Feedback Guild Battlegrounds Watchtower and Siege Camp Ability Re-balance

[Czara]

I'm not entirely against a recalculation to increase difficulty, especially in worlds where there are bigger and tougher fighters growing larger. I like a challenge myself but something this drastic will absolutely not benefit anyone as is, and make it way more difficult for smaller guilds and smaller fighters to grow. What about 85-90% cap?

 

[Harold Nat]

I actually liked the change, and I don't want to call it a "nerf". GBG was a great idea but in these years it's been abused by players and guilds who saw fighting as forge-points mining, hence all those tricks like "checkerboard" and bots to get more clicks than anyone else. I like that now there is a limit to the number of fights we can do in GBG and I hope this change gets to live, even though many players oppose it.

 

[GeneralLafayette]

Honestly this change sucks for every player that plays GBG as a whole. Everybody from casuals to the elite. The elite will stop being able to farm as far as they usually would which would be bad as GBG is a really crucial part of the game. I believe that this change will exacerbate the league system problem by making the difference between elite players and casual players even more as elite players can still maybe do 100-200+ fighting a day and casual would maybe only do 40-50, maybe even less. This change is solving the wrong problem and is putting a bandaid over a bigger problem in GBG. The problem with gbg is the difference of the level of causal and elite players. Changing the league system is going to be a better change than this SC limiting change. You hear all the time about how lower level guilds in platinum league complain about being placed in diamond league and not getting any rewards. GBG is also a great way to grow in FoE so basically taking it out of the game is a very big issue for many people. The benefits that people have brought up about this change like "this is going to help casual players" and such can be disproven quite easily and as I have explained above, it exacerbates the difference between the elite and the causal players. These elite players are complaining why they had to devote so much attention to maintaining a healthy treasury are being very petty about the change I believe as yea they probably had to change the way they built there city and such but I believe that there is no argument in what they are saying. Make some sort of better fix for players instead of this SC cap like changing the league system. This will require creativity and will be difficult to balance but I believe that there can be a better solution than this. Maybe change the chance of getting fps from an encounter, who knows.

 

[Fenix]

Yes, but my opinion is that the alterations in the Watchtower and Siege dos not need to happen, the cap at 66.6 is more than enough. I can elaborate why (attrition free led to abuse obviously, someone that does 8k battles do not do that to help the guild or his teammates, and it is obvious, this will prevent others to be able to do battles).
I remembered, someone suggested that the limit was variable in different leagues, ranging from 100 (attrition free) to 66.6, I really liked this.

 

[DEADP00L]

For questions of balance, even if the randomness brings a renewal in the strategy, the number of locations in each sector around the HQ is preponderant to a domination or a stagnation.
With the implementation of the restriction on siege camps, it would be just as interesting for the players as for the expenses of Innogames to no longer have 3 locations on certain sectors but also to better distribute the other sectors.
This reflection will give greater dynamics to the whole map and not just 2 or 3 guilds.

 

[F C N]

Dommage qu'on ne voit pas les commentaires des autres joueurs !!!

 

[Fenix]

One thing is for sure, I've never seen a map so well distributed, where all guilds have fields where they can really attack. I guarantee that in the past, with these guilds, the map would have been divided by 2, and had a nice chess pattern. The limit of 66.6 makes all the difference, the fields continue to be built as before.

 

[Nansoon]

It will make the game much more difficult for “young“ player. Less fights/negotiations = slower improvment of GB.
And they will lose more than the pure pourcentage because they won’t be able to go over attrition 20 let’s say.
I really don’t think it will redistribute the map. The powerful guilds will be still more powerful. And the others will just be disgusted to spend ressources in camps that won’t help so much as before. Even spending diamonds is less attractive in these conditions.
I really hope you’ll take into account the 2 votes’ results.

 

[kawada]

To be honest, I don’t understand why swapping/farming are considered something bad, shameful or even something close to cheating. It’s just a way how players adapted to the current GBG design to ensure maximum profit which is absolutely natural thing to do.

Players could choose fierce fighting at every season to get 1st place Instead. And actually thats how it worked at the very beginning of GBG at least in live servers (I wasn’t an active participant of beta those days). We had to develop strategy to fight, we had Discord chat to call people to help to conquer sectors, we built traps / destroyed camps to make rivals spend more attrition and treasury, smaller guilds teamed up against bigger ones.

but it was like that just for fun, because GbG was something new and super dynamic, especially for app users which don’t have GvG. But soon people understood that those efforts are too much for just “fun”, the efforts do not worth the outcome. and unfortunately GbG doesn’t suggest anything more than just fun and some rewards which lost their value quite fast. That’s why players had to find another way to get as much profit as possible - do swaps. And capping camps is not going to fix it. Sure, people won’t be able to do that many battles as before, but they will still keep doing swaps. probably, eventually the change will affect all the guilds equally And we will come to the same point we’re at now.

Why did they choose swap strategy In the first place? They have nothing to fight for. They don’t have motivation to fight for the 1st place, it’s not a problem to share it with other guilds . they don’t care either they take 1 or 2 or 3 place. Why so?

• Inadequate league system
• lack of significant reward for season win
• no affect on the guild rating

So, if Inno wants players to spend more time in the game, increase engagement and make ppl spend more diamonds or even real money, they should give them motivation, they should give them something to fight for. If those are not a goal of Inno, I know nothing about game business

 

[mintbunnies]

As a heavy diamond player, I have to say this change is simply awful. FoE used to be my escape during covid and the times I was caregiving for my grandma. As a GBG leader in my main world and here, I spend most of my time organizing, and negotiating terms, and managing the treasury. We are not the best, but we are a solid and strong fighting guild both here and in the US server.

Since this change happened in beta, I do not fight in GBG anymore. All my attrition is spent to flip or walk sectors. Sectors move so slowly that I can target 2 sectors with 4+ siege camps, go to sleep, 8 hrs later they are not filled. Have you heard the phrase "watching paint dry"? NO leader wants to do this. There is no strategies. Only "check GBG every 2hrs and see if anything on the map happened."

Members burn their attrition once a day, then they sign offline and play another game. Our 1.9 thread and swaps are slow. No one is around to chat. A few of our biggest members have gone on vacation. This change will have ripple effects in the entire FoE game, not just GBG. Beta does not represent the Live servers. Beta is slow to begin with and the change would not be as noticeable. Yet it is still awful. Do not implement this in Live lightly unless you are ready for a backlash.

Are you imagining that you are turning GBG into GVG? More strategy and less rewards? Well GVG is fought and done in 15min every 24hrs. Is that what you are aiming for? A game that you play for 15min per day? Well congratulations! That's what you've done.

I've suggested this in the other thread and I'll post it again. I wouldn't be against attrition that resets every 4hrs. This means that one user cannot get all the fights. But a well organized guild can still function. And a small dedicated guild can even compete like this. And yes I have given this thought. It should be every 4 hrs because otherwise a small guild would see their hard work wiped away. They would be able to take a few sectors even without camps but be burned out for the rest of the day. Then the bigger guilds would just come by and clean them up, push them back into their base and they are back to square one. However, attrition that resets in 4hrs would ensure the smaller guilds would still have a fighting chance as long as they are dedicated and organized.

Our live guild does well in GBG but we believe in fair play and letting the smaller guilds have a chance to play. We won't lock them into their base and we will let them keep their camps around their base when it is possible. We are on good terms with most of the diamond guilds in our server. But it is a slap in the face to all your dedicated players to pull the rug out from under them and our cities that we have spend diamonds to build would have to be redone. I am against this attempt to hide the poll away in a sub-sub-forum and hide the transparency in the process. The change has not been executed well.

 

[Fenix]

Now that one season is over and another is approaching, I really think that monopolizing the field to the 2 strongest guilds (truth be told to the 10 most active elements in each of them), leaving the others blocked for 11 days has to end. Obviously, if less than 10 elements in a guild are enough to make an exchange of sectors effective, this will also lead to all other elements of the guild having to fight for the remains.

 

[HunZ95]

Problems caused by the change:

-The playing time of the guilds is reduced, since the strongest members can fight on the map for a maximum of 20-25 minutes per day. This destroys guild communities, as there is nothing left to fight together for anything other than a few minutes of GBG and a few minutes of GVG battles a day.
-The penalty value of attrition at higher levels (80-150) is very disproportionate. For example, if I add 500% to my 1000% attack value city, I can only fight a tiny bit more, even though 500% is not really easy to get, it can take several months.
-It still doesn't create balance, the small guilds are still nailed to the shore (if they have a chance to break out,they dont use), but in return everyone was sent back.
it also affects the players individually, if they restrain their fighting skills, the previously active players logged in several times a day because of GBG, but after the change, it will be more than enough to log in once every night, then you can enjoy the collection, the GVG battles and the GBG, all up to 30 minutes under. I don't think the goal is to demotivate active players. However, the change causes exactly this, because even if they spend hours in the game, they don't get extra content, they get exactly the same in return for their invested time as those who only look into the game for a few minutes a day.
-beginner and intermediate players are completely prevented from joining strong guilds, as strong guilds hunt players with big strong cities even more to maintain their map dominance.

I think the distribution of leagues should be changed so that the guild fights against equally strong guilds.
However, I do not support the current change in any way, because it only punishes active, strong guilds and players, which I do not consider fair. A lot of work, management, organization, community building, treasury management, etc. need to be successful and now you think they deserve to be punished just because those who didn't put enough effort into building a similar guild are given the exact same competition as the bests?
This is unacceptable and there must be a better solution.

 

[Berenice la Sauvage]

I think more players will be able to play thanks to this change because noone will be stuck in the HQ anymore.

It wasn't a good thing that you could fight hundreds of battles without any attrition. Of course, players who could do that are furious but the game was completely unbalanced. Please don't give up on this change.

The matching could be better. Since the game keeps the count of the number of GBG won by every guild, that could be a criterion for the matching.

 

[.Chris]

I do not like the hard cap at 66%
Guilds that put in the work to build up their treasuries should be rewarded for that effort.

That being said, I do think, that sectors with 100% attrition reduction should be less frequent.
I would propose the following:
1 SC -> 30%
2 SC -> 54%
3 SC -> 72%
4 SC -> 84%
5 SC -> 90%
6+ SC -> 90%
Additionally:
1 WT 8%
2 WT 14%
3 WT 20%
...

In essence:
Reduce the effect of additional SCs and WTs - every additional SC gives 6% reduction less, every WT gives 2% reduction less; add the two independently for overall attrition reduction.

That way 100 % is still achievable, but waaay less frequent than it is at the moment.

I do want to stress however, that the most pressing issue to fix is the matchmaking (acknowledging, that you do not want feedback like that, but I still want to express that opinion nonetheless

 

[Beta Eta]

As already stated in the first feedback thread: I like the change. I started FoE because I wanted to play a city planning game, in my opinion there is no need for a massive click-to-farm-component in it.

 

[Fuxi]

I'm against this change, it will punish the player who build up there cities for more power and more goods, special guildgoods. People who play at night (so do I) have less chance to fight, cause there are only a few nightowls. Play over the day will also request a good handful of players to gain a sector and perhaps more. The fun in GbG ist to win races, to beat the opponents, therefor we can mobilise MG. But just coming in once a day, fighting down once attrition and leaving the game will cause less action in the guild, the support of newbies, the leveling of GB, the conversation, trading goods in the guild and so on. For guilds who have player mixed through all ages it will be a very slow down.
I'm with you, GbG ist great for farming FP, goods, etc. But there are much more "normal" player than highlevel farmers. We told our MG to build up there power to gain rewards in GbG. They still will need the power, but they will progress much slower.
So what's your intention for capping attrition? I think the main point ist you want to earn money. But with less SC/WT we will invest less Dias. Also the eventbuildings are less worth, so why buying Dias for a second one?

My suggestion is to reduce the number of rewards oder the value of the rewards in GbG, or else reduce the nummer of slots for building SC/WT/etc.

 

[davvcik0.01]

I do like general idea, but I do not think complete prohibition of free fights is the proper execution.
I have many friends who are now saying..."if this will come alive I will just log in burn myself out and log out for the rest of the day"
Value of GbG is now (except of personal gains) also the possibility of doing something interesting in the game during all 24hrs.
My suggestion is:
Find a way how to make free attrition much harder to achieve and which would make swapping more difficult, actual problem in my eyes are the %of SCs ..24% makes it too easy to swap whole map.
I suggest reduction to 16%... Free attrition would than need 6 attached SCs...the result I'd expect is that players would still try to control the map and secure enough SCs to have free fights, but 3rd and 4th ring of arena would not allow free fights any more, so the control of map centre would actually matter.

 

[mcbluefire]

I cannot see the purpose of this nerf. It will not balance GbG as it hurts medium and smaller guilds more than large guilds. It may backfire into less SCs used since 2 to 3 SCs will be all that is needed to roughly achieve the same reduction in attrition thanks to RNG.

The SC slots should instead be reversed on the map. 3 slots in home and fifth ring with reductions down to 0 or 1 in the inner ring and center. This will help all guilds get into the map and reduce center swapping. Alternatively building slots could be based on guild distance from home and not be a property of the sector. The further from home the less slots, period. This would still help guilds get out of their base while eliminating swapping by guilds across the map from each other.

The most agreed upon idea to be a good first step is to come up with a better league system that actually brings guilds of similar capabilities into top tier matches. Obviously need a bit of shuffling each season to prevent repeated pairing of the same guilds, but no 100 point jumps that put a platinum guild in the top tier of diamond in one season. Smaller increments of up and down based on placement would be a good start. +3, +2, +1, 0, and on down the rank for a season to stop the yo yo effect as a part of the solution.

Also the ranking in GbG should have a bigger affect on prestige so that GbG ranking for the top guilds means more than GvG holdings.

 

[TheSovereign]

Having nearly completed a second season of GBG with 66% attrition level, in truth, I've lost a tremendous amount of interest in continuing to build my beta city and, with the overhanging possibility of this change being implemented on production servers, I no longer bring an enthusiasm for play to my two production cities either. GBG provided a 'job' by which to earn forge points to build my cities and advance in ages. This job income made it possible to progress my cities at an 'acceptable' rate. So now, having learned that I am, apparently, a member of a class of gbg player for which there is a decided negative bias and discrimination - a 'farmer' - FoE proposes to cut my "Pay" from my gbg job to a level where my progress in growing my city in beta, at least, is no longer at a fun pace where it shows up as an accomplishment when I level a gb. Our guild fights when there are fights and I enjoyed the fights -- until the change where I now find finishing a tile in a fight leaves me with attrition so high that I can no longer fight under. So I'm retired until reset. Simply, this is an aggravation and a massive demotivator to continue play. So, with the loss of this fun of fighting in gbg, and the loss of an acceptable forge point production each to use to advance my city at an acceptable pace, should this change remain, I rather suspect I will no longer be a customer and advocate for Inno's Forge of Empires. For Inno is in the process of betraying my interest in being a continued customer as the game simply doesn't enthuse me any longer with this decapitation of the ability to feel accomplishment and interest. If the change DOES go through, I will, on the other hand, thank INNO for providing me the spark to leave and make better use of the many hours I have devoted to the game.

For the record, it is still NOT AT ALL CLEAR to me what the developers considered to be so 'broken' about GBG that they felt the need to make this change. For my play, this is nothing short of a decapitation and a violation of a marketer's basic tenet. "IF IT AIN'T BROKE, DON'T FIX IT!!!"

Were the deaths and disablements resulting from the covid shot complications eating into your player census to the degree you might have presumed this attrition of players was due to gbg being broken??? Politically incorrect, I know, but in an age where truth-telling on that subject is suppressed intensely, denial doesn't make the results disappear. Even I've seen a dramatic increase in the drop off in players from the game in the past 6 months.

 

[Nansoon]

My opinion has not changed. It makes the game really less appealing.