Below is the response of the World of Warplanes Dev team, including Lead Producer - Anton Sitnikau, on a major feedback topic -
One Thing That Breaks It All. I'm just quoting what they said. :)
1. Respawn (long waiting time, transition time / battle time ratio)
For relatively high-spec systems battle waiting time is now about 40s, including 30s pre-battle counter.
At the same time average battle duration - is 3.5 minutes.
We do accept that this is an issue. And it is being solved at this time in several ways:
Firstly, with the help of optimization. It's definitely not the easiest way, since the amount of data to be loaded before battle us huge. That's why we don't expect a major improvement in this area. It's loading time that made us introduce pre-battle counter in the first place - it is required to ensure that are players have managed to load.
Secondly, by increasing the time players spend in battle. This is where conceptual stuff comes in. Let's consider the options.
It would make little sense to introduce respawn for the current game mode. Respawn would severely decrease the importance of each destroyed aircraft. It's not clear how to refill bombs and rockets either - same goes for destroyed ground targets.
We do want to introduce respawn - however it has to be a separate game mode. I will get to game modes a bit later.
Battle duration is also affected by ramming. We don't want to dump ramming completely - self-sacrifice is a part of team-play. What we do want to do is to give players more chances to destroy enemy in head-on attack before ramming happens and decrease the necessity of ramming.
2. AA are useless (up to tier 7/8)
We are continuing to balance AA guns. Avg damage inflicted by AA guns has decreased. One of the reasons for that - change of firing algorithm. Now intense manoeuvring gives more chances to avoid being hit. We are planning to increase damage of AA guns. We are also working on a special UI that will show areas covered by AA guns.
3. Tier balance is terrible
Well, it's not that terrible, however we are not satisfied at this point. Generally speaking, we have got two major leaps: going from tier 3 to tier 4 (can differ across factions), and going from propeller planes to jet planes. Our balancing dept is now busy with making these transitions smoother, however we won't be able to eliminate them completely. These big leaps in history of aviation can't but impact smooth in-game progression. We can't avoid it without serious historical compromises.
4. Mouse control (lack of direct feel)
A lot depends on settings. Try using Vector or Hybrid presets instead of default one.
5. Not being able to see the altitude of targets and friends on the minimap
We have decided not to display altitude on the minimap to avoid mess and overcomplication. Right now we have got so-called strategic map in development. This enlarged map (M-button) has much more space to display useful information - aircraft altitudes, crash sights, AA-gun areas, etc
6. Hangar UI (Slower that WoT, "Where is Barracks?",no ammunition on main screen, differ the WoT)
Hangar UI will be reworked. At this point both sides - WoT and WoWP teams - agreed to make the UIs closer to each other. Installed modules, consumables, ammo and "battle!" button are going to be displayed on all screens. Moreover, we have managed to improve UI performance a lot: most of the delays and glitches were related to updating information for in-game store. The store itself is still rather slow, and we are working on this.
7. Heavy fighters are way
too powerful (World of Heavy Fighters)
We are planning to
introduce more differences between classes and highlight them. As for heavy
fighter, we are going to implement several changes. First, we are not going
to use the coefficient that decreased the damage when shooting down-up any
more. Second, high-altitude planes will get additional penalty in manoeuvrability when
flying low. Third, we are going to provide more possibilities for low-altitude aircrafts to avoid boom-zoom attacks.
8. Progression trough tiers too slow
It’s not entirely true
when it comes to overall pace picture. If you played Tanks, then you’ll see
that our progression is much faster. The principles of earning exp and credits
are a different story though. We’ve found and fixed the issue that led to
incorrect calculations in situations when a higher tier enemy was taken down.
9. The fact that kamikaze
gives a frag
Sometimes ramming is a
conscious tactical decision for the sake of the team. I have already mentioned
that we are going to increase the chances of avoiding a clash but we are not
ready to eliminate this game element.
10. Maps are too small
We conducted experiments where low tier aircrafts were on maps of high tier aircrafts. The results
were not 100% positive. It takes long to reach the opponent, pretty hard to find them. We believe that the maps are appropriate for
the current battle mode. For other modes, especially the ones involving
organized teams, we are planning to use maps of the existing size as well as enlarged ones.
11. No Clan Wars
We were planning to start
clan system right after the release and start clan wars slightly later. However, we changed
the concept during the implementation (we are going to provide more details on
that later) and the deadlines were changed, too. Unfortunately. We do understand
how important clan wars are. Basically,
that was the reason why we put them off: we can make them better than we
planned according to the initial concept.
12. Need Garage battle mode
Garage battle mode is
not our highest priority at the moment. The second random game mode and battles
for organized teams are the things we consider more important as for now. These
two types are more in demand and less risky.
13. Attack Aircraft
(Ground Attack) are useless (Destroying ground targets must affect gameplay)
We agree with the
observation that in the current iteration of the main game mode the role of
attack aircraft is less significant than it used to be. At present we are sending
off to test some experiments (to public test) aimed at increasing its significance.
14. Having to ride my
shotdown fighter into the ground before I can right click to watch from another
plane
In version 1.2. (first update in 2014) a new
camera system will be added to the game. No more suffering for players! Basically, the system
is ready, just
not implemented yet.
15. Very high impact of
current hight vs optimum height has on aircraft performance
The impact of altitude system
will be re-balanced in the few upcoming updates. What we released was the fully-functioning
mechanics of altitude influencing aircrafts behaviour. Further development,
adjustments and balancing will be taking place in more than one update. Plus, we
are planning to notify players about altitude (in garage etc.)
16. Need Missions and New
modes
A new game mode is
being developed at the moment. Missions and quests are planned for the very
near future.
WoWP dev team via Overlord
UPD. On 1.1 update that is being publicly tested right now:
- mouse controls will be different
- Focke Wulfs will be different
- There will be less bugs
