gdrover Feedback

gdrover · Post by **gdrover** » Sat Mar 12, 2011 3:14 am

Played most of the tutorials and the first three campaign scenarios a couple of times. My feedback:

SCORING
One thing that always frustrated me about the Panzer General series was the focus on completing the city captures in a certain number of turns. It turned a light wargame into a puzzle game. The palyer becomes so ultra focused on finishing that he doesn't focus as much on good tactics and good decision making. I would propose a new scoring methodology that would focus on winning the battle:
* The primary scoring would center around the quality and strengthpoints of units destroyed vs. those lost
* secondary scoring would be for cities captured (major objectives = more points)
* There would be bonuses awarded for capturing the objectives on a schedule. The bonuses could be more in scenarios where time really was a factor.

INTERFACE
The toggle switch for air/ land units needs to be MUCH bigger and positioned in an easy access spot. It is the most commonly used button and it is currently too small and hard to locate during gameplay. I constantly found myself hovering the mouse pointer over the buttons to the right and being frustrated at the waste of time hunting for it again and again.

It might also be nice to get one more layer of zoom. Seeing the cool units up close is sometimes fun... or make the units in the closest view slightly larger

GAMEPLAY
I love the feel. You guys are on the right track for sure. A few minor suggestions here:

* Indirect Artillery fire seems to impact armor too much. I get that direct fire could maybe hurt armor, but artillery firing in support of a defending unit should be weaker against armor.

* It is very hard to tell which units are attacking my units during the AI turn. This needs to be more obvious so I know what happened.

Rudankort · Post by **Rudankort** » Sat Mar 12, 2011 9:46 pm

Hey gdrover! Thanks for some fresh thoughts.

SCORING
One thing that always frustrated me about the Panzer General series was the focus on completing the city captures in a certain number of turns. It turned a light wargame into a puzzle game. The palyer becomes so ultra focused on finishing that he doesn't focus as much on good tactics and good decision making. I would propose a new scoring methodology that would focus on winning the battle:
* The primary scoring would center around the quality and strengthpoints of units destroyed vs. those lost
* secondary scoring would be for cities captured (major objectives = more points)
* There would be bonuses awarded for capturing the objectives on a schedule. The bonuses could be more in scenarios where time really was a factor.

So, what will be player's motivation to finish the scenario asap? Time is the only thing which really requires tactical and strategic planning. If you are not limited in time, you will always get a near-perfect ratio between losses and kills because at any given spot on the map you usually have an advantage over defender both in terms of quality and quantity. Defender's forces are distributed more or less evenly across the map, while attacker can concentrate on one city at a time, and bring in his best units there. In PG, the ratio between kills and losses was always rather absurd (because most players lost core units very rarely), but without a time limitation this might get even worse.

It might also be nice to get one more layer of zoom. Seeing the cool units up close is sometimes fun... or make the units in the closest view slightly larger

Perhaps we could rerender all units in bigger size, but this feature would require redoing all tiles too, and this is too much work at this point. Still, if many people think that tiles must be even bigger, this would be an important point to know for the sequel. What do you guys think?

Indirect Artillery fire seems to impact armor too much. I get that direct fire could maybe hurt armor, but artillery firing in support of a defending unit should be weaker against armor.

Can you give a sample combat log, or combat estimation? What units exactly were involved? This might be an error in equipment data which we just need to fix.

gdrover · Post by **gdrover** » Sat Mar 12, 2011 11:12 pm

Finishing a scenario as fast as you can will still get you Bonus Points on your score, but is not the be all end all. The scenario still ends in a certain number of turns, or when all objectives are taken, but speed is only a secondary consideration.
The primary consideration is destroying the enemy while sustaining as few losses as possible.

Even though loss ratios will still be lop-sided, that's O.K. Players want to feel as though they're a superior general...that's rather the point of the game.

Victory levels can be pegged to a final score that might be:
75% kill ratios
10% number of cities captured
15% speed bonus for capturing objectives (or more or less depending on scenario)

The kill ratios might equate to something like:

3 - 1 Marginal Victory
4 - 1 Victory
6 - 1 Decisive Victory

The math will have to be worked out and balanced per scenario, but the point is that the players are not forced to race across the map in most scenarios.

gdrover · Post by **gdrover** » Sat Mar 12, 2011 11:20 pm

I also want to add a suggestion that I placed elsewhere in the board:

Panzer Corps should be a rousing success with the beer and pretzels wargamer crowd.
The key to the success of this game with a larger audience is:
1) Great graphics
2) Gameplay that is easy to understand and get into
3) Stickiness: There has to be a sense of "Just one more turn" that games like Sid Meier's Civilization does so well.
To accomplish this, the game needs lots of new things for the player to discover, and lots of positive feedback for success:
* unit upgrades, but also medals, promotions, glory for the player's avatar/general.

Have you guys considered a meta-game? It could be an avatar/general that would be rewarded for victories with medals. It could also include a 'war-room' where the player could see the grand strategic map and what areas were conquered...and were he could make strategic decisions about unit builds and where to attack next...

lordzimoa · Post by **lordzimoa** » Sat Mar 12, 2011 11:28 pm

We have a medal and ace design, but it is not in the game yet. I have no idea if Alex still plans to add it, it is a bit of RPG added to the game.

Rudankort · Post by **Rudankort** » Sat Mar 12, 2011 11:37 pm

lordzimoa wrote:We have a medal and ace design, but it is not in the game yet. I have no idea if Alex still plans to add it, it is a bit of RPG added to the game.

Yes, I still plan to have that.

gdrover · Post by **gdrover** » Mon Mar 14, 2011 2:23 am

Nice! I think that having a 'Meta-Game' keeps the players moving forward and also adds to re-playability.

Lots of positive feedback is a strong 'stickiness' factor...meaning that it brings people back for more plays and brand loyalty for follow-on products.

The more robust, the better.