History BrokenBase / WorldOfWarships

* Ranked season 12 was particularly divisive for two reasons. First, it is the first ranked season to include the reworked carriers, and given how divisive carriers currently are in random battles, their inclusion in ranked battles fanned the flames between the anti and pro CV camps even further. Second is the introduction of "rental" ships to ranked battles, where players with Tier VIII ships could temporarily unlock Tier X ship to play in ranked battles. This immediately had some players complaining that it would cause an influx of players into ranked battles who would have no experience playing Tier X ships, therefore dragging down their team's chances of winning. Other players argued that rental ships were a good way to get more people into ranked battles and encourage participation.

* The "iChase Case." Community contributor iChase gaming posted a video where he was focused by a same tier aircraft carrier in the new Russian battleship Vladivostok. He cursed and ranted the whole time and went on screed about the flaws of aircraft carriers. This of course caused a giant flame war when it hit the forums between the usual CV and anti CV suspects. However this particular flame war took a new dimension when it was pointed that: A)iChase himself is hardly a stranger to carriers himself. In fact he's gleefully found exploits and shown people how to do them before. B) He wasn't using the O key or making effective use of his fighters, both things he should be very well aware of by now has hes demonstrated using them. C) For all is salt, he still got two kills, 100k damage, and won. D)He was being spotted and damaged by the enemy cruisers and Battleships and received most of the damage from them. These observation caused a the thread to devolve into not just the usual CV v. DD insult wars, but a free for all between iChase fans and detractors along with anyone who basically had any gripes about the game. It quickly swelled to over ''300+'' posts of rage with the mods being mostly powerless to do anything.

* The whole saga of the proposed move of the tier V premium battleship Giulio Cesare to tier six, dubbed [[ScandalGate "GC gate"]] by the fans. As stated war gaming claimed Giulio Cesare was over powered (something most people agree with) and said it would be buffed and moved to tier six. Most buyers of premium ships were furious as this counteracted War Gaming's official (but not legally binding) policy of never nerfing premium vehicles. Some people thought it was a good idea however to start nerfing the OP premiums. However, after not being satisfied with testing, War Gaming canceled the nerf. This obviously pissed off the later group and left a substantial portion of the former still angry that it was even seriously considered for a length of time. The fact the ship in question was one of four Italian ships in the game didn't do anything to temper opinions.

** The very fact that Wargaming is already testing Royal Navy carriers before the CV rework is even finalized. It doesn't help that the test versions of the ships are currently extremely overpowered despite successive rounds of nerfs.

** The resolution of the problem rubbed some people the wrong way, while others thought it was fine. [=Wargaming=] announced that there would be two premium versions of the West Virginia in different configurations (West Virginia 1941 and West Virginia 1944). The problem some people brought up was that this naming scheme could make identifying ships difficult and could open the flood gates to allowing better versions of existing premiums, and also allowing new ships that share the name of existing ships.[[note]]Common suggestions being the WW1 German armored cruiser SMS ''Scharnhorst'' (or her sister ship SMS ''Gneisenau'') and the post-UsefulNotes/WorldWarII Australian destroyer HMAS ''Vampire'', both famous ships whose names are currently taken by even more famous UsefulNotes/WorldWarII ships of the same name.[[/note]]

** The resolution of the problem rubbed some people the wrong way, while others thought it was fine. [=Wargaming=] announced that there would be two premium versions of the West Virginia in different configurations (West Virginia 1941 and West Virginia 1944). The problem some people brought up was that this naming scheme could make identifying ships difficult and could open the flood gates to allowing better versions of existing premiums, and also allowing new ships that share the name of existing ships.[[note]]Common suggestions being the WW1 German armored cruiser SMS ''Scharnhorst'' (or her sister ship SMS ''Gneisenau'') and the post-WW2 Australian destroyer HMAS ''Vampire'', both famous ships whose names are currently taken by even more famous WW2 ships of the same name.[[/note]]

** The very fact that Wargaming is already testing Royal Navy carriers before the CV rework is even finalized. It doesn't help that the test versions of the ships are currently extremely overpowered despite successive rounds of nerfs.

* When the CV rework dropped not only was its nature controversial but so was the nature of the next two hotfixes, 8.01 and 8.02. While everyone agreed that the 8.00 ''Hakuryu'' was completely broken on release, some people thought every other CV was fine. However some people hated the new system entirely, in no small part of the massive counter play [=CVs=] potentially had against [=DDs.=] Then 8.01 dropped and massively increased AA and removed a couple of exploits. [[note]]Most notably carriers being able to press the F key to instantly render their squadrons invulnerable by recalling them to the carrier[[/note]], but basically made any attack run a suicide mission at tier 8 at above because AA worked too well. However this didn't stop high tier CV game-play as intrepid carriers found they could "cold drop" ordnance before attacking so that they put less aircraft in danger. Some people argued this immediately defeated the purpose of the rework as it put a relatively high skill curve to enter CV play. ''Then'' war-gaming announced the AA scaling at tier 8 and above was higher than intended and released 8.02 which put AA in the middle of 8.01 and 8.00 at higher tiers. Some people argued this was just right, others said it was much closer than the previous two but needed fine tuning, others still thought it was too strong, some thought 8.01 AA should have been retained, still others thought 8.01 AA was still too weak, and a last group just hated the whole new concept promised to be angry no matter what level AA was at. Its without a doubt the most fractured and factionalized the fandom has ever been due to a change.

* When the CV rework dropped not only was its nature controversial but so was the nature of the next to hotfixes, 8.01 and 8.02. While everyone agreed that the 8.00 ''Hakuryu'' was completely broken on release, some people thought every other CV was fine. However some people hated the new system entirely, in no small part of the massive counter play [=CVs=] potentially had against [=DDs.=] Then 8.01 dropped and massively increased AA and removed a couple of exploits. [[note]]Most notably carriers being able to press the F key to instantly render their squadrons invulnerable by recalling them to the carrier[[/note]], but basically made any attack run a suicide mission at tier 8 at above because AA worked too well. However this didn't stop high tier CV game-play as intrepid carriers found they could "cold drop" ordnance before attacking so that they put less aircraft in danger. Some people argued this immediately defeated the purpose of the rework as it put a relatively high skill curve to enter CV play. ''Then'' war-gaming announced the AA scaling at tier 8 and above was higher than intended and released 8.02 which put AA in the middle of 8.01 and 8.00 at higher tiers. Some people argued this was just right, others said it was much closer than the previous two but needed fine tuning, others still thought it was too strong, some thought 8.01 AA should have been retained, still others thought 8.01 AA was still too weak, and a last group just hated the whole new concept promised to be angry no matter what level AA was at. Its without a doubt the most fractured and factionalized the fandom has ever been due to a change.

* The gun damage rework that capped the maximum damage an AP shell of 280mm or greater could deal to a destroyer to 10% of base shell damage (essentially making all AP hits on destroyers only overpenetrations) was met with huge controversy. The original issue was that Wargaming's damage model was intended to have high caliber AP shells only overpenetrate destroyers due to their extremely thin armor, with a chance for full penetrations to occur on oblique angle impacts that don't outright bounce off. However, a bug in the damage modeling system meant that an AP shell could register more than one instance of damage per hit. For example, the AP shell could "double-dip" for both an overpen and full penetration. This meant that the high base damage of a single battleship AP shell could result in a full salvo instantly or nearly kill a full HP destroyer. The numerous complaints about this bug eventually led to the damage rework. Destroyer players were ecstatic at the change, since it meant they would no longer be killed by random pseudo-detonations caused by battleship AP shells, while battleship players were furious since it weakened their ability to deal with destroyers, while the rest of the player base were angry simply because Wargaming failed to address the root cause of the "double-dipping", which was the source of the complaints destroyer players had against high caliber AP rounds in the first place, as the problem still exists post-patch.

* The gun damage rework that capped the maximum damage an AP shell of 280mm or greater could deal to a destroyer to 10% of base shell damage (essentially making all AP hits on destroyers only overpenetrations) was met with huge controversy. The original issue was that Wargaming's damage model was intended to have high caliber AP shells only overpenetrate destroyers due to their extremely thin armor, with a chance for full penetrations to occur on oblique angle impacts that don't outright bounce off. However, a bug in the damage modeling system meant that an AP shell could register more than one instance of damage per hit. For example, the AP shell could "double-dip" for both an overpen and full penetration. This meant that the high base damage of a single battleship AP shell could instantly or nearly kill a full HP destroyer. The numerous complaints about this bug eventually led to the damage rework. Destroyer players were ecstatic at the change, since it meant they would no longer be killed by random pseudo-detonations caused by battleship AP shells, while battleship players were furious since it weakened their ability to deal with destroyers, while the rest of the player base were angry simply because Wargaming failed to address the root cause of the "double-dipping", which was the source of the complaints destroyer players had against high caliber AP rounds in the first place.

* The gun damage rework that capped the maximum damage an AP shell of 280mm or greater could deal to a destroyer to 10% of base shell damage (essentially making all AP hits on destroyers only overpenetrations) was met with huge controversy. The original issue was that Wargaming's damage model was intended to have high caliber AP shells only overpenetrate destroyers due to their extremely thin armor, with a chance for full penetrations to occur on oblique angle impacts that don't outright bounce off. However, a bug in the damage modeling system meant that an AP shell could register more than one instance of damage per hit. For example, the AP shell could "double-dip" for both an overpen and full penetration. This meant that the high base damage of a single battleship AP shell could instantly or nearly kill a full HP destroyer. The numerous complaints about this bug eventually led to the damage rework. Destroyer players were ecstatic at the change, since it meant they would no longer be killed by random pseudo-detonations caused by battleship AP shells, while battleship players were furious since it weakened their ability to deal with destroyers.

* The Radar consumable. Anything caught within a ships radar radius when the consumable is going will be detected, no ifs, ands, or buts. Destroyers ''hate'' it, possibly more so than battleships hate torpedoes. Destroyers captains argue that it ruins their game as they are a stealth unit Battleship and cruiser captains argue that it an important counter against destroyers, which most of them considered overpowered before the introduction of radar.

* The gun damage rework that capped the maximum damage an AP shell of 280mm or greater could deal to a destroyer to 10% of base shell damage (essentially making all AP hits on destroyers only overpenetrations) was met with huge controversy. The original issue was that Wargaming's damage model was intended to have high caliber AP shells only overpenetrate destroyers due to their extremely thin armor. However, a bug in the damage modeling system meant that an AP shell could randomly "stick" inside a destroyer and cause full penetration damage. This meant that the high base damage of a single battleship AP shell could instantly or nearly kill a full HP destroyer. The numerous complaints about this bug eventually led to the damage rework. Destroyer players were ecstatic at the change, since it meant they would no longer be killed by random pseudo-detonations caused by battleship AP shells, while battleship players were furious since it weakened their ability to deal with destroyers.

* When the Russian battleship line was announced, opinions were split over if it was a good idea. The pro camp considered it an inevitability given the games Russian origin and were just happy to have new ships. The anti camp pointed out that it breaks a new record for paper ships in a line, with only ''one'' of the new battleships being actually completed.[[note]]And that one, Gangut, is already in the game under a different name.[[/note]] An almost all of the designs that are in the game are incredibly obscure, and only one was really serious. By comparison the previous record holder, France, has three completed battleships and all but one of the paper ships at least have a wikipedia page.

** Within the community there are those who like carriers, and those that hate them. The ones that hate them complain that carriers are like the [=SPGs=] from World of tanks, and as such, camp at the rear, and are, for the most part, unkillable. Many of these complaints died down as it soon became apparent that unlike [=SPGs=], you can actually do something about a carriers attacks, which includes the following:
*** When Torpedo Bombers are sighted, turning towards them, or away from them will allow you to present a smaller target, and increase your chances of not getting hit. At higher tiers however, where all types of aircraft are noticeably faster than their lower tier counterparts, this works if and only if the group of Torpedo Bombers have been shaken by either being engaged by fighters, or a cruiser's Defensive Fire ability when they make their drop. In higher tiers, the best defense against Torpedo Bombers, at least in battleships, is to stick with other battleships and combine the AA firepower, or at the very least have a cruiser or even a high-tier American destroyer that has the Defensive Fire ability escort you.
*** Constant maneuvering makes you a difficult target for Dive Bombers to hit, and even if they do hit, the damage can be minimized. However, in general, Dive Bombers don't do enough damage to care about them. This is especially true at lower tiers, when most carrier players don't even know how to use manually-aimed drops.
*** Sticking close to a ship that's bristling with anti-air weapons will make you a much less inviting target. Carriers have a limited supply of planes, and a smart carrier player won't throw his planes away.
*** Investing in AA skills and modifications for ships with the capability to fire on aircraft. This will increase the range, accuracy, and even damage of those ships when attacking aircraft, and thus make you a less vulnerable target. And if your AA is sufficiently powerful (or in the case of higher-tier cruisers, if you have the Defensive AA Fire consumable active), the attacking aircraft will be disrupted, causing less accurate bomb drops and much wider, more easily avoidable torpedo spreads.
*** Actively destroying the aircraft yourself[[note]] You do this by holding ctrl, and clicking on the aircraft you want to target[[/note]]. Even if the planes can make their attack run, the fewer of them that get their bombs or torpedoes off, the less damage you'll take.
*** Set the carrier on fire. Doing this will prevent the carrier from launching or recovering the air wing. If you can get close to one, focus it down until either it sinks, or you sink.
** Torpedoes have caused some debates over how strong they are, pitting those who primarily captain Battleships, versus those who use Destroyers and Carriers with Torpedo Bombers. Those asking for a {{Nerf}} typically point out the high base damage combined with the extremely high chance of even a single hit causing the Flooding DamageOverTime effect. Those who say torpedoes are fine, point out that torpedoes are supposed to be dangerous threats, and historically were to battleships. And that they're balanced by being able to dodge them should a ship maintain sufficient range from torpedo armed boats, as well as a bit of a clever tactical planning for them being inevitably launched at such a tempting target. Or by sticking together with decently AA armed ships to ward off squadrons of enemy torpedo-bombers. The argument has taken on new dimensions with the arrival of the ''Tirpitz'', the first battleship to mount torpedoes in-game.
*** In an example of how history repeats, RealLife pre-UsefulNotes/WorldWarI battleship advocates also didn't want to acknowledge the potential power of torpedoes, as it seemed dreadfully unfair that such formidable and expensive vessels could be so easily sunk by tiny torpedo-carrying destroyers. Unfortunately for both past and present-day battleship enthusiasts, sinking heavy units is exactly what torpedoes are for.
** The Radar consumable. Anything caught within a ships radar radius when the consumable is going will be detected, no ifs, ands, or buts. Destroyers ''hate'' it, possibly more so than battleships hate torpedoes. Destroyers captains argue that it ruins their game as they are a stealth unit Battleship and cruiser captains argue that it an important counter against destroyers, which most of them considered overpowered before the introduction of radar.
** Amongst the fans of ''Arpeggio of Blue Steel'', and ''[=KanColle=]'', is the distinct lack of a Heavy Cruiser ''Takao'' class outside of ''Atago'' being featured as a Tier VIII Premium. Calls have been made to replace the premium Tier VIII ''Atago'' with ''Maya'', or to place ''Maya'' at Tier VII[[labelnote:Explanation]]The reasoning being that ''Maya'' had the most different layout of the ''Takao''-class, with one of its main batteries replaced with more anti-air guns. The loss of 2 guns would give ''Maya'' a weaker main armament than other Tier VII heavy cruisers (''Pensacola'', ''Myoko'' and ''Yorck''), but better torpedoes and AA.[[/labelnote]]
*** Then for Christmas 2015, four actual ''Arpeggio of Blue Steel'' ships were included for a crossover event (in the form of purely cosmetic reskins, since things like [[DeflectorShields Klein Fields]] and [[WaveMotionGun Super-Graviton Cannons]] would completely break the game), with their Mental Models as the commanding officers. ''Takao'' is not one of the four.[[note]]Wargaming finally clarified the situation in QA in June 2016, saying that they want to introduce ARP ''Takao'' after mainline ''Takao'' has been properly introduced into the game (''Atago'' is premium only). It's also been revealed that ARP ''Takao'' has already been fully modeled, and starting with patch 0.5.11 she will be available to Wargaming employees for test purposes.[[/note]] When two more ''Arpeggio'' ships were added for September 2016, there was still more groaning about the lack of ''Takao''. Until November 2016, when ARP ''Takao'' was added to the game.
** "Paper Ships" (that is, designs that were never actually built in real life). Some players feel they add variety to the game, while others see them as taking up slots in the tech tree that could've been filled by real ships aren't in the game. The US ''Phoenix'' class light cruiser is one of the only paper ships in the US fleet, and could easily have been replaced by a real USN cruiser, especially as it's essentially a watered-down ''Omaha'' (the ''Phoenix'' project in real life was a developmental stage that led to the ''Omaha'' class cruiser). There's also some dispute over the practice of giving fictional names to Japanese designs that never got far enough to get a name in real life[[note]]Or in the case of the Tier 9 battleship ''Izumo'', in real life Project A140, a design that evolved into a different, larger ship design that evolved into the ''Yamato''-class battleships that were actually built. Had an actual A140 battleship been built, it would have been named ''Yamato'' instead.[[/note]], though at least they follow the actual IJN naming conventions.[[note]]''Myogi'' and the premium ''Ishizuchi'' are both preliminary designs for what became ''Kongo'' and are named after Japanese mountains, as was the convention for battlecruisers. ''Zao'' (likely believed to be a "paper ship" by Wargaming when it was implemented, but the design sketch they based it on was a hoax) is likewise named after a mountain, because heavy cruisers followed the same naming convention as battlecruisers. (''Ibuki'' isn't a paper ship at all, but a follow-up to ''Mogami'' that was partially built but never finished.) ''Hakuryu'' is a planned follow-up to ''Taiho'', and the name ("White Dragon") follows the convention of naming aircraft carriers after flying animals, both real and mythological. And ''Izumo'' is named after a historical province of Japan, as was the convention for battleships.[[/note]] Likewise the paper and "semi-paper" (that is, fictional derivatives of real designs that were deemed too difficult to balance) for the German cruiser and battleship lines have names that would be very plausible for their eras.[[note]]''Yorck'' was a preliminary panzerschiffe design by the Wiemar era Reichsmarine, reusing the turret and gun design of an Imperial German armored cruiser and . ''Roon'' and ''Hindenburg'' are very loosely based on panzerschiffe designs like the D- and P- class but with more more conventional cruiser-style main armament, while ''Friedrich der Große'' is based on the H-39 battleship (the planned successor to ''Bismarck'') with elements of the improved H-41 and ''Großer_Kurfürst'' is loosely based on the H-42 design but replacing the planned 19-inch guns in 4 twin turrets with 165-inch guns in 4 triple turrets (because of Wargaming has set Yamato's 18.1-inch (460mm) guns as the maximum allowed caliber). All of these ships are named after famous German generals, which fit with the Nazi-era policy of giving major warships patriotic names...but not ''too'' patriotic (ie no direct references to Germany itself or to Nazi officials) so that national morale would not be harmed by the ship's sinking.[[/note]]
*** Another argument against paper ships is that the developers sometimes use the "paper" statistics instead of what is realistically achievable in reality. The biggest example is ''Khabarovsk'', which is based on an obscure design that was never implemented due to the impracticability of actually building it. She's larger and heavier than her Tier IX predecessor, ''Tashkent'', yet somehow can can sail faster despite only having a marginally more powerful engine. ''Khabarovsk'' also has 50mm belt armor (the only DD in the game to have real armor rather than just hull plating) that makes large sections of her sides impervious to main battery HE shells from any ship that's not a battleship[[note]]Even the 305mm guns on the lowest tier non-German battleships have just enough penetration to defeat the plate. German battleships get 1/4 HE pen on all guns of at least 128mm in caliber and the 283mm guns on the low-tier ships and on the ''Scharnhorst'' comfortably exceed the margin.[[/note]], a German heavy cruiser[[note]]German cruisers from [=T4=] and up get quarter caliber HE pen from any guns that are at least 128mm in caliber. Their heavy cruisers have just enough [=HE=] pen to defeat the 50mm plate[[/note]], or any of the four large cruisers[[note]]The 283mm main guns on the ''Graf Spee'' get 1/4 caliber pen much like the tech tree heavy cruisers. ''Kronshtadt'', ''Alaska'', and ''Stalingrad'' get 305mm main guns, and have just enough HE pen to defeat the 50mm plate.[[/note]] ; in reality this armor plating was precisely what make the Project 47 Destroyer Leader impossible to build.[[note]]With the exception of the armor, ''Khabarovsk'' is a near-copy of the Italian Capitani Romani class (variously designated as light cruisers, destroyer leaders or "ocean scouts", which actually did get built...except that despite being scaled '''down''' from the Italian design ''Khabarovsk'' is somehow able to mount relatively heavy armor and more torpedoes as well as being even faster than the Italian ships. Some players have joked that ''Khabarovsk''[='=]s fuel tanks and crew quarters must be stored inside a [[Series/DoctorWho TARDIS]] because otherwise there'd be no room anywhere in the hull for them.[[/note]]

** The second Japanese destroyer tree and the reworking of the primary Japanese tree were met with mixed feelings to say the least. Some people liked the idea of more Japanese [=DDs=] but most people hated the idea. Most of the animosity was due to the fact that Japan was getting its DD line re-worked before two of the other major nations got ''any'' line of destroyers. It probably didn't help that the announcement was made while the anticipated British cruiser line was being indefinitely postponed. And when the line was rolled out, players of Japanese destroyers were unhappy that many of their existing favorites were being {{nerf}}ed in the process, with the very popular (and admittedly slightly overpowered) ''Minekaze'' being a particularly hard-hit victim.
** Within ''hours'' of reports coming out that the Tier VIII ''Alabama'' would be an exclusive reward to supertesters, Wargaming was facing an outright revolt on the forums over a one of the most-wanted premium ships being completely unavailable to ordinary players. Wargaming hastily reversed course, announcing that there would in fact be a separate version of ''Alabama'' for sale to the public at a later date. It later came out that Wargaming's original plan was to use ''Alabama'' as the supertester reward and her sister ship ''Massachusetts'' as the for-sale premium, but the outcry for ''Alabama'' led to that being set back...though in fall 2017 it was announced that ''Massachusetts'' would '''also'' be sold, meaning that 2 near-identical ships will be sold for over $50 US each.
** The announcement that the next nation to get a second line of a ship type wouldn't be the long-anticipated potential splitting of American cruiser or battleship lines, but a second line of Russian destroyers. With an emphasis on early Cold War ships. Many immediately feared that these would be overpowered because of having better (or at least more) torpedoes and even flatter shell trajectory than the current Russian destroyers. Others were less worried about whether the ships will be balanced than annoyed that yet another set of Russian ships are being added ''before'' British battleships and destroyers. On the other side of the argument are people who actually like Russian [=DDs=] and those who simply think more ships are always a good thing. Those not bothered by the new Russian [=DDs=] also point out that at least none of them are paper. But those opposed to the new line ask why these these ships that actually got built (some of them in quite large numbers) weren't just used in the original Russian DD line ''instead'' of paper ships like Udaloi and Khabarovsk.[[note]]The answer being that Wargaming wanted the original Russian DD line to emphasize guns, with torpedoes being a secondary armament at best. While destroyers mentioned for the second Russian DD line will in some cases have better guns, the ''number'' of guns is small and thus they'll have to rely more on their torpedoes.[[/note]]
*** For carrier players the announcement that the top ships of the new line would have better AA than the Americans and would gain access to the defensive fire consumable. The top cruiser in the line has more AA than a Cleveland and is much faster and harder to detect. Strong AA ships with smoke screens are in general a pretty big berserk button among carriers, as you don't know if a smoke screen is hiding a Kagero or a Minotaur (while Minotaur cannot use the Defensive AA Fire consumable, its AA armament is so powerful it shreds planes anyway).
*** When the ships were released a lot of players felt that the whole hype about new ships was just an excuse to buff the Russians. Two of the three ships in the second line are rather non-competitive but the ships in the main line are now perceived as overpowered. The most questionable decision being the decision to boost the damage of all Russian DD guns by 200 points. Wargamming's logic was that Russian DDs are suppose to be dedicated gun boats so it stands to reason that they should have high damage guns. However they never mentioned how the guns are far more accurate than their contemporaries due having superior velocity and shell arcs, which Wargamming had itself had earlier claimed made the most lethal guns mounted on destroyers.
** The Radio Position Finding captain skill (formerly "Keen Intuition" in an early leak) for the impending 2017 rework of the skill tree caused an immediate firestorm, especially among players who specialize in destroyers. The skill is widely seen as gutting all stealth and ambush tactics (what destroyers and especially Japanese ones rely heavily on) because it gives an indicator pointing in the direction of the nearest enemy ship ''even if it's not spotted''. While some players argue that it's not actually a GameBreaker because it's an expensive skill that requires giving up other valuable skills, others have decried it as a legal version of hacking the game. When the skill came up on the public test server and could be actually tried out in action, opinions if anything became even ''more'' polarized with many declaring it to be as bad or worse than feared. [[BigNameFan Prominent Youtuber and super-unicum player Flamu]] is on the record as feeling like he's cheating while testing the skill. Ultimately RPF turned out to have relatively limited impact, with ironically Japanese destroyers being the ships that use it the most (albeit defensively to avoid getting into gunfights that they can't win). Flamu has attributed this to most players not understanding how to use it ''offensively'' to hunt down enemy DDs or even to accurately aim torpedoes at unspotted enemies under certain situations.
*** On top of the RPF skill, the new captain skills and changes to old ones as a whole are widely perceived as providing buffs to battleships and nerfs to everything else. As some examples, Basic Firing Training (a must-have for "gunboat" destroyers) went from being 1 point to 3 points. Fire Prevention (a previously worthless skill) now makes a ship only capable of being set on fire in 3 places instead of 4, and more critically combines the 2 superstructure fire zones (the easiest places to light a battleship on fire) into a single fire zone. A vocal subset of the community has declared that the new skills mean "[=baBBies=] win." ([=baBBy=] being a derogatory term for unskilled and whiny battleship drivers, who are widely perceived as being catered to with many of the changes made to the game in 2016 and into 2017.
*** Battleship and heavy cruiser captains actually weren't all that pleased either. One of the new skills added to game was the "Inertia Fuse for HE" skill, which gives he shells 30% more penetration at the cost of a three percent reduction to fire chance. This means that HE shells with a caliber of six inches can now penetrate the deck and extremity armor of the every battleship and cruiser in the game. This skill allows light cruisers using it to melt through battleships and other cruisers. This skill also essentially negated the one advantage heavy cruisers had over light cruisers, that it was easier for heavy cruisers to penetrate light cruisers rather than the other way around. The power of this skill was initially overlooked because it came at the cost of a significant reduction in fire chance, which light cruisers had always relied on to do damage to battleships. But the skill was reworked to so that fire chance reduction wasn't as large, and most light cruisers will still set a decent number of fires due to their fast-firing guns and usually a large number of guns for their tier, meaning it's almost a no-brainer for them.
*** The announcement that Patch 0.6.3 would completely remove open-water stealth firing from the game by changing the detection bloom mechanic. Instead of each ship getting a detection bloom stat based on their gun caliber (plus additional penalties on Russian and German destroyer guns), a ship that opens fire will simply be detected out to their maximum firing range. Some players are celebrating the death of stealth fire because it's frustrating to be on the receiving end of. Others are outraged that a mechanic they've made good use of is being removed and ships that relied on it are not getting buffed in any other way to compensate, especially since premium ships (bought for real money and in some cases specifically advertised by Wargaming as being able to stealth fire) are not immune to the change. But the biggest controversy is over '''how''' stealth fire is being removed, and the impact that the new detection bloom mechanic will have '''beyond''' just removing stealth fire (which Wargaming seemingly didn't put enough thought into to notice). The new system is a major concealment buff to battleships, which almost universally had detection blooms far '''beyond''' their firing range under the old system (some of them even having blooms exceeding the map size). And for the many low-tier [=BBs=] that had detection range ''exceeding'' their maximum firing range? Wargaming simply buffed their firing range without nerfing anything else. It also impacts destroyers that fight at very '''close''' range, since if they fire their guns to kill a ship they can remain spotted for up to 20 seconds by another still-living enemy ship even if it's very far away from them. Thus, it's yet again perceived as a case of "[=baBBies=] win."
** The reveal of the Tier VII premium aircraft carrier ''Kaga'' was met was some amount of controversy, as Wargaming previously stated that they would not release another premium CV until the issue of carrier balance was solved.[[note]]Especially the gap in performance between America and Japan, with non-premium Japanese carriers outperforming their American counterparts (often substantially) at every tier.[[/note]] And then they added they revealed they were adding the ''Enterprise'' as a Tier VIII. To top it off when ''Kaga'' was released, players complained that ''Kaga'' exemplified everything bad about carriers.[[note]]She has poor fighters but will absolutely dominate the battlefield with her ungodly amount of torpedo bombers if left to her own devices. Especially if the enemy CV player is inattentive enough to let the ''Kaga'' player eliminate him early on, which ''Kaga''[='=]s torpedo bombers have more than enough firepower to do in a single well-executed strike.[[/note]]
** The release of the Tier VIII premium German aircraft carrier ''Graf Zeppelin'' generated even more controversy. While ''Kaga'' is controversial for being somewhat overpowered, ''Graf Zeppelin'' was released to scathing reviews from prominent Community Contributors for being released not just underpowered but seemingly '''unfinished'''.[[note]]Some have sarcastically noted this makes it historically accurate, since construction of the real ''Graf Zeppelin'' was never completed.[[/note]] Farazelleth, a unicum possibly the top aircraft carrier player in the world, while recommending that nobody buy the ship while declaring "I bought this so you don't have to!" It's generally believed that the ship was rushed into the premium shop despite still being a work in progress and supertesters thinking it was not ready to go live because Wargaming wanted it out in time for the 2017 edition of Gamescom, a convention that Wargaming likes to hype up new ships at.
*** Wargaming did not take kindly to iChaseGaming's scathing but honest review of the Graf Zeppelin and, as a consequence, have suddenly terminated his status as a Community Contributor in response to it. People are now condemning this decision as another example of Wargaming being unable to take the harsh criticism that results from their poor decisions (notably the Kaga and the [=SirFoch=] Controversy over the Chrysler GF). The damage has also been done; WG NA Community Contributor [=LittleWhiteMouse=] [[https://forum.worldofwarships.com/topic/134780-premium-ship-review-graf-zeppelin/ absolutely hates the ship]]. This controvesy died down somewhat when Wargaming [[https://worldofwarships.com/en/news/common/Graf-Zeppelin-Situation-Update/ admitted their mistake]], apologized, and pulled back the Graf Zeppelin for rebalancing.
** Update 6.14 overhauled the notoriously under-powered high tier American aircraft carriers; removing the much hated specialized load outs and swapping them for a single balanced loud out. Where the controversy starts is that they also gave high tier American [=CVs=] AP bombs much like the Enterprise. Some people thought this is a great idea since American ships in general are often criticized for being unrealistically too vanilla, others hated the change. The latter argue that this has made [=CVS=] as a whole too powerful and hate how the change has increased the frequency of carriers in games. Carrier (and cruiser) captains counter that carriers were intended to be powerful and argue that the complainers are merely salty that they can no longer consider AA a DumpStat.
** ''Asashio'' is notable in that it caused a huge controversy before ever being released. After beginning testing as essentially an improved stock Kagero, it was buffed to have 20km 20k damage deep water torps that can only hit battleships and aircraft carriers. Some people thought it was a good trade-off but others thought it would make battleships (especially aggressive ones) obsolete. It also pinched a nerve in the rather substantial Hatedom for Japanese destroyers as it was perceived as exaggerating what makes those ships loathed (good at surprising unaware ships and not capping and spotting). The controversy was so bad that most community contributors who usually avoid talking about a ships beta stats, such as Little White Mouse, had to speak their mind one way or the other on the issue.
*** Whether or not Asashio is any good remains a point of contention. She is essentially CripplingOverspecialization incarnate, being able to murder battleships or the odd CV out of position with impunity but being rather under-powered against anything but lower tier IJN destroyers. Since her torpedoes can't hit cruisers she is even more vulnerable to them than the average DD and her poor guns make her vulnerable to other [=DDs=] in a fight, more so than the Pan-Asian [=DDs=]. Her poor AA and the fact that her torpedoes can also kill carriers, this in practice means she tends to be focused and killed by carriers rather than being a counter to them. She does have incredible stealth but this but unfortunately also has rather low speed limiting her role as a scout. Some people argue that its simply to focused at one thing to be any good while other people argue Asashio simply adds more flavor to the game.
** The announcement that season 10 or ranked battles was planned to use the same format as season 9, where fro the first half its t8 but moves to t10 became a point of contention. Specifically much of the debate has centered around the Conqueror, and to a lesser extent, other He spamming ships. The Conqueror is already controversial but became almost exponentially more so as season 9 progressed. Some players noticed that passive Conquerors would hang back and get early points by snipping with HE and only engage the enemy directly when the rest of their team died. However they would still get a lot of damage doing this despite being pretty ineffective most of the game and get top score, thus saving them from losing a star despite being part of the reason their team failed.
*** There's also the factor of Tier X fatigue, since Clan Wars are always Tier X and so have the last two seasons of Ranked. While the reason for this is obvious: to encourage more people to grind out their Tier X ships and to provide "endgame" content for long-time players who already have all the ships. But players who don't have a Tier X yet don't appreciate being locked out of achieving Rank 1, and players who find mid-tier gameplay more enjoyable don't like having everything concentrated at the top. On the other hand some players like the increased emphasis on Tier X, considering to be overall the most balanced tier and because it contains the most powerful ships.

* When Black versions of Asashio, Atago, Tirpitz and Massachusetts were announced, to say players were split between opinions was an understatement. The contra- camp cited their less-than-stellar reception in World of Tanks to a similar scheme of black versions of premium tanks, and saying that the original owners of the premium ships in question should be given an option of buying only the black camo for their ships instead of needing to buy an entirely separate premium ship just for the camo. The pro- camp said "don't like it, don't buy it", pointing out that these black-colored premium ships are identical in every respect to the original premiums save for the black color, and that any incentive to buy them falls squarely to the player.

** The resolution of the problem rubbed some people the wrong way, while others thought it was fine. [=Wargaming=] announced that there would be two premium versions of the West Virginia in different configurations (West Virginia 1941 and West Virginia 1944). The problem some people brought up was that this naming scheme could make identifying ships difficult and could open the flood gates to allowing better versions of existing premiums.

* The announcement that ''West Virginia'' was going to be added into the game as the old Colorado A hull a tier 6. Some people were fine with it but others were ''furious''. This is mostly because after ''West Virginia'' was raised after being sunk at Pearl Harbor, she received a unique rebuild giving her secondaries and a a superstructure more in line with later US fast battleships. The later camp was made that this unique hull wouldn't be in the game, and if they wanted a t6 Colorado they could have used ''USS Maryland'' instead.
** The resolution of the problem rubbed some people the wrong way while others thought it was fine. War Gaming announced that there would be two premium versions of the West Virginia in different configurations (West Virginia 1941 and West Virginia 1943). The problem some people brought up was that this naming scheme could make identifying ships difficult and could open the flood gates to allowing better versions of existing premiums.

* The announcement that ''West Virginia'' was going to be added into the game as the old Colorado A hull a tier 6. Some people were fine with it but others were ''furious''. This is mostly because after ''West Virginia'' was raised after being sunk at Pearl Harbor, she received a unique rebuild giving her secondaries and a a superstructure more in line with later US fast battleships. The later camp was made that this unique hull wouldn't be in the game, and if they wanted a t6 Colorado they could have used ''USS Maryland'' instead.

* When the nature of the long-promised aircraft carrier rework was announced at the end of summer 2018, players were immediately split between those who are optimistic about it and those who immediately hated the idea...with most current CV players falling into the latter camp. The reason is that the rework is going to completely discard the existing RealTimeStrategy mechanics in favor of giving the player direct control over a single bomber squadron. Those optimistic about the new system generally hated the RTS style gameplay of [=CVs=] and saw it as part of the reason why they have excessive influence over the battlefield. Current CV players, on the other hand, largely played them ''because'' they like the RTS mechanic and are disappointed that the skills they've honed already will be rendered obsolete. Many (including those who were never CV players to begin with) also worry that the new version of CV gameplay will be boring and repetitive.

** The announcement that season 10 or ranked battles was planned to use the same format as season 9, where fro the first half its t8 but moves to t10 became a point of contention. Specifically much of the debate has centered around the Conqueror, and to a lesser extent, other He spamming ships. The Conqueror is already controversial but became almost exponentially more so as season 9 progressed. Some players noticed that passive Conquerors would hang back and get early points by snipping with HE and only engage the enemy directly when the rest of their team died. However they would still get a lot of damage doing this despite being pretty ineffective most of the game and get top score, thus saving them from losing a star despite being part of the reason their team failed.

*** Whether or not Asashio is any good remains a point of contention. She is essentially CripplingOverspecialization incarnate, being able to murder battleships or the odd CV out of position with impunity but being rather under-powered against anything but lower tier IJN destroyers. Since her torpedoes can't hit cruisers she is even more vulnerable to them than the average DD and her poor guns make her vulnerable to other [=DDs=] in a fight, more so than the Pan-Asian [=DDs=]. Her poor AA and the fact that her torpedoes can also kill carriers, this in practice means she tends to be focused and killed by carriers rather than being a counter to them. She does have incredible stealth but this but unfortunately also has rather low speed limiting her role as a scout. Some people argue that its simply to focused at one thing to be any good while other people argue Asashio simply adds more flavor to the game.

*** Another argument against paper ships is that the developers sometimes use the "paper" statistics instead of what is realistically achievable in reality. The biggest example is ''Khabarovsk'', which is based on an obscure design that was never implemented due to the impracticability of actually building it. She's larger and heavier than her Tier IX predecessor, ''Tashkent'', yet somehow can can sail faster despite only having a marginally more powerful engine. ''Khabarovsk'' also has 50mm belt armor (the only DD in the game to have real armor rather than just hull plating) that makes large sections of her sides impervious to main battery HE shells from any ship that's not a battleship[[note]]Even the 305mm guns on the lowest tier non-German battleships have just enough penetration to defeat the plate[[/note]] or a German heavy cruiser[[note]]German cruisers from [=T4=] and up get quarter caliber HE pen from any guns that are at least 128mm in caliber. Their heavy cruisers have just enough [=HE=] pen to defeat the 50mm plate[[/note]]; in reality this armor plating was precisely what make the Project 47 Destroyer Leader impossible to build.[[note]]With the exception of the armor, ''Khabarovsk'' is a near-copy of the Italian Capitani Romani class (variously designated as light cruisers, destroyer leaders or "ocean scouts", which actually did get built...except that despite being scaled '''down''' from the Italian design ''Khabarovsk'' is somehow able to mount relatively heavy armor and more torpedoes as well as being even faster than the Italian ships. Some players have joked that ''Khabarovsk''[='=]s fuel tanks and crew quarters must be stored inside a [[Series/DoctorWho TARDIS]] because otherwise there'd be no room anywhere in the hull for them.[[/note]]

** ''Asashio'' is notable in that it caused a huge controversy before ever being released. After beginning testing as essentially an improved stock Kagero, it was buffed to have 20km 20k damage deep water torps that can only hit battleships and aircraft carriers. Some people thought it was a good trade-off but others thought it would make battleships (especially aggressive ones) obsolete. It also pinched a nerve in the rather substantial Hatedom for Japanese destroyers as it was perceived as exaggerating what makes those ships loathed (good at surprising unaware ships and not capping and spotting). The controversy was so bad that most community contributors who usually avoid talking about a ships beta stats, such as Little White Mouse, had to speak their mind one way or the other on the issue.