SuperTester 0.9.9 Mercenaries

[Adorable_KeQing]

Woke up, casually going through Facebook while on my bed, hmmmmmm what's this "ST 0.9.9, THE "U.S. BATTLESHIPS, PART 1" EVENT, MERCENARIES, AND OTHER NEW FEATURES", aight I'll take a look,
Early access for American BBs? Hmmm alright, Camo, Naval Base, hmmmm all seems alright, and well well well what do we have here, Mercenaries and it was at this very moment I got off my bed and with this odd look, what is WG thinking?

So what are Mercenaries? Here is a screencap from the Blog, https://blog.worldofwarships.com/blog/68

So, what is WG thinking with this? Anyone remember where clans on EU, NA and Asia got nuked from RMT and/or Account Sharing???

This looks like WG is adding another way for this RMTers to sell their service to other players who wishes to grind steel without the need to join said clan which might make it harder to spot fishy behaviour by looking at the transfers within a clan.
Who would have thought this would be a good idea? (Alright before jumping to conclusions just yet, wait it out, I'll list out the posititives later but that can wait),

Why WG, if your intentions are to indeed "Test Candidates who want to join the clan", is there indeed a neeed to fully reward the so called "Mercenaries" full rewards according to the current league the clan is in?
All I see from this is a way for this RMTers to sell their services. Offer said service where a player pays "X" amount of cash, you get invited into the division and grind steel that way with the help of other players the the clan you are DIVed up with.
Yes, I am more than aware this may not be viable as I being the old UMR-R clan tried it out for themselves from what I heard and it doesn't work as one bad player is more than enough to bring the team down.
Makes it harder for us players to track anything fishy that is going on too.

Well what I recommend to try to combat this is to drop the reward by -50%, and if a user is were to fill in empty gaps, well, they would just have to get along with it.
What are the advantages? Well, WG have listed it already and thats the only advantage I see is to assess someones skill level before considering them into joining the clan.

While we are on this topic, I would like to touch on WG's actions on clans that violated the EULA on NA, EU and Asia, RMTers and/or Account Sharers
Yes, I am happy/grateful to see them take actions on this clans that violated it but it feels like it is lacking, disagree with me if you do so wish but please list your reasons why,
Yes, disbanding the clan, taking away their steel/resources/ships that they have accumulated in that season does hurt them but I don't think it does much. Look at certain clans on NA (Thats the only one I can see them doing it as of now), PWP making a new clan called WGCNM (It has been disbanded now tho), but there is not a single punishment being imposed on this players that participated in the creation of that clan.
>WG could also revoke this new clan's ability to participate in CB's for 4-6 months and/or for 1-2 seasons (Useless with the latest ST 0.9.9)
>Account lock those accounts within that clan from joining a clan and/or in this case, hardlock them from taking part in CBs for 4-6 months and/or 1-2 seasons

Yes, I am indeed quite unhappy with the way that this is being dealt as it seems to be quite easy going, a pat on the shoulder so to say

What are your thoughts? Please keep this thread sensible, no arguments needed, feedback is appreciated but please be constructive, don't claim something without having anything to back said claim up.

Cheers

 

[IJN_Katori]

Mercenaries also could be Other clan members

 

Example Clan of you and you invite a clan of someone.

[Adorable_KeQing]

3 minutes ago, IJN_Katori said:

Mercenaries also could be Other clan members

 

Example Clan of you and you invite a clan of someone.

[Lowyat]

reminds me of team battles ages ago

[Reinhard_of_Avercland]

I don't think the Mercenaries should get the main reward at all (steel in this case). Especially if the purpose of this feature is merely to test the applicants' skill without allowing them to enter the clan formally.

In fact there should be a certain threshold before a clan member can get steel. I mean the reason why this trading exists is due to the lack of the said threshold.

Yes my suggestion seems unfair. But we have seen what can go wrong if there are no restrictions to prevent this kind of violation from happening.

[Grygus_Triss]

20 minutes ago, HoChunHao said:

“The” clan, not “A” clan.

[Adorable_KeQing]

31 minutes ago, Grygus_Triss said:

“The” clan, not “A” clan.

Woops, my bad, apologies, will have to clarify with WG

 

[Thyaliad]

I am guessing WG implemented this to make it easier for smaller clans to fill out a roster for Clan Battles, especially if that clan is not a competitive clan but some individual clan members still want to try Clan Battles for the steel.

But yes it is pretty odd because it kinda legalises steel trading in a way. It makes it easier for steel traders to evade detection because they don't have to transfer into and out of clans anymore. 

There needs to be some assurance of measures being put in place to prevent this. 

[Adorable_KeQing]

So I am wondering about this now, it is,
A) Clan A can invite someone clanless into their roster/team/DIV, or
B) Clan A can invite someone clanless and/or someone from Clan B into their roster/team/DIV

This just opens up more loopholes where RMTers could bypass and sell their service making it easier for them to commit their so called "crap"
Offering their service to other clans at at cost I will say,

Clan A has a good CV player where Clan B lacks, Clan B offers the CV player from Clan A to join their team and assist with their roster/team/DIV
Or a good player can go clanless and offer themselves as a service to other teams at a cost.
This opens up more options for this Clans (Mainland Clans to be exact) to do this crap

Unless WG adds something or greatly reduce the rewards Mercenaries get, but this would still leave another loophole open where a mercenary could assist a team into getting victories for a faster steel grind.

[Thyaliad]

13 minutes ago, HoChunHao said:

So I am wondering about this now, it is,
A) Clan A can invite someone clanless into their roster/team/DIV, or
B) Clan A can invite someone clanless and/or someone from Clan B into their roster/team/DIV

From the way it is worded, it sounds like B. Yes the system is rife for abuse without any safeguards.

 

[Adorable_KeQing]

Assuming IF the clanless player doesn't get rewarded, it still won't matter much does it?
They can offer themselves by having Clan A pay them IRL for a deal to get them X amount of victories in CB, it doesn't matter if the clanless player gets rewarded or not because Clan A already paid the clanless player for the service their provided by assisting.

[S4pp3R]

This would have been a great idea years ago when we were all scrambling to get our clan positions maxed...

My clan needed this when we were full and couldn't quite run full teams during the week... One and Two years ago.

This is basic design stuff that should have come with CBs originally, learning on experiences from WoT (which they obviously haven't).

Sometimes I wonder if WG released something like a 'Goals for 2020' of a list of features they want to implement; how many people would actually stick around? They always feel like they do things too little or too much but too late.

As for abuse by accounts, yeah may be an issue but if they properly policed the issue, surely it wouldn't be an issue?

[THAI_THIEF]

Technical improvements:

With the release of Update 0.9.9, players will be able to play on all servers of World of Warships using one client, without the need to have a separate copy for each region.

The game server will be determined by the current account selected in the Wargaming Game Center.

For replays, the player panel and a tooltip with instructions for managing the recording were added.

 

Honestly...... Bring more chaos of bots

[S0und_Theif]

I think WG is trying to lure more players towards clan battles.

Not sure if the last season's clan battle boycott was effective, but it kind of feels suspicious.

Or (benefit of a doubt) there is not enough clan battles. Though I blame the limited time for that, rather than the players. We still have to go to work and have a life you know.

 

As for the sharing part in the new mode:

On one hand, yes agree with a lot of people that WG only disbanding the clan and not the players will just result in an infinite loop of cat and mouse game. Whether they learn or not.

Violators will test WG limits, but likewise, WG also does not want to ban them, seeming that they have a huge wallet / deep pockets, and WG wants to milk them dry. Bone dry.

 

On the other hand, WG is basically conceding that the account sharing will not go away, might as well make them legal (sort of).

Unless WG suddenly updates their EULA on what is allowed and what is not allowed on this new mode, there is a lot of loop holes that players can and would take advantage of.

 

Why WG does not perma ban them is a big mystery to me.

[Grygus_Triss]

My personal feelings on this?

Its a good first step. but I think the scope is too small.

Clan battles are... messy in the implementation.

CBs are (IMO) designed for those in clans who A. all play at the same time as CB, and B. Join a clan specifically for playing CB.

Those who are in casual clans (who may still want to play CB occasionally, but otherwise don't want to leave their clan for the short rush that is CB) or those in clans with most members active outside of CB, kind of miss out.

The idea of mercenaries would allow for smaller clans to group together... without essentially moving players between clans for a "CB clan" and a "casual clan"

Yeah, I suppose there are those other problems, but this is a step in a direction that would allow more people to experience CB, without having to leave or completely rebuild their clan.

[Bitrot]

This seems to legalises RMT, you now have two new RMT options allowed within the game;

1. Top clans can leave 1 or 2 spots open in clan battles, and sell the spot to the highest bidder, trading steel for $.
2. Individual players can sell their services to a lower tier clan to help then progress. i.e. 5 top players from Hurricane can join Squall Clan and level them up.

You could stop #1, by limiting steel of mercenary if his current clan is placed lower than the clan he is trailing in.
You could somewhat limit #2 by limiting number of mercenary slots to 2 or 3.

With #1, you can also keep the clan competitive with Team Alpha, but bounce Team Bravo between Squall/Typhoon for max rewards.

It just seems a little gutless when you consider recent account trading and repeat offender UMR-R in clan battles. Instead of showing some integrity of how you deal with players that cheat in the major leagues, you endorse it and give them a mechanic to do it in game.

WG just seems unwilling to hand out the ban hammer. It's just sad.

[Tagnbag]

Can you not already test people by playing in randos or a training room? Then give them a probationary period if thats how you want to roll?

Hard to believe one minute it's a bannable offence the next its a game mechanic. Oh wait.. no, totally believable. 

So a clan at [insert level] can takes mercs and beat another clan in a so called "fair" clan battle? Better clans get paid to take lesser players for rewards, lesser clans can pay mercs to buff their clan war stats?  

 

[Thyaliad]

On 8/29/2020 at 4:37 PM, S4pp3R said:

As for abuse by accounts, yeah may be an issue but if they properly policed the issue, surely it wouldn't be an issue? 

That's the thing.

Looking at WG's lousy track record against bots and how they handled the recent steel trading controversy (no greater forms of punishment then just disbanding the clans of offenders), it is not hard to see why a lot of us are concerned about this.

Not to mention it is pretty bad timing. WG says steel trading is punishable offence one day, the next day they introduce a system that makes it a lot easier for offenders to do just that.

[S4pp3R]

8 hours ago, Thyaliad said:

That's the thing.

Looking at WG's lousy track record against bots and how they handled the recent steel trading controversy (no greater forms of punishment then just disbanding the clans of offenders), it is not hard to see why a lot of us are concerned about this.

Not to mention it is pretty bad timing. WG says steel trading is punishable offence one day, the next day they introduce a system that makes it a lot easier for offenders to do just that.

Oh the timing stinks...

If they'd had this system years ago when CB released, I'm 99% sure I mentioned it at the time too; well my clan may have actually stayed involved with CBs despite the crud timings for us (ANZ).

Also thanks for picking up on my sarcasm in that line - I think most folks missed it 😉

[Rina_Pon]

WG are smart enough to understand that the recent CB abuses arise from a genuine and reasonable desire which is not going to go away, so the best thing to do is develop a legal and regulated outlet for that desire.

A lot of players would be happy to shop their services freelance for CB in return for fame and plunder. Allowing mercenaries would make this possible. In principle I am for the idea, and wouldn't mind doing that kind of job - since our clan rarely has enough active players to field a team.

The main difficulty is tuning the system such that being in a clan and playing CB for your clan is still more profitable than being a merc. Otherwise there is no point being in a clan, and certainly no point in playing CB for your own clan. At the same time there needs to be sufficient rewards for being a merc to make it worthwhile.

[Moggytwo]

I can see why they are introducing mercenaries - this allows smaller clans who struggle to get full teams to fill out their roster - this has the added benefit of increasing the number of clans queuing, which is something that seems to be a significant concern for WG.  It also allows clans to test potential applicants for suitability.  Both of these things are a really good addition!

However, as others have said, this does open up new possibilities for violations, and those will be much harder to detect.  A very good player or players could easily earn real money by hiring themselves out to lower ranked clans to help them move up the leagues.  I can't see how WG could possibly ever detect that this was happening.  I mean, they have literally named the mechanic "Mercenaries", ie someone who offers their fighting skills for money!

I think the appeal to WG of having more clans in the queue has won out over other concerns.  I personally am not sure how I feel about whether this was the right decision or not, it's a tough one, but I am concerned about the potential damage this could do to the integrity of the mode.

[mademoisail]

There is definitely a lot of valid feedback here. Thanks for sharing your concerns, and I will make sure to pass on your thoughts to my team. 

-Sail