DomiNations 2021: State of the Nation

[TheWise]

Greeting Leaders!

The New Year is upon us and with it comes all the excitement of curating new goals and ambitions for 2021, as well as taking the time to reflect on what we could have done differently in the year prior.

We are fortunate enough to have some of the brightest, most creative minds in the industry helping to build DomiNations, but we know DomiNations has the potential to become even better when we utilize our most valuable resource, the players.

This year, we would like to dive deeper into that communication and start building the community relationship we can truly be proud of. By this, we mean focusing our efforts on meaningful dialogue and transparency. We have always aimed to be as transparent as possible at Big Huge Games (in fact it’s one of our core values) but we have avoided sharing future progress for fear of setting expectations that must be changed later. One of our goals this year is to improve our information flow and to be more inclusive with our community during different stages of development.

As a part of listening to our players, we are continuing our focus on eradicating cheaters from DomiNations in 2021. In 2020, we introduced additional automated tools to find and take actions against fraudulent activity and investigated thousands of player reported accounts manually. We also updated our policies to include more severe sanctioning for offending accounts including permanent bans. We look forward to continuing to improve our processes, and give our thanks to the many players who continue to report suspicious activity.

Our main goal this year is to dig into what players really want and better understand what our community values most. To start, we’d like to gather feedback on your highest priority issues outside of cheating. Please take a moment to share your thoughts on what we should be aiming to fix in DomiNations with this short survey:

LET US KNOW YOUR THOUGHTS​

2020 was a difficult year for many of us, with no exception to our team. However, we are looking forward to our future and are so excited to continue building DomiNations into the best version it could be. 9.2 is on the way and we couldn’t be more thrilled to share information about our newest feature; Bookcases! We think research enthusiasts will be particularly excited about these, stay tuned for more details!

 

[King Crimson]

I'm sure you'll get plenty of good ideas and lets hope the ''your game sucks, improve your game'' responses are kept to a minimum!

 

[LordStark263AC]

By this, we mean focusing our efforts on meaningful dialogue and transparency. We have always aimed to be as transparent as possible at Big Huge Games (in fact it’s one of our "core values" but we have avoided sharing future progress for fear of setting expectations that must be changed later. One of our goals this year is to improve our information flow and to be more inclusive with our community during different stages of development.

It almost feels like they're addressing my meme in Dominations International Facebook group where I mentioned transparency and how they should engage more with their customers. 1-0 to Lord Stark

 

[Crossguard]

TheWise I honestly think that the damage is done, I see the forums are less and less active and most of the players have no faith in the developers.

but if you’re gonna be talking about listening to players then will you be redoing some of the nations abilities and perhaps even a special factory unit? What about military infrastructure and town infrastructure? Most of that in the parliament needs to be re-done

perhaps rewarding those who played at the start?

 

[Uhuru]

1st. Cheaters. I still meet a lot of bases with 90-lvl gens, max walls, super Museum, super troop cards, and so on. Are these all honest players who paid you thousands of dollars? If not, get them off! They get in the way even in raids, there is nothing to say about the war..
2nd. Bugs. Dozens of small bugs crawl through the game. On this forum, everything is already written.. read it! And fix it!
3rd. TheWise, You persistently want to do 3rd, 5th, and 10th.... but it won't help until 1 and 2 are solved. 1 and 2 poison the game the most!

 

[~Kratos~]

Sounds like a step in the right direction. Not holding any hopes, the last time I had this feeling with Muet was a big disappointment- but this post seems genuine and deserving attention.

Please, address the existing bugs and nation/troop rebalances before release any additional ages or major new features.
That is what the community has wanted for years, and that is what listening to us will lead you to do.

 

[oddin]

1. rebalance the nations, especially japanese and greeks
2. fix the recon doing 8s
3. fix the perk 3 allianca gate
4. fix the alliance donations and the lost troops
5. fix the map edit bastion
6. give us more statistics for our carreer in dominations
7. make everything in museum clearer. How the bonuses stack, when there is the cap of 85% etc

this is my wishlist

 

[sponge]

What you described is not cheater but big spender. You can't cheat museum artifacts, so that's one way to spot a cheater. But maxed bases, walls and generals are quite common and not that hard, especially now with crowns from recruitment. Golden Age blessing for example can help you max walls in a day or 2 if you play a lot.

 

[Uhuru]

It's not about the walls, but I personally know some of the cheaters, and I know how it's all done (incl. Museum). It is not difficult to distinguish a spender from a cheater, especially for a developer.

 

[Theoneandonly]

As long all of as can use the synergy effect at parliament no one will complain. Also all your base improvements.

 

[Theoneandonly]

Find the error: you want to improve your communication, you are announcing bookcases, but you are not telling us what it is.

Hei, nothing changed, same procedure as every time.

 

[Uhuru]

So what is not clear here.. they will monetize the library - they will sell new research.

 

[Dhruv patel]

If they're serious then the changes i want are these

bug fixes (obviously)
the removal of separate speed ups (make them more accessible too)

war reward upgrade ( the event where you shifted to legendary artifacts made the wars worth it)
nations ( more perks for all and new nations: Spain, Scandinavia for me)

dock rewards ( it's impossible to get crop, wall, commerce and medic blessing now either make them craft able in the temple or add another reward to the dock)

a unique general for each nation ( with a unique perk and needing manuals to upgrade but id prefer oil/food like the rest, and give uniqueness to the nations to replace Bjorn Ironside)

Legendary artifacts ( some have 6% at the start i want them at the minimum of 11% cause they're legendary artifacts)



there is more, but the ones pressing to me

 

[Dhruv patel]

they'll announce it in another post for 9.2. but i want definition of "soon" cause the museum update "soon" was 2 months

 

[ARCHER MIKE]

For wars I belong to small group as this game makes it difficult to find and recruit players. More on that later. Not sure if there is a way to fix the war matching up. We used to have 30 vs 30s but now we mostly do 10vs10s as the players got tired of the matching. In past 2 years most 10vs 10s sandbag by sending 5 high Age players Space Age and above with 5 level 20 accounts so the computer matches these Digital and Info Age players against a team who has highest Age of Atomic Age players. Their is no challenge for those 5 enemy players as they are 3-4 Ages above our top players and since they get 2 attacks each, the top 3 players will wipe out our top 6. I mention top 6 out of the 10 cuz some are so badly rushed bases that their is no strategy anymore to defend as a max Atomic base has no chance vs an enemy that is 2 or 3 Ages above them.

I belong to a few teams and I saw the same with the 15vs15s and 20vs20s. Too many players no longer want to do war except for the hardcore players.even if alliance has 30 or 40 players. I could go on but the truth is this last year was difficult as we lost 75% of our old veteran players that we been on same team for 5 years and couldn’t stand doing wars anymore. Most quit the game entirely as we discussed merging with other groups. Fix the war search please.

Changing one thing in the search algorithm would fix that and thats having it look at each teams top Age player and then not matching if more than 1 Age higher. Those Digital Age and Information Age players usually do the donating too so the war bases are full of really strong defenders and it’s a huge advantage getting donations for your attacks from them as I have seen Atomics level 200 with Digital Age donations absolutely crush max Atomic bases level 260s and Cold War bases level 280s in 1.5 minutes-2minutes.

There is too much of an advantage when 1 team has a player 3 Ages or more over the other team. At least on the 10vs10s.

2) If you could come up with a way for us players to stay in touch with each other or have a way where co-leads or maybe even all players could talk to other leaders to offer assistance with wars or offer a merge or similar. That way it’s easier to build the lower count alliances up. There’s usually a few players that want to war but don’t want to jump around for weeks/months til they find a home.

I know there is a place here in these forums for players to join or recruit but guess what, maybe 5% of players read the forums and that’s being generous.

Those are my 2 wishes to add to the list

 

[Qukapiku]

Since when does nexon care what its players think? 5 years of playing and 5 years full of bugs. Don't fool people. Obviously nexon is always aware of all bugs. Their players have always told them, and THEY NEVER fixed them. so enough, make fun of people. After more than 5 years there is still talk of the artificial intelligence of the troops and lag. An infinite amount of lag and bugs
PS. Try to fix your creation the only thing that community wants...

 

[joelegiao]

For me the most important thing to solve in the game is matchmaking, its not normal that we have 5 super impossible wars in a row and then 5 super easy...in my ally thats the first thing that discourage ppl on continuing playing

 

[Theoneandonly]

So ... a few more chapters in library are your big deal in 2021? It’s funny, but not more?

probably you start with fixing perk 3, followed by stopping cheaters completely, fixing Recons flying 8s, rethink the AI of the bastions and some other things.

Don’t listen and hear to much on a small group of people with minor influence to the whole community, even if they tell you.

 

[King Crimson]

One thing I find strange is why, after 5 yrs and with the game at Information age (so you would think it's nearing the end of it's 'story', so to speak), why is BHG asking us NOW what we want from the game.
Why weren't players asked this in the first 1-2 years? Then again, why weren't the players listened to in the first 1-2 years?

 

[Theoneandonly]

Cause they don’t know their Game. This is the main reason. Up to now there is no valid and official statement on the museum cap. All we were told was prooven wrong (or not fully right) in the past.

Cause they have listened to a small number of people in the past and realizing now that this 10 to 20 people haven’t real influence in the community.

Cause they will not listen to the players anyway, doesn’t matter what we tell them now. The intention atm is to find new ways to realize revenues.

Cause there are more and more doubts and complains in the community. Cheating is still in place, catched teams are trying to avoid glory roll backs and we were told all the time „hey guys, cheating is under control“.