Feature Guild Battlegrounds

[DeletedUser]

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Hello Queens and Kings,

In the past few months, we have been thinking about what to do with the current browser-only feature: Guild versus Guild (GvG). Since its release, we knew GvG was a very complex feature, in technical and usability terms. We know that this, along with its many issues and lack of scalability, has rendered GvG the one feature that is used by only a very few of you out there. Less than 5% of you are playing the feature, while for Guild Expeditions it is 10 times more. These numbers clearly show we can do better - our aim is to provide you with a more approachable, understandable and technically stable gaming experience. Forge of Empires has evolved over the last few years, as has the game team, and we want every feature in our game to be appealing to, and for, as many of you as possible.

With that in mind, we raised several questions that we would like to share with you to explain our next steps on how to improve the overall Guild gameplay experience:​

Would participation rate improve if we added more maps for the “new” ages?

By our calculations we can say it won’t. We can see from migration into new ages that players who play on the All Age Map stay the same. by adding additional age maps, we wouldn’t increase the number of players. We also wouldn’t be solving the issues with maps from the earlier ages not being used. So, we decided against taking this step.​

Would participation rate improve if we added the current GvG feature to the mobile client?

Yes, it would. Would the experience overall be much better than on browser? The answer is unfortunately, no. Technically speaking, there are too many restraints to offer a convincing experience on mobile. So, also here we decided against taking this step.​

Can we improve the current GvG – System as much as we would need to, to provide the experience we aim for in general?

Scalability - When we designed and implemented GvG five years ago, it was not planned for Forge of Empires as a game to have ages past the Future Era. Therefore, when Arctic Future was implemented, the All Age map was added to try and get around the issue of an ever-growing game. Unfortunately, adding new maps would mean redeveloping the entire map system, for rest see above.​

Code Base – Let’s simply say it’s complicated.​

Complexity - The current feature is not easy to understand and get into for players, especially new players. There is no tutorial, it's a lot of effort for players in earlier ages, and it's not self-explanatory; to name a few weaknesses. If we want to increase participation and make GvG a more used feature for everyone, we have to make fundamental changes, which as mentioned above are barely possible based on the current implementation.​

With everything above in mind, we believe the right path is not to bring GvG to mobile but instead to develop a brand-new Guild feature to run alongside it, on all platforms. So, we are going to develop a new feature containing several strong elements of the current browser GvG but we also will add additional layers to it and shape it in a comprehensible and accessible manner. Besides that, and over the next few months, we will, however, spend additional time to improve the technical stability of GvG, because the efforts we put into analysis the whole topic made some good improvements visible, that we would like to implement for you.

Overall, we hope you understand our reasoning for this step. We spent months in validation, thinking and technical talks and clearly think this is the right step, to take.

On the design of the new feature, we would like to include your feedback as much as we can. Therefore, we are going to share the concept with you. Share your feedback and let’s talk about your thoughts.

To start off, we would like to get your feedback on:

1. Does this concept excite you? Do you think it's a worthwhile addition to the game?
2. What can be improved upon? And how?

Please leave your feedback in this thread and we'll look into your ideas and opinions. We'll collect feedback for the next two weeks (until 3rd June 2019), integrate feedback into the concept and share an update within 3 weeks (by 10th June 2019). We will also hold a live Q&A on Facebook & Instagram on the 22nd May 2019 at 17:30 CEST (15:30 UTC). We hope you understand the reasons for this step and look forward to your feedback. Forge of Empires is played by millions of amazing players and together, we will make it even better!

Sincerely yours,

Your Forge of Empires Team - Team Beta

 

[DeletedUser]

Guild Battlegrounds​

In this section, we will explain to you the current state of the concept, which we call "Guild Battlegrounds".
Please keep in mind that this is work in progress and it will not be in a finalized state until we gathered feedback from you, the community, to make potential adjustments.


What is "Guild Battlegrounds" about?

In this new feature, all guilds who want to participate will be matchmade into various battlegrounds. Each battleground is its own map that holds five to eight guilds and will last for ten days.

Within each battleground, the participating guilds will fight for victory by holding as many provinces as possible for as long as possible.​

Battleground Gameplay

Each guild starts at the edge of the battleground map with a province, which cannot be taken from them.

From there, they can start conquering adjacent provinces. To take a province, every guild member can click on an eligible province and either perform a fight or a negotiation. These fights and negotiations will always match the era of the player who performs it, allowing every guild member to participate in a feasible manner!

After completing the fight or negotiation, the member will provide his guild with an advancement point, which will be visualized on a conquest flag (see image) on the target.

The first guild to accumulate enough advancements will gain control over the given province, whereas all other guilds that tried to conquer it as well will lose half the advancements that they have made towards that province.

A province that was just taken will be under lock-down for a few hours, giving the new owner some time to get victory points (see section below) and to allow them to decide for province buildings (see section below) they might want to build.

Keep in mind that there is no means of directly defending a province your guild owns.
In this concept, defense happens by being aggressive! So don't forget to bring your best warcry!
What you can do to defend yourself is to try to take the province of an attacking guild before they are able to take yours. In this case - if the opposing guild loses all adjacent provinces - they also lose all advancements that they have made towards your province.​

Attrition

In Forge of Empires, we have vastly different players with varying levels of army boosts. Our goal was to reward heavily invested fighters, but to also limit everyone's amount of daily fights. Simply to make everyone's contribution relevant and to make your decisions where to invest your actions strategical!

In that sense, whenever you complete a battle in the context of a battleground, you build up attrition!
This is a percentage value that directly affects the (attack and defense) boosts of the defending armies that you will face.

So at some point, performing attacks will become unfeasible as the defending armies become too strong, attrition will be completely reset to 0% each day!​

Province Buildings

Each province will have one to three slots for province buildings. Each province building will affect its own or even adjacent provinces in a special way.
For instance, they may make attacks from that province easier or make it harder for your enemies to take what's yours.

Any member with the "leader" role can access provinces of their own guild to decide which of the available province buildings they want to build.

However, each province building takes time to complete and will cost guild treasury goods to be constructed. The costs will depend on the magnitude of the given building.

If a province gets taken over, each province building that was being built there has a chance to be destroyed. The remaining buildings will benefit the new owner.​

Winning A Battleground & Rewards

The leaderboard of a battleground gets dictated by victory points, which is automatically earned by every guild once per full hour.

The amount of victory points gained depends on the provinces that a guild holds. Provinces towards the center of the battleground map provide way more points than those at the edge of the map!

You can see the current levels of victory points for your specific battleground at any time, listing all participants and their current ranking.​

When a battleground ends, guilds may obtain various rewards which depend on placement:

• Prestige Points for the ranking
• Guild Power
• Each member will get fragments for a completely new, upgradeable building that will provide Guild Power, Guild Treasury Goods and Forge Points

Forge Point Loot

Apart from rewards for your guild, there are also individual rewards; whenever you contribute an advancement (by fighting or negotiating), there is a chance to loot 5 Forge Points!​

League System

Just for this feature, we will introduce a shiny League system.

According to a guild's performance, they can climb the ladder to join the highest leagues.

Guilds start off in the Copper league and can advance to Silver, Gold, Platinum and Diamond league.

A guild's league will be shown in the global rankings and also affects the magnitude of their battleground rewards, so it always pays off to push for getting into a higher league! Performing poorly in a battleground may also make your guild drop in leagues!

When assembling new battlegrounds and doing the matchmaking for you, we will pick guilds which are of the same league to make up for the most intense and fair fights!​

Battleground (Summary)

If the above is too much text, here is the summary:

• 5 to 8 guilds fight on an instanced battleground for 10 days (and then get new opponents)
• Winning / losing a battleground affects the league your guild is playing in, and the rewards you get after the 10 days
• A guild's league dictates which opponents they will face on their next battleground
• Victory is decided by gaining victory points from holding provinces on the battleground map
• To conquer provinces, guild members perform battles or negotiations
• Provinces can be customized with province buildings, which are unique boosts for this new feature
• All guild members of all ages will be able to provide a valuable contribution for their guild

Images

Please keep in mind that these images show the feature as it was envisioned so far, but they are work-in-progress and all elements are subject to change!

Explanation of what you can see:

• Top left interface: Current league including rank in battleground | Current amount of victory points | Current level of attrition
• Flags: Show which guild tries to conquer which province and the amount of advancements they have achieved
• Colored medals next to flags: indicate other guilds that try to conquer the province. Only the most progressed guild is represented on the flag, secondary guilds are shown as colored medals next to it
• Guild Icons: Show starting provinces of the given guilds

Spoiler

Below you can see the contextual menu when clicking / tapping on a province. It will show all conquering guilds in detail and provides you with further options to attack & negotiate.

Spoiler

Please leave your feedback in this thread and we'll look into your ideas and opinions. We'll collect feedback for the next two weeks (until 3rd June 2019), integrate feedback into the concept and share an update within 3 weeks (by 10th June 2019). We will also hold a live Q&A on Facebook & Instagram on the 22nd May 2019 at 17:00 CEST (15:00 UTC). We hope you understand the reasons for this step and look forward to your feedback. Forge of Empires is played by millions of amazing players and together, we will make it even better!

Sincerely yours,

Your Forge of Empires Team