Weekly Feedback Thread 6/9

[Cailan_sky]

They totally are for the age I am in. No research or upgrades left until next age..

 

[Damascus]

I believe cheaters are the most important issue. In my opinion, your response to the Industrial Age hackers is not severe enough. Someone on the first page suggested that not all the Indy age bases are hackers. That the hackers moved others up with them to cover their tracks. That really makes a lot of since and in light of that, I understand why your initial action is to roll back Indy accounts. I would hope, though, that when cheaters are found that there is only one reaction; permanent ban.

The combat AI is a close second. It's pretty bad. I have watches my knights attack on wall block and instead of going through the wall, attack the adjacent wall block.

 

[Chris Coley]

Is it too much to ask that you rethink the current medal system. I'm not expecting dozens of medals from one raid, but the penalty for being attacked seems unbalanced with the reward you get from attacking others.

 

[Motaz Tarek]

1- AI is the worst in history ( soldiers avoid defensive structures intentionally specially those behind walls, troops no more focus gate ruining game strategy based on placing traps and ambush infront of the gates, troops move much and take worst route to their target, ranged troops dont always switch to defenders and focus building more and more ) 2- rally : troops consider the rally as a head to this position order if its targeted on a building, this makes them still try to reach target building area even if its already destroyed 3- defenders buffed and attackers weakened ruining battle balance, now some players with multiple banking in their base design are impossible to beat 4- foot soldiers range extremely decreased they have to stick to the building they attack while foot troops defenders range is still high and they can hit from behind the walls 5- gunpowder prices are extreme considering that loot becomes harder and less when u advance in age, u should reconsider upgrade prices and add a bonus loot depending on the age instead of or beside the bonus from league 6-to avoid ruining the game again, test what u have modified before releasing it in a forced update

 

[Tufqifo]

This weekly report is a good idea, but it's not enough! Right now, there is a strong sense of disconnectedness. People joke all the time about Nexon/BHG not knowing what goes on in the game or on the forum. Perhaps once a month, someone comes on the forum and gives some line about reading every post, but in our posts, we frequently say things like, "I hope they see this", "they never responded", "customer service is worthless", etc. We have open reports unanswered for weeks, and a spammer dominating the forum, but not a word from you! We've requested a chat room, and finally started one ourselves, and you are not on it! A company response should not be a rare sight, nor a political formulated statement to all at once! Almost all bug and issue posts should have a reply from you, as should any post that gets liked multiple times, and generates responses! For the game itself, please extensively test your updates before release! Most updates leave us all wondering if "fix" means the same thing to you as it does to the rest of us! The latest AI "fix" is unanimously despised, obviously flawed, and should never have been released. Please, connect with the players, and connect with the game! Then you will know what needs to be done, even without this weekly report!

 

[Chris Coley]

They are getting the same messages and complaints on the forums and FB as well as direct ones straight from I game. Broken AI, cheaters Being caught but STILL being allowed to play and unbalanced upgrade costs....I don't see why or how they are acting as though people just started complaining this week

 

[yellowlamp]

I'll start by saying that when I first started playing this game, I LOVED IT INSTANTLY. I stopped playing several other games, one of which I was paying a monthly subscription----taking money from another company's pockets means you're doing something right.

That said....the game has progressively gotten worse, not better.

• Haters gonna hate, hackers gonna hack. I don't care too much about the cheaters as I'm not max level or after medals at the moment. Logically, though, you have ZERO INCENTIVE to allow them to remain. They are not giving you money, they are not giving you feedback, they are not a part of the community. In fact, they are upsetting your honest (i.e. paying) community. Implement perma-bans.

• Upgrade costs. The first few ages they scale within reason. They really start to sting in Medieval, where I currently am, and I cannot imagine how tedious it will be to farm enough resources in the coming ages. Try introducing a new currency (is this what oil is supposed to be?), an either/or option (see below), or more mines/faster mine respawn

• Upgrade resource balance. Too many upgrades require gold. Balance out the costs by allowing us to upgrade something else with food. A great option would be walls. Upgrading my walls in Medieval, 200k gold each....holy cow is that slow. How about you make it 200k gold OR food?

• Most important: the recent raid-matching mess. Starting today (June 12), 9 times out of 10, when I try to raid I get either a) stuck on a loading screen, or b) a message saying no opponent could be found. When I am finally matched, after reloading the game, I am always matched with a player who is one age above me, anywhere from 0 to 40 levels higher than me, and ranging from unranked to top Silver in medals. Obviously it doesn't end well--I grab what I can and surrender. Yet today I was attacked by someone two ages and 60 levels above me. This has made raiding almost completely pointless, and since your game is dependent on raiding, this has broken your game.

Those are, for me, the biggest issues at the moment. There are things that are improvements, but they are mostly minor and your player base is....demanding. For instance, THANK YOU for making the Animal and Gathering blessings longer and of equal length!

I want to keep playing your game. Please work to keep me!

 

[This game is laggy]

I observed several AI changes in the oil boom update: some are positive and some are negative. Let's start first with the positive changes

Positive

• Fixed the bug where troops show delayed response to rally.
• Fixed the bug where supply carts rush to rally point and pass through walls when rallied.
• Fixed the bug where troops forget about rally as soon as they destroy a wall.
• Now nearby units attack the same wall.

Negative + old issues
Some of these are changes introduced in this update while others have existed before this update. I've included links to relevant thread with screenshots and videos, whenever applicable. I think there are possibly other issues but these are the ones that I've observed.

• Melee units can carry out ranged attacks. When that happens, they seem to be only able to attack from a specific distance, and if they get too close to their target they will move back. Additionally, sometimes melee units can attack over walls.
• Units don't attack enemy or buildings from the closest side. I see this a lot with my cavalries. When attacking the defenders, they move past the defenders before turning back to attack. When attacking buildings, units have a tendency to spread out and surround the building instead of attacking from the closest side. With large buildings, you can see units moving to a far-away corner before attacking.
• Units take the longer route instead of a shorter one. I often see cavalries preferring wider paths e.g. roads and avoiding moving between buildings even if it takes a significantly longer time to reach the target. It's not that they can't move between buildings either because I do see them doing that. The time difference between the longer and shorter route can be very significant - I've seen a 9-second difference. In addition to that, units now seem to prefer to attack walls closest to their target instead of those closest to their current position. I used to drop cavalries in a location that allows them to break walls without getting in range of defensive buildings. This doesn't work anymore because now the cavalries will break the walls closest to the defensive building.
• Units keep on attacking a wall even after the target behind the wall is destroyed.
• Units attack a wall nearby or even next to an opening
• General ignores enemy defenders and attacks buildings instead. This is despite their description saying that their favorite targets is "nearest enemy".
• Most of the time, ranged infantries still don't switch target when enemies get in range. They just keep on attacking buildings until the defenders attack them.
• Troops continue to make their way towards the rally-targeted building even after the building is destroyed. Prior to this update, troops disregard the rally once the rally-targeted building is destroyed, which I think is the correct behavior since you are issuing a command to destroy the building when you target it for your rally.
• Troops ignore enemy defenders, sometimes even when they're attacked by those defenders

I watched the gameplay video by John today. If you know what you're looking for, you can readily observe a couple of the issues I mention above in that video. You can find a somewhat detailed breakdown in this post

 

[leoelephant]

Sorry i cannot resist this chance to feed back to the Game Developer directly, so i decide to post again in this thread.
It is about AI.

My altitude is that new AI change is not 100% good or 100% bad. It is a experiment which will be followed by more experiments.

I will analyse it from a programmer's perspective.

Quite a few newly reported issues are actually caused by an AI change that is target to another old issue.


1. Pathfinding is changed.

Remedy for old issue: Previously if a rally is outside a wall block, units inside will attack the wall blocking them but not thinking of turning around and walking through the gap in the opposite wall.
Now AI is smarter that units will take a longer route to walk to rally instead of attacking wall. Also archers are smarter that they will walk a short distance to attack a building outside of wall, instead of stopping too early to start attacking wall.

Problem caused by this change: though the AI change enhances something, it fails something else. Now the HC units and infantry units are so "willing" to find a walkable route that they often unpredictably choose a long route and being attacked by many defending towers along the route.
It becomes even worse because of another change that you made, which is to teach units be more sensitive to nearby defender units. I will talk about that point later.

My suggestion: There need to be a balance when calculation route cost. If the current method is base on lowest "cost" optimisation mechanism. Then the cost of "wall block" and the cost of "unblocked space to walk" need to be tweaked. Now the units are too willing to "walk", previously they are too willing to "attack blocking wall", maybe compromise a bit?
I also suggest this judgement should be different for different unit types. Archer should be more willing to "walk" but HC and infantry should be more willing to "attack blocking wall". It is complained by many players that their HC are attacked during unexpected hanging around the walls, the reason is HC too easily decide finding a walking route instead of crushing the wall blocking him.


2. Attacking wall preference is changed so nearby units will try focusing on attacking the same wall block instead of inefficiently attacking the nearest wall

Remedy for old issue: The effect is very obvious. I can observe very often that group of archers or infantries are now working together on same wall block.

Problem caused by this change: Though it works the purpose but the AI change causes another unexpected and more serious problem. Now the units are so obsessed to attack wall block that they often ignore a open wall gap nearby them. The priority should be: "walk through near by wall gap" > "attack a wall my nearby fellow guys are attacking" > "attack my nearest building block wall", but now obviously their first choice is to "attacking a wall block" together. Gosh, sometimes i really want to roar because of their stupid behaviou: guys, your task is to attacking key buildings, not attaking a wall, even you guys sing song together and attack the wall very happily, but please dont be obssessed by a god damn wall......

My suggestion: Prioritise the correct sequence, also please increase the frequency that a unit checks his own surrounding environment so he can find out there is open wall gap nearby as early as possible.


3. The attacking preference is changed that units are much more sensitive to the nearby denfenders

Remedy for old issue: The effect is also very obvious (though i do not know if this really wantted by all people). Now the archer or HC will head toward and chase moving nearby defender. It is not like before that they were obssessd by the current task and ignored defender killing their comrades nearby.


Problem caused by this change: In my opinion this AI change is most debatable. Is it really wanted by majority of people? I really doubt it and it does not suit me obviously. My units are so easily distracted that they forget their main task and blindly chase defenders in all directions. It makes it worse that now the defender are buffed. There are so many of them and they are not easy to be killed as before. All these plus together causes a chain reaction that greatly impact raiding troops efficiency. Hi guys, i deploy you at that location and at that time for a reason, why chase a defender wandering around? who cares that defender??

My suggestion: For me, i will rather this change does not happen at all. Or at least, raiding units will not chase the defender so aggressively. They should be obtuse until the defenders move into a very close range.


Summary:

As a developer, i appreciate the boldness your developers took to solve problems in old AI. I wont complain even it brings equally many new problems if not more. Programming is like that, code->performance benchmark->change code and so on and on. At least the change reflects the good will.

It is not because we players are smarter so we see the problems but your developers did not. It is only because we check them out when we have the new AI but you needed to imagine the behaviour in mind when planned and developed the new AI.

If we were assigned the same task to improve old AI, I am sure very likely we did even worse or equal bad. It is natural and acceptable that improve through experiments.

So all in all, I hope you developers can move on to continue tweaking the AI. My suggestions above are not perfect. They will trigger some other unexpected problems which I just can not see now, as you previously did not predict the defects in your latest AI development activity. But let me wish you good and please keep on enhancing. Nothing is perfect, but we all wish it better as you do.

 

[Ultimeaciax]

Beautifully written with constructive criticisms.

 

[Redgar]

Just discovered new bug with AI, I haven't seen reported. Raiders stop after rally completely. It may happen when you target them on caravans gold.
Also, start investigation of Top Dominators Top-1 alliance. There are plenty of evidence that they are using industial age content.

 

[This game is laggy]

Non AI-related Issues

• Long loading times for attack/defense history. Sometimes they don't load for minutes and you have to try again later.
• "You are being scouted" message lasts longer than the 30s allocated for scouting. Sometimes the message can go on for a few minutes
• The Strength/Weakness fields for Terra Cotta Army and Strength of the Gladiator - "Tough" and "Ballista Towers" respectively - doesn't make sense. It feels like those two fields are copied from War Elephant or Heavy Cavalry mercenary. Also, their effect - Terra Cotta Army summons 10 heavy infantry + 10 ranged infantry; Strength of the Gladiator seems to increase certain amount of damage - isn't described in the description.
• While regular Raiders have been buffed, the Mercenary Raiders do not receive the same treatment, as far as I can tell.
• The "Troop Used" portion at the result screen of replays is now blank.
• The game occasionally freezes when searching for an opponent.
• Sometimes units can move through walls.
• Replays are still wrong sometimes. I just watched a replay moments ago that showed the opponent gaining a 1-star victory on my base, but the defense history showed that he didn't get any star, and I didn't get any peace treaty from his attack.

By the way, can anyone see my post above about the AI issues? I see that it has been tagged "Unapproved" and I wonder if it has any effect on my post's visibility.

 

[finger]

I can see it. I think since it has so many links or something it got flagged for moderator approval. Don't quote me on that or anything tho...

 

[finger]

Also I noticed my units moving through the walls again. Its always 2 units and always at the corner of two long wall segments. The 2 units just seem to path through it as if it the wall isn't there.

 

[This game is laggy]

Good to know it's still visible. I have seen units moving through walls but not very often.

 

[mwedwards]

Forum members Ieoelephant and "This Game is Laggy" both do an excellent job describing the issues at a detailed level. Based on his recent video playthrough however, at the high level it would appear these issues are really a side-effect of John's steering this game in the direction of Defense > Attack. He is clearly satisfied with losing 100% of his elite attacking force in exchange for one star, and if that's the design intent, none of these issues really matter -- BHG staff will correct some, possibly many of the above issues but tweak other things to maintain the current (undesirable) balance. I can't speak for everyone here but one can assume based on the feedback here that generally folks prefer Attack > Defense, which we had prior to the "Give Peace a Chance" update. Defenders now have the ultimate weapon: longer treaties, so attention now should be focused on offense. A careful, seasoned player should have no problem 4-5 starring any base at equal or lesser tech level, with minimal losses to maintain a steady cadence of 1 victory every 4 minutes or so to remain engaged, and accumulate medals and resources at a rate that makes this a positive form of entertainment. If that's the objective that's being tested for, most if not all of the issues with the latest patch would have been caught prior to release.

The Attack > Defense balance should be tested for every civ. This is a wargame after all, no civ should be optimized for passive gameplay. In the hands of a seasoned player, France & Greece should be capable of complete destruction with HC at the core of their armies, as British and Chinese should with ranged units at their core, and as Rome, Japan and Germany were with their Infantry prior to the AI issues. Folks should *want* to spend their crowns to try and master all the civs, and we should see an even distribution of civs across the top ranks. Buff, don't nerf to the lowest common denominator. Finally, what's up with the minuscule Enlightenment upgrade stats? Upgrading offense in Enl. costs more than 30m in resources and weeks to complete, which is insane. The results should be insanely great to compensate for that effort.

 

[ray3615]

You must be sarcastic about liking the new updated ai, and I'm sure you're the only one who likes it.

 

[Showdang]

. #1 Industrial Age Early Access 06-10-2015, 07:50 PM We recently released the v1.5 update for iOS and Android, which had lots of great features including the Oil Boom content. This update also had preparations for the Industrial Age. As some of you may have noticed there are players who appear to have reached this highly anticipated new feature already. Please know this is not intended gameplay as the Industrial Age is still in final development. We are currently identifying affected players, and will be rolling these accounts back. We know that everyone is very excited for the Industrial Age, and our goal is to have the DomiNations Community experience it as it was intended.

So wait, let me get this b.s. straight. You mean you are not going to actually ban these cheating pieces of trash, you are just going to roll back their hacked, undeserved accounts back to Enlightenment age and let them keep playing? Are you fucking shitting me?

 

[parbeiny]

I have lost all my medals and got kicked out of my alliance. I can't get back in nor into any other ones because it says i'm already in one. Please fix this bug.

 

[DomiNationsVigiles]

Thank you all for your feedback! We'll collate all of this information and report to the team. Look for the new thread tomorrow!