Talk:General Discussion/@comment-26326357-20150419073251/@comment-26326357-20150419205517

1 Still different, though.

2 It's ridiculously awesome IMHO, and it completely runs counter the image you think they're trying to set up, but we'll just have to agree to disagree here.

3&5 No, some Japanese players mentioned it might be upsetting to westerners - they don't consider it to be an insult. And the truth here is, that this is a Japanese game for Japanese players - they aren't going out of their way to cater to western sensibilities - the only thing that matters is whether or not they present those stereotypes in an intentionally insulting manner. Getting pissed off if there's no real ill will or mocking intent behind it is ridiculous.

Honestly, I understand your fears -I'm Italian myself!- but you have to look at it from an objective POV: if you discount the gun, every single detail of this ship's introduction so far has been positive - lots of tweets about her, touting her as the main event rewards -even the clever idea of introducing her at the end of April (when Vittorio Veneto was launched) in an event based on a battle against the Royal Navy - all this has been carefully planned and thought out - it doesn't speak of trolling, it speak of dedication and attention to detail.

Then, of course there's the gun. I think this is the first time a gun has been introduced before its ship, isn't it? As a monthly reward, even. I suspect there's something going on here, and I don't think it's something bad.

I think they're going for the GuP approach, which would be awesome.

6&7 Fifth of April, one of the first tweets. "Powerful Italian Kanmusu"

My point, by the way, wasn't that Cesare (or Doria - just imagine the supernaturally high luck stat!) couldn't be powerful ship if Kadokawa wanted to - but that they'd be vastly better targets for a joke. There would be no need to twist and tweak stats - they could be as historically accurate as possible and they'd still look like a joke next to the impossibly unrealistic Kancolle Kongous. But they haven't done that - they're going for the Littorio class instead, which, despite its faults, was still one of the best battleship classes of WWII. I think this means they do want a strong battleship in-game.

Look, just look at it from a cold, calculating point of view: you're Kadokawa, and you've effectively run out of battleships (and major IJN vessels in general) so you're slowly being forced to add foreign ships - but you want to limit yourself to axis vessels for the time being: the Kriegsmarine is relatively small when it comes to major surface vessels, while the Regia Marina is full of them - therefore it makes sense, in order to generate interest and keep turning a profit, to have powerful Italian ships in-game.

8 I'm aware of the myths surrounding the Pugliese system. It was flawed in that a hit in a zone outside the TDS tended to make the TDS explode anyway, like some kind of overreactive ERA, but the concept was sound, and saved the Vittorio Veneto at least once. Yes, I'm aware that the Japanese wikipedia mentions that, but I think Kadokawa's research to be a bit more in depth than just reading the Japanese wiki, and even the English wiki presents a waaay more balanced view of the system. Besides, a single fault means nothing if they don't want it to - several Japanese vessels with atrocious design faults are just fine in Kancolle.

The stats of guns are only "excessively negative" because of the low accuracy, something which might very well be fixed by a positive fit correction on the Italian ship - it's been my opinion since the gun was introduced that they don't want it on non-italian ships (+20, very long range and +2 AA is pretty nasty when you don't take accuracy into account). Sure, the fit correction is not going to result in a bonus (it'll probably be something like -1 or +0), but, as I mentioned, accuracy is probably not going to be the Italian ship's strong point. Besides, Bismark 1 wasn't exactly the best ship ever at the start either.

You chose to prepare for the worst. That's fair. I'm choosing to hope for the best instead, and I think things will turn out alright in the end.