The great feedback thread

Balance/ Mechanics should always be a number 1 priority.

I'm going to second the idea to split competitive and casual play. The playing most game leader board is just awful. We need more stats for our break down. ie

- Break down by faction
- Break down by champion
- Break down by specific list


My suggestion is simply this.

Run a tournament every other week.

The rules are as follows.
- You enter your company but are unable to change the list you have entered for the week.
- You only ever score once against every other player. ie If you play 3 games vs the same person each can only score one victory and one loss. The third game is not taken into account for scoring.

This format will quickly show you where the gaps in unit balance is.

Further suggestions:

1. More and balanced maps,

2. Splitting Elixir grab and KotH into two modes and not letting us as players know what mode we will be playing until the deployment phase. You would still call it confrontation mode. this allows for much better focus inside a game and will allow different factions and list to shine since they can specialize.

This format will quickly show you where the gaps in unit balance is.

and what about something such simple as being better?
Many times I won Vs much stronger and brainless companies becouse of really low skill of my enemy...

You enter your company but are unable to change the list you have entered for the week.

IMO you will get something similar to MTG - tons of copies of the same p[opular band that seems to be strong at the moment... games will be borring as hell and using hard counters will be easier than ever ;p

That is exactly the point there Dragon Warrior. If all your units are properly balanced against each other you will actually see variety. This is exactly what you get in any Table Top Miniture game out there. But initially across the first 3 or 4 tournaments yes we are going to see the battle of the clone lists which is going to show us exactly what units are used, why and what units don't even get a look in and why. And then you get to work on balancing it.


As for your question about skill and strategy vs composition. You are getting a large volume of games so on the whole you will still see it. In fact those rare occasions where some with a list of inferior units beats a superior units list will be where you go looking for your balance changes.

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To use the Devs own words. Humans will always pick the optimum units.
If this is true why did they pick one Harrasser over the Harpooner? Is it true across every Wolven company?

The idea of individual profiles was to have units that were more specilised so we could pick the ones that suits our goal for that unit. If as is the current case the Double shot archer will out perform the Aim and Slow archer in every case you will see them in every list. Now you know there is a balance issue that needs to be addressed. In this case.

Guaranteed reliable damage vs Potential damage/Rare chance to use a unique ability with lower damage output.

But initially across the first 3 or 4 tournaments yes we are going to see the battle of the clone lists which is going to show us exactly what units are used, why and what units don't even get a look in and why. And then you get to work on balancing it.

If you are right - why not all players choose Chimera?
Why im playing anything but Chimera?

I would imagine there are plenty of reasons not least of all that the competitive aspect of the current game is lost in how unreachable it is for many players that they gave up even trying. I'm sure if you asked the 3 lions at the top of the leaderboards which Champion they were using you'd get the same answer from each of them. A tournament is a more immediate more reachable prize which players will feel their choices make a bigger difference to wether they obtain it or not. Players won't be able to force themselves to the prize by playing more than anyone else.

Devs, if I understand right now you are involved in figuring out how to attract/keep people. My suggestion to do this is about leaderbord/tournaments system + unit prices + way to introduce new champions, this should make game experience more fun IMO.

This will be like a wall of text so be brave and please read it:

-make champions cheaper, instead prices at level 20k/40k/60k make it 10k/30k/30k. Make troops more expensive - prices before patch 13.0 were just fine. Bring back silver as a mission prizes. Thanks to this the players will feel that they are progressing. Right now: obtaining the right champion is very slow and its only about the champion because units are ridiculously cheap.

-enable leaderbords for all players not just for rank 20 - I have played with players who told me that they regret they are only rank 11 and they victory does not "count"

-enable all game modes (so they can be played not only against friends-which is often hard to perform): death match, king of the hill, kill the VIP, confrontation

-ok, now here is the first big suggestion: run leaderbords for every game mode simultaneously or alternatively make random shifts i.e one week leaderboards will be based on KoTH mode and in the next week they will be based on death mach mode and so on. I prefer first option rather than alternative. The prizes stay the same. This will make the game more interesting, and besides everybody should find something for them selfs.

-Introducing of new champions. This will be one of the main "fun thing" I hope. 2 week BEFORE champion final release there will be one day tournament (probably on Saturday or sunday). First 10 people gets the champion for free so they can play it right away (yes BEFORE anyone else can get him). Persons taking 11-20 place get 50% discount tickets for the champion, discount will lower the price in cyans AND silver. Of note 21-100 place gets cyans as usual. More over one week before final release the champion will be available to buy but ONLY for cyans (discount tickets from tournament WILL apply). This should make people want to play in tournaments and spend real money to buy cyans. Moreover this change does not make game p2win/you can still get the champion but you have to wait. I think that making tournament two weeks before final release is optimum, but everything is up to you so it could be for example 3 weeks.

-make other one day tournaments in weekends with special prizes. This is digital world the prizes could be any sort, like: champions, units, skins, cyans, discount tickets, silver, renown boosts, exclusive skins...

-for the future, make some special weekend deals i.e introduce champions and units which will be available to buy only from time to time in weekend deals, each faction need to have its own special deal. So for example:

weekend 1 deal: champion A

weekend 2 deal: unit X

weekend 3 deal: few ordinary units in cheaper pack

weekend 4 deal: unit Y

weekend 5 deal: champion B

The key is not to have so many things with limited availability, because it will be very hard to obtain them. So with the time deals could look like: weekend 1 deal: champion A and /or unit Y

-did you see what happened when you posted ONE reply dr. Ido?? We had a dead forum for a one week and than BUM!!!: one your post generates another page of replies, so please keep the dialog because players really want to help. Without a dialog its impossible.

-Finally: players started to generate some ideas in reply to your post so..make another survey from their ideas!! Ask in survey whether players want particular changes/ideas to be introduced. This will lower the probability of a failure.

If I didn't make my self clear just ask, I will try to explain.

Hope this will help you or at least inspires you

PS: Thanks for reading this...

ok, now here is the first big suggestion: run leaderboards for every game mode simultaneously or alternatively make random shifts i.e one week leaderboards will be based on KoTH mode and in the next week they will be based on death mach mode and so on. I prefer first option rather than alternative. The prizes stay the same. This will make the game more interesting, and besides everybody should find something for them selfs.

Shade here has just given you another way to breath life into the content you already have. Just don't make the ranking about who plays the most games in a given time period. Though it should be rewarded.

In the very least it makes use of the content you have while you focus on balancing your main focus of Confrontation mode.

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I'm also going to add that the idea of more special events was raised before and got a lot of player support. Knowing you have a limited staff it doesn't have to happen every week or every weekend but 2-3 times a month at least with each lasting a 36hr Block.

The reason it's 36hrs is purely because of the time zone difference. It gives everyone ample time to get in a have a decent crack at partaking in each event. Any shorter than that and you end up preventing many of your players from participating, defeating the entire purpose of the event.

So i've been thinking about how missions are just who the spares are used for now and it really doesn't make much impact on the game and who would risk there lives or kill for some dye? it seems a bit unbelievable now the way it is. I'm still unsure what purpose the missions could or should have but maybe to help players cycle through the champions a bit (atleast when playing casually) you could have a reward system where when you win so many matches with a champion you unlock a special group mission related to that champion. You send the champion and some troops to support them. Perhaps with some clues on what type of troops are needed to achieve the objective.

That means you no longer have the champion you were using to amass wins so you can choose to do this and then switch champion or wait to send them til your done with playing for the day and then come back to them the next day.

edit: I took the time to copy and paste the Confrontation giveaway onto the dogs of war online reddit i'm not totally certain how many people will see it there but reddit is a popular site. http://www.reddit.com/r/DogsofWarOnline/

I've been trying to work out how players can be successful in multiplayer with only Tier 1 units. Ram have excellent T1 units with acceptable damage in all 3 forms but have an awful T1 champion. The Wolfen have a pretty good T1 champion and i think they can just about get by but they are going to be very melee focused because the Assault Crossbowman as i said in another thread has dps issues. Lions have a really good T1 Champion and the T1 units provide decent flexibility. With the right mix they can be acceptable.

edit:

One of the newbies was complaining about the timer. He pretty much said that he would have prefered the timer was kept out of battles against the AI so he could get use to the game first. He said it was making him panic.

I've been playing with Wolfen War Mage and really he's too situational. Emerok's parry buff doesn't mean anything if Wolfen Warmage can't get any decent parry rate to begin with. With only 7 parry after counter attack he needs Mask of Ghandar to cause fear rolls and then your looking for a low acc unit who can be feared and or enciclement bonus' which is harder to pull off with a smaller army and then depending on your army those encircling units are probably more enticing targets.

Also you really need to change the names of things like Parry and Accuracy. I mean if your trying to explain their effects someone is going to get confused between parry and the parry attribute same with accuracy. I checked the french version and at the very least Precision or maybe Precise would sound perfectly fine instead of Accuracy. Parade instead of Parry is a bit more odd... i guess because i play Wolfen alot... Vigilant/Vigilance would make sense.

edit:
Another thing i noticed is this, theres a player who i've noticed changes his name back a forth between two names. I can only guess that it is to trick other players into thinking he's someone else. If people are paying attention then the company name staying the same will be a dead giveaway but i just think the practise is a bit odd and i imagine players who aren't using steam can't do what he/she is doing.