Discussion Guild Battlegrounds Watchtower and Siege Camp Ability Re-balance

[Thunderdome]

Where do I find this poll?

It was just added. So you might have to refresh the forum if you were still on the thread.

 

[prince chaki royalpants]

Facing guilds that are spending diamonds on traps/forts was really tough already now this will increase the problem, going for "solving" only one side of the problem is not the right solution, all the buildings need the balance to make it fair.

 

[-Alin-]

The second Guild has the advantage of some camps remaining unless the 1st Guild removes them all or sets traps.
In the long run, it is better for Guilds to work together to save treasury goods, even if it does hint at farming.

The first guild will not let the second one take the advantage of camps, they put only traps to stop them and burn the atrition, that's the idea.

We will test tomorrow how things are going if we find a good partner here on beta for a tentative of swap, other guilds will not be that able to advance further.
Rarely happened in our matchmakings to be 3 kind of very active guilds(for beta), and in the past we were many times With Kypiapxoi, now other guilds are weaker in GbG, due to the burnout and GbG grinding routine, at te beggining things were different in beta, especially when Covid hit and everyone was home.

Anyway, I don't except miracles, swaps are dead with this update and people will only want to burn all at the beggining of the day and do completely anything else untill next day. For a final conclusion, are needed few rounds to see the outcome and the REAL power (activity) of guilds.

 

[Ironrooster]

I voted yes.

I think this will make GBG more interesting. But of course, I'll have to actually play it to see. It probably won't solve all the problems at the diamond level, but it is a start.

On Beta I'm in a medium guild of 30-40 players most of whom are fairly new and do less than 50 advances/season. We bounce between Platinum and Diamond. so I may or may not see a lot of change.

On the live server I play GBG with a solo guild which is usually in Gold (occasionally in Platinum). This should make it a little more competitive for those seasons when there is a large active guild trying to dominate the map. Otherwise, probably not too much change.

 

[Donna a Macskabolond]

I voted yes.

I think this will make GBG more interesting. But of course, I'll have to actually play it to see. It probably won't solve all the problems at the diamond level, but it is a start.

On Beta I'm in a medium guild of 30-40 players most of whom are fairly new and do less than 50 advances/season. We bounce between Platinum and Diamond. so I may or may not see a lot of change.

On the live server I play GBG with a solo guild which is usually in Gold (occasionally in Platinum). This should make it a little more competitive for those seasons when there is a large active guild trying to dominate the map. Otherwise, probably not too much change.

Interesting.. I play on 6 server and I've never seen any guilds to build camps in gold league. I don't really understand why do you think your game will be more interesting. I bet nothing will change for you.

 

[OmegaLee]

It would be helpful if Inno was completely transparent on what "problem" they are trying to solve or rebalance for. If I understand the problem, I can present better solutions. What idea is driving this need for a rebalance?

• Is it purely rewards problem? (fairness thing)
• Is it a player health issue? (expectation of time/effort involved is hurting players)
• Some other issue?

I agree with this 100%. I'm not sure what Inno is trying to fix with this change.

 

[OmegaLee]

However, by being at least active, you are systematically propelled into the 1,000 LP league.
And the only solution given is to underplay so as not to be blocked.

I've seen this happen more than once. A guild is not playing this round to get our of diamond.

 

[Amenma]

I belive the thought to make a change in some manner is progressive and good, but im not sure if this will hit the core problem. Breaking it down into pros & cons.

Pros:
*You get to scale down the potential massive earnings some players achieve without difficulty, simply by being active and organized.
*It might make strategy & other buildings more relevant again.

Cons:
*By implementing this change you will at the same time reduce the overall activity of players, as there is no longer any purpose to being online much besides harvesting your city and unloading your potential i Battlegrounds, then you're done for the day. Is that something "Inno" desire as a company? To me thats like biting your own tail.
*The strong guilds will likely still control the battlegrounds, difference being more sectors held as "hostages" and "blocking" comptetitors. Additionally they will likely be held open for the duration possible given that the rotation around the map will greatly slow down due to no more free battles.
*I find that alot of people dont do things that are not rewarding, as such the active interest in GvG will be reduced, players guarding the map, sorting the strategies will likely reduce.
*Less diamond useage (is that something Inno is interested in? lol.

One of the main problems atleast on the norwegian servers is that there are too few players in general. Too many guilds, filled with few active players and a load of city builders and sleepers. Then theres 2 guilds that has a few more of the active bunch that controls everything. In order to look more at the problem, you need to solve the playerbase issue and increase the competitive aspect in the game. Why have 5 different servers instead of 1 or 2? Had these been combined or if you found some other way to solve the playerbase issue, you would have a battlegrounds filled with maybe 5-8 strong guilds. No way people would have been able to farm freely anymore and the rotation around the map would have been alot different with guilds losing their positions every so often.

The battlegrounds system is designed for more active guilds than what the current playerbase situation is today. Thats the problem. Changing the battlegrounds like this will only reduce the amount of active players.

 

[Kronan]

I've seen this happen more than once. A guild is not playing this round to get our of diamond.

Exactly. Reminds me of a thoughtful quote:

When ALL YOU HAVE is a hammer in your toolbox, everything looks like a nail.

GbG has depth and layers of both personal and guild strategy for success. Sometimes it's better to fall back for a more advantageous "track" to run the train on. If you can deal with the social stigma of "oh wow, they fell out of diamond...they must suck", you might actually be onto something.

So yes - Maybe they don't suck, but are smarter than the rest of us for executing a better and more lucrative strategy in a different league, right?

It's entirely possible to adeptly push back on the flow in the game that moves you up by achieving. There isn't a linear path to success. You have to move sideways and back sometimes, to arrive at your goal.

 

[Globaller]

GBG was my main reason to play FOE. Taking that reason will probably result in me leaving FOE at all. And not only me. Restricting the result of years of effort and constructing to get as strong as possible may be nice for some (smaller) players, but is there no loyalty from Inno to other players? Very sad.

 

[Kranyar the Mysterious]

Incidentally I do have a sneaking suspicion that the initial state of this change was done as a worst case scenario (both multiplicative and capped rather low), to set the tone. And that they may have plans to walk back the cap to a higher value later if it's determined to have gone too far. By doing both it allows them to give something back "due to feedback". I could see it possibly ending up with a 75% or 80% cap instead of 66% (and possibly even planned to be there all along, just as a strategy for releasing news that some will consider bad news) - the multiplicative alone would seem to be enough that everyone gains attrition even without a cap.

I've been leaning this way too in my thinking. Get all of the anger out at the announcement, then adjust upwards to make people feel better. Inno's used this tactic before, which is probably partly why I'm still here. Unfortunately Inno's also put out terrible updates without changes, so we have no clue which way things are going to go.

There is also the possibility of another shoe dropping (good or bad) that we know nothing about that would completely change the dynamic as well.

 

[xivarmy]

Exactly. Reminds me of a thoughtful quote:

When ALL YOU HAVE is a hammer in your toolbox, everything looks like a nail.

GbG has depth and layers of both personal and guild strategy for success. Sometimes it's better to fall back for a more advantageous "track" to run the train on. If you can deal with the social stigma of "oh wow, they fell out of diamond...they must suck", you might actually be onto something.

So yes - Maybe they don't suck, but are smarter than the rest of us for executing a better and more lucrative strategy in a different league, right?

It's entirely possible to adeptly push back on the flow in the game that moves you up by achieving. There isn't a linear path to success. You have to move sideways and back sometimes, to arrive at your goal.

The core problem is : "is it fun?"

I've been in a guild farming in 1000 diamond. It was not fun in the slightest. Profitable yes. But if there's no fun to be had elsewhere in the game, why am I trying to profit?

I've mostly been in small-mid guilds. They're fun when there's a well matched battle, but that's become increasingly infrequent. At first it was the high platinum rounds were fun. And getting stomped in diamond was the cost when you "won". But then people started trying to be "smart" and not go to diamond there, and those stopped being fun too.

Low platinum as a solo guild can still be fun... But I hardly think that's the scenario I should be being encouraged towards - not having *any* guildmates in order to not get so strong as to stray into rounds full of sandbaggers and farmers.

I don't (can't) know how exactly the playerbase as a whole will react to these changes in the long-term. But it's a start by reducing the oversized carrot for farming.

 

[Kranyar the Mysterious]

I've also been thinking that a hyper leveled Chateau (150+) may become important too for negotiating after you hit max fighting attrition. This will be easier to obtain for those who've been able to max out their Arc, since they likely use 1.98 or 2.0 threads for positions on their buildings.

 

[xivarmy]

I've also been thinking that a hyper leveled Chateau (150+) may become important too for negotiating after you hit max fighting attrition. This will be easier to obtain for those who've been able to max out their Arc, since they likely use 1.98 or 2.0 threads for positions on their buildings.

Honestly for those super high levels, the rate you're getting on the spots hardly matters. When it's costing you > 10k FP per level, saving a few hundred from a higher % is peanuts. It's all about raw income from whatever source at that point. (which the maxed out arc can certainly help with, but not from being in a higher thread - rather from being a predatory sniper of your hood or a very active helper on lower % threads)

Edit: point of comparison from my spreadsheet:

Lv 0->150 CF at 1.9 = 536,173
Lv 0->150 CF at 2.0 = 509,351

So you save about 5% of the levelling cost for the difference in threads.

(incidentally, now that "perpetual" questing is blocked, it's quite incremental to bother with CF that far: CF 150 vs CF 130 makes all of ~13% more goods for the same number of quests completed - for over double the levelling cost)

 

[jovada]

Facing guilds that are spending diamonds on traps/forts was really tough already now this will increase the problem, going for "solving" only one side of the problem is not the right solution, all the buildings need the balance to make it fair.

What balance ? I think the other buildings just gain there balance now , before they became lapsed, obsolete,

When building a palace or towers the only thing they did was giving a big smile on the farmers faces because they received more fights hahaha.

 

[Ironrooster]

Interesting.. I play on 6 server and I've never seen any guilds to build camps in gold league. I don't really understand why do you think your game will be more interesting. I bet nothing will change for you.

I won't say it happens often, but I have seen siege camps in gold league. I can't check this season on live because I'm in Platinum and there are lots of siege camps.

 

[Donna a Macskabolond]

I read every comments in this topic.
All of the players in solo or small guilds are happy with the planned changes because they think they will have some hours to conquer a couple of sectors in diamond league. All of the players who spent lots of time and effort to build up ther city and guild now disapponted because they think they don't matter anymore and their effort is wasted.

I think the real problem is why are small or solo guilds in diamond league? Why are they want to compete with the big fighter guilds?
Every player and guild is able to make decision - either put some effort and time into their city and guild and with time will be able to participate actively in GBG or not. But if the decision is the latter, why they have to complain they don't get the same rewards? Join to a fighter guild, level up the guild GBs and you can fight as much as you want.

The GBG isn't exciting enough? Just put together at least 3 fighter guilds and won't be any friendly tileswapping in that season. But the small guilds never come out of the base because they just weak and not active enough to do that in the diamond league. Those guilds who have the necessary recources to fight never sit on the beach. They just put themselves together and come out. This is just a matter of strength and activity. And I think it's okay. This is the highest, strongest league, wasn't inteded to the weak and meek.

Furthermore not every guild prefers the war against the friendly tile swapping, and not just because of the rewards (with good leadership the fighting seasons can just as rewarding as the farming seasons). This game is full of frustrated idiots who make drama out of everything- a lost battle, a lost sector, a lost season. We gave up GvG totally beacuse of this already.

The other reason why the tile swapping so popular is because there is no other purpose of the GBG as soon as you reached 1000 LP. You won't be higher in ranking. So why should any guild battle for the first position? There is no any reason to do that so the friendly tile swapping a much better soultion than the war. And this won't change with this modification.

As I see it there are 2 serious problem:
1. The diamond league is full of small guilds, they have nothing to gain there. The league system is wrong but we already knew this.
2. There is no reason why should the guilds battle for the 1. place. In fact, GBG has no purpose in the game above than farming. Inno should change this too.

Until these problems isn't solved Inno just frustrated their players - strong and small together - and keep losing loyal, diamond-buyer long-time players.

Everything else has been said before.

 

[HunZ95]

When building a palace or towers the only thing they did was giving a big smile on the farmers faces because they received more fights hahaha.

You see, you still can't break away from it. It’s not really a nuisance that you can’t fight enough, it’s that the other is making better use of opportunities and can attack more. In fact, it’s all about envy, and it shows up in every post because you always stress that others can attack less, and you don’t outline what makes you better after the changes (actually nothing, and even worse).

 

[samson42]

Let's face it:
this change is about reducing farming, and I like it.

GBG is absolutely boring, either when in a farming guild or when in an innocent guild trapped at the outskirts of the map.
I still remember the start of GBG when this was really about tactics and strategy and letting your guild win.

And what are you farming for? to farm more. This is stupid.

And because of this, GBG has nothing to do with advancing the guild, but in maximizing personal profit. Causing also much distress inside of guilds.

This is at some point Innos fault, as they capped out influence of GBG in guild ranking and the fact that fights have such an high impact on player ranking.

Does this change address the unbalanced game play? Maybe, but probably not. There where better suggestions to face this, like change in slots, higher costs for SCs the more you build, etc.pp.

Will this change influence GBG activity? I think it will boost activity, and bring all the people like me back into game, which do not like to just do fast clicking every 4 hours.

 

[Kranyar the Mysterious]

Let's face it:
this change is about reducing farming player rewards

Fixed that for you.

If Inno wanted to reduce "farming" they would have made a different set of changes than these. These changes may make a little bit of difference regarding farming, but I don't think that was the actual reason for the change.