Posts by Momo Kawashima

Quote from LostRealist

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 seeing 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.

This is so on the ball. This is partly the way i have felt for the past year. I dont appreciate being valued based on the amount of money im willing to blow on the game. It reminds me of Wargamming's games World of Tanks and World of Warships, which are games that value your patronage to their game by the amount of money you are willing to spend. And they work the same way. Paying players get infinite advantages that the otherwise common person cant afford.

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.

Either way, im happy to admit that i myself have been killed by gold spammers hundreds of times over, and im sure it will happen hundreds more. Thats fine, as long as the company is willing to admit that the game is free to play, but pay to win. Honesty is one heck of a thing. And i prefer supporting an honest company rather than one who throws every single advantage possible to the player who is foolish enough to spend hundreds and thousands of dollars on the game and masks it under the "helps the game" excuse. And it is an excuse.

Another idea is to allow players who are eligible (be it frontline pioneers like myself or those players who have gotten a certain rank in the game) to create games that are gold free. Its almost depressing in a way knowing that there are no alternatives to the current "gold crisis" that kinda plagues this game. Now im not the first person to bring up the idea of gold free games either, its quite a popular idea. The fact that even the admins admit they dont want to change anything makes it seem like you truly dont care about your playerbase. I mean you shafted everybody by forcing us to play against elite AI by default, which was widely disliked, and still threw the playerbase the middle finger. I guess theres no reason why this issue should be different. I guess there truly are some things that will never change. And unfortunately, it seems Bytro is unwilling to change too.

Quote from Mr.Fleming

Please submit a ticket about this so the GO's can check with all stats present. Home page > support. Thank you.

on that note though, if the engine can deal with it, i personally wouldnt mind seeing coloured images

Ive been seeing some coloured pictures in some newspaper articles, but mine are black and white. Can anybody elaborate on this

Im quite frankly not surprised that a EN mod for bytro is defending these updates. I was enjoying a good amount of hours and pay from my job. When i became critical of them, my hours dropped significantly, i will not be working for the company in the coming weeks. Probably the same with you demon. If youre actually critical of the updates that are clearly hurting the playerbase, youll end up out of a job. Its fine, i get that you have to defend it, no matter how absurd it becomes. Id be willing to bet (whats left of) my paycheck that if an update dropped that made all rounds in the game "starts when full" rounds, youd defend it too. Again, its fine, you gotta do whats best for business and you. Simple, putting up new players against elite AI is completely unfair and appalling. Ive been playing this game 4 years, and stat-wise, as well as in game, i still play like a player whos played for a few months. How are players going to remain competitive in 100p or 500p games if you put them up against 4 prov nations that destroy 80% of my fighting force? Get good? yeah, i hear that in pay to win games all the time, and trust me, buying my way through games doesnt make me competitive, it makes me feel like that company's servant. (since i cant use the b word)

Jeck i totally agree with you here, like i said before. Update ruins alot of rp work. It ruins generous players too. Im in a game right now where one of my coalition members robbed me of half a nation, after i did literally all the fighting, and a non-coalition member, who is currently destroying him, said he would gift me the provs that i was screwed out of. I had to tell him that thanks to the update, he/she will not be able to exercise their generousity to me. Not only does this ruin rp work, it kinda hurts good hearted players too. (but yes, i realise kind players dont help the income that this game is focusing on either). Trade is also a HUGE part of my alliances with other players. In a game where i was Hungary, i managed to side with a powerful coalition, because i started with favorable trades to members that i was diplomatically friendly with. Now how am i supposed to prove my worth, or how true to my word i am? I cant, thats how. Now i have to satisfy the experts by 'getting good' and that will just make me a toxic player. I play this game for fun. To meet new players, to see their rp work, to make my survival chances better by trading resources to other nations etc.

The last few updates have made it clear to the playerbase: This game is being steered slowly (but surely) in the direction of pay to win, or pay to enjoy. After a while, if this game survives that long, i wont be surprised if it becomes pay to play. Heres something bytro might see (before they probably ban my account for saying how i feel), my High Command Expires in less than 2 days. Ive bought almost 2 years HC from Bytro, and after the last few updates. I can tell Bytro with 100% confidence that i will not be "renewing" my "membership" so to speak. Its not worth dumping another $60 into a game that doesnt care about its main playerbase.

Quote from Golden Frieeza

poll is anonymous - you can ban any updated you want

and it is not on bytro infrastructure so we should be good

if we hurry up we can shut down game before bytro will do it haha

Theres no reason to shut this game down. It can still turn around. We just need to make sure we talk loud enough for Bytro to hear us. We can do something about this still

I guess all i did was offer a rant without solution.

Here are my personal solutions:

1) First and foremost, undo this update. Seriously, I agree with my colleagues. Elite AI has clearly been the default AI behaviour. If this weren't the case, than a player country would not have half of their troops wiped out by a nation with 3 provinces at game start. This makes it hard for players to play competitively, if you are forcing them to fight AI that are better than 90% of the player-base. The only difference is that, when i create a round, (like my fellow S1914 player said earlier) i no longer have to pay the goldmark required to use that feature.

2) Bring back the tumbola. This 'lottery feature' if you will, was a great feature. It offered anything from resources to small amounts of goldmark, to actual Premium Account time. You got 1 free spin a day, and the reward amount increased just by logging in. Taking this feature away really hurts players who play for free, as well as a huge hit to the money bytro earns. When i earned a week of premium account, i spent more GM so i could try to get more time. I even spent a few dollars for more GM to try and get more time. (Gm was cheaper than buying time, so i went with gm). There are bound to be players out there that do the same thing i do. Taking it away just screws over the Free to Play players that enjoyed the little "spin to win' minigame.

Stop killing this game. Not everybody wants to play the crappy rehash attempts of this game you have going on. CoN and NWE (in my honest opinion) are god awful games. CoW is pretty solid, if you added a few things from this game to that one, then CoW would have far more people in it. Why is Bytro spending time restricting player freedoms in updates instead of adding things like new units, or hell, add a world congress thing that allows players to get together and propose pre-written laws and regulations that limit a country's progress. (a very rough draft, dont quote me on this one). Here's an idea. Add aircraft carriers. HMS Argus was commissioned before the end of WWI. Add them in with some sort of limitations to them, to keep them from being overpowered or as effective as ones from WWII. There are plenty of things to add to this game. Restricting player freedoms is definitely not one of them. Guys this is OUR game. Bytro may have created it, but we are the reason it is successful.

As i wrote this, i wondered, and ask all of you, why are we even writing here? Every post probably makes Bytro laugh. Do they really care what we think? They clearly dont listen.

Well, no matter what, this is our game just as much as theirs, i hope Bytro's moderators and developoers start paying attention to us or theyll end up like World of Tanks. Less playerbase, less income, less game life.

World of Tanks started out as a (mostly) free to play game. For a couple of years it was at the top of the world. WG (the developers of the game) then try to take advantage of their players by introducing thier pay to win/pay to progress option, to convince players that they can be better by paying for advantages. Result: World of Tanks pllayerbase (in NA) is steadily trickling to nothingness.

Supremacy 1914 drops, and starts as a (mostly) free to play game. Updates are steady and in my games it remains at the top of the world. I get the distinct feeling that, with the elimination of the tumbola (which gave players with no money the opportunity to try and win premium time), along with the elite AI having been in all rounds (free and premium) for a long while now, coupled on with these literal trade restrictions, they are going to steer their game in the way of Pay to Enjoy. If S1914 continues going this way, id be more than happy to drop 4 years of playing (and almost everyday at that) because Bytro is becoming Wargaming. If this is true, then Result: S1914's playerbase tickles to nothingness

Bytro needs to understand that 80% of its playerbase is not playing this game competitively, but to enjoy the aspects of it. Id even bet that at least 30-50% of the playerbase (myself included) have, or are actively roleplaying. This game has everything a roleplayer needs for a WWI setting. We can customise our portraits, leader name/title and even our flag. Premium members even get to enjoy placing their custom picture in their custom article on the newspaper. Killing the trade stuff really damages how rpers go about playing this game. I love this game, and i used to be proud to say i wowuld play it until one of us (the game or myself) reaches its expiration date. But the last few updates (Tumbola elimination, Elite Ai default in every game, restricting in game trade) have made me really wonder if this game is worth putting another 4 years of time into. In fact, if it keeps going like this, Bytro can be assured that i will no longer support this game, or the other ones for that matter.