April 2016 State of the Nations

[TimTrain]

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Greetings Leaders!

April marks a very exciting milestone for us: it’s time to celebrate the one-year anniversary of DomiNations in Western markets! We are incredibly grateful to have so many people who play the game and join us for the rest of the journey through all of human history. Working on this title has been such a great experience, and having so many fans who love DomiNations makes it all worthwhile. I remember the first day of our launch in the West after two years of hard work, when we saw lots of players discovering the game and enjoying the next evolution in mobile strategy games. We’ve come a long way since then, and still have so much of human history to come.

Of course, there is another great reason to celebrate this month, with the release of the Global Age! This is the second new Age added to DomiNations since we launched a year ago, so this is a major event in the life of the game. The Global Age is meant to represent the period of World War II, with all the rapid technological advances to draw from. World War II is the cataclysmic pivot point of the modern era, with history divided into “before” and “after” that conflict. There are a lot of elements to draw from and stories to tell, and we look forward to continuing to develop new game features throughout the Global Age.

Leaders who follow the forums closely know that the past two releases, 3.5 and 3.7, were focused on “technical debt,” i.e., fixing bugs that have remained problematic for a long time. In particular, 3.7 did an amazing job of reducing crashes; our data reports that our crashes are down 93% on iOS after 3.7, with a large drop on Android as well. I was personally very excited the first time my game lost connection halfway through a battle – and I still got credit for the part of the battle before I lost network connectivity. If you have seen the benefits of these efforts, we would ask that you consider taking a moment and giving us a higher rating for the game on the App Store or Play Store. Higher ratings give us more visibility and help us grow the game, which brings more players into the world of DomiNations.

Having said that, we know we still have some other key features we need to improve on. In particular, we need to get War Replays into the game so people can help their Alliance mates get better at battle (and evaluate what went wrong during their attacks). We also are working on new ways for Alliances to recruit new members so they are not so reliant on posting to Facebook and forums.

Careful followers of the game industry will also have noticed our other piece of big news this month: our company has been acquired by Nexon, our partner in publishing DomiNations. This is very exciting news for us, as it allows the team to focus primarily on making great games, as opposed to spending bandwidth on the more mundane concerns of running a company. We’ve enjoyed a fantastic working relationship with Nexon thus far, and we’re happy to officially become part of the family! We do not anticipate that much will change in terms of our day-to-day. In particular, DomiNations will remain the focus of all our efforts for now, even as we start to think about what’s next for our team.

As always, we thank everyone for your continued support on DomiNations!

Tim

 

[redprince]

Thanks for the update! I'm looking forward to finally seeing some war replays. It's interesting that you say that crashes went down by 93%, while I did notice a huge drop in crashing before the GA update, after the update there was a renewed sighting of crashes. For me it seemed somewhat expected with a new update, but others are certainly less patient, would be good to see the current crashing issues addressed. Good job overall and congrats on the Nexon purchase and the 1 year anniversary!

 

[pfastovsky]

Tim, glad you feel you are getting the platform more stable and also that you appreciate getting war replays into the game. The big question is WHEN are you going to get those war replays in.

 

[S_How]

Tim,

The global update brought fun content. Memory related crash fixes were a welcome relief. However, the last few updates have introduced things that have really badly hurt your community, that have received almost no attention or communication on. It would be good to understand when they will be fixed, as they are really hurting many people.

1) Network crashes/Spinning ring/missing war stars - It seems you have experienced one variant of this yourself. Many people are getting network errors and crashing very frequently. The spinning wheel is showing up and disconnecting the attack, it never did this with any frequency before the last update. The worst variant of this is in war when players have a 5* win and it is reduced to a loss or 1-2 star win. This problem is ubiquitous and happens to us every single war, without exception. It should be very easy to reproduce. Terribly demoralizing.

2) Changes in the alliance recruitment system - this was a great feature before. Now, when a player in search of a new home is looking for an alliance, they are presented with terrible options of alliances that are entirely inactive, will never experience good features like war, or alliances with 1-2 people. Conversely, great alliances now cannot get new members like before, and are slowly dying off. This is having a spillover effect of war queues taking longer, and a much less vibrant community for many players. There is a 10+ page thread on this in the bugs section. Everyone just is asking for it to be switched back, no idea why it was changed. Its awful

3) You've spoken about security improvements in the last few state of the nation posts. Sorry, I cannot see the result of this. The number of 100% max global bases is sickening. They are everywhere, and people's ability to get whatever they want through bogus crowns and resources has not been impacted by your efforts. So many people are holding back spending real money for this very reason. Crowns have no value when so many cheats exist to get them, and so many people do get them, and are not punished. We are told to report them but nothing is done. Really the only solution is auditing by Nexon and perma banning these people. You would be #1 on the $$ charts for apps if these bases were actually paid for I bet lol. Its embarrassing! The only silver lining is we rarely see them in war, and they are good farms. But absolutely awful for nexon because it discourages real spending!

 

[Nathan Win]

Great, thanks for the update. I'm very looking forward to having War replay, and additional alliance tool doesn't hurt either. You guys have came a long way. I started playing this game April 2015, so it has been a year for me as well. I have been through all the emotional stages playing the games from excitement to frustrations (with all the bugs and cheaters). I was very happy for you guys that Nexon acquired BHG since that let us know there is a long term plan for Dominations and more support for your team. Please continue to fix your bugs and improve your security, and ban those cheaters.

 

[War Phoenix - David]

War Replay. ... War Replay ..... War Replay! Thanks for listening.

 

[GoldDS]

In particular, 3.7 did an amazing job of reducing crashes; our data reports that our crashes are down 93% on iOS after 3.7, with a large drop on Android as well. I was personally very excited the first time my game lost connection halfway through a battle – and I still got credit for the part of the battle before I lost network connectivity.

are you really kidding us? amazing job? since you introduced that freaking god damn solution i ve lost more than 300 medals! your so called solution just benefits if you are quick enough to get that first star, but what about those just placed troops and crashed then? or who won and got the win result screen but going back to main menu it all of the sudden shows as loss?
you burn invested money and dont care about it. compensations are insane and you are lying to us mentioning you cannot restore medals or ressources whereas every little teen knows how to adjustdatabase entries.

what about this ridiculous medals and ranking system? the endless "no opponent could be found" message? or the non received warloot which hits me 2 out of 3 world wars?

not to mention since global age your game become a kingdom for hackers and cheaters. tell me whats so hard about implementing a simple check script for accounts, e.g. number of crowns to get from max IA (level 168) to max GA (level 188) incl walls in 1 day, e.g. 800,000 crowns (havent calculated it but probably more), check against purchased crowns, e.g. ZERO. check hacker or legit = HACKER, so BAN!!! see how simple the maths are?!

you do just what you want and stopped listening to players after all, you dont even care so why would we rate you higher? do your job and respect paying customers.

thats all to add from my side

 

[Brand Marrow]

"thats all to add from my side"

i have a sneaking suspicion that we'll be hearing more from you on these same points again GoldDS...

 

[GoldDS]

indeed brand marrow just this afternoon our alliance war ended and again, i havent received war loot. why? because i missed to log off in time from that ONLINE game in order to receive the loot...so ridiculous...

 

[FroggyKilla]

Excellent. Good to hear the game's getting stable.

 

[xGraves]

Don't stir up the brothers, now.

 

[Shwan]

Seriously?! I'm using a high end device and my WW crashes A LOT! I rarely face multiplayer crashes, but in WW I face it a lot! And the CS guys are WOW, they provide zero support.
Very frustrating to be in the game for 8 months late industrial age and facing these issues.
BTW, lately I have an issue in being placed in leagues! I'm out of leagues no matter how many battles I do!

 

[Tainos]

Well damn does anyone know that there always will be bugs in games! The only way u Hae a perfect game is if you have the right people working for your company, example testers have a special job but what matters is what kind of tester is he? Do u know how much people are cheating and not spending money how can BHG GET ANY PROFIT TO INCREASE THERE SUPPORT SYSTEM OR GAME BUG? And without the cheaters the game will have no competition and more complaints. Thanks BHG FOR YOUR PROGRESS! LOOKING FORWARD FOR MORE UPDATES! Most of the good games have cheaters. Why don't we be the judge and help out BHG catch the cheaters and reporting them!

 

[Rockshaft]

Thanks for the updates they are much appreciated. It's been quite a first year playing and learning ,hope the next year brings as much fun!

 

[S_How]

Hi, the two main features you alluded to - war replays and better alliance recruitment - were not added in an update a month after this post. If you continue on the pace of an update every 6 weeks, we're looking at almost 3 months from this post, at best.

Also, you did a great job last month with reducing memory crashes. However, your "technical debt" is now higher than it ever has been before with reduced star issues in war related to your servers, network crashes related to your servers, and most recently, constantly vanishing medals.

Can you address these things in your next State of the Nations which I think should be soon?

 

[Guinevere]

Still waiting for "better alliance recruitment" which is still not happening for us.