Damascus
Approved user
- Joined
- Apr 5, 2015
- Messages
- 114
(WARNING!!!!! This is long. No tldr version. If you have the attention span of a five year old, then I don't even suggest you scroll down to post a comment. It's ah long way to the bottom.=)
Hello all you dominators. Been playing dominations for a couple months now and have really enjoyed my time here.
Just to give you guys some back ground profile before I get into this, my account is Greek xp 54 converting to gun powder. Like many here, I played clash of clans, also Kingdoms at war for years as well as various other games. I am 36 years old and work as a restaurant manager in Southern California
My hat is off to the game developers for the idea they came up with in dominations. Despite having the same battle engine as coc, this is very much a different game. Its a much deeper strategic game, requiring more thought and planning. The criticisms and corrections portion of this game will be obviously much longer than this one paragraph, but as short as the praise was, I can't emphasize how important it is. Despite some of the problems and frustrations, I am still here and still spend money on this game.
Problems and corrections:
1. The British. In the most recent patch, we saw a lot of ranges increase. Archer towers, ballista and catapult all got a boost. The problem is, the British unit became much less meaningful. Its Longbow was really the only thing it had going for it. Its 5% loot bonus isn't very meaningful. But a very capable unique unit made up for that some. Even before this, I thought the developers needed to beef them up, but I could understand why someone would choose them if they were going to do a lot...and I mean a LOT of raiding. But with there raiding ability getting blunted, I would say the British need for a bump has gone from simply needed to urgently needs to be done yesterday.
Correction: When any of us chose our nations, the vast majority made our choices based on very general descriptions with no statistical support. A nation change option was needed. In my opinion, everyone should have been offered one free. To prevent unwanted manipulations, a 24 hour time limit could have been applied or something like this. However, I will not cry and ask for a Mulligan for choosing the Greeks. The early finish bonus Greeks get is difficult to use and almost as insignificant as the British 5% loot bonus. Getting 15 minute free finish bonus plus 5 min more each age you increase to does not scale very well at all with the obnoxious times it takes up grades in medieval and gun powder, but the decreased cost in construction does scale pretty well. Additionally, and especially with the cav increase in dps, I am much happier with the Greeks.
The British however, are another story. They should either be beefed up significantly and very soon, like now, or immediately offered a free nation change. BHG, you guys muffed the British nation badly. They shouldn't have to pay for this issue.
2. Wonders. I know the gun powder wonders were buffed. I hate to say though that BHG needs to go back and seriously consider how to make wonders effective in their game without damaging their sales. Honestly, they may simply need to give to get a little back. A good example is the temple of Tikal. It offers refunded resources when you are plundered as well as increased trade goods capacity. Anyone want to know what that refunded resources amounts to? A whopping 2%. So if you are raided for 100k gold, you will get back 2,000 gold. How much can you really do with that? Its really terrible and simply useless.
Another one is Taj Mahal. One of its two abilities is to hire one free extra mercenary. You have to pay for that extra mercenary and if you are like me, more times than not, I don't attack with all the mercenary slots filled to begin with. This really doesn't mean much to me.
Correction. Again, I think a limited opportunity, one time free wonder change should have been offered and then allow charged wonder change. But I would encourage a far more detailed break down of wonder abilities, and nation abilities, for that matter, be made available in forums. This kind of detailed information IS getting out there gradually, but its all coming at the expense of the players finding out the hard way. Don't trap players into terrible wonders OR nations and then charge them to get out. Its underhanded and even unethical.
3. Leagues. Right now, the leagues are almost meaningless. The silver league bonus is at 2,000 gold and food. A player in silver would have to raid around 25 times or more for the league bonus to mean anything to them, and at that point, the 50k in bonuses would be lost in the total raided resources.
Correction. I thought the original league bonuses were pretty good. Winning 8-10 crowns wasn't a lot but it allowed you to build something worth your effort. I'm okay with battle bonuses. You want to make it gold/food/trade goods, fine, but male it worth a competitive effort.
4. Bugs, bugs, bugs. Game loading issues, text issues and on and on. The one I hate the most is when I load in my game and it says I am under attack, I wait for the counter to tick down and reload and it takes me to another screen that says I am being scouted or am under siege. This happens multiple times with nothing in my news about it.
Correction. I would like to see BHG devote all their resources to the bug issues, as well as hacks and cheats. There may be nothing more frustrating then when you see a player cheating their way past you. Maybe the cheaters ARE being taken care of at an acceptable rate and I (we) just don't know about it. You may consider publishing the cheating accounts removed from the game, in this case.
5. Nation Change. Some complaint has been made about everyone going Roman. Well..this is partially our bad. We asked for this. As I mentioned about the British, beefing them may bring back diversity, but we brought this on ourselves. They didn't even make it all that easy. You have to pay real money to change nations (600 crowns) and have 12 citizens available. That's difficult to do because I always have the majority or all of my citizens working on something, meaning I will probably spend MORE than the requisite 600 crowns on the revolution and I don't even know if it requires my civilians time to switch nations.
Correction. Attitude adjustment on our part. As I collective, we brought this on our selves. Also, we need to except what comes with diversity. There is always going to be a "best nation" and you could even develop a strategy to this. One clever forum poster said he would choose the "second best" nation so that when the devs nerf the nation that becomes to powerful, he will never have to be concerned. If that poster reads this, go ahead and take ah bow. =}
As for the developers, you have to notice when your players are getting a bad deal such as the British. You have to make it one of your most important goals to make every nation close to par. Just as there will always be a "best nation" maybe that means there will always be a worst, but it just can't be this noticeable. We all need to understand that the way a player uses each nation does have a huge impact on a nations abilities and so this makes it difficult to really measure how "good" nation abilities are, but there also has to be some measurement on how close to the pack this or that nation ability is. Maybe others disagree but in my eyes, the British players have been left out in the cold. Fix this right away!
Devs, you have made a unique and fun strategy game. Im also a customer. In my opinion, a strong product will encourage greater sales. Give us wonders with awesome qualities, nations with great abilities and you will not see sales go down. One of the qualities I try to give my customers is transparency which O believe is ENORMOUSLY under appreciated in sales.
THE ROAD MAP
I would recommend you publish something like a road map of goals for dominations. Give us an idea of what goals you are hoping to accomplish and when you want them accomplished. I am not asking you guys to box yourselves into a corner on dates. Give yourselves tons of leeway if you like and I will understand. Perhaps you could tell us what corrections, content, updates you hope to complete by the end of the year.
I know this has been long, and to all who read, thank you for your time. Some of my points and info are partly in thanks to redox DomiNations YouTube channel. He has some good ideas and content for those interested in deeper game play.
I wish everyone glorious plunder in battle!!!
~Damascus
Hello all you dominators. Been playing dominations for a couple months now and have really enjoyed my time here.
Just to give you guys some back ground profile before I get into this, my account is Greek xp 54 converting to gun powder. Like many here, I played clash of clans, also Kingdoms at war for years as well as various other games. I am 36 years old and work as a restaurant manager in Southern California
My hat is off to the game developers for the idea they came up with in dominations. Despite having the same battle engine as coc, this is very much a different game. Its a much deeper strategic game, requiring more thought and planning. The criticisms and corrections portion of this game will be obviously much longer than this one paragraph, but as short as the praise was, I can't emphasize how important it is. Despite some of the problems and frustrations, I am still here and still spend money on this game.
Problems and corrections:
1. The British. In the most recent patch, we saw a lot of ranges increase. Archer towers, ballista and catapult all got a boost. The problem is, the British unit became much less meaningful. Its Longbow was really the only thing it had going for it. Its 5% loot bonus isn't very meaningful. But a very capable unique unit made up for that some. Even before this, I thought the developers needed to beef them up, but I could understand why someone would choose them if they were going to do a lot...and I mean a LOT of raiding. But with there raiding ability getting blunted, I would say the British need for a bump has gone from simply needed to urgently needs to be done yesterday.
Correction: When any of us chose our nations, the vast majority made our choices based on very general descriptions with no statistical support. A nation change option was needed. In my opinion, everyone should have been offered one free. To prevent unwanted manipulations, a 24 hour time limit could have been applied or something like this. However, I will not cry and ask for a Mulligan for choosing the Greeks. The early finish bonus Greeks get is difficult to use and almost as insignificant as the British 5% loot bonus. Getting 15 minute free finish bonus plus 5 min more each age you increase to does not scale very well at all with the obnoxious times it takes up grades in medieval and gun powder, but the decreased cost in construction does scale pretty well. Additionally, and especially with the cav increase in dps, I am much happier with the Greeks.
The British however, are another story. They should either be beefed up significantly and very soon, like now, or immediately offered a free nation change. BHG, you guys muffed the British nation badly. They shouldn't have to pay for this issue.
2. Wonders. I know the gun powder wonders were buffed. I hate to say though that BHG needs to go back and seriously consider how to make wonders effective in their game without damaging their sales. Honestly, they may simply need to give to get a little back. A good example is the temple of Tikal. It offers refunded resources when you are plundered as well as increased trade goods capacity. Anyone want to know what that refunded resources amounts to? A whopping 2%. So if you are raided for 100k gold, you will get back 2,000 gold. How much can you really do with that? Its really terrible and simply useless.
Another one is Taj Mahal. One of its two abilities is to hire one free extra mercenary. You have to pay for that extra mercenary and if you are like me, more times than not, I don't attack with all the mercenary slots filled to begin with. This really doesn't mean much to me.
Correction. Again, I think a limited opportunity, one time free wonder change should have been offered and then allow charged wonder change. But I would encourage a far more detailed break down of wonder abilities, and nation abilities, for that matter, be made available in forums. This kind of detailed information IS getting out there gradually, but its all coming at the expense of the players finding out the hard way. Don't trap players into terrible wonders OR nations and then charge them to get out. Its underhanded and even unethical.
3. Leagues. Right now, the leagues are almost meaningless. The silver league bonus is at 2,000 gold and food. A player in silver would have to raid around 25 times or more for the league bonus to mean anything to them, and at that point, the 50k in bonuses would be lost in the total raided resources.
Correction. I thought the original league bonuses were pretty good. Winning 8-10 crowns wasn't a lot but it allowed you to build something worth your effort. I'm okay with battle bonuses. You want to make it gold/food/trade goods, fine, but male it worth a competitive effort.
4. Bugs, bugs, bugs. Game loading issues, text issues and on and on. The one I hate the most is when I load in my game and it says I am under attack, I wait for the counter to tick down and reload and it takes me to another screen that says I am being scouted or am under siege. This happens multiple times with nothing in my news about it.
Correction. I would like to see BHG devote all their resources to the bug issues, as well as hacks and cheats. There may be nothing more frustrating then when you see a player cheating their way past you. Maybe the cheaters ARE being taken care of at an acceptable rate and I (we) just don't know about it. You may consider publishing the cheating accounts removed from the game, in this case.
5. Nation Change. Some complaint has been made about everyone going Roman. Well..this is partially our bad. We asked for this. As I mentioned about the British, beefing them may bring back diversity, but we brought this on ourselves. They didn't even make it all that easy. You have to pay real money to change nations (600 crowns) and have 12 citizens available. That's difficult to do because I always have the majority or all of my citizens working on something, meaning I will probably spend MORE than the requisite 600 crowns on the revolution and I don't even know if it requires my civilians time to switch nations.
Correction. Attitude adjustment on our part. As I collective, we brought this on our selves. Also, we need to except what comes with diversity. There is always going to be a "best nation" and you could even develop a strategy to this. One clever forum poster said he would choose the "second best" nation so that when the devs nerf the nation that becomes to powerful, he will never have to be concerned. If that poster reads this, go ahead and take ah bow. =}
As for the developers, you have to notice when your players are getting a bad deal such as the British. You have to make it one of your most important goals to make every nation close to par. Just as there will always be a "best nation" maybe that means there will always be a worst, but it just can't be this noticeable. We all need to understand that the way a player uses each nation does have a huge impact on a nations abilities and so this makes it difficult to really measure how "good" nation abilities are, but there also has to be some measurement on how close to the pack this or that nation ability is. Maybe others disagree but in my eyes, the British players have been left out in the cold. Fix this right away!
Devs, you have made a unique and fun strategy game. Im also a customer. In my opinion, a strong product will encourage greater sales. Give us wonders with awesome qualities, nations with great abilities and you will not see sales go down. One of the qualities I try to give my customers is transparency which O believe is ENORMOUSLY under appreciated in sales.
THE ROAD MAP
I would recommend you publish something like a road map of goals for dominations. Give us an idea of what goals you are hoping to accomplish and when you want them accomplished. I am not asking you guys to box yourselves into a corner on dates. Give yourselves tons of leeway if you like and I will understand. Perhaps you could tell us what corrections, content, updates you hope to complete by the end of the year.
I know this has been long, and to all who read, thank you for your time. Some of my points and info are partly in thanks to redox DomiNations YouTube channel. He has some good ideas and content for those interested in deeper game play.
I wish everyone glorious plunder in battle!!!
~Damascus
