WoWS, Philosophy & Freedom: A comment on 'Video worth watching' thread and WoWS 'Original Sin'

[ArIskandir]

2 hours ago, Daniel_Allan_Clark said:

Marxist ideas are proven falsities.

What is your goal in continuing to use them?

Dude, you are the one providing the Marxist spin around here. My point is and has always been the need to reach out to and accept there's a 'dissimilar other' with whom you need to share the space and work along to the common goal of existing in a shared environment. This applies to both the game and RL.

[ArIskandir]

2 hours ago, Unlooky said:

>thread about world of warships philosophy

>two pages of arguments about communism 

 

lol what

 

Well, whoever established the design philosophy and general guidelines of WoWS appears to have had a 'communist' upbringing and some of their ideology permeated the design, at least that's my observation. 

The whole point of the thread is to express the need to find a solution to interacting and working along 'dissimilar' people.

[Daniel_Allan_Clark]

3 minutes ago, ArIskandir said:

Well, whoever established the design philosophy and general guidelines of WoWS appears to have had a 'communist' upbringing and some of their ideology permeated the design, at least that's my observation. 

The whole point of the thread is to express the need to find a solution to interacting and working along 'dissimilar' people.

I just don't see the design of the game following a communist upbringing. If anything, it shows the post-communist klepto-capitalist viewpoint that was heavily prevalent in Russia when I was there in the early 2000s.

As I stated earlier in the thread, I do not see that your assumptions about the game design line up with my observations of the game or it's staff at all.

[ArIskandir]

1 hour ago, 3LUE said:

The thing is, from childhood on, we are taught that if you want to succeed, you need to be the best you can be. All through school, the best athletes get on the sports teams, the best students get the honors, and when it comes to sports and education, the best get the scholarships. Then, when we start a job, the best get promoted, and the rest linger in the lower-paying areas. Being the best you can be is ingrained in our lives from birth. Many of us take that into our gaming world as well. Many of us look at failure as just that, a failure, and we must strive to not fail again. So we work hard at being as good at things as we can be, and we have a hard time understanding why others do not. 

I'm sure many of us here were raised under the same principles, me included. We take for granted that's 'the way' of things, but it's a mathematical fact for each 'succesful' individual, there's many that 'fail' on different degrees, what about them? what do we do with them? ... many people will never 'succeed', for multiple and varied reasons; if the world 'belongs to the successful' what are they supposed to do?, what if the threshold for 'success' is ever higher and less and less people is able to reach it?

[Wolfswetpaws]

We're all human and we all bleed red.

[ArIskandir]

8 minutes ago, Daniel_Allan_Clark said:

I just don't see the design of the game following a communist upbringing. If anything, it shows the post-communist klepto-capitalist viewpoint that was heavily prevalent in Russia when I was there in the early 2000s.

I see both the communist undertones and the wild lawless klepto-capitalist outgrowth, but that's my perspective; obviously different people will reach different conclusions and as I've been repeating, that's the point I want to stress: we may have diverging opinions, and that shouldn't be a problem

[Daniel_Allan_Clark]

12 minutes ago, ArIskandir said:

I see both the communist undertones and the wild lawless klepto-capitalist outgrowth, but that's my perspective; obviously different people will reach different conclusions and as I've been repeating, that's the point I want to stress: we may have diverging opinions, and that shouldn't be a problem

The only part of communist era stuff they pull from seems to be the penchant for sanctimonious PR communications that are blatant falsehoods.

Of course, that is also part of the capitalist ideology.

[Ensign Cthulhu]

3 hours ago, tangofan said:

The problem with your statement is that the pervasive anti-Communist phobia that shines though in this thread is a US-specific thing.

No, it's not. I lived my first 40 years in Australia and my parents emigrated from Italy as children. 

Every time it has been tried, it has failed, with abject misery for all who weren't explicitly the oligarchs in charge. 

[3LUE]

1 hour ago, Wolfswetpaws said:

Because it is a game and not a job?
A hobby? 
A passtime or drinking-game?
It's been explained earlier in this topic that not everyone shares the same motivations or commitment to playing WOWs at "tournament level" of proficiency.  🙂 

For myself, I've decided that I'm not going to lose sleep over the results of a game with 23 other people who have a fair chance of meeting each other for the first time and haven't had time to extensively train together.

Your expectations are more aligned with a permanent work-force of employees or volunteers who are training together in preparation for entering a battle together as a complete team, or at least a division.

 

1 hour ago, ArIskandir said:

I'm sure many of us here were raised under the same principles, me included. We take for granted that's 'the way' of things, but it's a mathematical fact for each 'succesful' individual, there's many that 'fail' on different degrees, what about them? what do we do with them? ... many people will never 'succeed', for multiple and varied reasons; if the world 'belongs to the successful' what are they supposed to do?, what if the threshold for 'success' is ever higher and less and less people is able to reach it?

I don't care about the fact that there are players who play badly. People fail at things in life; we all do. What bothers me are the players who do not care that they play badly and they do not spend one second of their time trying to improve their gameplay.  What separates people is that there are those of us who try and improve and those who do not and are content to continue failing no matter who it affects. If you have the time to play, you have the time to try and get better. Watching a video or two and reading some advice somewhere is never a bad idea. 

 Good or bad I am not wired to deal with failing without making an effort to improve. But I do understand what you both are saying.

Edited June 15 by 3LUE

[Wolfswetpaws]

1 hour ago, 3LUE said:

 

I don't care about the fact that there are players who play badly. People fail at things in life; we all do. What bothers me are the players who do not care that they play badly and they do not spend one second of their time trying to improve their gameplay.  What separates people is that there are those of us who try and improve and those who do not and are content to continue failing no matter who it affects. If you have the time to play, you have the time to try and get better. Watching a video or two and reading some advice somewhere is never a bad idea. 

 Good or bad I am not wired to deal with failing without making an effort to improve. But I do understand what you both are saying.

I think your sentiments are understandable, as a concept and as a common mindset among the spectrum of player's attitudes and perspectives.

That said, I take this opportunity to point out that it is an expectation that you have.
And, apparently, it is often an un-met expectation.
As a coping method, I suggest "letting it go".  But, that's merely a suggestion.

As your words indicate in your last sentence, you seem to "get it" even if you don't like it.  🙂 

[SunkCostFallacy]

A most intriguing post, which I am going to have to derail slightly by being prosaic.
 
If we look at the issue from the other side ... that of the game designer/developer (as distinct from the parasites like managers and marketers) we quickly arrive at the fact that World of Warships cannot support anything other than a "everyone in together" approach to match making.   
 
In short ... the game has never been big enough to make any other kind of match making viable.  
 
There have been a number of posts, over the years, in the various forums (e.g. reddit, the old forums, and here) which highlight many problems with trying to implement a more (shall we say) nuanced match maker. Whatever style of nuance you try to implement ... at the end of the day the player pool just isn't BIG enough to make it work properly.
 
At this point I feel the need to inject that I, personally, dislike the "all together" aspect at times. During dockyards, for instance, COOP becomes a right pain in the aft with all the PVP players flooding in and playing like intellectually impaired moths flocking to a flame^1. I'm not just talking about their ardent pursuit of whatever mission goal they are after ... I'm talking about the fact that their behavior is frequently detrimental to the players around them. In the last 3 weeks of the dockyard I noticed that I was frequently being rammed by team mates who were either too focused on their goal to care that there was a player in their way, or too stupid to pay attention to the minimap². So while I would actually LIKE to see a PVE mode where the PVP types could NOT go to ruin it for those of us who play PVE ... I know that there just aren't enough players to make that possible.
 
Ok ... now on to the philosophic aspects.
 
We see, based on the above, that the game's design is constrained by real-world reality. WoWS was NEVER going to be a really big game so the designers had to take that into account when they decided how to handle match making.
 
The same with political ideologies. Every political 'philosophy' succeeds or fails to the extent that it survives contact with the real world.  
 
To be contrary, for example ... I'll have a shot at Democracy. We'll take what I call "Warm Body Democracy" as the example. Everyone deemed "adult" in a state has the right to vote. All you have to do is be over the required age, alive, and you get to vote on whatever issue it is that's being decided³. There's a problem with that however: Not everyone in any given electorate is going to exert the same amount of effort in deciding how to cast their vote. Some people will research the issue(s) and attempt to consider the long term implications of an issue before casting their vote. Others however, will believe what some rampantly biased celebrity tells them and just cast their vote that way.
 
Like any political ideology, Warm Body Democracy has MAJOR flaws, because the basic assumption that everyone in the electorate is equally qualified to decide on the issue(s) at hand is demonstrably false. Marxism's flaws are different. Anarchism's flaws are different. But they are ALL flawed in one way or another.
 
Now to return to WoWS. It is arguable that some decisions taken by the management have been disliked by the majority of players. It is OBVIOUS that you can't make everyone happy. You just can't. Let's hypothesise that WG design, implement, and then GIVE everyone a premium ship for FREE. We all know that there will be people complaining about it for some reason.
 
Thus with any political ideology: No political ideology is going to be universally hailed as 'the way'. Someone, somewhere, will find cause to complain about it. And someone, somewhere, will be entirely willing to overlook the flaws of their political ideology.
 
But as we noted discussing Warm Body Democracy ... some opinions are going to be better informed, and more accurate, than others. Some opinions are going to be formed by those who have been told "this is what you should think" and others are formed by people doing their own research and deciding what they think themselves.
 
The only test of it is, at the end of the day, how it survives in the real world.
 
 
 Cool topic @ArIskandir
 
 
1. If you're a PVP main and don't act like an idiot when you go into COOP, then you aren't in the category of PVP-filth. I don't make gross generalizations (except for humor) and don't think all PVP players suck.
 
2. More ramming than in any other dockyard. Which begs the question ... is the player quality decreasing or is the player arrogance increasing? Food for thought.  
 
3. Of course we know that "alive" doesn't necessarily apply in some countries

[Ensign Cthulhu]

6 hours ago, SunkCostFallacy said:

More ramming than in any other dockyard. Which begs the question ... is the player quality decreasing or is the player arrogance increasing? Food for thought.  

My personal experience (and I was on the receiving end many times) is that it seemed to be restricted to battleship players.

Now I know I've been on the BB end of that a few times, but I at least try to apologize in chat, even if it's a brief SORRY. Getting even that much from the BB that's unceremoniously shoved me out of the way is the soft answer that turneth away wrath, and I'll compliment anyone who goes to the trouble.

My general feeling about "PVP filth" is that they fight like they're in Randoms, which means they leave damage on the table (which is good for the co-op mains) and they sometimes hide when they should be fighting (which can sometimes be very bad for the co-op mains). It tends to balance off, because a "PVP-filth" is like a braindead-type green bot (they block you, they turn into your torps, they fight like a newborn kitten that's born without legs) and I've had enough experience of being the only human in PTS co-op that I can compensate for this. But yeah, it can be annoying as hell. 

 

Overall I couldn't care who's in battle with me. They could be any race, they could be any sex, we could have aliens in orbit who are among the very few who've kept their default Player[long string of numbers] all the way to Tier 10 (because they're unaware of the nuances of human languages and/or don't want to risk giving themselves away). Some of us are struggling in life; others buy everything WG puts out the moment it hits the shop, gift things to friends and spam hundreds or even thousands of dollars of gifted subscriptions in Twitch chat. 

But all that is hidden behind our usernames and the fact that for the most part, we don't share our faces and voices. Generally, the only way we know is when one of us is a streamer with a facecam. By their works shall ye know them, the Bible says, and so I judge them by how they fight. I've seen trash trolls that I couldn't stand to be in a battle with get good, to the point where I now say hello to them whenever I see them. 

I'm sure I'm not the only one who's like this. I'm sure most of us are like this. You want an open and accepting playerbase? WOWS is it. But the nature of the game demands that the playerbase be a meritocracy.

[pepe_trueno]

The original sin was forcing teamplay between strangers with no means to deal with the player not doing his job.

 

any game were characters have defined roles say tank, healer and blaster if one of them decide to go rogue like for instance the healer stops buffing and decide he wants to do damage then the whole team would colapse. Same happens here we depend to much on the team so when someone fail to do their part the rest of the team gets mad.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Ensign Cthulhu]

12 minutes ago, pepe_trueno said:

The original sin was forcing teamplay between strangers with no means to deal with the player not doing his job.

But how, short of clan battles or full-division operations, do you fix that?

[Zysyss]

46 minutes ago, Ensign Cthulhu said:

But how, short of clan battles or full-division operations, do you fix that?

Even in clan battles, when you play against lower win rate clans, you see their players not doing their job. A lot of it has to do with people understanding their role, which many players do not. You see this at random when a BB wants a CA to tank for them and when a full HP BB is afraid to scratch the paint or a CA suicide right at the start. You will see the same thing with lower win rate clans in clan battles. Way too many players do not understand the roll of their ship. When you try and help them way too many times, you are either ignored or told that they do not care and it is just a game. To be honest, I do not think there is anything we or WG can do to change this. Sadly, a large chunk of the player base would rather just let their guns pew pew, then die and go to the next battle. They do not care if they create losses or make the game miserable for those who play to win. This is one of the big reasons good players are either leaving the game or have stopped playing random battles. In turn, less good players playing randoms just makes the whole thing worse. 

Edited June 15 by Zysyss

[Wolfswetpaws]

1 hour ago, pepe_trueno said:

The original sin was forcing teamplay between strangers with no means to deal with the player not doing his job.

 

It may have gotten lost in the excitement of this topic, but just to be clear....
"We are players, not referees."

Whenever necessary, you can create a customer service ticket.  🙂 

[Ensign Cthulhu]

1 hour ago, Zysyss said:

Even in clan battles, when you play against lower win rate clans, you see their players not doing their job.

Oh for sure, but you have to gain experience somehow, and screwing up in lower leagues is how. But at that point, it's on whoever leads that clan's team to weed out an underperformer - either from the CB team or the clan as a whole, as they see fit - and say no, you're just not good enough, keep practising and we'll consider trying you out again later.

The simple fact is that some players are not as good as others and never will be, no matter how hard they apply themselves. If all of WOWS was clan battles, these people would find their own level in some "mild rain-shower" league, where they could screw up and still achieve a modicum of success - but it isn't. 

My point is that operations divisions and clan battles are the only parts of WOWS in which a team can be choosy about who they let on, which ships they all take etc., and get that sorted and everyone on the same page before they hit the battle button. Which as @pepe_trueno correctly points out, is NOT true for any other mode. Yes, you can assemble divisions, but depending on the mode, your entire group might only comprise one third to one quarter of the entire team...

[USMC2145]

Sad but true, most players playing random PVP could not care any less about PVP. They just want to hear their guns go boom, look at their pretty ships, and sail around aimlessly. They do not care about winning, stats, how to play, or anything else related to playing PVP. They die and just move on to the next game and do it all over again without any care. There is nothing you, WG, or I can do to change this. The bad part is that this is making the game slowly bleed players, good and bad. Will this kill the game, maybe? It has for sure killed the game for many of the good players, and I do not think that is going to change either. I rarely play anymore and have been here since September 3, 2015, and have seen how the game has changed over the years. 

[pepe_trueno]

14 hours ago, Ensign Cthulhu said:

But how, short of clan battles or full-division operations, do you fix that?

The fix is not to separate players but to make players performance less dependant on the team. It can go from top 3 players of the losing side get the win bonus and bottom 3 players of the win side get defeat bonus to reworking the spotting mechanics to something where the entire team is not doomed if the scouts die early or decide not to do their part.

[clammboy]

41 minutes ago, pepe_trueno said:

The fix is not to separate players but to make players performance less dependant on the team. It can go from top 3 players of the losing side get the win bonus and bottom 3 players of the win side get defeat bonus to reworking the spotting mechanics to something where the entire team is not doomed if the scouts die early or decide not to do their part.

In all honesty I don't t know if that's a good idea. At the slightest hint of a loss people would go into the farming save a star mode. I really don't think giving anyone win bonuses for losing is a good idea.

I understand the concept but I don't think this would work as planned. The spotting idea could be good though.

[Daniel_Allan_Clark]

56 minutes ago, pepe_trueno said:

The fix is not to separate players but to make players performance less dependant on the team. It can go from top 3 players of the losing side get the win bonus and bottom 3 players of the win side get defeat bonus to reworking the spotting mechanics to something where the entire team is not doomed if the scouts die early or decide not to do their part.

Reworking concealment is badly needed.

[ArIskandir]

16 hours ago, Ensign Cthulhu said:

But how, short of clan battles or full-division operations, do you fix that?

 

1 hour ago, pepe_trueno said:

The fix is not to separate players but to make players performance less dependant on the team. It can go from top 3 players of the losing side get the win bonus and bottom 3 players of the win side get defeat bonus to reworking the spotting mechanics to something where the entire team is not doomed if the scouts die early or decide not to do their part.

I think it wouldn't be possible to isolate the individual experience from the team's performance on a game mode like Randoms. To isolate the individual experience you'll require a different Game mode, something Raid (loot) oriented like Key battles

[ArIskandir]

36 minutes ago, Daniel_Allan_Clark said:

Reworking concealment is badly needed.

Concealment is THE core mechanic. How would you rework it without needing to remake the Game?

[Asym]

On 6/15/2024 at 6:06 AM, Ensign Cthulhu said:

...

I'm sure I'm not the only one who's like this. I'm sure most of us are like this. You want an open and accepting playerbase? WOWS is it. But the nature of the game demands that the playerbase be a meritocracy.

Oh my, first I am late to this thread; apologies...  Real life always gets in the way of recreation.

The game is not designed to be a meritocracy at all.  To answer that sentence:  to what end - how?  We can have anything we can pay for now !?  What are we "limited in doing?" that a meritocratic process has skill gates for? 

@Ensign Cthulhu in bold above simply is incorrect....  the nature of the game is to have fun !  Otherwise, we'd have all of the meritocratic controls for level progression, buying of better tools and "gates" you'd have to earn your way into playing in them....  We don't have any of that.....

It's just a money making platform for those whom seek to have some fun after they come back from the "range" or the "course"  in 90 degree weather practicing to increase their "score" through sweat....

We still love your responses........!

 

[pepe_trueno]

58 minutes ago, ArIskandir said:

Concealment is THE core mechanic. How would you rework it without needing to remake the Game?

Concealment has been a problem even before world of warships was launched. Back to the old world of tanks, maps where open and had foliage all over the place. The result? everyone camping behind a bush while scouts jumped from bush to bush looking for a target, First to be spotted was obliterated by a bunch of invisible tanks... does that sound familiar?

 

eventualy camping got so bad in world of tanks WG hit the nuclear button and removed a lot of foliage aswell as started adding chokepoints and tall obstacles to prevent sniper from having a field day on anyone spoted.

 

at this point all i can say is

  

Edited June 16 by pepe_trueno