radiospace
Approved user
- Joined
- Oct 4, 2015
- Messages
- 37
I have a ton of suggestions for this game, so many that people would roll their eyes, so I'm going to focus on just one aspect of the game in this post, and that's improvements to the social, collaborative elements within the alliance.
I think Dominations is really great the way it is, but if it's going to survive the long haul, it needs to be very, very exceptional in many ways, and one of the most important is to have a rich sense of community within an alliance. Right now there is a decent sense of community in my alliance (I lead an alliance of nearly 50 people from all over the world) but it is constricted in many ways by the limitations of the game.
So here are some suggestions to improve the communication (and thus the bond) that people feel with their alliance, which would undoubtedly build loyalty to the game and thus ensure future income for Big Huge Games and Nexon:
1) Polling the populace. As an alliance leader of a group of people in every time zone, it is impossible for me to communicate with them individually on every important issue. I would like to be able to post a poll for either the whole alliance or the council members only, when it comes to making important decisions that will effect everyone. (Example: how often should we wage war?). It's not that I can't make decisions on my own, it's that I want to get a sense of the feeling of the community and to make them feel more involved in what is going on. Also allowing private, Council-only polls would add some value to being on the council that is otherwise kind of a lame, symbolic title at this point.
2) When you click on Info on your Town Center, and you see your alliance troops, it should absolutely tell you who donated those troops. I know there is a pop-up message for this, but that is completely insufficient as 75% of the time you are busy doing something else and miss reading it. We need to be able to thank those who gave us troops so that they feel valued. This is actually a big deal because giving troops is a vital part of being in an alliance and when people feel that they are not getting any credit for giving generously they are less likely to participate.
3) Similarly, as Alliance Leader, I must be able to examine who is donating troops to the War Bases, in detail. I want to know what sort of troops are being donated and who is doing the donating. This allows me to direct the alliance to better organize the war effort, which makes the whole process more engaging and interactive for everybody.
4) Others have suggested things like a bulletin board for the Alliance Leader to post strategy for the War, or a War-only chat. (I favor the first idea but either would be an improvement). In either case, we need to be able to highlight important instructions to the alliance members, versus the pleasantries and chit chat that takes up a lot of the alliance messaging system. (I.e. "Thanks for the troops, Phil").
5) I saw someone else suggest that we should be able to draw notes and suggestions upon an enemy's base to plot ideas for attacking it. I think this is completely brilliant, though I acknowledge it would be very difficult to pull off.
6) Private messaging and Council-messaging. It would be of great value to be able to message individuals, and also to send messages to the Council as a whole, in order to inform them of things that are going on. It is unbecoming to have discussions in public about individuals who should be kicked out of the alliance and I think having these discussions seen by the whole alliance creates an atmosphere of mistrust and animosity between regular members and the leaders. Additionally, as an Alliance Leader, I would like to be able to send private messages to poorly-performing members to encourage them to improve their performance (donating troops / using their war attacks, etc.) without publicly embarrassing them as I must do now, if I want to call attention to their behavior.
7) Military Parades. Okay, don't laugh... or laugh, but then listen: I would like once a month or so, to be able to hold a Military Parade, where the entire Alliance's troops march through everyone's town when they log on the first time that day, so that we could see all of our alliance's armies together, and that as we grow and advance as an alliance, we could enjoy seeing the increasing technological level of the whole 'armada'. Each player's army should fly a flag over it with their name so that we can identify the different members and where they are at in their technological development. I know it sounds silly but I think it would be fun and again, would build a sense of pride in the alliance.
8) It goes without saying there needs to be some kind of "score" to show how we have done in World Wars, even if it is just a record like in sports (15 wins, 7 losses or whatever).
9) Attack Alliance Defectors: I think anyone who quits an alliance should be able to be attacked once by the first alliance member who exercises the option (like a revenge attack). Ideally peace treaties could not prevent this attack from happening. Yeah, it's a little nasty but people just want an outlet when somebody flies-by-night without saying goodbye. Just consider it a going-away present.
10) Civil War Days? : This is probably the weirdest / trickiest idea I have come up with, but I know in my alliance we would greatly enjoy attacking each other one day a month or every three months or whatever. We check out each other's cities and wonder what the heck the other guy is thinking, and brag that we could take them down in 60 seconds, and that sort of thing, so it would just be cool to be able to put that to the test. Whether there should be any loot involved is questionable, but there ought to be some benefit to the overall alliance to participating enthusiastically in Civil War attacks (so that losers in those battles don't feel like their alliance mates have robbed them blind of loot). I would suggest that the winner keeps loot but the loser doesn't lose any, but I know that quite a few players have more than one account, and this would enable them to essentially print money as they could rearrange their cities to have useless defenses, attack themselves, then switch sides and do it again. Perhaps limiting each player to one attack on each alliance member, and a total of 3 or 4 such attacks, and having the loser lose only 15% of normal loot while the winner brings home 100% (or something along those lines) would both encourage participation while not rewarding unduly those who would seek to game the system, would work.
So, those are my 10 ideas as of right now for improving the interior life of an alliance. I know there are a lot of suggestions here, some of them perhaps a bit crazy, but I am thinking long-term about what would turn Dominations into a genre-defining, revolutionary game that will survive profitably for the long haul, kind of like World of Warcraft has done. I think the game is off to a fantastic start but I think to be something special it needs to get extremely innovative and forward-thinking and I think the social aspects of the game are a good place to start.
I think Dominations is really great the way it is, but if it's going to survive the long haul, it needs to be very, very exceptional in many ways, and one of the most important is to have a rich sense of community within an alliance. Right now there is a decent sense of community in my alliance (I lead an alliance of nearly 50 people from all over the world) but it is constricted in many ways by the limitations of the game.
So here are some suggestions to improve the communication (and thus the bond) that people feel with their alliance, which would undoubtedly build loyalty to the game and thus ensure future income for Big Huge Games and Nexon:
1) Polling the populace. As an alliance leader of a group of people in every time zone, it is impossible for me to communicate with them individually on every important issue. I would like to be able to post a poll for either the whole alliance or the council members only, when it comes to making important decisions that will effect everyone. (Example: how often should we wage war?). It's not that I can't make decisions on my own, it's that I want to get a sense of the feeling of the community and to make them feel more involved in what is going on. Also allowing private, Council-only polls would add some value to being on the council that is otherwise kind of a lame, symbolic title at this point.
2) When you click on Info on your Town Center, and you see your alliance troops, it should absolutely tell you who donated those troops. I know there is a pop-up message for this, but that is completely insufficient as 75% of the time you are busy doing something else and miss reading it. We need to be able to thank those who gave us troops so that they feel valued. This is actually a big deal because giving troops is a vital part of being in an alliance and when people feel that they are not getting any credit for giving generously they are less likely to participate.
3) Similarly, as Alliance Leader, I must be able to examine who is donating troops to the War Bases, in detail. I want to know what sort of troops are being donated and who is doing the donating. This allows me to direct the alliance to better organize the war effort, which makes the whole process more engaging and interactive for everybody.
4) Others have suggested things like a bulletin board for the Alliance Leader to post strategy for the War, or a War-only chat. (I favor the first idea but either would be an improvement). In either case, we need to be able to highlight important instructions to the alliance members, versus the pleasantries and chit chat that takes up a lot of the alliance messaging system. (I.e. "Thanks for the troops, Phil").
5) I saw someone else suggest that we should be able to draw notes and suggestions upon an enemy's base to plot ideas for attacking it. I think this is completely brilliant, though I acknowledge it would be very difficult to pull off.
6) Private messaging and Council-messaging. It would be of great value to be able to message individuals, and also to send messages to the Council as a whole, in order to inform them of things that are going on. It is unbecoming to have discussions in public about individuals who should be kicked out of the alliance and I think having these discussions seen by the whole alliance creates an atmosphere of mistrust and animosity between regular members and the leaders. Additionally, as an Alliance Leader, I would like to be able to send private messages to poorly-performing members to encourage them to improve their performance (donating troops / using their war attacks, etc.) without publicly embarrassing them as I must do now, if I want to call attention to their behavior.
7) Military Parades. Okay, don't laugh... or laugh, but then listen: I would like once a month or so, to be able to hold a Military Parade, where the entire Alliance's troops march through everyone's town when they log on the first time that day, so that we could see all of our alliance's armies together, and that as we grow and advance as an alliance, we could enjoy seeing the increasing technological level of the whole 'armada'. Each player's army should fly a flag over it with their name so that we can identify the different members and where they are at in their technological development. I know it sounds silly but I think it would be fun and again, would build a sense of pride in the alliance.
8) It goes without saying there needs to be some kind of "score" to show how we have done in World Wars, even if it is just a record like in sports (15 wins, 7 losses or whatever).
9) Attack Alliance Defectors: I think anyone who quits an alliance should be able to be attacked once by the first alliance member who exercises the option (like a revenge attack). Ideally peace treaties could not prevent this attack from happening. Yeah, it's a little nasty but people just want an outlet when somebody flies-by-night without saying goodbye. Just consider it a going-away present.
10) Civil War Days? : This is probably the weirdest / trickiest idea I have come up with, but I know in my alliance we would greatly enjoy attacking each other one day a month or every three months or whatever. We check out each other's cities and wonder what the heck the other guy is thinking, and brag that we could take them down in 60 seconds, and that sort of thing, so it would just be cool to be able to put that to the test. Whether there should be any loot involved is questionable, but there ought to be some benefit to the overall alliance to participating enthusiastically in Civil War attacks (so that losers in those battles don't feel like their alliance mates have robbed them blind of loot). I would suggest that the winner keeps loot but the loser doesn't lose any, but I know that quite a few players have more than one account, and this would enable them to essentially print money as they could rearrange their cities to have useless defenses, attack themselves, then switch sides and do it again. Perhaps limiting each player to one attack on each alliance member, and a total of 3 or 4 such attacks, and having the loser lose only 15% of normal loot while the winner brings home 100% (or something along those lines) would both encourage participation while not rewarding unduly those who would seek to game the system, would work.
So, those are my 10 ideas as of right now for improving the interior life of an alliance. I know there are a lot of suggestions here, some of them perhaps a bit crazy, but I am thinking long-term about what would turn Dominations into a genre-defining, revolutionary game that will survive profitably for the long haul, kind of like World of Warcraft has done. I think the game is off to a fantastic start but I think to be something special it needs to get extremely innovative and forward-thinking and I think the social aspects of the game are a good place to start.