[2021] Community Time with Ev1n and Mademoisail (8/25)

AHHHH THIS WAS MY FAULT.

The stream is WEDNESDAY (8/25) at 5pm CT. I updated the original post and title.

There is something else I would like to address. We are not banning people who want to talk about CCs or LWM. You are free to bring those subjects up in forums and in our Twitch channel. That being said, we ask that everyone be respectful and to not spam messages in our channels.

Thanks for everyone who posted questions and topics they would like us to cover! Keep them coming :)

-Sail

I am talking to the NA team members who will be involved in the stream tomorrow. We are all on the same page that no one gets banned for bringing up the subject. Bans only start happening when people are disrespectful and spam.

The reason we are planning this stream is because we want to talk to you guys and clarify everything we can.

Hey @LittleWhiteMouse. Thanks for your post and your suggestions!

I made an error in the original post. The stream will be Wednesday the 25th at 5pm CT. Just like any other member of the community, you are always welcome to join us.

Thanks everyone!

-Sail

EV1N/SAIL WOWS TWITCH STREAM

DATE: Wednesday 8/25

TIME: 5pm CT

TWITCH

(I am so sorry for the confusion! Please let me know if I can clarify anything else.)

I told everyone that you wouldn't get banned unless you were spamming or being disrespectful, and I feel my team did a good job of sticking to that promise. You can not come to our stream and be malicious or rude.

We covered everything that we could yesterday, and I really encourage you to go check out the twitch vod. It was awesome to have Ev1n on stream to answer questions and just chill with the community. I honestly thought we would play more battles, but we were super invested in our conversation with you.

Thank you guys for showing up.

Sail

Hello,

I can clear it up for you. We do not have a single person who decides everything in the game. We have instead different roles and areas of responsibility, so there is always one person who makes the final call, but we always have a process where we sit down and discuss the decisions before they are made. There is also a role - Game Director, who is accountable for the whole game and sometimes when other folks can't agree on something it's his duty to decide what to do and carry the ultimate responsibility for it.

Regarding monetization events - they are designed by the monetization team based on our roadmap and financial goals. Far in advance (a couple of months typically) their drafts are reviewed and discussed, including by me and my guys (shonai, Vessery) and regional offices too.

So, answering your question directly, I did not decide to put Missouri in random bundles, but as executive producer, here I carry responsibility for approving this design and not raising any significant concerns. It is one of my duties to provide the information and context for my colleagues to make calls in advance, and in this particular case I clearly failed, and it created the need to change the plans on the go. That said, when something like this happens, it's also one of my responsibility to make sure we sit down (now in emergency mode) and decide what to do and how to address the situation.

I'm currently working with my colleagues on several things to address the current situation on many levels - from our communications and CC program to the game content and future plans. I'm not hiding - just trying to make impact where I should. We're a team and have many layers of work. The fact I'm not here but Ev1n is does not mean I care less than him about the situation. We just work on the situation from different angles. Respectfully

I can address it.

1. Regional teams primary responsibility is what happening on their respective regions. Activities, direct community interaction (answers, streams, etc), quality of CS, driving regional activities, collecting feedback etc. When a decision is too important to be just local, regional teams sync between each other and devs. I.e. if for some reason there is need to offer a big bonus to players in one region (a week for free PA), we always try to match it globally to make sure there is no regional disparity.

Regarding decisions on the game itself, they are made with inputs from everyone. Both on planning stage (for example, when we compile our ship roadmap for next years regions would bring their opinion and ship requests) and on daily basis (when we have a plan for a next update). Still, there ARE areas of responsibility. A balance Game Designer makes a call on ship balancing, and a EU Community Manager makes a call on how to handle a EU stream. If there is some disagreement or even red light (i.e. someone believes that the job has to be done differently), there is a process where we can sit down and facilitate the conversation.

We don't talk about our internal structure too much, because we mostly don't believe it makes any difference to the players. What we do, how we do is what matters more than "what people were involved in this or that decision directly". I know it very well from my past experience as a CM - you don't talk for yourself, you talk for the whole team and represent it. It's a part of the job.

2. The level of commitment depends on what's involved. A Community Manager can't promise you to buff a ship before talking to colleagues in balance team, for example. But this CM certainly can promise to look into it and ask the said team to do so and come back with a reply.

One of the interesting myths about WG Management Structure is a concept of a "Marketing Department". I heard players put a lot of blame for any controversial decision on the guys, even though in reality they literally work on pretty innocent things like game trailers, ad campaigns and some business development activities. They have nothing to do with most of the in-game decisions.

Random mechanics like lootboxes or random bundles constitute only a part of monetization of the game. Not insignificant, but also not in any way determinative. World of Warships monetization is still largely based on direct ship sales and Premium Account sales. Everything else is complementary.

If you look at our random-based stuff objectively, you will notice that in the majority of cases it does not contain anything that can't be obtained otherwise or that is gameplay-critical (i.e. early access random bundles allow you to play a ship a couple of months in advance, and that's it). Overwhelming majority of content is not locked this way.

That said, in no way I claim we're doing everything correct. On the contrary, the Missouri case clearly shows we should be more considerate. And, of course, we follow all industry regulations, and looking at how it goes and how the world changes, it does not make sense to rely on such mechanics too much.

That's not true, and I'm not sure why you got such impression. We do not look at popularity only when making calls on balance, and we do not take inactive audience into account, too, it makes no sense.

If you have a quote or source of that, please kindly provide it so I can look into it, what you say now looks like a simple misinformation.

Reddit mods act independently and they decide what to do with the sub on their own. They decided to ban all lootbox related posts because of all the hate towards them, probably, and because of their personal position. It's their right to do so, and Wargaming has nothing to do with it.

We will release WV44 in 2023.

I personally apologize for taking so long, I understand we should have closed this case much earlier. We specifically did not give any date when talking about her before (as we were not sure about when and how), and it actually worked against us - unfortunately, this project was backlogged several times.

It's not the case anymore, we've added the ship to the roadmap officially. It actually happened a bit earlier, but in the steam of all stuff that's happening I think we did not actually mention it.

P.S. There are chances for late 2022, too, 2023 is hard deadline. Not later.

Our business model, and in general, our game has near zero relation to children.

For example, on NA, since 2018 the share of players under 16 was never higher than 4%. Paying audience % is obviously much lower. It's as low that I actually had hard time finding any data - our Research team simply does not include this group into paying audience reports, as the numbers there are on the level of statistical fluctuations.

I understand that there are many things we should do better or more considerate with the game and community. And the initial idea of locking Missouri behind random bundles was one of such things. There is no arguing we should implement changes to earn back some good faith. This does not, however, mean, we're also guilty of all mortal sins and profiting by selling lootboxes to children. With all due respect, if you are concerned about children and lootboxes in videogames, World of Warships - a game with one of the highest audience age in the market - is definitely not the game where it's a problem. Especially if you look at the industry and other titles objectively.

With all that in mind, it does not mean we're going to keep things as they are because "working as intended". I've seen a lot of comments about our age ratings, and mostly, about PEGI-7. I'd like to share some info about this, too.

We always act according to the law and industry regulations. Ratings, including PEGI, are given after the respective organization reviews the game. Recently we've added a new disclaimer to our PEGI rating ("In-game purchases", including Random items"). We're in the process of proactively adding such disclaimer to ESRB rating (it cannot be done just by us, we need a review and it takes some time, so we started working on it). Also as I said, minors are not, and never were, our target audience, so to make it even clearer in the near future we ourselves will apply for re-evaluation to PEGI and I think we will become PEGI-12. We don't market our game to children, and we don't need PEGI-7 in any way. It just was the rating we received back in the day. Is that all? Probably not. We will see if there are other ways we can address minors in our game, even though there are practically none.

In every job, there is "I need to do X" factor, right? I think it's perfectly relatable.

What I mean is there is no department which controls everything that happens in the game for a sole purpose of doing something, even if it's something as important (we need to pay our bills) as earning money. While (a rough example) 10 people are directly working on fulfilling our financial goals by planning sales, 490 people are directly working on everything else like new gameplay experience, bug fixing, visuals, sound, tech, and other ways to improve the game in different ways, and most of it is not connected to sales.

Thank you, good catch.

It does, of course. We look at popularity often. I.e. when we balance commander skills, popularity is a huge factor to see what skills should be changed and how. It does not mean we use it as a silver bullet to solve every question.

Wait, no, let me stop you right here. A LOT of people asked for subs. I mean when I joined the team like 7 years ago or something my first drill was how to answer the question about the subs. Of course it does not mean it's the only thing we need to do. And we learned a lot from CV rework: subs process is much slower, more incremental and careful. We did a lot of tests and changes and still working on it.

But your other points are perfectly valid. Let me briefly comment on them:

Soon (planned in 0.10.8) there will be a new Convoy game mode, inspired by historical events, and it's not the only game mode we're working on right now.


There will be at least one new map next year, and maybe one more. While the setting for the first one is decided on and it's important for its gameplay (wink wink), we will most likely involve the community into choosing the setting for the second one. More news will follow later.


We do plan to return the old ops. We've been working on our AI (working and reworking), should be over soon, and hopefully old ops will return somewhere in 2022.

We do know that. I'm sorry that our decisions have put you and some other players including WOWS veterans off. We will try to change that, more news, commitments and changes will follow.

We're still not decided if we should share the whole current course of action, including further plans that are more subject to change and delays, or should announce things as they come. In any case, please expect to hear from us more.

Thank you for the feedback, we certainly don't want veteran players to feel that way.

Old scenarios are to be back next year, we've been working on it (AI part) for a while.

As for the modes and temporary events, tbh it just seem to work well - to introduce several themed events during a year so that they cycle and people don't get bored. Also, don't forget such game modes are often a platform for us to experiment and we like to iterate on them from time to time (evolution of our Halloween would be a good example).

A torpedo bug is indeed a very good example of case where we should have been more transparent. Thank you.

Fair enough! Well, apart from long term commitments like Huron or West Virginia, we will deliver shorter term changes, too. Watch the news, see how how they live up to reality, and make your judgement

Good, thank you for clarification.

TBH retrospectively we did come a long way to adjust the reworked CVs if you look at all the changes to CV and AA over the years. Some of the changes to them should have been done before release, and that's why we agreed that CV rework was indeed rushed in many aspects. Some of the changes probably would not be conceived without releasing the rework and seeing how they live in the actual game, though. We're not fully done with CV spotting, it's something we still hope to address, by the way. The game lives and changes, and nothing is truly set in stone.

Treatment of LWM was a huge mistake and letdown on our side. We apologized to her clearly both personally and as a company for Yukon case, and decided to implement a ship proposed by her and Chobi as an olive branch. What happened afterwards - a follow up incident in CC Discord - was one of my team members gave an incorrect reply to the question about Missouri earnings and another member did not identify this quickly, instead argued with LWM for some time before he finally realized the issue, admitted it and apologized.

I can't describe the frustration we've had when we realized that we've made another CC related mistake just when we merely dealt with the previous one. That said, we're all humans. Yes, we replied incorrectly, and yes, it took us some time to understand what was wrong. Yes, looking back, it was very dumb. In no way me or my colleagues wanted to offend, insult or belittle anyone, we've basically did not realize what the problem was. The dude who provided the reply - Shonai - has been working with CC for months and months, providing a lot of valuable information and answers on a daily basis, and a lot of CC actually commended him for that. As so did the other one, who argued with LWM - he genuinely cares for what he does and for the community, but unfortunately that day his reading skills let him down. And that, second mistake with the reply, was something that happens from time to time regardless of all good intentions. It's not a question of "protecting" anyone "or bargaining", it's about what measures are adequate relative to the mistake. Yukon incident deserved something very real and serious, like a commitment to a new ship. An incorrect reply and communication mistake in CC Discord, with all due respect, deserved sincere apology, which was given, and an internal lesson in communications, which was learned.

1. Yes, I'm not sure about the exact form (post, video, series of posts, etc), but we will communicate on it more.

2. Yes, I agree the situation we have now have deeper roots and it's not about one incident or one game event.

Look, in one way or another there will be some changes coming and announced. Immediately, I can't tell you when and in what form we will share them, but we're working on it right now. I sincerely hope this week there will be an update. Yes, I understand, it's not quick enough, so I apologize for the wait.

Yes, we've been discussing this and also looked at the examples from other games. We will definitely consider expanding the timeline of what we share further. Right now we have devblogs and Waterline which are basically "a few months in advance", but there might be opportunity to share more.

That is the plan.

Hello,

Sure, simple answers:

1. Because that is not what we specifically agreed to with Mouse and Chobi. We agreed to creating a new Canadian ship with a camo and committed to it publicly. I will get in touch with them and clarify, and already asked @Ev1n_NA to help, to make sure cultural barriers won't be a trouble.

2. You are oversimplifying this, tbh. Ship earnings in the game are not that easy - they are quite complicated, and on the top of that Missouri's economics was different from other Tier IX premium ships not only with a built-in bonus - it's a legacy system which was practically unique to the ship. The change was not like "just change the formula in one place and it will work", you may even call it a rework. And in such case only sufficient data may proof if the change was correct. We did due diligence, but we needed to see how it works in reality.

3. Months of data before, but we also need some data after, too. For the reason explained above.

4. That's the direction we will consider. I can't comment more on it right now, but hopefully, more info will follow later. As for Missouri Random Bundles, the chances are very straightforward, as you see the number of total possible bundles and it is limited. The chances are equal to all pulls, and logically grow with each non-Missouri pull you have.

There are platform regulations which do not apply to PC. As I said above, I can't comment more on it right now, but I understand the request you bring and it will be considered. Tbh, it's one of the things we've been considering lately, and seeing such feedback makes me more certain it is worth serious discussion. Thank you.

As for gambling, obviously all random based sales has been hotter and hotter topic in the industry. IMO, it's not us or players, who determine the status of random stuff in games, it's governments and regulators. As a business, we always follow laws and comply with the regulations as they appear. We always do due diligence to comply, and will keep doing it. In some cases we will even try to work ahead of the industry practices, because we are aware that there are slowly progressing trends to regulate the digital space more and more, to catch up with technical solutions and business models built on them. We try to keep our approach balanced, and not to lock anything really important behind random mechanics. And with the recent events, I hope you understand we try to be more flexible and admit our mistakes, for example, the initial design of Missouri event was bad and we adjusted it.

PEGI-18 would bring other issues, specifically, in terms of advertising. We don't target children, but if you have 18+ it creates a lot of problems with placing ads on many general platforms, at the same time, we don't use "adult" stuff, but will have the connected limitations. Bonus part: we will technically will be able to do collabs with beer, not just sausages.

In any case , we will apply for evaluation and see the results, but looking at dozens of games around, I don't personally believe we qualify as 18+.

To avoid any kind of confusion about loot boxes and minors - and that's something I fully support your statement in - we do have some ideas in discussion on our own.

Lying is something intentional you do to..cheat, right? Yukon incident was a huge and obvious failure, but not because people lied. Rather because we as a team did a very poor job and poor communications.

We already apologized for this as a company and personally. We've started to fix our mistakes and worked out the sign of our apologies with both Mouse and Chobi -a new ship. I don't expect anyone to treat us well for Yukon , because it IS a big and nasty fail, but I still hope that you guys also look at how we fix our mistakes and try to make up for them.

Not helpful, mate, at all. Following this logic, we should just stop communicating at all, because where there is communication, there is also a chance of miscommunication. I understand this term should not be abused, but when people don't understand each other by mistake, it is what it is. I did not mean to diminish the size of issue, just was trying to explain the reasons behind it.

Thank you!

You are welcome.

No, we do not believe in P2W approach to design.Combat signals were indeed removed from achievements, but we've added them to the missions. We do not want them to become "gold ammo". Moreover, the closest thing to it we had were Premium consumables, and if you remember that update, we have removed those completely (made them free).

Hello, good to see you here. Yes, sure.

It is bigger than just AI, but it is indeed connected with CV rework. CV rework rendered a lot of internal tools (AI related) obsolete, and made working with aircraft related stuff in PvE very difficult or impossible. Right now we're in the process of removing this obstacle. It's being worked on for many reasons, not just for the sake of Operations, but one of the benefits we will have when this project is done is that we will be able to return the old ops.

I hope that clarified the question.

We try to include PvE to all activities where it's possible, I think if you look at the missions and events objectively you will see that there are very few places where PvE is excluded. That said, my thoughts are: PvE is not likely to have the same level of priority as PvP. We will keep experimenting, there will be more events, modes with PvE elements, etc. But I would not count on PvE to become the main theme.

Let's keep it civil, please. I appreciate that there are a lot of problems we have to solve, still, does not mean there is need to be hostile to anyone, including players that have different PoV. Thank you.

Look, I am not sure I fully understand this situation from your PoV, but I want to. I'm sorry that there is still this lack of understanding and these emotions.

I will ask someone competent from NA team do join our Discord chat and will try to discuss it with you and Chobi again. Let's try again.

It's a mascot used mostly on Youtube and which has very limited presence in the game. And it's not designed to appeal to children - it's just silly, funny and has good meme potential.

As for the data, not sure what do you mean? We don't ask players about everything we intend to do for game promotion. We had several talented artists (they were doing casual mobile games before) in the studio and this group of people, with the relevant background, gave birth to Bad Advice project.

I would assume the hypocrisy is to try to tie Bad Advice to the cause, for sure

I agree we should pay more attention to different cultural aspects. That said, the Yukon incident, for example, happened with direct involvement of local staff members, and during the past years, I've took part in resolving many issues where having local staff did not help. Sometime people make mistakes regardless. But you are right, cultural barriers are real and dangerous, I made several mistakes because of them, too. I hope there will be visible progress in future.

As for business model, I understand your point, but the model is dictated by several factors: we have a specific setting, we have big, but not huge audience (relative to more casual and less niche games). We experimented a lot, and unfortunately, what works for a casual looter shooter in sci-fi setting with the audience ten times bigger will not always work for a more niche and nuanced game like ours. And - what's very important, being niche, our game is very complex and requires a lot of work to be done. Would we survive if we used only stuff like ship camos for monetization? Probably yes, and that would require to dismiss most of the team, cancel most of the plans and generally put the game on maintenance mode. It's not the way we believe in.

What you refer to is fake news. Doing some basic research, it becomes clear the articles on this topic are connected by one email present on several websites. Searching this particular email on google, results in a staggering 45k results and one of the biggest network of fake websites to date. The websites are in all languages and territories, US, CA, Every EU country, China, Korea, India, Pakistan etc. It's something that is easily established based on public information.
So, just a heads-up: further on we will not discuss these fake news and allegations on our official platforms, and all such posts will be deleted.

Thank you for your fair evaluation. We will work to live up to it.

Good point. Random bundles is already a step from lootboxes - they are more predictable and don't have unlimited potential cost. There will be more steps in that direction! We anyways need to be creative as the world and the industry changes.

3d styles are cool! We have some cool, cosmetics, too, still, both in our game and in WoT it's a complementary aspect of monetization.

Thank you!

And thanks everyone for the discussion, I will happily be back later. For now, need to attend to some other things and my NA collagues are taking over.

I agree wholeheartedly about the need to communicate

As for your opinion on monetization, I sincerely hope you realize that the majority of our players, play for free, entirely. At the same time, it's a rather specific game, which does not cost less to develop and sustain if you compare it to more casual and wide spread titles. What I'm saying is, without any sugar coating, is that the general level of game monetization is adequate relative to our costs and we won't be able to drop it without also dropping significant efforts and plans regarding the future of the game. What we can do, and will do, however, is to be more considerate, make less mistakes and keep the balanced approach (i.e. regarding random mechanics).

So I woke up only to see a community free-for-all pillow fight with personal attacks and allegations...sigh.

I'm closing the thread, it went very far from the original topic.

Let's continue the discussion in other relevant threads and Q&As.

Also, fully support those players who ask to stop attacking each other. I will ask the mods to take a look at what has happened here according to the rules. Guys, it's not a choice. The discussion is either civil, or there is no discussion.

Thank you.