Atwar: The Rise and Fall

Greetings WD here, this post about atwar in a abstract manner. This post will talk about what I believe made atwar so popular, why it declined, and what I believe we need to do in order to fix some of the issues we face today. Please I ask moderators to allow an honest discussion about what we can do for the future of atwar if it is to survive. I ask that you remove anybody who is affiliated with DEUS VULT and TREE PEOPLE so we may have a serious discussion.

How did Atwar become popular

Personally, I found atwar while browsing kongregate.com. What I was looking for was a grand strategy game where you control massive armies and take over the world. I was amazed at the variety that atwar offered. There was scenarios, custom maps, and a strong competitive scene. I was just expecting a risk style game where you play the same map over and over, but I found something much more. What made atwar popular was it's innovative gameplay and the ability to make custom maps.


What made atwar difficult to get into

Atwar is a complex game, so it understandably has a very steep learning curve. As a new player, there are thousands of things you need to learn before you can start winning this game. There are also dozens of upgrades that you need to buy to even stand a chance versus higher ranked players. The slow progress of ranking up and buying upgrades made atwar a very grindy game. You need to invest massive amounts of time before you can enjoy playing the game. Not only that, atwar is mostly a pay to win game where the premium general and associated general's upgrades are absolutely REQUIRED to play competitively. Finally, the lack of advertisement has stagnated atwar's growth into where it is now where we are steadily declining.

There is a threshold when people stop caring about SP and focus more on having fun and enjoying the game. This is around rank 8-9 when you have most of the necessary upgrades. This is an incredibly steep hill for new players to climb before they can start fully enjoying the game. I feel as if there is not enough support for new players in their grind. They are basically tossed into a pit and told "good luck." There needs to be more mentors (who teach ukr) and maps need to be more catered to people without most of the upgrades. We need to invest more into our future players. The rank 3 noob you helped could turn out to be a programmer who one day works for atwar. He could create the most amazing maps after buying premium because we helped him get pass the cliff. He could even advertise the game to his friends and grow the community.

The pay to win aspect of atwar is difficult to address because atwar is a business in the end. The owners need to make money and so there is a lot of incentive to buy premium. You are basically required premium to host scenarios and maps and you need it to unlock extra options in your game. Maybe the admins should give free players this option will allow them to see more of atwar before they decide to buy premium. A major feature that free players don't have is the general. Having a general makes atwar pay to win. This feature needs to remain though to encourage people to buy premium. Something people can do as a community is to suicide our general to make it more fair when we fight non premiums. Lastly, the map maker and scenario maker is the last attraction of having premium. Most (95%) of players won't even bother with this feature at all. It is difficult to get into and making maps and then scenarios is time consuming and plagued by bugs. We need to get the HTML5 scenario editor out already, it is already functional on the test server and I don't know why they keep withholding it for more testing. We as a community also need to promote map making and scenario making. Hosting protocoin contests for maps and scenarios is a possibility. Maybe more medals and incentive for people to make maps?

The third massive problem that atwar has is the lack of advertising. Personally, the only reason I found atwar was from kongregate. This is not enough to sustain a game. There have been ideas of expanding to platforms such as steam to get more players. Atwar youtubers also help make the game more popular and we should encourage people to make more atwar contents.


What are your thoughts on this and what can we as the players do for the future of atwar?

Nobody cares
all i care about is that i'm a tree
PS:4nic did put upvote in 30seconds (nice fast reading skills)

Hold up... did WD just topic steal from Helly?!

Very thoughtful post.

The admin team is on the same page about custom maps / scenarios being the future of the game, which is why we're investing so heavy on it. We may have few map makers and scenario makers at this time, but the consumers of these maps still represents a big portion of our playerbase, and we want that to grow.

We've tried and supported initiatives to train the players and help beginners but at the end of the day they didn't helped much to solve the issue. Perhaps we can analyze why they failed, and what to do about it.

We also invested heavy on the social media and marketing for several years with little results. The supporter team is still doing it nowadays.

The only thing we haven't tried is to solve all the technical issues that we're having now. I'm focusing on that hoping that somehow we can move everything else forward, but there's a serious inactivity issue that we need to tackle first, and it looks like that will only become worsen. I ran out of ideas to combat that.

Geschrieben von Sultan of Swing, 29.09.2018 at 17:05

Hold up... did WD just topic steal from Helly?!

Will make mine that much better in comparison.

I think we all believe in AtWar's potentials. But its success does not rely on its potential sorely. This game survived terrible circumstances for years and carried on. Even though we might never get frequent reforms and intiative administration minor directions and reforms might just do. Thus even if miracle will not happen and we will not get to spread the message to the rest of the world the game can still become dramaticlly better.

In other game I play there is a term called degenrate gameplay - the meaning is gamestyle that does not rely on reading and understanding but on implementing variety of memorable techniques that are enough to win games. I think many players appealing that all across the game (Trenches scenarios. unlimited money. LB Italy. T1 rushes and etc). And as time passed it became more and more popular. The thing is players who do it succesfully develope ego and eventually stop enjoying realistic gameplay because they can not match expectations. And for new players it's even worse because without high's rank general and upgrades and they don't stand the slightest chance thus eventually active gameplay is available to very few who don't get tired of this.

In trading card games for examples they have banlist that updates every 3 months so players get new meta to explore 4 times ayear. But we need to be realistic and understand that Ivan Amok and Clovis have limited sources and time. So as I said they can help the community to fix itself by directing new players and encouraging vetreans to play fairly. You can see they understood the problem and added optional non upgrades game. The problem is it was too generic and too hard to implement even for players with good will. Why not adding 4times sp booster for these games? some trophies? random protocoins in world games? hosting tournaments? so both novice and vetreans can play together? Spending some time on tutorial that actually explains the game?

Regarding the struggles of competetive community - the problem is it's very hard time to fix strategies because they affect both scenarios and euro+ maps. So meta stays the same for too long and most complains except from bugs is that there are no updates. I noticed that Clovis suggested to add new upgrades. Problem is it will create even harsher gap. Then why not adding optional strategies changes for cws and duels? or just upgrades for cws? I know specific upgardes for cws will make harder time for new players to participate it but It will also make CWs scene unique. Also you can add bottom to make it optional. And if we are already discussing it why not encouraging new clans to participate in cws in better ways than just SP? because SP booster is not realistic against vetrean clans.

In my opinion you can not solve the problems of the game just by using mapmaker. They will just try to cover the gaps with trenches, unlimited resources, 1 enemy that cannot attack you. RP rules and so on.. And I think we all understand it does not help the future of the game in any way because we already tried it for years and it did'nt work. You need to encourage middle ground between the two parts of community while supporting the competetive one. I know it's sounds hards but compared to mapmaker It's really not a lot of work.

Geschrieben von clovis1122, 29.09.2018 at 17:05

Very thoughtful post.

The admin team is on the same page about custom maps / scenarios being the future of the game, which is why we're investing so heavy on it. We may have few map makers and scenario makers at this time, but the consumers of these maps still represents a big portion of our playerbase, and we want that to grow.

We've tried and supported initiatives to train the players and help beginners but at the end of the day they didn't helped much to solve the issue. Perhaps we can analyze why they failed, and what to do about it.

We also invested heavy on the social media and marketing for several years with little results. The supporter team is still doing it nowadays.

The only thing we haven't tried is to solve all the technical issues that we're having now. I'm focusing on that hoping that somehow we can move everything else forward, but there's a serious inactivity issue that we need to tackle first, and it looks like that will only become worsen. I ran out of ideas to combat that.

What is holding up the html5 scenario editor?

I've already figured out a foolproof way to make maps in html5.

For uploading background and images, use firefox.
For drawing countries and deleting them, use chrome.

If you do that, html5 editor is perfect. Each browser is buggy doing a certain thing and using both solves all the issues.

Great thread wd. i think its this type of originality of talking about atwar in an abstract manner is exactly what we need to respark atwar.

Geschrieben von Witch-Doctor, 29.09.2018 at 18:00

Geschrieben von clovis1122, 29.09.2018 at 17:05

Very thoughtful post.

The admin team is on the same page about custom maps / scenarios being the future of the game, which is why we're investing so heavy on it. We may have few map makers and scenario makers at this time, but the consumers of these maps still represents a big portion of our playerbase, and we want that to grow.

We've tried and supported initiatives to train the players and help beginners but at the end of the day they didn't helped much to solve the issue. Perhaps we can analyze why they failed, and what to do about it.

We also invested heavy on the social media and marketing for several years with little results. The supporter team is still doing it nowadays.

The only thing we haven't tried is to solve all the technical issues that we're having now. I'm focusing on that hoping that somehow we can move everything else forward, but there's a serious inactivity issue that we need to tackle first, and it looks like that will only become worsen. I ran out of ideas to combat that.

What is holding up the html5 scenario editor?

I've already figured out a foolproof way to make maps in html5.

For uploading background and images, use firefox.
For drawing countries and deleting them, use chrome.

If you do that, html5 editor is perfect. Each browser is buggy doing a certain thing and using both solves all the issues.

Yes, that is truly the way to market a game: Use different browsers to commit simple actions.

Geschrieben von Guest, 29.09.2018 at 18:06

Geschrieben von Witch-Doctor, 29.09.2018 at 18:00

Geschrieben von clovis1122, 29.09.2018 at 17:05

Very thoughtful post.

The admin team is on the same page about custom maps / scenarios being the future of the game, which is why we're investing so heavy on it. We may have few map makers and scenario makers at this time, but the consumers of these maps still represents a big portion of our playerbase, and we want that to grow.

We've tried and supported initiatives to train the players and help beginners but at the end of the day they didn't helped much to solve the issue. Perhaps we can analyze why they failed, and what to do about it.

We also invested heavy on the social media and marketing for several years with little results. The supporter team is still doing it nowadays.

The only thing we haven't tried is to solve all the technical issues that we're having now. I'm focusing on that hoping that somehow we can move everything else forward, but there's a serious inactivity issue that we need to tackle first, and it looks like that will only become worsen. I ran out of ideas to combat that.

What is holding up the html5 scenario editor?

I've already figured out a foolproof way to make maps in html5.

For uploading background and images, use firefox.
For drawing countries and deleting them, use chrome.

If you do that, html5 editor is perfect. Each browser is buggy doing a certain thing and using both solves all the issues.

Yes, that is truly the way to market a game: Use different browsers to commit simple actions.

Yes, lets keep holding the scenario editor which is supposedly done so we can fix something with a workaround.

Very good-made thread!

Furthermore, I consider that NWE must be destroyed

Geschrieben von Witch-Doctor, 29.09.2018 at 18:00

What is holding up the html5 scenario editor?

We do have one issue left before we can release it...

You may recall that sometime ago the game suddenly lost the militias as well as a couple of units. Tracking down this problem we realized that someone, somehow, by cloning the default map managed to edit the default units, deleting some of them and editing some of their strats. We've disabled the cloning feature in the live server until this is fixed (since it has such a potentially destroying effect).

I haven't managed to re-do this issue in our test server. I made some changes a month ago to allow Map Makers to edit their cloned maps in the test server, and it was deployed to the test server yesterday. So if anyone can reproduce this issue and let me know, I'll hugely appreciate it!

Geschrieben von Rock Lee, 29.09.2018 at 17:44

I think we all believe in AtWar's potentials. But its success does not rely on its potential sorely. This game survived terrible circumstances for years and carried on. Even though we might never get frequent reforms and intiative administration minor directions and reforms might just do. Thus even if miracle will not happen and we will not get to spread the message to the rest of the world the game can still become dramaticlly better.

In other game I play there is a term called degenrate gameplay - the meaning is gamestyle that does not rely on reading and understanding but on implementing variety of memorable techniques that are enough to win games. I think many players appealing that all across the game (Trenches scenarios. unlimited money. LB Italy. T1 rushes and etc). And as time passed it became more and more popular. The thing is players who do it succesfully develope ego and eventually stop enjoying realistic gameplay because they can not match expectations. And for new players it's even worse because without high's rank general and upgrades and they don't stand the slightest chance thus eventually active gameplay is available to very few who don't get tired of this.

In trading card games for examples they have banlist that updates every 3 months so players get new meta to explore 4 times ayear. But we need to be realistic and understand that Ivan Amok and Clovis have limited sources and time. So as I said they can help the community to fix itself by directing new players and encouraging vetreans to play fairly. You can see they understood the problem and added optional non upgrades game. The problem is it was too generic and too hard to implement even for players with good will. Why not adding 4times sp booster for these games? some trophies? random protocoins in world games? hosting tournaments? so both novice and vetreans can play together? Spending some time on tutorial that actually explains the game?

Regarding the struggles of competetive community - the problem is it's very hard time to fix strategies because they affect both scenarios and euro+ maps. So meta stays the same for too long and most complains except from bugs is that there are no updates. I noticed that Clovis suggested to add new upgrades. Problem is it will create even harsher gap. Then why not adding optional strategies changes for cws and duels? or just upgrades for cws? I know specific upgardes for cws will make harder time for new players to participate it but It will also make CWs scene unique. Also you can add bottom to make it optional. And if we are already discussing it why not encouraging new clans to participate in cws in better ways than just SP? because SP booster is not realistic against vetrean clans.

In my opinion you can not solve the problems of the game just by using mapmaker. They will just try to cover the gaps with trenches, unlimited resources, 1 enemy that cannot attack you. RP rules and so on.. And I think we all understand it does not help the future of the game in any way because we already tried it for years and it did'nt work. You need to encourage middle ground between the two parts of community while supporting the competetive one. I know it's sounds hards but compared to mapmaker It's really not a lot of work.

Well stated, and interesting post. A lot of this is what I have been saying for a while now too

@Everyone read through this if you havent already

Wow eventhough WD is a cunt this is actually a very well-made and rational thread that addresses the game's problems at their core without descending into demonising one thing or the other.

We had a 28 upvote thread on strategy updates and it was ignored by the admins.

https://atwar-game.com/forum/topic.php?topic_id=36144

Why hasnt this been done? We had a meta update at least once a year since 2013 and now it has been over 18 months since the last update. I for 1 am sick of this lb meta.

Don't tell me it's because you're worried about upsetting scen players. Anyone who plays scenarios regularly will appreciate some new toys to try out. All we have to do is avoid any mechanics changing updates that might break maps like the nc change.

Don't tell me the admins are too busy because it only takes 10 mins.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In regards wd's points.

1. functional mapmaker
2. bugfixes
3. Scenario cws.

That's all the game needs right now. Nobody should even think of investing into advertising until these 3 issues are addressed. Protocoin contests for scenarios though could also work and be good.

Geschrieben von SyrianDevil, 29.09.2018 at 16:29

Nobody cares
all i care about is that i'm a tree
PS:4nic did put upvote in 30seconds (nice fast reading skills)

maybe im wds alt who knows

The general thing is spot on. I never would have stuck with this game if beta players weren't automatically gifted premium (plus there was no such thing as a general back then). I would have just stopped playing. Only autists will grind up the mountain that is required to make AW a decent game to play.

Hard to take known trashtalker serious, Roai's post in the other hand is reasonably good.

Geschrieben von Permamuted, 30.09.2018 at 08:19

We had a 28 upvote thread on strategy updates and it was ignored by the admins.

https://atwar-game.com/forum/topic.php?topic_id=36144

Clovis agreed to apply some changes on the modforum but then went silent when asked to do it. Why hasnt this been done? We had a meta update at least once a year since 2013 and now it has been over 18 months since the last update. I for 1 am sick of this lb meta.

Don't tell me it's because you're worried about upsetting scen players. Anyone who plays scenarios regularly will appreciate some new toys to try out. All we have to do is avoid any mechanics changing updates that might break maps like the nc change.

Don't tell me the admins are too busy because it only takes 10 mins.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In regards wd's points.

1. functional mapmaker
2. bugfixes
3. Scenario cws.

That's all the game needs right now. Nobody should even think of investing into advertising until these 3 issues are addressed. Protocoin contests for scenarios though could also work and be good.

One critique I have is in regards to the "PC contest for maps and scenarios", at the moment protocoins don't have much use other than to get premium, but most map makers out there already have lifetime premium so PC's are virtually useless for people who have lifetime prem. The other features like promoting games are kind of useless, it'd be useful if there was consistently about 100+ games at once like in casual. Besides that, good post

Geschrieben von Black Vortex, 01.10.2018 at 19:38

One critique I have is in regards to the "PC contest for maps and scenarios", at the moment protocoins don't have much use other than to get premium, but most map makers out there already have lifetime premium so PC's are virtually useless for people who have lifetime prem. The other features like promoting games are kind of useless, it'd be useful if there was consistently about 100+ games at once like in casual. Besides that, good post

you could gift your PC to newbies.

Geschrieben von Witch-Doctor, 02.10.2018 at 00:39

Geschrieben von Black Vortex, 01.10.2018 at 19:38

One critique I have is in regards to the "PC contest for maps and scenarios", at the moment protocoins don't have much use other than to get premium, but most map makers out there already have lifetime premium so PC's are virtually useless for people who have lifetime prem. The other features like promoting games are kind of useless, it'd be useful if there was consistently about 100+ games at once like in casual. Besides that, good post

you could gift your PC to newbies.

One issue is the "gift protocoins" feature isn't really gifting protocoins, you're buying protocoins for them. There's no direct way to give your already owned protocoins other than by asking an admin to do this for you.

Geschrieben von Black Vortex, 02.10.2018 at 13:29

Geschrieben von Witch-Doctor, 02.10.2018 at 00:39

Geschrieben von Black Vortex, 01.10.2018 at 19:38

One critique I have is in regards to the "PC contest for maps and scenarios", at the moment protocoins don't have much use other than to get premium, but most map makers out there already have lifetime premium so PC's are virtually useless for people who have lifetime prem. The other features like promoting games are kind of useless, it'd be useful if there was consistently about 100+ games at once like in casual. Besides that, good post

you could gift your PC to newbies.

One issue is the "gift protocoins" feature isn't really gifting protocoins, you're buying protocoins for them. There's no direct way to give your already owned protocoins other than by asking an admin to do this for
you.

Clovis is an admin now and he at least responds to msgs.

24 upvotes and helly has only 7 get rekt helly!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Furthermore, I consider that NWE must be destroyed

Geschrieben von Black Vortex, 02.10.2018 at 13:29

Geschrieben von Witch-Doctor, 02.10.2018 at 00:39

Geschrieben von Black Vortex, 01.10.2018 at 19:38

One critique I have is in regards to the "PC contest for maps and scenarios", at the moment protocoins don't have much use other than to get premium, but most map makers out there already have lifetime premium so PC's are virtually useless for people who have lifetime prem. The other features like promoting games are kind of useless, it'd be useful if there was consistently about 100+ games at once like in casual. Besides that, good post

you could gift your PC to newbies.

One issue is the "gift protocoins" feature isn't really gifting protocoins, you're buying protocoins for them. There's no direct way to give your already owned protocoins other than by asking an admin to do this for you.

you can promote this thread (will pr) if you have spared protocoins, i will promote it aswell once clovs (if clovis sees this please dont forget!) will give me my prize for winning a drop

Furthermore, I consider that NWE must be destroyed

Do u plan to add something about the fall ?

A Polish friend of mine from another game recommended this one to me saying 'we are playing this game at school at Informatics 101 class' and while he quit I stuck around. However, I played this game unconsciously till' 2015. In that year I started working from home and I needed some kind of game to keep the working hours more compelling so I 'rediscovered' aw. I've tried to convince my friends to try it, but to no avail, they said it's too grindy. And they are right, without the 2015-2016 grind I couldn't have got to r8-r9, which is the minimum for getting the good upgrades. I waited a long time for the -50 discount of premium, but couldn't get it so I got it with -25. You all forgot the discount, but this makes the premium more attractive! Why did I stuck around a game like aw? Idk for sure, but I will enumerate a few possible reasons:
- I observed that it's always room for improvement in scenarios and competitive and prolly I wanted to get pro too, to find out 'how do they do it'.
- I found a community of players with whom I could play and occasionally chat.
- I needed a simple browser game to play as way of having fun online, this game is catered for some kinds of people or is like a 'come-back' for those who play fps' or mmo's, like a breath of air.
- u can say this game is half chat, half game, meaning that without the chat this game don't mean much, like I think I kept on playing this to keep my written English at a decent level too.
However, as many said it before, life catches u up and you won't be able to grind anymore and that is the perfect time to have r9-r10. For the speeding up of the leveling up I propose double exp weekends and sp discounts for upgrades as in other games.
Even if such a fuss is made around advertising, I agree too that youtubers are the future and they should be encouraged in some way (not because I am one, I have few views, but there are some who have many more), inviting gaming sites to write reviews (there are a lot of high ranks who saw this game on profile sites) and recommending it to your friends, the old fashioned way, which in my case worked. Idk if normal ads work, this game can't compete with some giants.

I have spent at least 3/4 of an hour writing this, I hope it helps!

Moar upgrades Clovis, I want to my rank means something, this way r10 =r16

Geschrieben von Freeman, 04.10.2018 at 23:45

A Polish friend of mine from another game recommended this one to me saying 'we are playing this game at school at Informatics 101 class' and while he quit I stuck around. However, I played this game unconsciously till' 2015. In that year I started working from home and I needed some kind of game to keep the working hours more compelling so I 'rediscovered' aw. I've tried to convince my friends to try it, but to no avail, they said it's too grindy. And they are right, without the 2015-2016 grind I couldn't have got to r8-r9, which is the minimum for getting the good upgrades. I waited a long time for the -50 discount of premium, but couldn't get it so I got it with -25. You all forgot the discount, but this makes the premium more attractive! Why did I stuck around a game like aw? Idk for sure, but I will enumerate a few possible reasons:
- I observed that it's always room for improvement in scenarios and competitive and prolly I wanted to get pro too, to find out 'how do they do it'.
- I found a community of players with whom I could play and occasionally chat.
- I needed a simple browser game to play as way of having fun online, this game is catered for some kinds of people or is like a 'come-back' for those who play fps' or mmo's, like a breath of air.
- u can say this game is half chat, half game, meaning that without the chat this game don't mean much, like I think I kept on playing this to keep my written English at a decent level too.
However, as many said it before, life catches u up and you won't be able to grind anymore and that is the perfect time to have r9-r10. For the speeding up of the leveling up I propose double exp weekends and sp discounts for upgrades as in other games.
Even if such a fuss is made around advertising, I agree too that youtubers are the future and they should be encouraged in some way (not because I am one, I have few views, but there are some who have many more), inviting gaming sites to write reviews (there are a lot of high ranks who saw this game on profile sites) and recommending it to your friends, the old fashioned way, which in my case worked. Idk if normal ads work, this game can't compete with some giants.

I have spent at least 3/4 of an hour writing this, I hope it helps!

You can take some lessons from me if you want to go pro.