Some quality of life stuff

These suggestions are actually not aimed at game play at all but rather more the community.

1. A list of who is currently in chat. Currently when you log in it seems like the game is dead.

2. A counter next to each category to show how many people are in the que. This is related to the first one in that it shows people are about. What I'm talking about is when you hit play and you choose between, Death Match, VIP and King of the Hill.

3. A link to some documentation that explains mechanics. There is so much to take in early on. Not knowing what many of the effects do make it incredibly hard to actually decide on how to grow a company. It is very off putting for people who just want to hop in and have fu.

4.A way to customize your army on selection. This here could be as simple as selecting a standard color for all your units right off. Customization breeds connection. IF you have more connection to your mercs you ware more than likely going to stay around to play with them.

5. Pre saved army lists in the pre match. This has been mentioned before but currently I am unable to switch up my army since often it won't register if I select or deselect a unit. This means my timer runs out and it is just a frustration. If I could just select between one or two pre made lists that require a slight tweak would take much of the frustration out.

[Jigoku]

Sorry, but I don't think you will ever see what you suggested for 1 and 2.
We did try it before, and we learned a lot from it, and we will not be doing it again.
Also, it's no coincidence if you don't find them in games like Hearthstone and Dota 2 either (or probably, League of Legends, or any smaller pvp game).

Suggestions 3 and 5 are very valid, and they are on their way in one form or another but the schedule is unclear on when they will hit the live servers.

The 4th point, while valid, is not as easy to handle as one might think with our system.
We certainly wish that there was a better way to bond with the units and a way to customize them right off the bat, but for the future of the game, it is not what we opted for. Hopefully what we tried to do will satisfy you anyway.

I'd be curious to hear what you learnt that turned you away from that suggestion (1,2). Some of those games have in-fact implement similar systems and others have it as one of the oft requested suggestions. I do know some of the cons of it but would like to hear yours. Without it I can't modify the suggestion.

Yes 4 is incredibly difficult to pull off and only you guys would know what customization to offer or how to go about it. What is worse is the moment you offer even a small bit of it people will demand more.

I'm really enjoying how you guys interact with us though. Actual dialogue that encourages growth rather than just yes no.

I'm not entirely sure but I think I know what the problem is with 1 and 2, I have seen it before in other games with the same function that died. There seem to be a common behavior on people mentality. I think is like and empty restaurant, if you see and empty restaurant and another one across the street that has people in it, most people would go to the second restaurant across the street thinking the food is better. So, if you had a list with 10 players online and the person login-in doesnt want to play a game with only 10 people online he won't even try and instead of having 11 players online now, you will go back to having 10. That will become a circle were there will be a time that you can't replace people that leave with new people who stays.

Same with queue if the queue has 0 people in it someone that wanted to play will just not even get into the queue (of course not everyone but most of them wouldn't) and just log out, if they have no idea they are the only one in queue they just wait there for at least some time making your queue have 1 player already and if another player enters the queue they can have a game, the wait of the first player would be long of course but at least he would get a game and stay to try another match.

Is not a bad idea for a game that doesn't have a people problem but is an option that once implemented you can't really take it away that easy and can do more bad than good.

of course this is just speculation on my part, I would also like the dev's take on this though.

That is the part of the problem I know about. But in of it self it has the flip side in that currently you log on and it seems dead where as with games that has low population you can see when people are around and so meet those people and the extend the peak times as people start playing with others who are on during times that suit them. Unfortunatly you cannot slant the system one way or another since you end up entirely at the mercy of the players personality.

I've seen it go both ways in start up niche games. A lot of it comes down to the community at that point. If you 20 quiet sour people in chat compared to 5 lively talkative and helpful people. Currently at the times I've played I've met mostly the latter which has been great.

PT 2

These are some of the other questions I've noticed or other brought up in chat. These are all around time and clocks

1. A server time clock so people can arrange meeting times more easily.

2. A clock or timer that says when the ladder or future events will reset.

3. A clock that states when the last game was or player in hopped into the que

4. Time stamped chat.

Is it even worth having the main canal at all? twice today i've seen this conversation. One person says hello? then two other people reply with hello/hi/some greeting and then theres only silence. Most of the time we can't access the main canal because we are playing the game. Even if we did have access, we wouldn't really have the time to look with how much time we're given for each turn. Theres no real reason to spend much time not running in a match so it really doesn't get much use even from active players. It may just be better to be rid of the main canal and cut the expectations at the source, no main canal; no expectations for it to be bustling with chatter. Ofcourse get those guides down pronto in that case so players have somewhere to turn when they need to ask a question.

If we're going to talk about quality of life changes that might make the main canal actually be used more then all i can think that would help instantly right now are these two things.

1. Increase the amount of time alloted for each turn.

2. Allow access to the main canal during matches.

With those two changes players instantly have more opportunity to use the main canal, wether players would take advantage of that though is another question.

main canal is good for new players to ask obvious questions and get fast help

Thats fine so long as they get a reply =p

I'm not really arguing it should be removed, just that if it's such a big problem, thats always an option.

Is it even worth having the main canal at all? twice today i've seen this conversation. One person says hello? then two other people reply with hello/hi/some greeting and then theres only silence. Most of the time we can't access the main canal because we are playing the game. Even if we did have access, we wouldn't really have the time to look with how much time we're given for each turn. Theres no real reason to spend much time not running in a match so it really doesn't get much use even from active players. It may just be better to be rid of the main canal and cut the expectations at the source, no main canal; no expectations for it to be bustling with chatter. Ofcourse get those guides down pronto in that case so players have somewhere to turn when they need to ask a question.

Well, I will surely be heart broken if there wasn't a main canal anymore. I would say i use it at least 30-45 minutes every day of chatting none stop with plenty of people that play when I log in, the real problem is that the chat is usually empty unless someone starts a chat, just saying hello won't start anything at all, people need to actually treat the chat as the would treat any other chat but there is nothing the devs can do to enforce that behavior.

Taking the chat out could actually not be a bad idea but we definitly need more guides, I'm helping people all the time in chat with questions about what to start with and how some stuff works.

I just love the chat though. Without the chat I wouldn't have nearly as much hours on the game as I have right now (almost 330 hours) but on the other hand if the game didn't had a chat the forums would probably be used a lot more.