Some complaints

[CommissarXSlim]

This is my first post here. I've played some battlefields, and generally rank around the top 10 when I end up surrendering. As a relatively new player the game seems to come up short in a number of ways.

1) The game is simply way too time consuming for people who can't be ready to stop what their doing and respond to what's going on in the game:

    -The game is constantly requiring attention in some way. Sometimes it's not particularly important. If a farm upgrade finished, your "falling behind" by not starting the next upgrade. Early in the game upgrades are finishing constantly every 5-15 minutes. Later in the game the upgrades are longer, but you have so many cities and admin zones to upgrade that the problem is just as relevant. A huge problem is when your away and something bigger is happening, like an opponent attacking you. If your not ready to respond, you will almost certainly lose whatever is being attacked. There are a few ways to help mitigate this I'll explain later. For the first point, I'd like some option to queue the next upgrade for an administration zone. This wouldn't take away the incentive to use diamonds since most people generally use them finish things they need instantly, like a turret upgrade when an attack is coming. It would be incredibly helpful to have a queue (even if it's just 1 queued upgrade/contruction per city) just to make the game a little less demanding.

    

2) The game takes forever to load areas when your looking around, making it much more difficult to quickly and efficently manage things.

    -Everytime I scroll from one base to another, there is a 5~ second delay before the structures are loaded and I can see what is going on, then perform an action. Storing the data for at least your own cities and structures locally on your device with occasional server updates (instead of the device requesting data from the server and making you wait everytime you look back and forth) would signifigantly improve the user experience.

    -This problem is another reason why the game is more time consuming than it needs to be. It's not really an issue when you only have 2 cities and a few admin zones. Later on your up to 8+ cities and 20-30 admin zones and it's a serious pain to figure out what's going on.

    -The city manager on the left task bar in game does not let you perform upgrades without first scrolling to the city and causing lag. It's also small and easy to hit the wrong icon. Making it larger, letting people  upgrade from the manager without having the screen go their, and make the "upgrading" icon more visible. It would also help to put the "Upgrading" Icon next to the city/admin zone name in the manager, so you can quickly see if an upgrade is being performed there without having to expand the admin zone/city. Right now you need to expand the city/admin zone because the upgrade icon is only shown next to the name of the structure in that zone being upgraded.

 

3) The units use a horrible AI when the player doesn't give them explicit instructions. This is another reason why the game is so time consuming.

    - Let me first say I'm completely fine with players online and actively commanding their units to have an advantage over players who are not. However, the AI is so bad that you literally cannot afford to be away during an engagement. They do not prioritize targets in a logical manner. In every strategy game I've played, the units will prioritize something attacking them or nearby units over something that cannot attack them.

This situation happened in my first game: I'm trying to take a village early in the game. You have to target the sniper towers individually because units will prioritize whatever structure is closest to them if I don't. It's annoying seeing my units attacking a farm while a sniper tower next to them is killing them off. This AI is fine with units that out range the sniper tower, but it's incredibly detrimental if the unit doesn't. If a unit is getting attacked by something it should target that instead of something that cannot attack them. I've learned to watch each fight closely to make sure that once I've focused down one turret in a city, im ready to tell my units to focus the next turret. But why should I have to do this? If I don't, they will target a supply factory, an iron mine, literally whatever is closest to them.

Another situation happened to me in my second game. I didn't have my phone on me and I was attacked. I log back in and see this:

A) My ground troops are almost all dead from bombers. The base is being hit hard by artillery, but because my ground troops were not explicitly attacked by the artillery they made no effort to attack. The last few remaining are now attacking, but only because his units finally started to move in. They are still standing next to the army base, getting crushed by bombers while my last turret is being hit hard by artillery and StuGs. Looking at the combat logs, I couldn't find any mention of any of my ground troops killing his ground troops. I think they just sat there while bombers obliterated them with splash damage.

B) My bombers were automatically dispatched and are flying in circles above the air base. They are getting attacked by 2 jet planes and a scout. 9 out of the 13 bombers I had are dead. I had 3 jet planes and a fighter or two in this base. After checking the combat logs I see that those 2 jetplanes and about 5 scout aircraft were the only anti air units he had. I can only assume my jet planes targeted his bombers or his scouting aircraft while he took them down with his jets. Units like Jets should really prioritize other Jets and fighters over scouts or bombers. Scouts barely tickle air units, and bombers can only attack ground. Jets kill air units very quickly, and scouts are about as "tanky" as a jet, so instead of losing his jets he abused the AI to make my jets attack scouts while his jets destroyed mine.

The last of my ground troops die, and soon after the last turret dies. I haven't bothered to issue commands to my bombers to attack or flee since the battle and game has already been decided for me. Even as enemy ground troops focus the city, my bombers are still making no effort to attack any of them. This might be because his tanks are still too far from the bombers. Still, his units are close enough to destroy my city. They should really either attack the enemy ground troops by having the AI act offensively when nearby units and structures are being attacked. Or at least make them flee (run a predetermined short distance in the direction opposite the attacker) when they are being attacked by something they cannot retaliate against.

4) The game is incredibly linear (The top players in all my BF's use the same unit's in the same ways) and not cohering to the general guidelines almost always results in a loss.

 

Every game basically divulges into this for the "good" players:

Rush to lvl 5 -> Stug wars -> Get transports to drop stugs and scouts for fodder (flying stug war) -> Get SPAs -> Get Bombers/AA -> end game units.

5) Why is there splash damage?

Units stand inside one another in this game. Splash damage is rediculously overpowered. You need either bombers or transports to deal with units like SPAs. Charging into SPAs with only ground troops is impossible, because units move too slowly off the road and stand inside each other on the road. SPAs also have no minimum range, and don't cause splash damage to themselves.

6) The game rewards passive behavior in the late game

The game rewards you based on your leader board position. It's common to see the top 3 players/leagues ally one another towards the end of the game, just to maintain their position and wait the game out.

7) The game offers no way for new players to learn it, and makes it much more difficult than it has to be.

I spent a lot of time my first game throwing all kinds of ground troops at enemy cities. It wasn't until someone used transports against my city and I lost that I realized you needed transports to even take a city. It sucks to have no way to learn a game. Even the unit stats (when provided) are inconsistent. If you hit the "I" icon on a unit in the munitions factory, it brings up a page with stars. If you do it on the battlefield, it shows you actual numbers. This is good, but you need to have the unit built to see this, and you cant view the stats of enemy units. Sometimes the numbers are just plain wrong. I upgraded an infantry to 2 stars, and according to the tooltip it should run twice as fast (or maybe it's speed was cut in half, dont remember). It still went at the same speed as my other 1 star infantry.

Investing 3 days playing a game is a long time and when your new it sucks to lose because you didn't understand some concept in the game. Losing because you were outplayed is fine but losing because you way of knowing SPAs did splash damage isn't.  Make a guide, please, so new players dont have to waste 3 days to learn each in game caveat like this.

[Boredomfalls]

On January 29, 2017 at 6:56 PM, CommissarXSlim said:

This is my first post here. I've played some battlefields, and generally rank around the top 10 when I end up surrendering. As a relatively new player the game seems to come up short in a number of ways.

1) The game is simply way too time consuming for people who can't be ready to stop what their doing and respond to what's going on in the game:

    -The game is constantly requiring attention in some way. Sometimes it's not particularly important. If a farm upgrade finished, your "falling behind" by not starting the next upgrade. Early in the game upgrades are finishing constantly every 5-15 minutes. Later in the game the upgrades are longer, but you have so many cities and admin zones to upgrade that the problem is just as relevant. A huge problem is when your away and something bigger is happening, like an opponent attacking you. If your not ready to respond, you will almost certainly lose whatever is being attacked. There are a few ways to help mitigate this I'll explain later. For the first point, I'd like some option to queue the next upgrade for an administration zone. This wouldn't take away the incentive to use diamonds since most people generally use them finish things they need instantly, like a turret upgrade when an attack is coming. It would be incredibly helpful to have a queue (even if it's just 1 queued upgrade/contruction per city) just to make the game a little less demanding.

    

2) The game takes forever to load areas when your looking around, making it much more difficult to quickly and efficently manage things.

    -Everytime I scroll from one base to another, there is a 5~ second delay before the structures are loaded and I can see what is going on, then perform an action. Storing the data for at least your own cities and structures locally on your device with occasional server updates (instead of the device requesting data from the server and making you wait everytime you look back and forth) would signifigantly improve the user experience.

    -This problem is another reason why the game is more time consuming than it needs to be. It's not really an issue when you only have 2 cities and a few admin zones. Later on your up to 8+ cities and 20-30 admin zones and it's a serious pain to figure out what's going on.

    -The city manager on the left task bar in game does not let you perform upgrades without first scrolling to the city and causing lag. It's also small and easy to hit the wrong icon. Making it larger, letting people  upgrade from the manager without having the screen go their, and make the "upgrading" icon more visible. It would also help to put the "Upgrading" Icon next to the city/admin zone name in the manager, so you can quickly see if an upgrade is being performed there without having to expand the admin zone/city. Right now you need to expand the city/admin zone because the upgrade icon is only shown next to the name of the structure in that zone being upgraded.

 

3) The units use a horrible AI when the player doesn't give them explicit instructions. This is another reason why the game is so time consuming.

    - Let me first say I'm completely fine with players online and actively commanding their units to have an advantage over players who are not. However, the AI is so bad that you literally cannot afford to be away during an engagement. They do not prioritize targets in a logical manner. In every strategy game I've played, the units will prioritize something attacking them or nearby units over something that cannot attack them.

This situation happened in my first game: I'm trying to take a village early in the game. You have to target the sniper towers individually because units will prioritize whatever structure is closest to them if I don't. It's annoying seeing my units attacking a farm while a sniper tower next to them is killing them off. This AI is fine with units that out range the sniper tower, but it's incredibly detrimental if the unit doesn't. If a unit is getting attacked by something it should target that instead of something that cannot attack them. I've learned to watch each fight closely to make sure that once I've focused down one turret in a city, im ready to tell my units to focus the next turret. But why should I have to do this? If I don't, they will target a supply factory, an iron mine, literally whatever is closest to them.

Another situation happened to me in my second game. I didn't have my phone on me and I was attacked. I log back in and see this:

A) My ground troops are almost all dead from bombers. The base is being hit hard by artillery, but because my ground troops were not explicitly attacked by the artillery they made no effort to attack. The last few remaining are now attacking, but only because his units finally started to move in. They are still standing next to the army base, getting crushed by bombers while my last turret is being hit hard by artillery and StuGs. Looking at the combat logs, I couldn't find any mention of any of my ground troops killing his ground troops. I think they just sat there while bombers obliterated them with splash damage.

B) My bombers were automatically dispatched and are flying in circles above the air base. They are getting attacked by 2 jet planes and a scout. 9 out of the 13 bombers I had are dead. I had 3 jet planes and a fighter or two in this base. After checking the combat logs I see that those 2 jetplanes and about 5 scout aircraft were the only anti air units he had. I can only assume my jet planes targeted his bombers or his scouting aircraft while he took them down with his jets. Units like Jets should really prioritize other Jets and fighters over scouts or bombers. Scouts barely tickle air units, and bombers can only attack ground. Jets kill air units very quickly, and scouts are about as "tanky" as a jet, so instead of losing his jets he abused the AI to make my jets attack scouts while his jets destroyed mine.

The last of my ground troops die, and soon after the last turret dies. I haven't bothered to issue commands to my bombers to attack or flee since the battle and game has already been decided for me. Even as enemy ground troops focus the city, my bombers are still making no effort to attack any of them. This might be because his tanks are still too far from the bombers. Still, his units are close enough to destroy my city. They should really either attack the enemy ground troops by having the AI act offensively when nearby units and structures are being attacked. Or at least make them flee (run a predetermined short distance in the direction opposite the attacker) when they are being attacked by something they cannot retaliate against.

4) The game is incredibly linear (The top players in all my BF's use the same unit's in the same ways) and not cohering to the general guidelines almost always results in a loss.

 

Every game basically divulges into this for the "good" players:

Rush to lvl 5 -> Stug wars -> Get transports to drop stugs and scouts for fodder (flying stug war) -> Get SPAs -> Get Bombers/AA -> end game units.

5) Why is there splash damage?

Units stand inside one another in this game. Splash damage is rediculously overpowered. You need either bombers or transports to deal with units like SPAs. Charging into SPAs with only ground troops is impossible, because units move too slowly off the road and stand inside each other on the road. SPAs also have no minimum range, and don't cause splash damage to themselves.

6) The game rewards passive behavior in the late game

The game rewards you based on your leader board position. It's common to see the top 3 players/leagues ally one another towards the end of the game, just to maintain their position and wait the game out.

7) The game offers no way for new players to learn it, and makes it much more difficult than it has to be.

I spent a lot of time my first game throwing all kinds of ground troops at enemy cities. It wasn't until someone used transports against my city and I lost that I realized you needed transports to even take a city. It sucks to have no way to learn a game. Even the unit stats (when provided) are inconsistent. If you hit the "I" icon on a unit in the munitions factory, it brings up a page with stars. If you do it on the battlefield, it shows you actual numbers. This is good, but you need to have the unit built to see this, and you cant view the stats of enemy units. Sometimes the numbers are just plain wrong. I upgraded an infantry to 2 stars, and according to the tooltip it should run twice as fast (or maybe it's speed was cut in half, dont remember). It still went at the same speed as my other 1 star infantry.

Investing 3 days playing a game is a long time and when your new it sucks to lose because you didn't understand some concept in the game. Losing because you were outplayed is fine but losing because you way of knowing SPAs did splash damage isn't.  Make a guide, please, so new players dont have to waste 3 days to learn each in game caveat like this.

1 "Scouts barely tickle air units"  you clearly have yet to see 10 5* scouts then. 

2 What is an SPA? I had not once seen that term. 

3 "it's common to see the top 3 ally each other to maintain their position" that's a lie. The fields with "the big mean leagues" (Wolfpack, Lucky, Godz, etc) are in the top 3 because of their allies, and if they're not, and you're still on the field to see the leaderboard, those leagues are in an all out brawl between each other for first place, hourly attacks, hundreds of units dying. You have no idea. 

4 no matter the game, no matter the style, there is never a way to tell anyone of EVERY concept in the game. What if I told you I know guys that don't gem that get 3* units the first 24hrs of gameplay? Adapt and overcome, learn from your mistakes. That's how games are played. No ones gonna walk you through everything. (And there is a strategy section of forums. It's called raiders and there is a tutorial in game.)

Now I will say that I agree with your points 1, 2, and 3. After that it seems to become childish and "well I lost because of this I don't like it" the game was made to try and be realistic. In order for it to be realistic it has to have things like splash damage. The bigger leagues don't always use the traditional units that everyone else uses, and just because you can't depict a specific strategy that's going on doesn't mean it isn't there

Edited January 31, 2017 by Boredomfalls

[CommissarXSlim]

1) Compared to a jet, yea they tickle. You also dont address the AI which was the point of the story. Your taking a small piece of a story (which was used to describe the poor AI) and debating that 5* scouts do more damage? Im sure they do, but these were not 5* Scouts anyway, and what if the jets were 5*? Do i need to specify every caveat when Im making a point so im not debated on details that have nothing to do with the point?

2) Self propelled artillery. First ground unit from an LC.

3) Game rewards you for your leaderboard position. Its easier, more efficent, and faster for the top players to get points claiming the cities of smaller less skilled leagues and solo players instead of warring with other large leagues that pose a signifigant challenge. Maybe some of the big leagues that want a challenge will fight each other earlier on and get into 100 unit/hr engagements but if your goal is points your going to target all the smaller guys first.

4) There is no guide that I could find. The tooltips are inconsistent as I described. I even looked on this forum for strategies but I didnt assume It would be called "raiders" (who would lol?). What strategy game doesnt give you some option to look at unit stats without having to build the unit in game? Every game Ive played you can find this info easily in game or online. You an usually look at the basic stats of an enemy (not supplies and cargo, but things loke vision and movespeed) Like, its pretty helpful to learn stugs have lower sight than they do range. Im not asking for a detailed guide to everything but how can you know anything? A tank has 700 "defense" on the tooltip. Where is defense explained and why does that number matter to me if I cant know what it means.

Also on your realistic comment: why dont SPAs splash themselves when shooting things standing next to and on top of them? Why can SPAs shoot units next to them in the first place? Why are roads 1/10th as thick as a tank and why do the units stand inside each other? Every game makes some sacrafices on realism for gameplay. 

 

[Boredomfalls]

11 hours ago, CommissarXSlim said:

1) Compared to a jet, yea they tickle. You also dont address the AI which was the point of the story. Your taking a small piece of a story (which was used to describe the poor AI) and debating that 5* scouts do more damage? Im sure they do, but these were not 5* Scouts anyway, and what if the jets were 5*? Do i need to specify every caveat when Im making a point so im not debated on details that have nothing to do with the point?

2) Self propelled artillery. First ground unit from an LC.

3) Game rewards you for your leaderboard position. Its easier, more efficent, and faster for the top players to get points claiming the cities of smaller less skilled leagues and solo players instead of warring with other large leagues that pose a signifigant challenge. Maybe some of the big leagues that want a challenge will fight each other earlier on and get into 100 unit/hr engagements but if your goal is points your going to target all the smaller guys first.

4) There is no guide that I could find. The tooltips are inconsistent as I described. I even looked on this forum for strategies but I didnt assume It would be called "raiders" (who would lol?). What strategy game doesnt give you some option to look at unit stats without having to build the unit in game? Every game Ive played you can find this info easily in game or online. You an usually look at the basic stats of an enemy (not supplies and cargo, but things loke vision and movespeed) Like, its pretty helpful to learn stugs have lower sight than they do range. Im not asking for a detailed guide to everything but how can you know anything? A tank has 700 "defense" on the tooltip. Where is defense explained and why does that number matter to me if I cant know what it means.

Also on your realistic comment: why dont SPAs splash themselves when shooting things standing next to and on top of them? Why can SPAs shoot units next to them in the first place? Why are roads 1/10th as thick as a tank and why do the units stand inside each other? Every game makes some sacrafices on realism for gameplay. 

 

I've got to say, I've never heard them called spa. Only mobile arty. And the reason they can shoot units next to them is because you have to realize this is a map Europe. It may appear that they're "right next" to each other but when you realize that tank engagements occur at about 1,000 yards (~1,300 meters) on average and that proportionately the units don't even take up the width of a road in game (units are enlarged so you can see them easier although the proportioning is off) it begins to make sense that mobile arty can engage other units that close. And units appear to stand inside each other because of the proportioning in the game. If we were to shrink the skin sizes of units to fit the map they would not be stacked on top of each other, but rather next to each other.

1) I was only mentioning that scouts can take down entire air forces if you use them properly. However, as is with ANY game auto targeting (or AI targeting as you put it) is never to be relied on as a primary attack method. Only to make things playable when you're not playing an active role. While yes I do wish there was a way to improve said targeting parameters it will increase the amount of load on the game increasing the storage cost and who knows what else. And the way glitches reappear with the slightest adjustment in this game, I think the devs need to move from Java scripting to C# and find these glitch leaks and have and repair them, not plug them. As a result I'm hesitant to suggest any new ideas because even when they don't update glitches they have fixed previously rear their ugly heads again. 

2) I stand by my earlier statement of never hearing mobile arty refered to in that way. 

3) Not one top league that I can think of got there by going "let's ally them because third place is acceptable to us" every top league that is known has repeatedly captured all 260 cities on a field with 20 people. It got boring. So now they actually fight for it by attacking the biggest threat first. Again they didn't become a top league by saying "it's good enough" they made friends, and while they were friends they fought each other and learned from each other honing their skills and tactics. 

4) If you look at the description for raiders (right on the main screen for forums) it tells you what it's for. As for the specifics you mentioned there does have to be an aspect of learning involved. That's part of what makes a "Real-time Strategy" game strategic. Figure most things out yourself. The tutorial only tells you how to build and expand units and what buildings do what and generally what units they're effective against. But finding out is part of the game. That's why you need to build the unit to view specific stats. As for the defense, no game just puts out the algorithms they used to determine damage calculations. And no game fully explains defense either. But in a nutshell if I have a Stug with 700 defense and a Stug with 800 the Stug with more defense receives less damage if both units are attacked by units with identical stats. 

Also i saw and can't seem to find it, but you mentioned seeing the stats of an enemy players unit, that would be like if Russia said "here's the weakness to our tanks and Jets for when we invade more countries so you can kill them easier" The fact that this game allows you to see an enemy units health is really shocking and all you need as long as you know what unit type is strongest against that type, and the only real way to find that out is to experiment. 

 

I understand im coming off as rude, and I don't intend to, but these are points I feel needed to be hit to at least try and get you to understand where the devs stand. That's not saying I agree with you but if you're able to successfully argue points that devs would be saying then that's the only way devs would consider any changes. Even on changes I agree with I'll argue all sides. 

[CommissarXSlim]

1) the ai is unforgivably dumb. and its 75% of the reason the game is so demanding on players. I dont care if my units make intellegent decisions but 90% of the time they make no decision at all and just stand there. Sure let jets target scouts when jets are also attacking them, thats forgivable. But at least have my bombers that were dispatched from a cities air base attack ground units that are actively destroying said city.

2) ok.

3) looks like you think im referring to the top leagues across the entire game. Im speaking on my experience of the top leagues in the BFs Ive played. AFAIK I havent played with any of these people. 

4) Raiders looks like its under suggestions on the main page. I thought it was gonna be some unit idea. Generally for a strategy section you just call it strategy or gameplay. Raiders is probably the least intuitive thing to call a strategy section.

 

Also are you trolling? Part of a strategy game is not knowing what the units you are going to build do? Thats like playing chess without knowing how the pieces move. Im not asking them to write some grand strategy guide. Just like I wouldnt expect a chess gameset to come with strategies. I do expect a rulebook that outlines how the pieces move, and other basic info about the game. It doesnt make the game any more or less strategic to keep this hidden. How could it possibly be better to keep new players in the dark? They are the only ones suffering from this, experienced players have built and used the units enough to not need this information. I also specifically said NOT the units cargo or other "sensitive" info. But the attack range and vision that are the exact same every game across all players? Its nothing like that Russia example at all for that reason alone: we all use the same units. Are you making the arguement that since more experienced players have more unit upgrades (from the tech shop), that things like hp and damage should be hidden? Hahaha your right man! We should hide the health bar too. That way, players really do have to stare at the screen. You never know when that turret is gonna die and you have to target the next one! Games often sacrafice realism for gameplay in some respects. You shouldn't sacrafice the gameplay for realism in a game. If it does nothing but add more burden on the new player its probably something worth looking at.

Also, im not asking the devs to do anything. I think doing something about some of these problems would make the game more fun for many players, but I dont expect the devs to take my suggestions as a solution or to even consider these problems worth solving. 90% of the reason I made this post is because there is a big post about getting new players involved here. As a relatively new player myself I shared some of my grievences that I feel hurt player retention and make the game unneccassarily difficult to play. Mitigating those problems would make the game more enjoyable for me and many others Id imagine.

 

[MkV]

On 1/29/2017 at 6:56 PM, CommissarXSlim said:

This is my first post here. I've played some battlefields, and generally rank around the top 10 when I end up surrendering. As a relatively new player the game seems to come up short in a number of ways.

1) The game is simply way too time consuming for people who can't be ready to stop what their doing and respond to what's going on in the game:

    -The game is constantly requiring attention in some way. Sometimes it's not particularly important. If a farm upgrade finished, your "falling behind" by not starting the next upgrade. Early in the game upgrades are finishing constantly every 5-15 minutes. Later in the game the upgrades are longer, but you have so many cities and admin zones to upgrade that the problem is just as relevant. A huge problem is when your away and something bigger is happening, like an opponent attacking you. If your not ready to respond, you will almost certainly lose whatever is being attacked. There are a few ways to help mitigate this I'll explain later. For the first point, I'd like some option to queue the next upgrade for an administration zone. This wouldn't take away the incentive to use diamonds since most people generally use them finish things they need instantly, like a turret upgrade when an attack is coming. It would be incredibly helpful to have a queue (even if it's just 1 queued upgrade/contruction per city) just to make the game a little less demanding.

    

2) The game takes forever to load areas when your looking around, making it much more difficult to quickly and efficently manage things.

    -Everytime I scroll from one base to another, there is a 5~ second delay before the structures are loaded and I can see what is going on, then perform an action. Storing the data for at least your own cities and structures locally on your device with occasional server updates (instead of the device requesting data from the server and making you wait everytime you look back and forth) would signifigantly improve the user experience.

    -This problem is another reason why the game is more time consuming than it needs to be. It's not really an issue when you only have 2 cities and a few admin zones. Later on your up to 8+ cities and 20-30 admin zones and it's a serious pain to figure out what's going on.

    -The city manager on the left task bar in game does not let you perform upgrades without first scrolling to the city and causing lag. It's also small and easy to hit the wrong icon. Making it larger, letting people  upgrade from the manager without having the screen go their, and make the "upgrading" icon more visible. It would also help to put the "Upgrading" Icon next to the city/admin zone name in the manager, so you can quickly see if an upgrade is being performed there without having to expand the admin zone/city. Right now you need to expand the city/admin zone because the upgrade icon is only shown next to the name of the structure in that zone being upgraded.

 

3) The units use a horrible AI when the player doesn't give them explicit instructions. This is another reason why the game is so time consuming.

    - Let me first say I'm completely fine with players online and actively commanding their units to have an advantage over players who are not. However, the AI is so bad that you literally cannot afford to be away during an engagement. They do not prioritize targets in a logical manner. In every strategy game I've played, the units will prioritize something attacking them or nearby units over something that cannot attack them.

This situation happened in my first game: I'm trying to take a village early in the game. You have to target the sniper towers individually because units will prioritize whatever structure is closest to them if I don't. It's annoying seeing my units attacking a farm while a sniper tower next to them is killing them off. This AI is fine with units that out range the sniper tower, but it's incredibly detrimental if the unit doesn't. If a unit is getting attacked by something it should target that instead of something that cannot attack them. I've learned to watch each fight closely to make sure that once I've focused down one turret in a city, im ready to tell my units to focus the next turret. But why should I have to do this? If I don't, they will target a supply factory, an iron mine, literally whatever is closest to them.

Another situation happened to me in my second game. I didn't have my phone on me and I was attacked. I log back in and see this:

A) My ground troops are almost all dead from bombers. The base is being hit hard by artillery, but because my ground troops were not explicitly attacked by the artillery they made no effort to attack. The last few remaining are now attacking, but only because his units finally started to move in. They are still standing next to the army base, getting crushed by bombers while my last turret is being hit hard by artillery and StuGs. Looking at the combat logs, I couldn't find any mention of any of my ground troops killing his ground troops. I think they just sat there while bombers obliterated them with splash damage.

B) My bombers were automatically dispatched and are flying in circles above the air base. They are getting attacked by 2 jet planes and a scout. 9 out of the 13 bombers I had are dead. I had 3 jet planes and a fighter or two in this base. After checking the combat logs I see that those 2 jetplanes and about 5 scout aircraft were the only anti air units he had. I can only assume my jet planes targeted his bombers or his scouting aircraft while he took them down with his jets. Units like Jets should really prioritize other Jets and fighters over scouts or bombers. Scouts barely tickle air units, and bombers can only attack ground. Jets kill air units very quickly, and scouts are about as "tanky" as a jet, so instead of losing his jets he abused the AI to make my jets attack scouts while his jets destroyed mine.

The last of my ground troops die, and soon after the last turret dies. I haven't bothered to issue commands to my bombers to attack or flee since the battle and game has already been decided for me. Even as enemy ground troops focus the city, my bombers are still making no effort to attack any of them. This might be because his tanks are still too far from the bombers. Still, his units are close enough to destroy my city. They should really either attack the enemy ground troops by having the AI act offensively when nearby units and structures are being attacked. Or at least make them flee (run a predetermined short distance in the direction opposite the attacker) when they are being attacked by something they cannot retaliate against.

4) The game is incredibly linear (The top players in all my BF's use the same unit's in the same ways) and not cohering to the general guidelines almost always results in a loss.

 

Every game basically divulges into this for the "good" players:

Rush to lvl 5 -> Stug wars -> Get transports to drop stugs and scouts for fodder (flying stug war) -> Get SPAs -> Get Bombers/AA -> end game units.

5) Why is there splash damage?

Units stand inside one another in this game. Splash damage is rediculously overpowered. You need either bombers or transports to deal with units like SPAs. Charging into SPAs with only ground troops is impossible, because units move too slowly off the road and stand inside each other on the road. SPAs also have no minimum range, and don't cause splash damage to themselves.

6) The game rewards passive behavior in the late game

The game rewards you based on your leader board position. It's common to see the top 3 players/leagues ally one another towards the end of the game, just to maintain their position and wait the game out.

7) The game offers no way for new players to learn it, and makes it much more difficult than it has to be.

I spent a lot of time my first game throwing all kinds of ground troops at enemy cities. It wasn't until someone used transports against my city and I lost that I realized you needed transports to even take a city. It sucks to have no way to learn a game. Even the unit stats (when provided) are inconsistent. If you hit the "I" icon on a unit in the munitions factory, it brings up a page with stars. If you do it on the battlefield, it shows you actual numbers. This is good, but you need to have the unit built to see this, and you cant view the stats of enemy units. Sometimes the numbers are just plain wrong. I upgraded an infantry to 2 stars, and according to the tooltip it should run twice as fast (or maybe it's speed was cut in half, dont remember). It still went at the same speed as my other 1 star infantry.

Investing 3 days playing a game is a long time and when your new it sucks to lose because you didn't understand some concept in the game. Losing because you were outplayed is fine but losing because you way of knowing SPAs did splash damage isn't.  Make a guide, please, so new players dont have to waste 3 days to learn each in game caveat like this.

1- I would love to see a que, having said that, attention to the game is part of the game. Usually as resource zones max out you are left with just having to attend to ports, cities and mzs. This imo is much more manageable.

2- A lot of the load time is your device. I used to have the same issues but when I upgraded my iPad those laggy loads went away. Also the next city button helps both with the lag and item number one.

3- this is a two edged sword, one of the appeals of this game to me is that I need to control my units. The target selection is fixed so once you learn it some of it makes sense and you can use it to your advantage. Aggressive range is a different matter entirely, both having it large and small are problems depending on the situation. I'd actually like to see the option to set it to sm, med, and large. An online player is almost always going to destroy an offline player, that's the nature of many games. One thing to try is turning off the auto dispatch on the airfields and army bases, that may give you some time to receive the notification that your under attack and get logged in. Also, set your notifications to alert you when enemy enters your territory and not just when you're being attacked helps some as well.

4- The linear method you described is indeed how most of the players play, I can tell you that it is beatable. Don't conform.

5- Splash is what it is, I don't know why it's what it is, but once again, its beatable.

6- not my experience at all, usually the late game is filled with some pretty intense battles. Ymmv 

7- totally agree. WeFew has considerable materials for our recruits but unfortunately those are our use only. We are working on a basic gameplay guide for public release, but that's still being produced. .

good luck, this game is worth the effort of learning it. My Line I'd is mefaircloth, friend me and I can help you with some of the basics..

Edited February 1, 2017 by MkV

[CommissarXSlim]

You guys probably shouldn't keep quoting my OP. It's really long.

 

1) It is more manageable, but by the time all your resource zones are maxed out it's been days in game. I can have some zones maxed out by day two, but I'm still expanding and getting more zones. This is a very late game scenario.

2) A lot of it is also poor optimization. If I just looked at a city, why do I have to load that city again when I look away? Some of the delay is my phone rendering the graphics, and there's nothing the devs could do about that except offer a lower graphics mode. But whenever the server or my internet is lagging the game hangs up until it can request whats in the city, then it does the actual rendering. You can store this data and occasional update it instead of updating it each time you look back and forth. I'm curious how many server locations they utilize and where they are located. The games English seems like a rough translation from another language (Chinese?), so I wouldn't be surprised if I'm loading the information from a server overseas. My phone is only a year old, and my friend who introduced me to the game has similar issues on his iPhone 7.

3) I just cant see how attacking a farm before a sniper tower is advantageous. I often leave the farms alive because it's less to rebuild when you take it. And yes there are some disadvantages to making the aggressive range larger. But as it is now, my units often will not fight at all. Many players start to learn the nuances of the AI and abuse them to have beneficial trades. Actually, I'd call them overwhelmingly beneficial trades. In my idea, the units would "share" aggression. If a unit is hit, my units around the hit unit would also fight. I wouldn't want my units to seek out engagements if they are not already under attack. Also, if I hide my units in a base and turn auto-dispatch off, what happens to them if the army base dies? If the city is captured? I have had this idea before but there's no way to know what would happen =x, and If I'm sleeping I'd still rather have them come out then sit in the base. Again, I don't mind the online player having an advantage. When I look at what he had and what I had and can pretty safely say "I would of won this fight if I was online" it just doesn't make sense that I lose 40~ of my units and only kill about 5-10 of his (which is mostly kills from turrets).

Also, fun fact. If your units are dispatched, select 1 of your units. It has the gold marker above it like it's being told to hold position... Is this a graphical bug or are they actually holding position? Because if they are actually holding position....that's just... my brain hurts.

 

5) Is it beatable by other ground troops (other than also having artillery?). I've tried throwing all kinds of ground mixtures at SPA's and have had little success. Seems you either need SPAs and to take out whatever hes using as a spotter or go air. And the rocket trucks will win a fight but I'm mostly asking about units available to me when SPAs come out.

7) I just hope they put something out before they try to draw new players. This games "learning curve" is just unnecessarily steep. It's a fun game and I'd like to see it do well.

 

 

[Bonkd]

I am so sorry some of you have been suffering from not knowing how some of the game is played, I will try to help you...

 

this is my strategy: as soon as you have light tanks, get the villages around you. Get to stugs, get everything around you, then do suprise attacks on people and cripple their economy. I usually get killed by now, unless I get an ally with the big alliances( I am very persuading). Hope this helped some, ask me any other questions,and I will be happy to help!

[Boredomfalls]

17 hours ago, CommissarXSlim said:

1) the ai is unforgivably dumb. and its 75% of the reason the game is so demanding on players. I dont care if my units make intellegent decisions but 90% of the time they make no decision at all and just stand there. Sure let jets target scouts when jets are also attacking them, thats forgivable. But at least have my bombers that were dispatched from a cities air base attack ground units that are actively destroying said city.

2) ok.

3) looks like you think im referring to the top leagues across the entire game. Im speaking on my experience of the top leagues in the BFs Ive played. AFAIK I havent played with any of these people. 

4) Raiders looks like its under suggestions on the main page. I thought it was gonna be some unit idea. Generally for a strategy section you just call it strategy or gameplay. Raiders is probably the least intuitive thing to call a strategy section.

 

Also are you trolling? Part of a strategy game is not knowing what the units you are going to build do? Thats like playing chess without knowing how the pieces move. Im not asking them to write some grand strategy guide. Just like I wouldnt expect a chess gameset to come with strategies. I do expect a rulebook that outlines how the pieces move, and other basic info about the game. It doesnt make the game any more or less strategic to keep this hidden. How could it possibly be better to keep new players in the dark? They are the only ones suffering from this, experienced players have built and used the units enough to not need this information. I also specifically said NOT the units cargo or other "sensitive" info. But the attack range and vision that are the exact same every game across all players? Its nothing like that Russia example at all for that reason alone: we all use the same units. Are you making the arguement that since more experienced players have more unit upgrades (from the tech shop), that things like hp and damage should be hidden? Hahaha your right man! We should hide the health bar too. That way, players really do have to stare at the screen. You never know when that turret is gonna die and you have to target the next one! Games often sacrafice realism for gameplay in some respects. You shouldn't sacrafice the gameplay for realism in a game. If it does nothing but add more burden on the new player its probably something worth looking at.

Also, im not asking the devs to do anything. I think doing something about some of these problems would make the game more fun for many players, but I dont expect the devs to take my suggestions as a solution or to even consider these problems worth solving. 90% of the reason I made this post is because there is a big post about getting new players involved here. As a relatively new player myself I shared some of my grievences that I feel hurt player retention and make the game unneccassarily difficult to play. Mitigating those problems would make the game more enjoyable for me and many others Id imagine.

 

When you mention basic info, those stars are basic info.

When I mentioned health I didn't mean the health bar, I meant the numbers. My scouts are maxed in tech tree, and if I select someone else's scout it shows me health points which tells me if I can beat it with one or what the case is. Outside of that it tells you what upgrade level units are. 

I understand why you made the post, but again I responded as a way of brining up points as to why certain things are the way they are. You have convinced me that some of these are problems that should be looked at, do you have suggestions for potentially fixing some of these?

[CommissarXSlim]

The stars sort of do but why not just use numerical values. The stars can be used but its hard to weigh what values the stars actually mean. For example: unit A has 2 stars in attack range and unit b has 3. Does this actually mean unit b has 50% more attack range? Not necessarily.

 

For most of these problems I provided some kind of suggestion, but this post was to bring attention to the issue and begin discussion not for me to solve it.  Theres multiple ways to solve the problems I outlined. I think the issues I brought up have merit but more experienced players will have better solutions or ideas.

[MkV]

You can get the numerical values by clicking on the info icon on the unit. I put a picture below.

every game I have ever played has a learning curve. Some are steeper than others. Now you know about spa and splash so you can plan accordingly. I assure you that's not the first lesson you'll have to learn. World warfare gives test first, and then the lesson. Part of the fun imo is the figuring out of what's effective and not, and believe me we are still adapting. 

honestly some of the issues are yours and not the games. It's a game about building infrastructure, managing cities, building and controlling armies. If you don't want to build infrastructure, manage cities, build and control armies, perhaps it's not for you.

[CommissarXSlim]

Please take the time to read my posts... im complaining because you have to first build the unit to see stats... If you dont read please dont post.

I also never said I didnt want to build up. I said it takes days to do so, and your being disingenous saying late game there is less to upgrade if you dont acknowledge it takes days to get to that point.

[MkV]

I don't know what to tell you, we took a screen shot of every unit the first time we built it and now we have a liabrary, it wasn't that big a deal, certainly not something to complain about. 

Each battle in world warfare is an 8-10 day commitment, you should know that in advance. Those days all have different tasks to perform and prioritize.

Im not being disingenuous, it takes as long as it takes, if you don't like it, don't play. There are many quick fix games out there for people who don't wanna take the time to play this one. 

Ive agreed with some of your issues, and disagreed with some, I've also offered to help you. If your response is just to dig in and argue, I've got nothing for you. If you don't want people to disagree with you, write a diary, not a forum post.

I'm out, Best of luck.

 

[Bonkd]

I agree with you MkV!

 

[CommissarXSlim]

"I don't know what to tell you, we took a screen shot of every unit the first time we built it and now we have a library, it wasn't that big a deal, certainly not something to complain about."

This is good for you and others who have played. I agree it's not a big deal either. But the developers could very easily help new players by providing it, and like you said it would probably only take a few minutes to do so. You have also yet to address any detriment to providing this information. If it only benefits players, why not? And yes, complex games have long learning curves, I'm just saying some resources in game could help make it easier to learn....

" Each battle in world warfare is an 8-10 day commitment, you should know that in advance. Those days all have different tasks to perform and prioritize. "

The game is very demanding on time is all that I've stated. I never stated it was too long. I believe you agreed with the queue idea also so I'm not sure why you fight me on this now. You can agree and disagree with different points but you shouldn't agree and disagree on the same point lol. The other points that could be addressed that I felt made the game more time consuming than it needed to be was the poor AI, and poor load times.

On the AI, I found out the AI dispatches your units to defend by telling them to hold position next to the army base or air base. You have yet to defend this by saying this is appropriate. Instead you say things like "attention to the game is part of the game".... I feel almost anything is better than my units holding position to defend.

Also I appreciate your offer for help but I've decided I don't have the necessary free time to play this game and remain remotely competitive. Most of my losses are from being attacked while I'm asleep or unable to play, and I think the hold position bug has been the bane of my existence. Game is good fun and I hope that it continues to improve in the future.

 

[Commanderburger]

GM's can you stop pinning these people's posts who are just complaining and instead pin topics that are recommending improvements for the game?

[CommissarXSlim]

I have put some of my own suggestions for improvements. Please complain about GMs in your own complaining thread, instead of derailing my complaining thread. Thank you.

[Commanderburger]

8 hours ago, CommissarXSlim said:

I have put some of my own suggestions for improvements. Please complain about GMs in your own complaining thread, instead of derailing my complaining thread. Thank you.

Stop making stupid posts where you're complaining because you don't know how to play the game and then I'll happily not comment on your post.

[Bonkd]

What's your favortite strategy to win? Just wondering, because I know their is many.

1 hour ago, Commanderburger said:

Stop making stupid posts where you're complaining because you don't know how to play the game and then I'll happily not comment on your post.

 

[CommissarXSlim]

 

6 hours ago, Commanderburger said:

Stop making stupid posts where you're complaining because you don't know how to play the game and then I'll happily not comment on your post.

Clearly you didnt read the post since you make a sweeping judgement that i offered no suggestions or improvements and was only complaining. That is simply not true. You either didnt read the post or you were unable to understand it...Go make your own thread if you want to complain. Its rude to offer nothing to the conversation we are having and complain about GMs here when a private message or new thread is a much better way to reach them. Your comment offers nothing of value for anybody.