Open Discussion Pertaining to Monetization Model of Supremacy 1914

Goldmarking morale to 0 or critically low levels should not be an option. If goldmark is to stay to give players an advantage then I am fine with that. Getting a few battleships out early is one thing, but 'nuking' just strips the fun out of the game. An alternative could be to just put a button on the screen that says, 'Pay 10000 goldmarks to win the round' which would save people time. I don't have a serious solution to replace this with. I generally just feel its an unsporting feature from the start and invalidates other players and think rounds would be better for all involved without it.

While I can live with it, I think instant production of units is a bit overpowered. My solution would be to be to increase the speed units are made. So rather than paying to take 12 hours off instantly, you would pay to increase the production speed by 1/4 for example. That way a units wont just instantly appear out of the blue, but a player using it would still gain an advantage. It also makes more sense in "reality".

You could pay workers more to do a faster job in constructing something. But workers in reality don't just instantly build battleships in a second, regardless of how much they are paid.

I do understand Devs need revenue to keep the game going, but I certainly agree with evlover: A review about Goldmarks benefits could be needed.

On one side, there are too many features in the matches where GM can be used (boost moral, buildings or units; instant espionage results; or limitless raw material in the market). On the other side, there are too few features outside the matches where GM can be used: for example, The Treasure Coffin is a marvelous idea but it lacks many more options; it could be features like "premium" statistics; alliance customization (i.e. military uniforms, etc.); in-game alarms, notebooks or "favorites" (people saving "prefered" matches or "stalking" great players); Tactical Headquarters where the system here does analyze the players and how does they fought in the matches; User-created Tournaments with prizes given by the same users; and a long, long, etc.

As I said, It's something good Goldmarks is accesible to VISA and NON-VISA players, but Byrto, as many game companies, has the problem to think that only giving in-match advantages to VISA they can get revenues, ignoring the potential revenues of the out-match advantages many people would be ready to pay.

Greetings.

The complaint of heavy gold mark use is very understandable.

The only solution to this is a game/event were no gold marks can be used or limit them to 6k or some number like this. instead all player pay 5000 GM when they join the game. and the winner gets his back at the end.

Not being able to spend GM in game might be a big hit.

It might be a big hit however potentially to costly for bytro if people wills tart only joining them. I will post the list I have so far from various other threads:

+ In the same sense of the Tactical Headquarters, to create a "videocamara" for the matches where the people, with a pay in Goldmarks, can rewind, fast forward and replay the matches saved by them to allow themselves to analyze them.

+ Statistics about top players in building infrastructures or units, Goldmarks spent or Goldmarks in their possesion.

+ Menial things for the matches, like a compass and a ruler where people can measure kilometers in the match, considering scales.

+ A tool where people can build their own alliance's logo or personal logo (related with heraldry)

+ Selling Supremacy Merchandising (Mugs, Shirts, Pens, things like that) with cost either in real money and Goldmarks.

+ Limited monthly non GM maps

Terms:

1. Server produces one Map monthly with GM disabled.

2. Free accounts limited to 1 Non-GM map per quarter/half.

3. Members of High Command limited to 2 per quarter/half (If game mode is popular, more people will look to purchase High Command which = more $$).

4. Normal Account Entry Cost = 50,000 GM.

5. Members of High Command Entry Cost = 25,000GM

Earlier Contributor

Goldmarking morale to 0 or critically low levels should not be an option. If goldmark is to stay to give players an advantage then I am fine with that. Getting a few battleships out early is one thing, but 'nuking' just strips the fun out of the game. An alternative could be to just put a button on the screen that says, 'Pay 10000 goldmarks to win the round' which would save people time. I don't have a serious solution to replace this with. I generally just feel its an unsporting feature from the start and invalidates other players and think rounds would be better for all involved without it.

While I can live with it, I think instant production of units is a bit overpowered. My solution would be to be to increase the speed units are made. So rather than paying to take 12 hours off instantly, you would pay to increase the production speed by 1/4 for example. That way a units wont just instantly appear out of the blue, but a player using it would still gain an advantage. It also makes more sense in "reality".

You could pay workers more to do a faster job in constructing something. But workers in reality don't just instantly build battleships in a second, regardless of how much they are paid.

I want to stress the situation explained in this quote:

+ Simply it shouldn't be possible to reduce enemy moral to 0% or enhance your own to 100% with GM instantly. There must be a limit per day, as happens with the conventional "espionage" mode (20%, maybe 30%?)

+ It shouldn't be allowed the creation of inmediate buildings or units. Spend of GM should be limited to 12 hours (850 GM) per building/unit and per day.

+ Same thing goes to "Spy Master" and "Resources Market" options: only one use per option/resource and per day.

Greetings.

Earlier Contributor

I want to stress the situation explained in this quote:

+ Simply it shouldn't be possible to reduce enemy moral to 0% or enhance your own to 100% with GM instantly. There must be a limit per day, as happens with the conventional "espionage" mode (20%, maybe 30%?)

+ It shouldn't be allowed the creation of inmediate buildings or units. Spend of GM should be limited to 12 hours (850 GM) per building/unit and per day.

+ Same thing goes to "Spy Master" and "Resources Market" options: only one use per option/resource and per day.

Greetings.

In my opinion this is a model that could work (a economist would have to see the numbers) as it would smooth out the GM usage which makes it easier to even out with skills.

Earlier Contributor

+ Statistics about top players in building infrastructures or units, Goldmarks spent or Goldmarks in their possesion.

This is a good suggestion in many ways

Maybe also include if they are won in a previous game or purchased.

I personally, if all out of winnings buy some for big games, 100+ maps, 20 EUR is not really a game changer there but more often than not get accused for being a big DM spender for growing fast, and DM is not even the issue there, some players don’t understand what a single cruiser can do in a island territory filled with inactive players or AI's .

Hello, I have a simple suggestion.

Add an option to disallow use of premium currency at the cost of premium currency? I wouldn't suggest forcing people to pay on joining those certain games though, it would just make them less popular.

The amount payment required could possibly be proportional to the maximum number of players within the map.

A particular downside maybe that all live games could eventually become GM-free, maybe reducing income/profit for the company. However, this can be easily tackled by making the games costing high enough to suffice the average GM spent within regular games, I'd assume it is normally distributed.

Greetings everyone.

We are playing a quasi-historical event/s matches during a period when the economies of the world were based on silver and gold. When World War 1 started, all of the countries were on a gold standard. The acceptable exchange rate among countries was 20:1 wherby 20 silver would equal the value of one gold.

I propose that Bytro add to the resources screen another indicator reflecting that any given moment, a player may spend X amount of gold marks if he or she wishes in any way they see fit based upon the amount of silver thay have in their treasury. Example - if at this moment I have 20,000 silver in my treasury, then I am limited to spending only 1,000 gold. If I have only 86 gold marks in my treasury, then I need to acquire more.

This aspect of the game addresses many of the concerns and frustrations that players have had over gold mark abuse.

Summary:

a. All players may spend gold marks if they so wish.

b. Spending of gold is based upon the silver they have in their treasury.

c. This is historical whereby when the conflict started, many of the world powers save one went into debt to pay for war material. This action is repeated in real time whenever a player breaks out the credit card to buy gold.

d. This addresses one of the primary concerns of excessive gold mark spending and will damper the abilities of a player virtually "buying a game".

Thank you for your time.

Respectfully,

Tyr-Ion

I posted in another thread but just wanted to post some key points I have:

• Introduce an additional game mode, without goldmarks, where the Entry Fee is close to or possibly even a little bit greater than the average goldmarks spent per player for games of that player size. No refunds. This preserves (or increases) revenue streams.
• By introducing this as an additional game mode, you will not lose any of your current audience, who can still play the game the way they've gotten used to playing, where the game has no entry fee but players can use goldmarks.
• If lots of people switch to the new mode, you will not lose revenue because the entry fee has covered it.
• This game mode would not be difficult to develop/implement. Just delete the goldmark buttons and add a mode with an entry fee.
• A new game mode will excite your fans and possibly attract a larger audience to the game, especially a different niche audience of gaming players who do not like pay-to-win.
• Supremacy is a great game and some of its best features become more apparent in games without goldmarks

Thank you for being open to suggestions!

I'll quote an article I've read some time ago pertaining to this specific issue, which really spoke to me:

Goldmark is the in-game premium currency. Many games have such a feature, and most often this gives certain advantages to players who use it, buying the currency and then being able to use it to make the game easier in various ways. Supremacy 1914 is no different : what makes it unique is the scale that goldmark can be used upon.As a comparison, in the game of World of Tanks, the in-game premium currency is labeled gold. Gold gives a host of benefits : it enables one to buy premium tanks, which earn more credits, enable crew training, and are increasingly competitive vehicles in their own right. It enables premium account, with which one earns more money and experience. It enables one to purchase premium ammunition (which can also be purchased with regular credits in the game, albeit at very expensive prices,), garage slots for more vehicles, free experience, money, to demount equipment, to buy buy permanent camouflage, and retrain crews. All of this is a tremendous bonus, but in a fight between a player using gold and one not using gold in equivalent vehicles, the gold player has no real advantage over the non-gold user, and even in the increasingly overpowered premium tanks, a non-gold player can still win with appropriate experience and skill.

Not so in Supremacy 1914. In Supremacy 1914, the only limits to the benefits of goldmarks is however much money one has available. It is entirely theoretically possible than any player, given enough money, can defeat any possible coalition : he could say, win a battle on a 100 player map against every other player simply by hurrying construction of vast armies of units and taking over the map. Of course, this would be hideously expensive, but just the ability to buy enough units to defeat and hold the surrounding nations can easily make a goldmark using nation dramatically overpowered compared to its rivals.

Hard examples proliferated. In one game, Mcklenberg fought an Italian nation, on a 500 player map. Both were roughly equal in score, but Mcklenberg's action was to take a province near Italy, hurry a factory, hurry 4 battleships, and destroy Italy which had nothing at all that they could do to react. One of the biggest nations in the game was destroyed in only a few dozen hours. Mcklenberg destroyed all of their opposition : the price they told me, had been $500 throughout the game (which doubtless continued to increase, as I left before it finished). In another, Belgium, on day 11, had 225 territories : the next biggest nation had 40. There is no cap on goldmark, and hence if one has the pockets, any enemy can be crushed. Even on smaller scales, the ability to spawn more than a dozen troops instantly in response to an attack removes any strategy involved.

In my opinion, the best way to fix this would be some sort of cap upon how much gold can be spent, perhaps graduated by nation size (with a base level for smaller nations that they can't go beneath). The ability for players to overwhelm their enemies regardless of strategy or skill by cash is one which makes Supremacy 1914 an incredibly unfair and biased game, and until something is done to fix it, one which can never be as good as it otherwise might be.

Source: https://levelskip.com/strategy/Supre...ly-flawed-game

I am a big fan of the idea to cap the spendature of GM. This can be done in one of three ways.
1. cap GM per province: eg. 10 provs can spend 1000GM, 25 provs can spend 5000GM, 50 provs unlimited
2. cap GM per day: eg. spend 5000GM/map/day
3. cap GM per actions: this is basically Narmer's idea eg. 850GM/building or unit/day

The example amounts are totally random and purely for the sake of illustration.

1st of all, I'd like to say I'm delighted to see how people can finally address this issue. The suggestions Narmer has summed up in this topic look very promising so I do hope some of them have the potential to turn into something. That being said, I'd like to continue on a post/reply from a while ago on the 1st page of this thread (posts #5 & 6

https://forum.supremacy1914.com/show...73#post1850573

1st of all (off topic to answer the 1st paragraph I didn't say no alliance members should join, I suggested to limit it to the max amount of coalition members for that map. And yes there are ways around, but it gets very annoying for them to do so if they use different teams for various maps.

To continue on topic now and address the GM issues. I will just wing it from here on and explain by using some issues I'm encountering right now, trying to provide alternatives where I can.

Situation sketch: from that 500 player map with all the alliance members, I'm currently the only one left + 12 that orgininally belonged to their alliance. However, 3 have left that alliance and joined my coalition, 1 didn't leave but joined me anyway (prolly spy but w/e) so atm it's 5v7. (actually 5v6, the 7th got granted 1 province in their safe territory to they're sure to keep us in 5 wars at any time to give us max negative war bonus )

So, currently I am up 1v2 against them in Africa. What happens is the following: if I put patrols up, I can't rely on them because they spybomb provinces to get aerodromes down. Yesterday a province with lvl 3 fort and aero was spammed to 0. I've been told forts take 2 takes and aero 7 (aero seems doubtful since I wouldn't see why that'd be 7 ticks to take down..) but anyway, knowing that each damage spy costs 2k goldmarks. You can understand how much they're spamming in the desperation not to lose against their Nemesis

This does however imply that I can't use fighters except from max distance. Since if I'd put them on a front province and they spam my aero's at the back first, and then the one in front: my fighters would be stuck, wouldn't be teleported to the back and I'd lose them for free.

Possible solution: put a limit on the amount that can be spend on damaging upgrades/day. I'm not going to work out all the numbers. But let's use a fictive number for a second: if a fully upgraded province with railway/lvl 5 fort/aero would take 20 ticks to go down, put the limit on spending 40k GM on damaging upgrade spies/day. That way they can spam the first one down. But at least you'd be guaranteed that they'd port to the back since those aero's wouldn't be able to be destroyed. (or they'd all have to simultaniously spam GM on a different aero ofc..)

Another solution: don't put a limit on the amount, but put a limit on the number of provinces they can spam/day. For example 1 or 2. Not more than that because well, if it's like 4 or something, it kinda renders it pointless since most of the time there aren't more than 4 aero's within range distance.

The second thing I'm encountering: while retreating, it's very common to wait a bit behind the center to a least get a free splash in. For those who aren't familiar with it: the attacker usually pushes forward with his art stack, but sends a few inf/armoured car ahead on forced march to cap the province to gain time. To counter that, you retreat but stop at the point where you can fire at the center, you don't fire at the troops conquering the province but you wait until the artillery batch is within 5mins of reaching it. Then you attack the center, get a free splash hit on the artillery, and you move out. (only do this if you can reach the center from another province btw, if you're still in the province you just lost, you can't do that cause then he'd just catch up due to your 30'ish% movement speed)

But anyway, what they tend to do is the following: they cap the province, insta GM a railway up, and if you don't have a railway in the neighbouring province you're currently standing in: you're ******. (I splashed his four 50 art stacks just with one 50 art batch, he GM'd railway and got 4 hits in on me while he shouldn't have). Before someone tells me I should've had a railway there: it's the frontline, you cap provinces, you lose some, it's back and forth all the time with upgrades being destroyed constantly. Without GM usage, you simply can't get a railway up.

They are doing the same with their aerodromes since that's only 2 ticks to speed up (actually 1 since you can use aerodromes from the moment they're 25% completed) compared to 6 for railway. And you already know they spybomb my aerodromes, so they GM theirs up to exploit the air as much as possible ofc

Possible solution: limit the amount of times you can speed up an upgrade to half of their ticks. In this case, 3 for a railway (reducing build time from 72 hours to 48 hours) and 1 for aero (reducing build time to 12 hours instead of 4. Side note: aerodromes should be changed so that they only pop up once they're finished. Atm they pop up after 6 hours of building time which is not only OP much, it would also render this solution pointless since they'd be able to use them after even 1 tick anyway.

The final thing they're doing is (ofcourse revealing enemy armies. I don't really understand why this only costs 1650 GM since it is one of the most OP things you can abuse. The game is all about tactics/strategy. So.. right before reset when the normal spies do their thing. The obvious thing to do is "fake" moving your stacks towards another position at the frontline (while out of enemy sight ofc so they can't actually check it). After the midnight reset, you split your army from it, let 1 infantry continue it's road and once it pops up in the blurred vision from your enemy where you sent it to: to them it'll show as your full stack since their spy report remembers that movement. As long as you keep it out of their clear vision, you can fake having your stack overthere, while moving your actual stack to a then unguarded position. So.. if you have 5000 inf / 400 art, you can pretty much spook them and double your army xD

However, if they use reveal armies, your cover is gone. And they don't need to think about actually calling your fake or not since they have the new pathing.

+ the other thing is that it renders submarines pointless. I have about double their amount of subs but am inferior in terms of battleships since no one in my team have coal reserves while they have 1 guy with 1 mill coal reserves. It's already hard to develop a strategy to get in melee range of the battleships within 24 hours (have to do it within 24 hours because obviously, they get a legit spy report at midnight), but whenever they notice I or any of my team members get even remotely close, they reveal every couple of hours so they can free hit our subs if they'd get in range, or split something before their stack to avoid getting their entire stack into melee combat. So we pretty much have to adjust our sub pathing every 2 hours or so..

Causing all of this misery, just for 1650 GM, a real bargain

Possible solution: hugely increase the price of reveals. If you consider they have spent around 10-20k GM / province to get aerodromes down, reveals should cost at least as much, if not more. So I'd put them at 20k or more. + put a limit to using it once or twice a day so people can't reveal subs 24/7. Renders the entire mechanic of the unit pointless since stealth is what they're all about.

Think that's about it for the moment, might update if I see them pulling other GM tricks.

Oh, and don't forget: never surrender!

Cheers

Edited by SMOD Wolfe_Tone: Please use asterisks to censor swearing in future.

Another idea that's not mechanic related:

I used to be part of the single player tournament back in the day. I have noticed there haven't been any for a while. Really need to bring them back.. The semi-final map was the best experience I ever had.

But, however, back in the day they were free and I think people were allowed to use goldmarks (if there were any back then? don't remember, they definitely weren't used as frequently as now)

Anyway: if there'd be a new tournament, should make it GM-free, but ask a minor sign-up fee.

If there'd be a tournament every 6 months, that'd drain quite some GM as well I imagine. (and it'd actually get some competition going again in this game..)

I used to love this game and haven't played in awhile due to GM [the state in which GM are being used]. Even though as a non GM player I could beat them, the time it took to micro manage the game was not worth it.

Most of the GM rage I used to encounter on these forums and in game was due to the instant creation of multiple units, allowing that player to gain an advantage, especially early in a game.

As it stands now, to speed up production of units and buildings it costs 850 GM for a 12 hour boost. I would propose changing that to 850 GM for a 50% speed up boost. So the first 850 GM would knock it down to 12 hours, the second 850 GM would knock it down to 6 hours, then 3 hours, 1.5 hours and so on.

This proposal gets rid of the instant units and buildings, unless someone wants to dig very deep into their GM pockets. This would allow a bit more time for other players to form counter attacks and set defenses instead of being run over by [someone that is using GM].

Edited by MA Alexiel Lucien: Please do refrain from referring to people who use GM in a derogatory way.

Many things have proposed by players that could actually be usefull, with the best opiinion (for me) t limit the useage of GM with some kind of mechanism. This mechanism could be reverse analogy of the strenght of an empire (that is if you have 1 province you will be able to an unlimited use of GMs) or a percent of silver or a fix amount?

Some proposed to be able to purchase thinks, as maps, entry fees or speed ups that eventually will result in the same "spamming" on GM usage (from my opinion)

May I propose a different approach? Such as the power that moves the entire world right now!! And this power is the Ads. Not the Ads which are forced, but the section that a user can watch ads to gain GMs or purchase GMs with his real money!

Is this a way that could benefit both bytro and players?

Icarusgr

Many things have proposed by players that could actually be usefull, with the best opiinion (for me) t limit the useage of GM with some kind of mechanism. This mechanism could be reverse analogy of the strenght of an empire (that is if you have 1 province you will be able to an unlimited use of GMs) or a percent of silver or a fix amount?

Some proposed to be able to purchase thinks, as maps, entry fees or speed ups that eventually will result in the same "spamming" on GM usage (from my opinion)

May I propose a different approach? Such as the power that moves the entire world right now!! And this power is the Ads. Not the Ads which are forced, but the section that a user can watch ads to gain GMs or purchase GMs with his real money!

Is this a way that could benefit both bytro and players?

There was such feature in the past but bytro's partner in it wasn't very relayable so it was removed as it caused more issues that gains. I don't know how much such ads could gain but all bits help off course.

NarmerTheLion

There was such feature in the past but bytro's partner in it wasn't very relayable so it was removed as it caused more issues that gains. I don't know how much such ads could gain but all bits help off course.

I don't know anything about that, personally, but as a player that doesn't spend any money on the game, I like the idea of adding ads, but still it is another way people will abuse goldmark. I don't think it should be banned, but daily caps or caps based on in-game activity should exist. Personally I enjoy winning games so I can get the goldmark and use it in my other games. That being said people abusing the ads could be a problem. Maybe a limit of ads-per-day? Or something else.

I believe GM should exist, however should have the option of creating games that GM can not use.

They should also limit the amount of GM used per game every 24 hours. Example: Day 1 the player uses 25k from GM and this is the limit. On Day 2 he can use GM again, however the daily limit will be 25k GM.

But about other means of monetization ... I do not know if they ever thought of creating a virtual store that sells items related to the theme of World War I. It may seem like a ridiculous idea for a gaming company, as it would certainly be very complex to put this into practice. But a similar idea would be a store inside the S1914 that the player could buy skins for the avatars of the games. For example: in a certain map I'm with Germany and I would like to change the default photo of Kaiser for another photo of him only that colorized and for that it will be through a collection of images that the S1914 makes available, some free and others paid. Obviously you would have to remove the player's option to put any photo. It may also seem like a ridiculous idea, but it's something that does not affect the game's balance like GM, which can totally change the course of a game, while what I'm suggesting is just one of those common things in these popular games that love to sell "cute items" for players to spend their money, but that does not affect the game.

I would like to hear other players' opinions on these ideas.

Sandman

"creating a virtual store that sells items related to the theme of World War I."

Hi Sandman,

That's quite a good idea as I know there are other types of games with a similar set up and they use it to make the Castle look different to others as an example. If they used this option for Forts and other units then it could be quiet successful. Once the re-vamp is completed we could look at seeing if something like this is an option.

Sandman

I believe GM should exist, however should have the option of creating games that GM can not use.

They should also limit the amount of GM used per game every 24 hours. Example: Day 1 the player uses 25k from GM and this is the limit. On Day 2 he can use GM again, however the daily limit will be 25k GM.

But about other means of monetization ... I do not know if they ever thought of creating a virtual store that sells items related to the theme of World War I. It may seem like a ridiculous idea for a gaming company, as it would certainly be very complex to put this into practice. But a similar idea would be a store inside the S1914 that the player could buy skins for the avatars of the games. For example: in a certain map I'm with Germany and I would like to change the default photo of Kaiser for another photo of him only that colorized and for that it will be through a collection of images that the S1914 makes available, some free and others paid. Obviously you would have to remove the player's option to put any photo. It may also seem like a ridiculous idea, but it's something that does not affect the game's balance like GM, which can totally change the course of a game, while what I'm suggesting is just one of those common things in these popular games that love to sell "cute items" for players to spend their money, but that does not affect the game.

I would like to hear other players' opinions on these ideas.

I like that idea, and would like to expand it. I've always wanted to change city and country names, because as North Canada, for example, after you invade South Canada, you're the only Canada. I'm not sure how this would be implemented, but having an option to change country/city names for goldmark could be a good idea.