Season 3 Shenanigans

[Jaxxin...]

First of all, let me say that the forums have been very very quiet. :-( Probably since OML announced that they were ending Outwitters development. I for one still strongly believe there is much more money LONGTERM in Outwitters than TTL. It's rare for an independent studio to get the level of intense loyalty that Outwitters achieved. For example, look at all the extraneous work programmers and forum leaders have done for the game. This WAS a strong and growing ecosystem, with, IMO, many creative monetization options. I wish I was still in business school, I would've loved to do a free strategy/marketing analysis for OML if they would've had me. Who knows, maybe the data would prove me wrong...

Anywho, I digress. Back to my season three points:

One, I find it interesting that the new season caused the point allocation to become so lopsided again. All of my games started out 22 to 1, and are now settling down a bit at 16 to 8. Anyone know why?

Also, pretty much ALL my matches have been with lower level players. I have always been a high level masters player, usually playing other masters players, sometimes top 200 players. But with this new season, I have played almost exclusively high-level gifted players. I don't believe I am in danger of demotion because I have gone roughly 25-5 against them. Yet still getting only gifted players. Anyone know why?

[Norahsul]

i am guessing it's partly due to fewer active players?
but hey i got matched with a ST yesterday... secretly i thought, time for promotion
truthfully, ST couldn't get a match in 2 days so i got paired

[Szei]

I feel like Outwitters has a lot of potential, though the window to achieve status as a competitive game in the longterm is slipping away. There are a few problems preventing true success and mainstream appeal.

Long Games
Outwitters is asynchronous which is great for people who don't have time to sit down and play out whole games at once. However, this harms the competitive tournament scene as these events can take an extremely long time.

Suggestion: If Outwitters 2 is made there needs to be a mode where each player has ~30-60 minute clock to guarantee games last no more than 1-2 hours. This can be used in tournament settings (there would still be the standard 4 day turn limit for league play).

Learning Curve
Outwitters has simple mechanics, but the game is actually not as interesting at a low level. Sure, you can learn how to play very easily, but specials are difficult for beginners to get out let alone use effectively due to their cost. In the early days after Outwitters' release there were a number of threads by people requesting specials cost less (and this continued for the first few months). It turns out that they were actually priced well and people simply hadn't learned how to save wits effectively enough to use specials. Unfortunately, it appears that many were turned away from the game by this initial learning curve. I had an extensive argument on a forum (I believe it was pockettactics) with some people who felt this way and never really gave it a chance as a result. They said ridiculous things like "all the teams are the same and specials don't play much of a role".

Suggestion: I'm not actually sure what can be done. The issue is that the teams actually are very different despite only having one special and being quite pricy. However, at the same time newer players don't get to witness this as well. Perhaps in a sequel each team could have two specials. I see a few benefits to this at the cost of losing some of Outwitters clean, simple design philosophy (which is unfortunate, but perhaps worth sacrificing a little). Primarily, the introduction of a second, slightly cheaper unique unit for each team will allow even new players to feel the unique nature of each team. Perhaps this second special could cost 4 or 5 wits. This may also make the game easier to balance. Why? Currently if you adjust one special to make a particular matchup balanced, you unintentionally impact all the matchups. It is very hard to balance all the matchup as a result. With 2 specials per team you can tweak each matchup more easily.

Graphical Style*
OML gave Outwitters a less serious graphical style to presumably attract more players, casual in addition to competitive. A reviewer (I don't remember who) pointed out that there is perhaps somewhat of a conflict here. Often times, serious strategy games have a serious graphic style. Usually either futuristic or medieval/fantasy. With its cartoony graphic style, the reviewer stated (and I would imagine he is right at least to some extent) that quite a number of people looking for a competitive strategy game likely passed Outwitters by after looking at the screenshots. There was no doubt for me that I would purchase Outwitters, but that was only because I had a great experience with OML's first game and had much respect for them as a result of the direction they took TTL (premium game with numerous free updates). However, had I not been familiar with OML and read every post on their homepage during Outwitters' development, there is a good chance I would have given the game a pass. Had I not known Alex was an avid Starcraft fan and was implement leagues and matchmaking, the less serious style probably would have given me the false impression that the game wasn't a competitive one.

Suggestion: I hesitate to say this as the current art has grown on me after all this time with the game, but perhaps give the sequel a more serious theme? Possibly you could have an alternate graphical mode that users can toggle between. "Default mode" which would be either a futuristic or fantasy theme and "Classic mode" which would be like the original Outwitters' style. I imagine this would be a lot of work for Adam but you could sell the classic theme (I'm sure many of us who have stuck with Outwitters all this time would be happy to purchase this to show our support). Again, I do hesitate to make this suggestion though because I like the unique teams Outwitters has and I feel it would lose some of its charm if it were to revert to a generic sci-fi theme. However, perhaps charm is not what most people are looking for in a competitive TBS?

Note that receptivity to the idea of giving the Outwitters theme an overhaul will probably be skewed on these forums. The people who are still here are those who either liked the art-style or didn't mind it. This may give a false impression of what "most" people want as you are missing feedback from all the people who simply skipped past Outwitters due to the graphical style.

[Norahsul]

i agree with mostly what szei said

personally, i love the simple cartoony graphic style!!
it is so simple and easily understood, clean to the eyes.
maybe because i haven't been playing other serious strategy games and so am happy with it. but i am assuming majority of the players are male so "serious/futuristic/fantasy" looks may attract more...

and i play adorable mostly because it's cute just like i avoided feedback because it was scary looking

[amoffett11]

When I first played Outwitters I never got specials, because I always used all my wits. I was always creating units at every spawn space, and sometimes just moved units to move them. If I ever did get a bombshell out, I didn't know what to do with it (still dont, which is why I play Adorables or feedback all the time)

[bngn3000]

What put me off initially was the lack of an in-depth tutorial and single player options. When I first downloaded the game I wanted to be taught some general tactics, what each unit is good for, and then to practice with that knowledge against an easy AI before joining a match with a stranger who had previous experience. This goes along somewhat with Szei's learning curve argument. Outwitters requires you to jump in with both feet at the get go, which can be off putting for new gamers.

[ElPared]

Szei, I think the "long game time" problem can be solved through the idea of a Ladder season.

if you played Diablo 2 you might recognize Ladder as the more competitive game mode where there were better items etc and it came in seasons.

I think if Outwitters 2 had a Ladder game mode OML could do 2 things: 1) Sell tickets to the ladder season for $1. This would generate income, and people would pay for it because 2) Ladder players get access to new teams and maps a season ahead of the regular players.

Once the Ladder season is over, it's content gets dumped into the standard play pool when the new ladder season starts (then the previous Ladder's players would just play their placement matches against normal game mode players)

You could just add to the idea of a Ladder game mode by also making Ladder players take their turns in a shorter amount of time or they forfeit the game. Ladder by nature would be more competitive so it fits with that idea, as nobody wants to pay a buck to play ladder only to lose a bunch of games to time-outs (obviously this would have to be made VERY CLEAR in the ladder ticket description, maybe even have an "are you sure" dialogue that reiterates that the time-out time is shorter)

I think business wise this makes sense, especially since Witters' Digest could showcase replays from the top 200 Ladder players instead of normal players, which would make the normal players want to play Ladder, kinda like it's own in-game advertising

The problem with shortening the time for everybody is that most of the players play just casually for fun and don't have the time to play a game through in one sitting (I think you said that already)

I guess they could also add a "blitz" mode kinda like Blitz Chess, but I think Ladder would be really fun. I'd play it for sure, especially if they added new content with each Ladder

[poweewee]

The graphical style is something that I've only heard about now, but actually makes a lot of sense. At first, I was really looking for a turn-based strategy game since I was able to play one called "Ancient Empires" which involved knights, dragons, elementals, etc. Good thing I stumbled upon this app, which is pretty close, and I also was able to play TTL before. I would understand though if people passed on the app because it looked cartoonish.

With regards to the single-player mode, it has been discussed that programming an AI is quite difficult, but a puzzle mode I suppose would suffice to teach some of the basics (e.g. given a certain position on the map, and with certain units, you have to beat the other player in one turn, or maybe kill X units in one turn, etc.)

[TheGoldenGriffin]

When i first saw outwitters, i was like, oooooooh, a war game, i like the graphics and the stratagy looks like so much fun! But i have no wifi. Too bad.

Month of more later: yay, wifi! Imma download this, that, oh i remember outwitters, download, download, download.

[Phyresis]

I honestly think that, even though Outwitters may have more potential than TTL, Adam and Alex are making the correct choice at the moment. They have already stated numerous times that they lost money on Outwitters due to lacklustre downloads. Maybe after TTL2 they will give Outwitters another go. Probably a payed for app though, not FTP.