Verdagon, look at this from my perspective, I'm l1. If you were to give that pause option and it was l2 only and a lot of people took it, I think there'd be a few major changes.
1.more l2 buyers. Not always a bad thing but bear with me.
2. More rated games.
3.many matches (pausable or unpausable) that players wouldn't want to join
4. L1 would be reserved for the newer, less experienced players
I don't have any desire to buy the l2 feature, and I certainly don't want to buy just so I can find decent match. I've won all four of the games I've played; sometimes it's been close, sometimes not. But I don't get satisfaction from beating up first game players over and over again. I'm sure you could find l2 games that ran all the time which would be great, but I've still had trouble finding a good game to get in with only one type of game; I don't need it complicated any more.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by L1 being reserved for the less experienced players, do you mean that the 24/7 games would have a higher percentage of newbies than the 12/7 games? I would agree that that would happen, but I don't know if it's a bad thing or a good thing. Right now the minimum-rating games do the same thing, they help separate the good players from the bad players. By funneling all the new players into the 24/7 games, it would do the same thing. On one hand, the new players will be playing against more new players, and on the other hand, an experienced player who's playing among them will have an easier time. I'd be interested to hear some numbers from the devs on how the rating system has affected the distribution of new players versus pros, and whether it has improved things or not, if they happen to already have those numbers around.

I see where you're coming from, in that you don't want to be that experienced person playing against the newbies. But in the current situation, you can play the way you want, and I can't play at all. If we introduced the speed/pause feature, then I would be able to play, and you would still have the option of getting L2. In the latter situation, both of us can play, but the way things are right now, from what I've seen, the game is too demanding for too many people.

aclonicy wrote:Verdagon, look at this from my perspective, I'm l1. If you were to give that pause option and it was l2 only and a lot of people took it, I think there'd be a few major changes.
1.more l2 buyers. Not always a bad thing but bear with me.
2. More rated games.
3.many matches (pausable or unpausable) that players wouldn't want to join
4. L1 would be reserved for the newer, less experienced players
I don't have any desire to buy the l2 feature, and I certainly don't want to buy just so I can find decent match. I've won all four of the games I've played; sometimes it's been close, sometimes not. But I don't get satisfaction from beating up first game players over and over again. I'm sure you could find l2 games that ran all the time which would be great, but I've still had trouble finding a good game to get in with only one type of game; I don't need it complicated any more.

It's all well and good for you to say, "I don't want to spend money on this game."
But if you're going to make that choice, you need to be ok with the fact that you're going to miss out on some fun features.
The devs have to make money. It's a fact. And this gives players a reason to make the jump from free to premium.

What frustrates me about your post is that, "I want what I want and I should get it" attitude.
Keep in mind that, while I'm sure the devs are happy to have a large player base from free players, they're not looking for players who are content to stay there. It's a difficult balance that they have to strike: At what point does the game become enjoyable enough that new players want to keep playing, but still reserves enough features to persuade new players to buy L2 Clearance.

I think this feature would definitely accomplish that, and the fact that you're so strongly against it only convinces me more.

roadkiehl wrote:

aclonicy wrote:Verdagon, look at this from my perspective, I'm l1. If you were to give that pause option and it was l2 only and a lot of people took it, I think there'd be a few major changes.
1.more l2 buyers. Not always a bad thing but bear with me.
2. More rated games.
3.many matches (pausable or unpausable) that players wouldn't want to join
4. L1 would be reserved for the newer, less experienced players
I don't have any desire to buy the l2 feature, and I certainly don't want to buy just so I can find decent match. I've won all four of the games I've played; sometimes it's been close, sometimes not. But I don't get satisfaction from beating up first game players over and over again. I'm sure you could find l2 games that ran all the time which would be great, but I've still had trouble finding a good game to get in with only one type of game; I don't need it complicated any more.

It's all well and good for you to say, "I don't want to spend money on this game."
But if you're going to make that choice, you need to be ok with the fact that you're going to miss out on some fun features.
The devs have to make money. It's a fact. And this gives players a reason to make the jump from free to premium.

What frustrates me about your post is that, "I want what I want and I should get it" attitude.
Keep in mind that, while I'm sure the devs are happy to have a large player base from free players, they're not looking for players who are content to stay there. It's a difficult balance that they have to strike: At what point does the game become enjoyable enough that new players want to keep playing, but still reserves enough features to persuade new players to buy L2 Clearance.

I think this feature would definitely accomplish that, and the fact that you're so strongly against it only convinces me more.

You're exactly right "I do want what I want" and I don't want to have to pay $10 for something I already have right now. I get that it does make the devs $$$, but it seems like it would force a dedicated player to buy l2 or leave. I'm a dedicated player, but l2 just doesn't do it for me. i have no problem giving l2 better features, but not one feature of the l2 package right now makes me interested in it. At the point where you have to spend $10 to find a decent match, I feel like it's extortion for the dedicated players to buy the l2, not an advantage to have it.

You're exactly right "I do want what I want" and I don't want to have to pay $10 for something I already have right now. I get that it does make the devs $$$, but it seems like it would force a dedicated player to buy l2 or leave. I'm a dedicated player, but l2 just doesn't do it for me. i have no problem giving l2 better features, but not one feature of the l2 package right now makes me interested in it. At the point where you have to spend $10 to find a decent match, I feel like it's extortion for the dedicated players to buy the l2, not an advantage to have it.

I'm not going to get into a huge argument about this, but I think you're missing the point.
Right now, you don't have a reason to buy L2.
You want this feature.
The devs are losing $11/hour by working on this game. (http://blog.subterfuge-game.com/post/13 ... the-future)
Part of the problem is that players don't see any reason to buy L2.
So, if you want this feature, and the devs will have to put valuable time into making this feature happen, then it is *reasonable* for them to make it premium-only.

In response to your "dedicated player" argument, I don't think the devs are looking for players who are "dedicated" per se. While I'm sure they want a healthy playerbase and want to make a game that people enjoy, they're primarily running a business. And a business requires an exchange of goods. In this case, that exchange of goods is your money for game features. I'm sorry that you feel you should get everything for free just because this is a mobile game. If this were the latest CoD (or whatever AAA game you play), I'm sure you'd jump at the opportunity to pay $60 just to play.

EDIT: I also want to point out that I am a poor college student. The $10 I spent on this game was literally the only $10 I could spare from my paycheck. It's definitely worth the money, though. I'd rather spend $10 on this than $10 to see a movie once.

You assume that he plays AAA games and has money to burn on them. I know for a fact that he doesn't.

telemitry wrote:You assume that he plays AAA games and has money to burn on them. I know for a fact that he doesn't.

Ok, so he doesn't play AAA games. My point still stands though. The free version has to be worse than the full version, and it's not extortion, it's business.

I think some people are missing the point of what this game is looking to achieve...

Someone stated that war is 24/7. This is true. You can't decide when your enemy attacks you. The game is called subterfuge, it is all about taking advantage of your enemies weaknesses.

They have the feature to plan moves in advance (lvl 2 only) for the specific times when you can't check the game. In war you don't know what your enemy will do. In a way you have to gamble. Sometimes you gamble right, and win. Sometimes you guess wrong and loose. That is war.

If you are afraid of an attack while you sleep, then you should use diplomacy and make friends. Or gather Intel and make the best educated guess you can make.

Adding a pause feature will also segment the community beyond simple lvl 1 and lvl 2 passes. You can't have a paused game, unless all people are in the same time zone. Otherwise the pause period could happen at night for one person and the afternoon for another. You can't allow people to vote or choose because then they could troll the pause feature or alliances can have an unfair advantage in a majority vote situation.

I have a life too. I am a grad student. I rairly have a time when I miss my window of opportunity to react. If I do, I can only blame myself for not bein ready for an attack. So I regroup and carry on.

Adding a pause feature fundamentally ruins what this game set out to do and achieve. Let's not make the games longer than needed, and let's not segment this community any further.

generalchewy wrote:I think some people are missing the point of what this game is looking to achieve...

Someone stated that war is 24/7. This is true. You can't decide when your enemy attacks you. The game is called subterfuge, it is all about taking advantage of your enemies weaknesses.

They have the feature to plan moves in advance (lvl 2 only) for the specific times when you can't check the game. In war you don't know what your enemy will do. In a way you have to gamble. Sometimes you gamble right, and win. Sometimes you guess wrong and loose. That is war.

If you are afraid of an attack while you sleep, then you should use diplomacy and make friends. Or gather Intel and make the best educated guess you can make.

Adding a pause feature will also segment the community beyond simple lvl 1 and lvl 2 passes. You can't have a paused game, unless all people are in the same time zone. Otherwise the pause period could happen at night for one person and the afternoon for another. You can't allow people to vote or choose because then they could troll the pause feature or alliances can have an unfair advantage in a majority vote situation.

I have a life too. I am a grad student. I rairly have a time when I miss my window of opportunity to react. If I do, I can only blame myself for not bein ready for an attack. So I regroup and carry on.

Adding a pause feature fundamentally ruins what this game set out to do and achieve. Let's not make the games longer than needed, and let's not segment this community any further.

This is a great encapsulation of why I don't like the idea. Except you can plan moves ahead in l1 except you can only do 4 of them as opposed to infinite.

Generalchewy, you talk as if the more like war a game is, the better a game is. If this is the case, then why not just go join the army? Can’t get any more realistic than that. No, something is not good just because “that’s what war is.”

I agree that the game is about taking advantage of others weaknesses, but to intentionally take advantage of a weakness that the players cannot control or work on or improve seems like bad sportsmanship. If everyone had the same weakness, the same inability to react while sleeping, things would be different.

The idea that you can just use diplomacy to prevent overnight attacks is very unrealistic. Unless you ally with every person in the game, you *will* be involved in combat, and you *will* have subs launched at you while you’re sleeping.

You’re missing the point of my idea; I’m not saying that the game is paused whenever it’s night time for anyone in the game, I’m saying that before the game, the creator sets when the game is active or inactive. People can then choose which games to join based on this. This isn’t a voting system either: the creator specifies it before the game, and you give other players the choice of which ones to join.

One last thing to highlight: People in different timezones will definitely still play with each other. Someone in London can still play with someone from New York; a game that begins at noon and ends at midnight for a Londoner is a game that begins at 7am and ends at 7pm for a New Yorker, which is still a realistic schedule. In fact, let’s go to the extreme and say there was a 6/7 game: that’s an even wider area of joiners; a 4pm-10pm game for a New Yorker is a 8am-2pm game for someone in Sydney. So the perceived problem is somewhat self-mitigating: the less hours-per-day, the wider range of people you can play with. The time zone difference is not as bad as one might first think, and it’s definitely not true that “you can’t have a paused game, unless all people are in the same time zone.”