[S1914] Discontinuing Support for “Legacy Mode”

Golden Buddha

add legacy mode as and extra feature in High Command and we are solved

just remember to solve security issues with legacy once and for all

Depending on the price tag I'd pay for unsupported Legacy mode if that's what it takes.

LostRealist

I don't, java was clunky and I actually liked the "streamlining" of the design they did when they made that switch. Good example of a design change, albeit fairly minor, that neither I nor many other people rejected. It's not about change. It's about what it changes into.

Eh, the aesthetics were much nicer than what they are currently in my personal opinion. Opening up the diplomacy tab and seeing the shape of my nation change in time, along with a corner map for views was something that really tied me to the game early on. Below is just a screenshot from their old yt video.

You do have a point there, it did have some really nice features that were lost in the slimdown when maybe they shouldn't have been and it's hard to see why they were...

LostRealist

it did have some really nice features that were lost in the slimdown when maybe they shouldn't have been and it's hard to see why they were...

If ever there was a short quote on the history of this game, I feel like this is the one.

supremacy great

LostRealist

Except if that "latest technology" happens to be nothing but a pile of hot garbage.

(Side note before what's next: You had your resources bound by fixing a bug every six months? Until the update two days ago when you actually did that, I was seriously under the impression legacy mode was considered unsupported ever since the new UI came out. Whatever "support" you did offer was not really notable to a player, at least to this one.)

This post is going to go down to you guys as "Salty 'cause things are changing", I know that, I know I can't change that fact no matter how I phrase this. I don't care. But I want the record to show that it's not the fact that the UI will change in general. I'm not even gonna disagree with the notion that it desperately needed at least a little modernization. I'd certainly love it if we had a new, more modern UI that retained the features that set the old one apart from the slew of free2play RTS games out there. It did not though and it failed doing so to a point where you have to wonder whether you wanted this game to become more generic and less of a uniquely enjoyable experience or you really spent not a single bit more of an effort on it than was absolutely required to have a "working" release at some point.

I don't think it's worth going into the details. When the new UI rolled out two years ago, near immediately pepole pointed out the ways in which it is inferiour from a gameplay perspective to the old one and have been doing so since. You did not care. You did not show any effort to improve the playability of the new UI since its launch by adressing any core issues and complaints. You've been putting out updates that nobody asked for ever since while players were either confining themselves to legacy or straight up leaving because their feedback on the new UI was being ignored. The actual act of playing the game and being able to do so with utmost possible ease has seemingly become a mere side notion to Bytro. The way it appears on the app store real edgy and modern so it gets kids hard over the gritty WW1 game is the main game now. You're free to make that business choice, I know. And as you did, Supremacy 1914 New UI is a worse game than Supremacy 1914 Legacy Design is. Easier to market maybe, but much worse to play.

You chose to have it this way by rolling out this behemoth of a UI and then ignoring the feedback you've even asked for on several occasions. The major ailments that plague playability are there still. If you want me to show you what I mean, I'll come back and post the kinds of screenshots that have been posted dozens of time. I can even throw in some more that quite clearly show how little "love" and attention to detail even went into the main driver of the new UI, the visuals. They are sloppily made, they overlap when they shouldn't, they clip when they shouldn't, they obscure information. All of this has been pointed out and no apparent effort was made by devs to change any of that. And quite honestly I haven't been keen of supporting this business decision with my playing the game for a while, but at least it was still in basic principle the game I grew to love over nine years of playing and supporting it, so the fun of playing it beat out the fact that I consider many doings of the company behind it to be extremely unprofessional, uninterested, uninspired and very loveless.

Of course this edges me more simply because I know of a time around here when it wasn't quite like that, when some of the people who had actually poured their blood and tears into making the game what it went on to become were still around and had a genuine relationship with their creation, and new players simply won't. They will just keep joining to find a now very generic game managed by a company that doesn't even care enough to document the updates they do to it properly. Nothing suprising in today's market so I'm afraid you might even get away with it. You've been getting away with it just fine recently from what I hear. Supposedly the game is in its most successful year ever with there being about 10 active members of the community left and everony else just kinda playing. Yeah I know, forum posts don't make you any money, players who want to get involved and help development with bug reports and suchlike don't either, they're just a hassle to you at this point. I get it, don't worry.

I know that fixing the new UI to be as efficient and convenient as Legacy while still looking modern would at this point be quite a bit more work than a spitshine, which is an amount of work nobody could realistically expect this particular company to invest into this game at this point. I know it would come with the damning implication that Bytro made mistakes when designing it the first place, which is a thing I don't think the company will have.

/boomer rant

I hope I can finish at least a few of the games I'm still in and from then, it's just gonna be the memories for me. Memories of nine years of playing, admittedly on and off, seeing the game and the community evolve and devolve, playing with a HC membership while eating nothing but butter on pasta for a week during my college days. Memories of the single one free to play game that has ever captivated me, the single one RTS that had a UI so intuitive, readable, no-nonsensically efficient I actually bothered to become decent at using it. I've reported bugs and issues countless times, I've been a frontline pioneer, I've been among the five people actually helping newbies in the Help chat whenever I've been playing during the last two or three years, answering the same stupid questions over and over again that could have been answered in a tutorial or a manual that is more readily available to new players. Afterall there was absolutely no reason for me to help these guys play and thereby support a game that apparently did not manage to teach them even the most basic mechanics on how it works, which also ain't no failure of mine. But I felt for some reason invested in this game I love and for some reason still wanted it to be the same awesome experience it used to be for me for other players, wanted to help improve it. This is gonna sound pathetic but this game really meant something to me over those nine years. The way this new UI was designed with so little care for detail or gameplay in general actually kinda hurt me. It would have been nice to at least get the decade full but since clearly the new UI will not be overhauled to become attractive to me for the same reasons the old one was, that won't happen. It could probably already be as good if player feedback on it had been taken seriously.

But it remains a pile of hot garbage to this day. Unless a miracle happens and it becomes a gameplay experience like Legacy with the visual appeal of a more modern game before January for some reason, this is farewell. And I guess it was at least nice to have this thread here to get all of that in before it's over. Knowing I'll leave again soon, this time to not return like I always have before is actually hitting me in the feels.

I agree you'd have to be insane to read all of that.

Oh and by the way: Thanks for the super early heads up about this. It ain't like many games typically take longer than two and a half months. Thanks a whole bunch.

What that guy said, but how about discontinuing support for legacy mode when the new mode can actually be considered an upgrade.

could we expect anything less from the year 2020??.. stuck at home and the only game i play is canceled.. sadly ill have to retire because legacy is the only playable mode currently. i hate the look of the new mode and its unplayable on 500 maps for me. ive spent thousands of hours on legacy mode and sad to see it go away.. legacy mode was close to a finished product.. it has a huge following and maybe ppl flocked to it because it wasnt about technology or graphics.. i liked legacy mode because its simple, easy to learn, not very complex but its about skill and strategy.. clicking fast isnt the winning factor lol.. i wanted to bring more friends over to supremacy but they wouldnt be able to access legacy mode with new accounts so why bother.. i guess ill have to find crappy shows on netflix to cure my boredom.. well it was fun well it lasted.. good luck in your gaming adventures everybody!

Golden Buddha

add legacy mode as and extra feature in High Command and we are solved

just remember to solve security issues with legacy once and for all

cow has two modes one with full of graphics and one with less graphics (like legacy) and best thing is everyone has access to both ui even newbies too.

And this ui seems to be quite much appealing (to me at least good appearance less heat issues)

btw I would like thanks bytros super cool graphics for ruining my another map too much browser crashes and heat issues. While playing 500p I have two options either risk my processor and continue playing or archive big maps and play small maps to save my processor

I'm also really concerned about the change.

I mean, the new version looks pretty cool – I always enjoy watching nice infantry sprites, water and really cool navy vessels roaming on the map etc.

Though, when it comes to actually playing against real opponents I always switch to legacy. It’s way more convenient to make orders and shows units exactly where they are. I cannot imagine sticking only to the new version, especially without a tactical mode.

I‘m pretty sure, that the reason that only veterans/older players prefer legacy mode is not because they used to and don’t like changes but simply because the new players don’t even have the option to try it and compare.

No new updates from the developers?

Trolzerkeinstein

No new updates from the developers?

NO

Seems Bytro is having huge Team meeting, no one has responded other than typical scripted, "Thank you for input", and "the community is important to us"...

it is simple- we cannot use revamp on a bigger maps as it burns devices

noone will risk loosing tablet or phone

I really want to see those numbers.

Make legacy accessible to all then again compare number

LostRealist

Well, duh? No account made since 2018 even has access to Legacy, you don't really need to have those numbers to have a pretty good idea of the general look of them. Especially since the mobile version has obviously created a major boom in new accounts since then. That comparison is seriously flawed in many ways, which doesn't make it worthless, but I hope you are not mistaking this as any form of statement on the quality of either UI? Under the circumstances, clearly you couldn't infer from that that the new UI was better, or even good at all. All it is is a measurable effect of the company's decisions on which UI people get access to in the first place. A more interesting number would perhaps be the amount of people who have access to Legacy but switched to Revamp vs. those that did not?

The question was not which version is liked more by players who have access to both. We already know from our marketing efforts that the revamp version works much better in attracting new users and growing the community again. The revamp was necessary to keep the game alive, because in the last years before the revamp we struggled quite a bit to attract new players and the overall legacy numbers dwindled. And then with the revamp and the mobile version: boom, the game got its second wind and is now bigger than ever. We never planned to keep both versions alive forever because that adds alot of code complexity and maintenance costs, it was always clear that we will have to turn off legacy at some point in the future. Therefore also the decision to limit it to existing players (since we knew from our numbers revamp works better for new players). I think we communicated this outlook back then rather clearly when we rolled out the revamp mode. The question now is just: When is the right moment to turn off legacy? The current numbers tell us exactly that, they showed us that now the opportunity costs and maintenance costs of keeping this version alive are higher than the benefit it brings. I know it sounds harsh but that's the business. We have to go with the times. Software has to evolve in order to stay relevant on the market.

For a more personal and empathic take on the matter please refer to my previous post in this thread.

Trolzerkeinstein

No new updates from the developers?

The decision to turn off Legacy mode still stands. But as said before: We continue working on the revamp mode. Usability and performance will still be improved over time. Your feedback in that regards help. We will look at the concerns and the issues raised by all of you. I don't have any other specifics to announce this time. At latest you will be able to read about it in future patch notes.

Hope to still see you around in the game!

s1914 great

I really wanna play legacy mode too but I do not have access to it

can we create new game? SupremacyLegacy and everyone who wants will be able to migrate account there?

everyone's happy : old players, new players, bytro finances

Golden Buddha

can we create new game? SupremacyLegacy and everyone who wants will be able to migrate account there?

everyone's happy : old players, new players, bytro finances

Sort of like Coke and Coke Classic. Good idea and perhaps you (Bytro) may want to check into the marketing story behind that before immediately saying NO. When Coke changed their formula and then brought back the old one it has become a legend about whether it was their biggest blunder or their biggest brilliant idea now.

freezy

And then with the revamp and the mobile version: boom, the game got its second wind and is now bigger than ever.

Well of COURSE with the mobile version the player base will grow! The numbers you SHOULD be looking at is how many players are STAYING with Bytro if they have to play it solely on mobile. Legacy mode on mobile was a nightmare but with a little time devoted to it by Bytro it would have worked and been easy for ANYONE with a mobile device to run efficiently instead of now taking a chance on running a game turning your phone into a brick.

OH, and one more little question. Now that you've made your decision will you be refunding unused Goldmarks to the people closing their accounts at the end of the year?

Just give players both modes and you will keep more attracted players, some just leave the game cos of new model, maybe will stay and will enjoy legacy mode.

freezy

The question was not which version is liked more by players. We already know from our marketing efforts that the revamp version works much better in attracting new users and growing the community again. The revamp was necessary to keep the game alive, because in the last years before the revamp we struggled quite a bit to attract new players and the overall numbers dwindled. And then with the revamp and the mobile version: boom, the game got its second wind and is now bigger than ever. We never planned to keep both versions alive forever because that adds alot of code complexity and maintenance costs, it was always clear that legacy will be phased out over time. Therefore also the decision to limit it to existing players (since we knew from our numbers revamp works better for new players). I think we communicated this outlook back then when we rolled out the revamp mode. The question now was just: When is the right moment to turn off legacy? The current numbers told us exactly that, they showed us that now the opportunity costs and maintenance costs of keeping this version alive are higher than the benefit it brings. I know it sounds harsh but that's the business. We have to go with the times. Software has to evolve in order to stay relevant on the market.

Sorry, but I think I acknowledged pretty much every single point you raise there in this thread before? I even specifically acknowledged, multiple times, that I agree that an overhaul was due of some sort. This is not the issue that I have. The issue that I have is that from all the input from actual customers of both products, the opinion has been unequivocally given that Revamp presents several major steps backwards compared to Legacy. Some of which are very glaring and some of which are very hard to get behind.

I want to keep playing and enrichen you guys by 5 bucks every 25 days for whatever it's worth but Supremacy in Revamp is very hardly worth that to me because it just got worse. This is the thing that your numbers do not show you. That you haven't "evolved" the game as much as made it less attractive, which isn't apparent if you only look at the number of new players brought in especially by the mobile market. I mean, come on, do you realize how many players a glorified slot machine for children like Coin Master has on that market? Do you want to be the kind of company that puts its name under a product like that? Under its bank account probably, yeah. But that can't really be the direction that the standards of Bytro are headed as well? Mobile players will make any garbage look amazing on paper if you only count their numbers. I fear you guys are getting distracted by those numbers from the feedback of players who get to compare the two designs and most importantly from the actual drawbacks, that are very much there after two years still, that it has to the previous one. Or you have decided that those numbers are good enough to make much less improvement neccessary, if any. Granted that's great for the company but it's a dang shame about the game itself.