Balancing Changes

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    • After implementing a random decision of an extra 15% on native provinces, which gives bonus that stacks up to the already overcoming advantages of defense you decide to increase cost of infras while reducing the combat abilities of air and rockets.

      In addition i here all the time about air superiority and many planes etc.... In my experience you can have a decent air offense after day 8. Until then resources for air and air units are not se effective. Still, players survive, have you ever thougght the reasons?

      You never thought that defense has an overwelming advantage over offense so it allows players with initial units to reach higher tech units relatively safe?

      So let's sum up the last changes:
      1. LT cost increased
      2. 15% extra defense bonus given (stacks up with forts, covers all province)
      3. Infra cost increased ( arts, lts are effective)
      4. Air is nerfed by lot
      5. AA is buffed.
      6. Rockets are nerfed
      7. Instead of fixing the bug of artillery damaging the subs , they do damage but still waste their shot.
      From my point of view those changes effect directly the offensive units and focuses to buff the survivability of new or bad players who can not keep up.

      Giving overwelming advantage to defense forces players to use units with higher mobility or damage to break through (air, rockets). Right now you take away those advantages while keeping defense the same. This is war game, attacking has a risk ( lower mobility, less information, etc) and it should have a reward.

      Changes make clear to me that attacking and breaking through a player is bad and you should never do it in a war game. It also says clearly that you do not care for veteran players, they will play for sure but you focus to make the new players survive. Good luck....
    • Quasi-duck wrote:

      AA shoot straight up, they're not like artillery. They are a point defence unit
      not really, whilst a single AA gun has a limited range (not strictly vertical, although a vertical shot is easier for technical reasons) an AA unit will have several of these spread out over an area unless providing point defence to specific assets. During WW2 few AA guns could elevate beyone 70 degrees and the limitations were mostly due to targeting instrumentation and fuse capabilities

      there is a world of difference in protecting army units or specific instatllations such as bridges to defending a region using AA. This is a wider remit creating belts of installations to protect regions or indeed army unit manuevering areas. This is termed area defence as opposed to point defence. This means that an area is covered by dozens of units to create AA Bdes/Divs/Corps.

      COW is unnatural in that you can create a stack of 15 AA and 20 AA and they all seemingly occupy the same 1 acre or 1km squared piece of ground. Indeed u can place 1500 units of each type on the same location. The net effect in the game is that you still only defend one field or one building whereas in reality you would be defending a fairly large region.
    • Dontezuma wrote:

      A lot of the balancing changes seem to be directed at players developing overpowering air forces.
      I thought I might propose another logical way to address the issue using SBDE.

      Instead of calculating SBDE on the stack on which the planes are flying, calculate SBDE based on the base it is flying from. Therefore 25 tacs flying out of single airbase are less efficient in SBDE. Currently players will put 25 tacs patrolling overlapping space in stacks of 5. Which is hugely destructive but technically due to the overlap it should be treated like a single stack of 25. Using the base method they might be still able to accomplish the same thing but they'd have to use 5 different air bases.
      I think this is a really creative solution on Dontezuma's part. I still support the air units being "nerfed" though also. All of you be honest, deep down we know they need a fix, even the ones using the exploit, because you wouldn't exploit them otherwise. I am not trying to ruffle feathers or take some kind of morale high ground, it's just be honest about the way you play.

      Infrastructure: please please do not increase the cost, the morale increase is a long overdue change that, frankly should have been inherent in them from the start.

      Units attacking submarines: Is it just not possible to change your computer coding or whatever to make those units to never see them? I am not familiar enough with comp coding to know, but like sub detection=always 0 or something like that?

      Anti Air units: like the decreased manpower cost. I would even go as far to make arty & anti tanks the same.

      Armoured Car & all the other changes I am on board with them. I really liked reading everyone"s opinions on these changes, many were thought provoking, even if I disagree with some of them.

      Thank you, as always, to all work you do, employees of Bytros.
    • cchyt wrote:

      After implementing a random decision of an extra 15% on native provinces, which gives bonus that stacks up to the already overcoming advantages of defense you decide to increase cost of infras while reducing the combat abilities of air and rockets.

      In addition i here all the time about air superiority and many planes etc.... In my experience you can have a decent air offense after day 8. Until then resources for air and air units are not se effective. Still, players survive, have you ever thougght the reasons?

      You never thought that defense has an overwelming advantage over offense so it allows players with initial units to reach higher tech units relatively safe?

      So let's sum up the last changes:
      1. LT cost increased
      2. 15% extra defense bonus given (stacks up with forts, covers all province)
      3. Infra cost increased ( arts, lts are effective)
      4. Air is nerfed by lot
      5. AA is buffed.
      6. Rockets are nerfed
      7. Instead of fixing the bug of artillery damaging the subs , they do damage but still waste their shot.
      From my point of view those changes effect directly the offensive units and focuses to buff the survivability of new or bad players who can not keep up.

      Giving overwelming advantage to defense forces players to use units with higher mobility or damage to break through (air, rockets). Right now you take away those advantages while keeping defense the same. This is war game, attacking has a risk ( lower mobility, less information, etc) and it should have a reward.

      Changes make clear to me that attacking and breaking through a player is bad and you should never do it in a war game. It also says clearly that you do not care for veteran players, they will play for sure but you focus to make the new players survive. Good luck....
      Your summary of the changes is so biast to the point of being dead wrong. Thus the conclusions you drew are at best dubious...

      Perhaps its just me that doesn't understand so lets go over it:

      1. Light tanks costs increase? I saw nothing in regards to light tanks being mentioned.

      2. 15% extra derensive bonus? where is that mentioned exactly?

      4. Air is nurfed? my understanding is that the normalization makes it less dangerous to issue attack orders with airplane stacks vs patrolling aircraft.

      5. AA is nurfed? I saw that it will take less manpower to produce AA did not see any nurfing.

      6. Rockets are nurfed? Range, speed or damage output remains unchanged so how exactly are rockets nurfed? Cost increase does not mean nurfing.
    • Keep the feedback coming guys :)

      To comment on some points:

      Can we do different solutions to balance certain things, by changing mechanics? -> Currently not.
      Programming time is always limited, so we focus on changes that can be done fairly easy without the need to program extra game functionality. The introduction of ranged anti air attacks or the change how SBDE is calculated for air units would be such changes that need programming, which is currently not in the scope. Therefore we go for simple value changes to balance these units.

      Is it really necessary to increase the infrastructure cost as well? -> yes.
      There are actually two layers of balancing. The first layer is the ingame balance, which we adress with the morale increase. This should help players to sustain bigger empires. But at the same time this change very likely will disturb the second balancing layer, and that is the overall game economy, on which also our revenue depends (yes I am being totally open here, as you are all smart guys I think we can discuss this in an objective way, can we?). More resource production from increased morale means less need to buy extra resources, more morale in provinces means less rebellions, means less need to increase morale or buy troops to fight rebellions, all of which will likely reduce our revenue. As no company would willingly take actions that hurts itself, we have to counter balance this in the second balancing layer with a cost increase, to improve the game balance in the first layer while keeping the second layer stable. I hope you all understand this.
      In the end the new Infrastructure is still worthwhile. Every building has its amortisation time, so while initially it will cost more, in the long run after some days you will also benefit more. This creates another strategical layer in the decision making when exactly you are should upgrade your provinces and when not. This will benefit the players who smartly plan ahead.

      Is this balancing patch directed only at new players? -> No.

      First things first, it is actually very important to keep new players in the game as long as possible, which will increase the likelyhood of them staying and becoming part of our awesome community. Otherwise it would be much harder to sustain a large player base. But to be honest the changes of this balancing update were not directed primarily at new players. With these changes we are also adressing much of the feedback that we received from veteran players, even competitive players playing in our community leagues. Of course not everyone agrees on everything, but we hope to find a nice middle ground. The fact that we receive so many diverting opinions on these announced changes is actually a good sign that we are going into the right direction. If everyone complains about different things you usually have a good balance. :)

      Now please continue :)
    • thanks for the comment Mr Freezy.

      your comments on limited programming time is curious. is this because there are other things being programmed for Bytro? Will it have an impact on the game development in the future? will we ever get a new unit? a new building?

      the game is mighty fine as it is, no doubt, but after a while many people find that the lack of additional elements means they get bored of the same routine. To me there's still plenty of stuff to discover and try but maybe it'll all become a bit same same in the future?
    • freezy wrote:

      Is it really necessary to increase the infrastructure cost as well? -> yes.
      There are actually two layers of balancing. The first layer is the ingame balance, which we adress with the morale increase. This should help players to sustain bigger empires. But at the same time this change very likely will disturb the second balancing layer, and that is the overall game economy, on which also our revenue depends (yes I am being totally open here, as you are all smart guys I think we can discuss this in an objective way, can we?). More resource production from increased morale means less need to buy extra resources, more morale in provinces means less rebellions, means less need to increase morale or buy troops to fight rebellions, all of which will likely reduce our revenue. As no company would willingly take actions that hurts itself, we have to counter balance this in the second balancing layer with a cost increase, to improve the game balance in the first layer while keeping the second layer stable. I hope you all understand this.
      In the end the new Infrastructure is still worthwhile. Every building has its amortisation time, so while initially it will cost more, in the long run after some days you will also benefit more. This creates another strategical layer in the decision making when exactly you are should upgrade your provinces and when not. This will benefit the players who smartly plan ahead.
      Fair point, so now people are going to be spending more money on infra :00008359:
      :00000441: Forum Gang Commissar :00000441:

      Black Lives Matter!!!!! All Lives Matter!!!!! :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:



    • So.

      The overall goal isn't to make the best possible game, and naturally to have loyal gamers gather around a pretty good game for it's solid gameplay. Instead, the goal is to engineer the game along the lines of mobile games - Making a meh game that is okay, but trying to encourage people to spend as much money for a P2W thing instead of something actually competitive or interesting. But any actual gameplay changes, with earning money as the primary priority via P2W sorts of things, instead of having a solid game - Are based upon the advise of a minority of players in the DE community?

      I recall when you guys completely destroyed the SP1914 community and ran off your entire Veteran base, and actually had to tone down your Runescape wheel of fortune copycat stuff. And even reverse some pretty horrid gameplay changes, before sneaking them back under the bus a few months later. You never recovered from it, and now bit by bit, it's being done here as well.

      Part of the issue is that this game is SP1914+. Old spaghetti code where genuine fixes requires a actual rework of the overall system. And any possible patches or updates are done not based on fixing gameplay, but on encouraging players to spend or buy gold. When I would honestly prefer cosmetic micro-transactions and membership instead of GM, which would is a pretty good viable long term income model instead of the alternative - Which so far is a good short term strategy, horrid long term strategy. Especially for maintaining a actual competitive playerbase and mature community.

      For those players that were wondering about the programming issues, a lot of the code for CoW, from what I remember, was C/P from SP1914. I remember when the game was first released in Alpha, a lot of the stuff had names akin to SP1914 or 30K, including the newspaper at one time. And SP1914 is a ages old game from 07 which has been built on numerous times. With the biggest changes being from Java to HTML5 user side. But I have a feeling the overall core code is still pretty messy and bad, and everything Bytro does is working within the existing framework. Any actual changes as we want would require extensive reworkings of this framework, which would be a massive task. So it's easier to just copy the existing frameworks over, tweak things within said framework, build upon parts of it in certain ways, and update the artwork. And Bytro has a think for copying Paradox a lot.

      Excellent. Bytro is the gift that does indeed keep on giving. At least you are somewhat honest about it, not as much as in the private chats. I could at least somewhat give you credit for that.


      The overall changes aren't good. The game was never exactly perfect nor balanced. But if you played at a higher level and actually understood how the game worked, you could have exciting, fun, competitive matches based on some actual tactics and overall strategy. Now it seems things are becoming overall more bland. It's a "Fix" that rips apart everything else and overall makes the experience worse. And this isn't the sort of game that will benefit from "Extremely slow" gameplay and static lines long term. It doesn't create any new strategy. It only seems to make things take longer. Longer does not equal better. Stretching out existing content, instead of actually building or reworking things just makes things more boring. Funny enough, all the little exploits, quirks, and "off" things in SP1914, and later in this game, funny enough, added a bit of dynamic depth to the game and brought it a bit more alive. I'd rather have a fun, flawed, dynamic game than something rather dull.

      Keeping new players in the game long term isn't only done via good gameplay. It's done by a engaged Developer and Moderator team who interacts with the community and allows a decent, mature community to foster with multiple elements. From casuals, to competitive, Role-Playing, fun community events, and much more. This is something Bytro has always been extraordinarily lacking on. Unpaid volunteers who do paid jobs for free can only go so far, especially when they got hands tied behind their backs. So slower gamepay = a higher chance people will spend money, or will be less patient and buy stuff? Typical stuff I see in quite a few games on the google Play store.

      I can most certainly say, from quite a few "Vets" I have spoken to, that these changes aren't exactly welcome.


      To be honest, I'm okay if things change. Things have to change. But this isn't really a change for game play reasons, outside of the few people voicing things. It seems to be a purely financial related decision, which from my experience with Bytro, eh, take it for what you will.


      Nukes and Rockets weren't exactly really useful. So bumping them up just makes them even more useless. Most of these special units, like the nuclear submarine were never used much in competitive matches.

      So essentially

      - I and others have noticed maps are overall giving out less resources.
      - Infra costs are increased (So we can't build LT's as good early game or in high numbers. I'm going off theory here, but it would make the three division early game strategy that a lot of players like to use well. Not exactly viable anymore. In combination with other factors.
    • - AC are somewhat more useful and spammable early game, like in SP1914?
      - Anti-Air can be more easily spammed, making it so you can build more early game and with appropriate stacks, make air units less effective early game.
      - TD buffs. They were always used as more of a defensive unit when used. So this is something.
      - Some misc changes against subs. Okay.
      - Increased costs for Tacs. With decreased map resources? and increased infra resources. Oh boy, really nerfing early game Tac/LT strategies hardcore here. Decreased HP so stacks of 3-4 which were already meh are even less viable, making it so we would prob have to go 7=? Or even 9+ now to have viable Tac stacks. Going off theory here, actual testing should vary. But then the units become even less efficient. And with AA more spammeable and naturally being able to stack with other stacks. Even less effective.
      - Strategic bombers were never that useful. Don't care.
      - Naval bombers. Meh.
      - Increased INT costs. Well why not.
      - Nukes. See above comments.
      - Back to Infra cost increases. So we increase the cost of all these units and necessary requirements for these units, with what apparently seems to be less map resources. This removes quite a few of the dynamic offensive units we got, and nerfs early game play. Which means it will take longer in order to achieve the same forces. But the increased morale encourages players to slow down while attacking and slowly build the provinces up.

      So overall, a more defensive style of play is encouraged. I could see spamming forts early game as being more viable if the nerfs to Tacs/Etc are that big. It encourages are more static defensive style of player, and slows the overall game down. Which has a advantage of encouraging players to spend money in order to get resources. which Freezy admitted was the point to all of this earlier in this post. So

      One of the issues here is that I'm a fan of dynamic, solid gameplay. Even if these changes don't completely nerf a couple ways of playing the game, it makes the overall game less...Solid. And to me, seems to make a game that is not only more slow, but is also more RANDOM/Less based in skill.

      It doesn't address the issue that the majority of the units in the game are useless. And making units bland or making everything meh doesn't fix that. The difficult issue is that the overall framework needs reworked or the existing system refined, not modified/Blandified.


      As a few misc thoughts, Tacs already die easily in low numbers. We need a decently large amount of them to be effective. In combination with LT's/Ground units. And these can already be countered by proper defensive play - So we need more Tacs in order to gain the same effect. But it's more expensive overall. And we can't have as many ground units. So AC/Arty spam? With whatever naval unit that isn't broken (I believe Dessies are still the units you spam, and it used to be Subs). So we just recreated a image of Supremacy 1914 gameplay here. Good job. With players spamming forts/Massing units to enforce this defensive style. And then hitting hard. Ah wait, this is Supremacy 1914. With competitive gameplay being doing that, then one team trying their hardest at a breakthrough at one point and sorta...Mhm.

      Change are overall a negative for solid competitive gameplay or anything dynamic, and decrease my options. Before, I had the defensive styles, turtling, my Tacs, and plenty of other options. Now I got less, and some things aren't just as solid and more will be down to luck. Meh.

      Some Miscs comments:

      More morale = Bigger Empires: This seems horribly false. This would be more of a factor with Supremacy 1914 and definitely not call of war.
      Game Economy = Revenue: Bytro stating that by having more resources, people are less likely to buy. So having fast games, dynamic games, etc, is not in their financial interests.
      Long run = benefit: No. Things are just going to be more of a grindfest.
      Veteran players: Funny enough, I was reaching out to more of them as I was writing this post. Specifically, the people who beta tested this game. Pretty negative opinions so far.
      If everyone complains about different things = good balance: Um, No. Appealing to everyone won't equal a good game. Some people post opinions on gameplay but have no idea how to play or how things work. Some people post things as they favour one style of playing the game within their specific alliance or sub community. If you are getting a lot of positive opinions from newer players and a lot of negative opinions from established players, that is a pretty bad sign.

      You could also fix some things. Like achievements. Instead of having a staff intern manually assign them throughout the day. But I suppose that requires one to actually fix old spag - I mean extensive coding work that is just impossible.

      Misc:

      I read over some of the previous comments.

      - LTS are indirectly more expensive. We are going to be able to build less of them and not as fast. So it's going to be a lot less effective. Encourages more passive gameplay.
      - Recent updates with defensive bonuses directly encouraged passive gameplay.
      - Air is nerfed. Less HP increased costs decreases its cost effectiveness. It makes it less viable.
      - Rockets have always been crap. But they are fun in lulzy big map games with people just sorta mehing around with each other.
      - Well, Battleships still spawn on land occasionally and they had to code a button for Game Operators to manually fix instead of fixing this issue. Achievements are broken time to time. The teleport bug is still unfixed. Among a lot of other exploits. That all date from the original SP1914 game I played a decade ago, so I'm pretty sure if they haven't fixed these issues within the past ten years, they aren't getting fixed.

      The issue is that the game favours less mobile gameplay / Favours moving units around less / favours being more active slightly less / Favours early game play less / Dynamic play less and encourages more passive play, sitting still, and grinding against your opponent. And it makes things less solid, less dynamic, and more random ish. More akin to meh death stacks moving around instead of nifty mobile armies with air support constantly moving around, or proper AA stacks with the right amount of units properly stacked to negate those air units.


      So in summary, they are just making the game a lot like Supremacy 1914 was long ago, but worse. And by that, the butchered version Supremacy 1914 became, not the fun dynamic version that used to exist. At least Call of War had something unique once upon a time.


      Just some of my random thoughts. A lot will vary on actual testing, as a lot of the code is spaghetti, and them showing a sheet with number changes isn't a exact reflection of actual gameplay. I'm just hoping it's not as bad as it looks and from what a few friends of mine in decent places are telling me. If it is, oh well.
    • CzarHellios wrote:

      (I believe Dessies are still the units you spam, and it used to be Subs)
      If by Dessie you mean DD, then yes, but also keep in mind that they do no damage to land units, which bugged me for quite a while. Nowadays the best combo is just to build DD and CC.

      CzarHellios wrote:

      Veteran players: Funny enough, I was reaching out to more of them as I was writing this post. Specifically, the people who beta tested this game. Pretty negative opinions so far.
      A lot of us only seem to play with other vets now, as new players always go inactive. So these "fixes" won't even solve one of CoW's major issues, it only serves to make it worse as older players leave.
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      The post was edited 1 time, last by Quasi-duck ().

    • Fritz Christen wrote:

      TANK Destroyer
      it does not need to be faster it needs more life points or more defense against armored vehicles, for that they are and they do not fulfill their function.

      Railroad gun
      added small damage vs submarine
      what it really needs is an increase in damage against structures and troops,
      currently it is very expensive and inefficient, if it were more efficient the cost would not matter

      The commands
      the commands almost nobody uses them could be added the function of parachutists, so they avoid creating a new unit, they give use to the unit and make everyone happy

      HEAVY TANK
      Need decreased HP in all levels
      are overwhelmingly superiors
      totally wrong point of view...every singe point is incorrect.
    • I am not a programmer, nor am I an expert of how to earn money, but rather a relatively young veteran who learns through gameplay. Some of these comments are pretty negative, and I don't blame them for that. I believe Bytro shouldn't only think about money. Yes, money keeps them alive, but shouldn't they do something that seems to let them lose money but actually lets them keep their players? I'm pretty sure almost all of us aren't gonna die in an accident soon, so why should Bytro increase Infra cost for the sake of earning money in the short term? How could you earn money without dedicated players? The primary goal should be to retain players and let newcomers stay, even if it means losing some income in the short term. Many of us wouldn't spend money for gold, but wouldn't there be more income if there's more players since there's a larger group of players who spend money? I don't think the game is becoming dull, but shouldn't the game focus on more major updates? I know it's hard and demanding, but that's one of the better ways to keep players. Not all players will be happy, but at least don't let the dedicated ones leave.
      "As long as there are sovereign nations possessing great power, war is inevitable." Albert Einstein

      "Giving up is not an option in war, for it proves one's incapability and incompetence as a leader." - Me (Little Racoon)
    • Adding moral improvement with infrustructure developement is a great idea, but as you get further and further away from your Embassy, even this will leave your furthurest outpost down.
      Can this moral improvement benefits also be added to barracks.
      On large maps you still have no hope of having your furtherest outposts at a good moral.
    • The morale improvement for infrastructure is a solution primarily aimed at the food issues on the largest maps.

      This idea:


      BattleIvan wrote:

      Can this moral improvement benefits also be added to barracks.



      would require you to build food consuming buildings to stabilize morale? Food shortages are the crux of low morale and rebellions late game on large maps, so this is a non-solution.
      War is a game that is played with a smile. If you can't smile, grin. If you can't grin keep out of the way til you can. - Winston Churchill



      VorlonFCW
      Retired from Bytro staff as of November 30, 2020.

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