Dogs of War Online

I guess i dont need to introduce myself but for the records im playing this game since early closed beta...and maybe more than i should...and yep this is another post about the injury system.

Intro (skip if you know all about the injury system's strory).

The injury system has been always in the game or at least since i started playing it. In closed beta each fate card (yes it wasn't called "healing card" ) used to cost 1500 ducats, healing whatever injury, no matter the level of your unit or type of injury. In closed was slightly easier making money as quests could be repeated every time they were completed/failed altough 1500 was still a steep price.

Then the open beta came and the first days of the new injury system were a mess. It was really a blood bath, up to the point that i was creating/deleting my companies so often just to keep playing with healty units. I guess Cyanide managed to lose a nice chunk of customers right off the bat (i hope it was not intended that mess, as they said).

The system was quickly fixed into what is today, where getting injuries is relatively harder (i would say once every 2 matches, no matter the outcome) and the price scales with your unit level.

(ok here is where you should stop skipping )

In the past i used to almost defend the injury system, saying it was a necessary part of the game but now after testing the new system i changed my mind: the current injury system MUST be removed for the sake of the game.

Here is why is affecting the game negatively:
- Zerg strategies are used a lot also thanks to the injury system. It is one of the reasons why people rather use lvl 1 units as they are cheaper to heal. Level 1 units are more rewarding than high level ones --> less revenue for cyanide.

- Buying (with real money) high level units risks to be very dangerous as their injuries cost a lot. This leads to players skipping most high level units --> less revenue for Cyanide.

- At renown level 12+ the injury system becomes only a minor annoyance (if you are playing with lvl 2-3 units only) as most injuries are relatively cheap to heal and you have access to all quests. If it is only a minor annoyance, why not remove it completely?. I wonder how many high level players actually bought the cards from the store with real money.

- Players do not like a system that is forced on them and that doesn't add anything exciting (to me is exciting to level a unit not to heal the injury!) . This leads to some players dropping from the game --> less potential revenue for Cyanide.


tldr; in short the system is just annoying, it becomes meaningless at high levels, stop players from buying and using high level units while pushing for level 1 strategies and generally scares new players. Why not removing it now? The ideal solution for both players and Cyanide would be to lower the ducats gained from matches/quests to match the fact we dont have to spend anymore money on healing cards.

all in all it comes down to...how much revenue is the injury system generating for cyanide? my gut feeling is: not a lot, so why not remove it if it can potentially attract more players (and thus more potential revenue)?

and for me playing in times of closed beta - when each healing was 1500 - was more interesting... when almost any player had 1-3 wounded units

Currently wounds have lesser influence on game - but still makes player-units relation more personal - when you need to check them from time to time for missed but important wounds.

I'll reiterate what I've said elsewhere:

At first glance, I liked the injury system. It gave a sense of risk and progression and personalization.

Now, I'm finding it hard to justify the existence of injuries.

- If I just lost a game, I'm already feeling bad. I don't want to feel worse because now all my units are beaten up.
- To cure injuries, I have to spend money. This adds hours of grinding ducats (no fun) or forces me to play with injured units (also no fun).
- The steep cost of curing injuries on high-level units disincentivizes elites and developed, experienced mystics. This doesn't make sense within the context of the game - I should be taking a unit because I think it has a favorable cost/benefit within my comp, not because it's expensive to maintain. (It feels even worse when I've already done a lot of grinding, of ducats AND XP, to get a unit where I want it to be ... and now it's costing me 1600 ducats every few games.)

Once again, this is a place where the game feels like it's trying to do two different things at once. Injuries as a penalty, and the difficult decision they present (heal them at cost, or suffer the penalties?), only make sense within the context of an additional optimization challenge. (Paying for recruiting new units is the same way, to my mind; the Legendaries costing 30k ducats just means it'll take me several days of grinding to get them - not that I need some amount of skill, or that I need to carefully weigh that decision against another.)

If my goal is to build the best company in two weeks' time (i.e. limited time), these features make sense. If my goal is to build the best company within 100 games (i.e. limited ability to acquire new funds), these features make sense. If I'm in a single-player game, these features probably make sense (more personalization and a bigger struggle).

Within a purely multiplayer game without any sort of external constraints, injuries only increase the grind and make me feel penalized for playing. They are, in short, simply barriers to fun.

I have this sense that DOW started out, in early development, as a very different game. The designers had a different vision - perhaps an RPG, perhaps something closer to Aarklash Legacy. Within that sort of context, these features make sense. But the vision moved, the game changed into something else. That's fine. That's what happens in development. Unfortunately, not all of the mechanics have updated to accord with the "new" vision.

So we're left with something awkwardly between a "MOBA" multiplayer wargame and an RPG. It's deeply unsatisfying, especially since DOW could be very good as either.

Hey both my Lv. 3 Skeleton Warriors have Disfigured. Cool injury

That said, the biggest problem is that Zerg tactics by default consist of units that are too easy to heal. At least make it so, for example, a Gouged Eye costs the same to heal on a Lv. 5 Magician of Alahan as a Lv. 1 Grave Guardian.

I'm actually pro the injury system (until my Black Paladin gets -1 ST and costs me like 15+ heal cards lol). Perhaps making injuries slightly less common is less of a wow crazay solution.

until my Black Paladin gets -1 ST and costs me like 15+ heal cards lol

in 0.10 any wound was equal to current 15 heal cards ;P

I have defended Cyanide's purchasing system in the past but I agree the injury system is a lose / lose for everyone, even Cyanide.

Make people pay for what they want, not to keep what they want.

I agree. As Serdak said, the injury system is a valuable addition, IF THERE IS SOME LIMITATION TO THE GAMES WE SPEND WITH INJURED UNITS.

So, for example, withtin a tournament or community challenge, which is limited in time and games played - where you would have a fixed amount of money/ap/whatever and try to get the best possible company for that certain tournament - where maybe units progress just until the tournament is over.

During regular games, where there is only the goal of having fun with no other restrictions active, the injury just adds up frustration. And, as I said in another post - it is usually cheaper to recruit a new unit, since the game currently favors zerging and most units come with low costs ducatwise by themselves.

Also, since injuries don't modify the AP-value, they are usually a penalty for those who attempt to play with injured units never the less.

as a general question: who of you has a renown rank of 16+? im asking this because at that point the injuries become just a very minor annoyance. You dont even care that that system exists anymore as you get enough money to do whatever you want.

My time to shine. I've been playing since the day after open beta became available. I have about 120 hours on record and maxed out my renown(20) about a week ago. Injury system is basically nothing to me, I have 50,000 ducats and at the moment I am just logging in to do quests, until new patch comes out. Personally, I was never out of money to pay for injuries even at low levels, as long as you do the quests I don't think there is an issue and even if you don't I find I get a plentiful amount of money from winning battles.

In conclusion, yes I agree with Deep Blue the injury system is a bit of a waste of time, but I feel it adds an extra dimension to the game and so shouldn't be discarded.

I think that the Injury System as it is at the moment is only a nuisance: when you are at low lvl, you HATE it since you are fighting your way to buy new units (the missions are mostly useless at low lvls) and then all your hard earned ducats go down the sink for a "coma" to your elite unit, while when you are at high lvl you can mostly completely ignore its presence since you'll gain a sufficient amount of ducats from matches and missions that you don't have to worry about it.

A very nice solution may be to completely eliminate the injury system for the regular games, but keeping it around for the future if "Tournaments" are going to be present. I explain better my idea: in the future, when the base of players is going to be larger (or at least let's hope so!), instead of or in parallel to the actual "ranking", every week or month "tournaments" lasting a couple of days may be created, in which you will have to confront other players in a specific set-up (that can be changed in every tournament) to get a bigger reward (e.g. cyans, a lot of ducats) BUT with a very high risk to injure your units if you lose, and in that case, the healing cards price would have to be much higher AND you could buy them ONLY if you drop out from the tournament (higher risk to get your company badly wounded, but, at the same time, higher reward if you manage to win! ). Obviously, the "play" button should be different if you're looking for a match inside the tournament or outside, like an internal option to activate it (and for this, a higher base of player is indeed needed!!!).