Ranked Season 7: Back to 6?

[publord 20]

WG appears to be throwing their full weight behind the play4fun demographic. There seems to be lots of hostility towards competitive modes whenever it gets brought up on the official forums. Don't know how similar it is on RU and EU.  All I can say is that NA's demographic is heavily slanted towards the 50 year old men who post hundreds of times trying to vigorously assert how they "really don't care about stats cause they're for weenies LOL!!!"

Maybe WG did their market research, and realized most of the playerbase could give a shit about competitive? Shame, if true. But not surprising.

 

 

 

[Madner Kami 405]

31 minutes ago, Mesrith said:

The inclusion of this new PvE mode is part of what's triggered my latest rash of pessimism for this game's long-term outlook.

The game needs clan content and tournaments to keep PvPers interested.  Instead, what 2017 has brought us is a PvE mode that 97% of the server does once per week to get their easy 24 hour premium and 10-point commander.  But the twelve Co-Op-4-Lyfers on the forums are thrilled with it, so it's a success, right?  We also got two (soon three) new premium carriers and a few gimmicks instead of an actual carrier rework.

WoWS is lacking either a plan or the resources to execute that plan.  My gut says that a plan is there, but that Wargaming has gone full-throated Save Tanks mode, and Ships has just enough resources to keep the lights on and keep the population steady.  There certainly doesn't seem to be anything coming soon that would retain more players and grow the playerbase instead of merely replacing churn.

I share that feeling, because the difference between the development in Beta and nowadays is jarring. One of the things that made me so enthusiastic about Ships in the first place, was the activity the developers displayed. They responded to requests and critique a whole lot more fluidly than the Tank's folks ever did (not always doing the right thing imo, but they didn't let issues linger for years), but for some reason that activity faded after release, increasingly in the last year imo.

[RollerCoaster47 758]

5 minutes ago, Madner Kami said:

I share that feeling, because the difference between the development in Beta and nowadays is jarring. One of the things that made me so enthusiastic about Ships in the first place, was the activity the developers displayed. They responded to requests and critique a whole lot more fluidly than the Tank's folks ever did (not always doing the right thing imo, but they didn't let issues linger for years), but for some reason that activity faded after release, increasingly in the last year imo.

 

They're following the WoT approach now, keep releasing more premiums, make money, say fuck you to any kind of game development.

[Jarkorsis 92]

I read somewhere where they showed a clan wars type world map at a Russian convention and they got boo'd out of the building. So whatever it was, it went over like a lead balloon. The dev's were released to do what they wanted instead of copying tanks. This may have derailed some short term change as they discuss how to proceed.

PvE mode will grow a lot of the player base most of us don't see. It will help the game's long term health from a financial point of view. T9 and T10 are the same as it always was. The only change is that with the US BB's getting lowered citadels there is slightly more aggression. There is still a lot of Chai sniping. so the changes in play seem small.

[Madner Kami 405]

1 hour ago, Jarkorsis said:

I read somewhere where they showed a clan wars type world map at a Russian convention and they got boo'd out of the building. So whatever it was, it went over like a lead balloon. The dev's were released to do what they wanted instead of copying tanks. This may have derailed some short term change as they discuss how to proceed.

PvE mode will grow a lot of the player base most of us don't see. It will help the game's long term health from a financial point of view. T9 and T10 are the same as it always was. The only change is that with the US BB's getting lowered citadels there is slightly more aggression. There is still a lot of Chai sniping. so the changes in play seem small.

The damage to T9 and T10 is done. That is why it's so important to react to meta-changes early and not wait half a year or longer, to adress issues.

[RollerCoaster47 758]

Got to Rank six today, so I'm going hard at the beginning of the season instead of not caring much until towards the end like I normally do. Then again, I didn't have a full time job any of the previous seasons either. Was trying way too hard by only playing destroyers early on, and not having a whole lot of success with it either. This weekend I just tried getting my daily wins in all my tier six premium ships and had very good success. I even got the Graf Spee to work fairly effectively. The only ship of the seven I've been using (Shinonome, Anshan, Molotov, Graf Spee, Warspite, Dunkerque, Arizona) that I will refuse to play from here on out is the Dunkerque, it's just terrible in Ranked and I'll leave it at that.

[ncc81701 152]

On 7/9/2017 at 8:58 AM, Mesrith said:

The inclusion of this new PvE mode is part of what's triggered my latest rash of pessimism for this game's long-term outlook.

The game needs clan content and tournaments to keep PvPers interested.  Instead, what 2017 has brought us is a PvE mode that 97% of the server does once per week to get their easy 24 hour premium and 10-point commander.  But the twelve Co-Op-4-Lyfers on the forums are thrilled with it, so it's a success, right?  We also got two (soon three) new premium carriers and a few gimmicks instead of an actual carrier rework.

WoWS is lacking either a plan or the resources to execute that plan.  My gut says that a plan is there, but that Wargaming has gone full-throated Save Tanks mode, and Ships has just enough resources to keep the lights on and keep the population steady.  There certainly doesn't seem to be anything coming soon that would retain more players and grow the playerbase instead of merely replacing churn.

While I agree that WoWS needs clan content and CV re-work very badly, I think you are underestimating the size of the Co-op only population. I suspect that their internal data is probably showing a much bigger PVE only population than what most people think it is and that this is a previously completely untapped source of revenue with growth potential for the WG brand. If that was not the case, they wouldn't have shovel so much resources into it at the expense of PVP content. At the end of the day WG is a business and they'll do what they think will get them more money.

[bathoz 107]

Weren't the numbers something like 40% of battles were PVE?

[Psycodiver 101]

Not to mention operations went over really well, now if they can combine operations with clans that could be something, one clan defending port and the other clan protecting

[MntRunner 223]

I haven't played for almost three months now, but I logged on last night to play a ranked battle to collect my rewards from reaching rank1 last season. I played two games (Shinonome, and Arizona) and here are some things I observed.

• New Mexico shooting only HE
• Lots of max range BB's who don't want to do things necessary for a win.
• Mostly BB's, hardly any CA's and DD's
• CA's get vaporized, one shot an Aoba in my Arizona
• Shinonome has pretty good torp wall, but I got outspotted easily by the Hatsu

So basically everything bad that everyone else has been saying. Doubt I'll move much farther in rank since my summer is pretty busy. Maybe the next rank season I'll go farther.

[Mesrith 356]

8 hours ago, ncc81701 said:

While I agree that WoWS needs clan content and CV re-work very badly, I think you are underestimating the size of the Co-op only population.

 

7 hours ago, bathoz said:

Weren't the numbers something like 40% of battles were PVE?

Any links with numbers to back this up?  Because if forum representation is anything like the actual numbers, PvE-only players are a very small fraction of the population.  I have a very hard time believing that even 20% of players mostly do PvE, let alone 40%.

7 hours ago, Psycodiver said:

Not to mention operations went over really well

In what way?  Speaking for my clan only, we do 2-3 runs a week (usually all on the day of reset) so that people can get the easy prizes, then we forget that Operations exist until the following Wednesday.  We haven't even done them since Ranked started.

[Psycodiver 101]

58 minutes ago, Mesrith said:

In what way?  Speaking for my clan only, we do 2-3 runs a week (usually all on the day of reset) so that people can get the easy prizes, then we forget that Operations exist until the following Wednesday.  We haven't even done them since Ranked started.

 

Well it appears most people on the official forum and Reddit page like it allot (minus the ones complaining about to easy/hard). I could be wrong of course since its a small sample size and truly only WG knows the true numbers and they aren't always forth coming with that information

[bathoz 107]

4 hours ago, Mesrith said:

 

Any links with numbers to back this up?  Because if forum representation is anything like the actual numbers, PvE-only players are a very small fraction of the population.  I have a very hard time believing that even 20% of players mostly do PvE, let alone 40%.

 

Why would mostly solo players who win almost all the games they play be on the forums? Also, this is the wrong thread for this discussion.

[Mesrith 356]

11 hours ago, Psycodiver said:

 

Well it appears most people on the official forum and Reddit page like it allot (minus the ones complaining about to easy/hard). I could be wrong of course since its a small sample size and truly only WG knows the true numbers and they aren't always forth coming with that information

A clanmate tested the reset last night.  If you've gotten a 5-star reward previously for a scenario, you don't get it again when it revolves back around a few weeks later, so you can't even repeat these weekly for free premium time and commanders.  If there are a ton of people doing them, it's because they enjoy playing only tier 6 and shooting bots that are programmed to do nothing more complex than charge straight forward.  I suppose it's possible, but suspect that they'll prove as popular long-term as Team Battles did.  Remember how packed those were for the first two weeks?

7 hours ago, bathoz said:

Why would mostly solo players who win almost all the games they play be on the forums? Also, this is the wrong thread for this discussion.

Jump into a conversation that's been going on for a page or two and then cry off-topic when asked for facts.  I like your style.

[Sidus_Preclarum 381]

10 minutes ago, Mesrith said:

 If there are a ton of people doing them, it's because they enjoy playing only tier 6 and shooting bots that are programmed to do nothing more complex than charge straight forward.

IMHO, those bots are way better at evasive manoeuvres than most of the player base…

[Madner Kami 405]

48 minutes ago, Mesrith said:

If there are a ton of people doing them, it's because they enjoy playing only tier 6 and shooting bots that are programmed to do nothing more complex than charge straight forward.

 

Um, when was the last time you did a Co-Op? These bots have become pretty good. An experienced player can still outplay them, but their behaviour is easily on the level of a 1000 WTR-player.

[Mesrith 356]

40 minutes ago, Madner Kami said:

Um, when was the last time you did a Co-Op? These bots have become pretty good. An experienced player can still outplay them, but their behaviour is easily on the level of a 1000 WTR-player.

I've only done each Operation for the 5-star rewards since they were released a month or so ago.  They spawn and then charge directly at the team to get focused down.  I know that it's fashionable to trash bad players by saying the AI is better, but wake me up when any non-terrible player has something less than a 90% win rate in PvE.

Back in the realm of numbers, only one ship above tier 6 has more than 500k games played.  Tiers 9 and 10 are entirely barren with only a few-hundred thousand games combined.  The most popular ship in tier 6, the Cleveland, has 10% of the PvE games that is has in PvP.  The most commonly-played ship in PVE, the St. Louis, has fewer PvE games than the Colorado does PvP games according to Warships.Today.  Now account for the battle duration being at best 1/3 that of a PvP match, and I think we can put this claim of there being more than 10-15% PvE-only players to rest.

[How_Terrible 529]

1 hour ago, Sidus_Preclarum said:

IMHO, those bots are way better at evasive manoeuvres than most of the player base…

That is setting a very low bar.

[TohtoriP 82]

Trying to get back to topic here...

What do you guys think is better for Cleveland first tier 4 skill pick for ranked? Concealment expert or IFHE?

[Mesrith 356]

11 minutes ago, TohtoriP said:

Trying to get back to topic here...

What do you guys think is better for Cleveland first tier 4 skill pick for ranked? Concealment expert or IFHE?

IFHE.  Concealment is useful, but you'll spend a lot of time using islands or friendly smoke to stay alive, so IMO it's a lower priority than IFHE.

[ncc81701 152]

3 hours ago, Mesrith said:

Back in the realm of numbers, only one ship above tier 6 has more than 500k games played.  Tiers 9 and 10 are entirely barren with only a few-hundred thousand games combined.  The most popular ship in tier 6, the Cleveland, has 10% of the PvE games that is has in PvP.  The most commonly-played ship in PVE, the St. Louis, has fewer PvE games than the Colorado does PvP games according to Warships.Today.  Now account for the battle duration being at best 1/3 that of a PvP match, and I think we can put this claim of there being more than 10-15% PvE-only players to rest.

I have doubts to the accuracy of the Warships Today numbers on PvE games since I doubt, even proportionally, that PvE only players care enough about their stats to check them (or are even aware of them in the first place). Thus I expect them to be under-represented in publically available databases which then under represent the number of actual PVE games are played. Publically available stat pages are likely to skewed toward PvP players since these players have incentive to check their stats and be registered. This is why I think WG's internal numbers are showing a different situation than what is publicly available and why they might think generating PvE content makes sense. 

PVE population size relative to PVP population might be a good question for Sub_Octavian in the next Q&A though...

[Rodrigopine 184]

Another possibility is WG is looking to grow the PVE player base. World of Warcraft has a pretty well developed PVE 'Endgame' model so maybe they're looking to invent something comparable? (It's also possible that someone at WG looked at the PVE numbers and declared "These are too low! something must be done!")

[bathoz 107]

20. Do you plan to improve Coop mode play and give players taking part in this mode better rewards?
A. We consider Coop mode more or less as a side activity. However, there's about 30% of players mainly fighting in coop battles. It's a good way to get familiar with the game and since it's so popular, we will develop it further. However, we don't want to rush it, we have several theories on how to improve it we need to test. For now, I can assure you there will be a PvE mode but coop battles aren't the only aspect of the game we're currently working on. We will soon focus on developing PvE mode.

This isn't the question I remembered (which I can't find yet), as this is from April 2016.

 

[Mesrith 356]

44 minutes ago, ncc81701 said:

I have doubts to the accuracy of the Warships Today numbers on PvE games since I doubt, even proportionally, that PvE only players care enough about their stats to check them (or are even aware of them in the first place).

Warships.Today doesn't care if anyone looks up someone.  It doesn't work that way; it pulls straight from Wargaming, only lacking very new accounts.

19 minutes ago, bathoz said:

20. Do you plan to improve Coop mode play and give players taking part in this mode better rewards?
A. We consider Coop mode more or less as a side activity. However, there's about 30% of players mainly fighting in coop battles.

Thank you.  My only question would be whether this is reflective of all accounts that play for some length of time, or if it's just indicative of how busy the revolving door is at low tiers with new players coming, reaching tiers 3-4 mostly in Co-Op, and then quitting.

Either way, I'll move on from the subject.  It's clear that WG hasn't made this game for competitive modes like those that I enjoyed in Tanks, so I'll just play it for what it is.

[RollerCoaster47 758]

This thread is about Ranked Battles Season 7 you fuck nuggets.