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Domination: Earth

State of PvP


Mr. D

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Hey guys,

On multiple occasions some of you raised an issue that our PvP (Player-vs-Player combat) is pretty much imbalanced and causes issues for new players, which I agree with: at this point it seems that @The one true king could slay all of us if he wanted to. :)
But although our top 5 players could unite in alliance against such a force, our new players are left fearing for their lives (and lives of their lands :)) every day.
And unfortunately, this problem has finally reached a stage of being really harmful to the entire project: many active new players were completely wiped out by more experienced players recently, which resulted in negative game reviews, a serious drop in active user count and a lot of frustration (obviously).

Multiple features were suggested in the past to help with that problem (most recently - tracking protection suggestion by SebRut), but although they most certainly help with the symptoms, they don't actually fix the root cause, as low-level players are still vulnerable to attacks by really territorial leaders. :)

Which is why as a quick fix I intend to make PvP a high-level player feature only, i.e. only available to those who've had a base of level 10+ (at least once; i.e. even if it got destroyed afterwards you're in "PvP League" now :)), but until then only the AI battles will remain available.

The reasoning behind this is that whenever you reach level 10 of your base you've most likely accumulated enough resources to easily repair any sandbags and concrete walls (which can be a real pain at level 5 :)), and regardless of whether you have 500 soldiers or 5000 all battles will last a really long time and you're unlikely to get wiped out by a single party.
However, new players who do not have enough money to build (let alone maintain) all the defensive structures will grow undisturbed.
It's also been suggested to add a temporary shield to all new players, but once again, there's no guarantee that by the end of that shield's duration I've had enough time to play and accumulate enough wealth to engage in any form of PvP.
Which is why disabling all PvP for new players (i.e. making them unable to attack non-AI enemies and making all of their lands non-attackable either) seems like the best quick solution currently.

I've mentioned "quick solution" as I am open to other ideas & suggestions regarding this matter and would be happy to implement any new features that would help with this situation, but as you can understand something has to be done urgently before most of our population leaves the game and "Domination: Earth" becomes a duel between the Top 10. :)

However, please post if you have any objections or different views!

 

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Yeah I think I warned for this... except for Paris I stopped attacking players. So i agree, however this should not bar bigger players to grow. If a new player starts near me and refuses an alliance I could be halted in my growth just by having a land with a single tower... 

For these cases we might indeed work with vassalage? An alliance that cannot be refused and is really costly (Like 10% of the max resources the level of the main player allows, excluding unobotanium). This would also give the newer player a huge load of Resources?

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Hmm... that is an interesting idea, I'll have a think about it!

Although a much simpler option (with less development :)) might be to simply not consider all of the "grey flags" as obstacles. I.e. you can see them, but they don't affect you in any way whatsoever until they reach level 10.

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I will try some suggestion. 

The idea that the presence on the base can have a defence boost is good. I would extend it to any land. So a player that have few lands to defend and is really present on territory could defend even against much stronger players.

In general I would say that it should be increasingly difficult to defend lands as you get more of them. Actually right now I see that you can gain resouces easily with the satellite if you have much land, while a player at the beginning with a little land has to travel around in order to get resources. It should be the other way around: if you have much land you should somehow work in order to keep it... maybe a maintaining cost?

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Hmmm maintenance of buildings and army might make sense, but not of land itself... vassals on the other hand would add something and easily fit into more political options players have been asking for...

Also the fact that there is no in-game communication means you can give somebody some time to sell a land before you attack if it limits your growth, but that would be it and indeed if I could not grow I would probably also stop. If I would suddenly have a level 10 player as obstacle I would still pound him into the ground, while if we could both continue as allies (/leader and vassal/folllwer) and both grow that would be fine by me...

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@The one true king just to avoid misunderstandings, what limits are you talking about?
As far as I am aware, right now your land can grow beyond any Guard Towers placed by enemies (or allies); the only restriction appears when you're standing right inside your enemy's land and there's a Guard Tower located on it.
But it would not hinder your growth if you're upgrading a land that has reached this tower from the outside!
Or am I missing something...?

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3 minutes ago, The one true king said:

Ow my mistake.. I apparently misunderstood that upgrade!

No problem!

Ok, in this case please let me know if you experience any issues with the grey flags; otherwise I think everyone should feel safer in 1.14.3! :)

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I have another idea about this.

What if the attack time (at least the time before the first wave) depends on the distance from the base?

It would make sense that I can attack the land close to my base easily, maybe even with no waiting time if it is at 0 distance. However if the defender is far, I would have to wait much time, and he has the time to organize a defence.

This might be a way to incentive a regular distribuition of players in the territory.

This would make the position of the base an important thing. Now it doesn't matter much.

What do you think?

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  • 2 weeks later...

It's only a rough idea,  but it would be nice to make it that you can ''destroy'' a supply route to the attacking land.

I will explain.

 

You have a land that you want to attack.

It's 4km away from your base.

That you can use google maps or some other route provider to select the 3 quickest routes from your attacking base to the attacked land your army will use.

You could use a watchtower, rocket station or nuclear silo to guard a zone on the map and if parts of the attacking army move over a road in that zone they would guard, the attacking army will be damaged by ...%. (That's about what building or level, and so is the range and size of the guardzone.)

 

It's only a rough idea to make the pvp more realistic.

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@Mr. D

I think you should have Tiers of Players

0-10 10-20 20-30,30-50 and 50+

Where people can only fight within these tiers and the lands cannot be affected by lands lower or higher. 

What this means (and this is a rough unpolished idea) is that there will be a few top peple fighting for 1st in an area. The top person is basically the King of the Land and all the players in his/her lands are thier vassals. This means that they can fight amongst others inside, but they share some of their resource collection with the King. The King meanwhile Fights other Kings or people on his level nearby.  The lower ranks can join in a Group raid against the King (have to work on the mechanic) every now and then called a Rebellion which the King will have to deal with keeping him in check as much as possible. This will allow users at all stages to grow and compete with similar level users while giving a bonus to the King and keeping him in check (The King doesn't want to kill vassals that feed him a bit does he?). IT also takes the game in two directions.

1. Don't like the king? Rebel (Civil War) 

Or

2. Love your king? Help him by farming resources out s that he can fight other kingdoms and take them over for your glory (External War).

 

Anyways this is a rough idea, but the more I think about it (though complex) the more I like it..

 

Thoughts?

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20 hours ago, Joris said:

It's only a rough idea,  but it would be nice to make it that you can ''destroy'' a supply route to the attacking land.

That is a very interesting concept!
There's only one potential problem with this: there are many places on Earth where Google struggles to find directions, so certain countries may be completely incapable of using combat if we enact such pathfinding mechanics.
For example, I've recently discovered that most of the Republic of Crimea doesn't exist on Google's geolocation database, so land & base capture was completely impossible (let alone finding directions!), which led to complaints & bug reports from players who live there.
I can only imagine how much trouble we'll run into if we base combat on Google's road database...

One possible workaround could be to avoid using any "directions" services whatsoever and simply plot a direct path through any obstacles as a straight line (from point A to B, no 3rd party databases).
But of course, this may be a bit more "boring" and provide fewer tactical scenarios.
A more complex alternative is to allow selecting a movement path yourself, but that is a far larger development.
Anyway, will have a think about this some more! ;)

12 hours ago, Eagle said:

Thoughts?

I was actually discussing something very similar with my colleague yesterday, as something has to be done to prevent level 20+ players wiping out level 10s indeed.
I'm not fully on board with forced resource sharing (e.g. as a new player I've just joined the game and I already owe someone my money? That's a bit discouraging! :)), but many players suggested treaties & diplomatic agreements in the past, so maybe if we get to building such a system this could be one of the diplomacy options (but not "forced" onto everyone by default).

Again, we'll discuss this some more and I'll work out all the details once my task list for this week shortens. :)

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 19/02/2018 at 4:27 PM, Eagle said:



@Mr. D

I think you should have Tiers of Players

0-10 10-20 20-30,30-50 and 50+

Where people can only fight within these tiers and the lands cannot be affected by lands lower or higher. 

What this means (and this is a rough unpolished idea) is that there will be a few top peple fighting for 1st in an area. The top person is basically the King of the Land and all the players in his/her lands are thier vassals. This means that they can fight amongst others inside, but they share some of their resource collection with the King. The King meanwhile Fights other Kings or people on his level nearby.  The lower ranks can join in a Group raid against the King (have to work on the mechanic) every now and then called a Rebellion which the King will have to deal with keeping him in check as much as possible. This will allow users at all stages to grow and compete with similar level users while giving a bonus to the King and keeping him in check (The King doesn't want to kill vassals that feed him a bit does he?). IT also takes the game in two directions.

1. Don't like the king? Rebel (Civil War) 

Or

2. Love your king? Help him by farming resources out s that he can fight other kingdoms and take them over for your glory (External War).

 

Anyways this is a rough idea, but the more I think about it (though complex) the more I like it..

 

Thoughts?

I like your idea..more fairness amongst all level players...

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