E3: World of Warships – First Impressions

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Thanks to WARLOCK360100 for sending me this. This text was originally published on another site and I am not its writer (the author of the text was one of the few lucky ones who apparently saw the E3 playable WoWs demo). However, given the fact that the aforementioned site copypastes FTR stuff without so much as asking on regular basis, I do not feel in any way obliged to post the original source here.

World of Warships was one of the most impressive demos we saw at E3 2014. While Wargaming.net first showed a recording of pre-alpha footage in a theater presentation during last year’s show, this year the company demonstrated real-time gameplay against AI opponents in the current alpha build. What we witnessed makes us fear for our free time: World of Warships is likely to devour our lives when it releases, much like World of Tanks first did.

The premise of WoWS is similar to both World of Tanks and World of Warplanes; if you have played one of these Wargaming.net titles, you will instantly feel at home. There is the familiar out-of-battle interface, tech trees with up to ten tiers for a number of nationalities, instant-action PvP, and maps with base capture mechanics. Ship classes include destroyers, cruisers, battleships and aircraft carriers.

The gameplay we saw focused on cruiser combat, generalist vessels with moderate speed, maneuverability, firepower and a mix of torpedoes and guns. The cruiser used in the demo had a seaplane scout aircraft, which was launched at the start of the battle. Aircraft are flown by AI but follow waypoints selected by the player on an overhead map view; the first phase of the engagement involves ships launching their scouts and hunting for the enemy fleet.

In the 2013 version of World of Warships it was possible to fire a ship’s cannon with two modes: sniper and artillery. Artillery mode, which used an identical method to that in World of Tanks, has now been removed. According to the developers, artillery fire incentivized players to hang back and shell one another rather than engaging rapidly, so now all ship cannons work only in a direct fire mode.

Camera options have expanded: there are chase cameras for both your aircraft and torpedoes, allowing players to see through their scout’s eyes directly, or to watch as their torpedoes slam into the hull of a target. This is very impressive to witness, and adds to the grand cinematic feel of the naval combat.

While a ship’s cannon have a traditional crosshair/zoom targeting system, torpedoes have a dynamic spread mechanic. A player can adjust the width of the spread of his flight of torps, with a narrow spread when at close range and high accuracy fire, and a wider spread for long range, less accurate shots. Torpedo salvos when combined with the optional chase camera have a nail-biting ‘will or won’t it’ effect as you watch them close in on their target.

Vessels now have two metrics for health: hit points and buoyancy. If either bar hits zero, the ship sinks; some weapon systems will have more of an impact on buoyancy than on hit points.

The ship models are impressively detailed, as we have come to expect from Wargaming.net and their penchant for archival research and blueprint-based modeling. The ships we saw ranged from the pre-Dreadnaught era (approximately 1905) through World War II.

The ship classes appear to be a classic rock, paper, scissors scheme, with aircraft carriers as an intruiging real-time strategy gameplay wildcard. Destroyers are quick and hard-hitting with torpedoes yet very fragile; Cruisers are generalists with cannon, torpedoes and scout planes; Battleships are slow and heavily armored with the iconic main batteries. Meanwhile, the Aircraft Carriers can command their aircraft squadrons along waypoints from a top-down RTS-esque map view, and must remain protected by their team against direct combat. We know of four types of planes available on WoWS’s carriers: scouts, interceptors, dive bombers and torpedo bombers. No kamikazes, no submarines.

Despite the stately pace of naval battles in the real world, the developers were eager to demonstrate how rapidly the opposing teams meet and clash in World of Warships. We saw a first engagement time of approximately one minute before contact from hostile destroyers and combat gameplay.

World of Warships is easily one of my most anticipated PvP titles on the horizon. We spaceship enthusiasts are often naval warfare buffs, and we haven’t seen a quick-fix naval combat MMO since the venerable sprite-based Navyfield. WoWS is stunning to watch, and grabbed me viscerally; the E3 alpha demo already looks better than many published games. Wargaming.net has stated that they hope to have WoWS in closed beta later this year.

PS: I would like to ask you to respect my decision in this case and not spam the source in comments, whoever wants to find it can google it anyway, this is a matter of principle. Thank you.

60 thoughts on “E3: World of Warships – First Impressions”

  2. …. “AI opponents”?

    Good that WG is learning from its mistakes and adding their own bots :D

    “According to the developers, artillery fire incentivized players to hang back and shell one another rather than engaging rapidly, so now all ship cannons work only in a direct fire mode.”

    I wonder if that means WG would take away arty from WoT if they could.

  3. The whole thing can only work by relying on good teamwork – much more then in WoT.
    So that might be the main issue.

    • This is what makes me laugh, getting any type of team work from ONE other player (let alone more than one) is almost impossible in WoTs (at least on the SEA server) and WoWS will rely more heavily on team work? Now THAT should be interesting…… (read: horribly frustrating/futile/a big fat waste of time)

    • Thats not true WOT can`t do shit without teamates. Its why a EXCELLENT player who is godly can still only win 60% of matches by himself.

    • I’m not sure if this game fails. It may be the better game experience as WoWP, but I see other problems:
      - It’s a game from WG, and you will have to deal with the same crap staff as you know them already from WOT.
      - It’s well known that WG’s first priority is money, they will “balance” the game to make more money and on the other side they will never be able to deliver a game with proper testing and a working infrastructure.
      - What I’m said – it’s much more dependent on teamplay. And we all know how good teamplay is working in WOT. WG manages to have a common player base with same intelligence as their staff – something you “can” call human being – but not more.

      • ad1 what crap you mean? Only bad things in WoT is bad optimalisation and engine, and community of litle whining bastards:

        Scenario I
        -russians are so OP-> they add WT100 -> oh WT100 is so OP -> nerf WT100 -> oh no they nerf my favourite tank WT100.

        Scenario II
        -This is so unhistorical game->add historical battle -> this aint fun i will not play this shit!

        Scenario III
        -Arty is so OP -> nerf arty -> oh no they nerf arty’s -> Noobs only camp, TD are so OP -> nerf TD-> oh no they nerf TD!

        Scenario IV
        -WThunder has better graphics -> do HD models -> omg my PC i want SD models i cant play!
        I am still amazed why WG listen of all this bullshit and do what community want.

        And the best of the best scenario that i whish will never come true:
        -I want Skill based MM-> WG make this -> oh no i got only to games with noobs..
        And now i tell you a secret: thats because you are to fcn nooob, like 80% of playerbase and you will play only with retards similar to you… (dont take it personaly Astronus – you mean all whining readers)

        ad2 cash politics in WG is still 1000x mutch better then gajin’s one (that pay to get everything in WT is so terrible)

        cheers

        .

    • +1 agree
      I would rather broke my PC playing the WoWS than seeing those CGIs . really, my PC near broke when i play Warthunder with medium settings…

      • I can run Warthunder at high detail on my lowly PC whereas WoT runs poorly and gives me headache! I’m interested in WoWS but having experienced WG fails and bad decisions I’ll not be holding my breath.

    • Some is fine, but I was kind of disappointed they didn’t give us much at E3. Kind of hard to keep the hype going with just impressions and nothing to look at ourselves.

    • I know, but apart from starting to leak stuff from WoWs Alpha (which I really don’t want to do) it’s the best we got. I think we’ll see more info on Gamescom.

    • As an Alpha Tester, i can say this: It’s fun, if needing more brainpower than WoT.

          • In Alpha also. Disagree. Cutting the tomatoes out will still leave a good player base due to the fact that unlike WoWP, WoWS is fun.

            Besides, that’s >if< it cuts the tomatoes out. So many people in WoT have no clue, suck beyond all possible possibility, but still have fun with the game (no, not me, I'm just kinda average, and have fun)

  7. I only wish they redo Pacific Storm with these new graphics and better AI.
    I’d rather play that than wows.

  8. Wargaming.net should add Historical Battle. Almost all historical battle happen in the Pacific. For example, Battle of the Philippine Sea.

    I can’t wait for Close Beta. :)

    • Are you fucking kidding? “Almost all historical battles took place in the pacific”. What a joke, all battles that happened in wwii were historical, by your logic as well, the naval battles that happened in the Mediterranean, North Sea, English Channel, Battle of Narvik, Denmark straight and the Atlantic Ocean was only a scratch compared to what happened in the Pacific Ocean was it?

      • @bodlat just lay down and play dead…he’ll lose interest.

        Next time be careful not to antagonize the Autie with Naval Battles Throughout History as his special interest. They roam this here environment.

  9. So i did google this source. On the past 4 pages on that website (representing roughly the previous 3 weeks) i didn’t find a single FTR article. SS certaintly applying double standards again. “OMG, you burn my village, i burn your village, let’s burn all the villages!”. All the more reason i barely check this blog anymore. You should take a note from TotalBiscuit, he’s a lot more honest and reasonable in what he does, and above all has standards.

  10. You see… i’m(and several of my friends) are wondering “how is WG going to ruin this game?”(just like it did with previous games with retarded mechanics), seeing the insane delays it’s showing(long overdue) is not encouraging.
    One of the MAIN things a lot of us question(reading some dev blog answers as well) and that you should too is:
    Considering the WOWS map are going to be BIG(at least 10km^2 and bigger) AND that ships move at ~30kph(with very slow acceleration mind you), and that WG said the game time should not be longer than in tanks(they’re aiming at 10min~), then how is WG going to ruin the gameplay to meet those retarded goals?

    and now this interview is starting to show how the game is devolving exactly as we feared:
    1) no “long range” mode for guns, which means your 40km+ main gun range is going to be USELESS as it devolves into a LoS shooter that will only be useful at 5~10km at the most(and knwoing WG they will implement some stupid artificial “drawrange” probably), so much for director and radar FCS…., so it encouraged people to “sit back and fire” wow, you don’t say, you mean like in a REAL NAVAL BATTLE?!?…..

    2) aaaand here we go, “hitpoints”, much fun as in he beginning they never said this, as they where going to model modules and compartments -just like in a real ship- to prevent “let’s shoot at this tiny portion of the vehicle -a hatch- over and over until HP goes to 0″ retarded WOT/WOWP gameplay, but noope, no sir, this is WG, they NEED to retard a game for the lowest demographic, and to add insult to injury now you have TWO HP systems that essentially halve your survivability(as it’s the lowest of the two that counts). That “buoyancy” is just a thin veiled HP system made for the retards on small ships who will be spamming torpedoes so that they have a chance to down your big BB or CV.

    All in all this interview has just started to confirm my biggest fears and lower my -already very skeptical- hopes for this game(in fact i’m looking forward to WT naval forces which will implement proper realistic FCS and no retard-catering hitpoint system)

    • I think you have already known that WG doesn’t make a simulator game that simulates how a tank/ship battles work so you should stop expecting them to make WoWS to be the same on what you’ll get in a simulator since WG just wants to give it’s players an arcade type battle with historical tank or ships. In short WG just want to give it’s players some fun without worrying too much about how you destroy a tank/ship if you don’t want that kind of enjoyment then the game is not for you.

    • OMG you anti HP guys are so funny. You realize even if they model compartments that they would have HP`s right?

      You have to tell a computer how much DMG the DMg model can take before it floods etc. Everything is math.

      So the whole “WT doesnt use HP`s and is way more realistic” is crap it just rellies 5x more on RNG. SOmetimes you will hit a BT7 and bounce and sometimes you will decimate it.

      All games have HP`s you then have to decide how much random + or – each shot does in DMG.

      Also the floating system is realistic, even if a ship was unsinkable doesnt mean it wasnt useless. Put so much water in a ship it can`t move and just sits there getting hammered and the ship should be TKO`d

      HP=Knockout
      Buoy= TKO

    • whine somewhere else, if you dont like the combat system in WOT go play farmvile

    • So you want a realistic sim where naval battles would be waged at long range over hours or days? *YAWN*

      And there is a reason for hit points, it has been proven time and time again over many many years of games development to work and enhance game play, i.e. more fun for all players.

      Tell me what games do you like? I’m guessing it would be a pretty short list of failed games…

      And on a side note, as an ex Navy Field player I can tell you that you have nothing to fear with the greater need for team work, this is not the sort of game that a Zombie sticks with and vessel class roles are more clearly defined so people will actually do what they are meant to do and work together. Destroyers will not sit on a ridge sniping, carriers will not rush a flank etc. The sort of player that will play WoWs will have a higher propensity to understand what they are doing, it will never appeal to the mass market and be flooded by retards like WoT!

      • ASSuming much are you(about the “failed games”?, i do come from a very heavy sim background(very succesful ones btw)

        the reason for HP is to cater to arcadetards, period.

        i rather play a day long realistic hunt the bismarck mission than a bastard arcade version anyday, full of excitement all day long

  11. actually sounds quite good…
    but only gameplay will tell, all hype until you play,
    play play play.

    but i have good feeling that will not be bad as World of CrapAirplanes or as bad as Warthunder GF.

    shame that it’s F2P, hate those games, i want to sub.

  13. Being an Alpha tester, some information are not really right. However, due to NDA, I cannot say what is wrong and there is always a possibility of different build used by the WG in E3 for demo

  14. Thanks Silent,

    I don’t go to “them” for news, but to you so thanks for the article. That said, take the high road and source your info, even if they are cowardly thieves and do not do so.

    • I agree SS…be the bigger man, not the equal bitch ;) They might learn by example, and then you have done a good thing :D

  15. “According to the developers, artillery fire incentivized players to hang back and shell one another rather than engaging rapidly, so now all ship cannons work only in a direct fire mode.”

    Isn’t that what warships did?They didn’t sidescrape with battleships, surely.