Gold use is ruining this great game!

K.Rokossovski wrote:

CITYOFGOD55 wrote:

I suppose more people care about demolishing a building then seeing this game turn into who has the bigger wallet..........sad really

You think every single thread should be about gold then? Bytro's position is clear, they will not change anything unless their statistics show that their current business model doesn't work anymore. No matter how unfair it is, we can scream all day and it isn't going to change anything. Of course they don't care about vets leaving, we only pay for a bit of HC and that income is probably negligible compared to the whales. Who knows, maybe they cheer when we leave, after all we are an obstacle to delivering their product to their clients. When they pay to win, they expect to get their product (the win) delivered and a quality player can still defeat a whale in many circumstances. And don't forget, only 0.000001 % of the player base actually makes it to these forums, so our audience (or our opinions) aren't really representative, maybe even irrelevant.

On the plus side of the balance, there seem to be less whales than there were before. In my last 3-5 games or so (can't remember exactly), I didn't meet any obvious whales. Occasional flame and amphibious tanks here and there, probably a lot of early resource cards, but nothing that couldn't be caught up without too much trouble. Maybe the whales are actually calling it a day, and Bytro gets an actual incentive to change their ways? Who knows.

Another plus is that Bytro doesn't really interfere with all the gold-free tournaments springing up from the ground everywhere. GO's are apparently allowed to organize these and do the gold checks needed for them, so at least for the top levels, coin-free play is still possible.

Actually I'm more worried about the quality of the player base. Take my last game as an example. It was a 4x speed WaW map, and I did a solo win in 20 days. That was mainly because there wasn't anyone competitive around. People didn't just "not build air", but they didn't build anything to counter it either. Literally every stack could just be blown away with maximum 20 HP damage to the bombers. Many players built navies of nothing but battleships. A lot of players were just standing around, apparently thinking one or two quick logins a day is enough for a speed map.

And it is not just that. Several players sent me messages expression how shocked they were at my performance, and that it was actually possible to play like I did. They said I was unique, and they had never seen anything like it. These were people with 10-20 games under their belt. That means that in 9-19 games, they didn't meet anyone like me, who actually plays the game like it is supposed to be played. That's actually 900-1900 players playing noobish, compared to one single decent player (I'm good, maybe even excellent, but not top-notch). I think those are alarming numbers.

I blame it on Bytro marketing. They're mostly going for teenagers now, and with all due respect, the teenage mind (with rare exceptions ofc) just isn't ready for a deep game like CoW. When you have driven away the core of strategic gamers (indeed, probably mostly by the P2W system they use), getting a new influx of slightly older, experienced gamers is actually pretty hard. The dumbing-down of the interface (there's hardly a release going by that doesn't have some sort of "trying to make learning easier", "countering the steep learning curve", blablabla etc) is a sign that this game doesn't go down very well in the new targeted market segments. To be honest, you can bring a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. Many of the "new" player recruits just want to toy around with tanks, without bothering to actually learn the effective game strategies, or even basic mechanics. They aren't helped by flattening the learning curve; they don't want to learn at all, they just want some fun with nice icons for ships and animations for explosions. Looks are more important than content to them. And to be honest, those are not the people who will make Bytro rich. This isn't their game; maybe they play a few rounds of it, then they move on to a game with flashier graphics. Of course we all want a game that looks good, but none of us (lets call "us" the experienced players who love the game) play CoW because of the looks; it is 90% about the content. That's who Bytro marketing should focus on.

Nostroma wrote:

Well said Roko

K.Rokossovski wrote:

CITYOFGOD55 wrote:

I suppose more people care about demolishing a building then seeing this game turn into who has the bigger wallet..........sad really

You think every single thread should be about gold then? Bytro's position is clear, they will not change anything unless their statistics show that their current business model doesn't work anymore. No matter how unfair it is, we can scream all day and it isn't going to change anything. Of course they don't care about vets leaving, we only pay for a bit of HC and that income is probably negligible compared to the whales. Who knows, maybe they cheer when we leave, after all we are an obstacle to delivering their product to their clients. When they pay to win, they expect to get their product (the win) delivered and a quality player can still defeat a whale in many circumstances. And don't forget, only 0.000001 % of the player base actually makes it to these forums, so our audience (or our opinions) aren't really representative, maybe even irrelevant.

On the plus side of the balance, there seem to be less whales than there were before. In my last 3-5 games or so (can't remember exactly), I didn't meet any obvious whales. Occasional flame and amphibious tanks here and there, probably a lot of early resource cards, but nothing that couldn't be caught up without too much trouble. Maybe the whales are actually calling it a day, and Bytro gets an actual incentive to change their ways? Who knows.

Another plus is that Bytro doesn't really interfere with all the gold-free tournaments springing up from the ground everywhere. GO's are apparently allowed to organize these and do the gold checks needed for them, so at least for the top levels, coin-free play is still possible.

Actually I'm more worried about the quality of the player base. Take my last game as an example. It was a 4x speed WaW map, and I did a solo win in 20 days. That was mainly because there wasn't anyone competitive around. People didn't just "not build air", but they didn't build anything to counter it either. Literally every stack could just be blown away with maximum 20 HP damage to the bombers. Many players built navies of nothing but battleships. A lot of players were just standing around, apparently thinking one or two quick logins a day is enough for a speed map.

And it is not just that. Several players sent me messages expression how shocked they were at my performance, and that it was actually possible to play like I did. They said I was unique, and they had never seen anything like it. These were people with 10-20 games under their belt. That means that in 9-19 games, they didn't meet anyone like me, who actually plays the game like it is supposed to be played. That's actually 900-1900 players playing noobish, compared to one single decent player (I'm good, maybe even excellent, but not top-notch). I think those are alarming numbers.

I blame it on Bytro marketing. They're mostly going for teenagers now, and with all due respect, the teenage mind (with rare exceptions ofc) just isn't ready for a deep game like CoW. When you have driven away the core of strategic gamers (indeed, probably mostly by the P2W system they use), getting a new influx of slightly older, experienced gamers is actually pretty hard. The dumbing-down of the interface (there's hardly a release going by that doesn't have some sort of "trying to make learning easier", "countering the steep learning curve", blablabla etc) is a sign that this game doesn't go down very well in the new targeted market segments. To be honest, you can bring a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. Many of the "new" player recruits just want to toy around with tanks, without bothering to actually learn the effective game strategies, or even basic mechanics. They aren't helped by flattening the learning curve; they don't want to learn at all, they just want some fun with nice icons for ships and animations for explosions. Looks are more important than content to them. And to be honest, those are not the people who will make Bytro rich. This isn't their game; maybe they play a few rounds of it, then they move on to a game with flashier graphics. Of course we all want a game that looks good, but none of us (lets call "us" the experienced players who love the game) play CoW because of the looks; it is 90% about the content. That's who Bytro marketing should focus on.

Maybe try to actually read my text? I am talking about Bytro's golding and marketing policies; that has nothing to do with fixing bugs. The current rank bug is obviously a tough one and embarassing to leave open for so long, but I'm pretty sure harsh words have been spoken about that in morning standups already, inside Bytro HQ. But in general, bugfixing is reasonably OK within the context of an app which is both functionally and technically pretty complex.

you know I said the same thing to you in another post and you ended up agreeing with me.

Huh? What on earth are you talking about?

My experience with (admittedly easier maps like CoN and recently America Homefront, I consider myself an advanced beginner) is that there are a few players with a lot of games and high level (120 or so) but bad KD and win ratios. I prepare a big war against them and when I attack them, they just don't react and get butchered easily. In my last game a few rejected to join my coalition as it would be more challenging to fight each other but even those just did not fight back. In that game also four people from an alliance joined, but even they did not fight back or even got inactive. So to come back to the topic of this thread: the advantage of those smaller maps is that gold usage is minimal (I think) it still does not lead to an interesting fight.

General2.0 wrote:

My experience with (admittedly easier maps like CoN and recently America Homefront, I consider myself an advanced beginner) is that there are a few players with a lot of games and high level (120 or so) but bad KD and win ratios. I prepare a big war against them and when I attack them, they just don't react and get butchered easily. In my last game a few rejected to join my coalition as it would be more challenging to fight each other but even those just did not fight back. In that game also four people from an alliance joined, but even they did not fight back or even got inactive. So to come back to the topic of this thread: the advantage of those smaller maps is that gold usage is minimal (I think) it still does not lead to an interesting fight.

I think that we should have more forum games more often, at least the veterans have fun without gold problems. The golders enjoy there insane fun and we have fun too.

K.Rokossovski wrote:

Ignatio Oddball wrote:

Partially because there are fanboys who back them in the decision to allow insane spending.

Around here? I don't no anybody who supports it. Afaik all forum users would like a P2P system better.

I don't see why the game couldn't show how much gold people have used in the game. All it would do is take away lying about it. And baseless accusations. We free players are people too. We give golders something to smash on, can't we have anything?

Talk to any coiner, even the blatant ones, and they will deny it. Bytro fully supports that option for them.

No, that is unlikely to happen.

A limit of 100.000 per day or even 1 million a day would do a difference though.

the bigger problem is their game gets pretty boring. if early game is defined by large % of inactive players and mid-game defined by the dominance of players using gold and late game is just RRG stacks, then I guess the only thing to...zzzzzzzzzzz... sorry, I nodded off just describing it.

frankly, the use of gold seems less a big deal than the late game tedium.

I agree. Player quality is a bigger deal than gold right now. It is very hard to find non-whale people opposing you to take control of WaW maps and actually have an interesting fight, let alone smaller ones. Complete inactives are over 50%, and noobs who have (varying degrees of) no idea what they're doing raise that to 95%.

If you need gold to win then you don't deserve to be in the same room with experienced players who use skill to win.

Nostroma wrote:

If you need gold to win then you don't deserve to be in the same room with experienced players who use skill to win.

Nostroma wrote:

If you need gold to win then you don't deserve to be in the same room with experienced players who use skill to win.

I will say that "skill to win" seems overly generous. in the larger map games I've been in, the winning side either uses gold or grinds with the RRG/AA stacks -- pretty one-dimensional skill-wise. the gold user is at least fun to watch as they show up with over-stacked/over-leveled units. the RRG grind is a snooze. smaller map games seem to end much quicker, so not as much time to get to that point.

I'm just giving my perspective as someone new to the game. the sample size is small, but my joy/entertainment has been affected more by the boring RRG meta than gold users.

In my experience, RRG/AA stacks aren't the meta for vanilla WaW maps at all. I play them quite often, and win most of them (if I don't quit them because there are massive golders around), and I hardly ever build any of those stacks. When I meet enemies who do, I leave them standing around and evade them, taking all their land except the provinces where those one or two big stacks are. Usually that is enough to make them quit, and when the AI takes over they break it up and send out the units piecemeal which are destroyed easily.

fair enough. I have seen/used that evasion method as well on smaller maps. I'm citing a current example of my own and anecdotes from others. I don't know much about much, but I've seen games wither when they don't evolve. gold is something to adapt to.

All the apps and games we download from playstores ask/need real money, surely by now if a person understands and accepts it,it would make it easier to live with.

These games have been designed to give entertainment,create jobs and placing food on the table... Surely the people who created this and that's maintaining it must provide for their families.

We and I myself as a free player thinks that all of this is evolving around us individually,it doesn't...

If Bytro stops the gold how will they be able make an income to be able to give us the game and maintaining it?If they don't have the gold that people spends real money on it there won't be a COW game.The fact that we free players can be able to play the game and make demands on the forum,is due to people spending real money on gold...not us free grazers

Yes it's annoying playing against people with no skill that's only depending on using gold to be good but what else can we do?No one is holding a gun against our heads and forcing us to play this game or against gold users.The best and only way to deal with a gold user is to ignore them.

Bytro will surely not collapse if us free grazers boycott and stop playing, they'll laugh at us, it's not us free grazers keeping the Bytro campaign afloat... it's gold buyers...

Sorry that I'm going to be that guy but that's the story...if this gaming app is not going to fulfill our needs we are more than happy to seek another birth...