I tried to find a way to send this as a message to Germanico but couldn’t so I’m posting it here and hoping he’ll read it and then delete it like he deletes all other posts about gold. I really like this game, want it to do earn lots of money and do well and certainly don’t want to break any rules.
Please hear me out.
I implore you not to take this post the wrong way. I am a successful businessman who grew up playing war games and like to still do it in my spare time. I think you have a good product here with this one big flaw and if you fix it you can get a much, much larger user base of paying customers, a much larger devoted community of users and far less churn. You have made your point of view very clear on the forums but I just know that if you alter your thinking about purchased gold and make it more reasonable, this game could really be something.
Four out of the last 5 games I started had a massive gold user that just ruined those games for everyone. The percentage is too high. I hope you will read the below knowing that it was written with the best intention in mind in order to help the game be more monetarily successful by becoming more popular, reducing churn because far fewer games are useless to play since there is no chance of success and creating a condition where buying and using gold will happen more often by more players and won’t be frowned upon by other players and won’t ruin so many games.
This is a fun strategy game when there aren’t any players using massive amounts of gold, but as you know when a player spends enormous amounts of gold in a game, it is no longer a strategy game since no amount of strategy can overcome massive amounts of gold. I recently introduced a friend to this game and after playing a bit he said, “So this company’s business case is to let people pay to cheat?”It doesn’t make sense that the company would spend so much time and effort to make, maintain and constantly improve this fun strategy game only to have this one issue in the game ruin everything and be the cause of massive churn. People start playing this game because they want to play a WWII-type strategy game, and I think a lot of people stop playing when they keep encountering this big gold issue over and over again in the majority of the games they play.
There is a big problem with gold that is ruining far too many games and the use of gold needs to be changed.
The fundamental problem is that the amount of gold that can be purchased is way out of line with the amount of gold that is given for winning games, and these two need to be brought in line. If you win a couple games, you will have enough gold to get you out of a jam and if you buy the max gold, you should get the same. And this is the key concept. Someone at the company thought out the amount of gold given for winning games and the effect that gold would have on subsequent games. It is reasonable. But then the amount of gold someone can purchase just blows that whole system up and makes it irrelevant. It is unreasonable.
Gold should of course still be used in the game and thus the company can still make lots of money from it but the amount of purchased gold needs to be recalibrated to make it more reasonable. The underlying concept of gold needs to be changed from ‘Buy enough gold to ruin many games’ to ‘Buy some gold to get you out of a jam’, and by ‘jam’ I mostly mean protecting a Homeland city from an initial attack. And what does a player need to do this? Maybe rush build a higher level army base, rush research something and rush build a few units. I’m thinking a couple SAMs or tanks in most cases would be enough. And how much Gold is necessary for this? Max maybe 10,000 Gold? So 10,000 should be the maximum amount of Gold a player can purchase and it should be for maybe USD$ 10-20. There can be tiers down from there, I suggest 5000 and 2500 and that’s it. The amount of gold in the game needs to be severely reduced to keep many more games as strategy games that are fun for everyone to play.
Even if someone goes crazy and spend $50 on gold, it will give him a big advantage, but possibly not an insurmountable one by very good player. And if a player goes really crazy and spends $100 on a game, only that game will be ruined. Right now for 140 Euro (around USD$150) a player can buy 760,000 gold and with the 250% bonus multiplier can actually buy over 2.5 million gold for that money. How many games can he ruin with that?! The amount of gold a player can purchase needs to be brought much more into line with the amount of gold a player gets at the end of each game.
I am confident that the economics of bringing these two gold systems in line will have a very good chance to actually work out better for the company. After making these changes to the use of gold, with the vast majority of games now fun and competitive, there will be more players, there will be a lot less churn , more of a devoted community and players will be willing to buy gold more often to get them out of jams. Super popular games get that way because they prevent cheating, not condone it. Currently when I look over the map and see that someone is spending massive amounts of gold somewhere I instantly become disinvested in the game. I’m not going to spend money on it nor am I even going to try hard anymore. What’s the use? I’ve gone up against Golders before and it is stupid, there is no chance. But if I know that a player can only use Gold to help him get out of jams and I have a big size or strategic advantage when I encounter him then I would take it as a challenge and would still be invested in a game. And while he may use some gold to help him out for a bit, I know that it is still possible for me to out play him and win.
And finally, the use of the unlimited gold cheat needs to be stopped. If you Google ‘Conflict Nations Cheat’ there is a program that gives you unlimited gold in the game. I think that many people are using this to spend unlimited amounts of gold in a game and doing things like annexing 30+ cities by Day 5. The company knows which accounts purchase gold and how much they purchased. If someone spends gold who hasn’t purchased it, the account and the IP address of that account should be banned. Also if someone spends more gold than they purchased, the same should happen. This check on Gold each time it is used in a game should be very easy to implement, doesn’t risk losing the company lost sales and maintains the integrity of the game. It may be that you are already blocking this cheat and the players spending gold like that are actually purchasing it, I don't know. But I wanted to let you know that the cheat is out there if you didn't know already.
The way purchased gold is currently structured is ruining games and if it were just some games, it would be reasonable but now that a large majority of games are being ruined, it is out of hand and really should be changed. It just has to be causing so many people to get frustrated and quit playing. I firmly believe that the above ideas will make the game much more fun, popular and more profitable than ever.
Please hear me out.
I implore you not to take this post the wrong way. I am a successful businessman who grew up playing war games and like to still do it in my spare time. I think you have a good product here with this one big flaw and if you fix it you can get a much, much larger user base of paying customers, a much larger devoted community of users and far less churn. You have made your point of view very clear on the forums but I just know that if you alter your thinking about purchased gold and make it more reasonable, this game could really be something.
Four out of the last 5 games I started had a massive gold user that just ruined those games for everyone. The percentage is too high. I hope you will read the below knowing that it was written with the best intention in mind in order to help the game be more monetarily successful by becoming more popular, reducing churn because far fewer games are useless to play since there is no chance of success and creating a condition where buying and using gold will happen more often by more players and won’t be frowned upon by other players and won’t ruin so many games.
This is a fun strategy game when there aren’t any players using massive amounts of gold, but as you know when a player spends enormous amounts of gold in a game, it is no longer a strategy game since no amount of strategy can overcome massive amounts of gold. I recently introduced a friend to this game and after playing a bit he said, “So this company’s business case is to let people pay to cheat?”It doesn’t make sense that the company would spend so much time and effort to make, maintain and constantly improve this fun strategy game only to have this one issue in the game ruin everything and be the cause of massive churn. People start playing this game because they want to play a WWII-type strategy game, and I think a lot of people stop playing when they keep encountering this big gold issue over and over again in the majority of the games they play.
There is a big problem with gold that is ruining far too many games and the use of gold needs to be changed.
The fundamental problem is that the amount of gold that can be purchased is way out of line with the amount of gold that is given for winning games, and these two need to be brought in line. If you win a couple games, you will have enough gold to get you out of a jam and if you buy the max gold, you should get the same. And this is the key concept. Someone at the company thought out the amount of gold given for winning games and the effect that gold would have on subsequent games. It is reasonable. But then the amount of gold someone can purchase just blows that whole system up and makes it irrelevant. It is unreasonable.
Gold should of course still be used in the game and thus the company can still make lots of money from it but the amount of purchased gold needs to be recalibrated to make it more reasonable. The underlying concept of gold needs to be changed from ‘Buy enough gold to ruin many games’ to ‘Buy some gold to get you out of a jam’, and by ‘jam’ I mostly mean protecting a Homeland city from an initial attack. And what does a player need to do this? Maybe rush build a higher level army base, rush research something and rush build a few units. I’m thinking a couple SAMs or tanks in most cases would be enough. And how much Gold is necessary for this? Max maybe 10,000 Gold? So 10,000 should be the maximum amount of Gold a player can purchase and it should be for maybe USD$ 10-20. There can be tiers down from there, I suggest 5000 and 2500 and that’s it. The amount of gold in the game needs to be severely reduced to keep many more games as strategy games that are fun for everyone to play.
Even if someone goes crazy and spend $50 on gold, it will give him a big advantage, but possibly not an insurmountable one by very good player. And if a player goes really crazy and spends $100 on a game, only that game will be ruined. Right now for 140 Euro (around USD$150) a player can buy 760,000 gold and with the 250% bonus multiplier can actually buy over 2.5 million gold for that money. How many games can he ruin with that?! The amount of gold a player can purchase needs to be brought much more into line with the amount of gold a player gets at the end of each game.
I am confident that the economics of bringing these two gold systems in line will have a very good chance to actually work out better for the company. After making these changes to the use of gold, with the vast majority of games now fun and competitive, there will be more players, there will be a lot less churn , more of a devoted community and players will be willing to buy gold more often to get them out of jams. Super popular games get that way because they prevent cheating, not condone it. Currently when I look over the map and see that someone is spending massive amounts of gold somewhere I instantly become disinvested in the game. I’m not going to spend money on it nor am I even going to try hard anymore. What’s the use? I’ve gone up against Golders before and it is stupid, there is no chance. But if I know that a player can only use Gold to help him get out of jams and I have a big size or strategic advantage when I encounter him then I would take it as a challenge and would still be invested in a game. And while he may use some gold to help him out for a bit, I know that it is still possible for me to out play him and win.
And finally, the use of the unlimited gold cheat needs to be stopped. If you Google ‘Conflict Nations Cheat’ there is a program that gives you unlimited gold in the game. I think that many people are using this to spend unlimited amounts of gold in a game and doing things like annexing 30+ cities by Day 5. The company knows which accounts purchase gold and how much they purchased. If someone spends gold who hasn’t purchased it, the account and the IP address of that account should be banned. Also if someone spends more gold than they purchased, the same should happen. This check on Gold each time it is used in a game should be very easy to implement, doesn’t risk losing the company lost sales and maintains the integrity of the game. It may be that you are already blocking this cheat and the players spending gold like that are actually purchasing it, I don't know. But I wanted to let you know that the cheat is out there if you didn't know already.
The way purchased gold is currently structured is ruining games and if it were just some games, it would be reasonable but now that a large majority of games are being ruined, it is out of hand and really should be changed. It just has to be causing so many people to get frustrated and quit playing. I firmly believe that the above ideas will make the game much more fun, popular and more profitable than ever.