World of Warships removes a skill without offering players a respec option

One of the skills in World of Warships was Situational Awareness, but it’s been patched out. Players could choose to take the skill, or they could choose to have no idea when enemy ships spotted them until the opening salvo. In other words, it was functionally a necessity. So the skill is becoming a baseline ability for all ships with the game’s next patch. That’s a good thing. What’s causing players to react poorly to this change is the way in which this removal is being handled.

Players who had points in Situational Awareness beforehand will have those points switched to points in Repair if they had no points in other skills of the same tier, or have one additional skill point added if they had points in multiple skills. This doesn’t necessarily fit with several player builds, and it’s at odds with previous skill changes which have offered free respecs rather than simply reassigning points. Players are therefore rather unhappy about this particular change not because of the mechanics, but because it’s a strong push toward buying a respec for a rather important change.

It’s worth nothing that the patch in question will also hold back the co-op Assault mode from release while balance issues with matchmaking and match difficult are resolved. That, thankfully, has not proven controversial.