After reading this thread, it makes me laugh to see which players are calling for “nerfs.”

We’ve got people who suck at or never bothered with formbuildr wanting to nerf chocolate, probably because they got put in a bracket with plk. Nevermind that she can’t win a single trophy, since the major factor in who wins at Dom is which klan has more members in a bracket, since destruction is so powerful now.

We’ve got people with slow connections wanting yellow nerfed.

We’ve got people who hate losing deciding that green is too powerful because someone might have a better position in a streak than they do. Nevermind that streaks are a great incentive to visit and see all the content in all the forums, or that it’s one of the few strategic aspects of Dom, where spy intelligence and tracking where other people are in their streaks is incentivized.

We’ve got people who’ve already effectively had White nerfed into the ground because they were, for a long time, losing at Dom because of raiding.

Why is “nerfing” always the solution? If we implemented all the proposed nerfs, we’d all be communist little bastards who’d only be getting about 300 scoops max, regardless of how much time and dedication one has put into the game, in an entire Dom week. With so much destruction, one single person could wipe out your progress easily. Not exactly hard if, by the luck of the draw, you or your klan happens to have one less player in the bracket, or someone just randomly decides to hate you.

Bracket placement (alts, klans and enemies) is the single most unbalancing aspect of Dom, but nobody really gives a **** because 90% of the committed Dom players are a few select klans, many of which act as if they’re the same one.

The fact that being on at the last hour of Dom ending is the second most unbalancing aspect of Dom, as it’s one of the only ways to avoid gang-enjoy caused by the overpowered destruction, also seems to be okay, because a majority of the most vocal and obsessed players are American and/or don’t have jobs/lives and will always manage to be around. But that must not be a big problem to push for, because if that tiny minority can win under a system, it’s not a big deal to mention in anything other than pbuming.

Basically, things only seem to be a problem if they’re causing people to lose.

It’s important to balance sources of scoops so that a few of the major play styles have a roughly equal chance.

It’s important to balance scoops vs destruction.

It’s important to design Dom in a way that rewards long-term dedication and contribution to the game.

It’s important to design the game in a way that gives people incentive to look at the content.

It’s important to consider that not everyone can be online at certain times.

It’s important to make there be reward for being in a Klan and using teamwork and team strategy.

It’s important, also, to not bow so much to individual styles and preferences that the objectives and rewards are so diverse and scattered, that nobody really cares about the same thing anymore. Give a trophy for a hundred different things, and suddenly nobody really cares to compete anymore, since the achievements are devalued.

Nerfs are not the only way to balance things. An additive approach is generally more fun and rewarding. Things should be a problem because they’re illogical, not just because they happen to be ****ing off a certain clbum or group of player who basically wants to eliminate all competition by whining it into oblivion.

Many things in this game need to be tinkered with, with a spirit of experimentation and unbiased logic. With the goals being to keep people playing and getting more to do so… not to please the obsessed and entrenched.

—Bashy