March State of the Nations!

[Guest]

Hello Leaders,


Welcome to the March State of the Nations! This is going to be an exciting update. Today I’ll be talking about things that are happening in April, giving an update on stalemates in World War, and addressing World War Replays.


Before we look at what’s coming up, I wanted to take a minute to thank you, the players, for your continued support and patience. With the release of 5.3 and the introduction of the Stronghold, we caused a few bugs that created issues for players when interacting with the new building and Troop Tactics. Some of those bugs have been fixed, but we’re still working to correct the remaining problems. Again, thank you for your patience as we address these issues.


This past Friday, the DomiNations team held an hour-long Q&A session answering questions specifically related to World War matchmaking and sandbagging. If you’re interested, please check out the thread. Be sure to leave feedback about the Q&A process so the team can improve on it for the next time!


April is always an exciting month for us! On April 1st, 2015, DomiNations officially launched on iOS and Android. To celebrate our 2nd Anniversary we will be running a series of events all month long, including the return of Alliance Gifting. Additionally, for new players or people just hoping to move up to the next Age, we’ll have weekly discount events reducing Town Center upgrade costs in various Ages throughout the month. Check back often for more details as we announce these Anniversary events.


While we’re happily planning our Anniversary celebrations, there’s one group that hasn’t been so happy: the bunnies. Since the launch of DomiNations, over 3.1 billion bunnies have been hunted by players. As announced earlier, they’ve had enough! Channeling their rage, these bunnies have learned to breathe fire and are out for vengeance. For one time only, these Fire-breathing Bunny Armies are available for purchase. Once this sale ends, these adorable yet deadly troops will be retired and will never be sold again. Get them while they’re hot!


In addition to the Anniversary events that will be taking place in April, we will also be releasing the 5.5 update! Let’s take a look at some of the new features in 5.5.


Marco Polo, the Traveling Merchant, is coming to DomiNations! Each time Marco Polo visits your city he will bring a new set of goods that you’ll be able to purchase for Trade Goods, National Trade Goods, or Crowns. He will remain in your city for a limited period of time before he packs up and heads out for his next adventure. The next time he shows up, he’ll have a new set of goods to trade you.


5.5 will also add Alliance Challenges. Players in an Alliance will be able to post one of their Town or War Base layouts in the Alliance chat. From there, anyone in that Alliance will be able to try attacking the base, including the player that initially posted the challenge. As this is a purely friendly battle, the attacker will not lose troops, tactics, etc. and no resources or trade goods will be stolen. Use this feature to practice your attack strategies and help your allies design stronger bases!


As exciting as Marco Polo and Alliance Challenges are, I have a feeling that this next feature will prove to be 5.5’s most popular. We will be greatly reducing World War stalemates by rolling out an update to the criteria for determining victory. In addition to number of stars and destruction percentage, time in battle will now be considered. In the event that stars and destruction are the same, the Alliance with the least amount of time elapsed in battle will be deemed the victor. On the results windows for individual battles and the World War as a whole, you will now be able to see the time elapsed for each battle. To avoid discouraging players from using their second attack, only the best attack against a given War Base will be counted towards time elapsed.


Finally, 5.5 will also introduce a number of new building upgrades for players in the Atomic Age. Farms, Caravans, and Oil Wells will be receiving another upgrade level. The University will also get its first Atomic upgrade as well as a new Great Leader: Amelia Earhart. You will need a level 4 University to begin researching her skills and a level 6 University to finish them. Her capstone research, The Ninety Nines, increases Air Capacity by 1!


As promised in the introduction, I wanted to give an update on World War Replays. Unfortunately, World War Replays are not ready to be included in the 5.5 release. There is good news though, stay with me! Some time after 5.5 comes out, we will be launching a World War Replays beta testing period which will last for several weeks. During this time, players will be able to view World War Replays, and we’ll be using the live data we collect to address the remaining bugs. We’ll be looking to get feedback from the community based on the success of the beta, and we’ll give more information about this after 5.5 is released.


Between the 5.5 update and the Anniversary events, DomiNations is shaping up to have another big April. Be sure to check back often so you don’t miss any of the Anniversary celebrations that are happening all month long!


Thanks,

Brian

 

[redprince]

Ok the English version reads a lot better lol. Good to hear we will at least get to see a beta of the replays.

 

[Brand Marrow]

yay! lots to look forward to! Thanks!

 

[Vixen]

Yay ... thanks for update...

My concern.. an EA or IA or GA with great skills can pull down a base way above him with far less troops but probably needs the full battle clock to do so. So when we match a sandbagging alliance of mainly atomics and irons you are giving them another advantage over us cos they can clean our bases faster and the sandbags don't hit.

Am I reading this wrong?

 

[Quovatis]

This only kicks in if both the number of stars and average destruction are identical. 99.9% of the time, that's only going to happen when both teams get a perfect score, and that's extremely rare these days after the stronghold.

 

[GailWho]

Thanks Brian! Sounds like some good stuff! I especially like the alliance challenges! This will be a great new training tool

 

[ColdestRage]

Yay, thanks for another update ... not.
When will sandbagging end?
Can't devs tell that that issue alone is killing the game and more and more people leave due to it?
Get your priorities straight and adress the issue that's more crucial than others are .
Are Nexon devs blind or do they don't care at all that people leave cause of broken matchmaking system that matches your alliance with alliance which average lvl differs by 30 or more lvls.

You can say you are looking for a fix for Sandbagging and that's why it takes so long .
I get it, here's the fix - when there's 50 lvl difference between one base (let's say #17) and next base (let's say #18) alliance that has those bases recieves no Glory and is penaltized by reducing their Glory by the ammount they could win.
That would end Sandbaggibg for good.
Surely you can say that'll damage mixed Ages alliances , but surely it won't as those have allies across all Ages and there wouldn't be so huge lvl difference between two consecutive bases.

But surely you can say "we are working on it and have it under our radar" for another year and have most of players deep in 3 letters.

Way to go, another meaningless update that doesn't solve most crucial problem

 

[Vixen]

And I suppose putting in irons gives us a kick too as will take 20 secs to roll

 

[redprince]

You mam, are an ignorant tool.

 

[SebQuattro]

From the Q&A:

''Option C: Dont have the bottom ~25% of a roster count for matchmaking reasons''

''Option C: That is a good idea, and it is actually how we calculate Glory (which is a separate calculation from matchmaking). This is something we’ve discussed internally and is something we’re considering''.

Personally, I think it would be nice idea if the alliance gained 10 bonus glory for each player who 5*'s a higher age base...

 

[Peugi]

Guys, am I the only one who is concerned about the stalemate fix? I already started a discussion about this on facebook, but I would like to hear your thoughts on this as well.

Imagine a scenario when we have a max stars stalemate and only the top 5 players have remaining free attacks. When are they going to spend their free attacks? Defo not on players on the top worth some loot, they will be forced to attack the classical or whatever age players at the bottom of the list to annihilate their bases in 8 seconds and thus shorten the average battle time.They will need to use full army incl. mercs - every second counts. Maybe even troop tactics and we are still talking about AA player attacking a CA.

Does this sound like a logical behaviour that should win us the war? Someone did not think this through... or maybe they did - we will be forced to use full amount of troop tactics available to shorten our attacks as much as possible = more moniez for Nexon. Pay to win WTF!

 

[rederoin]

>This only kicks in if both the number of stars and average destruction are identical. 99.9% of the time, that's only going to happen when both teams get a perfect score, and that's extremely rare these days after the stronghold.


But that is the problem with sandbagger, if they are any good they will perfect you.

 

[jmemira]

I am very concerned about this average time component to perfect score stalemates. This gives yet another advantage to the sandbagging teams we see in war, with 20-25 max Atomic offense and 5 Iron/Classical age guys against our team made up of multiple ages and multiple levels. For us, it is a great victory if we can stalemate a stacking team, we throw everything we can at their toughest bases and our best attackers need to use both attacks to overcome an incredible level (and often age!) gap. We treat these perfect score stalemates as wins - even though they are glory neutral - because they are often difficult and exciting and a huge accomplishment for a mixed team such as ours.

With this new aspect of war, the opposing team's base #1 can flatten one of our best defenses with his first hit, a legitimate attack, and then hit our easiest Industrial player with his second, destroying it in a minute or so, which will count towards their best time. Then their #2, #3, #4 and so on can do the same, meaning they might have 20 hits against our lowest player to count towards their best time. Our best attackers, on the other hand, will have to continue to use their hits for two real hits, with similar average destruction time, while our lowers clear out the iron age bases to free up our best offense to for real hits. Meaning most of our hitters will have a "real" average destruction time, based on the best of two close attacks on incredibly tough bases, and 2-3 will have a very low average time because we rely on those to take out the sandbags.

The leaderboard is going to become even more corrupted with this, and well-rounded teams will have no chance to ever gain any glory. I can only hope that the full loot payout for perfect score ties will remain, so that this doesn't turn into a complete slap in the face.

 

[jmemira]

this incentivizes sandbagging even more imo!

 

[Europeos]

Those Alliance challenges seem to be the best addition in the game in a long time. This is going to bring great fun!!
​​​​

 

[Europeos]

I think Vixen is right. Including iron age bases is going to be a disadvantage for the time average.

 

[ColdestRage]

I'm ignorant?
Nexon ignores our needs and it's good cause they roll out another meaningless update, and I'm ignorant?
Please, the ones that are ignorant are game devs that don't care to fix the reason that makes people drop this game

 

[ColdestRage]

Nexon goes pay for win road more with each update, you tought they'll reconsider?
Well...They won't

 

[Quovatis]

All you complaining about how this hurts sandbags, how many of you have had a recent war where both teams got perfect scores? After the stronghold, this is very rare. I'm guessing all the complainers never get a perfect score and would have lost to the sandbaggers with or without this change. 1st D has only had 1 war since stronghold that was a perfect-score tie, and we've played many top alliances that have tied us in the past since then. You are complaining about something that will rarely, if ever, come up. I think it's a good addition.

 

[Master Contrail Program]

Yes. The alliance challenges and actual forward momentum on war replays makes me a happy camper. An intra-alliance war sounds much more exciting, at least for a few months, than more of the same old same old anyway. If people would rather laser focus their discontent on a second tie-breaker in world wars? Well, different strokes I guess.

The game still has issues, it probably always will. However these last few updates have been some of the best they've ever done since I began playing, even with the bugs and hiccups.

Looking forward to this. I hope it's soon.