Things the game Needs (starting a big list)

[jasonwclark]

Things the game needs... (I'm going to start with 'needs' because 'wants' would take too long lol). This isn't ordered in terms of priority, just trying to set it down so I can remember what I'm thinking.

1. A way to sort through all the MP games being hosted, or to create player groups. Its only been up on early release for a day, but already I have an endless scroll going on.

2. A way to chat with players prior to launch. Before I commit to a game with somebody who I don't know I'd like a way to talk to them and see if its going to be a worthwhile match.

3. A way to open chat or public/private message in-game. Its Axis & Allies, and we need a way to talk to each other across the digital game table, especially to opponents.

4. A standard or promoted method to Handicap for player skill level.

Just having win/loss/drop rankings so you can track who's who isn't enough. We all love Larry, but player feedback is probably more important than designer feedback regarding the balance of the boxed game. We have been using various 'unofficial' methods for like 30 years now to try and make these games that we love work. There are several methods (the most popular was the descending tournament bid) but currently none are available here. This was announced a while ago so I had plenty of time to think about it. The only fix I was able to come up with after kicking around for several months on the issue, only works if players have a way to agree to certain play conditions beforehand. ie. if both teams agree to skip movement (only purchase/placement) in the first round of gameplay then you might have a game worth playing under otherwise vanilla conditions. Otherwise its 'good luck', because Axis are going to run the board.

5. Starting Income adjustment.

If that last issue seems daunting then there is a very simple solution to deal with the handicapping problem in A&A, and that is to allow players a way to edit starting income before the match begins. This is the oldest form of tournament bid going back to classic and it will work (if somewhat inelegant) because all balance issues on any A&A board can be addressed via adjustments to the starting cash for the side perceived to be at a disadvantage. It could also be used to make the solo game vs the AI more challenging for those who like that sort of stuff, but something along these lines is much more critically important in PvP.

6. Quick battles. We need a way to resolve the rolling/battling process much more quickly.

Ideally a little drop screen that can be used from the main map. See RISKII or TripleA for examples of how that can be set up. I don't dislike the current battle board design, but it is very time/click intensive and needs a fast battle alternative option from the main map to be the workhorse or games will take forever.

7. A way to track Moves during the combat and non-combat movement phases.

The little arrows aren't bad, but as far as I can tell there is no way to track what has moved where beyond trying to parse a bunch of arrow lines on the map. This makes it particularly hard to backtrack, change a move, or to see what happened during an opponent or teammate's move, let alone your own movement turn while you're still making it.

8. A better way to grab/split/select and move units within a territory.

Currently everything has to be clicked individually. This might work in the first round, but its going to be a nightmare during the endgame when the stacks get large, and multinationals start grouping together in the same territories or sea zones. What you need is a way to click for movement by territory tile or sea zone tile (not by individual unit types), this brings up a list of all units in the territory/sz and then offers a way to select the desired number of units by type and move only those to selected adjacent tile. Generally you want people to be mousing over and clicking the territory/sz tiles to issue movement orders, not using the individual units within those tiles, that should only be happening if its a very simple move with just a couple units involved not for pushing stacks.

9. A basic editor to add/remove units at any point in the game. Just like on the physical game board, players should have a way to make adjustments on the fly, to correct for mistakes or bugs that might otherwise hose a game after you've been playing it already (possibly for several hours committed.) Ideally any match that is edited would be flagged with an "Edited" sign or an asterisk* or whatever. If something like this existed it would eliminate the need for points 4 and 5 above, because the community could then implement most of the standard solutions we've been using since the boardgame first came out like 10 years ago.


Will add more to this list as it comes to me. Feel free to pile on.

Also, to the Devs... Thanks for taking this on. As with any existing franchise you're probably going to hear significant grumbling about the implementation or comparisons to other stuff past and present. I bought this game not because I really need another way to play Axis and Allies online, but because I wanted to support the continued growth of the franchise and I know this is basically the best chance we've got to see a digital platform that is supported and promoted by the publisher. So I'm here, and I know others will be too. But there is still work to do for sure.

best

Black Elk

[Feldsy]

I agree with 1-3 and 6-8, but a lot of the sandboxing stuff sounds more like a long-term addition. For casual players like me, the big draw of a digitized A&A is not having to crawl through the rulebook every move. So while the sandboxing/customization would be cool long-term, I'd much rather the Devs focus more on UI streamlining and disconnect errors first

[jasonwclark]

Yeah in general I'd agree. The main issue here is that the physical version of 1942.2 has been out for a really long time.

So usually there is a grace period of about 2 years for any new A&A board, where the community will play under vanilla conditions and argue about balance by sides etc before actually settling on anything. If beamdog was creating an online version of a brand new A&A board game it would probably also benefit from a grace period where such stuff isn't necessary... yet.

But in this case with 1942.2 we already know what is required to make the game work in competitive play circles. Standard Tournament bids were 20+ IPC for Allies under otherwise OOB conditions, which means a fairly extreme Axis advantage to deal with.

What I was trying to offer above was just the simplest ways I could think of to get the basic game into a state that will service competitive play. For actually sandboxing it there is a lot lot lot more we could go do heheh. But adjusting starting income is the oldest and most bare bones approach that I know of.

Currently we don't have anything to work with beyond "Restricted Openings" by player agreement. The only one I can think of that might actually work for 1942.2 is a total prohibition on movement during the first round. Meaning a full round of purchase/placement R-G-B-J-A before you start actually rolling combats. That is much more extreme than say Classic, where rough balance could be achieved by just skipping Russia's first round combat. But far as I can tell, its the best option we have right now.

[Feldsy]

Yeah balance stuff would be good in the future. As I said I'm a casual player (played less than 15 total games, and not on this version of 1942) can you describe or link me to common balance problems in 1942.2?

[jasonwclark]

Probably most helpful info would be at https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/

The section on 1942 sec ed. But you can also find a lot of info about it in the House Rules sub forum. Or also in the play by forums section if you scroll back a few years you can find ranked games. They typically will say WWIIv5 if the players were using a tripleA mod of the 1942.2 board on A&A org.

I guess at this point right now I just see the lack of a chat feature as kind of a barrier to properly playtesting the game.

Ideally I'd have spent the last 5 hours rapping out with someone while we got the game up and then reporting back. But I'm still struggling to Join the MP game. The Solo game is fine though I'm still kind of headbanging on the GUI and wishing I could blast through the combat/rolling screen. When I played as Axis vs AI the last couple times the computer didn't make the Ukraine attack/strafe so its kind of hard to get into there, I finally got one where the Russian's made a reasonable start so that is what I'm play currently. Selecting Hot Seat, and soloing as all nations has been the most straightforward for trying to get a feel for the UI stuff, but I'm kind of over that clearly lol. So right now just want to hop into a live game or something, since I got a few hours to kill, but its hanging up on me or maybe just nobody is launching. Earlier several games were playing that had the handle beamdog in it. That seems like an ideal way to go. Have the in house peeps play with us so we can iron out the kinks. But sans a chat its kind of rough using forums as intermediaries.

[Swiggy]

ill take any kind of bid system

[shmity72]

my first game conquered russia and asia in 3 turns. yes please. a bidding system.

[Victoria]

Wow that's a thorough list - thanks for the feedback. If you have some time, please submit your feedback here to help us improve the game: https://beamdog.atlassian.net/servicedesk/customer/portal/3

[jasonwclark]

Right on. I just tossed you guys a screen of a graphical error I encountered earlier. And then another of me comically trying to communicate with myself using the map notes, since I don't think anyone else could read them. I was able to finally get an Online game launched over the past hour. We played through the first turn. As Russia I failed the Ukraine strafe but took W. Russia pretty solidly, so pushed through my turn, but then whoever was playing Axis failed in the sz battle off Egypt (retreating loaded transport to the Italian sz.) At the noncombat phase I received a notification of forfeit (which is understandable under those conditions, although not sure what to do with it) but then curiously it said that Germany was now under a new players control? Not sure exactly since I haven't been able to talk through it. So maybe the game is still up. Will report back later if I find a way to get through the first round with whoever. I figure this whole first month will be strictly friendly games as everyone gets their bearings haha.

Happy to ramble at anyone who wants to chat on the game. What is the preferred method? I can type out a lengthy feature request if that's what works best.

[jasonwclark]

ps. Can't stress enough how important point 7 is.

Trying to rely on graphical information on the map to confirm or undo movement is frustrating. I've been spending way too much time trying to battle the UI to load/unload transports, or undo a move after its been made.

What you need is basically a list, of the same sort which currently exists in the game's history of moves in the "WAR DIARY" tab when you expand the little arrows to the right of each phase (after the moves have been made and the nation's turn is completed.) This lists all the moves that were made during that particular phase of the nation's turn.

But we need that list while the current combat movement/non-com is still actually going on. So we can see which move has been made, confirm that it's been made, or have a simple way to undo the move if needed.

As to the arrows, this also can be tricky as its hard to understand whether you've actually issued the orders to complete the amphibious assault or not. For example I just ran a battle on sz 37 where I thought I had committed both transports for the invasion of DEI, but after the successful sz combat nothing occurred. The committed troops where back on land with the transports free to move wherever in non-com. Not a huge deal, but just confusing.

One thing that happened to me several times is that the transport would seem to have been committed to a move, only for me to click and somehow unload the transport from the moved position, with the loaded ground units travelling all the way back to their starting positions on land. It happened to me at least twice where I didn't catch it before completing the phase. Basically if you want to have a click to undo feature, it would be nice it was left-click to issue command/right-click to undo command. But anyway, I just got lost there.

The process of loading the transport, click transport then click land units, can also feel a little counter intuitive. Maybe since I'm used to loading by clicking the ground unit into the sea zone directly, but either way, just a tracker that lists all the current moves point by point in the order they were made so they can be undone from a list rather than from the map would be helpful. There are a lot of arrows down there lol.

[applewhitew2003]

To the Dev's, thank you! I have waited a long time for this fun game that I have played off and on over the past 30 years.

One frustrating issue I have is the fact that the game repeatedly goes on and off line every 5 to 7 minutes during a game. Is it my machine? Or is it an issue the Dev's are already aware of?

Thanks again for a fun game!!!

[jasonwclark]

Not just you, I think it's happened to me a couple dozen times.

Seems that my game from earlier is still going. Whoever Robbie is that I'm playing against right now, you're a trooper man. I'm guessing probably still struggling to work through the same kind of connection drops that I was. I listed the game as "LIVE GAME 2 HRS" since that's about what I had before I gotta got to sleep, but I'm already pushing late night. So far that'd be about 2 hours to get to J1, which is certainly a long time to still be in the first game round. But we are definitely asynchronous, because I know I've dropped back to the load screen or main menu several times hehe.

It is what it is I guess. Early access and all. I'll probably swoop through after a day or two to see what's cracking then.

[Clarence Boddicker]

ALL they need to do is make the map great looking and simplify everything. Make it exactly like the board game. Don't waste any time on useless needed nonsense. Make the tanks etc look awesome and quick explosive battles.

[jasonwclark]

One more thought on point 8, regarding unit movement.

Using the territory or sz tile with a click to issue movement orders is probably the only sensible way to ever get this game on a mobile platform, if that is part of the long term goal.

When the gamemap is at maximum zoom it is still fairly easy to select the larger features like Territories or Sea Zones, but it would be very laborious to be all constantly zooming in and out in order to click and move individual units along the desired path. That's my thought anyway... select territory from the map > brings up list of units in that space > select which units/X will move from list > click on adjacent tile to issue the movement command.

I imagine something like that would also be useful if you plan to ever port to a console, where ideally you'd want a way to cycle through a rotation of currently occupied territories to issue movement orders, instead of having to always thumbstick to scroll around the map like a poor man's mouse.

[jasonwclark]

Also for point 9, regarding an editor.

Here is a great example from my current game, which I just lost (had to forfeit), because after finishing the American's turn I accidentally skipped straight past the Russian mobilize units phase. Might have been rushing, but mis-clicks and things of that sort will be common in these games I would think. A&A is not a game where you can recover from an error like that unfortunately.

In this case the US flying tiger from China had just gone for a dramatic airblitz vs a single Axis infantry unit in Ukraine, attempting to open up a blitz path for our Russian tanks to attack a pair of lightly defended German fighters nearby. The airstrike failed alas! but the other US battles went well and I'd be happy to play on if I didn't just also blow past an essential gamephase with the Russians. Maybe an extra prompt would have helped, like "are you sure you don't want to make a purchase? Are you really really sure?" in bright red warning letters haha.

Obviously with their backs against the wall the USSR can't afford to entirely skip a purchase in the second round, but there is no way to edit back to the previous phase via a timeline, or to edit/add units or anything at the end of the Russian turn. I also don't have a way to just ask the opponent directly if they want to try struggling on with it, or just take the win and start again. No anti-climax or post play banter etc.

So instead the game is just over... after sinking a couple hours into it. With an editor, even a very basic one, we might be able to salvage it and play through. But can't see a way to do that here. Sorry Robbie, well played today. Way to pick it up for the other guy who ditched out earlier. I'll catch you on the next one man.

[WpnsPltFox2/5]

Add "research technology" from edition 1. Also get rid of the auto resolve during player 1 or allow an option for players to turn it off.