March Livestream Recap

[Leviathan1]

Hello Leaders,

Missed our last Developer Livestream? No problem, we’ll cover everything we went over for you right here!

In the stream we gave an early look at the 6th Anniversary Events which are currently underway. You can read about those events in more detail on our 6th Anniversary Blog. We also introduced Friday Night Fights, an exciting new community run event led by Maggie at DomiNations Prime. Check out their Discord for more details and be sure to reach out to us at communitywar@bighugegames.com if you’re interested in organizing your own events!

The main course of this livestream was our Q&A Session with DomiNations' Lead Designer, Ben!
First we did a deep dive into Library Bookcases followed by other general DomiNations questions that players submit to us. Check out all the questions we went over below:



Bookcases Questions:

What inspired Library Bookcases?

• The University (and player reaction to that feature) was a huge drive to make the Library more easily expandable. We saw a feature we could only realistically add to each age and once we had added to it at a later age it was difficult to go back and add techs that catered to younger age players.

What were the design goals?

• Our goal was to compartmentalize the Library in a way that we can not only expand it but expand it in thematic easy to navigate chunks. This would allow us to continue to expand the old Library layout whenever new ages come while also adding sets of library books that cater to lower ages as well as higher ones in their own sections.

Will there be more bookcases in the future?

• While nothing is currently set in stone, this is an active discussion within our team. We still have many ideas for future bookcases that cater for players of all ages and different play styles. We also have some exciting changes coming to existing features over the next year and would like to tie a variety of bookcases into those as well as discussing potential for time limited seasonal bookcases.

Will you add a bookcase improving the wonders or even giving them another ability?

• That is a very interesting idea and something that is in active discussion among our Designers. It will be a real design challenge to ensure that all techs are actually in some way useful to all players and not just those that have a particular wonder but all players regardless of the wonder they have. We never want to add a Library book that affects a wonder a player doesn’t have and have them forced to research it in order to reach one that they do have. But we have ideas around working around that so players can improve only the wonders they want to.

I’d like to know more about why you added this feature to the library when it may have been easier just to make another leader in the University?

• So it would have been fine to just add to University but that would eventually have meant adding loads of new leaders all the time. Allowing the Library to expand in a more compartmentalized way like the University does, allows us to add new and exciting techs whenever we like. The Library also allows players to take a more direct route to techs they want than the University does so it made sense to allow us to expand it into other areas of the game at any age we want.

General Design Questions:

Can you add in ______ Nation?

• We are currently looking at the spread of all Nations for each Age and are planning a rebalance of the nation powers to make each a more viable and exciting choice for the player. There have been discussions many times in the past around adding new Nations and while I would never say never, the priority right now is to ensure our existing ones are more balanced and exciting options in their own right.
  As always your feedback is vital to shaping the game, so let us know which Nation you would like to see rebalanced/updated in the comments!

Do you ever see a navy component being added to the game?

• This is a fantastic question but a difficult one to answer. The idea of naval combat in DomiNations is one which has been discussed in the Design Department many times.
  There are so many approaches we could take with adding a naval component to the game:
  • Do we expand the body of water on the map to allow for more interesting naval deployment/defensive layouts?
  • Do we make Naval combat a separate battle system for players?
  • How do we keep combat fun without it becoming overwhelming with a whole new deployment area for the player to have to monitor and strategize around?

All of these questions as well as many more have been discussed and brainstormed many times. I cannot speak for certain to the future of the Navy in DomiNations, just know it is an idea that is never off the table.​

What will happen when you have released all of the ages you can (especially since we seem to be coming to modern times)?

• Again, a great question and a conversation we’ve had a lot recently. Moving past modern times in DomiNations and into a realistic vision of future civilization and warfare is something that is in active discussion. We still have at least one Age being planned (The Drone Age) that doesn’t stray past modern times.

Community Questions:

Will you be addressing some of the bugs in DomiNations?

• We spoke about this a bit during this year’s State of the Nations blog and wanted to provide an update on what we’re working on right now. We’re currently investigating many of the reports we’re getting, some of these are going to take a bit of time to reproduce and stomp out inhouse, but we wanted to let you know that we’re currently working on fixes for the Alliance Gate Perk 3 bug that many of you have reported, along with the issue that locks planes into a figure 8 loop. These aren’t the only ones we’re tackling at the moment, but just a quick update on a few that were reported by many players and that should be fixed in an upcoming update.

Update: We recently rolled out a hotfix for the Alliance Perk 3 bug that went out last week. We know there are still bugs to address but rest assured that the team has been working hard to track these issues down. We want to thank everyone again who has helped provide information to help get to the bottom of these as quickly as possible. That said some of these bugs can be quite complicated to fix, so we will keep you updated on the status of these as we work through them.​

Can we see base stats of units in the future?

• This was another request we heard from players and it’s something that the team is interested in doing but something that is still in discussion. However, in the meantime we are working on a way to showcase this unit information on our forums.

Has the pandemic affected how your team operates?

• Oh absolutely! We could no longer safely meet in front of a white board and brainstorm the inner details of a feature for ages. We had to conduct such meetings over video chat. This obviously took some getting used to but we feel we have managed it extremely well. When you are not all in the studio together, with all members of other departments, it’s hard to just walk to an artists desk and see progress on some of the cool units, buildings or UI that they are developing, or randomly chat to an engineer about the best way to implement something. We have to rely on being a lot more proactive about the sharing of information and keeping everyone on the same page as to the progress of things all the time. Video chats, frequent online updates and check ins became the norm. Like all changes, it took a while to get used to but we certainly managed it and have found ways to feel just as connected to one another and the work we are all contributing to as we did when we sat together in the studio.

Thank you for all your question submissions, we really enjoyed being able to touch on these. We plan on running similar questionnaires in the future, for both livestreams and blogs like this one, so keep an eye out for those!

 

[King Crimson]

Well that was very vanilla and didn't seem scripted in any way.

As for ''planning a rebalance of nation powers'' - we all know what that means.

 

[joelegiao]

Wait, with all the great community questions you received you answer a question of how the pandemic affected the team....cry me a river

 

[Spaceboy]

yeahh..a lot of great and fantastic (sic) questions. If only the answers were fantastic too.

Jesus, what a crap we have to read. They really are serious or they just fake it? Since when this game is taking player's comments into account? This is still Dominations right? I have a doubt suddenly.

 

[Ambassador_Monkisuma]

Looking forward to the plane path fix and nation rebalances, thanks for the written recap!

 

[oddin]

imho, Japanese and Greeks should be rebalanced.
Just a few ideas...

Greeks: raise the Instant finish from +5m per age to 6h from Atomic age and onwards. Refunds part of upgrade costs 10%
Japanese: Give them a Defender Spawn Time of +20%. They are the most defensive nation early on. Make it so it stays that way in the later game. Make the town shoot like an antitank gun but much faster (much like the parliament when maxed)

There is no need to change much on the other nations. Just buff those 2.

 

[Exiliado]

The Japanese town center should have higher DPS and target airstrip troops.

Instant finish upgrades and General recovery is a nice perk for us Greeks, but it should be increased.

The command post is capped at Cold War level which limits command post and armory unique defenders. Add more command post levels or switch to armory level so that these defenders can stay up-to-date.

 

[Dhruv patel]

greeks: lower expedition times (10-20%). refund part of bindings (10-20%) and something involveing wonders ( stronger effects, spawn unique troops determined by command post level or something).

japanese: Town Centre has higher damage, splash damage like a howitzer shooting both ground and air troops. +1 max defender limit for garrisons and stables. something with bastions ( have a small health/damage boost to building they cover or something).

romans: 20% health boost for pvp victories like German teutonic fury. 20% bigger armies and wonders increase general damage, hit points and reduce recovery time by 5% per wonder.

 

[King Crimson]

Are these the 3 nations you currently have?

 

[Rafar]

Hello Leaders,

Missed our last Developer Livestream? No problem, we’ll cover everything we went over for you right here!

In the stream we gave an early look at the 6th Anniversary Events which are currently underway. You can read about those events in more detail on our 6th Anniversary Blog. We also introduced Friday Night Fights, an exciting new community run event led by Maggie at DomiNations Prime. Check out their Discord for more details and be sure to reach out to us at communitywar@bighugegames.com if you’re interested in organizing your own events!

The main course of this livestream was our Q&A Session with DomiNations' Lead Designer, Ben!
First we did a deep dive into Library Bookcases followed by other general DomiNations questions that players submit to us. Check out all the questions we went over below:



Bookcases Questions:

What inspired Library Bookcases?

• The University (and player reaction to that feature) was a huge drive to make the Library more easily expandable. We saw a feature we could only realistically add to each age and once we had added to it at a later age it was difficult to go back and add techs that catered to younger age players.

What were the design goals?

• Our goal was to compartmentalize the Library in a way that we can not only expand it but expand it in thematic easy to navigate chunks. This would allow us to continue to expand the old Library layout whenever new ages come while also adding sets of library books that cater to lower ages as well as higher ones in their own sections.

Will there be more bookcases in the future?

• While nothing is currently set in stone, this is an active discussion within our team. We still have many ideas for future bookcases that cater for players of all ages and different play styles. We also have some exciting changes coming to existing features over the next year and would like to tie a variety of bookcases into those as well as discussing potential for time limited seasonal bookcases.

Will you add a bookcase improving the wonders or even giving them another ability?

• That is a very interesting idea and something that is in active discussion among our Designers. It will be a real design challenge to ensure that all techs are actually in some way useful to all players and not just those that have a particular wonder but all players regardless of the wonder they have. We never want to add a Library book that affects a wonder a player doesn’t have and have them forced to research it in order to reach one that they do have. But we have ideas around working around that so players can improve only the wonders they want to.

I’d like to know more about why you added this feature to the library when it may have been easier just to make another leader in the University?

• So it would have been fine to just add to University but that would eventually have meant adding loads of new leaders all the time. Allowing the Library to expand in a more compartmentalized way like the University does, allows us to add new and exciting techs whenever we like. The Library also allows players to take a more direct route to techs they want than the University does so it made sense to allow us to expand it into other areas of the game at any age we want.

General Design Questions:

Can you add in ______ Nation?

• We are currently looking at the spread of all Nations for each Age and are planning a rebalance of the nation powers to make each a more viable and exciting choice for the player. There have been discussions many times in the past around adding new Nations and while I would never say never, the priority right now is to ensure our existing ones are more balanced and exciting options in their own right.
  As always your feedback is vital to shaping the game, so let us know which Nation you would like to see rebalanced/updated in the comments!

Do you ever see a navy component being added to the game?

• This is a fantastic question but a difficult one to answer. The idea of naval combat in DomiNations is one which has been discussed in the Design Department many times.
  There are so many approaches we could take with adding a naval component to the game:
  • Do we expand the body of water on the map to allow for more interesting naval deployment/defensive layouts?
  • Do we make Naval combat a separate battle system for players?
  • How do we keep combat fun without it becoming overwhelming with a whole new deployment area for the player to have to monitor and strategize around?

All of these questions as well as many more have been discussed and brainstormed many times. I cannot speak for certain to the future of the Navy in DomiNations, just know it is an idea that is never off the table.​

What will happen when you have released all of the ages you can (especially since we seem to be coming to modern times)?

• Again, a great question and a conversation we’ve had a lot recently. Moving past modern times in DomiNations and into a realistic vision of future civilization and warfare is something that is in active discussion. We still have at least one Age being planned (The Drone Age) that doesn’t stray past modern times.

Community Questions:

Will you be addressing some of the bugs in DomiNations?

• We spoke about this a bit during this year’s State of the Nations blog and wanted to provide an update on what we’re working on right now. We’re currently investigating many of the reports we’re getting, some of these are going to take a bit of time to reproduce and stomp out inhouse, but we wanted to let you know that we’re currently working on fixes for the Alliance Gate Perk 3 bug that many of you have reported, along with the issue that locks planes into a figure 8 loop. These aren’t the only ones we’re tackling at the moment, but just a quick update on a few that were reported by many players and that should be fixed in an upcoming update.

Update: We recently rolled out a hotfix for the Alliance Perk 3 bug that went out last week. We know there are still bugs to address but rest assured that the team has been working hard to track these issues down. We want to thank everyone again who has helped provide information to help get to the bottom of these as quickly as possible. That said some of these bugs can be quite complicated to fix, so we will keep you updated on the status of these as we work through them.​

Can we see base stats of units in the future?

• This was another request we heard from players and it’s something that the team is interested in doing but something that is still in discussion. However, in the meantime we are working on a way to showcase this unit information on our forums.

Has the pandemic affected how your team operates?

• Oh absolutely! We could no longer safely meet in front of a white board and brainstorm the inner details of a feature for ages. We had to conduct such meetings over video chat. This obviously took some getting used to but we feel we have managed it extremely well. When you are not all in the studio together, with all members of other departments, it’s hard to just walk to an artists desk and see progress on some of the cool units, buildings or UI that they are developing, or randomly chat to an engineer about the best way to implement something. We have to rely on being a lot more proactive about the sharing of information and keeping everyone on the same page as to the progress of things all the time. Video chats, frequent online updates and check ins became the norm. Like all changes, it took a while to get used to but we certainly managed it and have found ways to feel just as connected to one another and the work we are all contributing to as we did when we sat together in the studio.

Thank you for all your question submissions, we really enjoyed being able to touch on these. We plan on running similar questionnaires in the future, for both livestreams and blogs like this one, so keep an eye out for those!

Naval battle could be a fantastic increment, carried out separate from multiplayer and world war.
A separate tournament, forming groups with X number of alliances.
All players, regardless of age or game time, have the same stats.
This would enhance an alliance's teamwork and strategy.
The most successful alliances at the end of each season accumulate points that can add up over time, causing the most winning alliances to move up in the league.
Each league has bonuses that players can use in multiplayer or world war.
Naval battles are always a competition of only skill and teamwork. Something similar to what happens in the Clash Royale game.
I understand that it is not easy to plan and implement something like this, looking for a theme faithful to the Dominations game, but it would be another game option in which teamwork would be fundamental to success.
A new building could be implemented on the map, bordering the coast. By clicking on that building, the player would be transferred to a new map, like in the world war, where these events take place.

Sorry for resurrecting this old thread and for my bad English. I'm counting on the help of Google translator