Naval mode is finally dead

Game Discussion Arcade Battle
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1486

Naval is still slightly larger, but not by much. Two quick-to-check stats:

Statshark playerbase last month (based on leaderboard stats, tends to be an overcount):

Helo: 101,140
Naval AB: 154,864
Naval RB: 100,137

Remembering there’s overlap between modes, it’s likely the helo player base is currently around half of both naval modes combined.

This is potentially confirmable by saved replays in both modes (taken from the replay site, from 1700-1730 UTC today):

Helo PvE: 19
Naval (both modes): 34

Any other recent replay sample I’ve seen generates similar proportions. So yeah, the two player bases are quite close, possibly within a factor of 2 or so of each other in at least some measures of size currently.

Both of which were added, along with Rank VI bluewater, in the two years before Leviathans. Worth remembering when people say there were no changes to naval in for two years before this spring, which is more about them not paying attention than anything actual. Fighting the bots off combined with significant damage model changes led to significant naval game play changes, and dozens of new ships and several maps were added in those two years as well.

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1487

Does the helo numbers also count the random helo’s you can spawn in ground arcade? And did you account for the smaller match sizes in Helo PvE. Also note that not every match is recorded as a server replay. I’ve had plenty of situations where I just could not find my own replays back as a server replay

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1488

Those stats are just PvE Helo matches, doesn’t count use of Helos in ground RB (ground arcade helos and aircraft are counted in stats against the ground vehicle you spawned them from). Factor that in and the “helo playerbase” would approach naval even more closely.

Replays could be an undercount, but there’s no reason to believe they are in naval significantly more than other modes at present. There was a problem in the past with some low-tier bluewater RB matches being misfiled in the “newbie mode” section, but we’re not talking a large amount there compared to the total number of naval replays.

I don’t think until Statshark came along this year that people realized that the two naval modes combined were, at best, about 1%-1.5% of this game, a little better than Helo PvE, but worse than PvE Air Assault or PvE Ground Assault, even taken together.

EDIT: Note the troll, who lied about the 50% increase in players post-Leviathans, who lied about no changes to naval in the last two years, is also lying in the post below, as he does continuously when it comes to defending his bizarre Naval AB fixation in this thread and others. The correct number to compare there is spawns, because you can spawn over and over in helo PvE in the same vehicle, unlike naval. The top helo, with 67,000 PvE spawns last month, isn’t that far off the top AB ship (Litchfield), with 224,571 spawns in the same month. Saying the two are “nowhere close” in terms of popularity is, in fact, an overstatement… especially when you consider how long you have to invest to get into helos vs how fast you can play your first naval game. In February, it was even closer, with 84k Ka-50 spawns vs 155k Litchfields.

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1489

That Mr. Cerrypicker for you. He could not understand that single ship in one mode in the game have more games than all Helis per month.

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1490

this may be a very unpopular opinion, but I do not trust Statshark completely, I do not know how they gather their data and until I do I will take it with a grain of salt.

But that is not to say that I don’t recognise how small naval is. but I would be quite surprised to hear it’s that close to helo’s

and it is not the player size per se that I found to be a pessimistic viewpoint. It was the one that thought naval PvP could dissapear as a game mode. (just to clarify)

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1491

Statshark has always been quite open about how it collects data, and responsive to questions on their Discord. I see really no reason to doubt its data here. What surprises me is how it was apparently all publicly available all this time and it just took someone who knows APIs to pull all our service records down once a month. (And again, that’s why I crosschecked above with the replay site data.)

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1492

So players multiply with respawns, sure.

I’m not the one who clamed that naval playerbase dropped April to February in the first place, you was. So why you don’t compare July to February?

ps. I’m not the guy who count 19 Naval battles to compare 448 GRB

pps. If you can’t handle some critic it’s your problem. You theories actually look like “first year” student ones, who just figure out what “average” and “median” is, who hides his unprofessionalism behind walls of text .

1493

New vehicles or rank is not the “changes” for the naval modes, just content. There were no new maps in last three years as far as i remember(or maybe one for small fleet 3.3-, when most of players play big ships). Hull compartments were in game for decade, just with slightly different mechanic of unsinkability lost and what was before it. Most of the changes were just little tweaks or attributes numbers change.

Heck, new multi vehicle AA trucks and their interface and mechanics have more changes in one patch that whole naval stuff in last three years from nowdays.

This are the changes what needed for naval.

ps. I told about two years before Aiming update.

1494

I wish Gaijin would store/provide more extensive data themselves. Interesting factoids like number of assists, caps or destroyed bases aren’t listed, and even something as basic as Battleship play time is nowhere to be found.

In contrast, already more than a decade ago WoT shared enough data with third-party websites and apps for them to be able to tell you exactly how many of a specific tank were destroyed by which one of yours and vice versa.

The accuracy of Gaijin’s official data, or at least the way it gets used to create the official leaderboards and the statistics derived from them, is also somewhat iffy. For example, my displayed Air Arcade leaderboard stats and the associated Battle-Hardended and Favourite Mode profile sections omit
nearly 2/3s of my battles and their results, despite them being correctly listed in the general Arcade LB and my Statistics tab.

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1495

Leaderboard data is very buggy, has been for years. Only really useful for these kinds of relative comparisons (because it’s ALL buggy). Service record-based stuff (which Statshark relies on more than leaderboards) is more reliable once you understand the caveats and how it’s being collected.

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1496

As soon as I read the post above, I immediately thought “wow that sounds like a take that RowanFW would hate.” Scroll down one message and you respond lmao. I know you too well! Wish there were better threads for this, tbh.

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1497

Oh, it’s that Rowan! I’m actually subscribed to his YT channel. We don’t get much Naval content, so it’s great that some players spend their time helping others.

Naval can be really painful with its constant damage model changes. A guide can be outdated just a few months later, which for me has always been one of the biggest problems of this game mode - the lack of stability. I just want to enjoy the game, not re-learn everything after almost every major update.

The funny thing is, I only wanted to start a proper discussion about this possibility. If you look at this topic, like 70% of posts are just trash - not even on the topic, only pointless arguing. I don’t understand why moderators don’t step in more often to clean up the mess.

As for Naval itself, I don’t believe the servers will be shut down that easily. But if the player base drops very low, then sure, it’s possible. Of course, they could just stop developing Naval, but even running the servers costs money. Why would the devs keep almost empty Naval Arcade, Naval Realistic, and Naval EC servers running at the same time? From their perspective, it would make sense to keep only one mode and reduce the cost.

It’s a possible scenario, but I’m pretty sure it would take years before anything like that actually happens.

BTW, I’m not that positive about missile ships either. Especially when you read the Covert Disclosures No.4:

To me, this basically suggests they haven’t even started working on missile ships. They didn’t say they tested it and found problems to solve - they said it “looks like” something difficult to implement, which suggests they haven’t even touched the topic. Honestly, I don’t think they’re working on anything major in Naval apart from submarines.

Do you really think they’ll start working on something completely new in the current situation? The bigger the development cost, the harder it will be to justify in the future, knowing Naval game mode still has almost no players despite all the previous effort.

I agree this is a pessimistic point of view, but at least it’s actually a discussion on the topic.

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1498

They already have a lot of the missile frigates, destroyers and some cruisers modeled in WTM, heck even Leviathans ships came from there. Subs too btw.

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A guide can be outdated just a few months later, which for me has always been one of the biggest problems of this game mode - the lack of stability.

This is true. I don’t actually have a problem with the damage models changing every couple of updates because there’s always a problem with them somewhere, but it makes it impossible to write general mechanics guides which is what players really need. I imagine most people didn’t even know that repairing increased your reload time before Gaijin patched it as a “bug” despite being a gameplay feature for years.

I quit working on naval DM guides after I wrote my crew one because I correctly anticipated that anything I wanted to write on would change. Turns out just this year, we had overhauls to flooding and ammo fires. I expect them to change the ammo or barbette fires again by the end of the year, as well.

If you look at this topic, like 70% of posts are just trash - not even on the topic, only pointless arguing. I don’t understand why moderators don’t step in more often to clean up the mess.

True. If we banned the contrarian babyragers, the naval forums would drop in activity by at least half.

Of course, they could just stop developing Naval, but even running the servers costs money.

I think they’d keep the servers running because people paid into naval forces. Freemium games run on the illusion of ownership, wherein removing an official ability to play paid content reduces consumer confidence elsewhere. If they really got tired of naval altogether, they’d just slow its development. We’ve seen this with the single player missions and bomber cockpits. I’d even argue the same has happened for helicopters and air SB, to a lesser extent.

Honestly, I don’t think they’re working on anything major in Naval apart from submarines.

Agreed. I’m sure they have ideas, but nothing beyond proof of concept besides submarines. I also expect them to add new nonsensical mechanics, as has been common throughout WTN’s history. Aiming and FCS is a huge problem IMO and they never seem completely happy with it. Yet, every time they touch it, it seems to barely change or get worse.

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1501

As it was for 2 years before “Aiming” patch. But there is some folks who state that GJ spend third of their time on Naval constantly.

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Enjoy Su-7 and Yak-28 in setup with Soyuz in NRB.

1503

Try using a Mogador against any of them and see how far you get. Secondary guns will also sink you within seconds. Don’t know why you think 6" of armour is almost nothing, a BR of 4.3 is the only sensible route because for some stupid reason even Bots are battlecruisers. The game IS BROKEN.

1504

Oh yes they are!!!

1505

Try using a destroyer without any torpedoes at all against them then come back to me

1506

Torpedoes are USELESS if they hide behind anything as a static battery as most of them do.