Missing features which make the game boring

Playing Falnders map 2nd time; with fixed and unbreakable coalition.

What makes it boring the 2nd time around is that there are no solutions for a multitude of problems.

- Economy and personal influence:

Having 1 province of a certain resource (Supplies), I am forced to upgrade the Infra to level 5 if I want to be able to construct and produce the right things. That is just silly. Basically I do a bit of fighting on the border and then sit and wait - like a farming game instead of strategy game - until I have enough Supplies again.

Market trade offers no solution, because even at a Buy-offer at 30 for Supplies, nothing is sold to me. (Maybe AI sits on all the Supplies provinces?)

This is not a challenge, because there is no solution, no workaround, no-nothing. Simply nada I can do about it, except play Supplies farmer, waiting for my harvest.

In the 1st game it was the same with Tools.

- No unittrading possible? Why?

One argument in CoW and S1914 for this was to prevent super-stacking. Not Relevant here. (....and it was not a significant occurence in s1914 or CoW, thus irrelevant anywhere)

Another was treason, but that is not possible here, in this unbreakable coalition. (....and it was not a significant occurence in s1914 or CoW, thus irrelevant anywhere)

If I at least had the option to focus on Infantry-class development and could trade units for Artillery etc. which require Supplies, but ... alas; unit trade is not possible.

Please note I don't play Farmville, because I think that is boring... 'nuf said.

- Troop position markers and troop 'flags':

Game looks great, except for the blocked view on exact positions of troops in crowded battles, i.e. 100 smaller human and AI armies attacking a position like Ypre, making it impossible to position anything close to the battle in an exact position.

Suggestions:

- make the units and there 'flags' become transparent when you zoom in, so position markers shine through

- make position marker shine through always

When doing so, keep in mind 33% of the world population has some form of color blindness (just thinking of the tiny dot which is supposed to be there in CoW, but for me it is just not; too tiny? wrong color?)

- Limited player interaction!

An MMO is basically a player-interaction based game. If it weren't, what would be the difference with playing vs AI off-line like in the old days?

This game offers very limited player interaction options for trade and diplomacy, which makes it ... boring.

- Coalition consists of AI and humans.

More than 50% of the human players of my (not even fully human) team is inactive already on day 4 and the enemy team is 80% inactive.

(This is actually the only challenge, because AI is smarter than all the 12 year olds that are lured into the game and won't like it anyway)

This leads to the conclusion that Bytro is marketing the game tp the wrong public.

So ... make a choice please!:

A. Keep making excellent strategy games for a smarter public and target those players with your marketing (text, visuals etc) and blow off the 12yrs old players.

B. Stop making excellent strategy games, dumb your games down, lose your active players and target the 12yrs old players (and go under in the marketing battle against bigger budgets of better marketeers of 1000's of dumb but flashier games out there for the dumber players)

- Inactivity:

Really ... inactivity has been the biggest problem of S1914, Cow and now is for S1. Solutions for the large number of inactives are i.e.:

- change your marketing to blow off those that don't like the slower pace and required thinking and learning, WHILE attracting the players that do like this kind of game.

- make rank-requirements to enter certain maps higher. Only players that are active attain higher ranks (mostly). When entering a map or creating a map, the ranking requirement thus more or less would guarantee that one avoids having 99 noobs in a 100 player map of which 89 are inactive within the 1st 2-3 days.

- add features, instead of removing them, so people have more to do than just farm resources...

- and a ton of other things...

Conclusion so far:

S1 is not really an improvement in view of the existing problems in S1914 and CoW. Now do what you have to do to make Supremacy great again.

Nevertheless, a few things are very likeable, i.e. it looks are great and the pro-active AI is so much better

Luckily the Elite AI is more of an pro-active opponent, which is a very good adition to all games, but it does not resolve the problem of the high inactivity of players.

The character of the game is such that it will simply not appeal to too young players and/or players looking for a fast game.

BUT...these are fly-by players anyway.

The crux of the solution will be in ATTRACTING the right players and that is an issue of COMMUNICATING the true nature of the game in the right way through the right channels.

ONLY THAT will attract new players that will stay.

But even than, there will always be people just giving it a try, because any good explanation of the nature of the game will be more than 3 lines .... and thus constitutes 'a wall of text' these days ... which will be too much to read for those mostly useful players.

The solve that problem, more maps should require a higher rank to enter.

For one, this gives an extra reason to players to achieve a certain rank.

Besides that, it will clean the higher maps of those useless twats, who only destroy the game.

Still, the only real way to attract more real and lasting players (who will thus spend on the game) is better communication & marketing, targeting the right group of players who like this purer form of strategy game.

However, it seems the company favors the road (to Nowhere) of removing features, rather than adding them, and aiming (hoping or ... praying rather) that the fly-by ADHD youth will like the game more after it was dumbed down.

But even if that would work (which it won't), they don't really have money to spend... and are always bored with a game after 3 months.

As I mentioned in another forum, it is rather ironic that the publisher of the BEST strategy game around BY FAR, is choosing such a bad ... strategy!

If it were my game, I would rather aim to attract the right players. There are still so many out there that never heard of this game or were unable to distinguish its qualities from the rather simplistic game description that is now mostly attracting dimwits.

Missing is a BONUS for expansion in the Flandres map...

Now you get punished.

I am curious what is the reasoning behind that?

Quote from freezy

We do not market the game to a wrong audience because marketing on this game barely even started. We are not even marketing yet in english speaking countries. The game is still in a test phase, so you will have to live with rather empty maps for a while unfortunately, until we ramp up the marketing.

@freezy: pardon my Dutch, but I am Dutch and thus direct to the point of being blunt. So, here goes:

- Yes, you do marketing to the wrong public or with the wrong tools attracting the wrong public. For decades. Take a look at the number of inactives in CoW and old s1914 per map.

I suggest to be more transparent about the true nature of the game from the onset. Be more specific. You will attract less people, but more dedicated ones. And only dedicated players tend to want to support their game with cash.

Unless I am wrong about the latter - and thus fly-by one-day-flies are the bigger source of income - focus on attracting the right kind of client should be a priority, when aiming to increase revenues, while reducing wasted effort and increasing client satisfaction.

Btw, this is meant as constructive criticism. You have a fresh start here, so what is against spending some thoughts on how to change your marketing approach?

Quote from freezy

Players who try the game and then abandon it are only abandoning the tutorial map as they don't even join a second map, and naturally we can't have a minimum rank on the tutorial map because new players need to be able to join it. Therefore the minimum rank is neither a problem nor a solution to the activity problem due to beginner dropouts. That said we have the Veterans Front map for experience players, which has a minimum rank. First we need more players to reach that rank though.

- The number of players is less important (for now). The percentage of players already going inactive - even with so few players - in the Great War map (as in CoW and old s914) is already simply shocking.

- Pls also take note of my post about the ranking system. If you would care to look into what I mentioned there.

You will see that a large number of players is attaining a high rank in the low hundreds, without significant kills and/or victory. That, however, NOT even being the point: the point is joining and building some stuff gets them enough points, even when they never return to the map.

- The tutorial is a full fledged game with basically all features of the full game. This is TOO complicated for the new players. That is a big reason to abandon the game early and not try it out further.

If you want to lure new players into playing your - for the instant gratification generation - rather complicated game, I would suggest to :

a. have a simpler tutorial map with reduced features, which will be easier to handle for a new player;

b. gradually unlock more features with progress by allowing access to a new map, including more units, moral influences and other in-game management mechanics;

c. only unlock the full game after attaining a good rank.

For point [c] you would have to change the ranking system (anyway an an urgent issue, ref map-trolls), which should be simple enough through incorporating the number of maps played in the equation, instead of only the accumulated points from maps joined (and gone inactive).

Another factor you might want to incorporate for the ranking: no points if the map ends w/o being active (for a larger number of days).

The current ranking system is totally inadequate to determine playerl progress.