Status report for Rina_Pon at (almost) 5000 games.

[Rina_Pon]

Will definitely hit the big 5k milestone before the end of the year. Contrary to my expectations of it all settling down, a lot of big changes happened over the last 1000 games (about 5 months):

1. I was invited to and joined a clan. Started playing CB (Zao). We're a casual outfit, and struggle to fill division most nights, but it's fun to play as a group.

2. Started playing ranked (sprint). Stopped playing ranked (sprint). (tight gameplay + unreliable teammates = stress.)

3. Went from wanting more ships to having too many ships. Thanks to sales, events, and resources added Warspite, Cossack, deGrasse, Acasta, Aigle, Texas, Tachibana L, and Alabama to the carousel, plus Algerie, Nurnberg, Kagero, Mahan, Fuso and Gnevy from regular play. The only ship left on my want list is Benson, but having ended up with Cossack that's become less of a priority now.

4. All my favorite ships got a major buffs in patch 7.11. T5-9 IJN cruisers got a dispersion buff, the IJN DDs got a damage buff, and Myoko saw turret traverse increase.

5. Gravitated to Mogami as my "weapon of choice", with Atago, Ibuki, Myoko, Zao in regular rotation. Akatsuki is another favorite now. "Work in progress" trying to bring my Mahan and Sims games up a few notches. Also enjoying Gnevy.

6. I'm losing interest in BBs. Very occasionally take out Scharnhorst, Warspite, or Alabama. IJN grind kinda petered out at Fuso (I enjoyed Kongo much more). N.Cal is a port queen ... and that's a shame. I reached this ceiling where I could do reasonably well, but the static nature of the gameplay frustrates.

There was this "event" at around 4500 games where something "clicked" again and I started seeing the whole game in a different light. The immediate consequence was a big jump in damage numbers ... and a dip in win rate and heroic awards. I guess you could group the enlightenment as a set of advanced skills called "How Not to Get Killed". Unfortunately being risk averse means giving up chances for big early gains in favor of consistent damage over the whole match. Sometimes that's a winning strategy, but sometimes it's not. The next level now is to refine the risk assessment so I don't pass up so many opportunities for bigger strikes early on...

For all that though I can't shake the feeling that I'm kinda "done" with this game. My level of interest has been pretty static and the non PvP elements (ship collecting and outfitting, missions, resource management) have grown tiresome. Going forward I plan to stay as a am: play the ships I already have regularly in random battles. No more grinds, no more premiums, and no bingeing: just 2-3 games a day.

I wonder sometimes if I am just one big change away from stepping away entirely: if submarines are introduced into PvP, or if the carrier re-work really messes things up, or some other change that makes the game more onerous or too obviously P2W. To be fair WG has done a pretty good job with the recent balance updates, but I sense lately that they are more and more desperate to keep revenue numbers up. So we'll see where that goes I guess.

Final thought: they game looks better than ever! Was in a blizzard for the first time last week. The effects were wild.

 

P.S. Benson ... unlocked!