World of Warships Will Soon Get Anime-Inspired Game Mode

[Fanghawk]

World of Warships Will Soon Get Anime-Inspired Game Mode

Wargaming is bringing a new gameplay mode to World of Warships inspired by the naval combat anime Arpeggio of Blue Steel -Ars Nova-.

Let's say <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/editorials/reviews/14639-World-of-Warships-Launch-Review#&gid=gallery_4714&pid=1>you've officially launched a World War II naval combat game, and need to come up with expansions and new content. What are your options? Do you add more historical vessels? Experiment with modern ships and technology? That's what I expected from Wargaming, but it's taking World of Warships in a complete unexpected direction - adding a new game mode based on the anime series Arpeggio of Blue Steel -Ars Nova-.

Arpeggio of Blue Steel is a manga set in a near future where rising sea levels consumed many Earth landmasses. The series follows humanity's conflict with The Fleet of Fog, sentient warships that control the oceans and communicate with humanoid avatars called Mental Models. The concept eventually carried over to the anime series Arpeggio of Blue Steel -Ars Nova-, which produced 12 episodes in 2013 and two full-length films this year.

So what's this have to do with World of Warships? Well, Wargaming will soon add a new game mode based around the Arpeggio of Blue Steel anime. Captains will take control of the show's Kongo-class ships, and lead fleets into battle for all-new missions. Each ship also comes with a Mental Model, calling out actions in-game. Wargaming even brought the voice actress behind "Iona" into Warships, a nice touch for fans of the show.

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This isn't the kind of direction I expected Wargaming to take, but it might actually be a smart move. It's a great way to bring an entirely new audience to World of Warships that already enjoyed naval battles in another genre. And based on the trailer, it doesn't require any massive changes on Wargaming's part outside of reskins and voice recordings. It's not clear whether the Apreggio of Blue Steel's mode features any gameplay changes, but it might be worth checking out in the coming days.

The question now is what Wargaming will come up with next. A <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/conferences/e3-2015/14165-Master-of-Orion-Remake-Will-Be-a-Labor-of-Love-For-Wargaming#&gid=gallery_4303&pid=1>Master of Orion crossover? Pacific Rim-themed Kaiju battles? Who knows?

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[Zontar]

This is just a response to popular demand. The different Wargames they have allow for moding the skin things have (within the realm of not allowing for cheating) and people would honestly be surprised how common anime themed skins are.

This is just Wargaming knowing their target market.

 

[Adamantium93]

Just reading the title, I was expecting a Kraken or Giant Squid battle. Not sure if I'm disappointed or not.

 

[Aeshi]

Well I guess that's not too surprising. Doesn't WoT already have a cross-promotion thing with a Tank-based Anime of some sort?

 

[EndlessSporadic]

Assuming this is implemented correctly this could be a significant draw for me.

 

[K.ur]

Well I guess that's not too surprising. Doesn't WoT already have a cross-promotion thing with a Tank-based Anime of some sort?

Girls und Panzer. When they translated/released the game in japanese in 2013. The anime aired 2012.


OT:
Oh, will they also do all that transforming stuff or give missiles? Because if i remember right, most they did was look like WW2 ships. They had lasers and nanobot repairs, being nanobot bodies with a central computer.

 

[Zontar]

Well I guess that's not too surprising. Doesn't WoT already have a cross-promotion thing with a Tank-based Anime of some sort?

No. The relationship between World of Tanks and Girls und Panzer is mutual consumption of each other's media by the staff of both, but there's no cross promotion due to Wargaming not having a large enough market in Japan to afford it, while studio Actas doesn't really care about the market outside of Japan.

 

[sonicneedslovetoo]

Is this any good? I tried playing World of Tanks and I had less fun with it and its tanks made of kleenex than I did at my last dental appointment.

 

[hentropy]

This is rather somewhat, even for Wargaming. The Girls und Panzer stuff for WoT is mostly just mods and skins one can put in there. I'm not sure exactly how they're going to run this, but it appears as if the Arpeggio ships are actually going to be their own Premium ships you have to earn through missions, complete with special anime girl commanders.

The real question is when they're going to do the Kantai Collection crossover...

 

[Lightspeaker]

Well I guess that's not too surprising. Doesn't WoT already have a cross-promotion thing with a Tank-based Anime of some sort?

No. The relationship between World of Tanks and Girls und Panzer is mutual consumption of each other's media by the staff of both, but there's no cross promotion due to Wargaming not having a large enough market in Japan to afford it, while studio Actas doesn't really care about the market outside of Japan.

Not strictly true. They had a bunch of official mods released:
http://worldoftanks.asia/en/news/pc-browser/21/gup-mod-release/


On topic: No lie, I was expecting a KanColle crossover rather than an Arpeggio one. But eh, I guess this okay too.

Is this any good? I tried playing World of Tanks and I had less fun with it and its tanks made of kleenex than I did at my last dental appointment.

Its different, but much more poorly balanced and less developed than WoT is. Last time I played it they basically totally ruined aircraft carriers, especially the IJN ones, and made them damn near useless. Not sure if they fixed that yet. They also managed to put a bug in thanks to a simple input error where an ability was supposed to increase damage by 10% and it accidentally increased it by 100% that took them something like two weeks to fix.

I'm surprised you found the tanks to be "made of Kleenex" though. I've never had a problem with the damage modelling in WoT. Proper angling on a Tiger P, for example, and I can bounce anything at tier or below unless they shoot weak spots.

 

[P-89 Scorpion]

Is this any good? I tried playing World of Tanks and I had less fun with it and its tanks made of kleenex than I did at my last dental appointment.

What's wrong with the damage models? most tanks are killed in one shot from another tank, remember tanks where mostly used to kill infantry tank on tank battles didn't happen that often.

If you got to a Tiger (tier 7) then of course it's not going to bounce shots unless your angling as in real life it went against tier 5 and below while in game it's balanced hell it does better than real life the Sherman Firefly one shot Tiger's and Tiger 2's easily in real life in game it takes ages.

 

[P-89 Scorpion]

Its different, but much more poorly balanced and less developed than WoT is. Last time I played it they basically totally ruined aircraft carriers, especially the IJN ones, and made them damn near useless. Not sure if they fixed that yet. They also managed to put a bug in thanks to a simple input error where an ability was supposed to increase damage by 10% and it accidentally increased it by 100% that took them something like two weeks to fix.

LOL Jap carriers are OP in WoWs and in tier's 9 & 10 they are the most powerful class by far.

 

[Alex Baas]

You know, I was rewatching this a few days ago and thought that this show needed its own game with gameplay similar to WoW. Then this happened. Progress?

 

[Lightspeaker]

Its different, but much more poorly balanced and less developed than WoT is. Last time I played it they basically totally ruined aircraft carriers, especially the IJN ones, and made them damn near useless. Not sure if they fixed that yet. They also managed to put a bug in thanks to a simple input error where an ability was supposed to increase damage by 10% and it accidentally increased it by 100% that took them something like two weeks to fix.

LOL Jap carriers are OP in WoWs and in tier's 9 & 10 they are the most powerful class by far.

I'm guessing you drive Battleships? Battleship players are CONSTANTLY complaining about Carriers of all shapes and sizes. And Cruisers actually, because of the fire damage.

I think you'll find, if you do some research into it, that the true problem CVs were the Midway and the Essex. These were consistently agreed upon in the vast majority of discussions as being outright broken and reducing some games to literally which Midway can nuke the other Midway first.

Having played every class across multiple servers since Closed Beta: IJN CVs are currently in probably the third worst state of any ship class right now, notably when compared to US CVs.. And the only ships in worst states were back in beta.

 

[P-89 Scorpion]

I'm guessing you drive Battleships? Battleship players are CONSTANTLY complaining about Carriers of all shapes and sizes. And Cruisers actually, because of the fire damage.

I think you'll find, if you do some research into it, that the true problem CVs were the Midway and the Essex. These were consistently agreed upon in the vast majority of discussions as being outright broken and reducing some games to literally which Midway can nuke the other Midway first.

Having played every class across multiple servers since Closed Beta: IJN CVs are currently in probably the third worst state of any ship class right now, notably when compared to US CVs.. And the only ships in worst states were back in beta.

Nope no battleships just all other classes and Jap carriers are OP it's very easy with a Jap carrier even at low tiers to wreck battleships with 2 torp squads and attacking crosswise I do it my self all the time. While against US carriers having a flight advantage makes attacking ships while denying the US carrier the same is also easy.

 

[shintakie10]

This suddenly makes me very interested again in this game. Wasn't hugely interested in the base game, but this. This interests me.

 

[Kaimax]

Was expecting KanColle, got Arpeggio instead...meh it's alright as both franchises also did a collaboration before. Probably sign that I need to get back to playing WoW.

 

[Tanis]

How about Warship Gunner 2?

Or, maybe just release some DLC that makes this game a bit more like it?

 

[Lightspeaker]

Nope no battleships just all other classes and Jap carriers are OP it's very easy with a Jap carrier even at low tiers to wreck battleships with 2 torp squads and attacking crosswise I do it my self all the time. While against US carriers having a flight advantage makes attacking ships while denying the US carrier the same is also easy.

Low Tier IJN CVs are pretty poor due to the massively increased prevalence of AS loadout CVs since the patch which basically results in two giant floating ships totally unable to do anything to each other (because the US CV shoots down all the planes of the IJN CV ez pz and then can't do anything itself through lack of any real meaningful strike capability), mid tier are okay because of the increased flight plane capacity and numbers, high tier is utterly US dominated because the Midway and, to a lesser extent, the Essex are outright broken. About the only level that IJN has a clear, consistent advantage at is T7 and that's because the Ranger is, frankly, total garbage with probably the worst at-tier loadouts in the game.

US fighters consistently out-fight IJN at every single level thanks to the massive advantage of extra aircraft in a flight coupled with the straight up superiority of the fighters. This got even worse when they changed the damage model on aircraft which meant entire flights could pop in an RNG way in seconds, plus the fact you couldn't actually run fighters away anymore because they became locked into combat. The sole, hilarious, exception to this rule was thanks to the Dogfighting Expert skill bug which added 100% capability to aircraft a Tier lower rather than 10%.

If you don't believe me here: There's a very, VERY good reason that every single IJN CV driver with ANY skill whatsoever used strike loadouts before they were removed from the game. And its because it was utterly worthless to try to do anything other than try to sneak torpedo bombers through. This is an issue that's literally gone back as far as CB. The issue is that US CVs have a poor strike package but godly AS compared to anything the IJN can put up. Which means that even though IJN get bigger strike packages in every loadout they needed that bigger package to get any bombers through at all. Which meant the absolute optimal play was to take full strike loadout every single time and just throw as many bombers at the opponents as you can and play for kills, trying to cat and mouse the US fighters. With the removal of those and the forcing of fighters it dramatically weakened the damage output and forced a totally useless AS squadron into the mix. Which was needed, because the full strike packages were pretty absurd for damage output. But with the consistent nerfs since then means there's very little left to work with.

Since the torpedo patch recently, in particular, IJN CVs are pretty damn awful. The drastically reduced torpedo speed coupled with the fact that it became absolutely ridiculous trying to T-cross bombing runs unless you fiddled about with the interface and the MASSIVE nerfs to landing time and launching absolutely killed them. The spread change received very mixed reviews. On the one hand against particularly slow and big ships you could now theoretically land more torpedoes from your salvo. In practice for the most part, however, it made the salvo as a whole much more easy to dodge by anything with any speed whatsoever because its both much narrower in shot and much, much slower. The fact that US bomber wings have way more bombers in them made this even worse in comparison.

That landing change though...after that patch even at low levels with hardly any planes it was better to flat out suicide your bombers and prep fresh because you'd have to wait far too long to land them. Was absolutely comically bad.

The only positive change was to Dive Bombers manual drop. It made it somewhat easier to just keep trolling opponents by first putting a hole in their hull with a torpedo, then waiting for them to blow the repair party and bombing the hell out of them to set them on fire. Which, whilst fun, is still pretty much godawful because Dive Bombers are pretty solidly bad against anything other than another carrier (because it can set their deck on fire and prevent carrier operations outright as a result).

 

[Frankster]

I have no idea what the anime is but hopefully my captains get replaced by pink haired lolis, the sea becomes filled with tentacles and I get a junky j-pop ost during battles. Also a tsundere vice captain who questions your every order but goes through with it anyways because it's not like she likes you or anything...

If you're going to go anime mode, go all the way I say!