TimTrain
Big Huge Games
- Joined
- Jul 24, 2015
- Messages
- 18
Hello Leaders!
Summer is drawing to a close here in Baltimore, and we’re excited about all the new players coming to DomiNations as a result of the Asia launch. We’re now live in almost all countries, and happy to bring our world history game to the entire world! We’re also very excited to have moved into new office space. This incarnation of Big Huge Games (v2.0) began in my dining room 2.5 years ago, then spent most of the last two years in a cramped, Spartan startup space as we labored to get DomiNations out the door. Our new home gives us plenty of room to grow, and I’m excited for all the adventures we’ll experience in this space.
We’ve been very busy working on a number of features both big and small. Our biggest endeavor is adding more fun ways to play with your Alliance, which we’ll be discussing in more detail in the next few weeks. We’re really looking forward to releasing this new feature set, which will usher in a new phase of play for DomiNations (and also deserve a new major version number!). We will also be adding more events to the game, giving variety to gameplay and lending a helping hand to our frequent players.
Of course, we continue to place a high priority on fixing cheats and hacks where we find them. We know that these issues are common to other successful mobile strategy games, but it is still very painful for us when people can gain an unfair advantage through these methods. In addition to ongoing engineering fixes, we ban cheaters whenever we find them (and take great delight in doing so). Since the game’s launch, we have banned over 30,000 accounts for cheating, and will continue to aggressively wield the ban hammer.
Our design team has also been focused on evaluating overall game balance, particularly where it comes to nations and units. Much of our core team comes from the old-school world of AAA boxed games, where it was very hard to gather meaningful information on game balance once the game went out the door. With the rise of mobile games, we now have access to terabytes of data that catalogue the performance of every player choice, battle, unit type, and nation, and we use that data to be sure no one strategy is clearly head-and-shoulders above the rest. Among other things, we are evaluating the cost of Library technologies in the Enlightenment and Industrial eras, and those prices may increase, so we suggest getting your upgrades in now!
I also wanted to thank everyone for sharing their ideas in the weekly feedback thread. I’ve seen a number of good suggestions for improvements there, and hope to add some of them in future releases. To address one question from this week’s thread on Nation Balance: we did consider having unique troops spawn on defense (i.e., Greek Companions spawning from their Stables on defense). However, that would be problematic for nations that have ranged light infantry like British Longbows, where they would be a less valuable nation choice since we don’t have a building that produces ranged troops on defense. It would also make combat substantially more difficult to balance, with a whole new variable to consider. So we opted to have defensive buildings produce regular troops.
As always, we very much appreciate all your ongoing support for DomiNations! We continue to work hard to improve the game, fix the bugs, and add new features that make the game more fun. We’ve loved working on the game and hope you continue to enjoy playing!
-Tim Train
Summer is drawing to a close here in Baltimore, and we’re excited about all the new players coming to DomiNations as a result of the Asia launch. We’re now live in almost all countries, and happy to bring our world history game to the entire world! We’re also very excited to have moved into new office space. This incarnation of Big Huge Games (v2.0) began in my dining room 2.5 years ago, then spent most of the last two years in a cramped, Spartan startup space as we labored to get DomiNations out the door. Our new home gives us plenty of room to grow, and I’m excited for all the adventures we’ll experience in this space.
We’ve been very busy working on a number of features both big and small. Our biggest endeavor is adding more fun ways to play with your Alliance, which we’ll be discussing in more detail in the next few weeks. We’re really looking forward to releasing this new feature set, which will usher in a new phase of play for DomiNations (and also deserve a new major version number!). We will also be adding more events to the game, giving variety to gameplay and lending a helping hand to our frequent players.
Of course, we continue to place a high priority on fixing cheats and hacks where we find them. We know that these issues are common to other successful mobile strategy games, but it is still very painful for us when people can gain an unfair advantage through these methods. In addition to ongoing engineering fixes, we ban cheaters whenever we find them (and take great delight in doing so). Since the game’s launch, we have banned over 30,000 accounts for cheating, and will continue to aggressively wield the ban hammer.
Our design team has also been focused on evaluating overall game balance, particularly where it comes to nations and units. Much of our core team comes from the old-school world of AAA boxed games, where it was very hard to gather meaningful information on game balance once the game went out the door. With the rise of mobile games, we now have access to terabytes of data that catalogue the performance of every player choice, battle, unit type, and nation, and we use that data to be sure no one strategy is clearly head-and-shoulders above the rest. Among other things, we are evaluating the cost of Library technologies in the Enlightenment and Industrial eras, and those prices may increase, so we suggest getting your upgrades in now!
I also wanted to thank everyone for sharing their ideas in the weekly feedback thread. I’ve seen a number of good suggestions for improvements there, and hope to add some of them in future releases. To address one question from this week’s thread on Nation Balance: we did consider having unique troops spawn on defense (i.e., Greek Companions spawning from their Stables on defense). However, that would be problematic for nations that have ranged light infantry like British Longbows, where they would be a less valuable nation choice since we don’t have a building that produces ranged troops on defense. It would also make combat substantially more difficult to balance, with a whole new variable to consider. So we opted to have defensive buildings produce regular troops.
As always, we very much appreciate all your ongoing support for DomiNations! We continue to work hard to improve the game, fix the bugs, and add new features that make the game more fun. We’ve loved working on the game and hope you continue to enjoy playing!
-Tim Train
I think I speak for other players when I say we are really excited to have something like an alliance war, it would definitely spice up the game, as well as new nations, as a history nerd, I really enjoy this game, and would like to see even more of the worlds glorious empires added to the game. Keep up the good work!
