The French arc is history now,
the majority of you are researching French battleships,
while others are enjoying the Fool's Day mode.
At the same time, we're preparing Update 0.7.4 for release.
This version is mainly based on your requests.
It includes an improved matchmaker, a new Ranked Season,
as well as a new punishment system for unfair play,
and many other features.
These days, we're receiving more and more feedback
about an unsymmetrical matchmaker.
To resolve this issue, we've done the following:
now the matchmaker will pick a ship
of the same tier and type when entering a battle
if the waiting time doesn't exceed three minutes.
After three minutes of waiting,
the matchmaker will return to its current state.
This way, the matchmaking time won't increase significantly,
while the battles assembled symmetrically will be more fair.
Within the framework of version 0.7.4, we have finalized the development
of the punishment system for negative in-game behavior.
The system determines player violations according to three categories.
The first category—inaction during battles, in other words, AFK.
The second category— quitting a battle before it's over,
if your ship isn't destroyed.
The third category—team killers.
If a player violates the rules frequently,
they may lose the ability to play in specific battle types,
such as Random and Ranked battles, and Operations.
At the same time, player can continue playing Training battles and Clan Battles
if somebody, of course, invites them.
Upon repeated violations in any category,
the system may apply much harsher punishment.
Let's talk about the ships.
The following ships will be improved:
Shimakaze, Prinz Eugen, and Admiral Hipper.
They've earned it.
In this patch, we've modified the Ranked Season settings,
so now you will be playing on Tier VIII ships
from rank 23 to rank 11,
and on Tier X ships from rank 10 to rank 2.
At the same time, the battles in the Sea Wolves League
will be played on Tier VII ships.
To make the transition between Tier VIII
and Tier X somewhat smoother,
we've shifted the last safe rank from rank 12 to rank 10.
Now we have enough players
with Tier X ships in their ports,
and we're ready to launch the Ranked Season for them.
We've also updated the battle interface.
We've added two new counters.
These are a counter for damage upon your spotting,
and a counter for potential damage received.
We received a task: to add a Kronstadt Port
into the game before May 9.
On the one hand, we had plenty of materials,
such as photos and video files; we took a trip to Kronstadt,
studied the coastline and the fort.
But that doesn’t always make it easy,
because you can't define a year from a photo.
For example, one of our solutions was the following: we had three photos.
In the first photo, a tree was tiny,
in the second photo, the tree was slightly taller,
and in the third photo, the tree was huge.
This is how we found out which photo we needed;
the photo of the required period with a shed and a boiler station,
so we could see how they looked.
Because the appearance of the forts changed significantly over time.
At first, the fort was made of wood, then it was rebuilt with stone;
explosions, fires,
some parts were restored, some parts were rebuilt.
For example, Fort Alexander was called the Plague Fort for some time;
there was a plague laboratory in the fort.
On our model, you can even see
the elevator that was used for lifting large animals.
We're very proud of our work:
we're proud of our approach,
of how the port was designed,
of how the port looks compared to other in-game ports,
and of the atmosphere it creates in our game.
Let's continue with the achievements.
Clear Sky is no longer in the game.
We have two new achievements instead—
King of the Air and AA Defense Expert.
We're launching a global support program for video makers.
It's called the Community Contributor Program.
It will be for video makers, YouTubers,
streamers, creators of different guides;
in general, it’s for people who tell players about the game
and inform them about in-game events.
We decided to unite all these activities in a single program.
This allows for more personal communication with contributors,
to be constantly in touch with them.
If there are any questions arising from subscribers,
contributors can very quickly get the answers directly from the developers.
Moreover, we're introducing a series of in-game items
specially for that program.
First of all, contributors will be able to distinguish themselves in battle.
They will have a patch, emblem, flag, and special camouflage.
Pages with the links to the most popular and useful
video makers on the project will appear on the official website.
We’re also trying to add their videos into the game client when possible.
For example, during Clan Battles,
for the sake of an experiment, we're adding training video guides
on rented clan ships directly into the game.
It will be much more interesting for subscribers too.
The thing is, video makers will have
a special container type similar to supercontainers.
A Premium Tier VIII ship can drop from such containers;
but even if the ship doesn't drop,
the container may drop a large chunk of free experience,
good economic signals,
or exclusive subscriber camouflages
providing splendid economic bonuses.
When this program launches,
we want to continue promoting it in a more active fashion
so that people, who are now thinking about streaming the game,
don't hesitate and start doing it.
If you want to be the first to get the latest news about our game,
subscribe to our channel, and, of course, hit the like button.
Hello, guys!
Nobody's here.
So, let's have a small secret talk, just me and you.
I'd like to say you thank you.
Thank you for all your likes, all your comments.
Even thank you for all your dislikes.
Because I'm happy to know that you're watching us.
And I have an idea
let's play a game.
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really enjoy this Developer Diaries video,
please give us a like.
If we get 5,000 like from you
I'll share a special bonus code in the Community feed section.
So, let's try to do it, ok?