DomiNations: The Road Ahead

DomiNations: The Road Ahead
Summer Edition

Greetings Leaders,

Welcome to The Road Ahead, a look ahead at some of the exciting things we’re working on. We have a very busy year planned for DomiNations, and we want to take this opportunity to give you a glimpse of what’s coming in the second half of 2023!

Please keep in mind that things in development are subject to change, and we will do our best to keep you updated as our Roadmap adapts.

We plan to keep these updates coming, with another Road Ahead update planned for the Fall.

Summer For the Ages
Our long-running Summer for the Ages event returns this July, which will feature a Drone Age level-up event for the first time. We’re also increasing discounts across the earliest ages to help newer players progress as the summer battles heat up!

Along with the Summer for the Ages event flow that you’re familiar with, here are some of the new additions and changes we will be implementing during Summer for the Ages!

• All 5m and 30m speedups will be removed from Event Pass reward tracks and replaced with 1h speedups.
• Legendary Artifacts will be available in special Event Passes, including one in the free reward track this July.
• Group Leaderboards are being reintroduced to select Weekly Episodes in a more competitive fashion; speedups no longer grant exp, and bonus Stars are now awarded to all players equally if they purchased the event or not.
• Global Leaderboards will also return to select Episode and Season Passes.
• New NTG Chests in Marco Polo will feature greater quantities of NTGs on a more consistent basis.
• Our Council Recruitment offerings are being upgraded in Quest Event rewards. Free Recruitments will be upgraded to Premium Recruitments in Episode Quest rewards. Note: This will not initially apply to the Council Daily Claim but will come in a future release.

Quality of Life
One key focus over the next few months of releases will be to include quality-of-life (QOL) improvements to DomiNations geared towards creating a better in-game experience for all of our players. We aim to include a steady rollout of QOL improvements in most of our upcoming releases for 2023.

Here are a few of the additions we’re currently working to implement:

• Increasing Artifact Storage
• Earlier access to Legendary Artifact Exhibition Slots
• Oil Rebalance for Enlightenment through Global Age
• Increasing the “Are you still there” Timer length to reduce disruption while playing
• Surfacing improvements to troop Donations
• Missile Silos and Bunkers will no longer take oil to activate
• Introducing new backend tools to improve how we monitor our matchmaking queues for potential issues.

In addition to the above, we have a list of other QOL items to add to our roadmap, but we want to hear from you first! What Quality of Life updates would you like to see? Let us know in the comments.


World War
We are also committed to addressing many of the outstanding issues with World War. While we are currently in the preliminary stages of these crucial improvements, our dedicated team of Artists, Designers, and Engineers are actively working on mapping out options to improve the quality of matches, address bug fixes, and implement a new Glory Tiering system. These projects are in various states of readiness ranging from active development to undergoing internal review.


Automation Age
It has been just over half a year since the release of the Drone Command building to Drone Age, and many of our Drone Age players are asking when they can expect to enter the next Age of DomiNations. We’re excited to announce that our next Age, The Automation Age, is targeting a release later this year, bringing new upgrades and strategies along with it. For our Drone Age players, we still have additional building upgrades coming. Our most recent set of upgrades were released with 11.10, with another set of upgrades planned for later this year.

In addition to the above, we will continue to constantly improve the performance, stability, and security of your DomiNations experience.

We hope you enjoyed this sneak peek at The Road Ahead for DomiNations. There’s plenty more to talk about, and we look forward to sharing more with you as we dive further into the development of these and other features throughout the year!

 

Good job.

 

Sounds really promising. If you're really looking to implement more ideas, my vote will be for these two.

Quality of Life Request - Swapping Museum Artifacts in sets

It would be a huge quality of life update if the museum allow us to save and swap artifacts in sets. This should incentivize more players to refocus on the museum and “re-roll” more lines. The way things are done now is very inefficient. We don’t need any new updates. Please stop with the loot...

xen.bighugegames.com

A slight rework of dock

tl;dr - add a "favourites" slot on dock, where we can choose certain expeditions to be available even after upgrading it.. Let's face it.. Dock level 13 kinda sucks, and everyone who has upgraded it either regrets it or wants it to be levelled down and I sympathize with them because sending 4...

xen.bighugegames.com

 

Subject: QoL Improvement Suggestion - Museum Presets and Artifact Protection

Message:
"Hey there, fellow players!

I've been a dedicated Dominations player for over 7 years now, and I'd like to suggest a couple of things that would make the game even better. You know, just some quality of life improvements that would save us from a few headaches.

First off, let's talk about museum presets. It would be absolutely fantastic if we could have presets for our museums. I mean, I've got different museums for farming, defense, and different strategies like fighter bombers or barracks-focused stuff. You know how metas change over time, right? It can be a real challenge trying to figure out the best combination of artifacts for each situation. But if we could save presets and switch between them easily, oh boy, that would be a game-changer!

And while we're on the topic of artifacts, let me tell you, crafting can be quite nerve-wracking. It happens way too easily that, in the midst of the whole crafting process, I accidentally destroy a really good artifact that I initially wanted to keep. It's like my own clumsy fingers have a mind of their own! There's no option to protect an artifact from my own accidental actions.

So, it would be amazing if we could have some sort of artifact protection feature. You know, a simple option to mark certain artifacts as 'safe' or 'protected' so that they can't be accidentally destroyed during the crafting process. It would save us from those heartbreaking moments of losing valuable artifacts due to our own clumsiness.

These improvements would not only enhance our gameplay experience but also make the whole artifact management process much smoother and enjoyable.

I really hope the devs can consider these suggestions. I'd love to hear what you all think about them too. Let's make Dominations even more awesome together!

Cheers,
Amenophis3

 

I can't wait Automated age to come and upgrades of +22 days for each building.
I will buy trip around world until one building is done.
Nice for holiday's.

 

Now for real.
- Cut upgrade TIMES for each age 50% (for smaller ages even more - let new players to grown faster)
- Change NTG sistem (in lower ages is easier to find some nation which in drone and information age almost don't exist)
- Return general spawn radius to like it was before - absolutely nobody want radius 13

 

Ah..good to see some activity after all those gears.Please do not add more building to the game..we have enough and upgrade times are already too high. Fix the bugs and improve the player experience. There are enough ideas in this forum So I will not repeat them here. Most of all, fix the baseline and framework.Once this is stable, you can add and improve stuff. Do quick wins without breaking stuff. thanks for the efforts guys!

 

GENERAL
------------

1. Our one major tool for becoming better in this game is practice and analyzing the replay. But here we have broken replays for years now. My first suggestion is replays to be based on actual history of battle and not calculated. Do it for WW battles only if that is creating storage problem. After each war finishes and the team is searching for the next, let all replays get deleted. So the storage gets continuously replenished. We do not care about multiplayer replays. The current way of showing replays is adequate.
2. The ability to hit 'pause' and rewind when watching war replays, so we don’t need to quit and watch again from the start.
3. Toggle on/off if donated troops will defend in MP… That way they will not get killed and we can request troops way ahead for wars without fear of losing the troops.
4. Make a button to lower medals (could request oil maybe?) as this one soldier drop-exit-repeat is really boring for all.
5. Make an in game chat message system so we can communicate with all domi world. Most games have this.
6. In-game chat with 2 tabs. WW and normal chat.
7. WW in-game chat with the enemy.
8. The in-game chat message system at some point was holding 999 messages. Why don’t we do that again? Chatty alliances can fill the 99 messages in like an hour or less.
9. Improve the scroll troop bar at the bottom:
   - have two rows of troop deck in war (just like Clash of Clans), so we don’t end up wasting time scrolling left/right to search for a particular troop during a chaotic war
   - choose our own troop tray layout. (Example if using Mortar TTs one can put all his mortars, mortar TT and Alliance troops together for easy remembering and dropping, most of the times I will forget about my mortar TTs because they are put way after Mercs and generals and have to scroll to get there)
10. If a warbase is put up in Friendly Challenge, should factor in O/D coalition powers for accurate analysis. This is a rather much requested feature in dominations and many people need that as mortars are totally different with and without coalitions.
11. Statistics is the one thing that is greatly missing from this game. We have been asking for it for ages. Improve the info section of a unit (in barracks or factory) to show buffs based on our current museum and council and any other criteria that apply, eg vip status. one that is correct and complete... important, show each effect separately! Tinsoldier has hinted years ago that this was under construction. I do not know what happened eventually.
12. Rebalance of coalition. Since most of the players are German nation it’s hard to find national trade goods to get coals
13. Rebalance of NTGs. You acknowledged this issue and tried to fix it but the general consensus is that the attempt made things worse as now you are not guaranteed you will take silk from a Japanese base. This is demoralizing. Please revisit this issue and make nation specific NTGs guarantee from a 5 star battle.
14. - Third research slot in armory and library
    
    Yes that is one thing that needs your attention. With so many generals and so many troops, one can only do so much! A third slot is a must after all those years! New players with 2 slots have no chance if ever achieving 3X100 level generals.
15. - Dock levels and rewards
    Give some meaning back to the dock. New level, new expeditions with better rewards and troop tactics. As it is now, max level dock is worse than the previous one. Also, we could have another slot in dock with our favorite expedition from any dock level. We upgrade the dock and lose a good expedition never to return? That doesn’t make sense.
    https://xen.bighugegames.com/index.php?threads/a-slight-rework-of-dock.28892/
16. marketplace for legendary artifacts
17. DST lower cap is 10”. Why? If I want to have a spawn of 2” then let me have it

MUSEUM
-------------

1. Make war only or main hall only crafting periods the status quo. ie every week continuously switching between war and main halls.
2. Save 'presets' of artifact combinations… say, combination to loot, to have LRR, to use Fighter/Mortar (or other attack style) with a click of a button rather than search each artifact individually. https://xen.bighugegames.com/index.php?threads/qol-museum-update.28905/
3. Let us reroll one more line in museum artifacts. Finding the perfect 5 liner is impossible. By having the ability to reroll 2 lines, we could work around this issue by making them ourselves out of 3 good liners. This is actually very easy to implement and fair for all.
4. If you could have a keep or lock button for museum storage. We all have accidentally sold a keeper and it was bad. Really bad. This is very demoralizing. Just by implementing a lock icon on some corner and by tapping on it, the artifact can no longer be sold, that would be great!
5. Increase artifact slots. Currently cap is 125. This is not enough for players who collect different sets of attack combinations.
6. Rerolls can be a blessing or a curse. The general consensus is that after say 10-15 rerolls, you should be asked what line do you want to reroll to as it is with councillors after 5 rerolls. Because many times players have spent 15000 crowns for a single reroll that never came!! I have done this mistake twice!

WW
-------

1. The FCs must take into account the coalitions as this is the only way to properly test our troop combos. This is really important and my guess is that the fastest way to do it is to rewrite the code from scratch as FCs had issues as well.
2. We have been playing WW for many years. Many games incorporate new modes of play after some time. My opinion is that new war modes should be introduced. With different parameters maybe? Allow me to brainstorm a bit…
   • Smaller duration of WW. Getting a mismatch is a problem. But it happens. Why not make wars 12h preparation and 12h war mode?
   • Smaller number of participants. Why have 15/20/30 and not 5?
   • Continuing from the previous point, an alliance could run multiple wars at the same time. A 10vs and another 10vs or a 5vs. You form smaller groups but faster paced WW. Every day you play one! Players are more hooked and involved.
   • You have the map. What does the map reminds you of? RISK!! The board game. Why not create a WW that teams actually gain the territory they attacked? And the team with the most territories wins at the end?
3. I know that a few years ago, Muet tried to do his best and create an algorithm that would make WW a more fair environment for all. There are still flaws though and nobody likes to wait 2 days for nothing! Incorporate a white flag button that only leaders can press. Once one leader press it, the other gets a message about it and if he accepts the surrender then the war is forfeited, the winner gets half loot and both teams can just respin.

 

the summer for the ages has upgraded world war chests with a chance to het legendary artifacts.

make those upgraded chests the new permanent rewards with the legendary artifacts changing each month.

The world war chests during “of the ages” events

It’s a great time to war cause of the better rewards and legendary artifacts. They’re far more relevant than the old rewards and I wish they were permanent with the legendary artifacts rotating every month. This would make warring more invigorating with these great rewards

xen.bighugegames.com

 

I think a return to longer peace treaties are well overdue and I seem to remember promised once upon a time, maybe a standard length of time, some of us have to work and sleep, I can go to bed get up go to work, come back fire the game up to have been attacked 3-4 times which is very disappointing.

Maybe a free once a month peace treaty, we all need a break from tech at some point.

Can we have a proper sandbox to practise with, nothing super elaborate but in keeping with age you’re at, be good to practice different formations etc, maybe once a week.

Love the game keep up the good work

 

GENERAL
------------

1. Our one major tool for becoming better in this game is practice and analyzing the replay. But here we have broken replays for years now. My first suggestion is replays to be based on actual history of battle and not calculated. Do it for WW battles only if that is creating storage problem. After each war finishes and the team is searching for the next, let all replays get deleted. So the storage gets continuously replenished. We do not care about multiplayer replays. The current way of showing replays is adequate.
2. The ability to hit 'pause' and rewind when watching war replays, so we don’t need to quit and watch again from the start.

Awesome analysis by Oddin ( well, as usual!) . Particularly the top first point = replays.
About WW size / duration... excellent but i am afraid player base does not allow to have too much various situations. ( player base is a limit, but also the fact a top 100 alliance typically only has fair opponent within top 100 )

 

I think a return to longer peace treaties are well overdue and I seem to remember promised once upon a time, maybe a standard length of time, some of us have to work and sleep, I can go to bed get up go to work, come back fire the game up to have been attacked 3-4 times which is very disappointing.

Maybe a free once a month peace treaty, we all need a break from tech at some point.

Can we have a proper sandbox to practise with, nothing super elaborate but in keeping with age you’re at, be good to practice different formations etc, maybe once a week.

Love the game keep up the good work

Peace treaties i am not sure to get the point

 

In addition to the above, we have a list of other QOL items to add to our roadmap, but we want to hear from you first! What Quality of Life updates would you like to see? Let us know in the comments.

• Increase the speed of collecting adviser cards.
• Automatically open all adviser cards offered per day in the council building with a single click.
• Automatically open all advisor cards that have been acquired and are in inventory with a single click.
• Include some research, whether at the University, Library or Parliament that improves the melting percentages of advisors to higher grades.

• Increase the amount of Artifacts that can be generated by mysterious fragments in the museum with a single click.
• Create naming folders where we can group sets of Artifacts in the museum.
• Possibility to rename non-legendary Artifacts.
• Create set-ups of Artifacts where, with one click, it is possible to change all the Artifacts exhibited in the museum.

• Fix WW Replays view so they can be true to what was played.

• If possible, establish a predictable maximum time for collecting rewards through ad videos.
• Include the option to close an ad video if you don't want to watch it until the end.

• Include a third slot in the arsenal so you can upgrade more Troops, Tactics or Coalitions simultaneously.

• Resume weekly global and group leaderboard matches with rewards such as buildings, Legendary Artifacts or higher quality advisor cards.

• Facilitate the medals reduction process. Something absolutely exhausting and meaningless that we do manually and can last for hours. (very well explained by oddin)

• Facilitate the search for Troop Tactics in some way, either to use in the attack or to donate to allied Strongholds in WW.

• Make it possible to view 100% of the base through zoom.

 

Missile Silos and Bunkers will no longer take oil to activate

Automation Age

 

GENERAL
------------

1. Our one major tool for becoming better in this game is practice and analyzing the replay. But here we have broken replays for years now. My first suggestion is replays to be based on actual history of battle and not calculated. Do it for WW battles only if that is creating storage problem. After each war finishes and the team is searching for the next, let all replays get deleted. So the storage gets continuously replenished. We do not care about multiplayer replays. The current way of showing replays is adequate.
2. The ability to hit 'pause' and rewind when watching war replays, so we don’t need to quit and watch again from the start.
3. Toggle on/off if donated troops will defend in MP… That way they will not get killed and we can request troops way ahead for wars without fear of losing the troops.Make a button to lower medals (could request oil maybe?) as this one soldier drop-exit-repeat is really boring for all.
4. Make an in game chat message system so we can communicate with all domi world. Most games have this.
5. In-game chat with 2 tabs. WW and normal chat.
6. WW in-game chat with the enemy.
7. The in-game chat message system at some point was holding 999 messages. Why don’t we do that again? Chatty alliances can fill the 99 messages in like an hour or less.
8. Improve the scroll troop bar at the bottom:
   - have two rows of troop deck in war (just like Clash of Clans), so we don’t end up wasting time scrolling left/right to search for a particular troop during a chaotic war
   - choose our own troop tray layout. (Example if using Mortar TTs one can put all his mortars, mortar TT and Alliance troops together for easy remembering and dropping, most of the times I will forget about my mortar TTs because they are put way after Mercs and generals and have to scroll to get there)
9. If a warbase is put up in Friendly Challenge, should factor in O/D coalition powers for accurate analysis. This is a rather much requested feature in dominations and many people need that as mortars are totally different with and without coalitions.
10. Statistics is the one thing that is greatly missing from this game. We have been asking for it for ages. Improve the info section of a unit (in barracks or factory) to show buffs based on our current museum and council and any other criteria that apply, eg vip status. one that is correct and complete... important, show each effect separately! Tinsoldier has hinted years ago that this was under construction. I do not know what happened eventually.
11. Rebalance of coalition. Since most of the players are German nation it’s hard to find national trade goods to get coals
12. Rebalance of NTGs. You acknowledged this issue and tried to fix it but the general consensus is that the attempt made things worse as now you are not guaranteed you will take silk from a Japanese base. This is demoralizing. Please revisit this issue and make nation specific NTGs guarantee from a 5 star battle.
13. - Third research slot in armory and library
    
    Yes that is one thing that needs your attention. With so many generals and so many troops, one can only do so much! A third slot is a must after all those years! New players with 2 slots have no chance if ever achieving 3X100 level generals.
14. - Dock levels and rewards
    Give some meaning back to the dock. New level, new expeditions with better rewards and troop tactics. As it is now, max level dock is worse than the previous one. Also, we could have another slot in dock with our favorite expedition from any dock level. We upgrade the dock and lose a good expedition never to return? That doesn’t make sense.
    https://xen.bighugegames.com/index.php?threads/a-slight-rework-of-dock.28892/
15. marketplace for legendary artifacts
16. DST lower cap is 10”. Why? If I want to have a spawn of 2” then let me have it

MUSEUM
-------------

1. Make war only or main hall only crafting periods the status quo. ie every week continuously switching between war and main halls.
2. Save 'presets' of artifact combinations… say, combination to loot, to have LRR, to use Fighter/Mortar (or other attack style) with a click of a button rather than search each artifact individually. https://xen.bighugegames.com/index.php?threads/qol-museum-update.28905/
3. Let us reroll one more line in museum artifacts. Finding the perfect 5 liner is impossible. By having the ability to reroll 2 lines, we could work around this issue by making them ourselves out of 3 good liners. This is actually very easy to implement and fair for all.
4. If you could have a keep or lock button for museum storage. We all have accidentally sold a keeper and it was bad. Really bad. This is very demoralizing. Just by implementing a lock icon on some corner and by tapping on it, the artifact can no longer be sold, that would be great!
5. Increase artifact slots. Currently cap is 125. This is not enough for players who collect different sets of attack combinations.
6. Rerolls can be a blessing or a curse. The general consensus is that after say 10-15 rerolls, you should be asked what line do you want to reroll to as it is with councillors after 5 rerolls. Because many times players have spent 15000 crowns for a single reroll that never came!! I have done this mistake twice!

WW
-------

1. The FCs must take into account the coalitions as this is the only way to properly test our troop combos. This is really important and my guess is that the fastest way to do it is to rewrite the code from scratch as FCs had issues as well.
2. We have been playing WW for many years. Many games incorporate new modes of play after some time. My opinion is that new war modes should be introduced. With different parameters maybe? Allow me to brainstorm a bit…
   • Smaller duration of WW. Getting a mismatch is a problem. But it happens. Why not make wars 12h preparation and 12h war mode?
   • Smaller number of participants. Why have 15/20/30 and not 5?
   • Continuing from the previous point, an alliance could run multiple wars at the same time. A 10vs and another 10vs or a 5vs. You form smaller groups but faster paced WW. Every day you play one! Players are more hooked and involved.
   • You have the map. What does the map reminds you of? RISK!! The board game. Why not create a WW that teams actually gain the territory they attacked? And the team with the most territories wins at the end?
3. I know that a few years ago, Muet tried to do his best and create an algorithm that would make WW a more fair environment for all. There are still flaws though and nobody likes to wait 2 days for nothing! Incorporate a white flag button that only leaders can press. Once one leader press it, the other gets a message about it and if he accepts the surrender then the war is forfeited, the winner gets half loot and both teams can just respin.

1. I agree with most of your points oddin. Regarding WW replays, it would already help a lot if the two top sources of variation between actual attack and replay could be eliminated: 1.The actual spawn point of forest and coalition defenders 2. The drop pattern of paratroopers and other troops spawned from troop carrying/generating units. It shouldn’t take that much to record these along with the players taps

 

REPLAYS !!!
ADD A FORFEIT BUTTON !!!

If we can’t fix mismatches, at least let the match be rejected or forfeited so we dont have to spend 48hours in a war that sucks.

 

And drop or reduce the artificial LVL rqujirements for Ages…

 

Some things no one else mentioned yet:

Make opening chests faster and require less taps. One open tap should reveal everything you get and one tap to close. 2 taps total.

When all forests are cleared make the animals and trees all appear on one’s side of the base so we don’t have to hunt for the hidden tree or animal anymore.

Remove the open chest animation from the hermitage. Make it either 1 or 2 times a day not every 4 hours and if it could just deposit the chest in inventory like the drone directive chest is that would make collection a lot less annoying.

Reduction of citizen count required to hunt bears. 4 would be nice so you could clear them after the standard upgrade finishes.

 

Peace treaties i am not sure to get the point

Before the Season Leaderboard events, the duration of the Peace Treaty will be extended.

 

Ah..good to see some activity after all those gears.Please do not add more building to the game..we have enough and upgrade times are already too high. Fix the bugs and improve the player experience. There are enough ideas in this forum So I will not repeat them here. Most of all, fix the baseline and framework.Once this is stable, you can add and improve stuff. Do quick wins without breaking stuff. thanks for the efforts guys!

Actually, if you have any standout 'bugs' that you would like to see addressed, or perhaps a priority list of sorts that is helpful feedback. Regardless of how many times it is said here, each time something gets highlighted helps to ensure we're focused on the right things to make the experience better for everyone! We would greatly appreciate it!