You are right. They will do nothing except put out even more payday operations...up to 2 per week now.

I too am considering leaving. Why play a game...any game...where there is no possibility of winning.

My last 6 games, including the one I'm playing now, have resulted in only 2 second place finishes, despite my experience in strategy games and skill. I used to have an 80% win rate.

Companies want to make money...that's understandable

But what's really sad is when the company puts ALL the focus on making money to the exclusion of making it fun for all.

Well, that's it for me...getting over run by a wallet player.

I'll continue reading the forums but that was my last game.

Too bad Bytro lost sight of what a "game" is supposed to be.

I've played since 2016 i'm glad i did, becuase CoW peaked around 2020/2021. The moment they announced V1.5 was when it went downhill. Who remembers the days when infrastructure AND industry boosted production? Without all those annoying extra buildings like tank plants and foundries. Oh and doctrines ...

They need to bring back V1.0. The graphics, the interface everything! I wish they did.

About the gold, it's always been an issue. From the get go.

I'm glad i got to experience CoW back then but i haven't played a game since 2021 after a couple 1.5 games. I'll see i can be bothered with the game i'm in right now.

What is worse I feel is an alliance in a any game who have worked together thru many games and then crushing others and feeling good about themselves.

They should play against other alliance members not in a general game where anyone can create a coalition and have members drop out which is the chance you take but a coalition who talks to each other in discord and do not drop out have a huge advantage over everyone else.

To me a little worse then gold buyers since I have used gold in the past but to finish off research or other small things not buying a ton of arms to win which takes the skill out of the game.

Than you have players who HAVE to win and will spend hundreds of dollars to do it. There should be a limit of the amount you can spend per game per how difficult a game it is like Pacific Conquest to World a War

100% right

Amen Brother preach it.

I have said it to others playing a game that gold takes the skill out of a game. I am not without fault I have used it in finishing research or other things but not buying an army or navy or airforce and then feeling you are the awesomeest player out there for winning.

You have to realize there are some out there who HAVE to win at any cost!! Just as in live they rely on what others can do or buy their way out of a poor decision

I an not considering it anymore I AM leaving. To many problems I reported that have not been resolved and tired of the lack of customer service. Over 2 weeks ago I reported my stats disappeared and my 420K in gold gone (and no I did not use all of it) over the 4+ years of playing and reporting things not one have been fixed for me.

They can take my 3 Stars and i am retiring from this sorry customer service game

I'm with you other than the forums.

Just finished my last game.

So did I. Glad to have free time again

So they've lost two veteran players...

Who cares, right?

You think every single thread should be about gold then? Bytro's position is clear, they will not change anything unless their statistics show that their current business model doesn't work anymore. No matter how unfair it is, we can scream all day and it isn't going to change anything. Of course they don't care about vets leaving, we only pay for a bit of HC and that income is probably negligible compared to the whales. Who knows, maybe they cheer when we leave, after all we are an obstacle to delivering their product to their clients. When they pay to win, they expect to get their product (the win) delivered and a quality player can still defeat a whale in many circumstances. And don't forget, only 0.000001 % of the player base actually makes it to these forums, so our audience (or our opinions) aren't really representative, maybe even irrelevant.

On the plus side of the balance, there seem to be less whales than there were before. In my last 3-5 games or so (can't remember exactly), I didn't meet any obvious whales. Occasional flame and amphibious tanks here and there, probably a lot of early resource cards, but nothing that couldn't be caught up without too much trouble. Maybe the whales are actually calling it a day, and Bytro gets an actual incentive to change their ways? Who knows.

Another plus is that Bytro doesn't really interfere with all the gold-free tournaments springing up from the ground everywhere. GO's are apparently allowed to organize these and do the gold checks needed for them, so at least for the top levels, coin-free play is still possible.

Actually I'm more worried about the quality of the player base. Take my last game as an example. It was a 4x speed WaW map, and I did a solo win in 20 days. That was mainly because there wasn't anyone competitive around. People didn't just "not build air", but they didn't build anything to counter it either. Literally every stack could just be blown away with maximum 20 HP damage to the bombers. Many players built navies of nothing but battleships. A lot of players were just standing around, apparently thinking one or two quick logins a day is enough for a speed map.

And it is not just that. Several players sent me messages expression how shocked they were at my performance, and that it was actually possible to play like I did. They said I was unique, and they had never seen anything like it. These were people with 10-20 games under their belt. That means that in 9-19 games, they didn't meet anyone like me, who actually plays the game like it is supposed to be played. That's actually 900-1900 players playing noobish, compared to one single decent player (I'm good, maybe even excellent, but not top-notch). I think those are alarming numbers.

I blame it on Bytro marketing. They're mostly going for teenagers now, and with all due respect, the teenage mind (with rare exceptions ofc) just isn't ready for a deep game like CoW. When you have driven away the core of strategic gamers (indeed, probably mostly by the P2W system they use), getting a new influx of slightly older, experienced gamers is actually pretty hard. The dumbing-down of the interface (there's hardly a release going by that doesn't have some sort of "trying to make learning easier", "countering the steep learning curve", blablabla etc) is a sign that this game doesn't go down very well in the new targeted market segments. To be honest, you can bring a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. Many of the "new" player recruits just want to toy around with tanks, without bothering to actually learn the effective game strategies, or even basic mechanics. They aren't helped by flattening the learning curve; they don't want to learn at all, they just want some fun with nice icons for ships and animations for explosions. Looks are more important than content to them. And to be honest, those are not the people who will make Bytro rich. This isn't their game; maybe they play a few rounds of it, then they move on to a game with flashier graphics. Of course we all want a game that looks good, but none of us (lets call "us" the experienced players who love the game) play CoW because of the looks; it is 90% about the content. That's who Bytro marketing should focus on.

Well said Roko

Gold is not a problem per se IMO. It's fair enough that Bytro wants a steady source of income.
The problem is that there is no limit to the amount of gold you can use. This really wrecks games. In my experience it is 'only' about 1 in 4 games that get heavily destroyed by whales.

When I encounter a whale, I usually just quit and save myself the time wasted combatting his wallet. Last time I did this, I observed a player using something like 1000$ in the end game. Even with 3 of us countering him, there was nothing to do about it with regular play.

We've been over this subject 100 times in the forum and Bytro isn't changing anything. Partially because there are fanboys who back them in the decision to allow insane spending. So I suggest you do the same as me: enjoy the regular games where ppl spend moderate amounts of gold and then just quit the games that get raped.

Around here? I don't no anybody who supports it. Afaik all forum users would like a P2P system better.