State of the Nations: December Edition

[TimTrain]

Greetings Leaders!

What a packed couple of months it’s been! I apologize for the delay in between posts; we have spent the entire autumn working very hard to get World War into your hands. I hope everyone has had the opportunity to download the update, and that you are having fun. My Alliance is 1-0 already, squeaking out a narrow victory, and have moved up to Preparation Day on a bigger 20v20 conflict. Perhaps we will run into you in one of our next Wars!

As you can see from the changelist, this was by far our biggest update since we launched in April. While many of the new features relate directly to World War, we also made a run up the hill at Nation rebalancing and shipped tremendous number of bug fixes.

We will continue to tweak balance to ensure that picking your Nation is always a difficult decision. One other balance change to highlight is that roads now confer a hit point bonus to your town center for every building that is connected to the town center. This is primarily to ensure roads are still meaningful when designing a War Base layout. Plus, we just kinda like roads and are always happy for reasons to increase their usefulness .

Moving forward, we will be building a lot of new features into World War, which will give players additional reasons to strategize on their attacks. We’re also looking forward to our new Events system that we’re adding to the game, and you should soon see a lot more weekly goals and timed events as a result.

Regular forum readers will also note that we’ve subtly altered Leaderboards to account for a loophole in the system whereby players could stay at lower Age tiers but still get high medal counts and be on the Leaderboards. The loophole was an unintended side effect of balancing intended to match players who are relatively close in Age. We also closed another loophole whereby Generals at the end of a battle went on cooldown with whatever health they had remaining at the battle’s end, regardless of whether the attacker had destroyed all defensive buildings. This unfortunately incentivized behavior like using Generals on raids, then ending the battle before they would take any damage, or ending battles before they had fully played out to save General health. Now, similar to other units, if you deploy a General but don’t destroy all defensive buildings, the General is considered “destroyed” and goes on a 24-hour cooldown clock. If you *do* destroy all defensive buildings, the General goes on cooldown based on whatever damage the unit had at the end of the battle. Personally, I love seeing users test the bounds of the game systems and finding these kinds of edge cases; it showcases the creativity of our player base, and helps us find ways to constantly improve DomiNations!

Overall, we remain very excited with how the game is evolving. We will continually be working very hard to add new features, fix bugs, and improve game balance. As always, thanks so much for your continued support of DomiNations!

-Tim Train

 

[polo1967]

I understand what you are saying about people exiting battles early to preserve their general, but isnt that what a retreat is supposed to do? The amount of resources that go into upgrading a general is too much for so little return on our investment.

 

[Quovatis]

The general change was very bad. There is no incentive to use them now. What fun is it to only use your general for a 1 minute battle once a day! The cooldown needs to be MUCH shorter to compensate for this change. I want to see generals be in battles and used!

 

[Nathan Win]

Thanks for the update. Keep up the good work. Hopefully you guys can consider some of our suggestions.

 

[Ravenlord]

Why does the general need a 24hr cooldown if not all defense buildings are destroyed? No other troop goes into a 24hr cooldown. The general should just go into a normal cooldown period dependent on his/her amount of damage. Generals should have some kind of bonus attached to their character. Clearly they don't lead troops or inspire troops - why not make them somewhat immune to the whole ''if you don't destroy defense buildings .....'' scenario?

However, I can see the point. If any troop is lost then that troop has to be rebuilt with the default time period. Presumably a general's default cooldown period for maximum damage is 24hrs?
Still sucks though.

 

[leetillu]

Nice to read a state of nations again... A little bit disappointing since it was not clearing up things like the past were.

Making roads useful again is a great Idea, and also makes base planning a little bit more complicated, which is fun!

But for the general cooldown... sending the general to a cooldown even if you have won the battle is killing it's purpose completely.
Of course the loophole people were using had to be closed, because why should the general be still alive completely if a battle has been lost.

But any troop that survives will be fully available for the next battle immediately, generals should be as well!

 

[Denquin]

Can't wait to see the global age, and any other nations. If the U.S. will ever be added... I'm changing to it, no matter what. It's just a patriotic thing.
Also... Will there ever be something boat related?

 

[IronFist]

Very good work guys ^^ but please, answer me: there are 3 infantry nations, 3 archery nations and 2 cavalry nations, so, to be fair, it must be another third cavalry nation. When will you put that? If you are going to make that. please put Russia (with Cossacks) or Poland (with Winged Hussars), Id be AWESOME to see another cavalry nation, and, If its possible, better than chevaliers and compagnions

 

[Binary]

Awesome State of Nations returns!

 

[Smallville]

Thanks again for the nations update. I always look forward to these.

 

[Ravenlord]

Couldn't agree more! (go Russia)

 

[Hunter Killer]

Personally, I think the world war has not delivered enough on the promise, just like this game hasn't reached the full potential it could have. Most players on the forum probably got used to all the bugs, cheats and other frustrating "rebalances" at every patch. I'm a half empty glass kind of guy

I am supportive of all the efforts to make the game better but if you can't fix the game crashing, allowing us to go into alliance wars doesn't fill its purpose. We'll still crash in the middle of a world war battle. And in reality many of us do.

Releasing alliance wars without defense logs and replays while you can't fix the cheaters issue just means we'll get 5 stars defeat in world war and have no idea whether we got attacked with 120 heavy tanks or not. Check the bugs section of the forum and wait until you get matched with alliance "RED ARMY".

The change to the general is really not consistent. Either you use a cooldown period for damage received or you don't. If the general only returns when all defenses are destroyed, then if he returns, he should not get any cooldown. If I finish the battle with a tank that lost half its hp, it's ready to go into next battle with full hp again. So cooldown should be either 24h or nothing. Either you get him back or you don't. If you do, he's fully charged. That would be consistent.

The change to the leaderboard was not due to a loophole. It is due to your medal system. But rather than fixing the medal system that most here would agree is flawed, you have decided to take the shortcut of blocking low level players from appearing on the leaderboard.

I think that yes you have been working very hard to add new features, probably less on fixing bugs and removing cheaters though

 

[Aurelius...]

Great to see this post. Thank you.

Many of the improvements are great. And alliance wars, while still a work in progress with meaningful flaws, has brought some fun back to a game that was getting a bit tired.

As to generals, I see the problem, and I suppose the fix is better than allowing people to sweep up loot with generals. Having said that, I agree with HK, that if the policy is that troops return after defensive buildings are destroyed, generals should too. It's important to note that the ai for generals isn't compatible with the cool down requirement. Having generals rush into harm's way so aggressively ensures a cool down for almost every deployment. And who deploys generals at the beginning of battles? (Big spenders and cheaters, who will just crown the cool down period.). Either improve the ai, or reduce the cool down period, otherwise you are ensuring that we don't use the most interesting troop in the game. One good suggestion that has been ignored: independent rally for generals. Another is: have each general positively impact surrounding troops with a bonus (health, speed, etc.).

 

[GailWho]

Thanks for bringing back your State of the Nations post. I almost missed it because I stopped bothering to look in this section of the forum.

I want to take this opportunity to thank you for bringing World War to DomiNations. It has added a lot to the game. Many in my alliance had been losing interest in the game and I was losing them to other games because of many of the problems discussed on this forum. They are back and the energy and excitement hasn't been higher. In order to keep the momentum going I'm hoping to see the following additions to the World War soon.

A leaderboard- This would be more meaningful than the alliance medals leaderboard because it takes teamwork to succeed not just the time to grind medals. Perhaps you can have different level on wins of 10v10, 15v15 etc. this will allow smaller alliances to make their mark on the game.

Replays of battles - how can we learn from our mistakes and make our bases better if there is no way to replay the battles?

An alliance bulletin board- to help leaders orchestrate war strategies... Chat (when it works) is ok but having members from around the world I'm contantly having to repeat instructions. A mailing system would be even better for overall communication purposes.

Thanks again. I look forward to future updates.

 

[JuDomines]

I +1 every Gail's suggestions

 

[Quovatis]

I appreciate the WW release attempt, but imho it wasn't ready yet. I would rather have waited a few more weeks to fix the bugs, add replays, etc etc. Releasing it now in it's bugged and almost unplayable state just makes more people leave the game, and they won't likely return even if everything eventually is fixed.

 

[ivan.]

I always look forward to reading these State of the Nations and hearing the devs' thoughts. But reading this report shows me just how out of touch you are with your own game.

 

[rambo3489]

Awesome! Keep em coming. The wars have been awesome. Could still use a little tweaking mostly by adding replays. I have no doubt that this game will be king over clans as long as the ideas keep coming and things keep getting fixed. Keep up the good work all.

 

[skysblue]

Second HK's feedback. Guess it makes two glass half empty guys

 

[leoelephant]

Hi, I respect your team's hard working to push new features.

But will you please explain why so many random army poor attachers get five stars win as the result? It is so obvious cheating and you are not doing any thing to prevent it and does not even confirm it in your customer service? What is the relationship between cheaters and BHG? brothers????