Alright so I have played various game types and different game modes over the last month and I figured it was about time that I came for a few suggestions/criticisms:
1. The game speed is painfully slow in standard format. I know there are games where you have accelerated gameplay but those should probably be more of the norm. A lot of internet users today likely lose interest in the game without quantifiable results in a timely manner. My favorite game was the 10x speed trial but those punctuated some of the issues that exist.
2. The current allocation of resources is broken, it appears to be different on which resource is short in any given game and some players start with different resources available which is nice but can also be crippling. The biggest offender of all the resources is Food... in every single game I have finished with a negative food allocation. This most recent game I went the extra mile to try and build up my economy to ensure it wasn't negative but as soon as I began an offensive the food ran out and population grew exponentially and the by product is you stop building certain units and you stop upgrading.
3. Unit strength and balance. If you haven't figured it out already (BUILD ARTILLERY). Spamming these units is literally the quickest way to win a game and guess what? SP Artillery is fast and doesn't require food to build(be advised the unit is broken). Tanks are nice but to slow and easily countered by the time you get some of these heavy tanks into position your either taking artillery, facing anti armor guns, or worse Bombers... My second favorite unit to spam is bombers.. they cover a lot of ground and they eat just about everything. In addition to these two units, the armored car is easily spamable and something you daisy chain through the enemy as soon as you break through, this is great but they could likely get toned down some. I have taken every uncontested territory a user had before they could even react. Lastly, my least favorite unit. The rockets are too easy to obtain and very quick to build and make the game incredibly unfun as soon as someone starts hitting your army. Like cool you either have spammed these for days and/or spent gold to just repeatedly fire rockets at me with little ability to counter them besides running for your life as soon as you see the target indicator. You could potentially provide a warning with a rocket is fired, maybe a user gets a message notification to lessen how much these ruin a particular game.
4. I feel as if naval units were essential to any war effort but in this game they will always lose out to more important ground units. I can only upgrade 2 at a time and they simply don't bring enough to a table to beat a line unit. I recommend having navy as a separate tech tree or it will continue to see little utilization.
5. Industrial complexes taking rare materials can really restrict growth unless you have the right provinces to feed both your tech tree and the building of these essential buildings. I suggest lowering the amount of rare material requirements for these essential buildings.
6. Winning Conditions: This one has likely already been talked about to nauseum but the winning conditions in any given game are a bit steep. The game drags on needlessly after has already been decided. Im in a game now with our coalition winning 1885 cps to 467 on the next coalition and it has dragged on for two extra days and still counting. Maybe a concede option be available for remaining active players or lowering the requirement to 65% etc... For solo victories I only have one and that was merely because my allies all went inactive in the 10X game.. there is almost no incentive to go for a solo win as 51% is just too steep for a player unless your paying your way through the game. Recommend reducing the solo win criteria in certain games. I have yet to join a free for all game as I don't care to grind all the way to 51% in any given game. Perhaps a game mode that eliminates a player when they lose their capital? This would make the game a bit more realistic as few will fight on after losing the center of your respective nation. Im all ears on this issue as I feel a game is decided well before 51% or 70%.
7. Rejoining after being deactivated- I had a very sketch game in which I actually invested some significant gold to get me into the game… towards the final day I had a previously inactive ally come back and launch everything into me, didn't respond to any messages and went inactive again. Either he is a troll, not likely, or it was incentive to invest in more gold. It kind of left a bad taste on an overall positive experience within this game. This could be fixed by adding a dormant window of you can only rejoin a game after a certain point, game dependent on the length of that grace period.
Well that is probably enough blocks of text for now... I will likely post more as they arise but just a few observations from someone who has played daily for the last 6 or so weeks.
1. The game speed is painfully slow in standard format. I know there are games where you have accelerated gameplay but those should probably be more of the norm. A lot of internet users today likely lose interest in the game without quantifiable results in a timely manner. My favorite game was the 10x speed trial but those punctuated some of the issues that exist.
2. The current allocation of resources is broken, it appears to be different on which resource is short in any given game and some players start with different resources available which is nice but can also be crippling. The biggest offender of all the resources is Food... in every single game I have finished with a negative food allocation. This most recent game I went the extra mile to try and build up my economy to ensure it wasn't negative but as soon as I began an offensive the food ran out and population grew exponentially and the by product is you stop building certain units and you stop upgrading.
3. Unit strength and balance. If you haven't figured it out already (BUILD ARTILLERY). Spamming these units is literally the quickest way to win a game and guess what? SP Artillery is fast and doesn't require food to build(be advised the unit is broken). Tanks are nice but to slow and easily countered by the time you get some of these heavy tanks into position your either taking artillery, facing anti armor guns, or worse Bombers... My second favorite unit to spam is bombers.. they cover a lot of ground and they eat just about everything. In addition to these two units, the armored car is easily spamable and something you daisy chain through the enemy as soon as you break through, this is great but they could likely get toned down some. I have taken every uncontested territory a user had before they could even react. Lastly, my least favorite unit. The rockets are too easy to obtain and very quick to build and make the game incredibly unfun as soon as someone starts hitting your army. Like cool you either have spammed these for days and/or spent gold to just repeatedly fire rockets at me with little ability to counter them besides running for your life as soon as you see the target indicator. You could potentially provide a warning with a rocket is fired, maybe a user gets a message notification to lessen how much these ruin a particular game.
4. I feel as if naval units were essential to any war effort but in this game they will always lose out to more important ground units. I can only upgrade 2 at a time and they simply don't bring enough to a table to beat a line unit. I recommend having navy as a separate tech tree or it will continue to see little utilization.
5. Industrial complexes taking rare materials can really restrict growth unless you have the right provinces to feed both your tech tree and the building of these essential buildings. I suggest lowering the amount of rare material requirements for these essential buildings.
6. Winning Conditions: This one has likely already been talked about to nauseum but the winning conditions in any given game are a bit steep. The game drags on needlessly after has already been decided. Im in a game now with our coalition winning 1885 cps to 467 on the next coalition and it has dragged on for two extra days and still counting. Maybe a concede option be available for remaining active players or lowering the requirement to 65% etc... For solo victories I only have one and that was merely because my allies all went inactive in the 10X game.. there is almost no incentive to go for a solo win as 51% is just too steep for a player unless your paying your way through the game. Recommend reducing the solo win criteria in certain games. I have yet to join a free for all game as I don't care to grind all the way to 51% in any given game. Perhaps a game mode that eliminates a player when they lose their capital? This would make the game a bit more realistic as few will fight on after losing the center of your respective nation. Im all ears on this issue as I feel a game is decided well before 51% or 70%.
7. Rejoining after being deactivated- I had a very sketch game in which I actually invested some significant gold to get me into the game… towards the final day I had a previously inactive ally come back and launch everything into me, didn't respond to any messages and went inactive again. Either he is a troll, not likely, or it was incentive to invest in more gold. It kind of left a bad taste on an overall positive experience within this game. This could be fixed by adding a dormant window of you can only rejoin a game after a certain point, game dependent on the length of that grace period.
Well that is probably enough blocks of text for now... I will likely post more as they arise but just a few observations from someone who has played daily for the last 6 or so weeks.
