The museum as it currently stands has nearly killed the game for me. I have mostly walked away from wars, dumped several alts, and only play my primary in a cursory way these days. I have other problems with the game as well, but the museum is the biggest. I have some practical suggestions that I think might fix the museum, and a potential path to get from where we are now to there. So for those who are just going to say “we’re stuck with it, they won’t undo it now”, read through first.
Issues with the museum:
Lottery - adds a random casino element to the game, completely different from the entire rest of the game design. I am not interested in competing with people who have just gotten luckier than I have, that is completely inconsistent with the premise of the game.
Terrible interface - generating and deleting artifacts is so bad it isn’t fun in any way. Collecting 5 different resources and sorting out which you need is stupid.
Overpowered (OP) - those who win the lottery, suffer through the grind, and / or buy their way through it are ridiculously (and silently) powerful compared to those who don’t.
Invisible - attackers and defenders have no idea what boosts their opponent has, or what the magnitude of those boosts is. This is both thematically inappropriate (a museum is for DISPLAY) and practically very different from the rest of the game. Library and uni boosts are invisible, but have a fixed maximum. And they factor into war weight directly, so can be guessed at from war ranking to some degree, to the extent it is accurately calculated.
Lottery:
Instead of randomly generated artifacts with randomly generated names and boosts, I would suggest that for each artifact, we choose a type (weapon, jewelry, etc), choose a name from a list (famous historical people presumably), and then choose which bonuses go on that artifact from another list that includes all the bonuses available now in the respective type of artifact. Each bonus can only be used once on an individual artifact, and there is no crossover between categories on different types of artifacts (so no more than two identical bonuses from two different weapons, legendary could make it three).
Each bonus starts at 1% (0 boost). To upgrade the boost by 5 or 10 (to 6% or 11%) requires spending a large number of fragments, but you know exactly how many. Upgrading to 10 costs more than 5, doing a second category takes even more, etc. The overall “boost” of a given artifact can’t be more than 25 (all 6% lines, or two 11% and a 6%, or anything in between). Setting that less than or more than 25 would be fine within reason, but put a hard cap there.
Bonuses to a category (say fighter HP) are capped at 30% total - exact number doesn’t matter much, but the same for everyone and can’t be more powerful than the university. That includes as many artifacts as it is on, including legendary - excess boost will be shown as 30% (40%) in red to indicate to the player that you have more boost to that category than can be effective.
War artifacts should be the same as regular, but with more limited effects just as they are now. Total cap to a war boost should be 20%, smaller than regular ones to match that limit.
At any point, you can change the boost category on a line of an artifact to a different one of your choosing for a small crown cost. This is not random, you pick the new one, and is exactly like changing out a wonder, and should cost less than that.
Terrible Interface:
Make an even halfway decent interface for the suggestions above, and this will be fine because we aren’t doing it thousands of times for no real reason or payoff.
Also, get rid of blueprints completely. Just directly use fragments to do everything - passing fragments through to blueprints by generating and discarding artifacts was a bad idea, get rid of it.
Researchers and benefactors add nothing to the game either. Merge them into supplies, leaving only two resources for the entire museum, that can be seen on the main museum page easily.
Overpowered:
Capping the boost to a single category would go a huge way towards fixing this. Also, having everyone being able to design their artifacts and not subject to random whims means both sides are getting similar boosts. This would also resolve many of the complaints about the dock.
However, certain categories of boosts are just intrinsically OP - “All defensive tower” boosts to HP and damage are ridiculous and should be removed entirely. Changes to your own or enemy defender spawn time are also very strong and may need to go.
Make only one of the 4 categories be for economic boosts (jewelry?) and the other (pots?) be unique in some way or be eliminated, instead of both of them having some random assortment of offensive / defensive / economic boosts as it is now. The possible range of defensive / offensive boosts is way too big if you keep these as extra offense / defensive boosts as they are now.
Invisible:
For MP, at least display defensive boosts to the attacker before the attack, without the numbers. So I may not know if you have +10% or +30% air defense damage, but I know you have a boost to it, and it will be no greater than the max, and that high level players are likely to have the totals maxed out. Show me the actual numbers on the final screen, so I can understand why I so unexpectedly won completely / lost utterly.
For war, change the whole setup. Defensive artifacts should be changeable during planning day, and become locked in at the end of it. Then they are displayed to the enemy in full detail (random invisible boosts have very little place in war, the university and library hidden boosts provide too much of this already in my opinion). Offensive boosts can be changed until you do your first attack, and not after. At that point they are displayed to everyone. This matches the existing rules around coalitions for consistency. It also helps to make cheating obvious and not invisible in the most important area for most active competitive players - wars.
That does require that war artifact categories be appropriately separated out so that entire artifacts are only offensive OR defensive, not both. Should be an easy change when reworking artifact generation.
This gives attackers who are flexible and have invested in multiple sets of artifacts a way to be rewarded by switching around their artifact choices in response to their chosen opponents defensive boosts. And defenders can coordinate their choices of coalition and artifact to match what they believe attackers are likely to try. Together it encourages strategy and investment.
All of that would make it harder to cheat, give people some pride in their progress, and increase the strategic aspects of the game. The opposite of what the museum does today.
Transition - how to get from here to there:
Everyone has invested in the museum as it exists today. Some with lots of effort and time, and some with money. Some who have won the lottery will be mad if they lose what they have. But a mixed system that favors the fortunate few won’t work going forward, we need to put everyone in the same system and on even footing. And those who have spent money should not lose it. So here is my suggestion:
1. Every existing artifact from the old system is removed. All fragments, blueprints, supplies, etc invested into them should be returned to the player as fragments.
2. Legendary artifacts that were not paid for with cash are modified to fit within the new limits. So are paid artifacts, but the players have the option to convert them into an appropriately large number of supplies / fragments instead (what they would have gotten by spending the money directly) if they don’t want to accept the reduced artifact power. Or possibly some sort of one time crown bonus to compensate.
3. All unused blueprints should be turned back into fragments at the appropriate ratio we got them in the first place. All benefactors / researchers are turned one to one into supplies.
At the end of that, everyone is starting clean in the new system, but those who have already done a lot of work in the old system are in great shape to start building in the new one, with lots of supplies and researchers to work with.
I'm sure there will be quibbles with a lot of the details, but I think this idea would redirect a lot of the frustrating aspects of the museum, and bring it in as an aspect of gameplay that supports the strategic and competitive gameplay elements of dominations that we all love. If you agree, I would like to see this still sitting in front of the community and the developers when they come back from end of year holidays.
Issues with the museum:
Lottery - adds a random casino element to the game, completely different from the entire rest of the game design. I am not interested in competing with people who have just gotten luckier than I have, that is completely inconsistent with the premise of the game.
Terrible interface - generating and deleting artifacts is so bad it isn’t fun in any way. Collecting 5 different resources and sorting out which you need is stupid.
Overpowered (OP) - those who win the lottery, suffer through the grind, and / or buy their way through it are ridiculously (and silently) powerful compared to those who don’t.
Invisible - attackers and defenders have no idea what boosts their opponent has, or what the magnitude of those boosts is. This is both thematically inappropriate (a museum is for DISPLAY) and practically very different from the rest of the game. Library and uni boosts are invisible, but have a fixed maximum. And they factor into war weight directly, so can be guessed at from war ranking to some degree, to the extent it is accurately calculated.
Lottery:
Instead of randomly generated artifacts with randomly generated names and boosts, I would suggest that for each artifact, we choose a type (weapon, jewelry, etc), choose a name from a list (famous historical people presumably), and then choose which bonuses go on that artifact from another list that includes all the bonuses available now in the respective type of artifact. Each bonus can only be used once on an individual artifact, and there is no crossover between categories on different types of artifacts (so no more than two identical bonuses from two different weapons, legendary could make it three).
Each bonus starts at 1% (0 boost). To upgrade the boost by 5 or 10 (to 6% or 11%) requires spending a large number of fragments, but you know exactly how many. Upgrading to 10 costs more than 5, doing a second category takes even more, etc. The overall “boost” of a given artifact can’t be more than 25 (all 6% lines, or two 11% and a 6%, or anything in between). Setting that less than or more than 25 would be fine within reason, but put a hard cap there.
Bonuses to a category (say fighter HP) are capped at 30% total - exact number doesn’t matter much, but the same for everyone and can’t be more powerful than the university. That includes as many artifacts as it is on, including legendary - excess boost will be shown as 30% (40%) in red to indicate to the player that you have more boost to that category than can be effective.
War artifacts should be the same as regular, but with more limited effects just as they are now. Total cap to a war boost should be 20%, smaller than regular ones to match that limit.
At any point, you can change the boost category on a line of an artifact to a different one of your choosing for a small crown cost. This is not random, you pick the new one, and is exactly like changing out a wonder, and should cost less than that.
Terrible Interface:
Make an even halfway decent interface for the suggestions above, and this will be fine because we aren’t doing it thousands of times for no real reason or payoff.
Also, get rid of blueprints completely. Just directly use fragments to do everything - passing fragments through to blueprints by generating and discarding artifacts was a bad idea, get rid of it.
Researchers and benefactors add nothing to the game either. Merge them into supplies, leaving only two resources for the entire museum, that can be seen on the main museum page easily.
Overpowered:
Capping the boost to a single category would go a huge way towards fixing this. Also, having everyone being able to design their artifacts and not subject to random whims means both sides are getting similar boosts. This would also resolve many of the complaints about the dock.
However, certain categories of boosts are just intrinsically OP - “All defensive tower” boosts to HP and damage are ridiculous and should be removed entirely. Changes to your own or enemy defender spawn time are also very strong and may need to go.
Make only one of the 4 categories be for economic boosts (jewelry?) and the other (pots?) be unique in some way or be eliminated, instead of both of them having some random assortment of offensive / defensive / economic boosts as it is now. The possible range of defensive / offensive boosts is way too big if you keep these as extra offense / defensive boosts as they are now.
Invisible:
For MP, at least display defensive boosts to the attacker before the attack, without the numbers. So I may not know if you have +10% or +30% air defense damage, but I know you have a boost to it, and it will be no greater than the max, and that high level players are likely to have the totals maxed out. Show me the actual numbers on the final screen, so I can understand why I so unexpectedly won completely / lost utterly.
For war, change the whole setup. Defensive artifacts should be changeable during planning day, and become locked in at the end of it. Then they are displayed to the enemy in full detail (random invisible boosts have very little place in war, the university and library hidden boosts provide too much of this already in my opinion). Offensive boosts can be changed until you do your first attack, and not after. At that point they are displayed to everyone. This matches the existing rules around coalitions for consistency. It also helps to make cheating obvious and not invisible in the most important area for most active competitive players - wars.
That does require that war artifact categories be appropriately separated out so that entire artifacts are only offensive OR defensive, not both. Should be an easy change when reworking artifact generation.
This gives attackers who are flexible and have invested in multiple sets of artifacts a way to be rewarded by switching around their artifact choices in response to their chosen opponents defensive boosts. And defenders can coordinate their choices of coalition and artifact to match what they believe attackers are likely to try. Together it encourages strategy and investment.
All of that would make it harder to cheat, give people some pride in their progress, and increase the strategic aspects of the game. The opposite of what the museum does today.
Transition - how to get from here to there:
Everyone has invested in the museum as it exists today. Some with lots of effort and time, and some with money. Some who have won the lottery will be mad if they lose what they have. But a mixed system that favors the fortunate few won’t work going forward, we need to put everyone in the same system and on even footing. And those who have spent money should not lose it. So here is my suggestion:
1. Every existing artifact from the old system is removed. All fragments, blueprints, supplies, etc invested into them should be returned to the player as fragments.
2. Legendary artifacts that were not paid for with cash are modified to fit within the new limits. So are paid artifacts, but the players have the option to convert them into an appropriately large number of supplies / fragments instead (what they would have gotten by spending the money directly) if they don’t want to accept the reduced artifact power. Or possibly some sort of one time crown bonus to compensate.
3. All unused blueprints should be turned back into fragments at the appropriate ratio we got them in the first place. All benefactors / researchers are turned one to one into supplies.
At the end of that, everyone is starting clean in the new system, but those who have already done a lot of work in the old system are in great shape to start building in the new one, with lots of supplies and researchers to work with.
I'm sure there will be quibbles with a lot of the details, but I think this idea would redirect a lot of the frustrating aspects of the museum, and bring it in as an aspect of gameplay that supports the strategic and competitive gameplay elements of dominations that we all love. If you agree, I would like to see this still sitting in front of the community and the developers when they come back from end of year holidays.
