Silent majority

We have a lot of data.

We poll our players through a variety of surveys. Most players do not visit these forums or other social sites, but they can and will interact with polls and surveys that are sent directly to them.

We also analyze behavioral patterns in game. You may not have a direct rating of the experience after a match that had a Submarine or a CV in it, but you CAN see if the player kept playing normally or if they slowed/stopped their play after the match. This is the real result data that shows us what people actually did as opposed to a question about what someone would do in a theoretical scenario.

Surveys are posted in the game client mostly. Players can choose to click them when they enter the game. Not everyone does, but there are a significant number of people that do complete the surveys on each of the server clusters.

The rest of your post is primarily asserting why you assume any information gained is tainted through incompetence or malevolence. There isn't much merit in responding to something which isn't true and is based on a faulty foundation.

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There is no reason for us to survey people just to ignore or make up results. It's a waste of time, resources, and good information. Further, it makes no sense that we can run a worldwide success of a game by simply ignoring reality and make-believe'ing ourselves into a high performance position.

You cannot approach this discussion while already assuming everything is awful when the reality and product do not reflect that assumption. Yes, there is a lot of angry, vocal feedback given on this forum and other social channels, but there is a lot of kind, vocal feedback given here, on other social channels, and directly through internal survey assessments and related data points.

Typically any large reveals of player data would come through DevBlogs. While I have the ability to review things like this, I am not authorized to share internal survey information.

It is in our best interest to have good data to make decisions from, so we are rather specific in trying to make sure everything is done correctly in terms of surveys and assessments.

DevBlogs like that can take over a week to produce. They will involve many people in the course of acquiring data, formatting, writing, checking, localizing, and more. The amount of time it takes to do something like that really is prohibitive, so it's not something to expect on a casual basis or on a variety of topics on demand.

As stated before, I'm not authorized to give data off the cuff. I can review it directly or via internal reports that break down our surveys and assessments for each patch/section of time, but the amount of work it takes to gather data and present it well is rather extreme. For my position, it's mostly about understanding the situation so that I can better relay information between the Company and the Players. I pass information both ways, so the more information I have the better the communication clarity.

Survey data is collated and sent out in a company wide report. Performance metrics on events, approval/disapproval, specific feedback to events, overall ratings, and a variety of other metrics. The reports are rather long as they cover everything in the updates that players could interact with. There are breakdowns of which groups of players thought what.

In-game data is directly accessible in some forms. We have internal tools that can pull average damage for whatever ship, or tier, or nation, or specific tier/nation, or... a lot really. There are a lot of different reports that have been created over time that provide current, up-to-date information for dozens of different concepts/metrics as well. Those tools are used heavily by designers while doing their thing, but they are also available in case other teams are looking to research something. Specific information can be gathered via "data pulls" (like are used for events like the Easter Egg Hunt).

Summarized? Can you expand on what you mean by this?

No, CMs don't have any running notes/data from builds or internal testing. While I assume that could be something that could be asked about, iteration is rapid enough that it would likely just waste time to relay information that may or may not matter in the long term.

When design decisions are made and finalized in such a way as to enter the game for testing, then DevBlogs are written to state that something is happening and when. DevBlogs can announce stuff that is as early as mere concept testing like Stun Bombs or is coming to the PTS or is coming to live server, etc... DevBlogs could also be used as a communication tool for larger topics like the Submarine DevBlog from last year, or messages to the Community relating to our Statement from last year.

CM teams do review DevBlogs before they are published. We can offer help with localization or ask questions about the content of the DevBlog. For larger items, there might be a meeting to discuss what's happening in an Update or a different large topic like Econ/Camo Separation.

We can also ask questions directly as needed, but Community is more about the actual Player Experience/Reaction. We mostly interact with Players to understand the mood and concerns of the Community in order to relay that to the Company in general. In the times where the Company needs us to relay information (Updates, DevBlogs, Large Events) we are available to do that too.

Typically, if something is relevant to the design choice or purpose of something, it's relayed or can be inquired about. As to commenting on day-to-day design stuff, that's not something Community would do because we're literally a different department that has other tasks/functions.

Put a different way, I'm employed 40 hours a week (lol, dare to dream <3, wee 15 hour day today so far~) doing Community related tasks. My personal area is Forums, though I take part in other tasks and have personal initiatives as well (such as the Customer Support Ticket awareness push to address behavioral issues). There's no reason for Community to be keeping track of Design-related stuff in a minutiae-sense because the Design teams are literally employed to do those things. We each have our role/function.

There has been a large increase in information being put out via DevBlogs and the new Roadmap (which will likely have an update at some point). We've been more transparent in general, and we've given specific information such as Container Mechanics and Contents.

I'm guessing from your question you are more asking for like, direct internal data as though looking to peer-review it. That level of data-sharing is not something that should be expected as a general ask. World of Warships is a highly complex game and is our intellectual property. Extensive amounts of data and internal process is similar in concept to the secret recipe for Coca-Cola, so there is a reasonable limit that should be expected in terms of what information we put out. Further, what information we put out has to be reviewed to be clear enough as to be understandable and avoid miscommunication as best as possible.

API stuff is going to be out of my wheelhouse. I am aware that wows-numbers and others have requested a more robust API, but I'm not sure on that status of all that. If we do get some information to share, we'll definitely pass that on.

I might be able to provide general information in regards to large topics if it was to a very useful end, but that would both require time to research the information as well as approval to give it. Further, we really don't want CMs to be seen a data-fetchers as that would just be a tremendous amount of time-loss. For the most part, we're already booked up as is.