TimTrain
Big Huge Games
- Joined
- Jul 24, 2015
- Messages
- 18
This Design Spotlight is brought to you by John Hawkins, Lead Designer!
Hello Leaders!
There have been a lot of questions and comments about the medal system in DomiNations. We appreciate everyone’s feedback, and we strive to make your playing experience as good as possible. With that in mind, I wanted to explain how our medal system works.
Currently we match players up with players who are within one age of them (up or down). In the past we have tried letting players attacking two ages down, but that led to bad experiences for the lower age players, and not enough loot to make it worth keeping for higher age players. Granted, it is pretty fun to run over Spearmen with Tanks, but at least you can still get that with the campaigns.
Many people have mentioned a desire for using players’ levels to match players up. There are quite a few problems with this. A player’s level is a combination of the experience they have gained from attaining economic, army, and defensive upgrades. So one problem right off the bat is there’s no reason to use the experience players gain from economic upgrades when calculating matchmaking. Players will not fare better or worse in battle based on how many Farms they have. Another issue is that players can have a lot of defensive upgrades, but few army upgrades, which means they can defend their base against similarly leveled players, but won’t be able to win as many attacks (and vice versa). At best, level is an approximation of a player’s age.
The second factor in matching up players is medal count. This factor is a measure of a player’s skill at attacking other bases and defending their own base. The primary goal with this is to allow for the most competitive multiplayer experience possible. We don’t want a system that rewards players who have played the game the longest to the point that newer players can’t catch up.
Medals gained or lost in a battle are determined by the attacking player’s medal count and the defending player’s medal count, and whether or not the attacking player wins or loses the battle. If you attack someone who has more medals than you, you will gain a lot of medals if you win the battle, while you will lose a small amount of battles if you lose. Conversely, if you win an attack against someone with less medals than you, you will only gain a few medals, but if you lose, you will lose a lot of medals. If the players are evenly ranked, then the number of medals gained or lost will be the same.
This system allows for players to quickly rise in the ranks if they are both good at attacking and defending. However, if you are only good at attacking but haven’t set up a solid defense, then you could potentially lose more medals than you gain. Especially if you focus on attacking weaker bases, which are more likely to have lower medal counts than you (hence why you consider them weaker), because these bases will only provide you a few medals at best. So indirectly the amount of medals you gain or lose per day is in your hands.
While there are plenty of other systems that we could use, we do believe that the current one allows players to best sort themselves based on their skill at DomiNations. The goal is to give players challenging battles, as well as to reward them for their success. We want to avoid players not being able to find any matches, or any competitive matches, just as much as you do. We also want to make sure that players feel like they are making progress through the medal system when they win battles, and not losing too many on defense.
Like I said in the beginning of this, we are open to changes to matchmaking, and we certainly have made tweaks in the past to provide the best experience possible to all our players. A few months back we increased the amounts of medals players could win or lose in battle. Because not only does it feel better to win more medals, but also it allows skillful players to more quickly rise in the ranks.
I wanted to also let people know that we are working on fixing the issue that a few people have seen with Peace Treaties. This has been a high priority for us for awhile, but it is something that has defied easy fixes despite our top engineers working on the problem. We are deeply sorry for this inconvenience and understand that it is a significant issue particularly for people at the top of the leaderboards. We hope to have a fix soon and will update people with new information as we have it.
As always, we are listening to your comments, and doing our best to try to address your feedback. We care a lot about providing the most fun experience possible. Not only because we want players to enjoy our game, but because also at the end of the day we are players too!
Take care,
John Hawkins
Hello Leaders!
There have been a lot of questions and comments about the medal system in DomiNations. We appreciate everyone’s feedback, and we strive to make your playing experience as good as possible. With that in mind, I wanted to explain how our medal system works.
Currently we match players up with players who are within one age of them (up or down). In the past we have tried letting players attacking two ages down, but that led to bad experiences for the lower age players, and not enough loot to make it worth keeping for higher age players. Granted, it is pretty fun to run over Spearmen with Tanks, but at least you can still get that with the campaigns.
Many people have mentioned a desire for using players’ levels to match players up. There are quite a few problems with this. A player’s level is a combination of the experience they have gained from attaining economic, army, and defensive upgrades. So one problem right off the bat is there’s no reason to use the experience players gain from economic upgrades when calculating matchmaking. Players will not fare better or worse in battle based on how many Farms they have. Another issue is that players can have a lot of defensive upgrades, but few army upgrades, which means they can defend their base against similarly leveled players, but won’t be able to win as many attacks (and vice versa). At best, level is an approximation of a player’s age.
The second factor in matching up players is medal count. This factor is a measure of a player’s skill at attacking other bases and defending their own base. The primary goal with this is to allow for the most competitive multiplayer experience possible. We don’t want a system that rewards players who have played the game the longest to the point that newer players can’t catch up.
Medals gained or lost in a battle are determined by the attacking player’s medal count and the defending player’s medal count, and whether or not the attacking player wins or loses the battle. If you attack someone who has more medals than you, you will gain a lot of medals if you win the battle, while you will lose a small amount of battles if you lose. Conversely, if you win an attack against someone with less medals than you, you will only gain a few medals, but if you lose, you will lose a lot of medals. If the players are evenly ranked, then the number of medals gained or lost will be the same.
This system allows for players to quickly rise in the ranks if they are both good at attacking and defending. However, if you are only good at attacking but haven’t set up a solid defense, then you could potentially lose more medals than you gain. Especially if you focus on attacking weaker bases, which are more likely to have lower medal counts than you (hence why you consider them weaker), because these bases will only provide you a few medals at best. So indirectly the amount of medals you gain or lose per day is in your hands.
While there are plenty of other systems that we could use, we do believe that the current one allows players to best sort themselves based on their skill at DomiNations. The goal is to give players challenging battles, as well as to reward them for their success. We want to avoid players not being able to find any matches, or any competitive matches, just as much as you do. We also want to make sure that players feel like they are making progress through the medal system when they win battles, and not losing too many on defense.
Like I said in the beginning of this, we are open to changes to matchmaking, and we certainly have made tweaks in the past to provide the best experience possible to all our players. A few months back we increased the amounts of medals players could win or lose in battle. Because not only does it feel better to win more medals, but also it allows skillful players to more quickly rise in the ranks.
I wanted to also let people know that we are working on fixing the issue that a few people have seen with Peace Treaties. This has been a high priority for us for awhile, but it is something that has defied easy fixes despite our top engineers working on the problem. We are deeply sorry for this inconvenience and understand that it is a significant issue particularly for people at the top of the leaderboards. We hope to have a fix soon and will update people with new information as we have it.
As always, we are listening to your comments, and doing our best to try to address your feedback. We care a lot about providing the most fun experience possible. Not only because we want players to enjoy our game, but because also at the end of the day we are players too!
Take care,
John Hawkins