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Domination: Earth

1.19.5: Mandatory Upgrade


Mr. D

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Hi all,

As some of you may know, Google is switching to a new "pay as you go" pricing model on the 16th of July, which unfortunately turns several "Domination: Earth" services unaffordable (Google Geolocation and Places API price raises by almost x40).

Because of that we're forced to perform an "emergency release" switching all Geolocation services to OSM and disabling Google Places API entirely, which means your newly captured lands will no longer be named using the nearest restaurant/hotel/landmark name obtained from Google (this does not affect any of the existing lands).
Please note that this is a mandatory upgrade; we will be forced to deactivate Google Geolocation and Places on the 16th of July not to incur additional charges, so all versions of "Domination: Earth" older than 1.19.5 will stop functioning after the 16th of July.

Version 1.19.5 is now available on the Play Store and will automatically appear on the App Store in the next couple of days.
Push & upgrade notification will follow as soon as the app appears on both stores.

On a more positive note, this update introduces one new feature: ability to rename all of your bases and lands manually to anything your heart desires for only 1 Unobtainium per change. :)
More than one rename of the same land or base is allowed.

As always, please let me know if you have any questions! ;)

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Unfortunately, all existing bases have been renamed from city name to it's source land name, which caused real mess in the base list (like, some ATM, some fast-food name etc - no idea where that is).

Is there any way to return old names of existing bases, city-based, without forcing a huge Unobtainium commitment? It's 38 for me :)

Also, how will the feature work for future lands/bases? Will the name be random? Will there be a possibility for a first rename to be free, either for land or at least for new base?

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8 minutes ago, Олег Поленин said:

Unfortunately, all existing bases have been renamed from city name to it's source land name, which caused real mess in the base list (like, some ATM, some fast-food name etc - no idea where that is).

Is there any way to return old names of existing bases, city-based, without forcing a huge Unobtainium commitment? It's 38 for me :)

Sure, I can reset your base names; it's not a problem. :)
Just PM me your username and either the lands title or display name, please! No need, just found your account; bases renamed. ;)

8 minutes ago, Олег Поленин said:

Also, how will the feature work for future lands/bases? Will the name be random?

The name will only represent your current geographic location (i.e. nearest village/town/area), not a nearby establishment (banks, cafes etc.).
It's not random, but will be taken from the OpenStreetMap database. :)

8 minutes ago, Олег Поленин said:

Will there be a possibility for a first rename to be free, either for land or at least for new base?

We'll have a chat about that with my colleagues, but at the moment I don't have a definite answer. :)
It is possible that one/some of the renames will be made free in the future!

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5 minutes ago, Mr. D said:

Sure, I can reset your base names; it's not a problem. :)
Just PM me your username and either the lands title or display name, please!

The name will only represent your current geographic location (i.e. nearest village/town/area), not a nearby establishment (banks, cafes etc.).
It's not random, but will be taken from the OpenStreetMap database. :)

We'll have a chat about that with my colleagues, but at the moment I don't have a definite answer. :)
It is possible that one/some of the renames will be made free in the future!

If you were to reset all base names to the new setting (town, City, location) it would simplify this and they should show up the same as they were.  I expect otherwise you will get a lot of PMs....

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4 minutes ago, Mr. D said:

We'll have a chat about that with my colleagues, but at the moment I don't have a definite answer. :)

It is possible that one/some of the renames will be made free in the future!

I was writing about free rename thinking that new lands/bases will have a pretty unrecognizable names. If the base names will be assigned geographically (as it previously was, I assume) then it's perfectly ok, at least ux-wise :)

I don't like to speak for others, but, taking ux look again, the replacement you did to my bases (reverting to cities names) might be considered a desired default among other players and by the same time minimize the impact of change enforced by this update :)

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5 minutes ago, Z3nd said:

If you were to reset all base names to the new setting (town, City, location) it would simplify this and they should show up the same as they were.  I expect otherwise you will get a lot of PMs....

I must admit I did not expect such a negative reaction to the explicit base names, as with the rumours going around about people getting confused with the base name duplicates I thought it's going to be a positive change. :)

But I'm nothing if not flexible; everyone's bases have now returned to the original values!

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13 minutes ago, Олег Поленин said:

Shame on Google anyways.

Exactly. * sigh *

14 minutes ago, Олег Поленин said:

I was sure I read somewhere on forums that these names were taken from Foursquare, not Google.

That is an alternative we're now considering, but it's still a bit pricey compared to our original setup.
So for now we'll stick with player-named lands, but perhaps we'll find a solution before the 2.0's launch. ;)

I do agree that it was pretty awesome to collect rare places and even travel to distant/unreachable spots in the middle of nowhere just to see what they can possibly be associated with. :)

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Just now, Mr. D said:

Exactly. * sigh *

That is an alternative we're now considering, but it's still a bit pricey compared to our original setup.
So for now we'll stick with player-named lands, but perhaps we'll find a solution before the 2.0's launch. ;)

I do agree that it was pretty awesome to collect rare places and even travel to distant/unreachable spots in the middle of nowhere just to see what they can possibly be associated with. :)

I know I'm offen the Zealot for campaigning for major changes and big updates, but possibly you could offer to let them rename it for free right there.  Or it could just go to your default sort of like a Zeta 1 or Delta 6. The phonetic alphabet wouldn't be too hard to use and then you could also had it location from Foursquare or street maps. 

Generally being able to name a place right then and there would be cool for some of us who play it as like an exploration tool. (Eg. I got a new land in Rocky Mountain National Park I name it RMNP or Rockies I know exactly what I'm talking about otherwise it just takes a default name) 

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I'm Totally OK with this!

I was actually just talking about this on discord the other week because I can't care Less for every schmuck and their tax evading home scam business junking up my flag names!

Furthermore, it's also an insult when I flag my or my friends homes and I get some stupid SEO crap name because some idiot paid to have it on the map..I'm playing a game not looking for advertisements!

Thank You a Thousand Times! Thank You!

Down With Bad Flag Names!

 

(Yes, this means I don't want you getting up with 4square either!)

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@Irrelevents, for a solid minute I was amused. 

I think this is a solid argument for free customizable names. 

Wow okay: idea for 2.0. 

What if you could pay $5 for the option to change every land once for free? That would be another source of revenue and give players what they want. As long this kept the 1 U$ option this might be nice. 

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Changing a land name for a single ubt is cheaper than that, and there really only so many names that I need to change.. The important ones at the center of large flags, bases, friends houses, near someone who you need to get msg to..

You can spend 5 bucks on ubt and have enough to change Many flags, that alone is a good  enough reason to buy the man a cup of coffee

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2 minutes ago, Irrelevents said:

Changing a land name for a single ubt is cheaper than that, and there really only so many names that I need to change.. The important ones at the center of large flags, bases, friends houses, near someone who you need to get msg to..

You can spend 5 bucks on ubt and have enough to change Many flags, that alone is a good  enough reason to buy the man a cup of coffee

Personally, I'm a control freak and will probably change dozens of names serveral times (as I have already done) and would love a sort of unbridled access to unlimited nane changing (or one per as I suggested) 

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2 minutes ago, Олег Поленин said:

Not if we don't use them. :)

I don't fully trust that database (it is editable by anyone even more freely than Google's!) and it's not as "compete" as Places or FourSquare, i.e. there aren't enough unique locations to make it entertaining globally (yet).

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2 minutes ago, Mr. D said:

Not if we don't use them. :)

I don't fully trust that database (it is editable by anyone even more freely than Google's!) and it's not as "compete" as Places or FourSquare, i.e. there aren't enough unique locations to make it entertaining globally (yet).

Yet does one really need a strongly trustworthy source for the in-game label of a more or less randomly placed flag? :)

Seriously, the only issue I see here would be the efficiency of such API calls. 

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13 minutes ago, Олег Поленин said:

Yet does one really need a strongly trustworthy source for the in-game label of a more or less randomly placed flag? :)

Seriously, the only issue I see here would be the efficiency of such API calls. 

If it's not a trustworthy source, just some random stuff, its going to be as good as renaming it to any random stuff...right?

Having towns and cities is enough for a label of a randomly placed flag. IMHO

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1 hour ago, Eerienkah said:

If it's not a trustworthy source, just some random stuff, its going to be as good as renaming it to any random stuff...right?

Having towns and cities is enough for a label of a randomly placed flag. IMHO

Yeah, but I'm trying to think about balancing some issues here. Each approach has some downfalls here.

Using just a geographic name is nice, but will start to look funny, when in large city. Imagine all lands of one player being named "London" for that matter. Any deeper differentiation would be lovely.

Rename option sounds cool, even if you have to pay for it, because people will likely care for very few lands, the best of, and will not have time to micromanage all names. Yet this will produce a rather monotonous gaming environment, with most lands named identical in big cites, even if you allow for the first rename to be free, since even with free rename, most players won't have time to use it.

Thus I'm just looking for solutions to make the default/initial names more granular. Just ideas. Maybe street names, maybe some other source :)

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9 hours ago, Олег Поленин said:

Thus I'm just looking for solutions to make the default/initial names more granular. Just ideas. Maybe street names, maybe some other source :)

And we really appreciate all your ideas and suggestions. ;)

We do have a lot of alternative data points to consider, it is possible that streets or other labels will replace the establishment names.
 @Irrelevents raised a very good point that we don't want to create a backdoor for spam in our game, but at the same time name diversity has to improve without losing its meaning (i.e. randomly generated names by us would bring zero value to motivation of travelling somewhere far :)).

Anyway, leave it with me; as soon as we have some concrete solutions I will post about it for further discussion!

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Google just had to mess up.

I'm I favour of naming after street names or something similar, but that doesn't help in places with no streets. Perhaps parks, forest sections, or some other names for such areas would be better. Custom would be fun but time consuming and you guys would have a hell of a time making sure people don't misuse it. A pay-for-naming approach could counter that, but then there's the question of paying per land or for the ability to do so (a one-time payment).

Well, I'm sure you'll think of something. Keep up the good work!

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