TimTrain
Big Huge Games
- Joined
- Jul 24, 2015
- Messages
- 18
This month's Design Spotlight comes to you from the man who is the brains behind World War: Brad!
Hello Leaders!
We hope that you and your Allies have been having as much fun fighting in World Wars as we had working on the feature. We are aware of some of the current issues and diligently working to fix them as we continue making further improvements. Now that World War has been in your hands for a while, we did want to take a little time to share some of the behind-the-scenes design process with you.
One feature that went through several iterations over the course of development was the Road Network Town Center Health Bonus. Because roads wouldn’t provide any Gold income on a War Base, players didn’t have a reason to strategically place them. We initially examined a bonus to your War Loot based on the number of buildings connected to the Town Center. While this was similar to the existing road bonus, we wanted to encourage players to attack strong opponents for awesome War Loot rewards. Additionally, we felt that an economic bonus wouldn’t be as synonymous with constructing a War Base as a defensive bonus would be.
We decided that the final effect, bonus Town Center health per building connected via roads, worked best because it reinforced the idea that earning stars was the most important goal in World War. This also makes placing roads more interesting for normal multiplayer battles. Players who maximize the health bonus make it significantly harder for attackers to get the crucial Town Center destruction star.
While working on World War, we had company-wide playtests where everyone joined Alliances and battled against their co-workers. There was definitely a lot of smack talk, but there was also a lot of constructive criticism on how to improve the feature. One of the changes that resulted from these playtests was removing certain items (i.e., Fruit Trees and Gold Mines) from War Bases. These items didn’t really fit into the concept of a War Base nor did they provide any sort of benefit when organizing your layout. Plus, when the timer on Planning Day is running out, the last thing you want to be doing is deciding if your Fruit Trees look better in front of your Castle or your Storehouse.
Another important focus of the playtests was balancing the offensive and defensive ratings used to find matches between Alliances. As a starting point, we used real player data to determine which Alliances should be matched up if they had gone to war. Then, we used simulated Alliances during internal wars to refine those numbers based on the outcome of each war. If offensive upgrades were weighted too heavily, wars would be a slaughter where everyone could easily get five stars. On the other hand, if defenses were given too much weight, players would struggle to get one star against their opponents and that wasn’t as much fun either.
We know there are lots of improvements and new features that will make World War even more fun and competitive for players. In particular, one feature that we are very excited to add in the near future is World War replays. Players will finally gain the valuable insights that expose the perils, and weaknesses, of enemy War Bases.
As always, please continue to send us your feedback and suggestions for both World War and other parts of DomiNations. We love hearing your thoughts on ways to make the game better.
Regards,
Brad Fisher
Hello Leaders!
We hope that you and your Allies have been having as much fun fighting in World Wars as we had working on the feature. We are aware of some of the current issues and diligently working to fix them as we continue making further improvements. Now that World War has been in your hands for a while, we did want to take a little time to share some of the behind-the-scenes design process with you.
One feature that went through several iterations over the course of development was the Road Network Town Center Health Bonus. Because roads wouldn’t provide any Gold income on a War Base, players didn’t have a reason to strategically place them. We initially examined a bonus to your War Loot based on the number of buildings connected to the Town Center. While this was similar to the existing road bonus, we wanted to encourage players to attack strong opponents for awesome War Loot rewards. Additionally, we felt that an economic bonus wouldn’t be as synonymous with constructing a War Base as a defensive bonus would be.
We decided that the final effect, bonus Town Center health per building connected via roads, worked best because it reinforced the idea that earning stars was the most important goal in World War. This also makes placing roads more interesting for normal multiplayer battles. Players who maximize the health bonus make it significantly harder for attackers to get the crucial Town Center destruction star.
While working on World War, we had company-wide playtests where everyone joined Alliances and battled against their co-workers. There was definitely a lot of smack talk, but there was also a lot of constructive criticism on how to improve the feature. One of the changes that resulted from these playtests was removing certain items (i.e., Fruit Trees and Gold Mines) from War Bases. These items didn’t really fit into the concept of a War Base nor did they provide any sort of benefit when organizing your layout. Plus, when the timer on Planning Day is running out, the last thing you want to be doing is deciding if your Fruit Trees look better in front of your Castle or your Storehouse.
Another important focus of the playtests was balancing the offensive and defensive ratings used to find matches between Alliances. As a starting point, we used real player data to determine which Alliances should be matched up if they had gone to war. Then, we used simulated Alliances during internal wars to refine those numbers based on the outcome of each war. If offensive upgrades were weighted too heavily, wars would be a slaughter where everyone could easily get five stars. On the other hand, if defenses were given too much weight, players would struggle to get one star against their opponents and that wasn’t as much fun either.
We know there are lots of improvements and new features that will make World War even more fun and competitive for players. In particular, one feature that we are very excited to add in the near future is World War replays. Players will finally gain the valuable insights that expose the perils, and weaknesses, of enemy War Bases.
As always, please continue to send us your feedback and suggestions for both World War and other parts of DomiNations. We love hearing your thoughts on ways to make the game better.
Regards,
Brad Fisher
