Here are my thoughts on the newly released mobile app. (Tested on a Google Pixel 1 and an LG G8 ThinQ)
The Good
My overall thoughts:
The mobile app is a very welcome addition. It has some bugs that are to be expected from a beta version. However, there is great visual inconstancy between the mobile version of CoN and the desktop version, and it feels like a reskin of the CoW mobile app.
The Good
- After 22 months of development, this exists!
- UI that is similar to the desktop version
- Push notifications!
- Zooming in/out is very smooth (for a while).
- Animated oceans! (courtesy of CoW)
- A new timer that shows how long it has been since you last logged in (finally!)
- You can now see other games you are in without exiting the game you are currently in.
- Weird and unintuitive automatic account creation when you press "Play" - an account should be created before actually playing
- There is no way to log out of an account without clearing the cache of the app
- The new(?) Account Deletion Survey has several typos. Also, while filling the text boxes, the keyboard covers the text boxes. The text boxes should be pushed to the top of the screen while typing. After typing, the 3-button navigation bar from the Android OS stays on the screen and covers the bottom navigation bar in the game.
- Going into the shop while playing a game and then pressing Back in the Android OS's built-in navigation system results in a frozen map.
- Text size is too small in some places, such as the VP counter in the Team Progress bar.
- The background noise is overlayed with the ambient noise for a city.
- Background noises continue even while the phone is off or the app is not open
- Background noises are way too quiet compared to the other sound effects.
- The Open Terrain ambient noise sounds different
- There is now way to see exactly how much of a specific resource you have if you have more than 1000 of it.
- The menu that is brought up when the resource bar is tapped is too spaced out - the text should be bigger
- In the research tab, there is no way to know what each of the icons for each unit-specific trait means. This also means that it is impossible to determine the radar signature size of a unit.
- Tapping any province or unit gives a sluggish response, especially when zoomed out.
- Push notifications are buggy: if a territory is conquered, it shows a message such as "Game 3179726: Territory {{{provLink 'Maintirano'}}} has been conquered by azrail0234 ({{{countryLink 'Syria' '49'}}})."
- There is no way to disable all push notifications without using the Android OS's builtin functions
- Visual inconsistency
- Why is there a totally new visual style for the map? It doesn't use the high-quality NASA images that CoN prides itself on and just uses CoW-esque terrain overlays.
- The resource icons used in the city names on the map look totally different from the ones currently used in the desktop version (and the components sprite looks especially odd).
- The air base icons that appear on the map look different from the other buildings.
- The old flags are used rather than the new ones
- The "Coming Soon" message should look like the error messages in CoN but instead look exactly like the ones the use in CoW
- Other players have a blue hue that slightly vary between nations. In the desktop version, all other nations are the same shade and do not have a blue hue.
- Other players in your coalition do not have thick white borders between them, unlike the desktop version.
- Other players in your coalition have an unappealing yellow hue. They should have a green hue, like the desktop version.
- From certain viewpoints near 180°E, the bottom of the map outside the playable area looks like an ocean.
- Air units move around their patrol area significantly faster (although it is very smooth).
- The ocean animation looks more like crumpled foil than an actual ocean.
- Rivers have the same animations as oceans, but rivers do not look like oceans in real life.
- While on this topic, rivers and coastal waters should be considered separate from oceans in that they should be considered a part of the country that owns those waters.
- While on this topic, rivers and coastal waters should be considered separate from oceans in that they should be considered a part of the country that owns those waters.
- My take on these visual changes: some of these changes such as the removal of the high-quality satellite seem to have been made to improve performance on low end devices, there should be an HD mode that can be chosen that will use higher quality images and possibly even the 3D models that each unit has (rather than the 12 pre-rendered images that each unit normally has)
- Why is there a totally new visual style for the map? It doesn't use the high-quality NASA images that CoN prides itself on and just uses CoW-esque terrain overlays.
My overall thoughts:
The mobile app is a very welcome addition. It has some bugs that are to be expected from a beta version. However, there is great visual inconstancy between the mobile version of CoN and the desktop version, and it feels like a reskin of the CoW mobile app.
