Feedback Guild Battlegrounds Watchtower and Siege Camp Ability Re-balance

[MATR]

I think Inno can already control the amount of attrition by the way it distributes camps. Currently, I see less 3 building sectors than in the past and there is far fewer in the center with 3 building slots than in the past.
The concept of limiting attrition with an artificial throttle of 66% is lame. It seems like a knee jerk reaction without much thought. It sure hasn't added any excitement to gbg for me.
Here's some ideas to provide some excitement for GBG rather than making it less thrilling:
Make all sectors have at least a single building slot. - gives the guilds stuck on the edge something of value to use to try and get off the edge.
Make edge sectors have multiple building slots and Have center sectors with NO building slots. Having the center sectors with the most slots makes charging to the center for the big farmer guilds important plus it provides the opportunity for zero attrition. Eliminating building slots in the center will reduce zero attrition opportunities. Having more slots on the edge will give all guilds a better chance of having a sector they can use to get out of home base,
Make the map bigger, much bigger, then add more guilds. 20 guilds with several hundred sectors. Put guild base camps towards the middle of the field (1 or 2 sectors) instead of all at the edge. Sectors behind your home base are much less likely to be controlled by the swapping farmers. Put the strongest guild at one end of the map and group the weaker guilds at the other end. Could even have a DMZ across the middle with two rows of sectors with zero slots.
If you want everyone to have fights just add 2 rings of sectors behind home base with zero building slots.
Make lock-down last 8 hours instead of 4 and make it take twice as many ( or 5 times as many) fights to conquer a sector. Would reduce the 4 hour rush and reduce the need for the constant management, that causes burn-out in many gbg leaders. Would also give the slow fighters extra time to get in some fights before the heavy hitters finish filling the sector (takes less than 2 minutes in my home guild before sector is filled, sometimes less than 1 minute). I'm lucky to get in 5 or 6 rights before the sectors is filled. I have to set an alarm clock or I'm left out.
Only allow a player 50 fights per sector, resets once it is locked.
Provide all home bases with no attrition equal to 2 siege camps.
Change it up every season so no one has the chance to "learn" the best strategy for farming.
Do any of these but don't make max attrition 66% no matter how many sc your guild managed to string together.

Finally: it would be nice to show the attrition reduction for each sector, as it is now I have to figure out how many sc we got, see if the sectors has traps, then do a calculation based on a multiplicative thing which I don't even understand. So, I don't bother. We now report attrition by the number of sc we got and leave it to the players to try and figure out.

 

[fabulousschu]

is say no like the old one

 

[plotus]

I barely played GBG due to this change. If this goes live you will ruin the main attractive fighting aspect of the game. GvG has under 1% participation, GBG will be the same. We, the active game players, want more participation not less. Please show greater imagination towards positive experiences in the game instead of a change that makes the game worse for all players.

 

[Juan Primero]

let's go to the live servers

 

[FrejaSP]

It is not possitive to test the effect of the changes here on Beta as the guilds here do not match the large active guilds.
I fear it will hurt the medium size guilds more then the large ones.
I also fear the traps will be a pain and ruin the joy with the battleground

The problem I see with the old system is, it is to hard for the smaller guilds to get startet, with 0%, when they are kicked back to their base. Change the base, så the guilds start with 48% (=2 camps) in their homebase. That will allow them to take back the 3 sektore around the base without the feeling of being beated down and they will have a better start, when they try to take more sektors. This will not effect the large guilds, as they try to stay arount center, there they can place more camps.

A better start from the base, may very well make more smal guilds enjoy the battle ground.

Be careful with your changes, they will hurt the joy from battleground and eill not fix the problems.

An other changes, that would help is max 4- 5 guilds on a Diamond map and max 6-6 guilds on a Platin map.

 

[myrddhyn]

Now that the third season is over, we once again ask you to provide feedback. Has anything changed from the last battleground? What were your experiences? Would you change anything?Please tell us in the Feedback Thread!

My experiences as a one man guild were horrible. My neighbouring guild decided to build 6 traps around my first province... and it was a deathsentence for my GbG. My GbG as a whole... not just this one. Cause I'm not gonna play it anymore.
Before I could fight my way through it... get a few camps near it and whether a province had 3 traps or not... I could take it on my own. There is no way to achieve that anymore.
I still can't figure out why this change had to be done. The arguements used for it, could so easily be solved by other measurements like for example a Champions League above all other 5 leagues. Only available for the most competitive and ambitious guilds and players. Or one of the many other examples that have been put forward here by so many other players.
I've been playing FoE from the early start... when LMA was the final era and coins & supplies gathered still counted for ranking points (Yes... every 300 coins was 1 rankingpoint and every 300 supplies gathered were 1 rankingpoint). No special units, no GB's and every single building had to be clicked individually to be able to collect it. Many good changes have been implemented in the game... many other changes were of a lesser order (like Future Era being the last era). With this change the game will loose its attraction for me. Haven't been playing much here on the Beta anymore... and I will definately be on the lookout for another game.
What's the use of levelking my att% GB anymore? No need to have more then let's say 2000% anymore. Why would I level my Alcatraz any further... or my Arctic Orangerie? Might as well build a Notre Dame now, and a Colosseum just to have SOME fun here

 

[Fenix]

I think this will be my last contribution here: it's just a matter of knowing the game and good sense.
The battle possibilities are finite (sectors x 160), if individual players have potentially infinite battles (and I've seen this), all it takes is 1 to conquer the entirety of the map, leaving everyone else powerless (took several seasons, the actions of a single player led to the abandonment of guild members and ended with the exit of said player, not pretty).
It doesn't matter that there is a good pairing of guilds, 2, as long as they collaborate, they can always block everyone else, even if they are stronger (and I've also watched/participated in this).
It's not worth trying to solve everything at once (can create unforeseen problems). In this case, putting an attrition limit at 66 is enough to prevent the monopoly of battles for a limited number of players, and this is the main problem.

 

[Azumi]

why again? what changed? This game after next season is more boring... only that.

 

[Thunderdome]

On your question of "do you like the changes done to the Siege Camp and Watchtower", the first round is a "no"; the second round is still a "no"; and the third round is still a resounding "NO". No amount of testing, unless Inno puts forth changes that will benefit the player and not their pockets, will get them to change from that "no" to a "yes". Not even a small amount of "yes" answers will see this change being kept.

In summary, the "no's" have it, so it's best to revert back to the original and scrap this idea by looking to other avenues.

Basically, a DNSL from me.

 

[Madman the cruel]

No, it is taking the GBG fun and profit largely away. Going to favor large guilds only. No no no

 

[DeepDiver2]

IMHO, "balancing" or limiting SC / WT support to no greater than approx 67% will only enable the biggest/strongest Guilds even more dominance than they have now! These large -strong guilds can (more) easily distribute the gain in attrition amongst their members that smaller / weaker guilds cannot. Without even the chance of getting Zero or near Zero (i.e. 96% from 4 SCs or72% from 3 SCs) reduced attrition encounters it is almost not worth the costs and time to engage in GBG. Furthermore, GBG has become my (and believe me, many other players) favorite part of the game mostly because of the opportunity or chance to obtain lots of awards.

Maybe that is Inno's whole goal, --->>> financial motivation ---->>>Limit the awards because players were earning too much ????????

If there are only a few active guilds on the Map, the ability to have 96+ % reduced attrition makes it fun to play for literally hours. When cooperating with a few Guilds you can swap or flip tiles every 4 hrs. But with attrition growing for everyone, once you're done due to attrition, you're out for nearly 24 hrs or at least until reset depending on where you are in regards to time. This rebalancing and limiting attrition reduction will take the fun out of the game. We will lose players to the game. Most active guilds have spent the year or more ??? ( since GBG started) learning the game, developing strategy, building their treasury, training members, engaging and exchanging strategy with other guilds, etc. The whole concept sucks quite actually. I do not know a single player personally who thinks this is a good idea. I am a Founder/Leader in EN and have been playing 9-10 + years (I believe). I have chatted with many Guild leaders who indicated if this occurs on the Live Servers they will fold their Guilds and quit the game.

 

[Mucki75]

I am a little Player here. It is not interessant to come on and help in GG because I can make less fights. Of course the big Player can make also less fights. It is absolute borring the game with this change.
Nice Greetings Mucki

 

[Petrus1942]

This change has absolutely destroyed my engagement with the game in beta and made my experience of the game far worse overall. When it started I had a level 75 Arc and was looking forward to joining the ranks of "real" players (because, let's be honest, the game completely changes at Arc 80) within the next week if not before the end of the next season, because I pay a lot of attention to GbG and thus am around the game a lot. Once these changes hit, I was done with everything I could productively do within 10 minutes and there was largely no reason to play for the rest of the day. My progression ground to a halt and finally out of sheer frustration after two seasons of this I spent most of what FP bank I had collected to get to Arc 80. Hallelujah? Not really. Now I still have military buildings that will take 5x + longer to build, and I have to stress ever so much more about snipers because our 1.9 threads are slow and getting slower thanks to people leaving after this change. Worse still this past season larger guilds completely ignored us on the GbG map because we can't handle the massive increase in attrition and don't close sectors remotely quickly - this hadn't happened to us in months before this change because we could always reliably flip at least a few sectors to keep things moving. So this past season I spent most of my time stuck on not just the already bad 3 SC sectors but on 1 SC sectors because the big guilds didn't view us as "worthy" of higher building slot sectors. That meant my time until hitting the attrition wall dropped from the initial 10 minutes down to about 5 - when I even bothered playing at all.

In short, this change has made my gameplay experience worse in every single way. Progression is practically at a standstill. Engagement is negligible to nil. Any chance of working hard to catch up to the gameplay experience of players who've been playing long enough to have decent military buildings is virtually wiped out - it will now take literally years to get to a decent gameplay experience, and I really don't think there's any reason to wait that long. If this change as it stands now is released Inno can forget about me ever buying diamonds again and I'm sure you know that while I'm not the whale of whales I have spent more than plenty in the past. There are, simply, no words sufficient to express my antipathy towards these changes. Please, for the sake of the players, the game, and yourselves: admit this is not the right solution and go back to the drawing board before you destroy the game we love.

 

[Yekk]

Season 3... no other guild has fighters fighting in this league. We own the map. That means no decent fights for players in my guild till tomorrow already...

 

[Nansoon]

Still the same. And the "young" players are the most penalized.

 

[Cylo]

How often do we want to vote again? Untill we all like the changes or what´s the idea? Sorry folks, that´s ridiculous!

 

[EaCy]

I see a steady decline in responses. Keep this up and no one will care after a while.

 

[Yekk]

Inno did make a mistake 2 1/2 years ago. Everyone agrees on that. Not their first nor their last. The community sprint where they ignored players suggestions and used whales do decide the changes, the Guild Perks which had nothing to do with guilds and was so poorly coded it had to be pulled, the recent feedback thread where they said they would be more transparent come to mind.

Now we have a major nerf which once again was poorly implemented. Attrition is nerfed but no other adjustments made. Not in season 2 and again not in season 3. Even though the feedback thread shows how this nerf fails. A feedback thread dumped to discussion as the CM "is to busy" to read it. Does not have the time to read a thread on a nerf that will most likely affect Inno greatly once it goes live.

Guilds are not building SC's or WT's. 3 slots have one SC... Players have reduced neg's so no diamonds there. Both could have been adjusted to work with the nerf. Inno did not nor has even addressed problems they can easily see. We get the Inno spiel "we look at other things" instead.

Makes me sad to see...

 

[ShadowKing]

Easier if you just take away all things you can build, not just capp them, take it all away, so you can only fight until attrition is up, would be more fair to everykne

 

[piplup1000]

I think the update is a step in the right direction. While it's obviously looong past due, it will help to reduce the excessive farming that's happening at the moment. I hope this is just a first (major) change and the other problems get solved too (match making, dangling flags, ... ).

If this update succeeds to make gbg again a competition between guilds and not a selfish farming setup, it might even rekindle my love for this element of forge. Last years I just couldn't care less about it and the farm mania has been a big part in that.

At first I thought that the cap would be too low (might be still the case given that you have traps and so on), but raw math says you can do three times the attacks of your attrition (100 attrition ~ 300 fights). It seems like it's a fair ratio to me. Since players wil now have more battles at a higher attrition level (0 attrition farming can't be done), the troop costs will be higher too, which in turn might limit some players too. So maybe there might be needed some adjusting in the (near) future, As long as the cap stays somewhere between 50% (3 camps) and 80% (6 camps) it seems fine to me.

All by all I think it might be one of the better adjustments Inno has done over the last couple of years, way to go!