The apology from Wargaming on the Puerto Rico shipbuilding New Year event

Oh, golly, did I miscalculate the grind required. I’m a bit perplexed who at Wargaming thought that folks would want to spend this holiday season chained to their keyboard grinding like a fiend?

The official word from Wargaming: “[PSA] An apology for poor event presentation and a bit of spreadsheet.”

In fairness to myself, I do agree with their observation that it was not adequately communicated that the Gorizia is the “free” Christmas ship, the fantastic dockyard is a campaign with rewards along the chain, but that the final reward is extremely difficult to obtain:

This is an extremely grindy event. We know this; there is no denying the fact that this part of our NY update was designed with relatively small group of players in mind. And this is the exact reason why this New Year we decided to offer not one, but two premium ships to cater to different degree of activity and dedication: Puerto Rico and Gorizia. But again, we fully admit that we failed to make it clear from the start, which raised people’s expectations. Simply put, Gorizia should have been given much more attention in presentation and organization of this event.

I’m hesitant to complain about free stuff, it’s a shame that they were so excited about the beautiful dockyard and the event that they didn’t make it more accessible or adequately communicate their financial expectations from it.

I do think they’ve provided some good Christmas season enjoyment, it’s a shame that the dockyard and Puerto Rico turned a nice event into such a disappointment for so many.

We still believe that this event offers everyone a wide selection of different activities, bonuses and items: a tier VII premium ship, four researchable tier VI ships, Premium time, Coal, Steel and Santa’s Gift containers for Snowflakes, Directives, Shipyard stages rewards and Daily Shipments as well as Clan Brawls and Ranked Sprint rewards.

Thankfully they did provide more guidance on how the math all works out, I expect that I’ll need all three boosters to complete the process … I’ll consider if I’ll just take what I can get from the rewards along the way of casually enjoying the shipbuilding chain, or if, since I’m already in for the first booster, I want to go ahead and get the other boosters.

When I did the test server stuff it seemed reasonable. I was planning on buying a booster or two if reasonable. Last two days I’ve gotten a couple of battles in, but didn’t pay attention to the directives after 3 or 4.

HOLY $#!&…

I guess this also explains the fact that the ship building didn’t start this week also. As far as I’m concerned this is the biggest mistake the WoWS crew has made for this game. CV revamp is a distant second in my opinion.

I won’t say never, but I strongly doubt that I will focus any energy or attention to getting the Puerto Rico now. A huge waste of a feature I was looking forward to. Hopefully they learn from this in the future and make good use of it. I might take a shot at a couple of Mega Containers. Will see.

Guess I’ll blow some ships out of the water to make myself feel better.

Thank you for saying that … I had seen some twitch streams on the second monitor, and at no time did I get even an inkling how unreasonable it was going to be. I had thought that the boosters were meant for folks like myself, who are a bit casual and may be out of town for part of the holiday chain, and had thought that was a nice gesture to make it so folks who can’t attend all the missions can still complete it.

The VII Gorizia seems achievable, finishing the first three directives for it looks to be my goal.

I thought the same thing. I know they dumb down the test server a bit for things like this. I did it in a day on test. Never thought it would be a 1%er grind.

I will. Read the post and it made it clear that I should not waste another thought on it. If I get free stuff out of it, great. But I am glad I didn’t have the 6k doubloons for the first level of booster the other night.

After checking in on the sub I think I’m back to F2P only on this game. I had enough stored up doubloons to get 1m of prem. time. I picked it up to finish out the Research Bureau grind. Now that is done I’ll just let it lapse.

A long time ago I quit paying attention to all the crates, boosters, keys and extra crap. Over time I got almost all the ships I had long term goals for so now I just get on, run a few battles in the ships that I’m in the mood for at the time and get off. Easy peasy…at least, at lot less headaches and I don’t have to pay attention to WG…that whole new ‘Research’ over again gimmick made me shake my head in wonder. Hope you guys are still having fun!

Oh, yeah, I’m still having fun, @Rance .

I just wish they had told us up front that since they sell the Tier IX Alaska for $78, this Christmas they will offer to sell us the Puerto Rico (a Tier X Alaska, with an extra turret) for ~$100 … but since they don’t “sell” Tier X ships directly for cash money there will be some missions / directives that need to be done, as well.

And that the “free” premium ship for Christmas is the VII Gorizia, even though it is also listed in the cash shop, too.

I don’t think I was alone in being under the impression that the Gorizia was a cash shop ship, and the Puerto Rico was the free Christmas ship, while it’s instead the other way around. Talk about bad communication.

There is still a lot of nifty free stuff being given away, I like free stuff.

As @Rance says, one of the nice things about World of Warships is that one can ignore all the daily missions, regular multi-week directive grinds, and little events for flags and such, and just have fun casually. I don’t do all the daily mission tiers, but I often enjoy doing the first half or so. And the directives that are more of a weekly task and can be done on the weekend, if one prefers, I like the added option of.

As well as unlike subscription games such as World of Warcraft, one can enjoy World of Warships for free if they want, as @Greyed says.

I thought of something I was going to mention: I have a PS4 but hardly play it (except to watch The Mandalorian on Disney) but lately I’ve enjoyed World of Warships Legends. I usually don’t like twitchy controls but for some reason I find this one fun. It’s dumbed down with smaller tech trees (kinda like World of Tanks Blitz) and it took me a little while to get the hang of their torps but its a kick. Go figure! If you have the tools, you might just have the talent!

I gave it a go but something about the controls got to me. It felt like my situational awareness took a nosedive in Legends. I just couldn’t do the out-of-scope-peek between shots as well as I could on PC. The funny thing is a few years back I bought a Steam Link and played WoWs on my main machine via the Link and Steam Controller. And it was fine. So I know it isn’t just controller bias, but something about the default layout WG has foisted on us.

In ingame chat, I had mentioned that I went back and read the Update/Patch Notes after discovering how crazy some of the shipbuilding directives were, and that Wargaming had indeed put in there that only the first three were intended for normal folks. @Greyed had seen another opinion on the Internet where someone was claiming that Wargaming edited the information after the blowup on reddit, which is completely different from my experience.

It’s possible that what @Greyed saw was something different than what I was talking about, that the first three directives are intended for regular folks to earn the Christmas Premium ship holiday reward, “To obtain VII Gorizia, you can play at your own pace to complete five out of 13 missions of the third Directive” and not spend your holidays chained to the keyboard.

In contrast, Wargaming does say that “The remaining four Directives are aimed at the most determined players”.

I consider myself critical about Wargaming’s poor communications, but in fairness to them it’s actually highlighted in the Update / Patch Notes, there is just so much going on that I didn’t recognize that only three directives were aimed at me, as the target audience. That the Gorizia was my intended Christmas Premium ship reward, and not to sweat being out of town over the holidays, I wasn’t going to be doing the last four directives, anyway.

I’m bad about opening browser tabs and leaving them open for reference. The notes were so comprehensive that I had left them open in a browser tab to refer to as I explored the events. Here’s what I see, from when the webpage was put up on December 10th, before the patch dropped on the 11th, notice the date:

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Further down the page here’s the info on the first three directives being intended for regular folks, but not the later ones:

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Here’s the video I referred to.

Hmmm, seems like he went in with a heavy expectation of compensation? I understand he’s doing a youtube video for entertainment, so I’m uncertain how much of his agitation is personal & how much is for his fans (FWIW, I do find him entertaining, while I don’t do youtube, personally, I often have a twitch stream up on the second monitor, and I do have him on “follow” on twitch).

Does Wargaming have a history of compensation? In my experience, Wargaming has a history of bad communication, but I don’t consider them to care about it, I was a bit surprised by their reddit apology and didn’t expect compensation.

I’m sympathetic with folks being aggravated that the Puerto Rico and the addition of the super cool (IMHO) dockyard were so hyped before the patch, but that Wargaming’s now evident expectation that this was being done to increase revenue, not to provide a free addition to the players, was not adequately explained along with the hype. I felt a bit misled, myself.

I checked the December 10th webpage that I have, the text that was posted before the patch, he is correct, the text does have “entirely” and “simply” in it like the one he has is showing, so those two words were removed once Wargaming realized that their notes were misleading. (IMHO, it was appropriate to remove those two words, whoever removed them was correct to do so, heh! )

I’m also sympathetic to criticizing Wargaming for using “simply” in this context, but given Wargaming’s history of poor communication (I wonder if they are better at communicating with their Russian audience?) I’m likely not as aggravated about “simply” as others may be.

For me, I think iChaseGaming is a bit over the top, but not out of line for today’s Internet and youtubers. I also think it’s unrealistic to expect compensation from Wargaming. I do think that he failed, like me, to notice the highlighted portion of the patch notes where they do identify that only the first three Directives, and Gorizia, are intended for most of us and that the “remaining four Directives are aimed at the most determined players” (which I’m glad to see that “professionals” like iChaseGaming also miss items in the patch notes like I do ).

I do think that if you are going to make a youtube video referencing the patch notes, you really should read them all and include the highlighted portion that explicitly explains the target audience of the Directives, so I will criticize iChaseGaming for not doing so. He does accuse Wargaming of actually “promising” something, but I think that’s a stretch of their poor communication, for which I will also criticize him and his attitude of righteous indignation. Having said all that, it is another “angry youtuber” video so it’s hard for me to know whether iChaseGaming intended it as much for entertainment as information? I will dock him some points, though, for being misleading, as I did Wargaming.

Wargaming did apologize, and I don’t have a problem if folks refuse to accept Wargaming’s apology. Having said that, I don’t think it’s appropriate to only forgive mistakes if given compensation, I grew up in an earlier generation where folks could apologize for mistakes.

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OK, a few points.

1. Compensation is mentioned for people who bought some or all of the boosters with the expectation of a doable grind that they’d have to patch up with a little extra coin.
2. Previous free-ship grinds were completely doable, even by people not on premium time, within the time allotted. The extras for the ship often required missions that required the ship so were not often obtainable.
3. The patch notes to give passing mention to the Gorizia, yes. But look at the advertising. The biggest banner with FREE SHIP near it is the Puerto Rico. The new dockyard is for the Puerto Rico. The loading screen is the Puerto Rico.
4. “The most determined players”, based on past free ship grinds, are some of the most vocal critics in this case. As iChase pointed out, to be able to complete some of the later directives and get the ship for free you would need a large stock of some of the most difficult to obtain camos, a large stock of signals, grind out perfect games and do so for 19 hours. People don’t consider that “The most determined players”. People question if more than 1-2 people will get it. That is effectively impossible. That makes it a bait-and-switch.

Which leads us to this…

This isn’t about accepting an apology from a person. This isn’t about a company “whoops, we done screwed up” once. This is WG having screwed up time, and time, and time again. They have apologized several times and keep on doing it. Even with individuals, when they pull shady stuff repeatedly, doesn’t get an unlimited amount of get-out-of-jail-just-for-saying-sorry cards.

No one went into this thinking it wasn’t meant to generate revenue. That is what every other free ship grind is for. You increase the player base during the grind, that pumps up engagement. You get Prem. time sales from people dedicated to trying to earn the ship. You get sales from people who just want to buy the ship and skip the grind. You get people who purchase the camo for the ship to skip that grind to.

That’s actually my situation, I picked up the first booster before more closely scrutinizing the patch notes, and looking at the later Directives ingame. I’m solidly in that group, that’s me you’re describing, unfortunately.

I knew I was going to be out of town so my expectation was that I’d need the booster to cover my absence.

However, when I then went to read the patch notes more closely, they do indeed say that Directives past the first three “are aimed at the most determined players”, and it is actually highlighted in the patch notes.

Well, not to be nitpicky, but it’s not really a bait-and-switch, the Puerto Rico is still the main prize at the end of the dockyard shipbuilding process, there is no “switch” going on with the dockyard. I completely agree it is unreasonable to expect folks to achieve it without spending dubloons, and I’ll defer to the experts as to whether more than 1 or 2 will.

Again, “I don’t have a problem if folks refuse to accept Wargaming’s apology”, nor do I think folks need to feel that they need to justify their refusal, IMHO. For me, even knowing how poor Wargaming’s past communications are, I picked up the booster without scrutinizing the patch notes closely and looking at the later Directives, I’m willing to own my mistake.

A lesson WG needs to learn.

Refunds are available for PR Boosters.

LittleWhiteMouse has her reviews of the VII Gorizia and X Puerto Rico up:

• Premium Ship Review #135 - Gorizia
• Premium Ship Review #136 - Puerto Rico

I was interested in understanding a bit more on how the Italian SAP shells function, she does her usual admirable job in breaking it all down. Here are the main highlights, more information (and graphs) are in the article, to include discussion of using regular AP shells:

Horribly simplified, SAP is an HE shell which does a lot of front-loaded damage but can’t start fires. It’s more complicated than that, but that’s really the gist of it. You’re trading the ability to stack damage over time effects to do more damage all at once. Against select targets, this is amazing. Against others, it sucks bad. Any flaws with the shells have to do with it’s unreliability:

SAP has two failure points, one of which it shares (kinda) with HE:

• If SAP shells don’t have enough penetration, the shells shatter . This is pretty straight forward and applies to HE as well. Generally speaking, SAP has higher penetration than a same-caliber HE shell, making it hands down superior in this regard. Gorizia’s SAP shells have a broader range of targets to which they can deal damage, specifically areas of up to 54mm worth of armour. Like HE shells, SAP doesn’t concern itself with relative armour thickness, only absolute armour thickness. So, if SAP hits an area that’s thickly armoured, it will shatter for zero damage just like HE.
• SAP shells can ricochet . This is the area upon which most people focus. At extreme angles (70º+) SAP shells can ricochet, reaching a guaranteed ricochet angle at 80º. Thus, if you hit the wrong angle of armour, BAM – no damage. It’s here where SAP loses out greatly to HE, even with her higher penetration. Because of the high velocity of her guns, this largely precludes her from scoring any penetrations against deck armour at ranges under 14km. The shells will simply skip off the steep surface, coming in at too far shallow of an angle to bite in. HE, meanwhile, doesn’t worry about impact angle at all and concerns itself simply with the absolute thickness of whatever surface it struck.

So other than the auto-ricochet thingie, SAP shells seem reasonably competitive against HE, right? Well, no – HE shell performance isn’t limited to the binary of penetration / zero-damage. Even a shattered HE shell can still put out the hurt because of the fires they start. Thus it’s worth peppering a target with HE that you can’t directly damage simply for the sake of trying to stack some blazes. The only reason to fire SAP at a target you can’t hurt is to annoy them with the sounds of shells plinking uselessly off their hulls. With Gorizia’s stupid-long reload, you really feel every shatter and ricochet of these shells and it’s not a good feeling.

The X Puerto Rico review is the usual comprehensive look at the ship, then LittleWhiteMouse finishes with an informed and educated opinion on Wargaming’s “Dockyard Debacle”.

Were it not for how this ship was acquired, I’d be happy to give this ship passing marks and a solid recommendation for those looking for something a little different. I’m a little more harsh if you already have Alaska – Alaska is the better ship, tier for tier. Puerto Rico is an upgrade but up-tiered so it doesn’t quite balance out. So yeah, she’s a good ship with a big ol’ butt attached.

And here it is: She’s good but then the Dockyard Debacle happened. I can’t talk about Puerto Rico without describing how she was acquired.

Yup, the PR fiasco is going to bite WeeGee in the butt. Quite a few people, myself included, have announced on the sub that once their current prem. time runs out they’re dropping the game. I’ve already picked up WarThunder again, dropped some coin on a premium tank that was on sale and have been putting in more WT rounds than WoWs rounds in the past several days.

Granted, WT’s tanks aren’t ships, and WT’s naval combat is… different. For me I got into WeeGee with WoT and then later WoWs. So, I don’t mind the reversion to tanks for a while. But so far, having loads of fun in my recently unlocked Matilda.

Yes, I agree. As she says “… this whole episode is just so downright scummy that it actively damaged my perception of the game and the company behind it.”

EA has set a high bar for scumminess, but it does almost feel like a “hold my beer” joke from Wargaming to EA.

I have a lot of Premium time on my account, but after my return from my trip I can see myself spending some of my ship time instead looking at the recently released Battle of Bodenplatte and Flying Circus for the IL-2 Sturmovik flight sim, with IL-2 now including the Western Front. Having just finished those two, the next combat theater they’ve announced is Battle of Normandy. (FWIW, their “older” theaters have had their Winter Sale extended to January 9th, https://stormbirds.blog/2020/01/02/a-couple-more-days-for-the-il-2-winter-sale/.)

Here’s a link to a nice IL-2 article: “IL-2: Great Battles Series 2019 year in review”

To say that 2019 was a busy year for the 1C Game Studios team and for the IL-2: Great Battles Series would probably be an understatement. By the end of this year, 1CGS has released two of three titles that they announced back at the end of 2017 and announced a new title. They also released a huge number of aircraft and tanks across all three titles and improved some of their core technologies too. What follows isn’t an exhaustive list but rather some of the key highlights from 2019 that I wanted to look back on and appreciate as we move towards 2020.

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FWIW, Part Deaux, I did pick up the older “IL-2 Sturmovik: Cliffs of Dover BLITZ” out of their store for $6.24 during this Winter Sale. My understanding is that this is the game engine before the current one (IL-2: Great Battles), but that the source code was released to an active community modding team back in 2016 and so is “official” (Cliffs of Dover Blitz runs on Steam, but I bought my Steam license key in the IL-2 store) and has been supported to DX 11 and Windows 10 now, and they are expected to release a North Africa expansion soon. What with the next IL-2: Great Battles theater announced to be Normandy (2021 ?), for Battle of Britain flight simming it looks to continue to be Cliffs of Dover for the foreseeable future.

What helped prompt me to pick it up, along with the current engine’s development roadmap steering clear of the Battle of Britain, is that the popular Storm of War campaign server was announced last week that it is returning to Cliffs of Dover in 2020: “Storm of War”

I’m thinking that I’ll hook up my Logitech/Saitek X52 Pro joystick and in 2020 practice some Battle of Britain Luftwaffe bomber single player mode flying in preparation for possible PvP Storm of War participation, as well as see how the PvE P-38 single player Career mode is in Battle for Bodenplatte … I’m too slow and casual to do PvP fighter work. I also already have the A-20 from Battle of Kuban, so thought I’d also give a look at the single player Career for the mentioned A-20C/Boston Mark III squadron, “IL-2: Battle of Bodenplatte Full Review”.

https://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/57269-storm-of-war/

SoW is an immersive campaign environment where your actions have consequences and help your side win the war.

We have a fully integrated website which shows the latest campaign stats, interactive campaign map and target lists, personal and squadron statistics and more.

You can play casually, in which case you will be eligible to fly any available aircraft from an “open” airfield on either side and come and go as you please. These aircraft are usually “lower” marques of aircraft and/or in small numbers.

Alternatively you can register for the full experience as a squadron, where you declare for a side for the entire campaign, may be allocated one or more airfield spawns and have your own reserved aircraft allocated to your squadron. You’ll be able to request replacements or additional aircraft through the website interface and be moved around as the campaign command group sees fit.