In WoW raiding people were hell bent on gearscore which is gained by grinding gear. Then I paid a bunch of raiders to clear Ulduar in blue gear. In World of Tanks I got to the toplist with well-chosen newbie tanks (and proved that the matchmaker is rigged, making an even bigger traffic spike). In EVE I transported implants instead of killing rats and got as rich as whole alliances. In Black Desert I hoarded toplist-worthy money without killing mobs. In PUBG I got to the top 100 with 0.1 kill:death. All my actions could be copied by a newbie, all of them were different
In World of Warships I want to create strategies that does not involve aiming guns. It’s a very complicated task, because – unlike most shooters – it’s easy to get a non-damaging hit. Overpenetrations, shatters, ricochets and “AA-mount down but no HP loss” hits are common. To have actually damaging hits, you need to know the armor structure of all ships. This is a central part of the game, as it sells ships, so they need to be different, but they want to avoid “ship X is just better than Y” situations, because then Y won’t sell. So one of them have higher citadel, the other has “better angles”, the third has a lower superstructure and so on. You have to learn how to damage each of them, to be effective.
Well, not me. I’ve ranked out in every season and miniseason since I’m having a ship for it. All of them were torpedo destroyers, AA destroyers and aircraft carriers. I simply ignored these complexities of the game and want to create more strategies of the same kind.
If they make torpedo destroyer play irrelevant and aircrafts too skill-based? I’ll find something else. Some other way to play that needs no practice, but understanding how others act and figure out a ship and build that defeats them. We’ll see what I’ll find next season or miniseason. But it will never be “practice with guns and learn what other ships do”. Hell, without my printout next to me, I wouldn’t know that Saint-Louis has no radar.
I think, that people are wondering about your goal because you are failing at what you described (in comparison to other examples you mentioned). Ranking out is not comparable to getting to 0,1% top players. Pretty much anybody can rank out, if they put in enough time to it. You are doing something diffrently, but it’s not clearly better. Your PUBG strategy was. Sure anybody can copy what you are doing, but anybody can also just play the meta for comparable results.
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@Artahm: no. If you play the meta, you’ll lose. The top 1% who plays the meta ranks out. Those who can hit an evading destroyer 12 km away.
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I don’t know
In WoW, Eve and even in WoT, there were some implications to your different play not limited just to the game in question. Which made the whole thing interesting. Your different play in WoS seems remarkably self-contained, sterilized and having no bearing on anything else at all. Nowadays i’m only reading because i cba to remove the bookmark from my daily tabs list 😀
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That’s just bullshit.
The first and greatest obstacle to R1 is time commitment. A reasonably good player can do it in 200 games spread over 4 weeks. That’s 50 games a week, 12 hours of time. That’s 2 hours every day or most of the weekend. There simply aren’t a lot of people who can and want to spend so much time playing WoWs.
The second obstacle is the emotional attitude toward loss. Some people just can’t take a loss without detachment from their ego. They start, they catch a few early losses, they quit because they feel like everybody is laughing at them for being so bad. When in fact, obviously, nobody gives a fuck about their performance.
The third is at least average intelligence and the ability to learn. Some people are idiots and will lose their ships the same way game after game, without the ability to actually notice the pattern that killed them nor learn from it. Some people can’t see beyond their gunsights because the complexity of the battlefield is beyond their capabilities.
That’s it. 3 obstacles to R1. If you have the time, can take 50% loss without crushing your ego and aren’t an idiot, you will get to R1. Aiming, twitch skills, map strategies, armour details – all of these help, but they aren’t mandatory at all. Aiming in BBs is trivial after a hundred games. Twitch skills are barely existent (occasional torpedo beats in DD dogfights), armour details matter for only a few ships and all maps can be played in similar fashion.
There are 1300 people with R1 on the EU server. Considering max concurrent user count at about 25k, it is probably close to 1%. However, only 1500 people have played 200+ games and out of those 300 have R1. That’s a 20% rate and there are 1000 more people on R1 who have less than 200 games because they finished before that number. Here is where the 1% comes from. Only 1% of players reach R1 because most of them never even try.
A claim of “I broke the meta because I didn’t have to learn to aim guns” is just silly. You had to learn to aim torpedoes and survive on the flank in the weakest ship of the game. It took you hundreds and thousands of games to learn if you remember your atrociously bad results at the beginning.
You can’t break WoWs meta by smart play because smart play is the meta. Your traditional modus operandi of “research the game and find something nobody else does because they refuse to do the boring tedious tasks” (research being one of those) simply doesn’t work in a game without boring and tedious tasks.
Oh, there is also the fourth obstacle to R1. Arrogance. If you refuse to learn and follow the obvious advice, you run the risk of either never getting to R1 or playing a number of games way above the necessary.
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@Stawek: you seem to be saying “the obstacle before ranking out is being a moron or a slacker”. I tend to agree.
What exactly did I write what you disagree with?
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“The top 1% who plays the meta ranks out”. This is the total bullshit.
I just showed you how 20% of people who played 200 games ranked out. We have to assume most of them played “meta”, otherwise, it would not be “meta”.
There is nothing moronic or slacking about not playing a video game for 2 hours every day. It’s just being a sane person.
If anybody is playing in a moronic or slack way, it is you. You refuse to play the better ships, you refuse to learn the simplest “skill” of aiming the guns and you refuse to try ships other than IJN DDs. Playing suboptimal game because of made up “reasons” is your own definition of M&S.
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@Stawek: If I’d practice 8 hours a day, I’d be the heavyweitght boxing champion. Totally.
Just like all those who didn’t rank out would do if they’d have more time.
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@Gevlon What I think stawek is disagreeing with is your false dychotomy that there are only M&S and geniuses in the world. The world consists mostly of regular people, that are somewhere in between. To rank out, you need to just not be an idiot. Wheras you claim that ranking out is an accomplishment availble to all but few. Its not. IMO what you have done in WoWs could be compared to “do daily quests” in another MMO. You’ve just found a way to do them a bit diffrently. In other words nothing close to comparable to your other projects.
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@Anon: 1-2% ranks out. So it’s available only to a few.
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I don’t have any stats, nor do I know where to find em, but I am quite curious if the ranking out is only available to a few as Gevlon claims or just requires basic mediocre grind as Stawek claims.
For example, in the previous seasons, what was the amount of games the worst rank 1 played across all ranks. Did the R2-3-4-5-… people play more games, and just aren’t good enough as Gevlon says, or did they just not commit the required time. And some total ranked games played vs rank achieved graphs would be quite interesting too
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@Caldarzar: I made the statistics about last season https://greedygoblinblog.wordpress.com/2018/07/16/finally-the-definitive-answer-about-warships-ranked/
Short answer, yes, battle count decreases rank. But even the highest battle count group has the average rank of 5. So most people who play godawful lot still don’t rank out.
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The boxing champion statement is a complete non-sequitor.
If you trained 8 hours a day in boxing every day, you’d destroy your body. Physical sports require recovery periods, so it’s not actually practical to train that much. Pro boxers generally do boxing training (eg punching drills and footwork) between 3-5 hours a day for 5 days/week, plus some additional physical conditioning and generally some study and coaching. Several of the days are harder/more physical, others are more technical and drill-focused to allow the body to recover.
If you did follow a training schedule that included 25-30 hours a week (plus appropriate dieting) though, after a year you’d probably be capable of participating in amateur boxing (in your weight class, probably not heavyweight unless you are a big guy) and you’d be pretty decent at it. You’d be a better fighter than 0.01% of all people who practice combat sports — which is actually a more exclusive club than those who rank out in WoWS. You’d certainly be able to knock out just about anyone you ever met outside of your boxing circle, including people like police officers and military personnel.
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