Naval mode is finally dead

[Sternlos]

@Bruce_R1

Of course, player numbers will still go up in June. The interesting stats will come end-July.

It takes about 6 hours of grinding to get a rank 6 ship atm with premium in a talismaned/premium ship. Thats 18 hours without those things. If they dont address the grind people are gonna give up trying to get to the new ships if they didn’t grind out the TT before.

Coastal grind is even more vile.

Been grinding a lot recently with talisman on sharn and premium time, the upper limit is about 1k RP a minute if you get good matches, ships are like 300k at rank 6 so you could technically do it in 5 hours, but more likely 6-7, and if you suck at naval its gonna be more like 8-9.

[FuegoTigre]

I think we sometimes think the game IS the grind. But what’s the point of the grind if the game isn’t fun? Not really directed at you but inspired by your comments.

A lot of ppl excited about big shinny Boom Boats. But will they be any fun if the mechanics are minimalistically influenced by players.

Theoretically, if they stopped putting out ANY vehicles, people should still love to play the game. No grind incentives needed. It should be an aspect that augments gameplay, not dominates it

[Kweedko]

@FuegoTigre

I think we sometimes think the game IS the grind. But what’s the point of the grind if the game isn’t fun? Not really directed at you but inspired by your comments.

A lot of ppl excited about big shinny Boom Boats. But will they be any fun if the mechanics are minimalistically influenced by players .

Theoretically, if they stopped putting out ANY vehicles, people should still love to play the game. No grind incentives needed. It should be an aspect that augments gameplay, not dominates it

So why you didn’t said a word about that here?

State of the naval modes on dev server and after update comes live

So we got first big naval update in 2 years with iconic ships and literally no bugfixes and significant mechanic changes from previous patch. List of bugs: https://community.gaijin.net/issues/p/warthunder/i/PUlnbUR7dp9K https://community.gaijin.net/issues/p/warthunder/i/R6Ma1FrthT9i https://community.gaijin.net/issues/p/warthunder/i/YEKZ7GmyvGnx https://community.gaijin.net/issues/p/warthunder/i/YO43Fmcio7lE https://community.gaijin.net/issues/p/warthunder/i/TG10fEXk1rdv https://community…

[spirtous]

@Kweedko

I don’t care you like me or not, i do care that you don’t care about the naval after all

And we don’t care if you care or not ;-)

@Kweedko

Don’t kidding yourself if they wanted to lock the tread, they would already do that. It’s a perfect tread for them to vent people like you, their woes. And what you did, locked yourself here in your echochamber, fighting shadows?

xaxaxaxaxaxaxaxa, so they this post is the black hole of their 5 woes?
Fuego we are in extreme time dilation that is why the grid is infinite xaxaxaxa

@Kweedko

So why you didn’t said a word about that here?

I think he already told you why, everybody told you

@Kweedko

I do it for the naval.

You are the self proclaimed Messiah!!!

[spirtous]

This post was flagged by the community and is temporarily hidden.

[Kweedko]

Sure

[Hylian_Knights]

Going forward please take all personal arguments to PM.

[tim_myth]

I would take the statshark numbers with a grain of salt. Low tier ships require fewer battles to spade. For example, I finished the Grecale in just 3 fights. I will not go back and play it again. Of course, the stats about the number of naval battles dropping overall are probably correct, but don’t automatically assume that fewer low tier battles means fewer new players.

[_Poul]

@tim_myth

Of course, the stats about the number of naval battles dropping overall are probably correct, but don’t automatically assume that fewer low tier battles means fewer new players.

Well, if new players joined Naval, they had to start from rank 1, so we would see an increase especially in the player count stats at lower ranks.

There is one exception, if new players bought premium vessels without playing lower ranks at all. This is something we can’t easily check in stats (technically you could analyze all premium vessels data, but this would require a lot of time). In theory it’s of course possible that all new players bought premium vessels at higher ranks and never played ranks 1-3. This would mean that even more old players left Naval and they were replaced by new players. But even if that’s possible, this is very unlikely. We should always follow the scenario that makes the most sense, not the scenario that is only possible.

If you think about this, considering Naval lost about 200000 players at BRs between March and May, but there was an increase in the number of players in top ranks, which scenario is more likely (I’m showing extreme examples):

1. 200000 new players joined Naval and they all bought rank 5 premium vessels and only played there, never touched lower ranks. At the same time, 400000 old players had to leave Naval.
2. 200000 old players left, which created more empty battles, and many remaining players moved to higher ranks.

Both these scenarios would cause what we see in the data. And everyone is free to interpret this data as they wish. The real scenario could be the mix of both. But if the first scenario is correct then the devs gained a lot of money from this change.

Personally, I don’t think that all new players just bought premium ships at top ranks to try Naval with the new aiming. Do you think how many players who have never played Naval before would buy something like IJN Yamashiro for 70€ just to grind through lower ranks? I don’t think there will be many of such players, especially they wouldn’t even know before buying this ship if they like Naval or not. And if they had tried something from the reserve vessels first, we would have seen it in the player count at BRs stats.

But I agree that interpreting stats for us always involves making assumptions. Only the devs can see the whole picture (e.g. how many premium vessels they sold in these months). In theory it is possible that they gained more money in these months, we just don’t know this. But there is no reason to assume a scenario that is much less likely to occur.

[dragloon]

This post was flagged by the community and is temporarily hidden.

[FuegoTigre]

@_Poul_

Personally, I don’t think that all new players just bought premium ships at top ranks to try Naval with the new aiming.

Agreed. Why there is some of that, as I understand it, the MAJORITY of players in F2P monetization are NOT paying. Anything. And then if they are, they’re usually doing little things. Lower tier/Cheaper Premiums. Maybe premium time.

Again, agree, only the devs know for sure but… you SHOULD be seeing lowest tiers bumped up as players funnel into the game mode. That’s the only entrance for the majority of Free to Players. The tiny percentage buying in likely isn’t significant.

@tim_myth

I would take the statshark numbers with a grain of salt. Low tier ships require fewer battles to spade.

This is also true. It doesn’t take long to get into rank III. I think a few days to get solid into the Rank IIs. But we should still see a ton of players in Rank II and III.

And those Rank I numbers should still show up as they’re monthly counts.

[spirtous]

GJ needs to rename this Battle Pass to the “Battles of the French fleet vs the sniper bots”

Also has anyone else noticed that the bots A/A do not take pause to reload, I noticed that on the German Flakvierling. They continusly shootinhg like they are gattling guns

[_Poul]

@FuegoTigre

This is also true. It doesn’t take long to get into rank III. I think a few days to get solid into the Rank IIs. But we should still see a ton of players in Rank II and III.

And those Rank I numbers should still show up as they’re monthly counts.

To best way to check this is to look at the Player Count stats, which is basically number of unique players that played at specific BRs.

Even if someone played 100 battles at 2.0 BR in specific nation, you will see +1 Player Count from this player at 2.0 BR for this nation. Of course in this example I assume that all these battles were exactly at 2.0 BR, which is pretty much impossible (more on this later).

You can also do something interesting and just look at the number of unique players that played Naval Arcade in the last month (select Ship Arcade, Win Rate, Monthly Statistics). This way you will see there were 158617 unique players in total (sum of all values) that played at least one Naval Arcade battle in this period. Just keep in mind that this stat is updated every week, so it’s best to note it with the release of monthly stats.

From monthly stats, we know that in May Naval Arcade had 549307 unique players in BRs. So the average Naval Arcade player played in 3.5 different BRs during the month. Which is not much, considering we have 20 possible BR lineups (from 1.0 to 7.3) and 7 nations. This low number of 3.5 suggests that many of 158617 players had to play just 1 battle. That’s because if you play many battles with the same lineup (let’s say 2.0 BR), some of your battles will be 2.0, some will be 2.3, some will be 2.7 and some will be 3.0, so you have 4 options with just one lineup (StatShark counts battle BR for every player). Because the number of possible BR placements with one lineup is 4, and we know the average player played in 3.5 different BRs, many Naval Arcade players had to play just 1 or maybe 2 battles in total last month, so this stat could be that low. Because there were surely players, who played at more BRs.

If that’s still not clear, a simpler example of just 2 players. If one player played just 1 battle in last month, he would be counted as just +1 player at specific BR in Player Count, and +1 player for win rate stats. If another player played at 6 different BRs last month, he would be counted as +6 players at specific BRs in Player Count, but still only +1 player for win rate stats. Both these players at average played in 3.5 different BRs (7 unique players at BRs divided by 2 unique players).

All this suggests that most players in Naval Arcade don’t like switching nations too often, and also prefer to play with just one specific lineup whole the time.

BTW: If anyone is wondering, 306402 unique players played Naval Arcade from February to May.

[Dalless]

@_Poul_

All this suggests that most players in Naval Arcade don’t like switching nations too often, and also prefer to play with just one specific lineup whole the time.

Me in a nutshell.

[Rupert64]

I have grinded out nearly all coastal trees, actually only the german “Schütze” is missing

[The-Cisco-Kid]

Just wanted to say I haven’t seen many people come to the changes defense, and I’ve gotta say I’m having a lot of fun in Naval Arcade at the moment.

[Rennie1018129-live]

Tbh i cant defend them because my dislike of them is genuine

[CapitanVento-psn]

Wondering why… this boat is impossible to spade…

[Rupert64]

i play mostly german top rank coastals where the grinding of Schütze is very slow

[Bruce_R1]

Another way to look at the structural problem with naval right now is to compare median Kills per Spawn between modes:

Spoiler

In very general terms, the lower the bar, the harder the mode is. Because we’re talking median values, it means other people are killing more things than you. This can be because of experience or other forms of player inequality. There are still ways to succeed in a low KpS mode (bombing bases in air for instance, or playing only low-tier), but you are still ceding the killing game to other, better players (again, on average, across all BRs in that mode).

In Air and Ground, the progression is what you’d expect. Arcade is the easier mode. When you want a greater challenge, or a more complex gameplay feel, then you can “upgrade” to the Realistic mode. Arcade serves, for Air and Ground, as expected as the “entry mode.” The lower the bar, the more player skill is posing a barrier to entry, on the theory that if skill didn’t matter at all (winning or killing other players depended as much on skill as a coin toss) that number would be basically 1.

In naval, there’s a problem that this graph shows well. Compared to air/ground both modes are absurdly easy/low-skill (there is no way mathematically for a KpS median to be higher than 1.0*, so 0.9 pretty much indicates that mode is as easy as you can get) in terms of getting kills in. This is largely due to Gaijinbots of course, but kills equate to SL and to a lesser degree score and RP, and in naval the skill floor for being a shipkiller is very low.

However, the problem is that AB is (not just recently, historical figures were similar) still significantly harder to get kills in than RB. Still pretty easy, but despite the recent aiming and bot changes, RB is still easier on the whole. So in that sense recent changes to AB didn’t really work in making it the “entry” mode. Mostly because the mode was already pretty low-skill to start with.

The other problem is that there’s really limited places for the mode to go to fix this now. The KpS numbers suggest you can’t really make AB any easier than it already is (other than by maybe dumbing down the bot AI in that mode extremely, making all the Gaijinbots even more SL pinatas than they are, or adding airbots as well… that could work).

Making RB drastically harder and more challenging isn’t going to GAIN you players, so you can’t get the Arcade/Realistic gradient going that way really, either (although if there’s any room to improve as a mode now, it probably lies in that direction, in the form of adding some more realism factors on the RB side and hope players like them enough not to leave… I still have hopes for surface radar or ASW adding new complexity in that regard).

*Poul points out in DMs you can go to a KpS higher than 1 if you have a lot of bots, or factor in AI kills, or offer “free kills” in some other way, as you do with Ground AB killstreak planes. Yep, agreed. But that just shows, to my mind, the only way you could really make the skillfloor on naval AB any lower now, too.