Critical issues about the Frontline Map when compared with Legacy.

  • First at all, I'll add images with examples of the issues I mention here when opportunities arises.


    Second, in this topic I'll make the comparative between Legacy map and Frontline map where the former is better than the later, with the goal the GO and devs makes the proper corrrections over the beta version. Because of that, this topic will be heavily edited as I'll add the aforementioned images.



    1. As you can see, I can outfocus the map in Legacy almost totally, that allows comfort to the user when he needs to manages troops in the extremes of the map. In Frontline, that's not longer possible and that comfort disappear (we need to zoom in to do the same management)



    2. Do I need to move troops to a point outside of the screen? Legacy allows me to do that with no problem. Frontline, instead, not. For that, I need to select the troops and click on "move" option. Even then, the displacement isn't automatic as in Legacy, but I need to keep pressing the click to move the map for moving the troops outside the screen. In other ways, devs made complicated a simple feature.





    3. This is, possibly, the greatest criticism many users has made about the new map when compared with the old one: in Legacy, you get a complete accountability of your army composition in a determinated place (infantry, cavalry, tanks, heavy tanks, artillery, armored cars, etc) without even select that army. Frontline, instead, just shows you the 3D unit who give the name to that army (that only suggest that army have, at least, one of those units. Still, I think that 3D unit is a good addition) and a shallow, even lazy, accountability of the army composition (while Legacy shows you have 28 infantries and 8 cavalries, Frontline just says you have 36 "human units"; while Legacy tell you have 5 artilleries, 5 light tanks, 2 heavy tanks and 8 armored cars, Frontline just tell you have 20 "mechanized units") that compelled the user to click on that army to receive a more detalled composition, that wasn't needed in Legacy.


    4. The same images also shows another problem: the actual location of the armies in the map. Legacy is very clear signaling the army is IN the city; Frontline suggest you the army is OUT of the city. That's something totally and unneedly misleading for the user.






    5. Continuing with the misleadings, in these images we can see Legacy shows us the exact location of the troops moving. Frontline, on the other side, want to indicate us the same things with white lines almost totally indistinguishable with some colors in the map (unlike Legacy, who give us that indication with well-defined black lines) and, as you can see with the arty, totally unneeded when that arty can be put on the road to show us its actual position. So, if you combine points 3, 4 and 5, the conclusion is that Frontline map gives the user unreliable information about the military situation.


    6. There is also complains not only about the 3D units being gigantic when compared with the cities (in contrast with Legacy, where the size units are reasonable) but with the infantry being the most gigantic of all units (including cavalry or tanks). Of course, that disproportionated size takes realism away from the game.





    I think Frontline, since the purely graphic design view, is, undoubtedly, a great improvement compared with Legacy (despite the fact the improves on graphics also means more lags in the game) and I congratulate the devs for that improvement. However, the critical issues related here (plus the excellent review made by Sandeep32) have the community concerned about the viability of the new map to attract new and old players. Fortunately, Frontline is still beta version, so the devs can takes notes about these issues and resolve the current problems that impairs Frontline to be the great map that it can come to be.


    Greetings.

    Demonaire
    ES. EN & PT Game Operator

    Bytro Labs | Supremacy 1914


    b78//+

    All the things you need to play this game can be found here, here and here.

    Do you want to experience new ways to enjoy Supremacy 1914? Click here and here.

    Have you problems with the game? Send a ticket.


  • one more issue, (unless i over read it)


    in the 100 players map i noticed that recruitment time for units in provinces with double resources are the same as those in provinces with single resources (or at least displayed as those).


    ex. Dodoma ( moral 100%, 1 iron : R.office + 1lvl.barrack) time 21 hours, 20 min

    Tanga (moral 100%, 2 fishes : R.office + 1lvl.barrack) time 21 hours, 20 min


    is it a programming bug or just a beauty issue?;)

  • Also could be a coincidence, that those two provinces results to finish the recruitment at the same time., but, if true, that would be a bug and I suggest you to send a ticket about that issue.

    Demonaire
    ES. EN & PT Game Operator

    Bytro Labs | Supremacy 1914


    b78//+

    All the things you need to play this game can be found here, here and here.

    Do you want to experience new ways to enjoy Supremacy 1914? Click here and here.

    Have you problems with the game? Send a ticket.




  • 7. Look at the disastrous disorder Frontline map show us when we are in the fight meleé. Legacy, as you can see, is pretty tidy when show us the battle dispositions in the camp. The new version, instead, (and in accordance with the unreliable info it gives us) put the enemy in a route they aren't (just because my 3D horse unit are in their way) and made them look like they're attacking my artillery. Besides, put reinforces from Guayaquil farther than they are in reality.




    8. Another irritating thing: When we enter at the diplomatic section, messages & trades subsection, the predeterminated view, in Legacy, are the last messages written between people. In Frontline, are the first messages, so we need to scroll down to arrive to those last messages (that, if the page doesn't reupload itself, in which case, she automatically redirect us to the first messages, forcing us to scroll down over and over again). Besides, Frontlines doesn't remember the last subsection we were, so the information subsection is always the first to appear (unlike Legacy, where the system remember the last subsection we visit)


    Greetings.


    P.D. A little bonus about point 5 aforementioned:




    Where are the location lines for the tank and the artys? Of course, they aren't in the location the map put them... Anyway, like I would say in spanish: "¿Donde está la bolita?, ¿Donde está la bolita?"

    Demonaire
    ES. EN & PT Game Operator

    Bytro Labs | Supremacy 1914


    b78//+

    All the things you need to play this game can be found here, here and here.

    Do you want to experience new ways to enjoy Supremacy 1914? Click here and here.

    Have you problems with the game? Send a ticket.


  • First off I want to thank Demonaire for a very well written critique, I have just reactivated FP to take a look and to be brutally honest I am not a fan at all at first glance. I am trying not to have a knee jerk reaction of plain hating it but struggling.


    It is very hard to tell who is enemy/ally, the red & green colour having been diluted. I can't even easily tell which units are my own, and I agree totally with the problem of not being able to identify easily the exact location of a unit.


    I also very much dislike not being able to see exactly what units make up my armies, to have to click on every army to confirm it's make-up will make large games with 100s of armies much harder to play. As will the overall size of the graphics. Often there will be many armies all close to each other I suspect being able to select the one you want is about to become even harder, in the legacy version I would simply toggle to the pin view but this does not appear to be an option any more - instead you can turn the armies off completely - not sure why anyone would want to do that ....


    Whilst I will get used to where everything has been moved to I am not sure I will ever enjoy this fussy overly crowded version. I have always been a fan of the very simple interface - there was something fitting about a game based in the early 19th century having a more basic look and feel about it.


    The new menus I will get used to but the map view will be harder to grow to like.


    I do not have a long term game playing at the moment so will need to play one through for a few weeks or even months to really know the full impact of this interface but I am not sure with what I see right now there will be a favourable reaction to it, others I have spoken to so far think similar to me and find more things annoying about ti than they do an improvement :(

  • It's been what, 10 months since the revamp was out? and how many of the problems listed here got solved?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HA8kSdsf_M


    Soldiers! don't give yourselves to brutes

    men who despise you, enslave you

    who regiment your lives, tell you what to do

    what to think and what to feel!

    Who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle,

    use you as cannon fodder.

    Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men

    machine men with machine minds and machine hearts!

  • I noticed that through the months,they have slightly changed the appearance of the Frontline map,with it now looking more like the Legacy map than before. Personally,I prefer the first Frontline Map design,like in the OPs screenshots.

    Im a pretty Mediocre player :|

  • There's really nothing that can beat legacy mode's graphic simplicity.


    Don't get me wrong, the new UI interface is visually aesthetic, but it's too complex and confusing.


    If the developers are able to implement the simple army models of the legacy mode into the new UI interface/update or a feature where you can disable the large 3D army models that clutter your screen and only serves as a distraction, then I wouldn't mind playing in the new UI interface/update.


    Fun and simple, that's the way to go.


    If Bytro decides to remove legacy mode completely, I am pretty safe to assume that half of their player base would go down.

  • There's no need to remove the legacy version. The big update scheduled for Supremacy1914 got changed for a new game due to the bad reviews to the new UI and probably due to their gameplay change too. So they'll just keep S1914 running until it isnt profitable anymore and then shut it down.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HA8kSdsf_M


    Soldiers! don't give yourselves to brutes

    men who despise you, enslave you

    who regiment your lives, tell you what to do

    what to think and what to feel!

    Who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle,

    use you as cannon fodder.

    Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men

    machine men with machine minds and machine hearts!

  • Not one

    awesome, we're making progress

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HA8kSdsf_M


    Soldiers! don't give yourselves to brutes

    men who despise you, enslave you

    who regiment your lives, tell you what to do

    what to think and what to feel!

    Who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle,

    use you as cannon fodder.

    Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men

    machine men with machine minds and machine hearts!

  • Not one

    Simply not true btw. You can check the patchnotes since the release of the Revamp. We did alot of fixes and optimization for the WebGL version already and also stuff listed in this thread got improved. For example the missing army composition was improved by providing army labels that show more information on composition and which show the diplomatic relation more clearly, and later last year we brought back positioning dots & lines for all units on roads so you can always see where the exact position of a unit is. We also updated the positioning system to create less overlap in crowded areas, and we made units always facing the direction they are attacking for more clarity. There will be more bugfixes and improvements coming soon, for example scrolling the screen when moving the cursor close to the edge while in drag mode, or further improvements to the positioning system.


    We won't give up on the new version and keep improving it further. So I recommend you check it out from time to time to see if it is finally to your liking :)

  • any chance for trading units within coalition on 10% basis?


    or maybe allow trading units only between players with HQ... that would a good reason to buy HQ

    If they had wanted to get it back, they would have done it alongside the return of trading resources.


    And, unlike trading resources, that was a correct decision.

    Demonaire
    ES. EN & PT Game Operator

    Bytro Labs | Supremacy 1914


    b78//+

    All the things you need to play this game can be found here, here and here.

    Do you want to experience new ways to enjoy Supremacy 1914? Click here and here.

    Have you problems with the game? Send a ticket.


  • Freezy is it possible to bring back tactical armies or pin armies view options to the new UI like it was in the first change over to new view?


    ...the Banner view is simply painful to manage and very clutterd...I like the new look, just not the banners

    index.php?eID=image&uid=11763503&mode=2

    Embrace your true nature , enjoy games and have fun!





  • point of view is related to a point of sitting


    I can also write without any arguments - banning unit trade was a wrong idea which forced a lot of players to leave

    "Point of view is related to a point of sitting" is called Ad Hominem Fallacy, and a textbook one.


    And I think I talked long and extensive about that in some topics in the forum, so I feel no need to repeat myself again.

    Demonaire
    ES. EN & PT Game Operator

    Bytro Labs | Supremacy 1914


    b78//+

    All the things you need to play this game can be found here, here and here.

    Do you want to experience new ways to enjoy Supremacy 1914? Click here and here.

    Have you problems with the game? Send a ticket.