Introduction: Joe “Muet” Grubb - Lead Designer

[Mat 3 BloodyBarons]

Welcome Joe, and thanks for the good news of cancelling stage 5 of Rebalance. Finally a good news, really appreciated, it is really tough playing this game and discouraging. Please bring more good news to the community.
Best regards Mat CWA lvl 243

 

[BHG_Muet]

Thank you for reaching out and introducing yourself. Glad to hear the 5th stage rebalance has been shelved and of potential solutions to the leaderboard and matchmaking problems. I too would love to hear your plans for dealing w cheaters as has already been mentioned. Could you also comment on what balanced and unbalanced compositions would look like so that I, as an alliance leader, can be plan accordingly?

Welcome to the community!

As developers, I think it is important that we don’t undermine exploration. It would also be naive of us to think we got everything right and understand how players will develop the meta. As with any strategy game, you all will put more hours into exploring in the first week than the Design team was able to do throughout development.
In the spirit of giving an actual answer: Heavy tanks are great at absorbing and being your front line. But, they can be overwhelmed. Bring the improved machine gunners to protect them and first aid to benefit from their high health pools. It's been pretty fun internally.

 

[Sc1zzle]

Welcome BHG_Muet - As one the leaders of my alliance I do hope to see offense given back to the game (that was how the game built its playerbase). I am thankful you are cancelling stage 5. However, the re-balance could have been done so many better ways (like nerfing the museum, or adjusting troop capacities rather than wholesale changing the game from offense to defense)

Our largest complaint is that game after game after game that we find and play at the 2-3 year game cycle, the development team decides to overhaul a very successful game. I'm one of at least ten in my alliance who have spent $300+ with at least 1 over $1000+ and friends in (BritishNo1) who have (supposedly) spent $5000+ on an iPhone game because of strategy.

How the re-balance has been viewed in my alliance and (BritishNo1 in the top 100) is that your team went greedy and switched the game from a Strategy game to a Pay-2-Play game format. It never ceases to amaze me at how unfortunate this is. Why? with a successful strategy game the profitability potential is much higher than a pay-2-play game. The options are far more endless with you teaming up with streamers, having live competitions on TV like MLG (major league gaming w/Halo etc...) and much more...

Competitive People want to win, they will continually pay to win and "dominate" people when a game is bent offensive - IF and that's IF it is based on their own choice. (As a man, I know that most men don't like to be told what to do. Telling me I have to pay to win is a poor financial decision for any business that wants me as a customer/player. It's just like when a woman has a grand idea and tries to have her man think it was his idea. That's what you need to do. Keeping the game strategic, allowing me to spend money and not using forceful financial maneuvers.

I have been a gamer for 25 years playing literally everything (from Duck Hunt to Duke Nukem & Unreal Tournament to Halo, Destiny, Clash of Clans, Boom Beach and that names like .05% of what I have played). l'm an online software developer and I went to school for marketing. Why am I telling you this, because my experience has led me to answer your questions: Where will DomiNations be in two years? How frequently should BHG update game balance? like this......

If you make wholesale major changes to a game like this, You WILL lose your playerbase and your next 2 years will have a grim outlook. They (the players) will leave or stop spending money. That's not what you want. It doesn't benefit your teams wallet and it doesn't benefit our digital lives. What we want and how often we want it: NEW CONTENT and TO WIN USING STRATEGY that is what has been so amazing about DomiNations. The constant level of new content with new ages always coming. FIX the basic problems of every day players and hardcore players. Give us new content and don't ever and I mean ever, completely change a game from offense to defense or vice versa. You've built a playerbase on offense so keep it that way and make tweaks. If the game was defensive to begin with then you keep it that way and make tweaks. Bungie failed with Destiny and Destiny 2 (great examples) because they couldn't figure out that you don't wholesale change a successful established game and bring no new content to it. (Recipe for failure)

I see you're a gamer so I assume all of this is not new to you, however I only hope the large community voice allows you and your team to see the value in my thoughts. I don't have my hopes up but I want to keep playing your/our game. I do feel like you are holding on to a community by a thread and the next few months will determine whether you keep them or they jump to another game. Good Luck!! You're Gonna Need IT!

 

[BHG_Muet]

Thanks for the transparency on the items above. My questions:

1) What’s the timeline look like for the leaderboard/matchmaking changes? It sounds like there are multiple steps, so approx how long are we looking at?

The tech is still in development so we can’t account for the unknown yet. But, I’m looking to make an initial update to the Leaderboard before the end of the year with the full MM update launching sometime in the new year.

2) What’s the plan for increased transparency (communication/dialogue?) with the community? It’s been almost universally one way traffic for a long time now.

I can’t speak for other departments. But, I’ve always valued having an open dialogue with the community. At the very least, you should see me pop in from time to time and provide insight. Let me know what you think after I’ve been around for a bit.

 

[KniferX]

Actually, one of the driving factors for locking War Artifacts was to prevent some of the strategies that led to an unfun micromanagement in the Museum. If we let you swap at will, it’d create weird metas where the ideal way to fight War is to have two sets of Artifacts, one offensive and one defensive. It would create a “race” to get your attacks in as soon as the War started so you could then swap in your defensive Artifacts. While that certainly adds a layer of strategy, we thought it was too cumbersome, added a weird time-sensitive strategy to War, and would ultimately be less fun.
To more directly answer your question: Yes, we’re always thinking about the impact of hidden information. But, perfect information isn’t always the answer. On a related note, I’d be curious to hear the community’s thoughts on a direction we’ve been considering for the Stronghold: Would you find it useful to know how many Troop Tactics your target has (but not the exact Tactics)?

Yes, of course, locking artifacts in war day is the way to go. What I meant is, as planning day ends, war artifacts get locked, then we get to see what boosts the enemy has activated. It would remove the randomness and RNG in attacking, not knowing whether your troop composition is countered or whether the enemy's defenders are much more resilient than you would expect. Knowing the enemy's boosts would give you the option of making a counterplay, going with a different troop composition (I was mistaken about changing artifacts for offense or defense in war day, slipped my mind) or a different plan of attack. Right now as it is, the best way is to collect the categories for your preffered troop composition (if you intend to attack high up and not be a dedicated defender) and hope the enemy doesn't have the artifacts to counter you. Somewhat counterintuitive to have such elements of randomness in a strategy game, you can't plan much around it.

No. Combat in DomiNations already places a large burden of knowledge on players. New players learn relative power levels in MP and those learnings shouldn’t be flipped just because the mode changed to War. But, we are considering ways in which we can increase rewards in MP, including modifications to the DOMINATION! Bonus.

Understandable. Hope in that case the rewards for tougher bases in higher medals are increased greatly, especially NTGs.

I won’t say it will never happen. But, we’re currently pretty happy with where Barracks troops ended up. Your point about a viable Barracks composition while transitioning is ideal and is what new players entering Enlightenment + should experience. Part of the pain of the rebalance is that this transition is also hitting higher Age players who never transitioned. “Pivot pain” is something we’ve talked about a lot internally. Pivoting as a CWA player to Factory compositions is painful and slow and it can feel like you’re stuck. As mentioned in my initial post, we’re exploring ways in which we can alleviate this pain. Keep an eye on upcoming Events.

Alright, makes sense. Hope to see at least some buffs to the barracks troops, if they will be inferior to their factory counterparts, at least make them viable enough to be spliced in those factory compositions to do some minor functions, for variery's sake. Otherwise what would be the point of them being in the game in the late ages if they are vastly inferior?

Also some changes for the nations that focus greatly on their unique barracks units, as the current best nation, Germans, is the only one to give 2 direct great benefits to factory troops. Significant DPS boost and better APC infantry. While most other nations have nothing to improve their factory units.

I’m not directly involved with our process for handling cheaters so I unfortunately don’t have much for you here. But, if you identify a cheater you should always report them with screenshot evidence if you can.

Hope you can pass on then the importance and urgency this issue has with the community.

Couple more questions I remembered to ask:

- Any plans in place to streamline crafting and sale of artifacts? Specifically the sales part. Having to go through hundreds and hundreds of worthless artifacts and having to go through at least 2 different menu screens each time before selling for every 5 crafted, is very tedious and tiring. Having a sale option directly as the artifacts are unveiled would be much more preferable and faster. An option to skip the animations too would be great.

- Any more plans to make some at least rudimentary legendary war artifacts available through events or Marci Polo sales? The recent Marco Polo sale was pretty expensive in rubies with a very low chance of getting a legendary, meaning a very small number of players actually got their hands on them. Would be good to make some basic options available for the playerbase.

Thanks for the detailed response, it is excellent to see some reasoning behind some of the decisions and to have a conversation with someone behind the game balance. Good move from BHG.

 

[BHG_Muet]

AMA: When are we going to see a rebalance or reworking of the nations so that all the nations are evenly competitive throughout all ages? The game is completely different than it was three years ago and some nations (Japanese, Greek, Romans, Chinese) are severely disadvantaged in war combat compared to other nations (German-especially, British, Korean) by the latest ages. I've observed a lot of Cold War Age players revolting to the German nation because the Teutonic Fury attack damage bonus keeps them competitive in war especially after the recent rebalance. Would it be possible that all the other nations can get their own version of Teutonic Fury so they are all comparatively competitive in war?

I commented on Nation imbalance in another post; it is something I’m starting to investigate. In all honesty, I didn’t provide details because I don’t have them yet. There’s a lot to consider when talking about a Nation rebalance. For example, the current crown cost is prohibitive to make constant changes. It would be a failing on our part to just make a new fotm and force arbitrary Nation changes to stay competitive.

 

[Chadwicke]

I'm saying the whole rebalance needs to be rolled back the whole idea was stupid most #s were wrong data because of cheaters , nations like Brit are dead now , all unique style of play on offense is dead , the total rebalance needs to go , Brit was competitive with the 45 second 55k decoy German is ok the way it is , french and Greek need a boost , Japan is worthless as is Chinese , then Korean has the same problem as Brit , basically this whole move was completely unnecessary, really all that needed done was stop cheating , so what I hear in this is using lower ages in war will not be allowed that means teams will fight equal # of agess that will take days to match and then the team that spends the most will always win , further the leader board simply needs cleaned out but if this includes the reset this is going to be a big problem as most on the leader board fought and spent to be there if there is taken away that will be the final nail

 

[Chadwicke]

You already have fored natoon changes , competitive top alliance are.french for defense and german for offence Brit and Korean the other two war nations are dead now because of the decoi tactic reduction

 

[Chadwicke]

You already have fored natoon changes , competitive top alliance are.french for defense and german for offence Brit and Korean the other two war nations are dead now because of the decoi tactic reduction

 

[MisterLaxx]

Well the big distinction here is that Joe is the LEAD DESIGNER. Tin soldier is a COMMUNITY MANAGER. Tin may not have the authority to have posted the type of material a LEAD DESIGNER has.

Perhaps Tin Soldier was only given a specific type of topics hes allowed to talk about. The lead designer coming out and talking about re-addressing change makes sense because he leads the design team.

 

[BHG_Muet]

These are great questions. Where did you get them?

So speaking of AMA....
1) How much hidden information is acceptable when attacking a base?

I think there are different kinds of hidden information that players have different levels of willingness to accept. For example, traps being entirely hidden until revealed makes complete thematic sense. It also helps that you can generally learn what traps are available per Age so you know what, just not where.
If I could go back and re-do the Museum, I would have put more emphasis on how we solve the transparency issues it surfaces. Part of the frustration from the Museum is that you may lose a battle and not know why. You didn’t see the % advantage your opponent had and it won’t be easy to identify it afterwards. Compare that again to traps. You immediately see the defensive play that got you.
The Stronghold on the other hand surfaces a different issue. You don’t know how much weight to give the building in War. Missile Silo? You know. It’s the same every fight. But, the Stronghold’s power varies. I mentioned it in another post but I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on if you think seeing how many TT the Stronghold contains would be sufficient information?

2) Where will DomiNations be in two years?

Age-wise, at least the Space Age. Potentially even one beyond that. I think we need to slow Age progression down as we move forward but it is unclear by how much.
Nation options will be the same. I know it has been requested to add new Nations but it unfortunately isn’t feasible from an art perspective.
Balance will be more of a regular occurrence (Not sweeping rebalances like the one we just did. But, you can expect smaller, targeted balance changes to be more common).
We should have been able to figure out Alliance competition by that time. We’ll have had time to polish both the Leaderboard experience and the upcoming MM changes.
With any luck we’ll have improved a couple of outdated features on the base.
Of course, there’s always the possibility of new features to shake things up.

3) How frequently should BHG update game balance?

I don’t foresee us making any more massive changes like the recent rebalance. But, I would like to see the Design team responding to and addressing balance concerns with each patch. That isn’t a guarantee that every patch will include a change. But, I’m currently budgeting more time for the Design team to evaluate and make changes.
In a game like DomiNations, we have to be mindful of the “Pivot Pain” that I identified in another post. Swapping to a new strategy is sometimes outright prohibitive and we can’t be asking players to swap to a new fotm each patch. So, expect more frequent and smaller tweaks.

4) How many Ages can DomiNations support? (remember that Tim Train said he would be open to extending the life of the game for another 8 yrs)

8 more years of Ages is easy. The challenge isn’t going to be tied to DomiNation’s lifespan or a lack of historical content. The challenge with more Ages is tied more to the game’s demands on player investment. Consider MMOs like WoW who have seen many years of success. Their first 60 levels of content do not take the same investment to clear as they did when the game launched.
There may come a time when we have to have similar conversations in DomiNations. One of our challenges will be if we can get new players to the new features that come along with Age updates.

5) Could DomiNations start monthly dev livestreams? (oooh you want community interaction? this is one of the BEST ways for it)

We run a monthly livestream alongside our friends at Nexon and the next show is this week. We're aiming to have it on Thursday and I'll be a guest answering questions and talking more about the upcoming changes. If you can attend and watch, we'd love to have you.

Since you’re interested in this kind of content, what sort of stuff would you like to see in these shows? We’re always looking to improve what we do. We already do a few different segments, but it's always good to get feedback on how we are doing.

 

[BHG_Muet]

So does this mean phase 1 of this leaderboard rebalance is beginning this week in lieu of the phase 5 combat rebalance?

Not this week, no. But, Stage 5 is cancelled and will not be rolled out.

 

[Houkai]

Get museum out of WAR!
Get rid(or at least reduce) PAYED troop tactics!
Introduce new units in barracks/factory(not only sell them for a dime)!
Get rid of the rebalance! If you want tougher WW, buff the coalitions or add something WW specifically!

 

[danron1376]

an unexpected but very welcome announcement. whoever proposed the rebalance as it was, including what was the upcoming stage 5 should frankly be fired, if not fired already. not sure how someone could be paid to make such obvious mistakes in a game with so many players. this game should not be a chore since it's a game (speaking of which the events with star requirements feel like a chore at the higher ages).

the main problem with the rebalance is that people lose their armies more regularly and have to wait to retrain. if the goal is to make 5 star victories more rare, you can do it without the loss of armies. just buff the hp of non-defensive buildings and return the hp of defensive buildings to what they were. you an also make the town hall harder to kill to achieve the same result. buffing all buildings without thinking of the consequence of increasing the need to wait for army retrains is a ridiculous oversight.

as for army diversity, there are still units that are underutilized. the MRL is one of them and it is a slap in the face to have to spend so much time upgrading to have the unit only be another disappointment. i also don't remember the last time i was attacked by a mortar troop.

 

[BHG_Muet]

Welcome Joe! I am very optimistic about the future of the game with you on the team I'm all for fixing matchmaking and the leaderboards, and doing a little nation rebalancing.

Next on your priority list should be improving the rewards in higher leagues, especially NTGs. A Dynasty player should earn as much in one attack as a medal dropper does in ten. And it needs to be a variety (until the nation rebalance creates more variety in targets). The simplest way to do that is to offer 10 NTG shipments as a victory chest reward. And 3 shipments in Kingdom league, 5 in Empire.

Regarding the museum; it is too late to remove the main hall, because many players have spent money on improving artifacts, but please abandon the war hall. Or make it another avenue of research where players have significant control over the artifacts generated.

Are you planning to create more single-player campaigns? It takes up so much space on the first battle screen, it seems a shame not to. I posted an idea in the ideas forum for a weekly campaign based on player bases.

I’d love to create more. Unfortunately, there’s nothing on the roadmap currently. Single-player campaigns, while interesting, carry a large cost to create and generally aren’t replayable like most of the other content in DomiNations. I won’t say it will never happen. But we’re not looking to add them at the moment.

 

[BHG_Muet]

Couple more questions I remembered to ask:

- Any plans in place to streamline crafting and sale of artifacts? Specifically the sales part. Having to go through hundreds and hundreds of worthless artifacts and having to go through at least 2 different menu screens each time before selling for every 5 crafted, is very tedious and tiring. Having a sale option directly as the artifacts are unveiled would be much more preferable and faster. An option to skip the animations too would be great.

Yes! This has become a recent hot topic of mine. Crafting can (and should) be streamlined. Additionally, analyzing if an Artifact has value currently imposes too much mental fatigue. There is no quick-glance read for an Artifact’s value. You have to read five different mods, analyze the % mod for each, and consider their order.
I don’t have solutions to share yet. But, I do want to address this in 2019.

- Any more plans to make some at least rudimentary legendary war artifacts available through events or Marci Polo sales? The recent Marco Polo sale was pretty expensive in rubies with a very low chance of getting a legendary, meaning a very small number of players actually got their hands on them. Would be good to make some basic options available for the playerbase.

Hm. I’m not sure. I don’t direct drop rates but I believe we have more legendaries like Admiral Yi’s helm that are in the pipeline.

 

[BHG_Muet]

Thanks everyone for all of the questions. I've got some emails to write so I'll be wrapping up for tonight. I'll take a few moments in the morning and answer more if I can.

 

[SiuYin]

My Comment:
1. Museum is evil, it ruined multiplayer and now it ruined war. And I don't see any solution for it
It is Loot Box, it is gambling and it is very low odd gambling.

2. Re-balance is a lie, it is purely buff the defense. New designer is a liar, and I don't trust the development team any more

3. I don't see any effort that making troop combo diversified


I now only collect some resource from farm and waiting server shut down

 

[Blood]

I am one of the many players who quit. I would come back if intelligent changes were made but I’m not sure how many would come back with me. You have lost trust within the community and angered casual players and whales alike. This rebalance was a blatant attempt to force people to spend large amounts of money from a company that made 825 million usd in q1 and 150 million off of dominations. I’m saying this so you understand the urgency of fixing things and the rage of the community. These tactics worked in 2014 but all players now have lost a game to this type of exploitation. Almost my entire group migrated from a space ape game that attempted the same tactics. The consumer base is becoming more knowledgeable and less tolerant.
now for changes.
you saying your happy with the state of barracks troop makes me feel like I’m pissing in the wind but I will attempt to explain this to you anyway. I have max Cold War troops. This took me 3 years tens of thousands of crowns and thousands of hours. Nothing is more infuriating then losing to a 150 lv global. I paid my dues and a battle like that should be effortless. A 230 Cold War complicated but fun because I know what I’m getting into and volunteering to risk my troops for the loot. Try playing without infinite crowns, without god mode, without mercinary troops, without generals, without tactics troops, and without donated troops, and turn off your impossible for regular people to acquired artifacts Like all normal users do when they raid. See how impossible you have made 99% of the game play for the dumb idea that this is good for world wars. World wars could have been fixed by removing elephant archers, removing hackers, and nerfing war coalitions. Before the rebalance many a max Cold War died on a cold war with a good layout and strong defense.
Museum it sucked from the beginning. I know it can’t be removed because people already spent to much money on it. It’s a blight a raging herpes infection that will never go away. But you must do something. Bare minimum show us their stats. I should know if my planes and tanks are going to magically lose 60% of their hit points by simply touching the whales hallowed ground. Not to mention now all their towers(everything that shoots even tc) gets a huge boost in hit points and damage. I can’t even finish this part it makes me so angry.
if we have to endure pivot pains because you decided our 1000’s of hours worth of barracks, troop, library, and university upgrades don’t deserve to be useful in Cold War then you had better fix the factory troops. Way less training time. By that I mean equal to barracks. 1 more factory to match the 3 barracks we already have. The training blessing needs to work on them not just the obsolete barracks troops. Reduce oil coast again. And most importantly buff them so they are actually useful. Oops one silo shot just instantly killed 3000 oil worth of troops tough shirt. Not acceptable. Play the game earn the oil and see why people are mad.
As far as seeing how many troops are in the stronghold I just assume all elephant archers from a cheating alliance or 135 foot soldiers that do 330 dmg a piece. Who cares. It’s a death sentence either way without a decoy to distract them while you hit them with planes.

 

[pckrn]

I mentioned it in another post but I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on if you think seeing how many TT the Stronghold contains would be sufficient information?

whether the stronghold contains TT or not should be hidden and be a surprise. but the TTs should be damaging only to an attacker that is shaken by the surprise. a composed attacker should be able to deal with any TT and suffer only a little bit. yes im saying TT’s are OP

Since you’re interested in this kind of content, what sort of stuff would you like to see in these shows? We’re always looking to improve what we do. We already do a few different segments, but it's always good to get feedback on how we are doing.

4 star attacks being made without TT, or 5 star attacks with TT.

Hm. I’m not sure. I don’t direct drop rates but I believe we have more legendaries like Admiral Yi’s helm that are in the pipeline.

that reminds me. event goals for some events are impossible for a cwa player to do.

+

and it would be nice if things were more clear.
like how the vault oil storage works new players would not bee able to figure out by themselves. or which buildings are affected by russian coalition? which types of defenders are affected by an artifact that buffs defender hp? etc