Discussion Juber's gbg suggestions

[1BFA]

Any appetite here to increase the 4hr timer.. I understand inno wants us to live on the game...however in my humble opinion reducing the stress on GBG leaders may actually benefit the game in long run as I see many GBG leaders are sick and tired of running the maps.

 

[iPenguinPat]

As this topic came up here: https://forum.beta.forgeofempires.c...ding-recent-feedback.15456/page-9#post-133853
I wanted to create a separate thread to discuss this.
I will also share the other suggestions I made for gbg and you can write, what you think.
These "Problems" are just what I personally observed. They have no official value and are just things I as a player noticed.

Problem	Solution
Currently League points have a hard cap of 1000 points and guilds always receive the same amount of points for the same places. Many guilds reach this and get randomly assigned enemy guilds. I think this is not optimal, because this will lead to 1-3 very strong guilds dominating the map and the others have no chance. Also, guild rankings are currently determined by GvG only, because most guilds at the top have 1000 LP and get the same amount of prestige.	Have a soft cap. This means, instead of gaining 175 points for P1 you get progressively less points, the more you currently have. You also loose more points then. The 1000 cap will be removed. This could look like that: Current points P1 gain P2 gain P3 gain P4 gain P5 gain P6 gain P7 gain P8 gain 1111 1 -5 -17 -33 -55 -77 -99 -111 1000 10 0 -10 -20 -40 -60 -80 -100 924 28 5 -5 -12 -34 -54 -72 -92 900 30 5 0 -10 -30 -50 -70 -90 700 80 40 10 0 -10 -30 -50 -70 500 100 60 30 10 0 -10 -30 -50 200 150 100 70 40 10 0 -10 -20 0 200 160 100 60 40 20 10 0 It will push most active guilds from 1000 LP down to around 500 and the very best will get more league points, while not so good current 1000 LP guilds, will have progressively less points. It also gives a bigger motivation to stay on top, but very much limits how much you can achieve. As you may have also noticed, I also decreased the amount of points you receive/loose. This is because I think you get through the leagues way too fast currently. Forge is a long term game so going to the top leagues should also take a while. This should solve most or even all issues regarding matchmaking, guilds, that can't do anything on their battleground, too random matchmaking and guild rankings. This would also result in guilds playing against the same ones more often. But this is not as big as a problem, as they are now better matched against others, that are just as strong. If this could be a problem, there could be a bit of variation added in terms of what guild will play against what guild. This means, instead of always following the same pattern of sorting them by LP and assigning the battleground, some guilds with less/more LP could be shuffled in the order, but not much.
Having 5 camps makes it possible to do fights without attrition. This leads to many battles done by players and giving them way too many resources.	Always have at least 1% chance to gain attrition. This change will not decrease the amount a lot, but is a limiter, that can't be broken by full guild treasuries. Another solution from other players is, instead of adding the percentages, multiplicate them. In this case, the attrition reduction could also be increased to make it easier for smaller guilds. This would lead to this: Camps old attrition chance new attrition chance new with 30% attrition reduction new with 40% attrition reduction new with 50% attrition reduction 1 76% 76% 70% 60% 50% 2 52% 58% 49% 36% 25% 3 28% 44% 34% 21% 13% 4 4% 33% 24% 13% 6% 5 0% 25% 17% 8% 3% 6 0% 19% 12% 5% 2% 7 0% 15% 8% 3% 1% 8 0% 11% 6% 2% 0%
In higher leagues, there is not enough space for 8 active guilds to have a fair fight. In lower leagues, most of the map goes untouched for a whole season.	Have less guilds in higher leagues and more in lower leagues on one map. Proposal: League guilds on map Diamond 4 Platinum 6 Gold 8 Silver 12 Copper 16
Guilds in Diamond leagues need a change and motivation to get to the top.	Have a "Masters" league. There, only the best 4? guilds will participate. There will only be one battleground in this league. It gives special rewards, like exclusive units/barracks, goods from player defined age and building vouchers for gbg buildings.
The 2 week rhythm is too long/short for players.	Have changing battleground lengths. A season could be extended to 3 weeks. A season is divided into active phase and off time. The active time can be between 10 days and 18 days, while the off time is between 11 days and 3 days. This time is random and is the same for the current battleground, but not all battlegrounds during one season.
Smaller guilds have problems getting away from their starting province, because they have to fight with full attrition.	Don't increase attrition for provinces next to your starting province.
Battlegrounds is very repetitive. The 2 maps are too similar.	Introduce a couple new maps with many differences. These can include: different amount of guilds on one map exclusive new buildings on that map removal/change of certain buildings on this map other province lock times longer/shorter seasons new grid patterns
Popups are annoying, when doing fights.	Don't display popups while you are on the gbg map and show all rewards you got in the new window introduced for the Castle System, when you leave the map.
Guilds block sectors by having them at 159/160 fights.	Reduce the amount of needed progress on a province by X (or X%) every hour. This would make it very hard to plan a sector locking and would also make it easier for smaller guilds to get provinces. Provinces will have a min. amount of progress this can go down to (maybe half).

And there we have it, all my ideas, that when combined (in one way or another) would fix the issues most are concerned about. But please tell me what you think. Did I miss anything, do you think the ideas are good? What ideas are not good and what would you change?

I would love to see your comments.
Please also note, that this is just a discussion. These are just my personal ideas and nothing that will/can be implemented. If you want any official information, look at the announcements.

Lots of good ideas and points here. Main missing issues:
1) Several of the ideas would lead to farming fights in an abusive way. Of course, reducing SC effectiveness will dramatically help that.
2) Still not enough real incentive to "win.' Even if it means you get a few more LP or whatever, without some sort of significant incentive to be first, guild will continue to farm regardless of SC/attrition rules.
3) Leading is too time-consuming. 4hr locks are just too short. semi noted already.
4) If SCs are nerfed and attrition does start to stack, large guilds will start to have an even bigger attrition advantage over smaller guilds. Things like traps vs. small guild will be absolutely crushing without siege camps. There needs to be some sort of weight division to level the playing field.

--- proposed solution would be to implement a cross-server gbg and use a proper elo system instead of the current rank point system in place. One challenge with your point system is that it will push too many mediocre guilds into groups with stronger guilds - perhaps even more so than now. With everything pushing hard toward 500, weaker guilds will run into stronger guilds at a lower league level much more often. They might move right back up. A proper elo where the rank of the guilds that finish in front of you or behind you would do a better job of keeping strong guilds and weak guilds where they belong.

Strong guilds should be able to advance more quickly by beating the harder competition, and/or should not get sent spiraling back to the lower leagues because the top 2 guilds team up and trap them. When 2 strong guilds get together, they can basically push another guild to the bottom and allow everyone else to pass the targeted guild.

the 159/160 issue is hard to fix because there are so many ways it can be abused for more fights. It seems to me the best way to reduce soft locks would be to 1) add extra incentive to have a higher score such that guilds would prefer not to allow other guilds to hold sectors forever. and 2) give guilds more reason to fight each other instead of team-up. 3) add more risk to priming/soft locking sectors.
Right now, there is risk of someone else stealing it and/or getting cut off. Usually, the guild with the soft lock holds all the cards. If the guild in a defensive position tries to make a rush to either steal or cut off the guild soft locking, They risk failing and being blown out on attrition for the rest of the day with no real benefit or means to counterattack. --- Adding some sort of way to bypass a soft lock to force the controlling guild to flip could help. For example, a building that allowed a guild to attack and/or stay connected 2 sectors away instead of just 1.or maybe give the HQ extra "attack" range to help bypass front door soft locks.

Another option that could be cool would be a tower/buff that keeps a sector locked longer, BUT it cannot be deleted once built and would be destroyed as soon as the sector opened (to prevent guilds from deleting to build siege camps and/or allow a friendly guild to take it while the other guild(s) arent watching.)

An issue not mentioned is treasury imbalance. The way costs are calculated makes it so that a ban requirement for a single good can totally wreck a guild's treasury. This is especially a problem for guilds trying to recruit early age players. Treasury in early ages tends to not be well developed and early age player do not tend to make a ton of guild goods (or their own goods to donate). That means it makes more sense for GBG-focused guilds to reject all early-age players. This means the rich get richer and early age players don't get the benefit of being in a strong guild. (this might be inno's goal since having proper support replaces a lot of the things that players spend diamonds on.).

anyhow, cool that you're throwing out ideas as a player. It's cool that at least 1 person at innogames seems to care about something other than the bottom line.

 

[iPenguinPat]

On yeah. one other idea i forgot - increase cost per building like with GVG. as guilds gather more sectors and build more SC's (or buildings in general), the cost could increase. The amount would need to be cumulative. This would force guilds to be more strategic about when and where they build siege camps. Deleting buildings should not reset/reduce the building counter - only sector changes should reset the cost. So if a guild builds 3sc, then deletes and builds 3 traps, then deletes and builds 3 forts, that would count as 9 buildings added to the cumulative count until another guild takes the sector.

This answers a lot of issues as it makes soft locking sectors cost-prohibitive over time. It would force dominant gbg guilds to manage treasury more carefully rather than blindly building SC's in every slot available. It would also help smaller guilds to afford to fight for the little patch of the map they do have access to.

In fact, this would help with the vast majority of farming issues. Yes there are workaround - but it would still dramatically reduce the cost-effectiveness.

And one other - the personal rewards favor selfish players that only fight on low attrition sectors. it can lead to a lot of internal fighting in guilds. Increasing guild-wide rewards and reducing individual rewards would help to promote teamwork rather than selfish players.

 

[Thunderdome]

On the flipping other drivers off thing, I only give the one-fingered salute to those deserving of one.

I agree wholeheartedly that players who are not active should not get any rewards. Because of my travel requirements in the real life (and some other things that always land me in the hospital), I often got booted from guilds because I wasn't active enough. I hold nothing against them as they needed active players, so that's why I am in my own guild now, so I can play the game on my own time. If I don't participate, I expect to get nothing in return (or demoted), but at least I can do it on my own.

For now, I got the message welcoming me (and my 1-player guild) into the Gold league. Going to put a few methods to the test as I also had aged up as well (Tomorrow Era) but I am going to have a fun time in doing so.

 

[Yekk]

why should not active players get the rewards? If you don't play GE you don't get anything either. There are many, many players just parking in top guilds and collecting SoHs in their cities, which makes it look like they would be active in gbg. Maybe my limit is too high, that can be discussed. I have 2 one-player-guilds and there is never a problem to achieve this, it's less than the daily fights and negs you need for the castle system. So why reward lazy players?

Just because they do not fight does not in any way mean they do not contribute... Their goods pay for the SC's needed. That alone gets them the basic reward. Fighting/Negotiating gets them much more if they choose.

 

[Amdira]

Just because they do not fight does not in any way mean they do not contribute... Their goods pay for the SC's needed. That alone gets them the basic reward. Fighting/Negotiating gets them much more if they choose.

Just because your brother is playing soccer, you won't get the trophy - even if you are supporting his club by buying a ticket for the stadion .
GbG should be a teamplay just like GE and rewarded like this. That's why it's called guild battle and not farmers battle btw

 

[DEADP00L]

And why not start the 4 hour timer as soon as the sector exceeds 140/160 instead of starting as soon as it is at 160/160?

 

[Owl II]

Just because they do not fight does not in any way mean they do not contribute... Their goods pay for the SC's needed. That alone gets them the basic reward. Fighting/Negotiating gets them much more if they choose.

The activity of the players of each guild can only be evaluated by the leaders of this guild. The game doesn't end on GBG. And the players are not robots. Someone has reduced their activity for a month or two. But then he will return to his high participation. Someone comes to the GVG. Someone is helping to align GB. Someone built SoН and HoF. It gives power to guild levels... Damn, someone is just talking in threads, and this is important part of the guild's life as well. Any judgment about the activity of the players will be incorrect. Only the leaders and players can decide what their guild needs.

 

[Owl II]

And why not start the 4 hour timer as soon as the sector exceeds 140/160 instead of starting as soon as it is at 160/160?

Why are you looking only one way all the time? We have no rivals in the current season. We beat 159/160 and wait for the participants to pass on. If we close, they will never get out. Would that be better?

 

[DEADP00L]

Why are you looking only one way all the time? We have no rivals in the current season. We beat 159/160 and wait for the participants to pass on. If we close, they will never get out. Would that be better?

In this very particular case, you will stop at 139/160!

 

[Owl II]

In this very particular case, you will stop at 139/160!

But we can stop at 139 in another case The truth is that any tool can be used both for good and for harm.

 

[Amdira]

The activity of the players of each guild can only be evaluated by the leaders of this guild. The game doesn't end on GBG. And the players are not robots. Someone has reduced their activity for a month or two. But then he will return to his high participation. Someone comes to the GVG. Someone is helping to align GB. Someone built SoН and HoF. It gives power to guild levels... Damn, someone is just talking in threads, and this is important part of the guild's life as well. Any judgment about the activity of the players will be incorrect. Only the leaders and players can decide what their guild needs.

Agree. My point is, why do players get rewards for something they don't participate in and why is the whole guild rewarded for the "work" of a handfull of greedy farmers? Why can a guild call themselves a successfull gbg guild, if there are only about 30-50% (10-15% hyperactive farmers and about 30-35% average active gbg players and the rest not participating) actually active in gbg? You cannot win a 133.3% battle in GE and claim P1, if there is just a single one inactive or even less active as the rest, but you can claim P1 in gbg with just a hand full farmers. If you don't play GE 4 you won't get a TF, but in gbg you can build a SoH even in BA. I don't think this is fair.
There are lots of guilds who don't care about ranking, placement and credits, but if you want call yourself a gbg guild, it should be one.

 

[Owl II]

Agree. My point is, why do players get rewards for something they don't participate in and why is the whole guild rewarded for the "work" of a handfull of greedy farmers? Why can a guild call themselves a successfull gbg guild, if there are only about 30-50% (10-15% hyperactive farmers and about 30-35% average active gbg players and the rest not participating) actually active in gbg? You cannot win a 133.3% battle in GE and claim P1, if there is just a single one inactive or even less active as the rest, but you can claim P1 in gbg with just a hand full farmers. If you don't play GE 4 you won't get a TF, but in gbg you can build a SoH even in BA. I don't think this is fair.
There are lots of guilds who don't care about ranking, placement and credits, but if you want call yourself a gbg guild, it should be one.

Players are not robots. GBG is not GE. You play GE when it's convenient for you. GBG must be played when the sector has opened. Maximum participation in speed battles is required In combat seasons. Whoever was able to come to the attack in greater numbers won. If someone is "lucky" so all provinces are blocked when he can be in the game, the player is not to blame for this. Sometimes a player who came in the evening and got killed on the 4th line made the result for the whole night. But it also happens otherwise. Greedy farmers who fight among themselves for every fight with 4+SC are more than just useless. They ruin the atmosphere. And it kills guilds.

 

[.Chris]

How about changing the strict 4-hour lock to something more random? Say between 3-6 hours.
That would make swapping a lot harder since it's not enough to just log on every 4 hours, fight, swap sectors and log off again.

 

[Owl II]

How about changing the strict 4-hour lock to something more random? Say between 3-6 hours.
That would make swapping a lot harder since it's not enough to just log on every 4 hours, fight, swap sectors and log off again.

This will complicate the swapping but it will not change the essence. "We gave you a feeder. But we drove a couple of sharp nails into the bottom so that you wouldn't be too happy

 

[Amdira]

Players are not robots. GBG is not GE. You play GE when it's convenient for you. GBG must be played when the sector has opened. Maximum participation in speed battles is required In combat seasons. Whoever was able to come to the attack in greater numbers won. If someone is "lucky" so all provinces are blocked when he can be in the game, the player is not to blame for this. Sometimes a player who came in the evening and got killed on the 4th line made the result for the whole night. But it also happens otherwise. Greedy farmers who fight among themselves for every fight with 4+SC are more than just useless. They ruin the atmosphere. And it kills guilds.

Agree again. Maybe we are just talking in different languages - I also feel the greedy farmers are the biggest reason for imbalance and frustration in gbg. Therefore I made some suggestions earlier to make it more difficult for them. Additional Inno could implement a special league for them (above Diamond), which can only be reached with a 100% particiipation of the guild. Then GLs would have to decide whether to rearrange their guild into a farmers guild with only highly players who can fight against same minded guilds in the new premium league or whether they prefer to be just an "average", but more familar guild, which is content with playing in diamond or lower just for fun.

 

[.Chris]

Agreed, it wouldn't change the essence - if it did it wouldn't be GBG anymore ^^

I don't think any ONE measure will solve the problems.

Another idea:
Each SC that affects a sector increases the lock time for the guild owning the SC by - say 15 min (subject to change of course).

 

[Owl II]

Agree again. Maybe we are just talking in different languages - I also feel the greedy farmers are the biggest reason for imbalance and frustration in gbg. Therefore I made some suggestions earlier to make it more difficult for them. Additional Inno could implement a special league for them (above Diamond), which can only be reached with a 100% particiipation of the guild. Then GLs would have to decide whether to rearrange their guild into a farmers guild with only highly players who can fight against same minded guilds in the new premium league or whether they prefer to be just an "average", but more familar guild, which is content with playing in diamond or lower just for fun.

FOE is a model of our society. Our game is what we made. Maybe that's the only reason we love it. We don't need to demand Inno protect us from greedy farmers or lazy dependents. Only we can do it ourselves.

 

[Yekk]

Just because your brother is playing soccer, you won't get the trophy - even if you are supporting his club by buying a ticket for the stadium .
GbG should be a teamplay just like GE and rewarded like this. That's why it's called guild battle and not farmers battle btw

Bad bad analogy... He plays soccer, I am not on his team... My guild members are though on the team. They farm and as owl says it is not your choice what happens in my guild. It is the guilds. Yours is another excellent example of why Inno should keep its hands off major changes in GBG.

 

[CrashBoom]

there are soccer players which are considered world champion but didn't play one minute
they only were in the team which was participating in the tournament



so soccer is actually a very good example were you don't need to play only being member of the team