Suggestion - Full Replay
Outwitters not making money is totally unrelated. I dont want to bash the game, cause its a great game, but in outwitters you have teams that are nearly identical except for one special unit. That might be okay except that the special unit also costs the most of any unit and is therefore only important in a fraction of your matches. Most of the players are not in the top-league, in the top-league the special unit becomes important, the higher in the league you are. But if you are in the bottom leagues, games are won-and-lost because of much more basic reasons, the low-cost cheap guys are the ones that win you the games at the lower leagues, not the super units.
I hestitated to buy anything myself because I looked at it and said to myself "The new team is nearly the same, buy two teams for 6$ thats kind of a rip off... and more than 5 games? Having just 5 at a time is already a lot to play if you do other things in your life than just play all day --...."
they have no advertisement, until a few weeks ago they had no ingame avatars or things you can customize for money...
a fully functional game for free, with a very questionable ingame purchase for 95% of the public. I really don't see how they would be making any money with that, irregardless of the replays.
they did just release a new team with now the option to buy avatars. And they also changeds the wits system in such a way that you accumulate more cash, which makes the super units a bit cheaper (indirectly). This will help, and I have seen many players already using (buying) the avatars. So I think that they must be making a bit more money now.
Replays help to foster a strong high-level game. I've gotten very good, very fast, at outwitters because of the replays. It also helps to position yourself against the pros, it gives you something to work towards.
It can help to make stars, people can become known as good players, and this develops a fan base. Right now it is very anonymous. Immagine if there were screen casts and videos that went turn-by-turn into HA games and did analysis of plays? the game has as much depth as chess. There are many points of decisions to make. Should I use my scroll ealry to keep tempo? Or keep it for later when I actually have a scary target I want to kill with it? Should I have used my early lead to go for a crystal kill? Or to just pressure for a TKO?
With replays people can share results. People who think a team is weak can show a replay and then others can comment if the team is actually weak, or if there was a potential mistake made in the play (say switching to a crystal kill when you had the lead).
A league and game-replays is about creating a high quality environment for the game to exist in. If the game is to grow and more-and-more teams are going to be added for years to come, replays are an essential part of that process. There is no way the game can still remain balanced with 20 teams if we can't also watch each others games.
Knowing how well a team is doing is also knowing what level players are winning and loosing with them. If a team is loosing 80% of the time when played by players who are lower on the league but loosing 60% of the time when played by players higher in the league, this tells you important things about what kinds of changes are required to the team that you can't know from just pure win/loss stats.
For the actual developers of the game, looking at replays of the games we are doing would also be invaluable for them. If Shaolin win 5 games out of 60, why did they win those 5? Were those players doing something different? Or did their opponents just make mistakes that would have won you the game no matter which team you were using?
Replays are the future... and no, a replay doesn't generate money in your bank, but having a really solid amazing game that is well put together that people can actually do tournament live casts or re-plays from top tournaments etc. IS going to generate money because the game is suddenly at a whole new level.
This game has the potential to be even bigger than it currently is, but without replays, (and without an in-game league) it will always be one-step away from that potential.
Oh and to speak about Big War Game vs. Outwitters, I've given Outwitters money, and I play it all the time, BWG I bought but I never-ever play. If BWG ever releases more ingame purchases I just won't buy them, but I would ones for Outwitters. If that is saying anything...
What outwitters really needs, is expansion-packs for the existing teams... 1$ and you get a set of unique units to add to the "base" teams. IE more special units per team, with costs lower than 7. That would really make the teams different, and also make it more worth your time to spend money on new teams.
Man, I loooove replays too, and think that it would be a super great idea!
I did a video of a replay once (check my blog). However, it seems to me that a replay would take at minimum 10min to play out, which might be kind of a drag to watch all the way through. Replays aren't super good in isolation, I feel - without being able to check the health, or game out scenarios, bare replays aren't all that exciting. If we ever get a full fledged replays system, like chess or go systems, where you get to explore alternate lines... wooowhee. =D
See my point with the assets being stored locally was that there must be a surprisingly large amount of data which hampers things
Man, I loooove replays too, and think that it would be a super great idea!
I did a video of a replay once (check my blog). However, it seems to me that a replay would take at minimum 10min to play out, which might be kind of a drag to watch all the way through. Replays aren't super good in isolation, I feel - without being able to check the health, or game out scenarios, bare replays aren't all that exciting. If we ever get a full fledged replays system, like chess or go systems, where you get to explore alternate lines... wooowhee. =D
Well the Steam version could export the data perhaps to json or an xml file, and then you can load it up and go turn by turn, just like you can in outwitters. If you only play 1 turn at a time (think video control interface, play, pause, rewind), you can see all the health levels of all the units.
I don't dispute it might take work to code it, all I was trying to say is that the feature would be incredibly useful for the game. Both for commentaries (think Starcraft commentaries) as well as for general skill level development of the comunity, and an even bigger sense of a community to boot. Who is the infamous Dark Elf player? Few would know right now if they didn't scour the statistics. But if you have replays and stars generated from streamcasts... well, we would all know who are the top players of the different factions as common knowledge.
I dunno, not a developer. I do know that Paul, the developer of the asynch Great Big War Game, got on his forums and explained to folks that while he LOVED the replays in Outwitters, it was probably too late to implement them in his game, because, given the way his game was coded vis-a-vis the server/asynch aspects, it would require a lot more effort than if he had built it with replays in mind, and he wasnt sure that he would see any financial return for the extra effort. So respect to the programmers here, but I'm not sure you guys understand the effort that would be involved. Also, Outwitters, which has replays, is a terrible financial flop, so its hardly guaranteed that replays would boost sales.
I'd love to have em too, just saying I understand why we dont.