This being the Dev Diary, it can address many different points that do not fit in Balancing or other threads.
I understand a need for innovation or renewal of a product.
But I still do not understand how 1.5 could achieve that or how it supplies any other fix or added value.
All I see is a simplified version of COW 1.0, which might work for the mobile market.
Actually, from my rather long experience in gaming as well as business, if player (= customer) retention and revenue improvement are the goals, a completely different issue would have to be addressed first.
An obvious defect I noticed over an again:
All the various Bytro games I know (S1914, COW 1.0, NWE, S-1, COW.15), all have the same handicap of a no-good tutorial, after which you are thrown in the deep.
For a fact, seasoned strategy gamers immediately have a huge advantage over new players; let alone strategy buffs that play or have played the great strategy board games of yonder.
When nobody teaches the new players the fundamental steps or the crucial strategic aspects or tactical priorities, it is no wonder that so many go inactive. There simply ois no hope for them to ever feel like they can achieve something (= reason to play).
Newbies start without a clue and they now quit without a clue, calling it a 'shitty game'.
COW 1.5 is not fixing anything in that respect and only repeats the same mistake.
On the other hand, every successful game I know, has new players progress through multiple tutorials, with various layers of difficulty, building their knowledge and skills.
Only once these have attained a certain level, these new players are thrown in with the rabble of war waging maniacs like us.
To fulfill their purpose, these tutorial maps should:
- start relatively small, (= more instant gratification)
- possibly have fewer units, unlocking (= incentive) new units with progress
- have no moral penalty in the 1st few levels (= remove challenging complications during tutorial)
- possibly run at 6x speed on the 1st starting level and then go 4x speed and then 2x to keep a newbie 'in' (= action).
- have plenty of stuff to do and discover (= incentives to log back in)
- have worthwhile and educational missions., e.g. 'Raise your Goods output with 10% to get X-amount of gold', (= incentives)
- have incentives which show not 'how to do something', but teach 'why to do something' , teaching the importance in the right context (= instead of 'advisers' talking some 'gibberish', lacking any actual baring on the game situation you find yourself in as a newbie; e.g. "We should build fighter planes in Warschau (because we can)", but your army doesn't even have a good basic set of units yet nor a network of air fields to make those fighters useful).
Besides fixing what there are not for issues, a good set of progressively difficult tutorial maps, would most likely solve a number of other issues 'on the go', as there are:
- an incentive to play for progress w/o being hammered by seasoned players in your 2nd game
- (with that) increased player retention
- (and with that) drastically lower inactivity rates, as players reach a higher level
- (all the above adding up to) more and frequently active players in the pool and attracting more new players into the pool,
- (all of which in turn is) leading to more income from more players who will spend money.
Actually, one only has to look at successful games to see what a good tutorial phase means.
Take World Of Tanks for an example.
Newbies start with a basic tutorial on how to move, aim, shoot. Then they go to the 'girly' maps, which can only be played by low level players in low level tanks, which in turn do not contribute to your ranking and score in any way significant: the newbies are simply playing in a different League.
And by the nature of progress, they unlock new tech for their tanks and completely new tanks in higher tiers. And with that they progress into a wider range of maps, until they have unlocked all required to play all maps.
What does all that do for WOT?
They excel at at retaining players.
They also make a train-load of money, but not from selling victory! They make that money from e.g. selling Premium Tanks which are no better(battle wise often even worse) than regular tanks, but offer different advantages (more XP, more silver earned = more rest) and they even make money from loyalty (!!), selling WoT-ware.
And they increased their customer base by releasing similar games with a different theme: World Of Warships, World Of War-planes and their mobile customers can play WoT-Blitz (= a separate, simpler game on the same basis)
Nonetheless, there is nothing WOT can do, that Bytro can't.
A good start for making more money would be: investing in player retention, which will lead automatically to more income.
In my opinion, that investment would be well aimed at creating a system of progressive tutorial maps as suggested.
And there is nothing against a separate mobile game, as War Gaming has proven with WOT-Blitz, to tap into the mobile market.
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. At least we reduced the risk of being beaten by some over-intelligent smartass with a better strategy, because you can now find a sufficient strategy also without thinking... secondly those intelligent players now leave the game anyway, because they'll be bored to death.
Demolish building, this is the feature I suggested on the forum before. I did't know it's a key feature of CoN.
