Strive for Greatness: Tier VIII development blog

July 14, 2022

Legends! The release of Tier VIII ships is drawing even closer, so we wanted to share a few more details with you before everything changes! Below, you will find a reminder about the economy, insight into the temporary matchmaking situation, info about what ships lead up to the new ones, and a small-but-comprehensive FAQ.

Economy Changes

Service fee reduced from 101,250 to 91,125 for researchable ships of Tier VI
Service fee reduced from 136,000 to 122,400 for researchable ships of Tier VII
Service fee reduced from 136,000 to 95,200 for Premium ships of Tier VII
Credit bonus for Tier VII Premium ships increased from 15% to 55%

Temporary Matchmaking Changes

Due to the fact that the Tier VIII population will initially be small, matchmaking will temporarily allow Tier VII, VIII, and Legendary ships to be matched in the same battle.
Keep in mind that this is only for a limited time, and normal matchmaking will be reverted back to the +1/-1 principle soon after. Other tiers are unaffected.

The Ships

Here are the new warships and their respective predecessors, so you can get prepared:

USA:

Battleship Maine, follows Iowa
Cruiser Buffalo, follows Baltimore
Destroyer Allen M. Sumner, follows Fletcher

Japan:

Battleship Izumo, follows Amagi
Cruiser Ibuki, follows Mogami
Destroyer Yūgumo, follows Kagerō

Germany:

Battleship Friedrich der Große, follows Bismarck
Cruiser Roon, follows Hipper
Destroyer Z-46, follows Z-23

USSR:

Battleship Sovetsky Soyuz, follows Vladivostok
Cruiser Dmitri Donskoi, follows Chapayev
Destroyer Delny, follows Tashkent

We will start showing the stats for each of the ships soon with a series of videos, so keep your eyes peeled!

Tier VIII FAQ

How expensive will Tier VIII Tech Tree ships be to research / purchase / service?

To get to a Tier VIII ship from a freshly unlocked VII, you'll need 300,000 XP. However, we're boosting Tier VII XP earnings for the remainder of the current update. What's even more lucrative—any Elite XP you have on your Tier VII ships will be used to boost them, so it's entirely possible that some of the ships will unlock for you automatically.
Acquiring a Tier VIII ship will cost 25 million credits.
When it comes to the service cost of Tier VIII ships, it is 160,000 credits, just like Tier VII a few updates ago.
Tier VIII Premium ships will also have a 15% bonus applied to their credit earnings (same as Tier VII before).

How will matchmaking work going forward?

For the release of Tier VIII, high-tier matchmaking is going to be three tiers wide. This means that Tier VII will be able to see Tier VIII and LT ships initially. Once the Tier VIII population is large enough, matchmaking will return to normal and Tier VII will no longer encounter LT ships. We estimate that this will take only one update.

Same as Weimar, will any other ship (Premium or Tech Tree) be moved up or down a tier due to their performance?

Weimar's situation is very peculiar in that we grossly underestimated her performance upon release and got what we got. She should be just fine at Tier VII, fighting against VI and VIII and only facing Legendary for a short time. When it comes to other ships, we do not see any candidates for such a move, at least currently.

How will Tier VIII ships be distributed besides the Tech Tree? Will they become a regular campaign tier?

You’ll definitely see some Tier VIII ships in campaigns and probably a good number of them. Otherwise, expect the usual routes of GXP, perhaps the Bureau, Forge, and even the Auction.

Do you plan to rebalance Legendary Tier and Tier VII ship performance?

The primary goal of Tier VIII is to slide exactly in between Tier VII and Legendary Tier, so we initially plan to work with the new ships while leaving the existing tiers alone as a whole. Specific ships will certainly continue to receive tweaks here and there.

Will future Early Access branches have the Tier VII ship available in crates from now on?

Probably.

Does this make the return of unavailable Tier VII ships more likely (Jean Bart, Lenin, Wichita, Yūdachi)?

While there are some ships that we don't want to oversaturate the game with, others that have gone but haven't been forgotten are likely to make a return.

Does this mean Legendary aircraft carriers are on the horizon?

Yes.

On the topic of more tiers, do we have any plans to introduce superships?

Do we plan to add the full ten tiers from PC?

Again, no. That would imply adding many lower tier ships that probably wouldn’t receive any attention from players, so with introduction of Tier VIII we see our vertical progression as complete. That can of course change as time goes on, but there are no such plans at the moment of writing this.

Prepare for the arrival of Tier VIII, and turn the tide!