[2021] Boggzy question; Fun to play against?

Thanks for the question!
If this was a simple answer, I could give it easily. It's not a simple answer, I'm afraid. There are a LOT of levels to it and the deeper I get I fear that folks will get hung up on the specifics and miss the overall picture.

Specifically, you're asking about "playing AGAINST", not "playing WITH" or "playing AS". I don't think a conversation can be had about any one of those things without the others and - honestly - I don't feel comfortable answering that question because it's just not how WG calculates stuff or how decisions are made.
So, the short answer is YES - we do factor in feedback on how it feels to play AGAINST something, but that's mostly something that results in action for a balancing aspect and adjusted when necessary. This feedback comes from a variety of sources when new ships come out including Community, SuperTesters, Clan SuperTesters, Privateers, Community Contributors, and staff.

Often times new things "feel bad" to play against because we, as players, don't understand their boundaries yet. I recall absolutely hating to play against Conqueror's for a long time. They'd spam HE and superheal and I thought that was crazy. Then I played against them in clan battles and realized that they go down extremely quick if they get focus-fired. Their weakness is being burst-fired and not having the time to utilize more than 1 super-heal. It's much easier to do that with a team that you organize and can agree to a plan, which is much more difficult in randoms.
I hope that helps a bit, but I just cannot give out a simple answer to that question as it is, I'm afraid.

That's it! I'm making Subs go faster then!!!

Most things don’t live if targeted by two CV’s. Same as most things don’t live if targeted by multiple ships.

Very few ships are capable of completely denying an air attack completely. Austin, Halland, and some of the Dutch Cruisers seem able to do so at times, but the idea of AA now is based around draining the offensive resources of a CV, not wiping them out entirely.

See, you mock that idea, but that’s exactly how it’s supposed to work, and that’s how it DOES work.

This relationship changes drastically based on how good the CV player is, no question.

Even in Clan Battles when carriers are present, the best CV players do have to learn how to manage resources properly. Even the best will say that they generally don’t run out of planes, but their behavior and options in game are 100% determined by the risk of running out and being a dead weight on their team.

Once again you present a personal opinion as fact.
You cannot derp your squadrons one after another without appropriate pre-drops and expect to have offensive capacity throughout the battle in CB's. Your choices are made in line with the reality that resource management IS the limiting factor. End of story.
Some CV's maintain resources better than others. Some players optimize those resources better. The mechanic remains regardless.

In a recent patch there was added the function that penetrating hits to the main battery would do damage equivalent to an overpen.
So even if you damage the module, you still take actual HP off the ship.

On the mechanic itself and it's fundamental orientation.
I dislike you walking into threads and making statements that are false. It reeks of ego and it misinforms other players.
In some situations the mechanic may not function as intended - that does not change the function of the mechanic nor it's implementation.
Just because a Super-Unicum doesn't feel that's it's the way things are - doesn't mean it's not the way things are.

So enough...

Just to put this out there. Smolensk and Thunderer weren't removed for overperforming. They were removed due to popularity. IE: So many people bought them because "They're OP" that you'd find them in lots of matches. For the sake of variety, they were removed to help get matches back to a more interesting mix of ships.

While they excel in the hands of high-end players, high-end players number in the 5% or so of the playerbase, so it really doesn't go as far as you might think.

Smalland is certainly strong, there's not a debate in that. But you'll also notice how quickly Smalland's availability changed.

Smolensk and Thunderer were available for quite a while past the day they were deemed "OP" to the general audience.

Why did folks buy the ships? Because everyone shouted OP! High-end players doing that really does have a significant effect on players that aren't sure of what to purchase next.

Number and figures showed Smol/Thunderer players weren't somehow magically making things happen because of the ship. However, they were queue'ing up in the ship a lot. Matches often had several a game, which ultimately shortens general variety and encourages taking them off the shelf to open things back up.

I recall that announcement had multiple reasons listed for the ships that were being removed, not just a catch-all of "Popularity".

Smolensk was available for quite a while.

I literally had a conversation where it was explained how it wasn't about the performance of the ship, but about the amount of them in the game. 2 and 3 in game after game was frustrating to players. Data showed it wasn't the ship itself being the problem, but the amount of them the player ran across on average. One Smol can be annoying enough, but 2-3 a game certainly stands out in the mind.

So, this begs an interesting question.

Is it not ok for a good player to have good games? If a ship only does well in the hands of a good player, does that mean it's broken if it does well when they use it?

Why would someone need to lie to me, when they could just tell me the truth instead? Especially when it's over something as basic as why a ship is shelved?

Note: The person I spoke with is known and loved by even those that are quite upset with Wargaming in general. In short, they don't lie.

Sure, as a frontman with the company, I'm expected to convey company positions. Just as I'm expected to relay community positions back to the company.

It's an interesting middle-position where you have one foot in both worlds. It's very tiring :D

As for this thing, there's no value or benefit to not just saying, "She's too strong, so we pulled her". No shareholder meetings, no global breakdown of trade. There's no downside to just stating, "She was shelved because of X"

I'm weirded out that this has to be framed as some conspiracy or something. It's really pretty straightforward. Thunderer and Smolensk were called OP, purchased by a large audience via Coal, and then pulled.

The battle performance led to cries of OP, which led to purchases, which led to overpopulation, and then to shelving.

So I'll ask again.

Is it a bad thing for a strong player to have a good game? Is a ship OP just because strong players can make them perform well?

Followup question that I actually had a long discussion over. It with a clanmate of mine, Dastert.

"Is the Thunderer so strong as to be the only viable choice for competitive/clan battles?"

How many days do you feel the respec should last? In case some folks are offline for a week or three?

Do they affect all classes? One?

Are they limited in scope, or is this an infinite thing for a bug that was fixed in days?

It's a sensible line of logic. The problem is when you take something strong and watch it fail to perform, repeatedly. If it's strong, but mostly not used well... is it a "threat that needs to be removed?"

If the majority of actual results are lackluster, but the ship is spammed in battle after battle, then it's more a population issue than performance.

The issue with that is there isn't a mechanism for a single redemption. The only way to do that would be crediting every player with enough Doubloons or Commander XP to cover a single Respec. However, there's no way to make sure it's used for that purpose.

So it's a much more involved thing than just flipping a switch and making it happen.

We did give away 3 Premium Containers to everyone, which is easily 1.5+ million dollars in "value" as compensation to the playerbase worldwide.

There are multiple definitions of OP. Typically OP is used more in reference of something that wins because it's too powerful to lose. At least in the older sense. The term gets thrown around a lot these days.

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What I'm saying is...

If average players don't make the Thunderer OP, then only good players do.

If good players are OP in the Thunderer, then she SHOULD outperform other choices the players could make. Kremlin, Bourgogne, Ohio, and others. However, her Strengths and Weaknesses are actually in balance enough to make a veteran player stop and consider the options... because the other ships might be the better tool for the job.

In this sense, I'm pointing out the "OP" is easy to say, but it's shown in actual practice that even unicum players see other "weaker" ships as strong or stronger then Thudnerer given context.

Sure, so it excels in its element, but can't excel outside of it. Which in itself is a representation of balancing characteristics.

A lot of ships excel when performing in their win condition space. The question is why is the Thunderer's win condition not strong enough to draw more attention to her as a competitive pick? Would catering to a truly overpowered ship yield better results than using a less powerful ship in a different way? You'd be using the OP ship to carry.

That's not really the role of the CC, though. Community Liason is the Community Manager's job. While a CC can certainly have a community around them and want to advocate for it, that's not what the CC Program is about.

The CC Program is a partnership between WarGaming and the CC. WarGaming provides assistance through giveaways, access to content, and promotion. The CC provides player engagement simply by doing their thing.

That's why some CCs talk poorly about WarGaming, but are still CCs. It's not about the message, it's about a community having a home to exist in and enjoy our great game. We don't censor CCs, though there are some ground rules that are mostly about ethics and treating people with respect.

I don't understand? What's the talking point?

Yes, CMs are hopelessly outnumbered unfortunately. But there are volunteers that help where able to allow the CMs to keep on their toes. It's... a lot of work :\ I think I'm running around hour 70 or something so far this week <3 Odds are good I'll be working the next two days too (though I'll try not to do it too much for sanity reasons).

Don't misunderstand, CCs give us feedback. They let us know what does and doesn't work for them and their community. It's just not the role of the program. From our end, the CC Program is about helping CCs grow because an engaged audience stays engaged in the game and community at large. It's good for both parties.

Honestly, the explosion that happened was the result of a whole lot of stuff happening all at once. It was a really rough time. I was a CC then and I got to see it from the inside.

On the plus side, the reforms and efforts that WarGaming has committed to and followed through on have been great, so there's a silver lining at least.

What I'm asking is... if it's so powerful at doing a thing, why not design a strategy around it doing that thing?

There was a strategy in League of Legends dubbed "Protect the Kog-maw". Why? Because if you had a champion called Kog'maw and your team was able to keep him alive, he killed everything. It was a full 5-man team effort to do it... but designing around the win condition was a strategy that worked.

If you're saying that it's impossible to design a strategy around a battleship with amazing guns but horrible armor, then I don't know what to say. Everyone is going to play this game in their own way.

Not if I'm in something easy to hit <3

But trolling around in a Russian DD? or farming from cover? Sure~

Please stop like jumping to lightspeed. It doesn't have to single-handedly murder everything all by itself to be powerful. In the example I gave about Kog-Maw, it's a 5-man team all working together and using Kog'maw's damage as a win condition.

To me, when you say "OP" it represents a distinct, significant advantage.

To which I pose the question...

If it's "OP", then can you use it to win? Moreso than other options?

You've made several responses saying that it's not viable or that other options are better choices.

To which I respond with...

Is it "OP" then?

At this point, I think we're just going in circles and the topic is probably over with?

I am very aware that different ships do different things well. The fun part of game design/balancing is to allow for lots of variety in the game, but to have all the very different things still be relative in power and good options in their own ways.

As to "OP", perhaps we'll just agree that we think "OP" means different things. To me, it represents a power that makes things happen and is worthy of forming strategies around. Your definition seems to be more akin to "abnormally strong at X".

Either way, it was a fun conversation. Thank you~

But that's the problem. The average player didn't do magic things in the Thunderer. That's why it was available for so long.

Yeah, it's definitely been an interesting thread. Many different conversations happening at once, but good conversations none the less.

Two things from me.

1) Every "game" is just a different way of doing something with a bunch of arbitrary rules strung together. "The floor is lava!" "Keep-away" "Hide and Seek" "Uno" "Monopoly""Minesweeper" "Sudoku"

Fun is just one of those things that you can't really quantify, but you can tell when you're having it. You can also know that while you're having fun doing something, like maybe sequential math puzzles... someone else has NO interest in the same. So "fun" isn't a universal truth. Even a universally loved game like Tetris or Pac-Man has folks that can't enjoy or connect with it in any way.

World of Warships has that same battle to face, and because it's so varied and decision-based, the amount of possibilities to balance/plan for is rather immense. Fortunately, there are a lot of baseline pieces that are known "people enjoy this" metrics you can abstract from.

As for "measuring it"? You make something that feels within the boundaries laid down by other things in the game... maybe a little more of less powerful. Then you test it yourself... your friend tests it... a test group tests it... supertesters test it... you alter it a little and test it again... your friend tests it again... the supertesters test it again...

Did you like it more before or after? Did they like it more before or after? Did anyone like it -at all-?
Does it feel like a familiar, yet unique experience? Does it feel like a weird, unknown and strange experience?

All those questions happen during design and testing, which is a fairly long process that spans months.

As for post-product launch?
Data can be gathered through surveys which directly ask, "Was this battle fun?" "Was this other thing fun?" You'll have a limited amount of folks that take the survey, though, but it's still something that gives you direct information.

You also have conversational feedback.
Forums, streams, youtube content, reddit, twitter, etc... There's an amount of the playerbase that engages here, so it's more information to collect.

There's also in-game data.
The most basic version of "Is it fun for the player?" is... did they play it again? and again? and again? How engaged in using the ship were they?
And the opposite, how did a player that went against something respond? Did they play again? Did they stop playing after that interaction? If they did one or the other, to what extent?

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Game Design is a crazy field not akin to story-telling or art. You make a thing that is subjective and is designed to be enjoyed, but it has a MUCH more intimate relation with the player than something that is just visual pretty or appreciated at a distance. It's a very direct interaction that takes place and how engaging it will be is wildly subjective.

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2) This thread has gone a lot of places~ Good places, but a lot of places.

I'll keep it open for now, but it might be time to close it down before too super-long. Just a head's up.

A few words on this!

1) Community Time Streams are VERY DIFFERENT from personal streaming. I was really surprised about that, but it's like incredibly true. Your mind is split in a lot of ways because you aren't there to play, you're there to connect. The playing is the thing that happens in the background of your mind because you have thousands of people that want to ask questions the entire way through. Or, you're in the middle of performing live on stage because you're Anchoring your very own TV show with a co-host.

So, I don't know who it was or what they played, but when you see folks do poorly on the Community Stream, there's a half decent chance their mind is only slightly in the game. If it's more in the game, then it's less engaged with you guys.

2) I've never done the math on it, but Operations always seemed like the Stars you earn are a multiplier to the Base XP you get. So just completing the Operation is worth more than failing it, but completing it with 4 stars will yield more than 3, and completing it with 5 stars yields more than 4.

So, your three star win might have gotten roughly 1300 Base XP, but a 5 star win might have been 1700 to 1900.

It could also be that each Star just adds a flat amount of Base XP/Credits. I feel confidient that's been charted and mapped out by the Operations community to a much firmer degree.

Omg… imagine if that was the actual question this whole time

I have been told it is moderately pleasing to play against me.

What do you think is a fair amount of compensation for a well-done Operation?

Do you feel that the ability to know the entire situation before hand and plan for it should alter the rewards as compared to a live-action situation where nothing is predetermined?

I appreciate the response, but I assure you there's a lot more thread it go~