98 thoughts on “World of Warships Developer Diaries 1

  1. Warships… are coming! :)

    2:30: its reelevant and iconic! </3

    edit: is it also wrong to say im actually the first to post without getting donkey'd or banned? ;_;

    edit 2: SerB spotted at 4:20

  2. 1:48, not just the case of clicking and shooting , but becomes the case of interaction and tactical thought
    Oh dear …

  3. U-Boats:
    - hard to detect
    - superior fire power
    - poor self defense capabillities

    “We won’t add it for the sake of it. It doesn’t add enough to the gameplay.”

    Artillery:
    - hard to detect
    - superior fire power
    - poor self defense capabillities

    “Here, have some special events to promote arty!”

      • Agreed. I bet it is more they didn’t want to render the underwater portion of the maps/undersides of ships.

        Why not make subs like the planes from aircraft carriers? Something that isn’t player controlled but is spawned when you play a destroyer.

      • the real difference is the fact that submarines were raiders who generally operated independently of the surface fleet (the Japanese being one of the exceptions) in order to harass enemy supply and only really had a limited number of torpedoes (about 4-6 not counting stern tubes). artillery on the other hand was much more integrated into the typical order of battle and was intended to give semi-sustained fire over an area throughout the course of a battle. Its more logical to have artillery support in a tank game than it is to have submarine support in a battleship game

        as much as i would like to be included, having submarines in WOWs really wouldn’t work because you’d fire your one or two torpedo salvoes (hope they kill something) and then have to go dark for the rest of the game, so im just content to play silent hunter instead

        • You don’t understand the means of the submarines. They are “the invisible killers”. They are a constant threat. I would use them even if i would be just shoot out 1 ship because i would know THEY ARE AFRAID OF ME. And this is the mental state i want in a game. (yes, i’m mentally ill that way :) )

          • The real difference is that you cannot name but one battle having both subs and surface ships together. Early subs are far too slow to keep up, have no means to communicate with surface ships unless surfacing etc… The subs vs no subs treads were epic on Wows forum, but it’s done now and I never saw an argument trump that one.

            otoh,
            Battery fire and tanks, yup that existed.

            • Name one battle where only tanks and battery were on the battlefield and i name a battle with subs and ships :)

    • I think maybe the point they are making is that a submarine has to get into at least a direct fire position to shoot something (can’t shoot over or around islands, for example) so that, once it shoots, it gets spotted and, since it was in a direct fire position to shoot, now finds itself in a direct fire position of it’s intended target. and therefore finds itself dead. Arty can shoot you clear across the map without any worry of getting spotted or shot in retaliation (unless CB, but hardly anyone does that anymore).

      • An U-Boat can fire and remain undetected too. But Bonesaw is kinda right, U-Boats are lone hunters rather then battle group assets.
        Still, arty doesn’t add enough to WoT either. As an anti-camper asset, it provokes the opposite imo. A lot of maps lose huge parts of playable ground because there is no arty cover while providing cover from direct fire.
        So you camp because that area is not safe to traverse.

        • Then flatten the maps in WoT. When you have no arty-safe spot on the map you won’t camp.
          In WoWs submarines would FORCE you to maneuver all the time!!!

          • You have to balance the maps for slow tanks too. So no cover is not really an option :)

            • Slower tanks have better armor, HE shells usually just make 1-2 HP damage to those tanks or detrack them. Light tanks can rush to arty in no time so they doesn’t need arty-free spots. Meds are too fast for arty to. So the real winners of “no shell from the sky” places are the camping TDs. Camping TDs make more chokepoints (“i won’t go around that corner, there is a TD that can oneshot me!”). But if i have to choose from: A., getting killed by a TD with one shot; or B., MIGHT BE killed by an arty with one shot; then i would go for B.
              Same with submarines.
              If the game will be already “fast paced” then why don’t they add a “campy, fragile, ‘freeXP’ asassin”? (yeah i know… Bigworld engine… would be hard to render undersea territory and the bottom of the ships…)

              • churchill, anyone? sorry, but on tier 5 there are more armored monsters, that are actually faster… :D

    • Remember the range.
      If submarines are implemented, it will like an artillery but with shooting range like a low tier machine gun.

      That will make you act like a landmine with little moving capabilities: no one will enjoy playing this, and will also create a very reasonable excuse for those AFK tomatoes:

      “Oh, it’s not my fault for doing nothing in the game, it’s just no ships got over my shooting range. You should have lead them to feed me, IT’S YOUR BAD”

    • U-Boats:
      - hard to detect – yep legit

      You forgot to mention they’d stay invisible before, during and after firing their weapons.

      Artillery:
      - hard to detect – what HAVE you been smoking, who supplied it, does he have any more?

      Well…once you let one of those bad boys rip…there’s no hiding anymore.

      Also, artillery leaves tracers, you can shoot at the point of origin of the tracer and bye bye arti. You can’t really do that with a Uboat, even if you see the torpedo’s trail, he gonna be loong gone.

      • Arties ARE hard to detect in WoT. Why? Because they can stay back and fire from out of spotting range. Plus a few layers of concealment and bam, invisible unless you stand right next to it.
        And the tracers are not exactly a reliable way to detect arty anymore.

        • Hidden arty -> scout -> dead arty

          Also in an arty, I tend to counter arty every few battles quite successfully (depends on my tier and if I feel like it).

          How can you counter sub, now?

          And I think that the biggest threat from subs is something different – botting and trolling at the ocean’s bottom, where it is practically invincible – you can’t expect enemy subs to find it in a reasonable amount of time.

          • Subs can’t fire from deep beneath the surface plus destroyers could easily work as a sub counter with depth charges.
            One could make it work but then, like with artillery, you’d have to implement a hole different mechanic to the game.
            The playstyle is just too different. Like it should be with artillery, but they just implemented it in a rather unrealistic way.

            • So… They roll with the “It’s too hard to implement things in this game, so fuck it, that much mechanic already in the game will be okay for 10 years.” attitude? Again?

              No wonder people start to turn to WT and AW. (and i bet there will be a new MMO navy game in the next 3 years)

              • to bad NF2 blew it, if they would have build on the frist one, but instead its even worse then NF…

        • How the hell are they hard to detect? Staying back out of spotting range doesn’t mean they’re hard to detect, it means they’re hard to reach!
          To be hard to detect means being actively hard to spot WHILE in spotting/detection range.

          You can detect them just fine, provided you can pass the other tanks alive in order to get into spotting range of one.

          Hurr durr, random arti hate

      • there are ways to make it balanced, let the submarine stay underwater for a limited ammount of time, then it’ll automatically emerge, have a timer before they can go back underwater (“filling the air barrels” or something like that).

        submarines are slow, really slow on surface. Thus, a submarine could be a weapon of mental warfare, you’d basically have to survive for some time, dodging like hell, then it’ll emerge and you could kill it easily. It certainly would add a LOT of tension to the game, which might became boring at times, “chasing the last destroyer around in a battleship” type of situation.

        So submarines could work extremely well in the hands of a skilled player, borderline OP I’d say. But noobs that would just submerge at the start of the battle would become easy prey for ships later on, when they’d be forcibly emerged.

        Also, did I mention they were slow? you just would not be able to react to changes on the battlefield, like a TOG, you’d choose your path at the beginning and that’s it.

        One last comment, I don’t like how they always compare it to WoT (“Imagine a light tank with quadruple KV-2 turrets”, comparing the battleship to a “Maus with SPGs on top”), we know how well it went the last time they tried to make a WoT replica in a different enviroment (looking at you WoWp) + NO FUCKING GAMEPLAY! WG, you can screw off with that pre-rendered BS, show us the game before you brag how good it’s going to be

        • The problems with Subs are mainly, they’d be hard to detect (picture Rhm camo), have absolutely devastating firepower (torpedos are purely below sea level damage, so you’d take water/bleed out) as well as to be even remotely usable, would have to have a fairly legnthy underwater time, as it’s hard to keep a surfaced sub (or boat, even) hidden on open water, which would mean it’s either crazy OP, or crazy UP.

          Balance would be the worst nightmare of even the most skilled teams, even if they had 3 years to do it.

          Honestly, I don’t see any way they could implement them, without it being simply game-breaking.

    • Key difference with this, however:

      SPGs: long ranged weapons that can shoot across the map.

      Submarines: has to close in to almost point-blank range in order to reliably hit a target with torpedoes.

      They’re actually closer to the Tank Destroyers in WoT. If anything’s similar to arty, it’s aircraft carriers.

    • As of April 11 the game is about 70-80% of what the developers want to have before going to Closed Beta. It will be done when it is done.

      • Will the closed beat be handled like in WoWp? (Like answering questions for joining)

        • IDK. But it seems it will haul people in the same way it did for the Alpha stage. At least, from what little has been said.

  4. No U-boot? Well this game is not for me then.
    BTW “World of Warships becomes not just the case of clicking and shooting; it really looks becoming more strategic interactions and tactical thoughts.” translates to me to “You will shoot everything to everywhere because you won’t know what the f*ck will happen to your ship in 2 seconds.”

  5. I’ll comment only when they actually show some gameplay footage.
    What they said in the video is something we know from months, but i guess it’s useful for people that didn’t follow until now what we know of WoWS.

    Submarines would be boring as hell to use in such an environment considering the low underwater speed and the fact you can’t use time compression like on Silent Hunter so to say.

    Plus they would have to develop some underwater environment too, add sonars and so on.

  6. They said all this about World of Warplanes… Im not getting my hopes up.

  7. They feel realism is important to players? So it will be possible to oneshot enemy ships?

    What about MTBs (Motor Torpedo Boats)?

    • It will be possible but rare, because HP will spread into every module, your only chance will be ammo detonation or totally destroying buoyancy for smaller ships.
      The smallest ship class in game is destroyer.

    • The guy speaking was an artist. He was talking about the graphics, and that’s basically the same deal in WoT: when thye say realism, they mean graphical fidelity. Because that’s what gamers want. Realism doesn’t sell games, graphics do.

    • Oneshotted ships weren’t common, it takes extreme luck to happen. Even the famous Bismarck VS Hood incident wasn’t a oneshot. Hood received several serious hits from Prinz Eugen before shots from Bismarck exploded the ship. While in a tank a penetration usually meant game over, a ship could withstand lots of hits. Of course torpedoes are much more dangerous.

  8. pls PEGI – “with brain” – (at least 16+ but thats not gonna happen :€)….because the potatoes will ruin the game experince even more than in tanks…”lowe noob” is nothing comparing to someone incompetent in aircraft carrier

    • That’s why WG’s shareholders are having gang-bang again. They’re happy about n00bs.

  9. Lets be honest here this is a video for the “normal guy” who likes wot but knows nothing about WW2, Tanks, Aircrafts,Ships,etc.
    I had to laugh when they made the wot comparisons. Its practically an insult to every one who is reading this blog.
    “Imagine a light Tank that has quadrupple Kv4 cannons on it” just omg….
    And why no submarines? Ma_Wo made a good comparion up above.
    But i think the real problem is that the big world engine will have problems realising air,see and underwater combat and it will be to much work to make waterbombs and a submarine vs submarine fight.

    Btw if someone wants to see how the game “could” work. Look for a game called Navyfield. Its only 2D but i think it has the basic mechanics coverd, like:
    How to aim,switching weapons,Ammo types,Torpedos,Submarines,Aircraft,AAA etc.

    • AH navyfield , that is a good game , had 14 000 battles on it before EU server closed.
      Every fan of navyfied is waiting for world of warship coming out i tell you, navyfield 2 is a failure.
      So naval warfare in 3D , wows could be the “new Navyfield”
      Having played on NF a while I can say that it is a good thing not have any sub in the game.

    • To be fair, most of the people that are watching these, mostly know about Tanks, and they’re running the comparisons through tanks, the firepower is rather reliable to that comparison, same as the usage characteristics. I do understand that the video is from the WoWs blog, but the majority of players are from the WoT train, not entirely new players.

      Such as Destroyers being more mobile, faster ships, while larger Battleships would be slower and lumbering behemoths.

      I also, am interested in how they run the control scheme, as I find that interesting.

    • Why would it? The reason behind the failure of WoWp is really that they tried to make it WoT with planes. And WoT being a heavily server-sided game, the slow pace is necessary, but that obviously doesn’t work will with planes. That’s not a problem with Warships.

      • “imagine a scout tank with 4 KV-2 guns…”
        I see they are trying to make a tank game on water and not a navy game. This was the same with WoWp (tank game in air). This is why it will flop.

        • Guess what? WoT isn’t really a tank game either as it’s got very little in common with actual armored warfare.. didn’t flop though.

    • It will probably be much better received than WoWP.

      I went to a WG Meet and Greet last year.

      One of the questions that came up for the crowd was “Who here is more interested in warships than warplanes”? And literally the ENTIRE crowd [except maybe 1 or 2 people] raised their hands.

  10. IJN’s warships are all gone now….good luck WG to have them HD in WoWS……and of course blame US for destroying most of them :p

    • Well almost all of the warships from the game period are gone, so its not just something related to the IJN.

      • Considering there are some photos, and plans are probably available, it’s probably not that hard to make a HD model.

        Give them enough resources, but not the object itself, and they probably could make a damn close one.

  11. Yes having Battleships with 16 inch guns battling it out with destroyers and there torps.

    Enter the nelson class a battleship with 16 inch guns and Torps :) those BL 16inch guns

    • I wonder if they will have the same spot system like in tanks.
      “NERF YAMATO’S CAMO NAO!!!” :D

    • Build up expectations for what it’s going to be. Do you think Activision only starts advertising Call of Duty when its already on the shelves, or that Titanfall adverts only started showing up after it was in open beta? Of course not! If they know about it before it comes out it builds up hype for the game, and that turns into buyers.

  12. It would be nice if there is submarine, because there a submarine that I want to see in the game, I-400 class submarine (I-400, I-401, I-402 completed) of Imperial Japanese.

  13. Torpedo boats (light tank like role, amazing mobility) and u-boats (artillery/TD like) could make game much more interesting than just big battleships everywhere. Maybe they can roughly balance it according to tonnage and numbers and limit u-boat count or make them slower than the rest.

    • U-Boats ARE slower then the rest of the ships in the game, underwater as a given, and on the surface there are only a handful of German u-boats that have anything called speed.

      On the surface with speed submarines are dead submarines… thats why they are submarines… if you want an surfaced submarine with speed and torpedoes get a destroyer. its much safer.

      And Torpedo Boats like submarines have no real armor and will die if something so much as looks in their direction.

    • Most ships in the game could probably outpace a submarine, and since they will have next to no armor and very, very limited destructive power (a handful of torpedoes which could miss their target).

      So, it’s slow, it’s poorly armored, has a literal handful of torpedoes which could easily miss what you point them at, and loads of other potential problems.

  14. I am imagining historical battles for this game already.

    Those would be some good fights. Sadly most of the ship-to-ship combat was WW1 I think in WW2 a lot of the big naval engagements were carrier based.

    Also they didn’t talk about Carriers all that much. I think carriers are a bit more important than they are letting on.

    • A common misconception, a great many naval battles were fought in ww2 with little or no carrier involvement. WW1 on the other hand only really had Jutland.

  15. I can not wait for the release of WoWs,I had followed the Dev’s blog recently,the game mechanics is rather interesting and different than WoT and I guarentee there will be paper ships( these ships are vital to fills the gaps in the tech tree) but however,the dev’s want to avoid use paper ships if possible.WoWs will most likely released at the end of this year or at the beginning of next year if the development is going on without problems.I think WoWs will become another big hit .

    The only future competitor that I know against WoWs will be when War Thunder release the ships part(Navy Field 2 is a failure from what I had heard and I also heard the Battlestation series had been killed,not sure if this is true though).Of course War Thunder ships will be more realistic and sim,no doubt about that ,so comparing them is not a good idea.Its not yet confirmed wether submarines will in War Thunder ships or not.

  16. So the most reasonable map to show was the one with erupting volcano. Why not a map with a fucking Godzilla coming out of the ocean to destroy Tokyo?

  17. No Subs, and no damage model, and aircaft are called in like arty strikes in war thunder, select a target, and a group of Avengers carrying torpedoes swoops in, amd then with a cooldown time before you do it again. NOPE, not even gonna waste my time downloading this junk. Mabey when war thunder ships comes out there will be something worth playing. But this is even worth my time reading about it.

    • You haven’t seen game-play. An actual description of game-play isn’t even out. And all you’re doing is assuming.

      Classy. I hope you enjoy your WarThunder Ships with ALL of those features you’ve stated, and continue with your hypocrisy in your future endeavors.

      With love,
      A guy who waits for a games release (not some loose generalizational comments), to judge a game.

  18. WOWS is the game that I have not lost interest at, lets hope it is good so WT ex WOT player might come back.to play WOWS.

  19. I am curious about the HMS furious like what might they do with it it was a seaplane carrier after its forward BL 18inch gun was taken off would it be classed as a aircraft carrier or would they decide to stick the 18inch gun back on? also i know this the BL 18inch gun did terrible damage to the furious though in 1917 having a BL 18inch gun the gun would probably split other battleships of that era in half

  20. Or the Lexingtons that were designed as battlecruisers, changed to carriers, but still had the 8 inch guns of heavy cruisers.

    Or how about the half battleship half carrier things the Japanese had.

  21. No submarines, huh? Well, there goes one of the reasons I was considering ever trying out this game.

    • He said that U boats would be too powerfull but as soon as they surface there too vulnerable. that reminds me Artillary OP gun but dies instantly if spotted

      • Except that torpedoes are only really effective at about point-blank range (due to their being much slower than the shells from a battleship’s guns, for example), whereas arty can fire across the map.

  22. I’m almost certain submarines would be in if the Soviet subs in WWII had a stirring battle record worthy of song and Hollywood movies.

    But they don’t so they aren’t.