Design Spotlight: Combat Rebalance!

[TinSoldier]

Greetings Leaders!

We are very excited to announce an upcoming combat rebalance initiative that we’ve been working on. This will be the largest set of balance changes that we’ve ever made in an ongoing effort to ensure that combat remains an engaging part of DomiNations. Because these changes affect nearly every Age in the game, we’ll be introducing them in multiple stages with Design Spotlights and patch notes to talk about the specifics of each one. For this initial spotlight, we are going to talk a little bit about why we are making the changes and what you can expect during the process.

For the past several months, our team has been digging through the vast mountains of combat data that is collected in the game and have found a couple of things we’d like to address. The first is the number of 5-star World War battles. It is clear that you all have become highly skilled commanders on the battlefield and are able to dominate your enemies with ease. We want to make sure that World Wars remain engaging by raising the bar for earning 5-star victories. To address this, we will be strengthening defenses and defenders from the Classical Age to the Cold War Age so that 5-star victories always require strong army compositions, highly-skilled troop deployments, and the latest advancements in army upgrades and research.

In addition to looking at the overall results of combat, we have also been looking at the troops being brought to combat. There are a number of troops that are staples in most armies and are performing well in battle. However, there are also troops that aren’t being used nearly enough and will be rebalanced. Specific details on those changes and several other improvements to army training will be discussed in the upcoming design spotlights.

Each stage of this rebalance is going to be accompanied by a period of time where we will be reviewing the data and your feedback on the changes before the next stage rolls out. It is possible that we may make additional tweaks between stages.

We are very excited for you to get your hands on these changes and we hope you’ll continue providing us with your feedback!

- Brad

---

Stage 1 Design Spotlight: https://forum.nexonm.com/forum/nexon...tlight-stage-1
Stage 1 Patchnotes: https://forum.nexonm.com/forum/nexon...ne-patch-notes

Stage 2 Design Spotlight: https://forum.nexonm.com/forum/nexon...tlight-stage-2
Stage 2 Patchnotes: https://forum.nexonm.com/forum/nexon...wo-patch-notes

Stage 3 Design Spotlight: https://forum.nexonm.com/forum/nexon...tlight-stage-3
Stage 3 Patchnotes: https://forum.nexonm.com/forum/nexon...ee-patch-notes

Stage 4 Design Spotlight: https://forum.nexonm.com/forum/nexo...858-combat-rebalance-design-spotlight-stage-4
Stage 4 Patchnotes: https://forum.nexonm.com/forum/nexo...37857-combat-rebalance-stage-four-patch-notes

 

[MartinK12]

Looking for it with both - excitement and fear

 

[yemen]

Money quote: "We want to make sure that World Wars remain engaging by raising the bar for earning 5-star victories."

After two years, we can't find reasonably fair world war matchups on anything like a regular basis. So your solution is to make it harder to get 5 star victories against the toughest bases? That will make even somewhat "small" mismatches into unwinnable give ups. Your team needs to spend some time rethinking how war works before making it harder.

If you really want to do something, don't allow troop tactics in world wars. On offense or defense. Copy the big organized world wars, where many of your best players have decided this is the setup that makes wars the most fun. That will make 5 star attacks in wars much more challenging, but reduce the spending arms race that makes them obnoxious for free players. Strengthening defense because too many of your rich players spend too much on elephant archers to 5* each others bases is crazy. Get rid of or weaken the ridiculous troop cards that are the root cause of making this too easy.

Whatever you do, remember that by making war base 5 stars harder, presumably that means making multiplayer harder as well. Is anyone giving any thought to how that will impact regular play? Getting adequate ntgs and diamonds for war, rebuilding troops in a reasonable time so you can keep playing and not log out after every battle? We can't use troop cards on every battle, so on offense war strength and multiplayer strength look quite different. That has to be reflected in the defensive base strength as well.

 

[heist]

Going to try making the bazooka tower permanent again?

 

[KniferX]

Finally, devs realized that troop card spam like elephant archers is the main culprit, not ''weak'' defense!




Ah... nevermind.

 

[oddin]

omg...this is quite a big thing you are going to do....and not in the right direction...

Did anyone said that WW battles are easy? Try doing a 0TT and you will see..
Did anyone asked for defence to get a buff (yet once more)? There are people that still don't know how to do a 2/3way attack and deal with silo.
Did anyone said that we want more usage of troop cards in order to 5 star bases? No no no no. The opposite in fact!

We have won WW that were hard for us because there was some room for mistakes. If you make it harder then the gap between two teams in a mismatched WW will be even bigger.

What can be done to improve WW and engage more people?

1. reduce the time to retrain the army/tactics/generals etc (Hannibal addresses only one of those)
2. remove troop tactics (as it was in the past) or at least debuff Elephant archers and other too powerful units
3. rebalance the units you believe are not used often
4. Fix the matchmaking in order to solve the long time problems with unfair WW
5. Then and only then you can actually make the battles harder. Not before. It is wrong from your side to do such a move and you will see the results for yourselves. If you proceed with this, then be sure that many casual players will stop playing because they will not like the level of difficulty in WW matches.

 

[Flailer]

Yeah, I've gotta agree with Yemen.

And, Nexon, I would agree that many of the troops need re-balancing to make them useful. Obvious ones needing improvement: commandos, mortar troops, attack helicopters, assault vehicles (maybe), machine guns, armored cars, MRL, bombers, and maybe a tweak to transport aircraft. Improve those in some ways to give people more variety. But, I would beg of you, don't nerf existing troops. Many of us have spent months/years specifically improving those troops that we want to focus on in the armory and university. Not fair to play Lucy-with-the-football and snatch those changes away from people that have invested a lot in them.

But, the core issue with the fact that people have been 5 starring bases too easily in wars is 1) because the war matchup system is broken! you've been saying you're going to improve war matchups for YEARS, but it hasn't improved that I can tell, despite plenty of suggestions from the community. At least try something! If it doesn't work, try something else a few months later. 2.) people are 5 starring bases because you've offered players the ability to purchase troops, some so powerful that they're able to take down far larger opponents than they should.

Please- this is/was a great game. Listen to your players!

 

[Quovatis]

I hope the defense changes only affect war. If you make it nearly impossible to get 5 stars in multiplayer, you will break the economy. Too many things depend on 5* victories like getting diamonds and saving troops.

 

[MartinK12]

I'd like to add one more thing - 5 staring a base is not easy because you have skilled players (seriously you expect players to suck after 3 years of daily playing this game?) but because you have:
1. paid players and cheaters (mostly in wars) - you know what to do - remove: cheaters, stronghold troops from wars and do not bring museum to wars, please
2. rushed bases like:
-atomics lvl 160,
-globals lvl 130,
-industrials lvl 110,
-etc
which are so freaking easy to 5 star. Even their offence skills and troops are pathetic. Like all those rushed players are some inpatient 5 year olds playing this game for few months and thinking they can have same skills, troops, etc only by upgrading their Town Center, as players playing this game for more than 3 years Those players don’t care about defenses at all, not to mention museum, other armory researches, library, etc. They just upgrade their main army troops and move on to the next age.

Strengthening defenses, seriously?
What do you want to strengthen - cheaters? rushed atomic bases lvl 160 with defenses from gun powder age? U can add milion HP to those defenses and it would do nothing if players have them few levels below their Town Center age Not to mention 5 staring those rushed bases with paid troops Take care of those players (cheaters and rushed) and there's no need for additional strengthening defenses. Just promote defenses and slow down those players, that's all.

Solution 1 for promoting defenses:
Just force those rushed players to upgrade their defenses by making defense count. In example daily attack on players bases and providing huge rewards for perfect defense. You have live examples in game like Boom Beach where players are under attack by AI. Domination is perfect for such events, for example - attack by generals and their armies with full strength and bonuses according to players age. Different armies with different generals could have different attacks, ie.:
-Hannibal could attack with elephant army – obviously
-Alexander could use barrack troops and attack from the shore
-Cleopatra could use all special units from her age period and attack always from alliance gate side
-Joan of Arc could attack with tanks only from museum side
-Nobunaga could attack with all ninjas, samurais, shinobis, etc. army
-Napoleon could attack with factory troops and other special event units
-MacArthur could attack with full army of fire breathing bunny rabbits, bcs why not
-Churchill could attack with air units only
-not to mention attacks by pirates, ninjas, rabbits, helicopters, spies, mastodons, dock armies, etc.
Limitless possibilities and funny gameplay. It's very easy to program such attack even with the use of tactics, trop cards, war coalitions, etc. Rewards should be the biggest possible rewards of all in the game because there are a ton of rushed bases so they would be easily crushed by your AI with full strength.
You can start this easily by making one time event and see how many players can actually defend. This would make rushed players think twice and slow down their game pace forcing them to focus on defenses the same as offence.

Solution 2 for promoting defenses:
U can also add requirement level for age advancements:
-Atomic minimum lvl 200,
-Global minimum lvl 180,
-Industrial minimum lvl 140.
This alone could let you balance the wars easier.

Troop rebalance
No doubt that it's needed.
Just make sure to make not so often use troops better (ie. mortars, commandos) and do not nerf often use troops (infantry, tanks, artillery). National troops could also use some rebalancing

And before any rebalance can we finally see defender stats first,
including defense levels, university, library, museum - please!?
What happened with the Boost Details update?​

*All above are just my 2 cents for making this game better. Thank You.

 

[gxe1134]

Some random thoughts on what I hope they fix:
- Make mortar troops worthwhile. I've tried a number of times (including the university research), but to me, they still remain the most useless unit in the game.
- Nerf heavy tanks by reducing damage, movement speed or increase troop space. I know of a couple of guys in my alliance that have an army of all HT, nothing else. It's so lame, but if you're German + university research + max HT, they're basically unstoppable
- Make bombers tougher, but take longer between bombing runs? They're so fragile, so most people are just using all planes
- Attack helicopters seem weak compared to Artillery / howitzers, plus they take up more troop space. I don't know of anyone who uses them
- Nobody seems to use MRL. I don't believe I've seen them in a war battle in 5 months
- Something needs to happen with tactics. I love Decoys (so much!) but they're overpowered. Sabotage, betrayal both cost 2 spaces, meanwhile barrage basically does nothing at the higher levels. Most wars I'm in people are using 7 decoys, or maybe one betrayal or first aid.

 

[BeerMan]

Level 300 CWA bases with hold the gates, 3D, and filled SH are "easy?" I must be a lousy player then...

 

[Horsepower]

Wake up! Every single move is to generate more revenues. Just look at Marco today or all the museum stuff for sale. It’s gotten ridiculous and like a circus. BHG hyped early on about Marco and rubies. How do you like your hard earned rubies now? War use to be more fun when it wasn’t a money trap.

What we need is for this game to go totally OTT wars. Of course, BHG would never go for that. Only other solutions are to keep spending huge money or just quit wars.

BHG, shame on you! You’re slowly killing a great game.

 

[MartinK12]

Decoys are not overpowered, they are bugged. Depending where u place decoy, very often defenders stop moving. Probably AI is calculating how to get to the decoy and that's why decoys can only be destroyed with defensive buildings. Hmmm... maybe decoys should not affect defenders at all, just defensive buildings?

 

[oddin]

oh this thread, mark my words, is gonna be the busiest we have seen in months here....

 

[oddin]

oh shit...don't give them bad ideas...

 

[Centurion96]

I can't imagine how boosting of defense can make this game better. None will invest his time and money in the game where he can't actually win. But it's up to you, don't say you had not been warned.

​If you aim for less 5* victories, just remove the overpowered Troop Tactics. They are destroying the game. You can't make profit on destroying your game unless you lost your mind which I fear this is the case.

 

[MartinK12]

IMHO Hold the gates don't mean that much now, compared to Museums Enemy Defender Spawn Time, ie. +40%. It's a shame that 2 years of research with so many workers and resources, and some random museum artifact can mean more than that, not to mention paid artifacts
We also don't know how those stats add together, meaning when museum stats are applied - before university/library, are they add to base stats, etc? Do we?

 

[theBobNamedDan]

I think War mismatch is a bigger deal. Our most recent war had me as the #1 in Industrial Age against 2 CW and 8 Atomic Age opponents... when the first IA opponent is #12 and our #1 is IA... now it will be harder to even earn the measly 60% of stars?

yay! Just kill Elephant Archers. If people had to figure out how to attack with Impi armies only it would still lower 5 star victories.

 

[Motaz Tarek]

as a player who played this game since it's release i totally disagree with the statement of how easy it's to 5 star bases

it's obvious even to blind eyes that it's no more possible to 5* even a moderately strong base without using 4 troop cards of good quality

and it's impossible to 5* a tough base without using at least 2-3 elephant archers cards

and impossible to 5* a hardcore lvl 298-300 base without 4 EA cards + full mercenaries of elephant archers which requires elephant stable

by no means u can consider a highly premium add-on as a basic utility that all players have access to

it's clear that any buff to defense ur pushing more for pay2win and pay2play route

i hope u reconsider buff defense cause on the contrary it needs to be nerfed to make it more fair for all types of players to have the win opportunity

on the other side i agree many troops require rebalance or even complete remake

and am sad that many good troops went exclusive for troop cards on sales like crab tanks and night fighters while very bad useless troops keep being released for barracks and thrown into the trash

the varity and excellence of troop cards far exceeded that of barracks, factory and airstrip which means the concept of troop cards being an extra tool for strategy changed into being the main determant of battle outcome and this is the main problem that needs to be fixed

 

[Rachel]

Just when we thought you couldn't screw this game up any further you surprise us and find yet another way