Napkin Analysis 0.13.4

[ArIskandir]

19 hours ago, Utt_Bugglier said:

No, “napkin,” as in “written or drawn up on the back of a napkin,” as in what someone does to communicate an idea or thought over lunch, when other surfaces to write on aren’t handy.

I read and write as long as what the OP wrote routinely; I never mislead my audience by billing it as “napkin analysis.”

SEVEN (count ‘em seven!) hidden contents windows after declaring “final thoughts.”

This thing cries out for a “TL;DR,” because that’s exactly what I did: it’s far TL, and I DR.

 

The "problem" is the overall lenght of the patch's content needed to be reviewed. Each individual section can be read on 3 mins (avg), very wel fitting into the "napkin" cathegory. Given the full extension of the patch, it is unrealistic to expect to full content covered on a single "napkin", whatever information you manage to cram into that single "napkin" would forcibly be useleesly superficial or underdeveloped. 

Bro, those seven hidden windows belong to the notes, your are not even required to read the notes unless you want further information. (Tho I recommend reading the notes, there's some very funny hidden gems there)

[Project45_Opytny]

On 5/16/2024 at 12:45 AM, torino2dc said:

For a preview on how not to buff the Fenyang, we need only look to the Russian server. In Mir Korabley (MK) update 0.13.3,⁸ they gave her a 25% (!) reload buff, improving her base reload from 4.4s -> 3.3s. The resultant monster, were it to live on our servers, would easily top the charts for HE and AP DPM among Tier 8 Destroyers, while retaining the extremely strong secondary ammunition characteristics (fire chance and ricochet angles). In particular, I find the Russian Fenyang's 11.48 fires/minute to be hilariously exaggerated, standing almost 40% higher than the next best ship, the Split at 8.3 FPM (see charts below).

https://nga.178.com/read.php?tid=40464773

A Chinese comment of Lesta's Fenyang.

In short: Lesta developers have grossly overdone the re-balance touch and created an overpowered monster that is much superior to all other T8 destroyers, as well as pushing their "Akizuki CLR" into complete irrelevance.

[torino2dc]

2 hours ago, Project45_Opytny said:

In short: Lesta developers have grossly overdone the re-balance touch and created an overpowered monster that is much superior to all other T8 destroyers, as well as pushing their "Akizuki CLR" into complete irrelevance.

Thank you for the update, it seems I wasn't wholly off base with my analysis then 😇. My suspicion is that Lesta is going for the "overshoot and correct" tactic that World of Tanks often employed -- make the ship a monster for a while to induce demand, and then nerf it back to a sane middle ground. 

I generally don't think this approach is healthy, as it tends to create unintended waves in the meta as players rush to exploit the OP ship before the nerf hammer inevitably comes down. That said, for a niche premium ship like Fenyang that long suffered in the shadow of Akizuki, it might be a defensible approach to finally give her a day in the sun. We shall see how things develop.

[Admiral_Karasu]

My confidence in WG's ability to balance ships, including DD's that have normal torpedoes and DD's that have DWT's remains unshakeable.

[Pugilistic]

Excellent essay. Would be nice for these to be collected in the Reference Section. 

[I_cant_Swim_]

16 minutes ago, Pugilistic said:

Excellent essay. Would be nice for these to be collected in the Reference Section. 

Yes it certainly is, and yes they certainly will be.

 

[Pugilistic]

2 minutes ago, I_cant_Swim_ said:

Yes it certainly is, and yes they certainly will be.

 

Thanks!

[torino2dc]

9 hours ago, Admiral_Karasu said:

My confidence in WG's ability to balance ships, including DD's that have normal torpedoes and DD's that have DWT's remains unshakeable.

I'm not sure whether this is meant sarcastically. For the case it is: folks need to be careful not to confuse Wargaming (the western developer that runs World of Warships) from Lesta (the St. Petersburg studio that runs the Russian version of the game called Mir Korabley). As I've hopefully shown in this analysis and in the overview, Wargaming has proven to have the more mature and intelligent approach to balancing since the split.  

[Admiral_Karasu]

10 minutes ago, torino2dc said:

I'm not sure whether this is meant sarcastically. For the case it is: folks need to be careful not to confuse Wargaming (the western developer that runs World of Warships) from Lesta (the St. Petersburg studio that runs the Russian version of the game called Mir Korabley). As I've hopefully shown in this analysis and in the overview, Wargaming has proven to have the more mature and intelligent approach to balancing since the split.  

In other words, the split has brought some benefits you mean? People keep tabs on what Lesta is doing, and some of the things they do, seem to have been well liked on our side of the fence as well.

[Andrewbassg]

On 5/15/2024 at 7:45 PM, torino2dc said:

.............................................

Horrible handling torpedo cruiser receives HE buffs that don't address her fundamentally unfun gameplay loop.

 

Superb analysis. I did played her quite a bit in Airship and she did good, but as all CL;s she is very team dependent and she has no carrying material in her. And yes her handling is abysmal. Yet it was bestowed upon her, the  sub chasing role.

[torino2dc]

57 minutes ago, Admiral_Karasu said:

In other words, the split has brought some benefits you mean?

Absolutely. This is deserving of a full post, but the short version is this:

In general, the aesthetic experience of playing Mir Korabley will be superior. They seem to have kept a bulk of the art department and the folks who know their way around the spaghetti code. This means that the gap in visuals and behind-the-scenes optimizations will likely continue to grow.

• Perma-camos are more numerous and more detailed.
• Lavish special events like "Cosmonautics Day" with a special port and game mode in Soviet retro-futurist style.¹
• A new map "Kamchatka" already in the game, with two more in the pipeline.
• Updates to the cloud and lighting system in game.
• Numerous quality of life improvements, including to Training Room, ship loading in port, coop bot distribution, unifying smoke fire penalties, re-balancing CV DCPs, and fixing Hidden Menace.¹

Looking through the MK patch-notes, it is really easy to get really envious. All of their stuff looks amazing and the devs seem to be addressing a lot of the perennial complaints from the player base.

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However, the price that is paid for all of those gains is that the experience of playing Mir Korabley PVP can be far more toxic. From a game design perspective, they don't seem to care much about re-working broken classes or fixing interactions with insufficient counter-play. So if you want to go on the Russian server, be prepared for:

• Tier 11 ships in their un-nerfed form (Conde, Annapolis, United States, Sekiryu, Eagle)
• Submarines in their un-nerfed form, meaning shot-gunning galore and one-sided hydrophone interactions.
• Tier 11 submarines (with the ability to shotgun). 
• No cruisers with Submarine Surveillance (the Commonwealth tech tree is WoWS-only, no other ships got it either). 
• Japanese support carriers that drop naval mines.

Furthermore, the Russian balancing department seems to be hard-stuck in the mindset of "always more firepower," which will do a lot of long-term damage to the meta as ships continue to reload faster and shoot farther. If they haven't already, the design team will face significant constraints as ships without strong damage output will become unviable as products. The World of Warships team, though they occasionally fall in the 'moar dakka' trap, has shown itself to be much more surgical and circumspect in its balancing decisions, which will yield long term benefits in terms of maintaining a healthy PVP meta. 

A mention should also be made to the two servers' approach to re-working captain skills. The Russian server updated theirs in 0.13.3, which consisted of adding (mostly minor) secondary bonuses to various existing skills (see screenshots below). The WoWS 0.12.10 Captain skill rework, by contrast, re-worked several under-used skills (Heavy AP, Furious, Dazzle, Improved Repair Readiness, Pack a Punch), boosted useful quality of life skills (Preventative Maintenance, Consumables Specialist), and added more counter-play options against CVs (Focus Fire Training, AA + ASW Specialist). Though not all of those skills can be considered finished products, there is certainly a concerted effort to encourage more build diversity.

Spoiler

Mir Korabley Captain Skill 're-work' in 0.13.3

World of Warships Captain Skill Re-Work in 0.12.10

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Which version of the game is preferable depends largely on what aspect of warships is important to the player. For PvE players and those that enjoy the game for the beautiful images it can conjure to the screen, it is likely that Mir Korabley will have more to offer. For PvP players I think a strong case can be made that World of Warships has a healthier and more sustainable approach. It is still early going (at time of writing, it has been less than a year since the content split), so time will tell if these trends persist. 

 

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¹ It should be noted, however, that the Russian game has no equivalent to the D-Day PvE event.

² One of the things that folks say the Russian game has gotten "right" is the introduction of mini-map only spotting for CVs. I cannot for find any reference to this in the patch-notes for MK -- only an announcement for a test on their devblog. If someone knows where/when that was actually implemented on their live server, please let me know.

[Project45_Opytny]

Mir Korabli has adjusted their content "working focus" thanks to the massive change of player demographics. Like, they would celebrate V-E day (May 9th) in typical Russian fashion (in contrast to the D-Day anniversary this year in the west or a routine combat mission chain every May), Russian National Unity Day, National Day of Belarus, Maslenitsa, etc. The entire early 2024 has been dedicated to Soviet new contents: Severomorsk Dockyard, new Russian-Soviet battlecruisers, Kerch charity bundle (that all income from selling premium cruiser Kerch will be donated to Russian military veterans), Cosmonautics Day, and even commemoration of Aleksandr Pushkin, the Russian national poet.

The exact counterpart for D-Day event there seems to be a rather fantastical... expedition to the Antarctica and events relating with a secret project of an ocean raider battleship.

Besides they are going to introduce some new ships that seemed to be created under strong influence of hallucinogens... a destroyer branch, with laser-like (not joking) ballistics and balanced by having only DCP comsumable. A sarcastic comment is that such an insane branch is probably made only due to how poor native MK players have been in destroyers.

Another aspects include as how the game was designed, unless a catastrophic event (very ill advised and unwelcomed balance change/new content, significant political controvery, etc.) strikes, many veteran gamers are not going to abandon established accounts and start afresh, as WG has also been positively working on the game and successfully quelled much discontent by teasing the Commonwealth cruisers at the end of last year while MK announced super submarines and "Standard of Russian Viceroy of Far East". And as a part of the seperation, while WG's Global version has enabled many different paying methods, only local Russian and Belorussian paying methods are available for MK.

[Wolfswetpaws]

6 minutes ago, Project45_Opytny said:

Mir Korabli has adjusted their content "working focus" thanks to the massive change of player demographics. Like, they would celebrate V-E day (May 9th) in typical Russian fashion (in contrast to the D-Day anniversary this year in the west or a routine combat mission chain every May), Russian National Unity Day, National Day of Belarus, Maslenitsa, etc. The entire early 2024 has been dedicated to Soviet new contents: Severomorsk Dockyard, new Russian-Soviet battlecruisers, Kerch charity bundle (that all income from selling premium cruiser Kerch will be donated to Russian military veterans), Cosmonautics Day, and even commemoration of Aleksandr Pushkin, the Russian national poet.

The exact counterpart for D-Day event there seems to be a rather fantastical... expedition to the Antarctica and events relating with a secret project of an ocean raider battleship.

Besides they are going to introduce some new ships that seemed to be created under strong influence of hallucinogens... a destroyer branch, with laser-like (not joking) ballistics and balanced by having only DCP comsumable. A sarcastic comment is that such an insane branch is probably made only due to how poor native MK players have been in destroyers.

Another aspects include as how the game was designed, unless a catastrophic event (very ill advised and unwelcomed balance change/new content, significant political controvery, etc.) strikes, many veteran gamers are not going to abandon established accounts and start afresh, as WG has also been positively working on the game and successfully quelled much discontent by teasing the Commonwealth cruisers at the end of last year while MK announced super submarines and "Standard of Russian Viceroy of Far East". And as a part of the seperation, while WG's Global version has enabled many different paying methods, only local Russian and Belorussian paying methods are available for MK.

Given the ongoing reasons for the "split" of the game, much of the divergent paths of development makes total sense, in my opinion.
Each of the splits is catering (with the personnel and tools available) to their clientele.