Discussion Guild Battlegrounds Watchtower and Siege Camp Ability Re-balance

[Beta King]

Really i don't think you understand it ,

Without the cap they just face the same problem , they are the only big guild on the map.
Second why say punished with the cap? No it's an adjustment to avoid the endless fighting and farming.
Third i said it's not our fault , because first there was a reaction here from him because we were not on the map yet, and when we are and doing what we can the second reaction is to push us again to hq so we have to fight again with full attrition, well go ahead i said because that is very smart they will have even less possibility to fight or they just want to make us a target.

But hold on you said that this nerf would keep the smaller guilds from being pushed against their HQ??? I think this proves you were mistaken... Maybe late tonight when they run out of attrition you might be able to squeeze in a tile or 2 we shall see. Yekk Vs Jovada, grab your popcorn and gather around folks its gonna be a "Battle"!

 

[jovada]

But hold on you said that this nerf would keep the smaller guilds from being pushed against their HQ??? I think this proves you were mistaken... Maybe late tonight when they run out of attrition you might be able to squeeze in a tile or 2 we shall see. Yekk Vs Jovada, grab your popcorn and gather around folks its gonna be a "Battle"!

What is it with you people always misquoting

First it's an adjustment not a nerf.
Second yes smaller guilds can take more sectors, and yes after two days you can push them again and again against their hq, but they have the possibilty to always come back , and even if they do nothing anymore then and says face it you to do nothing anymore they are always a winner from the first day because a big guild can't take the whole map in 1 day so the little one have more opportunity with that first day then they had before on 10 days.

 

[Beta King]

What is it with you people always misquoting

First it's an adjustment not a nerf.
Second yes smaller guilds can take more sectors, and yes after two days you can push them again and again against their hq, but they have the possibilty to always come back , and even if they do nothing anymore then and says face it you to do nothing anymore they are always a winner from the first day because a big guild can't take the whole map in 1 day so the little one have more opportunity with that first day then they had before on 10 days.

So Dragonstar will not be able to take over the whole map today? Wish there was a way i could watch this map. You should upload us screenshots throughout the season. Also do you think if there was a second strong guild on your map would they still be able to do swaps or has this "adjustment" stopped that as well?

 

[jovada]

So Dragonstar will not be able to take over the whole map today? Wish there was a way i could watch this map. You should upload us screenshots throughout the season. Also do you think if there was a second strong guild on your map would they still be able to do swaps or has this "adjustment" stopped that as well?

Pfffff it is pure mathematic, maybe at the end of the day a big guild can have the whole map , but not from the start so little onces have opportunity.
Second what you say is pure nonsens , every body can swap , a little one can also swap a few tiles with a big guild, and two big guilds swapping sure will control the map but yes the "adjustment" will limit them at some point and you will not see every 4h the whole map covered with slots or flags 159/160.
And if they don't adapt a little bit and still do all the swapping , then it's only because the greedy mentality that they forged during two years still has the upperhand.

 

[Emberguard]

There's also the principle that game designers should not always listen to their players - because players will always want more, but that does not necessarily lead to a good/enduring game.

It’s important when listening to also understand. Without understanding then you can only either take everything at face value OR reject things on the basis of your own vision.

When a person presents a solution (usually) they’re not telling you the problem, they’re only telling you what they think would solve the problem. Which of course also takes away the opportunity for the other party to come up with anything better if they don’t identify the underlying reason for the suggestion

The underlying problem is far more important than the idea itself. Some ideas are great and could be used as is, but often once you understand why the idea was brought up then you can come up with a better solution. So do listen, but listen to the underlying problem and whether it’s coming from experience or inexperience so it can be approached with understanding, not just skipping straight to the solution

Also, most ideas presented tend to contain compromises based on what they think will be accepted or because it’s the best they could come up with, not based on what they actually want. This particular idea had a lot of support in the past whenever put forth. But how many were voting yes on a anything-is-better-than-current-status-quo basis, and how many said yes because they actually wanted that specific solution?

The contempt i have is for the Less capable guilds and players begging for this nerf so they can get just as many rewards without having to do the work of building a strong guild or building a strong city to be wanted in a strong guild or possible they aren't capable of doing so after years of failing. I

The smaller Guilds just want to be able to play without their growth being stunted from being overwhelmed.

In rounds where the smaller (motivated) Guilds are against other smaller (motivated) Guilds, everyone gets to grow. In rounds where there’s too big of a power disparity, only the top gets to grow (exception being if the top decides to let others in on the farming). Everyone elses growth stagnates from what they otherwise would have been capable of if the absolute top wasn’t suppressing everyone else.

However, there also aren’t enough top Guilds of the same power dynamic to give them all equal opponents. Certainly not right at the very top if we’re sticking to 8 Guilds per island.

The degree in which this (particular aspect) is a problem changes from server to server, world to world and over time due to diplomacy changes between Guilds. While it hasn’t disappeared, it’s certainly decreased over time due to more Guilds being allowed into the swapping

Bottom line, the top will always grow because there’s nothing to stop them from growing. The bottom can only grow if they have room available to do so (regardless of effort put in)

One idea I’ve seen come up is put league(s) above Diamond. I’m thinking any League added above Diamond to sort out the 1,000 LP section may need to also reduce number of Guilds per island, or keep it at 8 but provide a larger map

where is the joy? for me it's the competition and the tactics that go with it, but seems we don't want this, we all just want to be allowed out to play nice, hold hands and sing kumbaya.

If comes in GBG really needs a new name as 'battle' will be ironic

I agree. Competition is far more fun than farming, Love a healthy competition. However a healthy competition needs limitations that prevents any one side from being unbeatable, while also making it worthwhile for everyone involved.

I’m not sure what solution would achieve that… and be accepted by the community… and not create additional problems or other loopholes

I think we all understand the dynamics of GBG. It's farming for rewards. Perhaps a very small percentage of players think it's about competition between guilds for bragging rights but, the vast majority of active GBG participants are in it for the rewards. If anything else was closer to the truth there would be no need for "checkerboards". I play on 5 worlds on the US server. Every GBG battleground is a checkerboard, some more elegant than others but all checkerboards. Anybody putting in 8K+ battles per season that claims this is about "competition" isn't smelling what he's shovelling.

yeah. It *started* as competition, over time it became about farming. Now people are used to farming, and new players are introduced to it based on the concept of farming

 

[Owl II]

I don't understand what kind of problem you all have with the 4-hour lockdown. This is a design feature: blocking is the only way to protect the province. Go back to the description of the concept that the developer gave when creating this gameplay. Seeking to block a province is the natural behavior of guilds. Healthy behavior. And healthy behavior is to prevent this intention. But do not sit and cry that you are not allowed to play.

We see is unhealthy behavior here. Our entire territory is not protected and we risk losing it at any moment. This contradicts the concept. This contradicts the guild's healthy desire to defend itself. And the guild is taking action. It is preparing own passage for the next 4 hours. It hangs up the flag and waits for the province nearby to be captured by the enemy. So the designer came up with it. If you don't like it, let's increase the blocking time. Let's reduce the blocking time. Let's remove the blocking time. But you have to hit the province to take it. And not sit and cry

 

[Beta King]

This round we sleep, glad I did my 315 fights for today, see you next round lads.

Spoiler

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Do you think with this change the really strong larger guilds will have to break up into smaller guilds of maybe only 10 hard fighters otherwise there wont be enough fights for everyone after day 2 maybe, looking at that map you will be starved for fights long before the end of the season even with the SC cap? Then every guild can make 3-4 sister guilds(Dragonstar-1, Dragonstar-2...) then they can coordinate together on maps as a team some times.

 

[Owl II]

Beta is the sleepy realm. And the nerf camps put it to sleep even more. Today I participated in the race. It was short seconds befor nerf, filled with adrenaline. Filled with emotions, it doesn't matter if you lost or won. Today it lasted 40 minutes. 40. I got a headache at the end and I closed the game for the whole day. Beta is the sleepy realm. But if GBG is like this on live servers, I just won't be able to play physically

 

[Shalimar the Brave]

I don't understand what kind of problem you all have with the 4-hour lockdown. This is a design feature: blocking is the only way to protect the province. Go back to the description of the concept that the developer gave when creating this gameplay. Seeking to block a province is the natural behavior of guilds. Healthy behavior. And healthy behavior is to prevent this intention. But do not sit and cry that you are not allowed to play.

We see is unhealthy behavior here. Our entire territory is not protected and we risk losing it at any moment. This contradicts the concept. This contradicts the guild's healthy desire to defend itself. And the guild is taking action. It is preparing own passage for the next 4 hours. It hangs up the flag and waits for the province nearby to be captured by the enemy. So the designer came up with it. If you don't like it, let's increase the blocking time. Let's reduce the blocking time. Let's remove the blocking time. But the province needs to be beaten to take it. And not sit and cry

My problem with the 4 hour lock from a guild leadership standpoint is that it isn't long enough - make it 6 or 8 hours. But of course Inno wants people to be engaged in the game more frequently, which is the reason for the four hour lock to begin with. If players burn out their attrition early, it defeats the purpose of the four hour lock keeping people engaged, because only the leaders will be coming back every four hours to make sure there is coverage. While I can see a purpose for capping attrition reduction, I think that the cap as currently in place is too drastic.

 

[Beta King]

I don't understand what kind of problem you all have with the 4-hour lockdown. This is a design feature: blocking is the only way to protect the province. Go back to the description of the concept that the developer gave when creating this gameplay. Seeking to block a province is the natural behavior of guilds. Healthy behavior. And healthy behavior is to prevent this intention. But do not sit and cry that you are not allowed to play.

We see is unhealthy behavior here. Our entire territory is not protected and we risk losing it at any moment. This contradicts the concept. This contradicts the guild's healthy desire to defend itself. And the guild is taking action. It is preparing own passage for the next 4 hours. It hangs up the flag and waits for the province nearby to be captured by the enemy. So the designer came up with it. If you don't like it, let's increase the blocking time. Let's reduce the blocking time. Let's remove the blocking time. But the province needs to be beaten to take it. And not sit and cry

Now that they have put a hard cap on the amounts of fights that any given guild can do per day they might as well do away with the timers completely and people will have to diamond SCs and WTs if they want use of them. Do what you can until you use your attrition all at once and close GBG for the day simple as that. Many leaders will not babysit a map if they are out of attrition early in the AM i'm sure if there is even a reason to watch the map anymore after this.

 

[Owl II]

Many leaders will not babysit a map if they are out of attrition early in the AM i'm sure.

They won't want to, but they will have to. Otherwise, what kind of leaders are they?

 

[Emberguard]

They won't want to, but they will have to. Otherwise, what kind of leaders are they?

if a leader is babysitting, they either have people that aren’t paying attention, or they’re micromanaging. A good leader enables those around them to be able to thrive and make choices in the leaders absence. A babysitter is only necessary if the leader doesn’t trust those they’re leading to make choices

 

[xivarmy]

My problem with the 4 hour lock from a guild leadership standpoint is that it isn't long enough - make it 6 or 8 hours. But of course Inno wants people to be engaged in the game more frequently, which is the reason for the four hour lock to begin with. If players burn out their attrition early, it defeats the purpose of the four hour lock keeping people engaged, because only the leaders will be coming back every four hours to make sure there is coverage. While I can see a purpose for capping attrition reduction, I think that the cap as currently in place is too drastic.

The purpose of the only-4-hr lock isn't to make individual people play more frequently:

It's a balance between: something be open frequently yet allowing a guild to gain some value from what they took - so that when someone who for instance has 1 specific hr a day to play logs in there's a good chance there's something to do. As well as when someone takes a sector from a bigger guild it isn't taken back 30 seconds later before they gain any VP.

Which is also the problem with total-map-lockdowns that flip every 4 hours, that there probably isn't anything for 1 hr a day player to do when they get on - they're likely looking at locks, whether they're in the little guild or bigger guild.

The fact that the *entire* map flips *every* 4 hours is what attrition is supposed to counter - that at some point guilds will run out of attrition and have to make choices of what not to do. So when 1-hr-a-day guy gets on, there's something for him to do somewhere.

Attrition needs to be something that runs out for everyone.

---

The other point is rather than considering the direct impact of what happens in diamond, there's also indirect effects that have changed how people approach the game outside of diamond. When GBG was shiny and new, almost everyone just tried to do their best, and that was good. Yes there was HQing, and maybe occasional lockouts - but every round was different. And if you were in over your head for a round, it was just 1 round and next round you'd get a good competition again.

Now it's far too consistent - every diamond round locked out, almost every platinum round a snooze that sends you back to diamond unless you sandbag.

The reasons this changed are multifold - a deficient ranking system that inflated diamond far too much is part of it, people catching on that "siege camps are OP" is part of it, and part of it is adaptation (i.e. the motivation of "in an ideal world I want to fight for rewards but not win in platinum so I don't go back to diamond" - enough guilds doing that has turned platinum into a non-competition).

This nerf addresses two points of that :
1) "siege camps are OP" - well they'll still be powerful, but they'll have their limits. And maybe that means there won't be locks all around when once-a-day guy arrives.
2) adaptation - currently the gap between a platinum round where you might have 10 times the fights of a diamond round is so wide as to encourage avoiding diamond, if possible, over prizing the additional value in diamond. If it's reduced to no more than 3 times the fights because siege camps aren't perfect, it reduces the motivation to sandbag in platinum. So you might have more guilds actively trying in platinum and just taking what they can get in diamond.

 

[Shalimar the Brave]

if a leader is babysitting, they either have people that aren’t paying attention, or they’re micromanaging. A good leader enables those around them to be able to thrive and make choices in the leaders absence. A babysitter is only necessary if the leader doesn’t trust those they’re leading to make choices

A good leader won't be babysitting, but they will be present multiple times a day to coordinate their team and give instructions whether or not there is any personal benefit to them. With the SC nerf, that responsibility will include organizing teams based on attrition management as well.

 

[Owl II]

if a leader is babysitting, they either have people that aren’t paying attention, or they’re micromanaging. A good leader enables those around them to be able to thrive and make choices in the leaders absence. A babysitter is only necessary if the leader doesn’t trust those they’re leading to make choices

I do not know what you are talking about. I wrote about tactical tasks to control this part of the gameplay. Make a schedule, gather players to attack. make a decision, close the province, or no. Coordinate with partners if there are partners in the group. Such things are performed by a group of leaders. They could be involved easily in the process of capturing provinces themselves before Nerf. But I can't imagine how it will work now. One of our beta leaders did over 400 negotiations last season. I understand well where this figure came from. Probably not because he likes negotiations.

 

[jovada]

Do you think with this change the really strong larger guilds will have to break up into smaller guilds of maybe only 10 hard fighters otherwise there wont be enough fights for everyone after day 2 maybe, looking at that map you will be starved for fights long before the end of the season even with the SC cap? Then every guild can make 3-4 sister guilds(Dragonstar-1, Dragonstar-2...) then they can coordinate together on maps as a team some times.

Again what ridiculous arguments, just like that guild all players were equal fighters , no it is almost in every big guild always the same 5 who did a lot , then a other few who were allowed also to do fights with 0 attrition and another few (or doubles) that take the sectors with full attrition.

So explain again why they should split in several guildes ???? Before some players angry because it were always the same who took the profit left a guild to make their own guild and try to farm as lot as possible , i see no other reason why there are 3manguilds.

 

[Owl II]

The fact that the *entire* map flips *every* 4 hours is what attrition is supposed to counter - that at some point guilds will run out of attrition and have to make choices of what not to do. So when 1-hr-a-day guy gets on, there's something for him to do somewhere.

Attrition needs to be something that runs out for everyone.

I have already written above: the protection of the province is a natural aspiration of guilds. This is how the design is implemented. They will do it as long as they can. But if they can't, they won't play it, that's all. Strong guilds will be able to, despite the nerf. But this will cause all sorts of restructuring and migration.

 

[Beta King]

Again what ridiculous arguments, just like that guild all players were equal fighters , no it is almost in every big guild always the same 5 who did a lot , then a other few who were allowed also to do fights with 0 attrition and another few (or doubles) that take the sectors with full attrition.

So explain again why they should split in several guildes ???? Before some players angry because it were always the same who took the profit left a guild to make their own guild and try to farm as lot as possible , i see no other reason why there are 3manguilds.

Looking at that map Ninjalin will not be able to get near as many fights this season as last season due to the weaker guilds not turning enough tiles every day to satisfy all the attrition of their members so why would they not split up so they can all use their attrition every day?

 

[xivarmy]

I have already written above: the protection of the province is a natural aspiration of guilds. This is how the design is implemented. They will do it as long as they can. But if they can't, they won't play it, that's all. Strong guilds will be able to, despite the nerf. But this will cause all sorts of restructuring and migration.

It's fine that they aspire to it. It's not fine that they succeed with such regularity. It's the job of the system to challenge them.

And to totally lockout everyone else it'll take at least 2 of those "very strong" guilds. Doing behavior that is potentially otherwise sub-optimum to the interests of their farmers. i.e. they could probably still have max-siege-effect flipping in the center 2 (or 3 in waterfall) rings and lock guilds out at that level. Or they can try to lock people in HQ and leave the center more stagnant - but probably get less fights doing so as not every HQ will have 4-siege support on it. And if they are HQing guilds, those guilds might just give them actually-meaningful-traps to eat the next time on top. There's more options for counterplay when there's more pressure on the resources of the top guilds.

In general though, my experience is the *really strong* guilds are far less vitriolic than the *farmer* guilds. Strong guilds are not worried if you get out, because they'll contain you later as needed - they may HQ you at times (especially if they have a warring rival), but they also leave you opportunities often.

Furthermore, the changes don't have to create positive change in how every guild acts, just some. If your guild wants to go for total domination with an allied guild helping at the exclusion of other considerations, that's fine - you're 1 group. The question is how guilds in aggregate will act - which will take time to find out

 

[DEADP00L]

You ask "According to your criteria, what are we?" My answer is in the wrong league...

You are a big mean bully in platinum doing 80k fights

except that on the last 39 CBGs we have only been 3 times in Platinum, 10 times in light diamond and 26 times in 1,000 LP.
When I tell you that you have a narrow vision of things considering that there are 20 "real" guilds per world and the rest of lazy people.
If we are not in the right league (which I also think) then the diamond league should only group 20 to 40 guilds, or 5 groupings maximum.
And in 6 months the big guilds will be divided into 2 because they will be tired of always fighting between them while in Platinum we will earn more because we will never be blocked.