Tijdens ons bezoek aan de Lesta Studio in Sint Petersburg hebben we de genoegen gehad om met Philip Molodkovets, ook wel Sub_Octavian genoemd, te praten over de nieuwe aircraft carriers (CV) build. Voor de mensen die nog niet weten hoe wat dit onhoud, zie hier de video.
Terwijl we de nieuwe gameplay aan de tand hebben gevoeld komen een aantal vragen naar boven. En dit moesten we natuurlijk direct aan het vragen!
TGD: After many years of a community asking Wargaming to change the way CVs are being played, Wargaming finally is chaining it. What changed the mind of Wargaming?
Philip: This is not about changing the mind, actually. The need to address CVs has become quite obvious soon after the game was released and meta was established. However, we spent some time trying to fix the existing system without reworking it from scratch. After these attempts failed to give meaningful results, we started working on new gameplay, and that took a lot of time, effort and dumped prototypes. The CVs we revealed are not the result of month’s work – it’s the result of a long and challenging journey our team had to complete.
TGD: Looking at the new way of playing a CV, it looks like you can’t control the entire map at once. Is there a reason for that?
Philip: Absolutely – as the excessive map control given to just one player – a CV player was one of the balance problems we acknowledged.
TGD: We see that you new have only control of 1 squadron at the time, but does that also mean you can change the layout of your squadron while they are stationed at the CV? For example, can you now have the option to change between HE and AP, DWT and regular torps?
Philip: It’s still being discussed internally. This question is mostly about choice. A player should have freedom and control to allow flexibility and more fun gameplay, but if this freedom is excessive, then there is no choice, no decision and planning. If we allow too many changes “mid-air”, it will hurt the tactical aspect of getting the right payload selected in advance.
TGD: Since we can only have control of 1 squadron at the same time, can we expect a mix of planes in the (near) future? For example, instead of 12 fighters, we can see 4 fighters, 4 torps and 4 bombers?
Philip: It basically the same as with the previous question, but if we talk about mixed plane types, it has much more potential to hurt balance. So, most likely, no, the squadron types will be separate.
TGD: Looking at the new drop mechanism, it looks like a cross drop is something from the past. This is something CV player used a lot to do a lot of damage in one single drop. How will this influence the game and what will it mean for the CV player?
Philip: While we still can tweak (and will, when we have a proper public test) many numbers, the ability of cross drops often equals the ability to deal high spike damage with extremely little chance to be countered. And we really want this case to go. Overall, average damage numbers of carriers should change with less alpha strikes, and transition to damage over time caused by consistent well-planned attacks.
TGD: The CV player that are still in the game are most of the time really good at playing CV. Will, they still be able to do a lot of damage in the game, or is this to get more player to play CV?
Philip: They will I think, but overall the top damage numbers will be more aligned with other classes, and the ability to quickly obliterate almost any ship will go for good.
TGD: After the CV rework, does this also mean we can see other major changes in the near future?
Philip: Who knows? 😉 We will test the submarines gameplay within the upcoming Halloween event in October. If it’s successful, we will strongly consider adding them to the regular game, and this will be a huge change. But we as always are working on some lesser changes to the game to address what our players are concerned about. WoWs is a live experience, and we believe it should always be kept fresh for everyone.
TGD: And last, but not least. We have seen a lot of changes, most of them are small, some are huge. If there is one thing you want to change in the game, what will it be?
Philip: Me personally? I would like to change matchmaker to create more comfort for mid tiers. But as a developer I know it’s a huge challenge – our core playerbase progressed to the top and acquired a lot of high tier ships. Their sheer numbers make this task very hard. But I believe with various different measures, we will be able to improve this experience.
Wat dit betekend voor de toekomst van de CV speler,, de tijd zal het uitwijzen. Daarnaast hebben we ook gekeken of we nog iets over de aankomende updates met jullie konden delen, maar we komen niet verder dan een NDA.
En mocht je een bug tegenkomen in de aankomende updates, geloof mij, deze komt door de omgeving waarin ze werken, deze is ook die is niet geheel bug-free.