult. Uptiering in Tanks can be really bad in comparison, especially 2 level difference.
Oh, I spent years in Tanks, from closed beta through all sorts of Clan Wars and game changes, etc. The amount of gotchas in the game simply exploded over that time, for sure, and what you describe includes several of them.
Ships are easier because the gap between say a Tier V BB shell hitting you and a Tier VII BB shell isn’t usually that much–they both hurt. The pace of land war tech development historically was much faster than at sea, given the huge capital costs involved in replacing battle fleets and what not, so you have a much easier time matching up ships from different eras. It’s far from perfect or even remotely historical, but in terms of gameplay, it works a lot better.
I mean, a Minekaze or Kamikaze (Tier V IJN DD) can survive and even thrive in Tier VII matches given its incredible stealth for example. Can’t do something like that in Tanks.
I feel like I should have asked all of you guys about both games a bit more before I let my buddy talk me into them. :)
Seriously though, they are huge sinks of time and can be so for money too. Fun for sure, frustrating in sometimes equal measure. Yet here I am playing with an old high school friend and -sometimes- having a blast. I guess it could have been worse, he could have been getting me to play some Candy Crush or something.
Both games are very engaging when you have a group of people, or even one or two, to play with, people you like hanging with online. They are, to me at least, mind-numbingly boring as solo games most of the time. All the BS and wonkiness is easier to stomach with friends.
I think you nailed it. I play because of the group. I’d much rather play something else when the group isn’t online, in most cases.
Is this on the main servers now? I’m assuming it is based on the many reddit posts about em.
Yes, but only as rentals from free bundles and only in ranked and co-op modes.
The game is pretty much dead to me at this point. I log in to get the free log in thing and read the news to get the tokens, but that’s about it. The quality of gameplay is abysmal, the utter incomprehensibility of their so-called logic in how they add or subtract mechanics is boggling, and the sheer mendacity of their monetization approaches and bundling is pretty off-putting.
About all they have going for them is that the ship models generally look good.
This bugs me the most. Tanks is, if anything, even worse. Between the two they eat my gaming spend money like it was nothing. If it weren’t for my friend playing them all the time I’d have drifted out of it by now. But it is what it is.
