Design Spotlight: Combat Rebalance!

[Blood]

Amen since they can’t stop them from hacking them just remove them all together

 

[No Angel]

Atomic and Cold War are so far just fine. Need adjustment for Global and Industrial.

 

[Bludd]

I also love the solution1 idea!

 

[Manifesto]

So you cut of their nose to spite your face?
Or the other way around?

 

[KniferX]

Last I knew Starcraft has everyone at the start of a match at equal terms, which is why points and leagues work there, the only difference between opponents is their skill level so it is a game of skill.

Here you have players who have upgraded everything in the game and players who have years until they do so. A league glory system would completely ignore these differences and complete disaster would ensue:

- only teams of all level 300s will be able to consistently win
- pay to progress faster would become pay to win overnight
- any team that is not full of max level players and plays good would eventually reach a point where they lose just because the enemy is more upgraded than they are. I.E. same effect as getting mismatched because of sandbagging, only this one will be persistent and get worse if you try to win.
- high level reset alliances would troll everyone
There are several more, but there's no need to go further I think.

 

[Manifesto]

I am not sure if anyone can do this and I've seen this on many other forums like crypto trading sites... someone should create a poll and let the members of the community speak for itself... Pretty easy to do right? Sorry I am not that technical so I don't know how to create one. It's a good case study by polling how members of the forum/community feels with just a simple vote on things like... Hey do you like the rebalance stage 1? stage 2? stage 3? Like or Dislike and we then can see how the whole community on here feels as a whole. I hear and I read both sides... valid points but, honestly I feel like more members don't like it and there is a lot of things not to like. If Nexon and I know Nexon cruises their own forums... they can begin to see if there was something like that. If 70% feel like they don't like the rebalance act... blah blah blah... Nexon Devs might start to think... wait a minute you mean you don't like paying 7.99 and waiting 10 days to get all your crowns.... you know what I mean.

Great idea. Why haven't we all thought to let the devs know how we feel?
Come on everyone, let's get behind this revolutionary idea from koool, calling on his weeks of experience on this forum.

 

[Ulysses]

Hey guys, Where did everybody go?!?!

No, seriously guys, it's become obvious in recent gameplay that I'm hitting sleeper bases now; so much uncollected oil and other resources out there. And where I used to get hit 5-10x overnight, even if it was just by 1 rifleman to medal drop, now I might get hit once per night, or maybe not at all... Just me? Or is everybody else finding this game has lost players? Not sure how many; but enough to notice a difference, for sure...

Just wanted to say a huge thanks to skychan for your awesome post. You made it real easy to see the net effect of Brad & Tin's tinkering with offense/defense stats since the summer. This one really should be stickied, and it'll be interesting to see if Nexon do that. Help yourselves guys. It's thorough and honest. And it's quite an eye opener. Direct link here → https://forum.nexonm.com/forum/nexon...on-the-updates

In between realising I've become less interested to start Dom these days, and rediscovering the joys of more time for Real Life again... that ol' dopamine surge of an addictive video game no longer triggering for Dom any more... I got to wondering why Nexon would want to 'improve' its previously wickedly successful formula. I've spent plenty of time (aka far too much) invested in getting my base to a foolishly high level, but the way I wanted it, and yes I've spent money in the past too. But even I've been shocked to learn that some whales on the forum admitted to spending $100k on Dom. Whoah?! Did I read that right??? Wth??? And suddenly Nexon doesn't mind losing these guys??? Mind. Blown.

So. Here are my theories. There's a rational one. And a conspiracy one. You be the judge. And if you've got a better one, I'm all ears... Hearing your theory is probably gonna be more fun than playing the game right now, lol...

1. My rational theory - Nexon screwed up. Somewhere last year, the guys decided to double up on the resources that we could collect. Then some guy in management (heck, maybe even a Management Consultant brought in to help them 'optimise' the BHG acquisition) decided that it would be great idea to brainstorm ways to generate more revenues. Like seriously. Have you seen the amount of 'opportunities' they give you to spend cash or crowns in the tab to the right? Jeez! Greedy doesn't begin to cover it. There are only so many pixels I wanna put on my credit card bill. But anyhow, out of that brainstorm, the Museum emerged. And as we've all learned, that there Museum, it's a lottery. You've got a 5-6% chance to score an 11% line, and more than likely it's gonna be for a factor you don't need anyhow. But wait guys, if you're continually unlucky, like the stats predict you should be, Nexon is happy to sell you (drum roll, fanfare) Legendary Artefacts. For maybe $100 each. But who's counting right? The thing is, enough guys did get lucky, or ante-ed up for the Legendaries, and now that's massively messed up resource collection in the game... If you've rolled, or bought, the right museum Artefacts, you can collect 100-200k oil in a day. Every day... and your food & gold comes for free while you're motoring for oil... Now if you're a developer who cares about game balance (or revenues) that's a Big Problem. Because those uber users, don't need to buy anything any more. The golden geese can put their credit cards away... So what are management to do? Easy. They make it harder to score resources again. And that's what the last four waves of changes have achieved... Nexon couldn't actually come out and say that's what's happened, because there are probably jobs at risk here. After the BHG acquisition. In the current company culture, there's not a whole heap of admitting that bad calls have been made (heck, they still haven't fixed the labelling on MRL stats, which have been completely different in the Factory and the Armory for more than half a year now, pointed out multiple times, and ignored multiple times by Tin & team; compare and contrast Nexon with other games you can think of, where devs do pay attention to easy to fix details. Weird right?)... So, my rational theory reckons that Nexon accidentally made resources way too easy to collect, for some of us, and have then tried to correct that. But in their correction, they've made it impossible for regular players to raid/farm enough resources to enjoy the game... I don't know what the end game looks like for that scenario??? But it's approaching... Any smarter folks got suggestions???

2. My conspiracy theory - Now that I've learned there were whales out there who have admitted to paying $100k pay to play, I get an idea how much profit BHG must have made from Dom. It doesn't cost a software company a lot of money to build a pixel. You don't need much bread, bricks or PBJ. It's just a pixel. That's pure profit after paying the devs. Somebody somewhere made a lot of money when BHG was sold to Nexon. I don't have access to the kind of info resources I'd need to figure out who? Bloomberg terminal anybody? But now that BHG has been sold, whoever took that money and left, doesn't have much incentive to keep the franchise going anymore. Anyone remember the last time Nexon held an AMA for Dominations??? ... If I were a conspiracy kind of guy, I might even question whether the current drip, drip, drip of making the game ever harder to win, is a deliberate slow effort to lose players. If Nexon just pulled Dom, there'd be an uproar. Folks would demand our money back. Nexon would probably face issues from the places they get their money from, like Apple. But if Nexon slowly make the game unplayable, as they seem to be doing, most of us are gonna go... quietly... like we are... Then they can either close the BHG franchise, or roster staff to something else...

Sure, Dom's been fun. A whole heap of fun. The early devs created a really simple game, with cute graphics, nice icons, easy to play... Okay, the AI has always sucked... There have often been cheaters... Chat has had its good and bad weeks... But it's been a great way to meet up and play with some truly awesome dudes (and dudettes)... But good as Dom is now, it's nothing on the scale of say Civilization, Total War, Battlefield, Fortnite at their best... Dom didn't need to be... The problem for Nexon is there are some mouthwateringly good games coming out right now... and Dom just doesn't cut it any more... It could. With investment. But whether you believe my rational theory or the conspiracy one, or maybe you've got your own (please share), until Nexon's management show that they care about the game and this player base, this ship is gonna leak players... who are already taking their enthusiasm, time and money to more interesting places...

Thanks guys. I'll login to watch what happens. It's been cool. It'd be nice if it got cool again. But... well, I'm not gonna judge, let's just see how this plays out...

 

[Ponfi]

Rebalance: IT was not a good change. People want to finish the game. It´s impossible not to be able to beat a smaller level. Why do not you listen to what I´m writing? Howevwr, the entire forum, also the whole facebook, is full of how you messed up this good game. I´ve been playing if for years, and somethimes I´ve put the money in it. I like to finish the game. Also many players in the aliance have stopped talking. Some still hope that something will change so they decided to wait for some time. If anything does not change ends with the game. This is how people get you and there will be few who will be willing to dominations yet to give money. Try doing something about it and correct these changes. Before that game was fine, now it´s hard to play. It does not bother us to wreak big losses on levels we had previously beaten without problems. It can not be a lot of attacks a day and the game strats to be rather depressing. You have totally failed this game.

 

[Houkai]

I agree with your rational idea. Museum screwed them up really good.

 

[Manifesto]

Your museum theory has merit.
Why they decided to affect all of us is a pain in the áss.

 

[alegs]

Well, it’s harder now, but it also has become a lot more challenging again.
I started being bored to just run over base, over base, over base … without any big loss or noticeable resistance.

So, all in all I personally appreciate the rebalance efforts. Although I do not like every detail of it.

E.g. armored cars are probably the strongest defenders in TCs. If they get an additional buff for attacking (which is rational) they will even be tougher defenders, too (which is not rational). :/
Probably you have even exaggerated it a bit, because it has become really hard to 5-star an equal-level base now and even more defensive buffs are incoming with the next update(s).

Also, one throwback will most likely be that you will see more of those boring medal-dropping attacks. This is not only something you did want to delimit, but also frustrating for the players.
It is nice to see that you are actively working on the product again. Continue the good work and don’t forget to hear out the community. Except some of the exaggerated whining.

 

[skychan]

We're reaching the point where our alliance leadership is starting to rotate OUT of wars. Because it's no fun grinding for NTG's anymore. Everyone I know is medal dropping because there is no point in staying high. Easy abandoned bases that you could wipe before cost half an army, so my time playing has dropped. Unless you count the time spent dropping medals, that's gone up. And only that.

I can only imagine what fresh hell is in store with the wall improvement update coming next.

 

[Manifesto]

So what level are you? And what level bases were you beating over and over again?
And by medal dropping you're not actually embracing the 'rebalance', are you?
You're simply restoring your status quo, thereby bypassing the effects of the 'rebalance'.

 

[Carthage]

Rebalance sucks. Everything is worse. I'm not going to write a wall of text about it, but Nexon will eventually get the drift because playing and hence spending will drop off. You might have have killed the game Nexon. Fire the dude that came up with this idea.

 

[alegs]

I'm around lvl218 now. I'm confident about 5-staring most opponents on a comparable lvl in world wars now. I used to be able to 5 star bases with lvl 230 to 250 even when I was around lvl 190 before the rebalance.
I don't like medal dropping cause I think it's an abuse and it is boring. But I did it in the past and I do it now. Currently it is getting very hard to 5 star opponents in multiplayer raiding with about my level. Not only because of course you don't want to use heavy resources for raiding like multiple generals, mercenaries or even troop cards. Therefore I mainly go the easy route and kill bases far lower than my level for raiding. One thing I noticed with the updates is, that I get more low lvl bases now. A lot more. Regardless of the medal count it's just more low lvl

 

[Parmenion]

If the time it takes to train troops, aircraft, factory troops and tactics was cut in half it might make the rebalance easier to take. So, we can accept that getting 5 stars in a battle is now harder but through losing many more troops it takes too long to train things, which makes the game frustrating and much less fun. There needs to be balance in areas that help us to keep playing and not more money making options.

 

[Manifesto]

You have a training blessing and now some people have seen plane blessings.
Nexon will not reduce times permanently while these are available. Better get used to it.

 

[Jolly the Wise]

To understand why the changes have been made Google “Nexon share price” for USA and Korea and look at the change for the year to date.

To see the impact of the changes to DN count the number of blank medals in the leaderboard after the next season change. My new season will start in a little over one day. Currently out of the top 175 there are ten blanks. If a week after the new season starts there are a lot more then that tells you how many top ranked (in medals) players are not attacking in MP. (I haven’t been attacked for a week now).

 

[Mountainking]

wrong thread

 

[Anupam Dinodia]

because only of rebalance nearly above than 20 alliance member leave this game which were above 200 level