Let's ask a Game Designer for Call of War 1.5

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  • Let's ask a Game Designer for Call of War 1.5


    Attention, Generals!

    A few weeks have passed since the first test event for Call of War 1.5 took place, but to us it feels like it only happened yesterday! The team put a lot of time and dedication into Call of War 1.5 and it was great to see the huge amount of feedback from the community and how passionate our players are for the game.

    We are currently working through the community feedback and are preparing the next test event. Until we are ready to move on and pass the current state of Call of War 1.5 into your hands for more feedback and testing, we have asked our Game Designer Freezy a few questions about Call of War 1.5.

    What was the reason to develop Call of War 1.5?

    Call of War as a game is still close to the state it was in 2015. We released some new features and units over the years but we envisioned much more. We wanted to make the game easier to get into, make the game better balanced and enable much more diverse strategies. We also wanted to add many new awesome gameplay features. Now we have the time and focus to do that!

    We feel that this is a necessary change to keep Call of War fresh and competitive in the ever evolving games market, so that we can support it for years to come.

    Of course it is a quite drastic change to the game, that’s why we want to test it thoroughly together with our community, and roll it our only after we had several test events.

    We saw some drastic balancing changes with units, buildings and resources in Call of War 1.5. What was the idea behind these changes?

    The goal of all changes is to have a more balanced game experience with access to evenly valid and diverse strategies.

    The challenge with WW2 is also that everybody envisions things a bit differently. For example: Was a tank destroyer in theory designed to be an offensive weapon? Yeah sure. Was it more iconic though for its defensive usage? Yeah sure. If history allows us to interpret something in multiple ways, we will rather go for the option which opens more different strategies and roles.

    This said, we realized that we gamified the first Call of War 1.5 balancing a bit too much and that some parts of the balancing work well, while others don’t. This is the beauty of testing - we can now change and tweak the balancing over multiple event iterations. Rest assured that we will fix the apparent balancing problems and that we will also make the game more realistic again where possible. So please expect a lot of changes in the next event.<br><br>

    We keep praising the community for the amount of constructive feedback they provided during the first Call of War 1.5 test event. What was the biggest learning for us from it in your opinion?

    The biggest learning is that many players have a strong vision what Call of War is or should be. For example many players seem to value historical accuracy over everything else. But there are also players who value gameplay more. Our biggest challenge ist to find a compromise that pleases the majority. While it certainly won’t be possible to please everyone, we will still try.

    The feedback and gameplay reports also helped us to spot some specific issues in the new balancing. With some changes we admittedly went “A bridge too far”, for example with the steep level progression, which we are now able to improve.

    What are your personal highlights of the first Call of War 1.5 iteration?

    Feature wise my favourite is the combination of new building roles with the disabled auto-upgrading of units. Both features together really push you to smartly diversify and upgrade your core provinces. I like to dedicate my cities to certain tech branches to play most effectively.
    There are still features coming up in the next tests that will improve this aspect even further. For example we are developing the much requested possibility to manually upgrade units that are already on the field, and we will also streamline the build requirements of advanced units to make production easier to use.

    Balancing wise I really like the new possible strategies, I noticed players playing unit combinations that I rarely saw beforehand. Needless to say that there is still room for improvement and we continue our quest to give all units a valid role in the game.

    Regarding the event as a whole I really like the huge participation rate and determination of our community. Though not everything with the event was perfect, doing it was overall still a success, and it encourages us to continue with this approach.

    When will the next test event for Call of War 1.5 start?

    Due to the fact that holidays are coming up and that we are still changing the balancing as well as implementing more features and usability improvements, you can expect the second test event earliest at the end of January 2020. We really hope to see all of you around by then, and hopefully most of you will agree that we are making improvements! A personal thank you to everyone who participates and helps us shape the future of Call of War!
    Discord: Call of War
    Facebook: Call of War
    Twitter: Call of War
  • Hello Freezy, I greatly appreciate the fact that you check forum and spend time writing this interview. To be honest, I think COW1.5 is great. I love the stealth unit part where commandos can just go to enemy territories. One thing I want the game to be improved is that you should still keep the original version of this game in COW. I suggest having 2 games made at a time. Eg. 1. Tutorial Clash of Nation 2. Tutorial Clash of Nation 1.5. Making this will please BOTH COW1.5 fans and the people who like COW 1.0. For me, I like both so I would jump in between games and it will give us more freedom on the game as well as having more choices here at Call of War. As you are the designer of the game, I am sure that you will want more people to play this game and lower drop-out rates. As you can see from many other players, they left because of this. You said that you will stick with what the majority says right? A lot of people said to keep 1.0, so that will be fulfilled, some say 1.5 is great, that will also be fulfilled in the scenario. I am trying to shape the future in COW so I wish that you take this idea and think about it. I will greatly appreciate it if you listen to us.


    Thank you
    BeaveRyan
    Moderator
    EN Community Support | Bytro Labs Gmbh


    Training Alliance United Leader
  • Chimere wrote:

    Thanks for the interview.

    What user feedback on 1.5 will you implement that was not in your initial roadmap, if any ?
    Balancing changes first and foremost, but also usability changes (some things were hard to understand). It also made us reprioritize some features. For example we wanted to do the manual unit upgrading anyway, but now we moved that to the beginning of our roadmap.

    Ryan04px2025 wrote:

    Hello Freezy, I greatly appreciate the fact that you check forum and spend time writing this interview. To be honest, I think COW1.5 is great. I love the stealth unit part where commandos can just go to enemy territories. One thing I want the game to be improved is that you should still keep the original version of this game in COW. I suggest having 2 games made at a time. Eg. 1. Tutorial Clash of Nation 2. Tutorial Clash of Nation 1.5. Making this will please BOTH COW1.5 fans and the people who like COW 1.0. For me, I like both so I would jump in between games and it will give us more freedom on the game as well as having more choices here at Call of War. As you are the designer of the game, I am sure that you will want more people to play this game and lower drop-out rates. As you can see from many other players, they left because of this. You said that you will stick with what the majority says right? A lot of people said to keep 1.0, so that will be fulfilled, some say 1.5 is great, that will also be fulfilled in the scenario. I am trying to shape the future in COW so I wish that you take this idea and think about it. I will greatly appreciate it if you listen to us.


    Thank you
    Yeah we know that there are quite some players who would like that. We don't know though if that is really the majority, as the people posting in this forum are only a very small subset of the CoW player base. We value the dedication of everyone who posts here though.
    As I posted in another thread, this topic is not decided yet and it is also not our prio to decide this right now. First we want to make sure 1.5 is awesome, then we will talk about how it will be rolled out later.
  • Hello all, I think this might be a better way to say things:

    I like the idea of 1.5 but what I do not like is that it is turning into Conflict of Nations. As suggested by me and many other player in the English server, we think that the only way to make this a win win is to have both 1.5 and 1.0 after it is implemented and we should think about the changes from there onwards. I think that each game has their specialty and COW should have their own that is unique. They have different production ways has Supremacy 1914, they allow players to build units in all provinces at a cost. (Industrial Complex) I believe that this should continue. Of course there are many parts of 1.5 that I like. For example the Commando division being a stealth unit now. To be honest, it should've been a long time ago. Commando at that time does a lot of surprise attacks so I think that is completely realistic. I think changing the buildings around a bit is OK but not if it completely changes the game like in not allowing unit production outside the cities. I am OK with having tank plants instead of infrastructure and so on. Just try to make the name more fancy because it is basically saying that the tank production factory is tank plant.
    BeaveRyan
    Moderator
    EN Community Support | Bytro Labs Gmbh


    Training Alliance United Leader
  • Game Designers need a “Time Out”

    To whomever is in charge of making decisions?

    I believe at this point that a time out is called for. It is very evident to me and a greater number of players that there is a lot of controversy over 1.5. Some people like some things, others like other things and some don’t like a lot of things.
    I for one like a few things that you have mentioned about 1.5. However, maybe, just maybe you are trying to do too much at one time. It may be time to step back and rethink this new version. I understand that you are never going to please everyone, but at the same time, I believe you should try to please the majority and figure out what is best to move COW to the next level and keep up with the times.

    I have played a few war games over the past 10+ years. What brought me to COW was the major changes that War Commander implemented in one big upgrade. For many, it ruined the game and they just stopped playing it. I for one did not like it and found this game server a short time after. I had played War Commander for 5+ years. Here I am now, just over 4 years and the developers are talking about a major upgrade. I now start wondering if I am going to have to find another war game that I like.

    Don’t take my statements the wrong way. I love this game and believe it is the best out there. I am just saying that with all the back and forth comments, thoughts, arguments and what have you that it may be time to step back, take a look at what all the players have said. Once you have all that information, take what you think will be best for the future of Call of War and run with it and the rest just either throw away or put on the back burner.

    Just like with everything in life, if you try to do too much at one time, you end up not getting anything done.

    I mean no disrespect to anyone so please forgive me if any of this has offended anyone.

    Sincerely,
    General cdub
  • General cdub wrote:

    Game Designers need a “Time Out”

    To whomever is in charge of making decisions?

    I believe at this point that a time out is called for. It is very evident to me and a greater number of players that there is a lot of controversy over 1.5. Some people like some things, others like other things and some don’t like a lot of things.
    I for one like a few things that you have mentioned about 1.5. However, maybe, just maybe you are trying to do too much at one time. It may be time to step back and rethink this new version. I understand that you are never going to please everyone, but at the same time, I believe you should try to please the majority and figure out what is best to move COW to the next level and keep up with the times.

    I have played a few war games over the past 10+ years. What brought me to COW was the major changes that War Commander implemented in one big upgrade. For many, it ruined the game and they just stopped playing it. I for one did not like it and found this game server a short time after. I had played War Commander for 5+ years. Here I am now, just over 4 years and the developers are talking about a major upgrade. I now start wondering if I am going to have to find another war game that I like.

    Don’t take my statements the wrong way. I love this game and believe it is the best out there. I am just saying that with all the back and forth comments, thoughts, arguments and what have you that it may be time to step back, take a look at what all the players have said. Once you have all that information, take what you think will be best for the future of Call of War and run with it and the rest just either throw away or put on the back burner.

    Just like with everything in life, if you try to do too much at one time, you end up not getting anything done.

    I mean no disrespect to anyone so please forgive me if any of this has offended anyone.

    Sincerely,
    General cdub
    Thanks for your message. We did exactly what you are saying: We read through all the player feedback on 1.5, took a step back and decided which things need to be improved or changed. We don't want to rush this out, that's why we now take more time than we initially planned. In the next CoW1.5 test Event you will hopefully see an improvement.