• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Of Course You Realize, This Means Wargaming (The Jimquisition)

CTLance

Member
Heh, bet Jim is kinda regretting the 17th century noble thing.

I mean, regular videos with him dolled up and painted white will probably be quite a bit of work. Plus, I wonder what the neighbours will think about someone dressing up and screeching and cackling at a camera in their Gazebo. Regularly, like every weekend or something.

As a side note: Looking forward to the aesthetic changes.
 

Shifty

Member
ROYSTON

Best episode in a few weeks imo. This bourgeois character is great.

Can we speak about how shitty Wargaming Europe is, handling World of Warships ? Or is it derailing ?

Do tell. No harm in attempting to wrench the conversation back in line.
 

CTLance

Member
I love how many videos I have come across call the initial rant guy "Sir Fuck". I mean, Jim at least had the decency to try to pronounce his name correctly once.

It's Fosh, not Fuck. Written Foch. *shakes fist*
 
Do tell. No harm in attempting to wrench the conversation back in line.

In World of Warships, we have week long events and week-end events.

Usually themed after real life naval battle and events of the 20th century. So we have themed missions and rewards. Problem is, the EU cluster is notorious for having super shitty events, incredibly hard or/and restrictive completion requirements and super shitty rewards, compared to NA, RU or Asian clusters.

When I say hard requierements and shitty reward, I mean it. Sometimes it's about having to gain XP in matchs or deal damage in matchs, but the different is by a factor of 10 times between EU and RU... WG EU justify this saying " its not meant for every player, but only for the more experience, skilled and dedicated player " but when you look at it, some event required to play for about 8 hours a day for a week to be award a Premium ship worth... 15$

So of course we look at NA or Asian and RU clusters and we wish we have their events. Earlier this month, V Day celebration happened. EU cluster got 20 super fancy Camo (with actually great XP Boost perks) so it was free and nice gift. RU clusters got these + repeatable missions + XP boost + free premium ship.

We just wish all clusters had the same events and reward. We don't understand why some of us are treated so poorly (actually we know why, it's because Europe and NA are spending more money than RU and Asia so they don't need free shit because they buy shit anyway) and prices from RU to EU are going to double or triple depending what you want to buy...

Now let's talk about their Premium Ships. You can buy unique Premium Ships in the game like in World of Tanks and they come with several perks. People love these as they represent historical value with legendary ships and the associated perks are very nice if you are a serious player : they represent good investement in the long run.

Now the problem : Wargaming absolutely knows how dedicated and crazy about historical and famous ship, its fanbase is. So when a very famous ship comes out as Premium, they usually offer different pack : ship alone for a high price, or bundled with Premium time, doubloons (gold) and other consummables for a very high price.

Now the fuck up part : (that I will argue that can be considered as experiements about these kinds of economic models in games) for the release of Prinz Eugen last year, they ONLY release for 150€ bundle first, to push the hardcore fan of german ships to pay upfront. A week later they release the alternative 80€ bundle and after that, the ship alone for 30€ (I think). Again, you didn't HAD to buy it and you COULD wait 3 weeks if you wanted the ship alone.

Now this week was released HMS Hood, the most legendary ship in the Royal Navy and the UK being sadly under-represented in the game, people are so HYPED about a British Battleship, about Hood especially. The Royal Navy, being one of the biggest navy in the world during the 20th century and still not being properly in WoWs is a joke and a meme at this point in the community. But WG prefer to put in the game Soviet paper ships (designs, ships never layed down) because of stronk soviet ships and to pander to their russian fanbase (WG is russian)

Ok, so HUGE Royal Navy hype, for years now. Hood comes out. Right on time during a (actually very amazingly well, balanced, not too hard, not too grindy, well rewarded) Event called Hunt for Bismarck (Bismarck being the biggest ship germany layed down in WW2 and famously sunk Hood, the pride of Royal Navy, in a SINGLE shot.) This event is based around missions you have to do but some of them are possible ONLY if you posses Hood, a premium ship, you have to pay with REAL money.

Now, it's okay, if you bought the ship, you can earn the right to have a easier time in the event. Why not : it's a reward based system for player who put more money in. It's not breaking the game balance it's not Pay 2 Win its all good.

What's not good is that Hood is NOT available to buy alone as long as the event is live. If you want Hood during the Event, you have to pay for the super expensive 100€ bundle

So this is what I wanted to say.

There's another big debate growing slowly in WoWs community : the power creeping of premium ships compared to their " free " main line counter parts. This is a very technical debate and I won't go because it requires a lot of understand and knowledge of the game mechanics but WG refuse to nerf Premium ships. Sometimes they test them and nerf / buff them before release but once its released : a premium ship is NEVER, EVER nerfed in any way. They sometimes buff other ships to raise the overall balance but some ships are in... questionable places, balancing wise.
 

Bombless

Member

I'm pretty sure the cheaper bundle releases next week and the ship alone will be sold on the last day or close to the end of the event. And the collection is doable without the ship completely (i did it before i finished the 3rd leg of the campaign).

Honestly this is more the players' fault than Wargaming. They laid down the schedule for the ship sale and people still jumped on the 100€ bundle like there was no tomorrow so of course Wargaming will take advantage of that.

Edit : I'm not saying Wargaming are good guys, just that in this particular case they simply take advantage of people with no self control. Same thing with Prinz, we KNEW the ship would eventually be sold standalone and that statswise it really was nothing special yet people bought the ship anyway.
 
I'm pretty sure the cheaper bundle releases next week and the ship alone will be sold on the last day or close to the end of the event. And the collection is doable without the ship completely (i did it before i finished the 3rd leg of the campaign).

Honestly this is more the players' fault than Wargaming. They laid down the schedule for the ship sale and people still jumped on the 100€ bundle like there was no tomorrow so of course Wargaming will take advantage of that.

I actually agree with you. As I say, one can argue it's just a week long exclusive sale. Like the bundles for Prinz, you just had to wait 2 weeks. It's not a big deal, it's not like if it was 6 months or something.

I see it more like social-econonimical experiments. These games are still young and everything they sale is subject to be balance in term of value / price. Much like Valve in its time, they are experimenting with different models and ways of selling and defining values to their player base.

and so far, on these bundle, I don't see any fuckery.
 
For anyone freaking out about Premium ammo: As an avid player (a little over 1000 hours in game), premium ammo is not straight up better in most cases than normal ammo.

Plus, it's available to buy in game using in-game currency, so if you feel like it's some insurmountable advantage, feel free to spam it yourself.

Why would we care at this point ? That some people feel compelled to defend the practice and basically argue about "how minimal an advantage it is" , let alone the normalcy of the practice , paint a very bleak and yet hilarious picture .

Those kind of arguments don't help one iota nor convince anyone but the already fans imo . Especially when usually followed by a bunch of "well they have to sell something and make a profit anyway" . Yeah ok , some of us do get it ... but let's not pretend there are not other things to sell , and that their profits would be hurting without this specific case
 

Septimius

Junior Member
I'm surprised Jim Sterling didn't completely tear them apart when the official position thing he got literally said "we only threatened to do this to get the video down". They are blatantly admitting using an outright threat to force an outcome they want. I still take issue with the fact that they pretend that this particular video went too far with swearing, when it's obvious that the real issue they had was that SirFochstick actually had a case against WoT that could actually cause bad press. Remember, kids, it's not defamation if it's true. So their only recourse was to remove it with a threat.

I take such a huge offense by people acting this way, and it's obvious that the people behind this debacle aren't really able to understand what they did wrong. I am so grateful that people like SidAlpha and Jim Sterling take it upon themselves to stand up for such blatant abuse. I am really grateful for that.
 

a harpy

Member
For anyone freaking out about Premium ammo: As an avid player (a little over 1000 hours in game), premium ammo is not straight up better in most cases than normal ammo. Compared to normal ammo, premium ammo provides higher armor penetration on flat armor, but ricochets more easily against a sloped target and is completely blocked by spaced armor that normal ammo would be able to penetrate. There are some special types of premium ammo for artillery or other derp-style guns, but even those have situations where normal ammo would have had a better effect.

Plus, it's available to buy in game using in-game currency, so if you feel like it's some insurmountable advantage, feel free to spam it yourself.

Would you talk a little bit about what exactly the advantage is? I think many of us are outsiders looking in and we have very little context to go along with features that most people would straight drop a game over.
 
Would you talk a little bit about what exactly the advantage is? I think many of us are outsiders looking in and we have very little context to go along with features that most people would straight drop a game over.

It's like an ammo type. An alternative ammo to specific tanks in specific situations against specific targets...

It depend of playstyle. Like High Explosive against Armored Piercing shells choice in these type of game.

World of Warships introduced a similar system : you either shoot HE (high explosive) it doesn't penetrator armor, but deal good surface damage : it's nice to wreck modules on deck and it can start fires (fire are dealing damage over time on decks)

or you shoot AP (armored piercing) shells, these can't start fires but can penetrate much more armor and deal much higher potential max damage.

The entire basic gameplay consist of knowing when to shoot what shells against what target (soft, hard target, angled or showing flat 90 degree of armor)

and the game introduced a captain perk called IFHE (Inertia Fuse High Explosive) basically, the HE shells will have more penetrating power by detonating not upon impact but right after, allowing more armor penetration. in game, it deals 30% more penetration, meaning more potential RAW damage, but at the cost of reduced Fire chances (less chance of DoT)

Once again, you have to choose carefully what guns (what ships) will make best use of IFHE because of your playstyle and what kind of ship will you face (and what kind of armor) and how you will shoot at it.

The entire point of these game is to understand how to shoot, what to shoot and where to shoot. there ballistic models are not realistic but the penetration value and armor plating are actually very detailled and it's the entire point of these game to understand and know your spec and your target strong point and weaknesses.

It's just that premium ammo sounds... bad. But it's just an alternative ammo spec. Like elemental damage in a RPG or Acid/Fire/Shock bullets in Borderlands.

World of Warships did the same but as a captain perk, not a consumable.
 

Z3M0G

Member
Man... Publishers have it good these days...

- Full control over the developers and over-arching design decisions of the games being developed
- Full control over the media, drip feeding them content who scramble over any little scraps they can get
- Full control over when reviews get released so that it doesn't impact Day 1 sales
- And now working over how to control Youtubers, who don't cost them a dime, who currently hold the largest audiences for showcasing their games...
 
We all laugh now, but the next generation will gobble this up. They'll probably mock anything that doesn't have 5 different​ currency types.

You an already see it here in this thread. Bargaining over how much of a grind to just play the game is okay.
 

Arrrammis

Member
Would you talk a little bit about what exactly the advantage is? I think many of us are outsiders looking in and we have very little context to go along with features that most people would straight drop a game over.

In World of Tanks, every tank has armor, as one would expect. However, some tanks have sloped armor (which increases effective armor thickness against shots and, if the angle is steep enough, causes enemy shots to ricochet, which does no damage at all to the target) and some have spaced armor (the shot has to penetrate the armor, then keep going and penetrate a second set of armor to damage the tank). The premium ammo in the game has higher base penetration values (so you can use gold ammo to penetrate heavier armor than you can with normal ammunition) however premium ammo loses more penetration against sloped armor than normal ammunition and has a larger likelihood of ricochets (IIRC normal ammo ricochets at about 10 degrees, premium ricochets at 20 degrees). So In general, you'll cause damage more easily with premium ammo in 80% of situations, but more players (especially in the upper tiers) can tell the difference and adjust their playstyle (angle their tank, make it harder for the enemy to hit their flat armor, etc.) so that the enemy actually does less damage with the premium ammo than they would have if they were using normal ammo.

Overall, the premium ammo is better in most situations, but there are definitely disadvantages to using it 24/7. It's still a complete joke that premium ammo exists in the first place, but it's not game breaking and doesn't cost real money or offer an insurmountable advantage, so I don't have that much of a problem with it.
 

CoolOff

Member
ygOVwjQ.jpg

.
 

Nikodemos

Member
Just FYI, WG have announced that they're going to nerf prammo in WoT Blitz. It's going to be cheaper, but deal less damage than regular AP, thus causing a decrease in cases of goldnoobing.
 

Gxgear

Member
Thank God for Jim Fucking Sterling Son, one of his finest.

For people defending premium ammo: it's a precedent/precursor on the slippery slope to full blown Pay-to-win, arguing it's relatively accessible (for now) is irrelevant.
 

Brashnir

Member
It's like an ammo type. An alternative ammo to specific tanks in specific situations against specific targets...

It depend of playstyle. Like High Explosive against Armored Piercing shells choice in these type of game.

World of Warships introduced a similar system : you either shoot HE (high explosive) it doesn't penetrator armor, but deal good surface damage : it's nice to wreck modules on deck and it can start fires (fire are dealing damage over time on decks)

or you shoot AP (armored piercing) shells, these can't start fires but can penetrate much more armor and deal much higher potential max damage.

The entire basic gameplay consist of knowing when to shoot what shells against what target (soft, hard target, angled or showing flat 90 degree of armor)

and the game introduced a captain perk called IFHE (Inertia Fuse High Explosive) basically, the HE shells will have more penetrating power by detonating not upon impact but right after, allowing more armor penetration. in game, it deals 30% more penetration, meaning more potential RAW damage, but at the cost of reduced Fire chances (less chance of DoT)

Once again, you have to choose carefully what guns (what ships) will make best use of IFHE because of your playstyle and what kind of ship will you face (and what kind of armor) and how you will shoot at it.

The entire point of these game is to understand how to shoot, what to shoot and where to shoot. there ballistic models are not realistic but the penetration value and armor plating are actually very detailled and it's the entire point of these game to understand and know your spec and your target strong point and weaknesses.

It's just that premium ammo sounds... bad. But it's just an alternative ammo spec. Like elemental damage in a RPG or Acid/Fire/Shock bullets in Borderlands.

World of Warships did the same but as a captain perk, not a consumable.

So it's like a game of Rock, Paper Scissors where they give you Paper and Scissors, but charge you extra for Rock.

Yeah, that's super fucked, despite your attempts to rationalize it.
 
Top Bottom