Introduction: Joe “Muet” Grubb - Lead Designer

KniferX

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To answer the question, yeah seeing the number of TTs in stronghold would be helpful, and still leave space for strategic decisions (strong troop tactics inside or weak ones?).
But I think the wide consensus around the museum boosts with the community is that they should be visible in wars. Being able to plan for those boosts looks to be a better, more fun gameplay segment, than hitting blindly and hoping for the best.
 

sulbin

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Welcome Joe, I've always waited for someone like you.

Hi, I am SuLBIN, the leader of ARES guild.
First of all, I thank you for showing your willingness to address the issues I have been asking every month for two years first.
I've been asked several times, but I've only been told to offer a return answer.
I'm glad you're trying to settle it now.

I'd like to ask you a few questions.

1. Do you have any intention of showing off your opponent's 'artifact' at World War?
- Unable to approach strategically because you do not know the other person's Artifact.
You may have seen Top Guild World Wars , but the average person is divided into defense and offense groups.
In order to be more strategic, I think you need to know the other person's information.
It is a different concept from a trap.

2. If the matching system improves, can you increase the rewards for each season?
- There is too little reward for the current World War.
We need an opportunity to get them involved.
With this Rebalance patch and 6.6 patch, many people have left the game.
What many of them are saying is the first is the difficulty of attack and the second is the lack of target.
Something needs to be achieved.

3. Have you thought about national characteristics, the mystery that's not being used?
- I hope it will be updated in a way that can characterize defense and attack.
Some countries are good for defense and some wonders are good for attack and I hope you highlight them in this way.

4. Gold and Food contents to consume are needed.
- The consumed resources of higher content are too concentrated on oil.
Gold, which changes the color of walls, also welcomes food consumption.
This is just one proposal.
I'm also in favor of giving my overflowing food and gold to lower-aged people.

5. Policies are needed for new users.
- Currently, the game has fewer new players.
In this era below, speed up building.
I hope you will speed up development to the industrial age & Global age.
I think the flower of Dominations is an industrial airplane.
By showing them the diversity of strategies, they could be more involved in games.

I want to ask you more questions, but I will talk to you every time you do this AMA.
Thank you for listening to the opinions of the users.
I've always been waiting for someone like you.
The others didn't listen to us.
I'm glad to be with you. Welcome Muet.
 

Manifesto

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We’re evaluating and testing changes to give a little power back to offense and make attacking more fun.

Hi Muet, always happy to hear from one of the chiefs, especially one who 'gets it'.
A lot of previous posters have asked great questions and your answers have been enlightening, so thank you.
My question relates to the giving back of power to troops. I agree that barracks troops are fine as they are, they only seem nerfed because of the recent defensive boosts. My argument has always been against different troop stats for defenders vs attackers.
eg: a HT on defense has twice as much hp as an attacking one. Why, because it defends? Doesn't make sense.
So, instead of give a little power back to offense, which would require additional work on your part, why not reduce or remove the recent defensive boosts to troops?
Keep the recent boosts to buildings (l can live with that) but by reducing the boost to troops not only would you be reducing some of the sledgehammer boosts we've been talking about but you'll effectively be giving back the equivalent of more power to offense at the same time. And, you won't need any additional coding, you'll only be tweaking existing coding to restore a little of the previous status quo.
Two birds with one stone.

ps: very happy stage 5 has been cancelled, my CWA walls are tough enough. And if you could remove that annoying pointy arrow directing me to the museum, I'd appreciate it. :D
 

alexandria

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Your goals for your role are nice but if you can't give timelines on your goals they mean nothing. Also make yourself involved in handling cheaters. Clearly no one else on the BHG team is taking action so I think you should. Cut the middleman out and get to solving the biggest desgin flaw that cheaters are exploiting.
 

Persia

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Hi Muet, always happy to hear from one of the chiefs, especially one who 'gets it'.
A lot of previous posters have asked great questions and your answers have been enlightening, so thank you.
My question relates to the giving back of power to troops. I agree that barracks troops are fine as they are, they only seem nerfed because of the recent defensive boosts. My argument has always been against different troop stats for defenders vs attackers.
eg: a HT on defense has twice as much hp as an attacking one. Why, because it defends? Doesn't make sense.
So, instead of give a little power back to offense, which would require additional work on your part, why not reduce or remove the recent defensive boosts to troops?
Keep the recent boosts to buildings (l can live with that) but by reducing the boost to troops not only would you be reducing some of the sledgehammer boosts we've been talking about but you'll effectively be giving back the equivalent of more power to offense at the same time. And, you won't need any additional coding, you'll only be tweaking existing coding to restore a little of the previous status quo.
Two birds with one stone.

ps: very happy stage 5 has been cancelled, my CWA walls are tough enough. And if you could remove that annoying pointy arrow directing me to the museum, I'd appreciate it. :D

Nah, as a lower age player, I implore BHG to cancel the rebalance entirely or severely nerf buildings close to what they were, because it’s ridiculous. Bases that I could have stomped simply have too many hitpoints for me to possibly clear within time, even if I can knock out all defensive buildings. Whether or not I’m a bad strategist is up to debate and irrelevant; I was able to five-star these bases easily, because they were badly constructed, now towers a full age below my shooters can one-shot them and wipe out much of my army.

It works hand-in-hand with the AI, though. I’m just now realising that the AI is so bad it’s incredible. Individual troops like supply carts are brainless, no explanation required. Cannons can get out of range of defences, but don’t and get killed for some reason. The improvements to defence have completely destroyed any offence that may have existed in lower ages, at least in my experience; I haven’t had a serious attack in a week. It failed miserably. Prior to that, I remember maybe one person getting two or three stars when my base wasn’t even optimised. It’s ridiculous, and I’m feeling the changes hard.

My point has always been this: the rebalance killed strategy in lower ages. Barracks troops are irrelevant, but they’re all we have, and nobody wants to waste their time or resources using mercenaries and tactics every attack. I should not even have to deploy my general for cleanup to destroy a poorly constructed “noob base,” but I have to, and that doesn’t speak to anyone’s “skill level” but just the heavily defensive nature of the game nowadays. I’m just dropping horse raiders and rolling with the hundreds of thousands in loot I get. I hardly have to retrain; it’s cheap, pretty quick, and requires no bigger of a brain than a gorilla has. It’s effective, which is why raiding has shifted away from the nerfed barracks troops, even in lower ages. Raiders are the best, and they’ve always been good, but some strategies have been nerfed to irrelevancy by the rebalance, and that isn’t good.

I believe Nexon should have asked the community what they wanted before proceeding with any sort of rebalance, and avoided the whole issue, instead of then trying to mock the players by going “we are happy with the changes in troop compositions” or whatever it was that Tin said. Cancelling the rebalance is a very good step in the right direction. I’d rather have it completely reverted, and have attacking be pretty easy in general, than any of these defensive changes remain in place. I would like to go back to British or Germans from Japanese and revert my FC into the Colosseum. As it stands right now, that isn’t worth anyone’s time.
 

unhappy

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Anyone else think it was Joe's fault? Lead design role and new to the company so decides to make his mark early with some big changes. Completely screws it up as he obviously never played the game and is now battling to save his job.

EDIT: Since there is some discussion on TT and SH here is my 2c. TT die on defence after the first attack. One attack might already be gone but it gives the second player a serious chance at the base and will even the playing field against all the cheats that magically have EA. Nexon wins as players will still buy EA, players win as there effectiveness is reduced on defence.
 
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Mountainking

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Coming from a player with a big CWA, big AA both near max and full O IA account contemplating walking away, this is Nexons piss poor attempt at using a defibrillator over the dead player base.
Get a clue. It's dead. Pull off the life support.
They will be as active as NX_wateverthef** who dissapeared as fast as they appeared. Houdini stuff.

edit: Long story short: Too little too late.
 
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LordStark263AC

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I like what Joe's saying and I hope he makes a significant difference in this game, but, IT IS too late for so many players that's been playing this game since 2015.
 

Alanswiss

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Well I did notice that Joe said in his original post that ......One of my goals for the rebalance was.............which makes it sound as though he was directly responsible so I asked the question whether he was the instigator of them , but that wasn’t answered .
I applaud the interaction but will be waiting to see exactly what happens and how it impacts an already massively changed game .
By the sounds of it , a lot of the recent changes are here to stay , so whatever follows on from here on in may not make a substantial difference until quite a few modification are made ....and what the game looks like by this time next year is anyone’s guess. That seems a long time to try and keep people’s interest , to my mind BHG need to get something going to show intent ASAP .
Once the initial positive feelings of someone actually looking like they are responding to the players wears off , then there will be a more intense call to see some of the action promised ......Joes posts have now created an expectation that needs to be met ,at least in part, quickly to keep the new optimism going .
 
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Houkai

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Who am I? What is my background?
I am Joe “Muet” Grubb. I recently joined Big Huge Games to take up the Lead Design role for DomiNations. Before joining BHG, I lead the design team at Dire Wolf Digital on the strategy card game Eternal. Prior to DWD, I worked on multiple ARPGs: Star Wars: Uprising, Spirit Lords, and Robot Rising. Going back to my earlier years in the industry, I was a Content Designer on two different MMORPGs, Jumpgate: Evolution and Stargate Worlds.

Joe, from the all the games you have worked on, only the card game Eternal is "live"... since you know, it's kinda in early access. All other games have died(a quick google search can confirm that). I got suspicious when I saw Stargate Worlds listed. So, my question is, when will the final nail in Dominations' coffin going to be hammered down? BTW, good job on the re-balancing :)
 

Alanswiss

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If Tin Soldier doesn’t have the authority to answer or even address concerns ( and bear in mind that Joe said that Tin Soldier will still be the main contact with the forum ) then that’s a really poor sort of way to interact with the forum .....in fact what is the point of having someone who cannot, doesn’t have the authority to interact properly , or is loathe to post very often, actually be touted as a lead contact ?
A community manager who has no authority to actually interact with the community , address and manage the discussions ......well that is not any type of manager that I would recognise as worth a title .

As surprising as it was , a lead designer should not have to be addressing and rolling out stuff that a Community manager should logically be doing ( maybe that shows how serious the situation with the game has become ?) .....Tin Soldier basically just got relegated to just another forum player , who from time to time gets heads up , or to a simple moderator who gets to police the odd strong language or insult.
 
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Alanswiss

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That may be a bit too negative😂 ...let’s wait and see ......let’s hope we see something pretty quick ( as the positive thoughts at having someone at least talk about stuff will soon wear off if there is nothing soon ....expectations have now been raised ) ....let’s see what change happens ...and what exactly those changes are 👍😜😎
 

Beebs

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Joe seems to be handling the right issues and thank you for that! Also seems he has won the trust of the community (but so did the previous BHG/Nexon representatives (who eventually lost it pretty quickly)) so do please keep the gasoline in the tank and live up to the high expectations. It's actually really easy - it always narrows down to one simple act - communication with community. That's it. Also it's something that other representatives could also learn from - communicating with player base regarding convenient topics is nice, but it should also cover inconvenient topics and not going into hiding once sh*t hits the fan.

Now about the covered topis:
Leaderboard
Wish you good luck

Matchmaking
Matchmaking could simply be fixed by simply taking account 75% of top players into calculations. Something Clash Of Clans successfully implemented. Why in the world is there a need to take every account into war ranking calculations? Let's be rational about it - bottom 25% accounts don't decide the outcome of the war. They hardly affect anything and their contribution to total firepower is also insignificant. Also if they do manage to 5* a base, they do it with 2min+, which is ok. But when it comes down to time breaker, there's almost certainly a need for higher player to narrow 2min+ down to 1m20s+. All of this so called "bad matchmaking" is caused by sandbaggers and it all could've been eliminated by calculating war weight regarding 75% top players. This is something Clash of Clans did and they are pretty successfuly, no? So why not copy a working mechanism that's proven itself to work?

Common 5 starring
That is something i find amusing. Nexon/BHG representatives do keep coming back to common 5* results. Really? There's a saying - fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. Don't want to be rude as i do hope to get a decent reply to asked questions - but have you used your so called analysis tools to compare the results between 0Stronghold vs ordinary war results. To clear up - 0SH movement forbids using Elephant Archers on offense/defense. They are also the reason that cause so called "common 5* results". Nerph Elephant Archers and you have successfully implemented rebalance (hell, even taking proper dmg from airplanes would've been a great start).
This whole "5 stars are too common (when using overpowered troops) and we'd really like to address it" to me is taking a leak on someone's head and calling it a rain. Respect your community and they respect you - it's always a 2 way street.
Or if someone could prove me wrong i'd be happy admit i'm wrong - i'd really like to learn how to take down a decent DDD CWA (heck, doesn't even need to be fully upgraded) by using common troop tactics (can't be payed troops) as it was impossible to do before rebalance was introduced.

One can't fool its players indefinitely as they are not ignorant and this forum has given a pretty decent overview regarding past weeks what they think of Nexon/BHG. Also is probably the reason why Joe is trying to save what's left to save. Actions speak louder than nicely written words/promises and Nexon/BHG has a long way to go to rebuild their player trust and I wish you and your colleagues all the best on that journey.

Edit: One shouldn't criticize without providing an alternative. Rebalancing Elephants would mean cutting down income from EA's. Introduce pay 2 advance value like subscription based citizens for a reasonable fee? Someone previously wrote - 100 000 players paying 5 dollars is better than 10 000 players paying 15 dollars. I know i would pay 5 dollars per month for extra 4 citizens.
 
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Borck

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Hi Joe and welcome.

I have just one question this one was also mentioned in a Twitchstream by TinMan.. Please look again at the Shipyard/Dock rewards. The higher levels get worse rewards as the lower ones. The Wall blessing is gone and a diamond option is not available please take care of it.
 

oddin

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Hi Joe and welcome to these forums.

The fact that you are a player yourself and even mention BG2 (my all time favorite) and Diablo, makes me see you in a better, more positive way. I only hope that you will be able to correct the wrongs here because the last 2 months were horrible for players.
I am currently level 231 CWA and played this game for 2.5 years.

Ok, so let me summarize some of the mistakes that you made the last 1 year or so:

1. WW matchmaking - Leaderboard
We haven't seen any real effort to solve the injustices there. You already said that you are gonna address this. Time will only tell. Will not say more since you already answered this topic.

2. Cheating
No matter what you are gonna fix, if the cheaters remain then again the leaderboard will show inactive alliances and cheaters will always be at the top. This is NOT acceptable. First, find a way to kick them out of this game once and for all. Then fix matchmaking and leaderboard. Other games release a list, on a weekly basis, with all cheaters that are banned for life. That list contains around a hundred players each time. This shows that the company protects its legitimate customers and this is what we want to see from you as well.
Some ideas maybe:
You could create a script that checks player progress daily and if it finds huge differences then this means that this player has obtained and used large sums of crowns using other methods.
You could create a script that checks workers. If it exceeds number 16 or 19 or 20 then that player is using the worker hack and builds 20 buildings at the same time.
Make it so that the system recognizes cheaters by itself. Remove human interaction in order to make it faster and more accurate.

3. Stronghold
This building created so many problems. Rebalance stages did not touch Elephant archers. Maybe THE most unbalanced unit in the game. Nerf them severely if you want some balance in wars. I don't care to know beforehand if my opponent has 3 or 4 troop cards but I want troop cards to play not such a drastical role in battles. Many of them are simply too overpowered.

4. Expeditions
They were fine before that patch that introduced researchers and benefactors. People were happy with it. Bring back the old rewards and for god's sake, rebalance the rewards with more SUPPLIES and not constantly have researchers. Creating on purpose a shortage of a certain commodity is UNETHICAL. Give us more supplies in expeditions now that we have a War Hall. Or at least give us the option to roll back the Shipyard to a previous level that gives MORE supplies. How fair is having a level 6 shipyard give more supplies than level 8 or 9? It certainly needs rebalance.

5. Museum
In the beginning it was fine. A nice boost for all players. Then you mixed the categories in pottery and Jewelry and this is were the decline started. And on top of that the War Hall. Simply unacceptable! I would 100% like to see War Hall removed. But if this can't be done, then we must have clarity in what our opponent has. At some point, the designers talked about a Stats page so that we can see how strong a base was. Make that happen!
In addition, Supplies is a huge problem. I will never buy them but I want a better chance of gathering them. See no4 above.
Lastly, you introduced war hall but the capacity stayed the same. If you want to be fair, an increase by 25 should take place for all players.

6. FUN!
This is THE most important factor when playing any game. After rebalance stage 4, FUN has dropped dramatically. I used to have immense FUN when as a global, I could 5 star an atomic age player after careful consideration of his base and by selecting the proper troops anad tactics. It is FUN when you can 5 star hard bases. Now, you took that away from us. And this is the main reason people are leaving. In fact, I stopped playing too because of that. In the end I adapted my strategies BUT I can't hit bases at my level without heavy loses. I am spending most of my time in dominations retraining troops. How much FUN can someone have out of that? So, make it so that defence gets a small nerf (be it through buildings HP or defenders damage), while attack gets some more damage.

7. Underutilised Troops
Rebalance stages aim was to create diversity. It failed obviously. If someone 5 stars my base, then he must be 250+ cwa with Heavy Tanks MK7. No other combination has worked in my base even closely to that. Let me help you:
Mortar troops
Commandos
MRL
Attack Helicopters (yes they need a little bit of more damage even after all research in library is completed, in order to be a successful replacement of tanks)

8. Leagues
You have released the Domination bonus after each battle and then you make it so hard to get 5 stars so it is rather pointless since rarely you 5 star opponents now. Change the league rewards to be more meaningful and give real incentive for players to reach Empire League and STAY there. As it is now, there is no way you can keep up with NTGs and diamond demand.

9. Archive
a. Speed ups
So, you decided to give something back to the community and gloated that speed ups are coming! Long building time is a problem in this game, even in industrial age. Do I need to mention atomic and cold war age? No! We all waited for something that we could use to shorten by a day or 2 our 14 day building upgrades. But we were fooled once more. As it is now, we never get more than a 6 hour speed up, if we are lucky, which is useless. Make it so that we have better chances and better speed ups. Sell them for crowns at a discounted price at the archive. One day speed up normally costs 300 crowns. Sell them for 250! Just an idea...
b. Manuals
Another fail from you guys. If you wanted to give something back and make it easier then you wouldn't request 11 manuals for a level 15 wall when you are given one manual at a time and this in rare findings. It is more meaningful to give 2-3 manuals at each time and maybe archive could sell manuals like speed ups for large sums of gold/food but lower than if we build them straight away with gold/food.

10. Max resources
Many players complain that they are full of resources for weeks or even months. Make it so that they can buy things for large sums of gold/food. Potential ideas are supplies, marco polo items, speed ups, manuals, blessings etc

11. University
As it is now, only whales and long time players can actually complete the first 5 leaders. But when a game stays in the business for so long, and constantly adds more things to do, some things must change. In my opinion, the initial leaders, should be rebalanced so that TIME required should be reduced. Make them more like Hannibal for example. Rework some of the stages that require 6-7 workers for 10+ days.

12. Building upgrade Time
This is maybe the most requested thing in dominations. 14 days upgrades are unaccaptable. When space age arrives, it will be a nightmare. Either improve and give more and better speedups to all or reduce the upgrade time in many buildings because it is very boring to wait 12+ days doing nothing.

13. Reroll feature in museum
This was a player requested option. And you failed again. Why? Because it requires 100 crowns! Why again crowns? It is unethical to request such a sum. It could be like 2-3M food or gold per reroll for example. Or if it HAS to be crowns, then make each reroll cost like 20-30 crowns max. This would give players more incentive to do it. As it is, I am NOT spending 100 crowns for pure lottery.

14. Tactics
Decoy was our number one choice. You nerfed it and it is fine cause I admit being overpowered. BUT you completely destroyed its usefulness. Give it back a few secs and 5000-8000 hp so that it becomes somewhat useful.
As it is now, people are still struggling to find something to use and nothing works now that battles are so hard. And maybe the most important is to make them train faster! TIME is again a huge problem here. Dominations is all about attacking, so make us attack more NOT LESS! Rebalance stages caused a mayhem and forced many players to attack LESS. That is what you want?

15. Friendly challenges
https://forum.nexonm.com/forum/nexo...llenges-replays-and-replays-in-general-bugged
This is something that you definitely must fix. This is how we improve our skills. Again, you failed in making this right for months now.

There are more that I would like to address but let me now say a few things of what things I would like to see in dominations:

1. A space age that will actually be attainable and not require 15-16 days building upgrades
2. More buildings, not like cold war age that only introduced traps.
3. More units that will force new strategies.
4. New tactics that will really bring diversity
5. Traps are way too many. Bring Spy as a factory troop or make the Commando disarm them.
6. 2 more workers. They are really needed.
7. Stats page for each player. Number of stars won in WW, logging time, strength, units used and tactics, wins and loses, base wins and loses. We simply want more statistics!

Sorry for the long post but after all this time being neglected, I feel this is the time to actually say something and be heard. You understand that this is BHG's last chance to make things right? People are already leaving and looking other games. I just hope you succeed in your new position and give us a dominations that will all enjoy more!

thanks
Odysseas
 
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LordStark263AC

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I only have 1 thing to add, in World Wars don't let CWC, Atomic and Global Ages hit Enlightenment and Gunpowder Age bases. It is unbelievably unfair and makes my pi55 boil!!!
 
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