Analyze, Adapt, Overcome! - Release Notes

Tribunate wrote:

The very nature of forums are usually meant for complaints and constructive feedback. Majority of the players on CoW don't even have forum accounts set up.

It really isn't that obvious as you may think. Most comments on any forum are very critical of the subject in which they are commenting on so your opinion will be skewed.

The Coca-Cola reference was a miss as well. Coca-Cola has adapted their recipe hundreds of times (recipe for our preferences will be the inner game workings of CoW)

What hurt them was their poor marketing strategy around New Coke. Which is not the situation we are discussing here.

freezy wrote:

I want to write some general words first before adressing specific posts.

The reason for the change is to present the army information in a more orderly and clean way, as the old way of attaching army info to unit images was unprofessional and pixelated. We also did this change to include additional helpful information that was not shown before. New info that is presented with these new labels:

• Enemies, allies, neutrals and own troops are better distinguished by different label colors.
  
• When zoomed in we now show the concrete number of units per armor class in the army instead of showing only the overall number.
  
• The health bar of the army is shown and changes color depending on the condition. The health bar and the army label itself will also pulsate slowly when an army is fighting or taking damage.
  
• We added missing statuses to the labels that were not shown before, such as "defending" and we also show previously hard to see icons in a more orderly way, such as espionage snapshot or fire control settings.
  
• All timers and statuses that can affect an army are now shown in the label in an orderly fashion. Since they are attached to the labels itself instead of freefloating on the map, there also wont be any more questions which army an icon belongs to.
  
• All timers are now visualized by the icon background beeing filled up. Once the icon is full the specific action is happening (e.g. combat tick). Every icon now has its own distinct background color.
  
• Labels can also be clicked to select an army. Hovering a label will move the corresponding army to the foreground so you can check to which it belongs to.
  

So if you are making use of this additional info you should be able to play more effectively and see more information at a glance than before.

From what I gathered the most contested part of the labels is the zoomed-out view, where labels are replacing the unit image. We did this to clean up the game and remove clutter from the map, as on those view levels unit images were already pixelated alot and attached icons where hard to see.

At the heart this is a strategy game after all and not an action game, so displaying units as abstract symbols on higher zoom levels, like on a strategic WW2 or NATO map that Generals use, should imo not be a divisive change, but be a natural fit. Our intention is that when you are zoomed in you are in "realism mode", but when you are zoomed out you are in "strategic planning mode".
The amount of units in zoomed-out labels is still shown but in an abstract form via dots: 1 dot = 1-4 units, 2 dots = 5-9 units and 3 dots = 10+ units. But we heard your feedback on this and are discussing right now to show concrete numbers again on these zoomed-out labels, probably with the next update in 2 weeks (no promise though).
War status is also still shown when zoomed out: When fighting the label is slowly pulsating and displays a lightning symbol in its top corner.

Another contested change is that we fade out army labels and images when zoomed out as much as possible. This is intentional because on this level all armies start to overlap and become pixelated again. Instead of showing this "mess" we rather wanted to include a political layer, where players can check out the current country border and country names without being covered by alot of icons. Army labels are still shown below 90% zoom and this should be high enough to view a whole continent for a strategic overview on army positions.

We of course listen to your feedback and look forward to improving this feature in future updates. So please keep giving us feedback, but in a civil and specific way, explaining what does not work for you and why. Feedback like "this sucks, change it back" does not help us since we have no plan to remove it again.
We also hope that you give this change a chance and play around with it before you judge it. Similar changes in the past always showed that sentiment towards them usually improves alot after 1-2 weeks after people got used to it.

If you really cannot live with this change you also still have the option to switch over to the low graphics mode in the game settings (can be opened in the lower right menu).

If anyone comments after this post about things adressed in this post, please kindly point towards this post for clarification.

Thanks everyone!

GeneralBrooks18 wrote:

Tribunate wrote:

The very nature of forums are usually meant for complaints and constructive feedback. Majority of the players on CoW don't even have forum accounts set up.

It really isn't that obvious as you may think. Most comments on any forum are very critical of the subject in which they are commenting on so your opinion will be skewed.

The Coca-Cola reference was a miss as well. Coca-Cola has adapted their recipe hundreds of times (recipe for our preferences will be the inner game workings of CoW)

What hurt them was their poor marketing strategy around New Coke. Which is not the situation we are discussing here.

And btw i made an account just to bring up this new update is bad.

hotmechani wrote:

GeneralBrooks18 wrote:

Tribunate wrote:

The very nature of forums are usually meant for complaints and constructive feedback. Majority of the players on CoW don't even have forum accounts set up.

It really isn't that obvious as you may think. Most comments on any forum are very critical of the subject in which they are commenting on so your opinion will be skewed.

The Coca-Cola reference was a miss as well. Coca-Cola has adapted their recipe hundreds of times (recipe for our preferences will be the inner game workings of CoW)

What hurt them was their poor marketing strategy around New Coke. Which is not the situation we are discussing here.

And btw i made an account just to bring up this new update is bad.

Same here i only made an account as this update is such a bad move, and if Coca Cola was just poor marketing strategy then why did they very quickly change their minds and change back to the product their customers wanted????

GeneralBrooks18 wrote:

This new update is horrendous. I have to zoom in completely to view exactly what units I or the enemy have. Please allow us to switch between the old and new unit view. Otherwise i may stop playing. It is That bad.

CorporalCole wrote:

I made my own post about how I felt about the update but I will repeat what I said here, so everyone may see it easier

There has been a lot of criticism of the Analyze, Adapt, Overcome update today, and I completely agree with the criticism that is has received. First off, this seems to be another attempt to make this game more like the successful strategy game HOI4, the first attempt was the doctrines, which are a fun feature, however this is not. the unit divisions in HOI4, which, unlike this game, are actually pleasing to look at and help you with gameplay.

From what I have read on the forums and the update, it seems that the developers thought that this would be "helpful" as we would be able to gather information easier, such as the units health, what type of units are in a stack, and so forth. However, replacing a bunch of unit icons on a map with a bunch of diamonds on the map actually makes it much harder to see what units you have where. For instance, all units in the infantry tab are placed by an icon bearing the "infantry" symbol, however, are you only going to have one type of infantry in your entirely army? Likely not. Your of course going to have the regular infantry, you'll have motorized or mechanized infantry if you're a fan of fast attacks, commandos if you are a nation with the allies doctrine, and paratroopers if you are going to execute some special forces missions, however, all of these very different units are simply just replaced with an infantry symbol, making it very hard to tell what you have where. (This also includes ships, aircraft, ordinance units, tanks, and nuclear weapons, which just use the plane icon, no difference between a nuke bomber and an interceptor for sure) However, I can almost already hear the developers typing away "You can zoom in to see what units you have where" and yes, you can do that, however for people like me who are on much larger maps such as the world at war and historic maps, it's extremely important to be able to see specifically what you have where in the "larger picture" and forcing us to zoom in on the map to see what we have where is very tedious, and not helpful to the "bigger" picture of the map, where many of us will end up having gigantic nations that span multiple continents. Additionally, you still have to zoom in fairly close to even see the unit "icons" appear on the map.

My second complaint is it is now very hard to see what units of yours are under fire, as the new lightning symbol is very small and not easy to see. before it was a large circle, and it was clearly obvious to see where your units were attacking / being attacked, and how long it would take before their next attack would take place. Now all we get is a tiny lightning symbol at the top of the unit icon that makes it very hard to see which units are being attacked and which are not, making it harder for players to locate which of their units are engaged or where they may need to pull away from, which is disastrous for anyone who is trying to not lose any units. Additionally, the "dot system" that has replaced the actual unit number is contrary to what this update was supposed to be about, making it easier for players to find out more information easier. It's especially unhelpful as the 3 dots could be for a stack with anywhere from 10 to 1000 units, very unhelpful.

These unit icons actually make the game less fun to play as well. I'm sure most of the players here enjoyed not having to zoom in to a microscopic level to see their tanks or fighters moving across the map. Now we are all stuck with a bunch of boring, tasteless diamonds that don't even look good.

This update seems to be another feature that nobody asked for and nobody wanted, and yet the developers still seem surprised that nobody likes it. Maybe if they did polls asking what people what changed, they would start getting somewhere and help make this a better game

Tribunate wrote:

That was a waste of a comment and not very constructive at all. If you have an issue with something bring up a solid reason as to why and offer a solution.

MKS Hypno YT wrote:

Here are some of my opinions about this update.


I personally think this is just a horrifying way of making the game more like HOI4. I would prefer to keep this game different as I like the call of war style better.

1. I can barely keep track of my troops

2. I can barely see my troops

3. It's extremely difficult to find troops

4. It is hard to move troops or stack them

5. I feel like this is completely useless

6. Please revert this update or turn this function into a setting

Another thing is, these 3 dots can represent a stack anywhere between 10-100 troops which is unhelpful

The neutral label color does not look right to me for some reason

These labels are just way too confusing to understand compared to the old version.

Love this game though just hope this new system turns into a setting.

Battle on Generals!

freezy wrote:

If you really cannot live with this change you also still have the option to switch over to the low graphics mode in the game settings (can be opened in the lower right menu).