Retaining Players

part of the issue is game balance. I believe the historic map tries to reflect military strengths of that time. If u get UK or Germany u are strong if you get Morocco you don't have a chance.

what we need is a balanced allocation for every nation. By balance I mean equal for everyone.

Have just started my first 50 player. For the past two days all I've done is research tanks and build infra(1 day), 2nd day build tanks. hopefully they are ready tomorrow and I will form a stack ( 3rd day). So if I want to go to war with 4 tanks and some infantry I could get into action on Day 4. Won't be a lot of action really just ordering 1 stack. By Day 5 I'll have a 2nd stack. Need to move it so by Day 6 it's in position. By Day 7 I'll have 2 stacks to control and manuevre.

That's a full week of doing very little. I don't mind it myself but I am guessing that the inability to do anything significant for first week pushes a lot of players away that might otherwise have been happy with the pace of the game but get put off by a week of relative inactivity.

Spitfeur wrote:

That's a full week of doing very little. I don't mind it myself but I am guessing that the inability to do anything significant for first week pushes a lot of players away that might otherwise have been happy with the pace of the game but get put off by a week of relative inactivity.

While you could fix it by having a larger portion of units, at the end of the day it boils down to the gameplay, at its core, being too slow for most people's tastes, even for the people who like the game. Most people think of 1939-1941 when you talk WWII, because the action was very quick when you compare it to the rest of the war. This game shows you the reality of WWII, which is mostly a logistics management game. There is nothing you can really do to fix that without fundamentally changing the game in it's entirety. The fact it is an RTS puts even more people off, because everything takes hours, if not days, to build and construct, when they expected to be playing something that might take, at most, an hour to complete.

Put simply, while player retention is a problem, it is always going to be a problem. It is just that type of game. But presentation of the game is everything, and the fact it uses WWII for the theme really hurts it in the player retention department, because everyone expects gameplay that doesn't span over the stretch of 2 or 3 months(also doesn't help that games of this type are slowly being phased out of the market, because the market has set the tempo to WoT action packed adreniline rush games in recent times), simply because it has WWII in the title.

NovaTopaz wrote:

The pace of the game at the start is very slow and there is pretty much nothing you can do about it.

It seems to be fairly easy to create an option where you have an army at the start.

This will at least make people try the game for longer. Some will like the general pace of the game some won't.

But at least you will retain those who do not want to spend the best part of the week doing very little but don't mind the general slow pace.

This doesnt require to change the whole game. Just give us a starting army like the historic map. or even the Arms Race event. I 've never played that but it seems u get to start with a whole bunch of units there. So not difficult to solve it seems

If you look at the reviews on Steam, most of the complaints seem to either be fore it being a "HoI rip off", taking too long, or people getting banned in chat.

Spitfeur wrote:

That's a full week of doing very little.

Day 5, major coalition battles, several active player countries overrun.

If you are at day 7 with no action, who's fault is that?

Quasi-duck wrote:

"HoI rip off"

MontanaBB wrote:

Quasi-duck wrote:

"HoI rip off"

What is HOL in text speak?

Still Waiting for it to go on sale.

MontanaBB wrote:

Quasi-duck wrote:

"HoI rip off"

What is HOL in text speak?

Being a noob to CoW myself I suspect I have a different perspective on rentention than you veterans.

At first sight CoW seems very straight forward but the more you get into it the more you realize that its a very complex environment in which you cannot afford many mistakes.

For instance coming from the S1914 environment one would think that I would have a solid grasp on the basic concepts such as economy in which I completely dominate my opponents in S1914. That is really a false impression however I quickly realized in CoW. The core/non core difference in resources production is very deceptive added to the fact that not all provinces are producing resources (other than cash&manpower) to begin with like in S1914.

I quickly drove myself to resource shortages in the first week by investing my starting resources in a sub optimal way. It took

me weeks to rebalance my economy and get it out of the red.

The same can be said with what to research and what units to produce. What I am getting at is that this steep learning curve can drive many people away. Thankfully there is a very nice community that have created many useful and informative guides on the forum.

But not all new prople check the forums so the only way to help them is with the tutorial which is so short and I am sorry to say downright useless. If you want to improve retention I suggest you start there.

Some good points Kanaris. But at the end of the day the starter expects to lose and it's only thru experience that u learn. But if u are bored for a week you don't stick around to gain experience.

Most starters look at CoW and they think "Wow, it's fast paced!" Then they actually play and find out it's slow. That's why most players quit their first game. Me, I gain experience from my first account (this is my second), then play this account. That's why my stats are pretty good. To retain the noobs (aka beginners who don't know the game yet), CoW either would expand the tutorial, or just force them to make a forum account at the same time.

No? Forcing them to get accounts for the forum won't make them stay. To me, its a pacing thing, it is too slow to do anything. For the first week if you aren't in an active alliance you have nothing to do, You could only build up you army and hope you don't get destroyed by some alliance. Things need to be faster, It could just be two hours faster, Like it takes almost a month for me to get from Russia to America, that's realistic but BS for players at the same time. When that force gets there, That force is either dead or just too late to do anything. That kills new players, CoW is advertising on gaming sites, you are getting players who are young, they are expecting a fast paced game with flashing colors in the advertisements, when you play the game, you get a boring, slow, and drab game. That is what I think needs to be changed.

Darragh is right, but I would hate for this game to be fast paced, it is what attracts me, as well as *paying adults* who like to log in once or twice at work and in the evening. If the 24 hour time rate is changed, I think much of the paying user base will go in exchange for kids who won't be buying gold or HC.

On the other hand, these new players will bump the ad revenue, but I do not know which makes Bytro more money at them moment or if it is a good gamble for the company.

Kanaris wrote:

The core/non core difference in resources production is very deceptive ...

Would not have it any other way because it adds a measure of realism. If you are Britain, you keep London as your capital, because you get over 10K Goods from it once you build it up. Move your capital to Rome and you reduce that like crazy. But you will be surprised at how many players do that.

MartinB wrote:

Would not have it any other way because it adds a measure of realism. If you are Britain, you keep London as your capital, because you get over 10K Goods from it once you build it up. Move your capital to Rome and you reduce that like crazy. But you will be surprised at how many players do that.

Quasi-duck wrote:

MartinB wrote:

If you are Britain, you keep London as your capital, because you get over 10K Goods from it once you build it up. Move your capital to Rome and you reduce that like crazy. But you will be surprised at how many players do that.

Sometimes you have to do it to keep rebellions down if you a have a large empire.

There are other ways to keep morale up, and I don't mean churning small AIs for the boost. I have won solo on the 25 player map before, with colonies in South America and Asia and my capital in London or Berlin. Meant to write a guide on this but just never got around to doing it. But essentially it involved building what I called 'fortress complexes' which are large complexes of fortifications that are actually quite good at keeping morale up at least high enough for your provinces not to rebel. Very expensive especially in terms of Steel, but if you are at that stage in the game, you should have more than enough resource production to be able to do it.

Plus fortress complexes can be very useful for defence, especially against an enemy who builds a large stack and tries to bulldoze his way through your provinces.

MartinB wrote:

There are other ways to keep morale up, and I don't mean churning small AIs for the boost. I have won solo on the 25 player map before, with colonies in South America and Asia and my capital in London or Berlin. . . . But essentially it involved building what I called 'fortress complexes' which are large complexes of fortifications that are actually quite good at keeping morale up at least high enough for your provinces not to rebel.

cough You guys get distracted easily, Lol. I thought we were talking about retaining players, not capitals. Lol.

JCS Darragh wrote:

cough You guys get distracted easily, Lol. I thought we were talking about retaining players, not capitals. Lol.