Gold and High Command - how (not to) monetise

The first three games of Call of War I played were fun, friendly and above all, fair. Many players were considerably more experienced than others, and so ended up with a massive advantage, but nobody was annexing entire player nations on day 1, and everybody progressed reasonably similarly for the first few days. Then came my fourth game, which I still remember clearly to this day. I was playing as Poland in the Europe: Clash of Nations scenario, and was preparing my nation on day 1 by researching essentials like Infantry, Armoured Cars and Cruisers. And, I kid you not, not an hour into the game Greater Romania launched a massive invasion of my southern border. I was fairly confidant that I would win, given that not only are the easiest to acquire early-game units (Infantry and Armoured Cars) defensive, but I would also recieve the 15% strength and defense bonus from home provinces. However, the moment of the day-change to day 2, my defensive positions were being born down on by a stack of 6 or 7 Tactical Bombers. In case you don't know, for the Commintern doctrine (which Greater Romania uses) to research Tactical Bombers, the research time is around 11 hours. Baffled, I moved up Anti-Air, which were promptly obliterated in a single hit by a pair of stacks of 5 Rocket Artillery units, which again, take over 16 hours to research. This my friends, is the wonders of gold.

## A reasonable system

Gold was created (presumably) in order to solve one of the main problems for the developers of Call of War - it was a free game. Therefore, they needed some way to make money off of it, and that had to be through in-game purchases. The idea of a currency that can buy an advantage is hardly a new idea, and the way it is implemented is in many ways quite reasonable. Firstly, it is not only possible, but frankly easy, to acquire relatively large amounts legitimately. The reward for finishing a game in 1st place is around 5000 gold, which can buy you 10 000 resources, or more pertinently, can restore a lot of health to a reasonably large number of units. In addition, there are many achievements which provide gold in fairly large quantities, and on mobile, you can receive free gifts of 100-1000 gold nearly daily.

What's more, it's quite expensive to buy with real money. Depending on the offer you go for, it clocks in at about £1 (GBP) per 2000 gold, meaning that the ability to skip just 6 and a half hours of construction costs the same as a cheap loaf of bread. This adds an element of balance - when it's so easy to obtain in bulk legitimately, and so costly to manually purchase, surely most people ought to play fair...

## A flawed system

There are a lot - and I mean a LOT - of problems with gold though. Firstly, it can be used for literally almost anything. Want a new unit instantly? Done. Want to produce a new one but don't have the resources to? Gold's got your back. Want to heal some severly damaged units instantly to full health? Easy peasy. Want to lower the morale in every single one of your enemy's provinces so that they can't produce resources or units at an optimal rate? Done!!!! Short of teleporting your units across the battlefield or instantly destroying enemy armies, gold can be used for practically anything. One of the most egregious issues is that it can speed up research, by 12 hours per 2750 gold, allowing for nations to gain access to units way earlier than they normally could. This, combined with disgusting levels of instant production and buying resources, is what happened to me in my war with Romania.

Also, one fact of gaming is that there is always some rich, entitled imbecile who is willing to sink hundreds of pounds into winning an inconsequential virtual war for the sake of... I don't know? Clout? A sensation of power? It doesn't matter that gold is pretty costly, there are bound to be many people who are willing to fork out for the sake of their ego.

The basic problem is that you can pay money to gain an advantage in a multi-player game - this is the DEFNITION of a pay-to-win game. And this isn't fun for the people who play fair. Even if you never spend a penny, gold is unfair simply in that it provides better players with an advantage: they win more games and therefore gain more gold rewards. It also encourages grinding, as you get rewarded for each and every game that ends when you are active. This isn't a recipe for enjoyable and intelligent gameplay - it's a recipe for thoughtless, p2w sh\*\*. And this saddens me a lot, because in many ways Call of War is a great game! It is free, full of interesting strategy and tactics, brimming with features, some of the artwork is stunning and the rest is at worst meh (except for the Allied Light Tank, which is uglier than a cat-hater on caffeine and Diet Coke). But this isn't the worst of it.

## A deaf system

Type "gold" into the game chat in CoW, and send the message. Everything works fine. Now do the same with "spam". I'm sure you can see where this is going. If you type "gold spam" into the chat, it is replaced by asterisks. The same asterisks that would replace a swear word or something deeply offensive. Firstly, I just want to laugh at how poorly coded this system is: you can literally write "g o l d spam" and the detection fails. But secondly, this hints at a much, much larger issue - Bytro Labs is unwilling to take negative feedback from its community about the gold system. The fact that they felt the need to implement this censorship suggests that there must be a huge amount of resentment in the community. And this is only the tip of the iceberg.

Complain about the gold system in the game discord, banned! Complain in the chat, banned! Even speaking about gold in a vaguely negative way can get you banned, at least temporarily. This is not a sign of a corporation that cares about the people who play its games. Nor is it the sign of a group of designers who are intelligent and self-aware enough to be able to take criticism, adapt and improve. It is instead a symptom of insecurity, selfishness and apathy. Do you see why this is a problem? Surely you do. Bytro Labs has decided that the gold system is flawless and turns a deaf ear to any critique or complaint. This is not a good design ethic! It is the responsibility of game developers to listen to their players and respond to feedback. Of course they have a right to decide that these players are wrong, and that might be the correct decision. However, when they receive so much criticism they don't want spread that they resort to hard counters such as censorship, that is a sign that it is the players who are right. They have a duty to listen!

## A salvageable system

So you've listened to me moan on for ages about gold bad, Bytro labs bad, blah blah blah. "But Qweifomapsvoiams!" I hear you cry. "I don't hear you offering any solutions. If you want change, provide constructive criticism." Well, here's the deal: I'm not sure I need to. Because Bytro Labs have made it clear that they do understand how to monetise a game fairly and reasonably: High Command. And this is why I feel so much confusion.

High Command (or as it is now known, a Premium Account), like gold, can be bought for a period of time with real-life money, costing around 18p (GBP) per day. It comes with a slew of benefits, including access to Fire Control (which allows you to reprogram how ranged units behave) and rally points, which allow you to cause units produced in a province to automatically move to a designated location. On desktop it can also be used to create one game round per month.

Now compare these effects to gold. Gold can accelerate a production, research or construction, heal units or buy resources. High Command, in contrast, can re- and pre-program unit behaviours, allows a build queue to make construction and production more efficient, and allows you to create your own game rounds. Do you notice a difference? The benefits that High Command provides are available to players anyway, as long as they spend enough time playing! Build queue? Just always be active when a production/construction finishes. Rally points? Same principle. Fire control? Pay close attention to your units at all times and the difference will be negligible. In short, High Command is not a pay-to-win structure; it is a pay-to-do-less-work structure. And THAT is how you monetise a free online game. You allow players to pay to gain benefits that are external to the basic structure of the game!

High Command does this really well, too. Fire control feels like such a release, when you know that the Artillery units you are sending into enemy territory can't accidentally get obliterated on enemy troops you missed - just set the fire control to offensive. But at its core, you could have precisely the same effects by being constantly active and vigilant. High Command just makes the game less stressful, not easier. The other main benefit is the ability to create your own game rounds, which while being fun, hardly provides any sort of advantage (besides you get to choose your country first I suppose).

## An improved system

So what do I want to happen to gold? This is genuinely quite a difficult problem, because obviously it can't fulfill the same function as High Command - that would just be pointless. But equally, clearly something must be changed. My first choice would just be to remove it completely, but I also totally understand if Bytro Labs feel that they probably wouldn't make enough money from the game if that happened. So my proposed solution is this: gold should have more round-external features, and none of the round-internal ones. High Command already provides a number of benefits within a single game, such as rally points and build queues, so gold doesn't need to do that. Instead it can be used for external benefits.

For instance, I think that the ability to create games should be removed exclusively from High Command, and instead you should have to pay a gold fee of perhaps 5000 gold. This makes personalised game creation much more accessible and makes it easier for new players to experiment with different maps. In addition, I think gold could be used to create "practice maps". These would be maps where you have full control over all of the nations, and would be really useful for players to plan out strategies and learn different tactical manouevres. Finally, I would suggest that gold could be used to customise the appearance of your troops. This is hardly a novel idea, but I do consider it quite a good one, and I think it would be very well-received given the enormous tension in the community regarding which doctrine's units look the best.

Of course, this approach might be challenging to implement, and many of my preliminary ideas would have to be refined. But the important part is that gold can be integrated into Call of War in a way that doesn't create unfairness and a p2w system, and continues to make sweet, sweet cash for Bytro Labs. As long as the developers are willing to listen to the issues and suggestions of the community, I genuinely believe that gold could be transformed into something more meaningful and equitable.

- Article by Qweifomapvoiams