Good afternoon everyone, it has been almost 2 weeks but part 1 is finally ready for you to read. Part 2 will come later this weekend.

Q: Any plans for landing and repairing as well as landing to capture points?

We would like to see an interesting implementation of landing and takeoff ourselves. But in our opinion it should not just be an additional step for a player to enter the battle or repair their aircraft, but also have an underlying mechanic and meaning. Until we have a real working prototype that we’re satisfied with we can’t say anything specific.

 

Q: Any plans for a proper optimisation?

Optimization is being worked on constantly, in fact we added a new technology that will allow us to reduce memory usage just in the latest patch. This work will continue throughout 2018 as well.

That being said, there’s another side to it that we’d like to draw attention to. If you compare the 2.0 version of battles and the 1.x, you’ll see that we now have significantly more stuff going on. Instead of just 30 player aircraft we have defenders and NPC bomber flights, all of them are taking damage and shooting back. We have much more detailed objects on the territories with spectacular destruction animations, the missile, etc. Additionally, there’s much more graphic effects on screen and we’re constantly adding new ones or updating the existing. In 1.x our engine would not allow any of that, and we pushed its limits in 2.0 quite far. At the same time performance remained roughly the same, so simply speaking we now have a lot more stuff going on that costs about the same in terms of performance. That’s optimization too.

 

Q: Will there be a gold discount on the premium planes in the tech tree this holiday season?

We don’t announce discounts on premium aircraft beforehand, because it will naturally reduce interest to them when there’s no discount. But, naturally, we are preparing some interesting specials and activities for winter holidays.

 

Q: Back when 2.0.1 was launched, loot crates were removed from the missions, and the bomber parts could be bought using tickets. The patch notes said they would be removed Feb 1, 2018. Why is this?

Later on those bombers will become common premium aircraft. But at the same time we will add a bomber branch that can be researched and purchased in a regular way.

 

Q: When are bomber branches planned on being added and what nations?

At the moment we are working on three bomber branches. Every one of them has unique features and gameplay style. Very soon you will see three lower to mid-tier medium bombers from Germany, in particular, the Do 17Z and Ju 88. Higher tier machines will appear in later updates. Another branch that we are working on are Soviet medium bombers codenamed “Pe-2 branch”. And finally (and, probably, most exciting for our NA players) — there are plans to add the largest and heaviest of bombers that ever existed – the Flying Fortresses.

 

Q: Any thoughts about future lines in the game, especially British or GAA lines?

Actually a British branch is right around the corner — the Hawker multiroles are coming in December.

 

Q: When will premium ammo, consumables, etc. be available for credits as with other WG titles?

We used to have this in our plans quite a while back, but the idea was scrapped and there’s no intention to bring it back.

 

Q: When will we see an Italian Tech tree in the game, and could we possibly have Israeli planes as premiums?

There are no plans to add whole Italian trees at the moment. Nevertheless we might introduce some premium machines at some point. As for Israeli air forces, since they never designed or produced any warplane but used successful warplanes from other nations of that time, you might see similar aircraft under Israeli emblems in the game some day.

 

Q: When will we see branches containing planes from Hawker or Grumman?

The Hawker branch will make its first appearance by winter holidays and will include the legendary Hurricane. The second part of the branch including the almighty Tempest will come in next updates. The lineup is going to be quite interesting.

 

Q: Why can’t we have both Team Deathmatch and Conquest mode so we can chose which one we want to play?

At the moment we consider Conquest mode the most interesting and entertaining. Currently we are working on new game modes that will have new exciting mechanics that will provide our players an experience similar to the old Team Deathmatch. As for enabling the old game mode alongside the current one — unfortunately, it’s technically impossible. With the amount of changes to the engine and server side that we’ve made WoWP 1.x and WoWP 2.0 are essentially different games, so having the old game mode online would mean separate servers with relevant settings and a separate support and development team.

 

Q: Will there be any team battle mode?

It’s possible but not a priority at this time.

 

Q: When will the next iconic line come?

Hurricane warning for December, grab your raincoats, pilots!

 

Q: Do we really need the squall line? Why not let the team with the most points win?

Q: Squall line. The fact of smashing the plane into the ground just before the squall line was that intended? Are you happy people doing this? Or are you looking to correct this?

Squall line has 3 functions:

1. It serves as a natural time limitation for the battle. Without it the battles would be 2 minutes longer in general. By that time most players would’ve exhausted their respawn attempts, so the last minutes would just draw out the battle and turn into “hunt down the last GA” or “wait till the scale fills up”.
2. It is a “gamebreaker” — a mechanic that allows a losing team catch up or even make a comeback, which makes gameplay more exciting.
3. Allows skilled players who can fly precisely and shoot accurately decide the outcome of the battle by shooting down enemies and winning through total elimination of enemy team.

Stats we have show that the squall line is doing what is supposed to quite well.

At the same time there are some issues with it, and we are working on solving them.

-Players who crash their aircraft right before the squall line triggers to have full HP for the last part of the battle are a problem. We need a better design to make this tactic unnecessary or not viable, and we’re working on it.

-Squall line right now has no visual representation, which breaks immersion.

 

Q: Will you look into balancing? Some planes are way better than others (Yes, i’m looking at you Spitfire line and yes i am crying for your funeral Mustang line).

We’re going to make a full balancing pass in January-February. We will take a close look at all the stats we have for all the aircraft, find the outliers and then evaluate what we can do to fix them. Furthermore, we plan to improve and rebalance some of the existing Premium aircraft. Some of them will be changed quite soon.

As for altitude fighters like Mustangs, the main issue with them at the moment is that they barely have any targets at their altitude. Appearance of bombers that will be freely available for research will remedy this situation.

 

Q: Any ETA on the return of plane anniversaries? And what will happen with the planes that had their anniversary after the 11th of october?

No ETA at the moment, but it will definitely happen. All players that miss their aircraft’s anniversaries will be compensated in some form when we bring the feature backю

 

Q: Will Multirole fighters and other planes carrying bomb loads ever get their bomb sights back? (Left Shift until 1.9)

Generally the more keys you need to play, the more confusing the game gets, especially for new players. Our goal is to avoid adding special features (and keys) that have no significant effect on gameplay. At the moment we prefer to make bombing and strafing more comfortable for these classes with the default camera mode.

 

Q: There are still a lot of pre 2.0 maps missing, will we see those maps again?

Yes, major updates planned for 2018 will also include new schemes based on the iconic locations from WoWP 1.x. A couple of them will actually be released very soon.

 

Q: In contrast to tanks, Romania actually built quite a few planes. Is there any possibilities of introducing Romanian planes in the game at some point?

No details yet, but it is possible.

 

Q: Is there any effort in making the UI and controls more consistent with other WG titles such as WoT and Wows? Playing all 3 games you have to learn 3 different sets of interfaces, and 3 different control schemes. The default zoom key in WoT and WoWs is shift, but in WoWp it’s F. Additionally the way modules, consumables, upgrades, research etc. works across all three games is different and there’s no need for it. The map works differently (though this is new to 2.0), chat works differently, there’s no way to view team lineups at the side, and loads of other inconsistencies. Can WG devs for each title just get together and come up with a similar UI across all 3 games?

In general we try to adhere to common style where it is possible. It is not always possible though, for many reasons ranging from general design to technical limitations. WoT, WoWS and WoWP are quite different games, the same design can not fit in all of them organically because of differences in gameplay tempo, amount of crucial and redundant information you need to see on screen in battle, etc.

 

Q: Can you add an option for the alt-interface to be permanently enabled in battles?

It is actually possible already, you just need to change the control setting. Go to Settings – Controls, click the “Alternative interface mode” option setting and switch from Hold the key to Press the key. Then the HUD will switch from normal to alt mode with one keypress and stay in this mode until you press it again.

 

Q: UI scaling – any resolution above 1080p has really small UI elements, playing at 4K or 8K you can’t read anything or see any of the GUI, you’re practically forced to play at lower resolutions. Is there any plan to fix this?

At the moment we support up to 2560×1440 in our UI. Naturally, once the number of players using 4K+ resolutions grows we will adapt the HUD to support it.

 

Q: Can you please let us see previews of planes we do not own in the hangar? Currently we can only see a tiny thumbnail in the tech tree, it would be nice to see the full plane in 3D without having to research and buy it.

There’s no technical limitation, we can implement this in the client. Alas, the whole team is busy working on more important features at the moment.

 

Q: Any plans on advertising the game some more? Furthermore, will we see any other game modes other than Conquest?

Naturally we will continue to spread the news about World of Warplanes 2.0 to the new players using all instruments available. If you really like the update and would be glad to see the game evolve even further we’d be very grateful if you took part in this process, telling your friends about it.

Yes, of course we will introduce other game modes to the game. We promised it right from the start and we will deliver.

 

Q: Some shooting range would be nice to have in hangar. To test different ammo types against plane parts. For example, we have fixed plane (choose a plane from all available in tech tree), also we have fixed weapon (choose a machinegun, autocannon etc what is available for all planes). Point it where you want (tail, wings, engines etc), shoot and see what damage and criticals you make.

That’s an interesting idea. We’re doing improvements to panels that show aircraft characteristics and features in the Hangar, some of them you’ll see in the upcoming patch.

 

Q: Will we ever get an experimental fighter line for the U.S? Having planes like XP-67, XP-56, and XP-54?

We already have some experimental aircraft in the game, the XP-58 for instance. If the XP-67, XP-56 or XP-54 make their appearance at some point they will be Premium machines though, not branch ones.

 

Q: Will the Kostikov 302 be sold on EU in the near future?

Not in December, but it will reappear in the premium shop as a limited time offer quite regularly.

 

Q: Is there a plan to rehaul daily missions so they are more rewarding, less incompatible with general gameplay and increasing fun from the game instead of killing it?

Daily missions and their rewards will be reworked to make them easier to complete and more rewarding. No ETA on that yet, sorry.

 

Q: How did the release of 2.0 influence the total number of active players?

In several regions where the game is available our daily player count grew so significantly that in fact it reached several times higher than we’ve seen over the last three years. That’s impressive considering that a part of players thought the changes we’ve made were too drastic for them to continue playing. This indicates that we are on the right track and we will continue developing new exciting features. We are sure you will like them.

 

Q: The new Gamemode seems a bit boring in the long run, the focus definitely is on the planes now, and it’s fun, but i think it won’t keep newcomers like myself here for too long or give them motivation for a longer time to play actively.

Will there be optimizations, new mechanics and more gamemodes incoming?

Maybe just reworked maps for more tactical play or opportunities to make dogfights more interesting by using terrain when the distances between caps are bigger?

We’ve dropped some hints on future updates here and there over the last couple of months. In short — there will be much more features and new content in 2018. Stay tuned.

 

Q: Are there any plans to bring WOWP to consoles?

To be honest, at the moment we’d rather focus our efforts on evolving and improving the game on the current platform to fully show its potential. Right now spreading our resources between PC and possible console port will probably hurt both platforms. Once we’re fully satisfied with the PC version time for considering consoles will come.

 

Q: Are there any plans of bringing WoWP to the SEA server?

We already have a considerable amount of players from SEA who play on other realms. Can’t say anything certain for the moment, but yes, we are considering providing SEA players with their own servers in 2018.