Posts by LostRealist

    Bytro on the other hand refuses to learn from past mistakes,

    This is where I think you're wrong; as far as they're concerned, no mistakes were ever made, because the revenue still flows well. That is the only metric they measure this game by, not what you and I think of the direction it's headed.


    I mean, jeez, second that thing about the GM free rounds, very good example. We've begged them. But we're not their accountants, so our opinion's just no good.

    the real money maker called player retention

    I have certainly not held back with criticism towards the choices Bytro has made over the years but even I almost feel bad when I point out that you're wrong here, at least when applying this to the current business model that this game is being run on. Feels like throwing needless dirt on them when that's actually not what I want to do.


    What I, without being cynical, do believe has happened, is that the game entering the mobile gaming market initially a few years ago has been a learning experience for Bytro. They learned that with enough exposure on that market, microtransactions are a literal money printer. Audiences on that market tend to be very young and not very picky - if the game is shoved in their faces, they will play it, and if the developers are crafty enough (and Bytro having over a decade of experience with this, are), they are easy to "guide" into microtransactions. It's not really about the game itself, it's about how many opportunities and incentives the game provides to click a "buy" button - there are many enormously crude examples of this, but Bytro also ate this lesson up.

    Ever since then, the game has become less involved and "dumbed down" to keep these extremely casual audiences with very fleeting attention spans interested for the few weeks tops they'll play this game before they move on. It's not about providing a deep, complex experience to players who are looking for a serious strategy game anymore.

    They are well aware that they're attracting audiences that aren't looking for the kind of commitment to a game that you'd need to even complete a single match here and they will tell you this with pride when they point out how well the company's numbers are doing like they're completely unaware of or uninterested in the fact that any public match sees >80% of players drop inactive within the first week. If they left a couple of bucks here along the way, Bytro will read that as a flaming endorsement of its product.

    Player retention has become entirely superfluous to Bytro because it isn't their real money maker anymore. Quick-hitting microtransactions on a new player pay much, much better. For what it's worth, I'm sure it's a really good racket - external financial estimates on Bytro certainly suggest so. Yeah, player retention is hard to achieve, but Bytro freaking had it before. I played this game for eleven years for example. They abandoned this pursuit consciously, which is why you're seeing the sort of changes that you very aptly describe in your post. The business model is no longer a long-term strategy game that generates income because it's better than the competition at being a long-term strategy game. It is now quantity of quality.

    I am not sure what gives the idea that is a possibility, but there won't be gambling involved.

    I shall be glad to stand corrected, because this does give off the "FIFA" kind of "booster cards" vibe.


    I understand that an inventory system might not look like a big thing, but it is a crucial feature for the new Operations and rewards in general.

    Yeah that was kind of my point - it seems like the broomstick to the broom, so sort of weird to call it a seperate feature. Again, that's neither here nor there, just an odd observation.

    "for balancing reasons just 1 in each province at the same time"

    alone the possibility to "just double" the normal soldier production in early is already bonkers

    Gotta agree. This is a change moving the game away from itself towards it becoming a totally different game.


    If you want a different game, why not make a different game? Did Supremacy really have to take the fall for this?

    newly acquired unit cards,

    I assume this acquisition will consist of money changing hands with a good helping of gambling mechanics involved?


    Also, this is a little petty I know, but I don't see how this is a "new feature", when it's the basic neccessity that's required to use these cards, which are, in fact, apparently the only actual new feature aside from a new unit that nobody asked for?

    I should probably make a new alternate account with new emails to boost Bytro numbers LOL

    Nice gesture in the spirit of the season of giving, but quite honestly I believe they're absolutely good with their numbers as they are. Anything with a decent marketing budget and a non-direct approach to sales will do well on the mobile gaming market, regardless of everything else. I think S1914 is a pretty good example of that in action.

    That said there should be a limit on gold spending per turn so that a money bags player can't wreck a game in which players have invested many hours.

    Undoubtedly, if anything, you'd get the "tHiS iS A bUsIneSS" line of replies to a suggestion like this.

    The cold hard reality is that a "freemium" service is looking for specifically those players who spend compulsively and possibly uncontrollably. These are cash cows and the company will not quit milking them for every drop.


    I've suggested a "Win This Game" button that costs like 500k GM in the past, so we at least don't have to waste our time. Don't hold your breath for it.


    Bail from those games, let those guys play with themselves if they absolutely must, and move on. There is not, has never been and extremely likely will never be any other way to deal with it.

    Hi Lost. What are some of the main things that turn you off of the current state of the game?

    If you're really that interested, I have a pretty extensive list of suggestions/grievances that I compiled a while ago.


    It's not 100% up to date I guess, you could argue everything about the 3D-sprites is moot since you can at least turn them off entirely now. Mostly everything else is (sadly) still relevant.

    And I may add the balancing update which is atrocious in most ways, but that would be a flatus in the wind really. It was clearly done to achieve very specific purposes.

    Then why play? If it is SO bad, why are you here?

    For full disclosure, I don't play anymore. I tried, but in this state I really don't enjoy this game anymore - a game I used to love immensly. That's why I'm still here. Because I know how much better this game can be and have a pipe dream that anyone does give a rodent's behind about that enough to glance past the endless numbers of mobile users being streamed through to check out the actual state of the product they're selling.

    a format that the MAJORITY of the community can agree too.

    The "majority of the community" is not made up of professional game designers who should know how to craft a purpose-driven UI to meet a standard set by the company itself by what it had accomplished before.

    The "majority of the community" is made up of throwaway accounts that generate revenue for one to two weeks and then get bored and leave forever, to be milked the same way by the next developer.

    The game is free.
    Do the math.

    Many other games are free.

    The game was free all the time but it used to be objectively better.

    It was free when it was award-winning, widely held in high regards by critics and had a massively involved community with very commited fans of the game.


    Does it even have to be free? That is always flung around like that was a god-given commandment, but it was indeed a choice the company has specifically made. It's all besides the point anyway because the topic here isn't the monetization system. We're not talking about where the money comes from, it's about what it was spent on.


    Because I also fail to see how "Ask for feedback, then ignore it and implement arbitrary changes" costs less resources in any regard.

    Another feature that would be a great addition would be the ability to retreat when in close contact All die if you try.

    It would be nice if you had tacticle withdrawl feature where some troops could hold off the attack while the majority could escape. (This recomendation has come from several players I talked to as well as myself)

    This would break the entire combat logic of the game and essentially change it to a completely different game. It would be like allowing mulligans in a game of chess.

    " did you intend to attack ally" feature any time an ally is attacked.

    While surely helpful, this would be a crutch. An interface that makes it easier to target the intended targets in the first place would make this unneccessary.

    I'm also not quite sure what you mean by "ally", since coalition members already can't be attacked. Having positive relations with someone does not automatically make them an "ally" by many definitions of the term, so it would be hard for the game to decipher when to show that message. Hence, my original point - it shouldn't even be neccessary at all.


    There should be rewards for the game you retired unless I am way mistaken. It can take a bit for them to be payed out though, maybe check again tomorrow.

    multiple clicks on mobil / tablet device to do same exact thing you could do with a click and movement of a mouse

    These sorts of things have already been achieved in several spots - sometimes, where in the previous UI no input action at all was even neccessary to recieve information that now requires at least one click or more. These are objectively quantifiable ways in which the game has gotten straight up worse, no amount of "personal preference" involved. These are countable metrics of accessibility.

    If the response to that is "We don't care, the kids are still paying", it's telling. Nothing out of the ordinary in today's world, sure, but then again Supremacy used to be something out of the ordinary by its quality, that recieved high accolades back when this game was widely considered to be one of the best of its kind that were ever made.

    And then someone found out that you simply don't need quality to make cash on the mobile gaming market. And that's why we're looking at this thing we're looking at today that used to be browser game of the year in the year of its release.

    That's nice - after years of disregarding all of the substantial feedback, acknowledge it with a bunch of lip. I mean, one could take the fact that that guy is even here, all this time after Legacy has been pulled, to leave that opinion to mean he must be fairly dedicated to even care at this point in time. I guess he had it coming for that mistake. And I guess being more vocal about your disregard can be considered an asset.

    Just honest-to-god observations here:


    Making building times depend on morale is not the most far-fetched thing in the world I suppose, but I think we all know of a certain thing that can be used to lower someone else's province morale and that thus now became more effective and encouraged. What a coincidoink!

    This also applies to the massive buff that cavalry and ACs have recieved, combined with the facts that forts are much less beneficial now until much higher levels - all pumping plenty of spending incentive into the early game, while in the late game it's much harder to not fall apart and instead reward yourself without it even when playing objectively well.


    Pretty undesirable for players in general, but all things considered with these balancing changes, I think that might not have been the point.