Executive Summary #5:

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 (on QM), AIs vs Players template (on QM), Small Earth Multi Attack (on CW) etc.

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/Forum/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



Other Suggestions

a) When creating a game, if specifically a 1v1 QM template is used, there can be a an option to search players from QM (with ranking similar to person creates the game) as well. So that players can find another player faster
- Didn't included with the rest because this was too small and convoluted

b) Advanced filtering options for Open Games (you can look for games with specific settings etc.)
- Didn't included with the rest because Open Games already have just a few games, this filtering will make the options feel even less

That's why it would be an improvement to have a block on the multiplayer tab with links to tutorials, guides, maybe helpful other players and more useful information. The same block could also be shown at the singleplayer menu and at the help tab.

Even if new players want to be in a new clan the choice is very huge. They don't know with clan are nice or what people are in these clans. Sometimes a new player already knows someone, then it's much more logical that he/she wants to be in the clan with the player they already know. The thing is: by far not everybody wants to be in a clan from the start. Showing them how to join a clan is ok, as long they are not really joining a clan. Same for tutorials; there have to be skippable.

It's much more fair if all clans are uncapped. What you would get in the situation with only capped clans which could play competively is clans with more brother/sister clans. Like M'Hunters 1, 2 and 3. If they match against eachother it's really possible that they would help eachother with easy/free wins. While it's much better to avoid this situation of helping other clans.

And stop repeating the same things each page and leaving other good things out of your summary. People missing many good suggestions this way

@vena
"It would be better if all clans are uncapped or that all clans are capped."
yes. all capped please. Uncapped clans have an undeserved, unfair advantage in CW.

"Custom and open 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. "

Issue for new & intermediate/casual players is not that some qm templates only unlock after reaching a certain level. Issue is, that players can be waiting a very long time until even qm games fill. Anything except SEAD is already difficult, including the templates used in idle arena games, namely 2v2.

"Players should not be forced into a clan."
yes, fully agree!

"Same for forcing certain games to players. When they do not like that, the chance is much greater that they leave."
exactly. No owner of a shoe store would expect every customer who walks in to try on as many as possible or maybe even all pairs of shoes in shop. Same here. Auto-enable is evil. Even when fizzer and some others think that new(er) players may never try out more complex templates. Nothing wrong with that. Anybody really interested in templates like Triple Taffl etc. has found those templates in the past and will also find them in future. Without adding them to qm and without auto-enabling them.

I would really like to manage my qm list of templates, including clearing out 99% of my currently unlocked templates. Only ones i want to see (for now) are SEAD, SE1W, S1v1. All others ... I know they exist, but i don't want them to clutter my qm dashboard.

Well, it's that time again.

Warzone is awesome. ;)

"World of Tanks Clan Wars work like this:
1. All clans that want play for a territory in single-elimination mode until only one is left."

hell no! It would give an even greater advantage to 40-player CW roster "elite" clans. No chance for smaller clans and especially no chance for non-hardcore, casual players.

If things were changed to this mode, I would definitely not participate and consider leaving the game. CW currently is already biased enough towards large / "elite" clans and hardcore players. No need to make it even worse.

TL;DR: if current CW is too much "candy crush" for your taste, then go and play ladders, CL, tourneys and super tough custom games all day long. .

Let me put a suggestion of banning uncapped clans from CL to the CL Discord.

@vena
It's much more fair if all clans are uncapped
- If all clans become uncapped, most players would cluster in a few clans. There would be less and more unbalanced competition

And stop repeating the same things each page
- It's called a summary, not everybody has enough free time to read everything, so I gathered all good suggestions under one post and share that post when a new page starts (so that they can find the most relevant summary in the latest page). I'm sorry if its inconvenient for you but it's useful for others

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@NONO
all capped please
- If all clans gets capped, there won't be community clans. I believe there should still be uncapped clans but they shouldn't be able to participate in CW

hell no! It would give an even greater advantage to 40-player CW roster "elite" clans
- Depends on how its implemented, it lets say each clan can control at most 10 territories, this would provide other clans the opportunity to spread in the "less valuable" territories

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@HangFire
Warzone is awesome
- Same as you :)

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@καλλιστηι
Let me put a suggestion of banning uncapped clans from CL
- I don't think anybody would approve that. Because;
1) Lots of big clans are already uncapped they have to make huge changes in their structures
2) Its the original form of clans and CL player usually like things to be stable
3) Participation to CL should be decreasing, they wouldn't like to risk losing more participation

When only capped clans could play competitively, there will be more brother/sister clans and they could play against eachother. This could be leading to giving wins away.

The summaries are ok, but you're leaving out many other good suggestions. That is what is makes incomplete. For example that it's now dependant on Fizzer and that it is a weaker point when something happens to him. Although he does a great job. So people still have to read every page to be updated on this topic.

Edited 3/30/2023 17:01:45

Well said Hangfire :D

What also would be an improvement is that you could choose your own QM in Idle for the arena games. That way the arena is getting more a part of Idle and more likely to be played

Edited 3/30/2023 16:58:32

@vena
you're leaving out many other good suggestions. That is what is makes incomplete. For example that it's now dependant on Fizzer and that it is a weaker point when something happens to him
- Which good suggestions I left out? You only said 1 suggestion in your response (Fizzer being the only dev is a risk) and that suggestion is already written in the summary. People already criticize me for adding too many suggestion in the summary. I can't add more and add less suggestion at the same time

you could choose your own QM in Idle for the arena games.
- I agree, this would make WZI Arena much more convenient to play and should be easy to implement

Oh, I see it there. I can look later at all pages when I have more time for it :)

Couple of things about arenas in idle to improve and derail this conversation even more:
-make them coinless irrespective of QM settings
-make the rewards dynamic so they're worth it independently from where you at in the map.

@stefano: yes! and i also like vena's idea to let players decide which qm template they want to play for arena. but i am afraid it is totally against fizzers' belief that more templates should be foisted on players, bc otherwise they would only play SEAD.

It has been suggested that Arena games just randomly pick from your enabled QM templates, but as you said, similar to auto-enabling crappy QM templates, Fizz likes to decide what people play, but in his defense, Arenas are optional, you 100% do not need them to finish the level; puts their usefulness right up there with Mortars

I would minimally say 2v2 has no place in Arenas, it's a terrible experience for both WZI players & QM players

I can just imagine a new WZ player, has only ever played WZI, stumbles across a 2v2 Arena, waits 20 mins to get a game, has no idea how to pick or how to play, gets destroyed & ends up wrecking the game for his unfortunate partner & the opponent team is laughing internally about how the other team is clueless - bad experience for all; and it will certainly turn that new WZI player off (not on as intended) of WZC

Combine that with the GC pleas for "I'm queued in 2v2 arena, can someone pls queue for 2v2 QM and surrender for me?" which again, makes a poor experience for any players that do get roped into that game from natural QM; I've seen it where 3 players from GC get combined with 1 QM player, and if the QM player happens to match with the GC player who _isn't_ playing from the Arena, his partner surrenders T1, and is confused "wth?" ... terrible mechanic; remove 2v2 Arena

Who plays 2v2 on QM???

Template is good. But getting a good match is rare

Is this a place to rant about how horrible most-voted QM templates are?

Good idea, Stefano!