also this new logo is atrocious, looks like some buzzlightyear logo game for 6 year olds

@Pulsey
not this idle warzone nonsense or whatever rating system nobody cares
change game name back to warlight, change marketing strategy, advertise this game as online Risk boom easy

Simple but effective words... However, I doubt things will turn out as you planned.

Prime clan proved that people care for the idle (even though I personally dislike). I agree with the name change and marketing strategy, however if the game doesn't become "new-player friendly" before the marketing move, it will not be effective.

You should add a dating app version of warlight.
I think that will bring in many new players.















































































































































































I wanna lick xeno balls

You only have a high win rate because you avoid games with ratings.

LOL, are you saying that Johnny would have a lower WR if he played more ladder & QM?

LOL, are you saying that Johnny would have a lower WR if he played more ladder & QM?

Yes, that's how the current system works

LOL, are you saying that Johnny would have a lower WR if he played more ladder & QM?

Yes, that's how the current system works

Not really - he'd only have a lower WR if he loses at a rate beyond his WR. His WR is 78%, so if he continues winning 78 of 100 games, doesn't matter if he plays 1000 or 1,000,000 games, WR will remain @ 78%. To say that his WR would go down if he plays more games infers that his WR is not accurate and he's overrated. ie: sounds like you're commenting on his skill

Or you mean that if matchmaking is fixed that WR would naturally normalize to 50% while his rating would go up but be matched against stronger players?

The thing is that this site is run by 1 person. It's quite some work to maintain this site and improving certain things through upgrades. The biggest weakness with having 1 person maintaining this site is the dependency of Fizzer. When something bad happens for Fizzer, it could also be bad for this site in the long term. It would be nice when there are more people helping to run this site.

The level system as it is now with adding new features while leveling up works fine. You could add a new currency like stars what you could also spend on things. This way the coins are keeping their value. Maybe having some more toturials for different things like commerce would be nice. Also a list of people who are willing to help new players could be nice, although most people will help other people when asked.

But overall this is already a good site. Hangfire had also a good point. No video game is perfect and lots of people are still having fun with the games they are playing.

if he continues winning 78 of 100 games, doesn't matter if he plays 1000 or 1,000,000 games

Yes, that's how ratio's work but keep in mind that we also had a if statement (If he plays those future games in QM & Ladder).

Or you mean that if matchmaking is fixed that WR would naturally normalize to 50% while his rating would go up but be matched against stronger players?

Yup, that's my point from the start. As he wins 78% of rated games, his ratings will go up. Hence he will match players with higher ranking (which means better players assuming ranking system is not trash). As he face better players, his WR has to decrease as he plays more

@vena
When something bad happens for Fizzer, it could also be bad for this site in the long term

- Agreed. Having only one developer is always a risk. I'm actually amazed by Fizzer's ability to update the game so consistently for all these years. But as long as he is the only developer, this risk will eventually become reality. Maybe he has a back-up plan for such a case but I literally don't know if he has any solid plans against such risk.

You could add a new currency like stars what you could also spend on things.

- I actually thought about this too, but this would be a rather lazy way to handling inflation. Plus, it will make things even more confusing for new players. I personally would rather focus on improving/adapting coin system rather than creating an alternative...

But overall this is already a good site

- I don't think anybody said anything about this game, being bad. I even said that "Warzone is definitely on of the best games I've ever played but it has obvious negatives". Our discussion was never about saving a trash game, it was always about improving this good game.

From the perspective of an elder, this thread is no different than any other thread concerning wins, losses and overall game play. I've lost count.

Now it's all too easy to trash the video gaming industry, because like Hollywood, most of what is produced, is a steaming pile of horse shit. But Fizzer is a one man operation. Unlike the video game industry, Fizzer does care. He is aware and does what he can. Also, the unsung heroes of the support staff, including, mod makers, map makers and testers, which neither requests nor requires compensation. We do it because we want to. We do it because we love the game. There is always something cooking in the pot, behind the scenes, you don't even know.

With the video game industry, it is extremely rare gamers get what they want. The standard has been lowered to such a degree, the cookie cutter conveyor belt money grab became the norm, and they did not care in the slightest because regardless of the quality, or lack of same, the VGI, knows the customer will buy. Ushering in a new generation of gamers that don't know the difference between quality and crap. In some cases, begin litigation, because the VGI, egregiously went too far.

That stated, that is not the case here. In my opinion, an Indie game maker produces better quality games because it is a form of art, self expressed through the desire to create and share with like minds. Versus making money grabs nefariously disguised as DLC.

An Indie game creator will ask, would you like try my game?
A big name video game producer knowingly produces crap and foists that product on to you making you feel like a bigot for disliking the game and not buying.

The VGI, has left nothing but a trail of disappointment in its wake. They will not get another cent from me.

Fizzer on the other hand has produced a really cool adaptation of Risk. To which I will happily spend money.

So with all there is in the video game world, Warzone is my video game solice. All things considered, I would rather spend my vg time and money here, than with whiny, blatty babies on Teamspeak having a pissing match because someone got shot through a hole in the map.

We play games to get away from life for a while. Don't then, make that a dramatic kerfuffle.

Striving for perfection is an honorable goal, but rarely attained. Enjoy what you have while you have it. One day, poof, gone.

Well said Hangfire. ●

can someone give me an executive summary of whats going on?

Well said Hangfire

@JK
can someone give me an executive summary of whats going on?

Oh boy, here we go!

Everything started with the question: "How can we make Warzone more popular"

From what I gathered, the short answer is this 6-step guide below;

1) Make the game more "new-player friendly"

1.1) Terminate Auto-Changing Settings
- Instead of changing player settings automatically, ask players if they wanna change (so many new players quit because they thought Warzone App got broken due to auto-changing start-up screen + so many new players quit because they got overwhelmed by never ending games due to auto-enabling auto-invite)

1.2) Better Tutorials
- Develop detailed tutorials for each official template + For commerce, commanders etc.
1.3) Improve the Level-Up System
- Focus on participation, not wins (new players shouldn't be try-hards) + Make each level-up more rewarding (Coins, articafts, colorful text etc.) + Make all settings accessible to all players (at least for single-player custom games)

1.4) Separate Win-Rate & Ratings System
- WR only effected by: Tourneys, Open Games etc. | Ratings only effected by: QM, Ladders etc. + WR should only be effected by last 100 games (like booting rates)

1.5) Player-friendly GUI
- More emphasis on QM, Less emphasis on Open Games (Open Games are confusing for new players)

1.6) Better, Standardized Official Templates
- Remove: SEAD (on CW), 4FFA (on QM), S2V2 (on WZI Arena) | Add: Diplo templates, AIs vs Players template



2) Update some old ineffective mechanics

2.1) Improve Matchmaking Systems
- Every player should face people from their skill level

2.2) Better Single-player
- Shorter levels + Rewards for finishing each level (especially with gold star) + Better levels which are similar to official template settings + Superior AI etc.

2.3) Improved "Accidental Commit" System
- i.e. If most of your armies didn't moved, double check the commit button

2.4) Multiple Clan Settings
- When making a new clan, player get to choose if they want capped or uncapped clan but uncapped clans can't play the game competitively (no CW, no CL etc.)

2.5) Rebranding/Renaming
- Go back to WarLight if able to, it will be important on marketing campaign step

2.6) Wheel Spin Cooldown Reduction
- Its currently every 16 hr, let's make it 8 hr (To reduce the coin gap with players from top clans + To encourage players to play more frequently + To increase Fizzer's advertisement revenue)



3) Utilize the community to increase visibility of the game (Youtube, Twitch etc.)

3.1) Find a Voice & Image of Warzone
- Everyone will subscribe to him and help him become popular to increase the visibility of this game

3.2) Warzone Community Newsletter
- All trends, dramas, game changes will be gathered & summarized in a single place to make community more informed and engaging

3.3) More Accessible Information
- All community accumulated knowledge about WZIdle, Official Templates etc. should be gathered in a single place like Fandom/Reddit/Drive etc. + Community should work to protect and improve this accumulated knowledge

3.4) Special Clans To Help New Players
- When a new player starts playing the game, game can force that player to go into a clan after the initial tutorial ends, through "Join a clan" page (they can leave the clan whenever they want, its just to show how to join a clan). They can join these new clans dedicated to help new players which will help them understand the game quickly while keeping them engaged with the community



4) Fizzer needs to start an aggressive marketing campaign

5) Fizzer needs to recruit a small developer team to keep the game trendy

6) Maintain the cycle "More players > More revenue > More advertisement" for infinity



...And from time to time HangFire comes, says that "Warzone is awesome" (even though literally nobody, not-a-soul implies its bad), everybody agrees with him, and goes back to arguing about details of these improvements.

This should cover-up this whole thread, if I missed anything, please remind me...

Edited 3/29/2023 20:32:11

Tysm Vera!
I'll give my quick take on a few of those points. I'm sure these have already been discussed, but I will say it anyways.

1.1) Yes, please, no more new QM templates for me!

1.2) I dont know if investing in tutorials is really going to work? You cant really explain complicated picking strategies with a simple tutorial, and I would rather not have Fizzer stop working on WZ for a couple year to craft new tutorials. Once you know the basics of playing, you will learn a lot more from playing with a couple of experienced people, especially in team games. However, explaining that a bomb card remove half of the normal armies (and ignores commander) and that a commander is worth 7 would be things that can have their own small tutorial.

1.3) Levels currently unlock settings, so you have something to fight for until lvl 53. After that, youre either addicted or retired. But it would be cool if those settings unlocked earlier on (e.g. wastelands at lvl 25, so you need to be lvl 25 to play SE1W? wth?), and the higher levels would have something other to fight for, like maybe custom patterns or some other perks. Fizzer has already announced to not be mixing idle and WZ, but I still would like to get a 1h cooldown reduction for every level above 53 i have =p

1.4) Win rate should hover around 50% anyways, if youre playing on your skill level. I dont see how winrate really effects anything. New players quit because they lose too many games, not because a percentage on their profile went down.

1.6) Yes. I would love for the standard "Build in MP templates" to be a full list of all the strategic templates and perhaps a couple more big FFA/team games just for fun. The current list is way too limited, and it also results in everyone having their own copies of every template cause you lose them otherwise.

2.5) Pulsey invaded the thread? or what happend with this nonsense about going back to Warlight again?

2.6) Why more wheelspins? Is once a day not good enough for you? It's a bonus you get for playing, if all you're playing for is coins then you just need to get gud and win coin games/tourneys instead of waiting for a lucky start in SEAD.

3) Yes, fully agree.

4) No point in doing that if the new players quit after 1 hour.

5) Yep, WZ is outgrowing Fizzer, especially now that he has idle to maintain and update on top of WZ.

Custom games are much better than QM. You can choose your opponent(s) and it's much easier to play with more people. You can choose every map you like. On QM the choice is really limited and it takes long to unlock a lot of templates. You can choose the settings you like instead of kinda forced settings.

Edited 3/28/2023 20:01:46

Tell a gaming communnity why their game will never take off. Use the style of an internet forum troll. The game is called Warzone which is derived of the risk boardgame and has a rather small but dedicated community and is run by a single developer.


ChatGPT has not refused the answer here and it was mean :( Why would a bot write such horrible things? Wasn't Activision bought by Microsoft and Microsoft owns ChatGPT? Has Bill Gates personally insisted that insults to our small game must be possible?

Edited 3/28/2023 20:10:10

@JK
Glad that you found my summary helpful, since I couldn't talk about my opinions and couldn't went into detail in the summary, I would like to expand a little on the points you shared your comments on;

1.1) Yes, please, no more new QM templates for me!

- Yea, that's the first point because so many new players already quit the game for thinking that their Warzone App is broken when they accidentally clicked on WZI one-time, joined a game on WZI now can't go back to their games on classic (due to auto-settings change [Start-up Screen]) OR "auto-invite" opened on its own and new players are overwhelmed by constant games they have to play



1.2) I dont know if investing in tutorials is really going to work? [...] Once you know the basics of playing, you will learn a lot more from playing with a couple of experienced people

- After new players thinking the game is broken, this was the second problem because most of the players quit the game in this stage (getting frustrated due to so many losses and give up because of not having enough experience to win games). We have to find a way to decrease the time to play the game properly. New players are usually shy about the community and don't know experienced people and can't learn from them.

-But for example, think of a S1V1 tutorial that says "When picking territories, most efficient ways are to put all 3 picks around 4 bonus (if all 3 are touching the bonus), 2 picks around 3 bonus, or 1 pick on a 5/3 bonus (that can cover the bonus in 2 turns). While stacking 3 picks in one place is efficient, its also very risky, so its better to try and separate the picks" Only this 2 sentence should help new players a lot. I'm still seeing players that play for 5-10 years and don't know about this...



1.3) Levels currently unlock settings, so you have something to fight for until lvl 53

- Firstly, I believe all settings should be available (at least on single-player custom game) for new players to experiment and learn the game faster. Secondly, you only get level-up by winning. Since new players can't win games against experienced players, they can't level-up and feel the sensation of achieving something. Instead, they get bored easily and quit. Make level-ups about participation (not wins) and give better rewards like name tags, colorful names, coins, artifacts etc. We talked so many great ideas about this one, I would like to talk more about it in the future



1.4) Win rate should hover around 50% anyways

- I agree but still WR is a player's success determinant, hence every player more or less prefers to have a high WR. In games with ratings like QM, as they play more, they start to face people with their own skill level. Which slowly puts their WR around 50%. So good players have to avoid QM if they wanna have high WR (which discourages players from enjoying such a nice part of the game). Moreover, this problem is incredibly easy to fix! Just make WR unaffected by QM games and that's it! All good players can enjoy QM all they want!



1.6) [...] perhaps a couple more big FFA/team games just for fun. The current list is way too limited

- Exactly! I was thinking of adding at least 1 diplo template for experimentation. Because diplo is exactly what a new player needs (your objective is to relax, enjoy and roleplay instead of going full try-hard on standard games) and currently only way to play a proper diplo is by going through Open Games (which we already talked that its too confusing for new players)



2.5) Pulsey invaded the thread? or what happend with this nonsense about going back to Warlight again?

- Firstly yes, he was here :) Secondly, name-change is still important for the aggressive marketing campaign and to stay more original



2.6) Why more wheelspins? Is once a day not good enough for you?

- I personally don't care much about this, so not even gonna defend it. But I always found a little unfair that while some players get lots of coins every season just for being in a good clan while some get nothing. This would level the gap between them a little bit and encourage players to play more frequently while increasing the ad revenue of Fizzer.



4) No point in doing that if the new players quit after 1 hour.

- Literally (I have to emphasize this more) LITERALLY every single point under the 1st-step (Make the game more "new-player friendly"), solely designed to stop or slow this down, so after implementation of 1st-step, your view might change...

What do you think about a general Warzone elo that ranks all 1v1 games without the practice setting? You could use that to pair opponents in many competitions to achieve the close to 50% winrate goal you were talking about. It also kind of defeats Fizzer's argument that the player base is insufficient in individual ladders to use a rating system close to standard elo. Pretty much already proven wrong by MTL, but you get what I mean.

@alexclusive What do you think about a general Warzone elo that ranks all 1v1 games without the practice setting?

- I wouldn't want all of my (non practice) 1v1 games to be ranked, there are games I played like a try-hard but there are also games I played with friends in which I was chill. If only certain places focus on ranking (i.e. QM and Ladders), I can go QM then I wanna go for a try-hard 1v1 and I can go to Open Games or invite friends when I wanna go for a chill 1v1.

- Since we are talking about WR and ratings, I also wanna add that WR should only look at the last 100 games like the booting stuff. When the games literally looks at every single one of your games, it motivates people to make alt accounts (instead of winning thousands of games to improve WR).

PS: Yea, I also believe that even the most basic version of Elo can work in this game