Haven't played in months. How's the game now?

ok, so, they killed Goods and Rare Materials. and then added rivers to certain maps. and also theres War Bonds now, which are like gold but you earn then at a flat 1500 per hour.

Jaspy190 wrote:

ok, so, they killed Goods and Rare Materials. and then added rivers to certain maps. and also theres War Bonds now, which are like gold but you earn then at a flat 1500 per hour.

War bonds are simplifying the meta game, which is not good per se IMO. But OTOH WBs evens out the option of doing general and special actions. Now it is an option for the ordinary player as well as it has always been the gold player to e.g. heal units or increase morale, which I think is good.

IOWs this change is good for anyone who has an issue with gold usage.

1) War bonds (aka mana) has been introduced, to protect coiners from being seen (everybody uses them now, so it is hard to tell for others if it was just generated or being payed for). The fact that it also meant introducing magic into the game (all kind of stuff can be done instantly: researches, unit builds, destroying buildings etc etc) for the non-paying users (the majority) was apparently not an argument for Bytro management to think twice.

2) Common resources have been reduced from 5 types to 3, to dumbify the game and protect the poor souls who thought it was too complicated. The fact that it also meant the removal of interesting build planning from the game was apparently not an argument for Bytro management to think twice.

3) Both developments above have driven away good players, while Bytro got what it aimed for: dumber users. Player quality has dropped significantly, and vanilla maps can now be won with both eyes closed 96% of the time. The fact that this ruined the strategic nature of the game was apparently not an argument for Bytro management to think twice.

K.Rokossovski wrote:

1) War bonds (aka mana) has been introduced, to protect coiners from being seen (everybody uses them now, so it is hard to tell for others if it was just generated or being payed for). The fact that it also meant introducing magic into the game (all kind of stuff can be done instantly: researches, unit builds, destroying buildings etc etc) for the non-paying users (the majority) was apparently not an argument for Bytro management to think twice.

2) Common resources have been reduced from 5 types to 3, to dumbify the game and protect the poor souls who thought it was too complicated. The fact that it also meant the removal of interesting build planning from the game was apparently not an argument for Bytro management to think twice.

3) Both developments above have driven away good players, while Bytro got what it aimed for: dumber users. Player quality has dropped significantly, and vanilla maps can now be won with both eyes closed 96% of the time. The fact that this ruined the strategic nature of the game was apparently not an argument for Bytro management to think twice.

I agree with everything Clint Eastwood says, but still think the game is fun, without any clear alternative.

How many companies put out WW2 strategy games?

K.Rokossovski wrote:

1) War bonds (aka mana) has been introduced, to protect coiners from being seen (everybody uses them now, so it is hard to tell for others if it was just generated or being payed for). The fact that it also meant introducing magic into the game (all kind of stuff can be done instantly: researches, unit builds, destroying buildings etc etc) for the non-paying users (the majority) was apparently not an argument for Bytro management to think twice.

I'd guess they wanted to change the meta game to be one where everyone can do 'magic' and where doing well requires less planning. My guess is they did this because the player base had been declining for a long while and they wanted to attract more players from the rather large pool of casual and 'point an click' gamers.

I agree with you that it has lowered the player quality, but I doubt there's any of the sinister motives you are mentioning.

NoobNoobTrain wrote:

K.Rokossovski wrote:

1) War bonds (aka mana) has been introduced, to protect coiners from being seen (everybody uses them now, so it is hard to tell for others if it was just generated or being payed for). The fact that it also meant introducing magic into the game (all kind of stuff can be done instantly: researches, unit builds, destroying buildings etc etc) for the non-paying users (the majority) was apparently not an argument for Bytro management to think twice.

Do you have any quotes on that? Or are you just speculating?

I'd guess they wanted to change the meta game to be one where everyone can do 'magic' and where doing well requires less planning. My guess is they did this because the player base had been declining for a long while and they wanted to attract more players from the rather large pool of casual and 'point an click' gamers.

I agree with you that it has lowered the player quality, but I doubt there's any of the sinister motives you are mentioning.

Bytro is one of those few companies how regards their own fan community as their enemy. I can't remember any other example of a gaming company being succesfull long-term with such a contempt for the exact group who could have been their staunchest supporter.

K.Rokossovski wrote:

NoobNoobTrain wrote:

K.Rokossovski wrote:

You are a dreamer))) Of course there is no evidence; as a Bytro employee, you would probably get fired if you said anything like this outside the company HQ walls. But the writing is on all the walls: Bytro has made multiple changes to game mechanics with no other incentive than increasing income, while opposing anything that could possibly in remote cases decrease it (do you remember how many YEARS it took before we even got something as simple as a gold-spending-warning? Of course, experimenting with a non-P2W revenue model is completely out of the question), their complete secrecy about any sort of metrics/statistics (the community has to rely on external traffic systems to get ANY kind of data on this), while flashing around their even more mysterious "KPI's" which are supposed to prove that all is well money-wise (while no one knows what they are, and the stock price of their parent company is in free fall (which would suggest that everything is not as hunky dory as they say)), the list goes on. I'm sad to say that the Bytro communication has always required "reading between the lines". Heck do you remember how they tried to sell the recent resource dumbification as "increasing strategic depth" or something along those lines?

Bytro is one of those few companies how regards their own fan community as their enemy. I can't remember any other example of a gaming company being succesfull long-term with such a contempt for the exact group who could have been their staunchest supporter.

Yet, there is also such a thing as a market economy here. You see it kills products and companies all over the economy every day. Market economy also works in gaming and the nature of it is to maximize earnings from any product/game and for each phase of a games life, there may be a different way that gives the best reward for each phase. For a dying game it is not to sink lots of money into creative development. It is to maximize the count of paying players before the game dies out enough to render it economicaly unfeasible. I suspect CoW has reached this phase and as such, it is not strange (alas sad) that it is being scavenged.

And no, I was luckily not around when they announced the resource down grade. I would have had a fit on the forum.

I'm not impressed by Bytros response to the player community either, but if you think this is bad, you should have seen how Paradox treated their fans back in their early growth days. Even their lead developer was openly insulting and flaming players who disagreed with him. He also perma banned so many fans for disagreeing with the design that we ended up forming a seperate forum of well over 100 players

THAT was bad. This is just stupid.

I don't think there is much more to be had here other than to play an occasional, casual game. The old days with a competitive player base are gone.

We should move on to another game that has the strategic depth this game used to have. I'm not sure which game that would be though. I'm open to suggestions.

Summary of failures in recent downgrades:

A. Resources ruined:

- Messed up resources with absolutely no logic applied to supply and demand.

- Less choices to make when using resources on units

- Bigger demand issues bc all need about the same from the limited combinations possible (F+M/F+O/M+F/M+O)

B. Game play:

- Lag, Lag and lag. Often more than a minute!

- After the 'Resources ruined' downgrade, 90% of units is obsolete.

These units you now will only built when you are a '300map/0vics' nitwit, or for cheap occupation troops or for fun when you have already won, but the game drags on.

- Troops turning in the wrong direction.

This happens when crossing a border or prov-centre when setting or annulling Forced March.

C. Map features:

- Rivers ... which are not rivers.

They are long stretched lakes. Their only function (except the Danube on some maps) is to block passage.

Make them wide where one cannot cross and narrow where you can cross and allow ships to use them to a certain extent (like Great Lakes <-> Sea passage is realistic, but not BBs reaching Vienna over the Danube)

- Province centres ... which are not that.

How can a province NOT fall when your troops are in the empty centre? Why having to run back and forth over it 4x to capture it?