I remember when someone's request for a clan messages system (clan manager send mail/notification to all other clan members) got marked as done because clan chat exists 🤣


yo that was mine im pretty sure. went through the effort of describing it just for fizzer to mark it as done

even messaged him about it after and no reply :(

Oh I misunderstood ... so you submitted a request for functionality that didn't exist, and it got marked as Completed despite not actually being implemented... is that right?

smh

@JK
Yea that sucks. Hence why I spend no more effort on CW. I play when all the factors coincidentally align now (at my PC, have time, CW timeslot opens, has a good template & I'm in the mood to play), and I think I've played 4 games in S7 total. Yay CW.

Oh I misunderstood ... so you submitted a request for functionality that didn't exist, and it got marked as Completed despite not actually being implemented... is that right?

smh

Yes, see: https://warlight.uservoice.com/forums/77051-warzone-features/suggestions/42552910-clan-pm-system

looks like you put a lot of effort into this thread

"PS, did you expect something activity- rather than skill-based to be alive? :)

This is not the first game where this was tried and it won't be the last. Activity competitions always create attention for a short time and then nobody cares anymore. Conversely, skill competitions can canalize attention for many years to come. We've put to Fizzer's attention for a decade now that this game's problem is that built-in skill-based competitions are drastically missing and those that exist feature terrible rating systems.

If his response to that is to invest time in an activity-based feature with unpopular templates that only offers rewards in some idle game, then this is just a new big demonstration why our efforts were wasted."

This crisply hits the nail on the head.

Thanks, Plat^^

Regarding the clan chat request, it seems to me that while he didn’t implement exactly what you wanted, you effectively have that functionality available to you with a combination of clan chat and the clan forum. Just make a post in the clan forum and then drop a message in the clan chat to "notify" clan members that they should check the clan forum. He probably should have given a response rather than just making it done though.

That's not going to work for an active or large clan where the chat scrolls beyond the top of the window before every member has a chance to see it. The real current fix for that request would be a script to DM your clan in batches of 1-20 players, which has been reinvented a few times by different clans but ofc doesn't exactly get shared since it's ToS-breaking.

Also posts to the Clan Forum already show up in Clan Chat, so '""notify"ing"' in Clan Chat would be redundant. I'm sure UFO was aware of both the Clan Forum and Clan Chat when making that request (in January of this year)... so it stands to reason that he didn't find the existing functionality exactly adequate.

For whatever reason, people are much more likely to respond to and act on DMs than they are to clan-wide chat messages or messages in a general clan forum. In large clans I don't think you get anything nearly as good as DMs when it comes to response rates.

Edited 12/17/2021 02:29:15

^ that was my idea. because most people dont check clan forums or clan chat

now i think of it more it would be great if clan management could tick clan forums that are priority and it becomes a notification for all clan members. for example an urgent announcement or such. also make it that clan members can untick the box for themselves when they enter the forum so they arent hassled with lots of notifications if they arent intrested

Yeah its quite annoying to mail every member. So i just made a new account meant for mailing, removed all friends and added all clanmembers as friends and am able to send 20 mails a time. I suspect this is the case of majority of clans.

Great post, but two suggestions:

1) Title should be: Why Clan Wars Died.

and

2) You should have added in the fact that his thread would garner over 100 comments from the games most influential and hardcore players, yet narry a response from the developer to fix anything.

Iirc lavrov made the title intentionally clickbaity, and im sure Fizzer has read all of our suggestions (but will nevertheless not implement them)


Maybe it would be cool if Fizzer wrote a detailed dev blog, where he explains so of the design choices he made. Right now, its mostly one way communication, with the community pointing out problems in updates. Knowing why Fizzer does what he did might help improve our feedback.

Surely we could fix all these problems if we just were able to communicate better with Fizzer. /s

I don't think it's a communication issue. I think the financial interests of a f2p game dev are either orthogonal or diametrically opposed to improving the player experience. You don't generate revenue when the base free version of the game is highly enjoyable.

Look at the transformation of Halo, which just now adopted the f2p-with-microtransactions model on multiplayer. For prior Halo games, the incentives of the player base and devs were aligned because players bought copies of the game and paid for subscriptions (like Xbox Live) if they enjoyed the experience of the game: so making the game more fun meant more $. Now, in Halo 6, the interests conflict: attracting players to the game is a solved problem, while converting them to revenue requires creating just enough frustration for them to dump money into the game so they can maybe improve their experience just enough to justify the hours they already burned on the f2p game. Now if you make Halo 6 MP really fun out of the box, you lose $.

That's where Idle fits in: it's a way to monetize the player base (mainly existing Classic players, not a new separate Idle crowd- that's why the games are so tightly coupled) by generating timed dopamine hits with frustrating experiences people will pay coins ($) to skip past. And CW probably exists to nudge Classic players toward Idle, not to create an enjoyable experience by itself- after all, you probably don't play CW because it's fun so much as out of a sense of obligation to your clan mates. And post-5.12 clans have been reworked to nudge them to prioritize CW instead of on offering the intangible value that a good clan offers.

In short, f2p isn't an act of altruism (except when the plan actually is to not make revenue- like with the MTL, which is just a moneysink). It's a business strategy, and one imo that's ultimately bad for enjoyment in gaming.

CW isn't broken or dead. It's working as intended.

/hottake

Edited 12/19/2021 22:33:16

Interesting points. Let's take a game like Fortnite. In itself enjoyable as is but its basic, You pay to enhance and customise your experience. In that case, mostly with skins, emotes etc. I dont think players pay to bypass frustrations, they simply leave/stop playing or find an alternative.

Idle does not enhance the playing experience here, neither does commanders, bomb cards or any of that. Charging excessive amounts for colours just doesn't cut it. Clans I assume are a popular and financially better than other options given these really do add to the gaming experience, add another level, enable you to customise your gaming experience.

Now imagine, a members only ladder, where there were real prizes, a members only clan cup likewise with prizes, site sponsored live events for members, you get the point. People would pay as this is an enhancement of your experience and ultimately you're getting something back for your investment. Outside of a clan, there is nothing on this site I would pay for and therein is the problem.

Let's take a game like Fortnite

Their main revenue driver is Battle Pass, though, so they make money not with just cosmetics but also with paywalling the progression system. The base game is incomplete, and that's why they can afford to make it f2p.

Other online Risk-like games do this- they paywall things like multi-player and real-time games, so that the base experience is incomplete. On Risk: Global Domination, you basically get 2 MP games a day unless you buy tokens or memberships. On others like Conquer Club, you need memberships or tokens to play RT games/etc.

Warzone offers basically the complete package for free- we take stuff like RT MP games for granted on this site that players on other Risk games have to pay for.

Now imagine, a members only ladder

I think this is how the ladder worked originally- iirc, this is why Nauz has so many alts with Membership. Idk why that didn't work out- maybe a chicken-and-egg problem where the ladder is only valuable if a bunch of players are actively participating?

Idle is only the latest piece of this game's business model. Prior to Idle, there's been multiple versions of Membership- with Membership (imo) definitely not offering much today relative to the free play experience. There's been clans but so far they've generated probably like ~$6-8k of revenue, 'cause really what's the value of a clan? For most it's just a chat and a tag next to their name. And there's coins, ads, etc.

f2p games make non-ad $ by creating an enjoyment gradient between the free and paid experiences. You could do this by paywalling massive value-adds that are critical to enjoying the game (esp. if it's MP and you're locked out of the progression mechanics that everyone else enjoys) or by refusing to paywall but doing the little frustration trap thing that Idle does, a more hidden and probably more effective approach than an explicit "pay $x to actually enjoy the game" transaction.

I guess making Clan Wars a much better experience might spur clan purchases, but that's hard to test.

Edited 12/19/2021 23:39:35

i hated town of salem when they made it so u had to pay the play the base game, before it was that u payed for the expansions but now u need a stupid subscription

i hated town of salem when they made it so u had to pay the play the base game, before it was that u payed for the expansions but now u need a stupid subscription

They had troll problems. If you had created an account before they made it pay to play, you can still play on it, it is grandfathered.

Though the player base (at least on ranked classic) is now very low, so having high elo no longer guarantees that people will be able to read.

Edited 12/21/2021 22:58:35

" I think the financial interests of a f2p game dev are either orthogonal or diametrically opposed to improving the player experience."

This is not necessarily true. There is old and simple economic equation that says that 20% of customers generate 80% of revenue. To adapt it to f2p game dev situation, the more players you have, the higher income you get.

I play Hattrick, which is f2p game as well. Its kinda similar to Warzone in the fact it exist for long time and has big tradition. But they have experience with how big userbase actually work, because there were years when Hattrick had million+ active users. So game devs communicate with players actively with aim to improve game experience, because they know that more players equals more money.

Of course they make mistakes, too, but they are willing to back up from hasty changes if community lets them know those changes are bad. And with current count around 200 000 players, the active part of community is big enough to be relevant. Which is big advantage in comparison to WZ, where vocal part of community are few dozen players, who are, on top of that, engaged in top strategic play which is niche relatively to many other modes the game is played in. So Fizzer ignore them,assuming that their voice is not representative of the whole userbase.

But I dare to say this assumption is wrong. Here is why - people who are higly engaged in an activity see and know a lot about it. It just happens due to the way WZ is structured, with many game modes, that people with high interest gravitate towards strategic play, because it requires high interest to be actually enjoyable. So its not about the fact that vocal part of community represents niche group of strategic players, but the other way around - strategic players are the most active part of community exactly because they enjoy the game mode which requires the most activity to be enjoyable.

Edited 12/22/2021 09:20:29

can you make the shitposting more condensed pls

To adapt it to f2p game dev situation, the more players you have, the higher income you get.

That assumes revenue per user remains constant as you increase users, which isn't necessarily true but can be under the right business model.

So game devs communicate with players actively with aim to improve game experience, because they know that more players equals more money.

Their business model seems to be similar to what WZ does with Memberships, except the Hattrick Supporter membership seems to offer a lot more value for a dedicated user: https://www.hattrick.org/en/Help/Supporter/About.aspx

This creates an incentive alignment where having users stick around and enjoy the game means that the Hattrick Supporter membership would offer them a lot more value and they'd be more likely to buy it. I don't think such an approach worked for WL.