Posts by LostRealist

Quote from twts

Even though this has turned into a discussion about something else I want to continue it.

It absolutely is a more realistic battle mechanism than the flower technique. The flower technique is a game mechanic hack. There's no way around that fact. I am not saying it should be removed. I understand its part of the game. But you cannot argue that it isn't a hack in the game mechanics.

This statement clearly points out it is a game mechanic hack.

As for the historical accuracy of the unit i proposed it is just false to claim it did not exist. It did. The boat actually sailed thousands of miles from port and launch and received fighter-like aircraft at sea.

I did not bring up the flower technique, and it is a viable comparison because it IS more realistic. Which was my claim.

Yes, again, carriers existed, we all get it. But they played an extremely minor part in this war, much more minor than many other unit types that aren't in the game in fact. There is absolutely no way you can argue from a historical accuracy point here that these things should play any sort of role in the game.

And for how the flower defense is "realistic" I'm not following you at all, but again, it's an error. It's a mistake in the code. If this game had better developers, it wouldn't exist. You're not going to get a fair comparison out of that with any intended mechanic.

Quote from twts

This perspective is ridiculous. Why even have this section of the forums then? If everything is just "beating a dead horse" when players want to make realistic, dynamic game play changes to an outdated (yet amazing) game then why even have this forum? Just get rid of it.. stop looking in it if the game is perfect the way you like it. Even with clunky mechanics that don't let you utilize dynamic techniques that were available even before WW1. You can't call this a true tactical RTS without having true tactical options.

You don't? I'd say you do, but an entire army of 50.000 soldiers dug into trenches just packing up shop and hightailing outta there happens to not be one. That's a thing you can plan around. And going down the "true tactical options" road is really futile anyway. There's always gonna be a next tactical option that was used back then but isn't in the game. And a next, and a next. This is, at its core, a casual game and not meant to be a combat micromanager to that extent.

And while it's true that I personally wouldn't want this dynamic and, as the glitchmaster himself has already pointed out it exists via bugs already that you're free to exploit to your heart's desire, my main point of saying that is that if there was any realistic chance of this being added to the game, it probably would have happened at some point within the last ten years which is about the time since this has been brought up the first time. Hell, they probably would have added it right at 1.0, but they chose not to for fundamental reasons. I explained above how embedded the lack of a retreat option is into the way the gameplay of this game functions. Changing it would be a little like adding another piece to the game of chess: Sure you could do it but what seems like a minor change would cause ripples that would eventually wind you up with a completely different game. This isn't a little tweak that's being proposed, it is in its effect a fundamental overhaul of the entire way this game works. I'm not sure you guys understand that.

Quote from twts

Not sure what mechanic would drive this. Given that prices are set by players, not true supply-demand principles. Maybe it could calculate the average of all prices available for a resource? then plot that? I mean you could almost manipulate the market by placing an order for a cheap price and pulling it back at day change, if someone doesn't grab it. Like sell 1 grain or 0.02 silver at day change and the graph would represent that and it would be incorrect against the actual market.

Yeah that's a good concern I think. You're gonna run into real-life statistician's problems here where the average can very easily be misleading or even manipulated. Using a median value to prevent this would probably not be as useful to players though.

I've been playing very on-and-off for close to nine years now and I've observed a lot of markets. For obvious reasons, the market is mostly driven by supply and demand in the average game. The more AI there is in the game, the more it will be. Players tend to not have standing offers on the market nearly as much as AI so the value of goods is basically determined by which AI offers the players pick up. AI will then try to make offers that match the "current price", a value that actually used to be displayed in the market tab for each resource years ago but is long gone from the public eye. I believe it's still tracked internally to control the AI's market behaviour. How exactly this number is formulated and protected against manipulation, if at all, I'm not sure, but it does depend heavily on what was most recently actually sold, not just the asking prices that nobody ever pays. If I ever get around to it I'll test it in a private game.

Now as the AI nations make their standing offers, players come in and take them up on them. They will naturally buy the cheapest stuff first, then depending on the available supply the average selling price rises. AI is smart enough to cash in on this to an extent even if there's still supply and make offers for higher prices. This is where players can sometimes come in and stir things up by getting rid of stockpiles they accidentally accumulated at really low prices. These, however, often go very quickly in the larger games at least and don't impact the price for very long. That goes for all short-lived stunts players do on the market, including the dumping prices and the highway robbery ones. If you don't do that stuff consistently, several times a day over a number of days, you will not have a lasting impact on the prices that AI asks.

Due to all this, the market really isn't that complicated and the dynamics surrounding it are fairly predictable if you've payed attention to it for a few games. There's the "tech days" 5, 8 and around 14-16 when Iron and Lumber (or Oil, depending on the map) develop aggressively, there's the general rule that the more AI remains deep into the game, the more lively the market will be and prices for the more maintenance-oriented stuff like fish and gas remain pretty decent.

If you had a graph that tracked your game's market and relied on that to make your decisions, I think you'd always be one step behind anyway. It would reflect changes on the market that have already happened - I mean, if the price for oil is high right now and rising, you can see that with your own two eyeballs right on the market, you don't need a graph for that. And the market itself reflects changes in the game world - AIs disappearing, resource-relevant regions engulfed in war - that have already happened as well. If you pay attention to those is where you can get a step ahead of the market and really skim it.

tl;dr: I think the market dynamics in supremacy are very interesting but also very simple and easily predictable to the human without the aid of additional tools or statistics that could wind up being just as much misleading as they are helpful.

Quote from twts

I think its a great idea. On your last point (with your force retreating and the enemy force advancing) maybe they could stay in combat mode (normal dice roll every 60 minutes with A:D ratio) but the combat can move at reduced rate. So lets say two forces (fA and fB) meet between province A and B and and fB wants to retreat while fA wants to press province B. I think fA and fB should stay in combat but move toward province B. This could be used to bait into arty, RG, or BS fire.

Alright, but then what happens if the other army chooses to retreat as well? The battle just ends and everyone goes home?

While I see some use for a retreat option (which is also more than a dead horse at this point, by the way), it should certainly not come for free. Previous discussions often included the idea of a severe morale penalty to the retreating army as they scamper with their tails between their legs. They could also, quite realistically, suffer major, unconstested losses in their "retreat tick" as covering a retreat, when you have your back against the enemy, is a really difficult thing to do. Afterall, the army you just swung by to harrass and then bolt would have an interest in not letting you get away so easily.

I don't believe you're ever going to see this option though and the reason is quite frankly that it would change the entire basis of Supremacy1914's gameplay. The fact that units get locked into battle is a fundamental aspect of the combat mechanics not only concerning their calculations but also the player's approach. It puts a further emphasis on planning and preparing rather than just executing to know that your troops will be committed to an altercation once you send them in. The entire combat system would chance very, very deeply by adding a retreat option and I do believe it would change to a point outside of what would be considered tolerable to most players and the company providing the gameplay.

Quote from twts

that is more realistic

Nah. Absolutely isn't, though.

If you were to force an aircraft carrier into the game despite the historical inaccuracy, the saving grace might be to have >90% of your fighters just straight up crash into the tides as they attempt to land on it.

Please don't compare something as fundamental as a new unit type to an exploit of the game mechanics. Of course the latter isn't going to be historically accurate or add to the balancing of units in a beneficial way. It's a glorified glitch. It's like comparing Missingno. to the other Pokemon and then complaining about how useless it is.

It is just fact that a navy carrying a fleet or airbourne fighter aircraft with them across thousands of miles of open ocean for protection, starting, landing and harbouring them on a vessel was not a practically possible thing back in 1914, sorry. They had to rely on other tactics to protect their navy and so do you.

I kinda don't see the bfd about the battleship and railgun names after never paying any attention to those for nine years now. I mean, they were never displayed very prominently in any UI, they were always mostly just for the paper. So I don't really care either way.

Daily Spin I agree though, something like that should return I think, but I think this time it should be tied to the individual game and not as an overall daily login reward. E.g. give players a chance to earn a small reward in every of their games to give them an incentive to stay active in them. Many 100p games are in a really sad state of affairs after a few days at the moment and I think an "activity reward" could be beneficial to everyone.

Oh, and, sorry for the double post but quoting stuff is a ... female dog in this forum.

Quote from freezy

e) we know very well how to market a free2play game, but marketing for a premium or subscription based game is entirely different. There is no guarantee that we could pull it off with current marketing experience, marketing prices etc.

Yeah, that's not surprising. This is what happens when you implement one thing and then ride it for ten years, too afraid to touch it. The idea is about as old as Goldmark itself but you guys shot it down for years with the old "Well we gotta eat somehow" logic. You could have tons of experience in doing that at this point, it was your choice not to have it. And come on, if you usually get guarantees that things you do in your life will work out, I'm open to swap.

Quote from freezy

There are a lot of free2play games with much worse pay2win mechanics which are much bigger than our games, some food for thought.

Oh look at that, I worked out the quoting. It's actually really nice in this forum, who would have guessed.

This is certanly true, however there are also a lot of free2play games, especially competitive multiplayer ones, that have much less intrusive monetization strategies, often because they're not ten years old. If you're gonna throw food for thought at me, have some of your own.

Another thing just popped into my head, or rather a decent way to phrase it out. Since you apparently consider any change to the Goldmark mechanic a change of business models yet you bring updates upon gameplay every few months, some of them unwarranted, even experimental, I reckon that at this point you guys consider the actual playing of the game to not be a part of the business model at all? You give off that impression when you say that any change to GM would risk people's livelihood whereas gameplay changes can be made at all times. It's like to the company, the spending and the playing are seperate categories, the gameplay being mere bywork to the structure that allows people to give you their money. That's somewhat understandable from a business perspective as without covering the costs, no gameplay could be provided, but I honestly believe it's a harmful way of thinking to the quality of the product, which is also something you can observe in plenty of other businesses as I have in some that I have worked for in my life. People typically don't like to pay if they feel that's all they're good for to the salesman. Alas I now realize with the mobile gaming market, I guess this sadly doesn't apply, so consider this just an idealist tangent.

Quote from Furry1

I agree although I think I have a little bit of an advantage using Legacy.....

But yes, give people the choice. They shouldn't be penalized just because they didn't join earlier than some of us.

Oh, and one more reason to give the choice, based on another post, is to cut down the amount of lag within the graphics engine. Lower resolution (legacy mode) should make it easier on people's PCs and mobiles.

While I agree, I wouldn't say they're being punished for joining later, they're just forced to suffer through what Bytro has decided is best for the game now. Quite honestly the simpler solution for Bytro would be to just get rid of Legacy entirely and remove that kind of logic. Then it's just awful for everyone but the sad truth is that what we think about legacy design doesn't matter at all.

Bytro obviously poured work and hours into the new design to make it the way it is for whatever reason. Maybe not enough work and enough hours to make it anywhere near as good as the old one but if you're already invested like that, you're not gonna undercut your own efforts by making the other option more prominent again. I really don't think this is realistic. Bytro clearly isn't viewing the two designs as different playing styles or whatever that you should be free to choose. They're just keeping legacy around to avoid a load of people leaving the game at once is what I reckon. Once enough of "us" are gone on our own, the plug gets pulled and the game moves on.

The better shot we'd have I think is to try and bring them to improve the new UI to a point where it works as well as the old one. Considering Bytro has assumed quite a hands-off approach to this game it seems, good luck with that. If you ask me, the new UI might as well be torn down completely and redone from scratch if you want it to work as efficiently as Legacy - also something that's sadly very unrealistic for the company to do at this point.

I believe the new UI to be mostly marketing-driven to align this game more with the look and feel of the kinds of games that are popular with young players. Functionality came second in designing it. That's not neccessarily a bad thing but it didn't work out so well in this instance. But apparently the young audiences do come in now and underage players spend a lot of money since the game is supposedly doing really well. And since Bytro has been known now to not even dare to glance at the features it makes money off in fear of destroying their "business model", don't bank on any major changes to the design itself or the way the two existing designs relate to one another.

Quote from twts

Well, fixed winged bombers weren't used in WW1 either. Plus I said it could be something that only super late game economies could afford. Who's to say we wouldn't have built a floating aerodrome to be used if the war continued?

Plus, https://www.militaryfactory.co…hip_id=HMS-Ark-Royal-1914

Theres an example of a carrier with recon planes taking off and landing during WW1. So it was used during the war.

As far as gameplay balancing i disagree. Especially since most maps have too much distance between N american and Europe to fly planes there. Why cant an economy that can afford it be able to produce a bridge across the ocean to solve that problem?

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Yeah it's always a matter of time until someone brings up one of the like three vessels that existed at the time and were used for this purpose for varying durations during the war. It was a novelty item regardless, extremely uncommon and did not have any significant impact in the war. Featuring them prominently in this game would be highly anachronistic. So why can't someone who can afford it produce a bridge across the oceans? Because this is a game about World War 1. Such an undertaking just does not fit the time. Aircraft, one could argue, are already a more powerful weapon in the game than they were in the actual war.

And balancing wise, I don't know what you're thinking. Supposing it was outrageously expensive, somebody would still build it at some point (please also remember that Goldmark is a thing) and thereby break the late game balancing. Any country relying on a Navy at that point will then be vastly inferior. Heavy weapons in the form of Bombers could cross the pacific in a matter of hours and deal nearly uncontested damage before returning to safety. No other weapon in the game currently allows you to do this. Balancing would change massively, I'm not sure how you could disagree. You can't just throw a superweapon in the game, make it hella expensive and then rely on the fact most people won't be able to afford it as the only mechanic to prevent it from breaking the game.

Quote from freezy

It is true that businesses should also take risks from time to time, but we are talking about a rather big risk here that most businesses would not explore. I mean imagine you run a successful store at the moment and some customers suggest you change your current store business model completely. Would you do that? Probably most store owners would never do that because changing a well running model for something else would be a move that risks their whole business. Maybe they would try it out with a new store to see how it goes, without risking their old store.

See and this is where I disagree. Unless the company considers its business model to be "Let people pay us so they can break our product", tweaking the Goldmark mechanics is absolutely not akin to changing your current business model completely. The better analogy to a store would be picking up a service or an item on customer request or serving a different brand of coffee. Nobody is asking the company to change its entire business model, step away from Goldmark or the ability to buy advantages in the game. It's like the fiftieth time I say that in this thread alone. This is why I find it so hard to understand that the Goldmark mechanic, for as far as I can tell, has not substantially been touched at all in over ten years.

I remember the gold free alliance tournaments and those were an absolute spectacle to watch. I can't say I ever knew of gold free games with entry fees ever existing, probably because they were alliance only from what I gather. Else I would have been in them. But the Goldmark options as they stand right now are essentially the same of ten years ago while many, many changes have been made to the rest of the gameplay. I think this is for better or worse whichever way you look at it, as while surely some failures and losses were avoided, innovation and revenue was as well. And sure, after ten years of it running well enough, it's hard to provide any reasons to not get complacent. The whole mechanic just seems a little antiquated now, especially as the game's entire marketing has shifted generations with the new UI and the website overhaul, stuffing it into a profitable market. Its monetization is still very uninspired and 1.0 from 2010.

And as a pretty meaningless side note - I mean, I'm happy for you that the game is in its best year ever apparently, but you would not phrase it that way from playing it, take my word for it. The target audience for a freemium service has become very young over the past few years and this game is clearly no exception. Again, I'm glad you're doing well, but the product lives off its players here and it's not doing better for that. And to be truthfully honest with you, as by the way I do appreciate the transparency of your reply, I'll be so transparent to express how I find this particular aspect of a business model to be extremely disagreeable. The GO's are to enforce a "family friendly" atmosphere among players, the chat even filters the word "bollocks" for crying out loud, like we're pandering to five year-olds here, yet you know as well as I do that the company has no issue whatsoever gauging these kids for money it deliberately attracts and you also know as well as I do that the reason it does this, like most other freemium platforms, is because these kids are inexperienced with spending money and will soak up microtransactions with absolutely no regard to the quality of the product they are recieving. This works so well because presenting them with a challenge and then providing the easiest solution will have them go for that in the majority of cases. The whole freemium market really is capitalism 2.0. This obviously isn't Bytro's fault at all but they also quite clearly do not think much of participating in squeezing very, very young customers for all they're worth because that's the easiest thing you can possibly do. I think it's despicable quite honestly and while the time for concerns like that has mostly passed, I don't think it gets any better when you consider what a family unfriendly topic this game is about.

I'm aware that someone who gauges money out of children for a living makes it more than clear by doing so that he couldn't give less of a patootie what some random guy on the internet thinks about that. I'm also more than aware that now that Bytro has taken that road and decided to just throw its product into the thousands of other generic games that are in that particular market because it's easy to serve that market and it generates income with almost zero effort, all pretense that the quality of the product is of any particular meaning to the company is out the window, likely never to return. You can throw out random gameplay updates every few months as much as you want, this game is being handled hands-off by the company at this point. You found a way to make this thing a money printer on autopilot and for what it's worth, once again I'm glad you guys are getting payed, but when taking that road the company made it clear that it's not going for a special, high-quality product anymore that sets itself apart. Personally, I think an opportunity was blown there to have a product that's actually valued by your customers.

I can confirm number one, that's on legacy design for me. A number of visual glitches involving units when they are selected and especially when given orders.

As for the battles, I think those are too situational to consider the update to be causal. The bombers flying out for a tick where nothing winds up happening at all for example has happened to me many times over the years.

A thing I did notice though is that damage efficiency appears to play a bigger role in battle calculations now, but not just since the most recent update. A single infantry unit appears to have a really dang good chance of holding its own against anything up to 12 attacking units for at least a tick. It's also observable in larger battles how a higher damage efficiency seems to give you a massive advantage now. I personally think it's overdone and could be tuned back a notch.

Quote from Hastings TNT

however we all know at a certain point your either increase your skill level, learn new strategies and tactic's to fight the heavy gold users

But you can't though, and you know it. You yourself are spending 150k of the stuff on a "noob" to combat his spending. Do you see how this reminds me of the old "Fighting for peace is like doing something for virginity" saying? Yes there's a lot of players (like a seriously concerning amount) who learn to spend money much sooner than they learn actually playing and for a lot of them, no amount of spending will overcome their ineptitude. But if a guy is for whatever reason - more often than not a pathological psychological situation, let's not kid ourselves - willing to spend triple digit dollars just to get past you, no amount of tactics or strategy will save you. This is the core issue with the current system. It can be used not only to make the game easier for you but to completely break it for anyone else. It goes too far. The more someone spends, the less of a point there is for his opponents and himself to even play the game at all. Use of Goldmark is a substitute to regular playing, not an amendment in its current form. Just one example: Railguns are worthless thanks to Goldmark. In a public game, you'd have to be a straight up idiot to build one and rely on it being operational. I am honestly a little dumbfounded that that sort of business model for a game worked out the way it has. You can literally buy the actual game out of the way here and people actually do it by the dozens every week.

And if someone pulls out the Goldhammer and nukes your entire military infrastructure completely in a two month-old 100p map, and I should not have to state that this is entirely possible and absolutely happens, no amount of tactics or skill on my part will change what an incredibly frustrating thing this is. I've spent weeks to be where I'm at, it's been a journey through gameplay that wrote a completely unique story of fight and survival, friendship and betrayal - and then someone spends 30 bucks on you smartly and it's fricking over. I realize my emotions don't put food on anyone's table but maybe my High Command memberships over the course of nine years have and maybe some of those I've recommended this game to way back in the day have as well. You probably wouldn't want to hear what I'd consider my honest description of this game and the people running it to an outsider nowadays.

It's not like all suggestions in this thread would lose Bytro revenue. I really don't feel like shouting them into the ether again but plenty of stuff here could bear some economic potential, it's not like we're here just to bash the pay2win factor, there are some really interesting ideas in here. But again, I guess I'm just an actual idiot for spending any time thinking about this. After ten years of nothing but "Well we gotta make money somehow, so y'all can stfu" it was indeed pretty stupid to take this thread seriously at all I now realize. I just really could have done without yet another set of middle fingers at those who actually care about this game and try to help improve it.

Quote from TooBadThen

which country has the most pluses on resources or even all plus so no minus resources.

It's not a sandbox game.

Quote from Furry1

As much as I love the idea, there was no such animal in WW 1 so you're beating a dead horse.

Firstly this, also from a gameplay perspective, one could argue aircraft are powerful enough. This would create a whole myriad of balancing issues that frankly aren't worth it I think.

Quote from PACCBET

Gold stamps are a great way for developers to make money. All of their Bytro games have gold marks. I doubt very much that they would act against their wallet.

Yes, we've heard it. Stop implying that because premium currency = developer income, developer income = everything has to stay exactly the way it is right now and this is the only and forever only way this developer could ever monetize their game. It's simply not true.

Quote from Momo Kawashima

Personally at this point i dont care how they monetize the game, as long as their willing to admit that the game is clearly pay to win as well. While it is free to play, the amount of money you spend on a round gives you a clear and direct advantage over another player. Whether it be used to "nuke" provinces (spend gold to tank the morale of a province or country) or to spam armoured cars/arty/tanks etc and simply overwhelm your enemy, or its used quite literally to "buy rounds". And while i am understanding of the fact that there are players who are skilled enough to at least make the gold spend worthless, it does not represent the entire playerbase. There are players who play the 500p maps or 31p maps who are newer and get gold rushed on day 1 (kaizer12 actually gold rushes in alot of games). If anything, the gold spam is actually demonizing players and to a degree i think it hurts more than helps. In fact, its hard to gauge how good you actually are against a player who makes up for their lack of skill with their paychecks.

I agree with a lot of that and I'd like to use this opportunity to point to a specific problem again: The lack of any way to spend your GM that doesn't unfairly affect other players. Even the least intrusive options give you an immediate advantage and this is clear to everyone using them. I have actually talked to new players in chat who disliked this, stating they wanted to play "normally" and without gaining such an advantage over other players and were confused as to why there was no other way to spend GM.

I mean you could start five premium games a day but that's about it. The monetization scheme here goes straight to the point that "if you buy, we'll make you better". Obviously this attracts those who will end up spending money pathetically because they have a problem that the gaming industry as a whole has seemingly decided is absolutely fine to exploit. Don't wanna get into that, rehab centers also make money somehow, so whatever. But this also alienates players who realize early on that the monetization system is exclusively pay2win. Other games let you buy skins or junk like that that doesn't impact gameplay at all, just lets you customize your personal experience. Why not ponder something like that? Because enterpreneurship is not "financially sensible" to you?

Quote from Crasianos

around 25 % of men

That can't be true!?

Quote from Crasianos

2. Also the trade window state "We DEMAND" not a good word to open a trade negotiation, any right minded english speaker would say We Request, a minor point but then you are a GERMAN company huh ! open to customer feedback Nichts Verstehn !!!

It's 1914, I think this is owed to that. I've also thought about that in the past but chalk it up to "historical conduct".

I'm sorry, but I have a little problem with that? I was, apparently mistakenly under the impression that inciting a topic such as "Open discussion pertaining the monetization model" would indicate some form of openness in the company to implement different things. Afterall, that is not as uncommon for companies to do as you're leading us to believe here. If no businessman ever did something that had "a significant risk attached to" it, we'd live in a much different world right now. Changes can also be gameplay tested, they can be rolled back, I'm sure a lot of businesses actually envy you guys for that actual lack of risk and ability to fine-tune the way you make money. So while I never expected you to do anything, also seein as how the company has made it abundantly clear at almost every opportunity that the monetization system is for some reason entirely carved in stone, surely you could see how it wasn't all that far-fetched to think that you were actually considering implementing some feedback. I mean, you guys even asked for it. This is a bit of a slap in the face.

What you guys did is ask for our concerns about something and then, after one and a half years and five pages of (mostly) constructive feedback on it you come back to basically tell us that if we ever thought you would actually care about those concerns we're almost idiots who clearly have no idea what the "economically sensible" thing is because that thing obviously makes our feedback worthless. And with your quote essentially just brought it all back to the old "Well it couldn't be free to play otherwise!" argument that literally everybody in this thread has acknowledged or at least clearly accepted in one way or another and tried to come up with ideas keeping it in mind. So alright, everything is the way it always was, but now I also feel taken for a fool.

Sorry, couldn't let you get away with that. That wasn't a great way to treat your customers at all.

Since of the two, only province upgrades will count towards your ranking that would be your direct concern. Since however resource shortages will negatively impact all of your gameplay in various ways, they are certainly a hinderance to constructing vast amounts of upgrades.

Quote from polo94

Anyway, I've made my conclusions. I still feel that it's impossible to make peace with AI. I have never achieved it and as I see I'm not the only one. Even if you change the relation status to peace.

For all intents and purposes, that's the right attitude.

I feel like you might be able to deter them from attacks if the provinces they have to go into have large garrisons in them as they seem to avoid fights where they are vastly outnumbered.