Country Invasion has been a part of War Clicks since the start, but we were never fully happy with the experience it conveyed – we always wanted it to be a cool addition to the game and require some teamwork to achieve common goals. We already had huge reasons to rework it (and how) but about 2 weeks ago we asked for your opinions as well, to get a broader picture of not what just we want – but also that it’s aligned with thoughts and desires of our community – and we are happy to say that we all see similar issues and see similar solutions and ideas to make it way better!

 

The main issues of the existing Country Invasion (CI):

  • lack of teamwork feeling (majority of the damage done by only a few, awful new user experience)
  • lack of properly balanced rewards, especially in late game
  • fights become not interesting/boring/impossible to progress at the certain stages
  • inactive country leader problem – no option to skip bosses if the leader is inactive, lack of other commanding options/decisions
  • treasury has little to no meaning currently. No user benefits from donating
    -More users should have a say in decisions, but to keep sense of „knowing what to do“, the decisions should be at least partly centralized to the top/most experienced players.
  • No teamwork or “country” feeling. There should be fights/battles between countries.
  • very limited chat, that makes it hard to converse and is annoying to use only within CI

 

After taking all of that in we had discussed tons of ideas and made an important conclusion – to resolve all of the above and make CI awesome and fun to play for everyone, we had to do it right. We decided that we rather take proper time to rework it than just “do something quickly”. So now, after several weeks of meetings and narrowing things down we have the core of the rework changes  prepared. Our designer has started preparing the design, so we will have first images to share soon! But for now, we would like to briefly list the main changes we will be introducing via the rework:

1. ATTACKING BASES

We will be keeping “attacking bases” as the core progression mechanism as it creates that teamwork experience & goal to strive for. However to make it fun at all points, for all countries and amounts of active players Clicking Force (read CF) will be calculated differently. We will “relatively cap” the maximum difference between the most and least powerful player within a country to ensure EVERYONE has a fun experience attacking. Progression of base health increase will be adjusted much more accurately to ensure a constant progression is available, as CF will NOT scale as much anymore (as it does now with DPC). We will also be limiting each attacking attempt to finishing off one base. Finishing off more bases in one attempt feels weird, plus with the rework it shouldn’t be possible in most situations anyway as it will require a group effort/more attempts. We are also considering changing some mechanics to make it more fun/engaging while attacking.

 

2. SPOILS/ REWARD FOR PARTICIPATING

Spoils will not be battle stars anymore, but “spoil points”, which will simply be shared to attacking players based on damage inflicted. Players will be able to convert them at any time to Battle Stars (and also potential other rewards later) based on their rank/current WarZone progress. This means that the reward from CI will ALWAYS be significant, depending on where in game you are. Gold spoils will work similarly as they do now. This will also allow you to “store” spoil points and convert them for more BS at a later stage in game to get more BS for them. This will also ensure that if a country is “not as strong” or has few players, it might take them longer/days to finish a battle, but they will also be getting a bigger split, so relative player benefit will be similar regardless of country size.

 

3. BOSS BATTLES

Boss battles will remain as they are a crucial mechanic for creating obstacles in progression and make it challenging. However we will cap their “healing” to either a max X times, or make healing progressively smaller each day. This way a country will never get fully stuck on a boss battle without using an air strike. Using an air strike will also grant the full spoils of a boss battle.

 

 

 

4. COUNTRY UPGRADES

We will be introducing various “country upgrades” that countries will be able to vote on. These will be permanent and there will be various types (increased CF for all country members, increased spoil reward, x% less boss health…). This will allow countries to work and build their power collectively.

Every certain period (1/3/7 days) an automatic vote will be initiated for all countries, where countrymen will be able to vote on which type of upgrade to buy during that period (same for all countries, but level of upgrades will vary based on which one a country already has). There will be a free option, and 2 slightly stronger options, that country will be able to buy with gold from their treasury. This will allow for various strategies. And don’t worry about “noobs messing up voting” – more on that later! Countries will be able to get gold from boss battles, donations and Country Vs Country fights.

 

5. DONATING

To stimulate donations that help country progress better, they will give extra benefit to each user. Every X (Say 100) gold donated, user will get a slight increase in CF as well as an increase in voting power – This will give users who donate more slightly bigger spoil shares and more decision and status power within their country.

 

6. VOTING

In each country there will be various important decisions to vote on: When to skip a boss fight, which upgrade to buy and which country to attack in CvC battles.

To ensure a good experience all votes will be started automatically – CvC and upgrades at the start of the day/voting period, and Boss Skips automatically when a Boss Battle is reached. Votes will be accepted either at the end of the voting period (the higher % wins), or in case of Boss Battles once a certain threshold/majority is reached.

 

Everyone will be able to vote, but each user will have a different voting power. This will be based off player’s rank, donations made, as well as possibly past CI activity. The top 20 players will also form “a council” whose voting power will be multiplied additionally to represent a certain percent of overall voting power. For example, council could have a 60% overall power, which ensures that most experienced players can make quick decisions (especially important in case of Boss Battles), but the rest of the countrymen can help tip the scale if the council is not uniform in their decision. Note that we might also want to adjust the voting % power more into favor of the council in cases like Boss Battles which are time-sensitive.

 

To ensure users vote actively and a country is not held back by inactive users, overall voting power will be based off only active CI players/voters – the same applies to the council. If a council member is not active in voting he/she will lose the position and someone else will take the place – at least until this member decides to become active again.

 

 

7. COUNTRY vs. COUNTRY BATTLES

This is a part we are still finalizing many details on, but as a quick preview here is the general idea (numbers are NOT final) of what we want to do:
Each country will every day be given a vote of which country to attack the next day. 3 random choices from a pool of 10 closest countries in strength (based from 3 countries under them and 7 above them, as this ensures that stronger countries are more likely to be attacked by several countries) – strength will be calculated each day based on overall damage done by a country in attacking battles). This means that a country could be attacked by several other countries each day (we will consider adding a cap/limit based on vote options). Each member from the country will have to decide on which front to participate that day, meaning that countries forces will have to be split. This ensures that even a superior country can lose to a weaker country on a front, if it’s attacked by several countries.
If a country is attacked and loses the front, the attacking country will steal a percent of (unprotected) gold from their treasury, which will go to their treasury and some of it will be shared to all members fighting. We are considering adding an upgrade to the country with which they can protect more of their gold – but most importantly we want to make it so that countries are not discouraged to stockpile gold (i.e. for higher upgrades). We might also be adding other perks for winning a front and participating (i.e. a slight increase of CF, small gold reward or other bonuses).

 

CvC battles themselves we want to design to not be time-zone or user hour-activity dependent, but simply a “24 hour thing”, and the winner is determined at the end of the server day. Plainly put, each user would contribute to “dealing damage” (based on his/her CF) during that battle, and the winner of the CvC would be the country that dealt more damage. It’s tricky to explain without pictures, so just imagine it as a sort of a “rope pulling” competition :)

We also don’t want to make another clicking minigame, so we’d like to make the CvC battles either as a simply strategy or timed-events type of play. And we want it to look/feel cool as well!

 

8. CHAT/ COMMUNICATION

Due to the added teamwork elements we want to make sure you guys have proper chat available, so we will be reworking our chat, to a more sophisticated solution. Firstly we want it to be accessible from anywhere within the game, have cool display options, filtering, spam protection etc. You know, a proper chat! We are also considering adding a public room, that anyone from any country can talk in!

 

9. CHANGING COUNTRIES

We will finally also be adding a change country feature – details of which are yet undecided. It will definitely be a limited option, but we’re considering if we should extend it to sort of a “marketplace” where countries can recruit other players. It’s something we want to do, but most likely not with this update yet.

All in all we now have an overall plan in place of what we want Country Invasion to become! Some mechanics of it will stay the same, but vastly improved, and other cool features will be added! The rework will be done in 2 stages – first without CvC to ensure a smooth transition and not complicate things, then shortly after CvC will be added to it. We want the user experience and interface to be clear and smooth – it will come with a simple tutorial and information to get everyone up to speed!

 

Furthermore due to the extent of changes and overall change in numbers/progression/damage split, it will require a reset of the CI. We will definitely be keeping the details of country treasury gold, but the rest will become non-important with the rework. Don’t worry though, as the rewards and the clicking force of a user will become a much better & constant experience, any “progress gained” within a country will not have an effect  within the new version and thus will provide a great experience (and rewards!) from the start.

 

We hope to share some first pictures next week as well as more details of the functions and other specifics. Please let us know in the comments if you have any questions or first feedback regarding the rework – there’s many little details for each of the change that we couldn’t include in an already long post :)

A big thank you to all who have submitted feedback regarding the Country Invasion changes so far as it helped us shape some of the decisions properly!