We’re checking out World of Warships for our next “Things You Would Change About…” article, the latest in the “World of…” trilogy from developers Wargaming; set in WW2 like its sister titles players will find themselves captaining their own warships from various nations and pitting themselves in team based battles against players from around the world. With multiple maps and modes, a ton of ships that are unlocked through the technology tree, the game features a perfect strategic style gameplay that focuses on a slower gameplay pace, where planning and positioning are the words to live by when doing battle out on the open ocean. A great game overall, but here’s some think we think would make it even better.

• Long Queuing Times - High ranks suffer with extended queue times. It is unfortunate when you have a great game and it simply lacks the population, which in turn takes some of the fun out of the game due to the issues it brings up. For World of Warships it is the Matchmaking system trying to place players into games of similar MMR/skill levels to create balanced games (it fails on this in other ways) and so as you climb the ranks you have an ever dwindling pool of players to go up against. From around Rank 10 players will begin to noticed the protracted waiting times to get into a match, and from Rank 5 it can littler drift up towards the 30 minute marker. The game needs to prioritise these matches before they drift on for too long and putting players into any match just so they get to play, or at least giving them the option to set how long they are willing to wait before being randomly matched.


• Forcing Ship Purchases - You have to buy ships that you don’t even want. We like the tech tree in the World Of games quite a lot, there’s a whole bunch of vehicles available from different nations, different modules and components to buy to upgrade them, it gives a lot of customization. Players have to spend XP to research a new ship, which we get and think is fine, the problem is that they have to purchase previous ships and upgrade them before they can research a new one… this makes no sense to us. You have to buy a ship, whether you want it or not, and upgrade it partially before you can get access to a ship you want. It’s a huge money sink and a way to delay players getting to the later Tier ships. We’re not a fan of business plans where the game is made difficult/not fun but can be circumvented by paying cash, ie. buying the Premium ships for real money that don’t require any pre-requisite ships or tech. We say lose the requirements for buying earlier ships and just increase the amount of XP it costs to unlock the techs (which should still be done in order), maybe reducing the cost of the next tech if you spent currency to buy the previous ships, etc.


• Astronomical Repair Bills - Simply playing in battles costs so much in repairs. Ships, as often as not, are going to take a lot of damage in battles, that is the nature of the game, and so players must pay for repairs after the battle so that they can keep their ship running and sea worthy for other battles. It is another money sink obviously, but one that really takes its toll down the line when players are using the higher Tier ships and coming out with repair bills that are crippling, particularly if they are still trying to spend cash on new ships and modules. Once more this is a push to premium aspect of the game, with extra income from games to subscribed Premium accounts, but even then the costs are so high that Premium players struggle to keep paying them (heaven knows how free to play accounts manage), players are avoiding using some high tier ships because of the repair costs alone, and players in other ships that should be used more aggressively in a battle as part of their role are being overly cautious through fear of being sunk by the bill.


• New Game Modes - All three games revolve around the same game mode. There are three primary game modes that all revolved around two objectives; kill all the enemy team or capture a certain point by occupying it with your ship. Standard mode is both teams have base points that the enemy want to capture, Encounter has both teams fight over a single point and finally Domination has both teams fighting over the same points that can be contested. It’s all very samey. We’d love to see some more traditional style classic game modes like escorting a ships (AI NPC or player) to a certain location through waypoints, VIP where one member in both teams is marked as the Kill Target, anything to spice up the same point capture gameplay.


• No Penalty for Team Killers - Team Killers have free reign in the game right now. Whilst this may be changed at some point, and is likely more just a matter of time, we do feel it’s important enough that it needs to be up there. Killing Team Mates currently has no penalty, whether doing it to grief, or just being a little bit too wild and carefree with your shots, or even honest mistakes, the fact remains that other than your name changing colour to signify you are a Team Killer there’s no permanent penalty. We think TKers need to face increased costs across the board for killing members of their own nation, actions that from a concept point of view are costing your nation the war! This should be a big enough deterrent and hopefully make even the accidental killers a little more careful.

So that’s what we’d change with World of Warships, but more importantly what do you believe should be changed? What do you think could/should be added to improve the game? What would you add to your own personal wish list? Let us know what you think in the comments below!

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Source: Wargaming Press Release.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 25th, 2016 at 10:58 am and is filed under Articles, MMO News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.