Gold use is ruining this great game!

    This site uses cookies. By continuing to browse this site, you are agreeing to our Cookie Policy.

    • K.Rokossovski wrote:

      CITYOFGOD55 wrote:

      I suppose more people care about demolishing a building then seeing this game turn into who has the bigger wallet..........sad really
      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.

      Nostroma wrote:

      Well said Roko
      You beat me to it. I was going to say Well Said also. I might have spend a $2500 to $3000 in this game over the years and can not even get the gold back I lost from one game to another along with my stats and mostly the stats of others. Nor can I see when my premium account ends to renew it.

    • K.Rokossovski wrote:

      CITYOFGOD55 wrote:

      I suppose more people care about demolishing a building then seeing this game turn into who has the bigger wallet..........sad really
      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.
      Do you agree with everything they do? For the 4 years I have been here there have always been bugs. You like those too? You said it is clear they will not change. So not fixing the game is just what we should accept?

    • Maybe try to actually read my text? I am talking about Bytro's golding and marketing policies; that has nothing to do with fixing bugs. The current rank bug is obviously a tough one and embarassing to leave open for so long, but I'm pretty sure harsh words have been spoken about that in morning standups already, inside Bytro HQ. But in general, bugfixing is reasonably OK within the context of an app which is both functionally and technically pretty complex.
      When the fake daddies are curtailed, we have failed. When their roller coaster tolerance is obliterated, their education funds are taken by Kazakhstani phishers, and their candy bars distributed between the Botswana youth gangs, we have succeeded.
      - BIG DADDY.

    • Huh? What on earth are you talking about?
      When the fake daddies are curtailed, we have failed. When their roller coaster tolerance is obliterated, their education funds are taken by Kazakhstani phishers, and their candy bars distributed between the Botswana youth gangs, we have succeeded.
      - BIG DADDY.

    • My experience with (admittedly easier maps like CoN and recently America Homefront, I consider myself an advanced beginner) is that there are a few players with a lot of games and high level (120 or so) but bad KD and win ratios. I prepare a big war against them and when I attack them, they just don't react and get butchered easily. In my last game a few rejected to join my coalition as it would be more challenging to fight each other but even those just did not fight back. In that game also four people from an alliance joined, but even they did not fight back or even got inactive. So to come back to the topic of this thread: the advantage of those smaller maps is that gold usage is minimal (I think) it still does not lead to an interesting fight.

    • General2.0 wrote:

      My experience with (admittedly easier maps like CoN and recently America Homefront, I consider myself an advanced beginner) is that there are a few players with a lot of games and high level (120 or so) but bad KD and win ratios. I prepare a big war against them and when I attack them, they just don't react and get butchered easily. In my last game a few rejected to join my coalition as it would be more challenging to fight each other but even those just did not fight back. In that game also four people from an alliance joined, but even they did not fight back or even got inactive. So to come back to the topic of this thread: the advantage of those smaller maps is that gold usage is minimal (I think) it still does not lead to an interesting fight.
      Right.

    • Talk to any coiner, even the blatant ones, and they will deny it. Bytro fully supports that option for them.
      When the fake daddies are curtailed, we have failed. When their roller coaster tolerance is obliterated, their education funds are taken by Kazakhstani phishers, and their candy bars distributed between the Botswana youth gangs, we have succeeded.
      - BIG DADDY.

    • the bigger problem is their game gets pretty boring. if early game is defined by large % of inactive players and mid-game defined by the dominance of players using gold and late game is just RRG stacks, then I guess the only thing to...zzzzzzzzzzz... sorry, I nodded off just describing it.

      frankly, the use of gold seems less a big deal than the late game tedium.

    • I agree. Player quality is a bigger deal than gold right now. It is very hard to find non-whale people opposing you to take control of WaW maps and actually have an interesting fight, let alone smaller ones. Complete inactives are over 50%, and noobs who have (varying degrees of) no idea what they're doing raise that to 95%.
      When the fake daddies are curtailed, we have failed. When their roller coaster tolerance is obliterated, their education funds are taken by Kazakhstani phishers, and their candy bars distributed between the Botswana youth gangs, we have succeeded.
      - BIG DADDY.

    • Nostroma wrote:

      If you need gold to win then you don't deserve to be in the same room with experienced players who use skill to win.
      even being quite new to the game, I would agree that gold isn't a big annoyance. in my limited number of games, I've only seen/suspected players using it maybe in 1/3 of them...??? and even then, most of the time not effectively.

      I will say that "skill to win" seems overly generous. in the larger map games I've been in, the winning side either uses gold or grinds with the RRG/AA stacks -- pretty one-dimensional skill-wise. the gold user is at least fun to watch as they show up with over-stacked/over-leveled units. the RRG grind is a snooze. smaller map games seem to end much quicker, so not as much time to get to that point.

      I'm just giving my perspective as someone new to the game. the sample size is small, but my joy/entertainment has been affected more by the boring RRG meta than gold users.

    • In my experience, RRG/AA stacks aren't the meta for vanilla WaW maps at all. I play them quite often, and win most of them (if I don't quit them because there are massive golders around), and I hardly ever build any of those stacks. When I meet enemies who do, I leave them standing around and evade them, taking all their land except the provinces where those one or two big stacks are. Usually that is enough to make them quit, and when the AI takes over they break it up and send out the units piecemeal which are destroyed easily.
      When the fake daddies are curtailed, we have failed. When their roller coaster tolerance is obliterated, their education funds are taken by Kazakhstani phishers, and their candy bars distributed between the Botswana youth gangs, we have succeeded.
      - BIG DADDY.