Gold Balancing- No Really This One is Good.

28 Oct 2020, 08:01

A cancer is within CoW. That cancer is called "Pay-To-Win." Oh I've seen your ideas for countering gold users, "Get all the players to attack the same person," or "Identify them early on and attack them as soon as possible." Useless! A gold user has nothing to fear. Bountiful troops, buildings, and spy perks all at the ready.

So what is the real counter? Well we can't just get rid of the gold feature, that's how CoW keeps their servers running.

Here is my solution: Limit the gold usage to a reasonable amount. 20k a game maybe 25k. Perhaps more, my suggestion is flexible. This would still give players buying gold the advantage while limiting them from total overkill that ruins the fun and disrupts the playerbase.

I truly hope this goes through. Call of War is a good game- a Steam worthy game. All it needs is some refinement and polishing around the edges.

8 Replies

28 Oct 2020, 16:05

Has been suggested many times before. Let me direct my you to an answer by freezy:

freezy wrote:
Well let me care to respond to this thread then. Usually we don't respond to these threads because there were indeed too many over the years and it becomes tiresome to answer them nearly every week. I will answer both on the suggestion to put in a gold limit as well as the suggestion to change the business model in order to monetize differently (e.g. unit skins or upfront gold costs for entering rounds).
- We won't change the business model of Call of War anytime soon.
- We know about the advantages and disadvantages of the business model. It has all been taken into account.
- Call of War runs with this model for over 5 years now and has its best year since release. The same is true for our older game Supremacy 1914. There is no reason to believe that the current model is not working or sustainable (at least in the foreseeable future).
- If for some reason the current model shows it is not sustainable anymore (due to rapid market changes etc.) we of course would have to act. But that is not the case yet and also not foreseeable yet.
- Changing a well working and proven model for an existing game, which is the core pillar of the companies income, is a very risky thing to do. No sensible company would do that because it puts the livelyhood of the company, its employees and families at stake.
- Putting limits and breaks into the current model will just make it work less good. I won't go into detailed calculations here (we ran them) but most often the assumptions that we would make more money in the long run if we introduced such limits is not true or not provable without considerable risk.
- what may work for other games might very well not work for our games, since our games have a different target audience and are pretty much a niche setting (meaning scaling does not work as well as with the most popular free2play games)
- We also have to take company size and efficiency into account: Games which monetize via content or visuals have to put out alot more updates and content, requiring alot of effort in acquiring new know-how and bigger team sizes. Our current office wouldn't even support so many employees. Games with our monetization model on the other hand can be run very lean with smaller teams, because the game basically does not need new purchasable content every few weeks.
- Still we may want to explore additional revenue streams or monetization methods in the future, but for existing games like CoW those most likely will be additions to the existing model and not replacements, while for new games we would have a bit more leeway in experimenting.
- from a player perspective we understand the frustration that this may trigger in certain situations. We hope you still have fun with the game and as many players showed us already you can perfectly win alot of maps without paying anything.
- We also have to consider other player types who are actually ok with this model and make use of it (they are also part of our community). Those players actually make it possible that the majority of players can play this game completely for free.
Please note that I won't have time to hold long discussions with you about this, so hopefully this 1 post will suffice. I hope I was able to answer some questions, and I hope you appreciate this honest approach without any PR statements. This is an answer more from a business perspective. I didn't want to sound like I have no empathy or something, I can totally understand your opinions on this matter from a player's perspective. But as with many things there are different viewpoints to consider. After all Bytro needs to have success as a business in order to keep supporting this game for years to come. And we will do that so we all can have a good time playing Call of War
Feel free to link to this post when these discussions come up again.

2 Nov 2020, 18:32

I've read the post and responses, and both I've seen in the history of forums here! I'm with Threatening on wanting to see a change to address gold spamming. So, I have another suggestion. Keeping in mind that Bytro is running a business and therefore has incentive to keep its current model, what about ADDING another option. Specifically, if a player wants to be in a game where gold use is not allowed, have those games be ones that the players must pay to participate in? This way, Bytro still gets money AND can retain players who are fed up with gold spammers.

4 Nov 2020, 00:34

Art Fan wrote:
I've read the post and responses, and both I've seen in the history of forums here! I'm with Threatening on wanting to see a change to address gold spamming. So, I have another suggestion. Keeping in mind that Bytro is running a business and therefore has incentive to keep its current model, what about ADDING another option. Specifically, if a player wants to be in a game where gold use is not allowed, have those games be ones that the players must pay to participate in? This way, Bytro still gets money AND can retain players who are fed up with gold spammers.

Still won't work for a couple of reasons, which I simply cannot be bothered to go into. But in the hundred individual games I have joined I have seen ONE gold user actually triumph because of their gold use. In total, I would say I've seen about four or five heavy gold users, but they were all defeated or went afk for whatever reason (this happens a strangely large amount of the time. I guess they don't feel invested in the game, even though they've literally invested in it?). So, what I'm trying to say is, if you're fed up by gold users, you either have an extremely short fuse, very bad luck or very thin skin. It is, after all, a videogame, which is *occasionally* marred by P2W users who are needed to keep the game afloat and the updates rolling out. If you don't want to play, don't play. It's that easy.

4 Nov 2020, 16:59 (edited)

I don’t like pay-to-win like most people but some gold-users are really just stupid. I once was playing against a heavy gold user and I sent spies on military sabotage to wreck this lv5 fort. The guy (I knew he was a guy btw) didn’t set up counter espionage just repaired the fort with gold literally draining his irl cash. So yea most heavy gold users usually can’t play. He was also the rudest call of war player I’ve ever met but that’s unrelated.

“If nature doesn’t kill us in the next few decades we will take matters into our own hands” -Habo778 (me)

4 Nov 2020, 18:37

Ok, so I'm giving everyone here an unofficial warning. Let's keep this thread purely about suggestions, and leave gold denouncement and player denouncement out of it. Remember, those gold users are the ones who allow you to play this amazing game for free.

If we can't keep gold/user denouncement out of it, I will have to intervene, and neither you nor I want me to do that.

4 Nov 2020, 18:38

5 Nov 2020, 01:10

Well, neither of us were mentioning names or really specifics, and I didn't denounce anyone, while Art Fan (actually quite politely) didn't make a blanket statement on gold users, which, from what I've seen, is quite accurate and true (the statement he made).

5 Nov 2020, 01:33

Not talking to anyone specific. Just being general, as this is usually the point in gold suggestion threads where it dissolves into blacklisting and insults.

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