Why Nexon, why?

[Mrcoconut]

This may be a rant but I need to get this out of my chest.

I love DomiNations! (no sarcasm intended) Been playing this game for quite some time now, to be more precise it's been 9 months. I would like to say that recent patches (notice the plural form) have made this game almost broken. I knew a lot of people who quit, not because of the usual complains about high upgrade costs but because of the bugs, glitches, and not to mention the nerfs.

I was fine with some nerfs because they actually explained why. But the recent Animal Blessing nerf was damaging. That blessing had been part of DomiNations since the day it was implemented. As players advance through the ages, the need for more income arises, and that's where Animal Blessing and Gathering Blessing come in. Personally, I never used both of them. Thought that the Diamonds and Ciders were only useful for War Elephants and Templar Knights but as I reached Gunpowder Age, upgrades were like twice or thrice more expensive. So I had to find another source of income.

That's when I discovered the Animal Blessing + Zeal Library Technology. I never knew that it became my second source of income! I would sometimes get around 120k gold and around ~100k food when I'm lucky. When I reached Enlightenment Age I get around 250k gold to ~150k food. Now, those numbers may not be significant but it helps a lot. I've told my alliancemates about this and they too have been using it.

Now that the duration has been cut to half, it's not nearly as effective as before since Diamonds are hard to come by in higher ages. I'm fine with the broken matchmaking feature where I see a lot of level 140+ Industrial Age nations when I'm just a level 103 Roman who just began Enlightenment Age. Really, I'm fine with it because there are a lot of nations with the same level as me. But to nerf our 2nd source of income without an explanation is not!

The only reason why they would actually nerf such a feature is because they want to increase the time the player needs to save up for upgrades. With Animal Blessing duration cut to half, players will have to raid others more often resulting to more troops being trained. When you calculate the time it takes to train a full troop in EA (excluding Cannons), the average time would be around 15-20 minutes. That's almost the same duration of an Animal Blessing. Also, I thought that the bad button placement of 'Finish' in barracks coincides with the reduced AB duration.

--Someone accidentally used crowns to train troops = chance that person might buy crowns
--Lesser source of income = chance that person might buy crowns to fill-up his storage

If anyone from Nexon is reading this, let me tell you these: DomiNations is a fairly new game compare to other similar games like Clash of Clans which has almost a billion total downloads on both Android and iOS. As DomiNations updates and adds new major content like adding new ages, new troops, new nations, it will continue to welcome new players. And don't just expect old players to buy crowns, new players WILL also buy crowns to catch up with old ones. This means that the more people play this game, the more it is beneficial for Nexon. I've always thought DomiNations has a very big potential, much more potential than CoC. Don't disregard your DomiNations players, as they are the reason why you, Nexon, are still adding contents. No players = no income = no more DomiNations.

I hope this post reaches Nexon.

 

[Redgar]

Well, they could at least:

- buff loot blessing which is not used and make it cheaper or not for precious cyder
- make 'next' button bigger many people miss and attack when didn't want to instead of that stupid speed up button
- buff HP of town centre so it is not destroyed by cheaters so easily
- help greece and other nations... It's not that difficult to make greece refund 10% or british bonus 15%
- buff/nerf some tactics
- etc, etc, so AB nerf would go fine

Those are EASY to make balance/interface changes, which would really help. No, they want it their own way. 100% ignoring ALL community requests and adding another nerf. Then they have to hire fake posters to say a good word about the game complaining about negative, etc.

Since they had to nerf something, it's good they 'rebalanced' animal, but not training blessing, but this approach is very frustrating.

 

[Mrcoconut]

Yeah, I know Nexon needs to fix a lot of bugs and glitches but Animal Blessing shouldn't even be part of that change. They never explained why they did it. And, are trade goods supposed to be stolen when TC is destroyed? It was never even mentioned in the TC 'Info' page.

 

[Redgar]

Well, honestly I felt it was a little bit OP in terms of given resources, but considering useless economy is was just fine to balance passive income. I also suspect they could tune bears %, but it's hard to check, because now I will use it even less. But the most important question is indeed why they always want to waste good mood of players willing to enjoy the update with useless nerfs and interface changes which i doubt will bring them extra-money, may be less

 

[XeroMaxx]

I also share the same opinion that they should explain every patch. I think Riot and LoL is a good example of attempting to give of reasons why they make nerfs and buffs. Usually, the community is on board with most of the changes. Usually it's because we see something that's very powerful and know it's going to be changed.

This could be why people always think the training blessing and the French are going to get the TB hit with the nerf hammer. It's very powerful.

I'm hoping they'll release patch notes with every nerf and buff to explain their reasoning for the nerfs, and also explain why they won't be taking some community advice. I'm sure they have points why they don't want to change some things, and I want to hear it from a professional game designers point of view.

頑張って

 

[firedancer]

I noticed most of the Clash of Clans wannabe developers are usually more notorious in their games to make people pay more. I think this is natural since they probably want to get as much cash as possible before the genre reaches saturation and crashes. Any suggestions to buff units, reduce upgrade time or cost will usually land in deaf ears because that is impacting the revenue.

Any hints of players who use a particular strategy to gain enough resources to have fun in the game will be an indication that the game needs to be nerf-ed further to plug the revenue leak. The more players complained about a certain nerf, the better the confirmation that the game was built in the right direction - that is to frustrate players so that they will pay for Crowns.

 

[dbukalski]

Too bad that doesnt work. U cant frustrate players into spending $ long term. U can frustrate players into spending $ money short term then they quit to go play something thats fun for them. So rather than design this game for long term gains with 1mil customers x $1 each for years on end. But they prefer harvesting the player base right away so a year from now they have 100k customers x $3 everyone else moved on to the newest coc

 

[Redgar]

League of legends is a free to win concept. Domi is pay-to-win without troops concept which evolved in its worst case cheat-to-win. You don't need to be a designer to understand that winning without troops is wrong for such type of games and it was 100% communicated to devs even by forum mods. No reaction, instead here comes korea with 6 tactics, so even def blessing won't help.

 

[jaywhizz]

As someone who has spent a small amount on this game..essential what I'd pay in the shops for it 5 years ago.. I will not be spending anymore, play less, and maybe even move on to another game, when the so called "balancing" stinks of an attempt to get players to buy more crowns. Improving a game gives you long term income, nerfing it just gains you short term income from frustrated players that have money to burn. Civilisation (the game) will be spinning in its proverbial grave

 

[Mrcoconut]

Exactly, they don't even think of the long term effect of this game. They are basically driving potential loyal, paying players away even before they try this game. They would probably quit playing as early as Iron Age and would think that "Hey, this game has a lot of bugs and glitches and a lot of cheaters. They 'rebalance' things that shouldn't even be touched."

 

[somuchdust]

That accidental attack instead of NEXT SUCKSSSS... Happens to me too often.. ugh 20+ medal loss...

 

[somuchdust]

I used to not care about spending money on this game, then the Nerfs and stuff happened. Havent spent a dime since the whole IA hacked accounts came too.

 

[Rugrunner]

I'd like to know "Why" they made some tactics count as 2 spaces. Makes it impossable to 5* an Atomic base with Forbidden City even if you are Global.