Feedback Guild Battlegrounds

[DeletedUser10282]

a lot of people are grabbing their pitchforks .., just sayin ....

One of my goals is help my guild by fighting, and I don’t intend nor do I have the time to fight all day, but if all I can do is fight to level 90 or so, then forgetaboutit. I’m not looking to get 5000 fights a day. you are penalizing fighters way too much.

 

[DeletedUser10318]

Guild Battlegrounds was not intended to be a feature that can be played all day.

There are two reasons for this:
1.) There are so many other things in the game already and we didn't want to make players feel required to invest too much time with this new feature.
2.) If it was possible for a player to play all day, it means that those players could contribute so much that all players with normal contribution amounts (let's say ~20 advances) would feel as if they are not contributing at all. Just imagine if someone who "broke" the 1750% attack penalty wall could go to 1000+ attrition. How would the small guild member who "only" contributed up to 20 attrition feel in comparison?

So this attrition change was two ensure two things:
1.) Keep a relative even ground between a low-end player and a high-end player, so that both can still make a difference for their guild - of course the high-end player should be able to contribute more to be rewarded for having a stronger city.
2.) Improve the balance between negotiations and fights, as we saw that negotiations were too attractive (compared to fights) in the lower and middle attrition levels.

Well done developers!

This change was excellent and really necessary.

I suggest that every month according to data collected from the game a new fine adjustment is performed.

This is a dynamic game, and the continued fine tuning will make it always fresh.

 

[Scorpion Elite]

Sure ... they're consistent ...
2 years to sell us military upgrades, changing our cities for battles,
to be able to do 2 more battles ..
clap clap really good
buffuna!!

 

[Hiep Lin]

2 years to sell us military upgrades, changing our cities for battles,

Are you seeing?
You have been preparing GB for 2 years?

I increase my attack bonuses for a long time, and I will continue, I am far from beating 1750% and I am happy to be able to do 3 or 4 more fights.

 

[DeletedUser9666]

I quit once because of a lack of a real endgame.

No, there was an endgame. Here it is how it went:

Step 1: Get (aka "optimize") your Arc to 80 doing fp swaps. Possibly "optimize" few other GB as well.
Step 2: Tell your guild that you do not have time to play due to real life (after several years of FoE, when you apparently had no real life).
Step 3. Abandon your account.

That was the endgame that I saw happening on my main server over and over again since I started. Not so good mechanics from InnoGames perspective, I guess.

With GBG, there is no longer one STATIC, clearly defined "winning criterion", such as - get Arc to 80 and if possible - buy yourself with diamonds huge attack/def boost that would give you illusion of being most powerful player in the game. Then congratulate yourself and quit playing.
Now, the winning criterion is DYNAMIC and changes with every new GBG match. The point when players can "congratulate thrmself" and quit will not be accomplished so easily anymore.
Winning GBG takes much more than optimizing treasury and building zillion siege camps. Timing during daily cycle seems to be a big factor. Guild members activity level is another. I could probably come up with few more, if I thought about it a bit longer.

For example - you had conquered and built SC in every sector at recalc using your guild limitless resources. After 4 hours, when you are sound asleep in the USA, I conquer your first sector. Since all you have there are SC, it should not be hard. With a bit of lack, all siege camps will survive and now benefit me as I go after your next sector. By the time you are awake again - I have conquered all your sectors using your own siege camps. And now I have filled all your former sectors with traps. You are welcome!

Up to this point, FoE was a game of optimization. That's what was the biggest problem with it.
Now, it is a game of strategy and increased social interaction. At least, for the biggest guilds.
For what it is worth - my personal prediction is - it will significantly decrease player attrition. Because of social factor alone.

 

[qaccy]

@Genco Abbandando @xivarmy I'm still not convinced that raising boost is now pointless. The way I see it, even though adjustments have been made, someone with enough military bonuses to hit what used to be the attrition cap is still able to fight a lot more than someone who could only make it to around GE4 boost levels. If raising boost wasn't 'pointless' before this adjustment, I don't think it's pointless now either. The only thing 'lost' was it being capped, but GBs are already a similar system and with those, you simply stop working on them when you reach the point where the investment isn't worth it. Can military bonuses not be viewed the same way? Just stop getting more when it's no longer worth it. But that doesn't mean everything you've already acquired is suddenly irrelevant once you do, right?

 

[DeletedUser8743]

Guild Battlegrounds was not intended to be a feature that can be played all day.

There are two reasons for this:
1.) There are so many other things in the game already and we didn't want to make players feel required to invest too much time with this new feature.
2.) If it was possible for a player to play all day, it means that those players could contribute so much that all players with normal contribution amounts (let's say ~20 advances) would feel as if they are not contributing at all. Just imagine if someone who "broke" the 1750% attack penalty wall could go to 1000+ attrition. How would the small guild member who "only" contributed up to 20 attrition feel in comparison?

So this attrition change was two ensure two things:
1.) Keep a relative even ground between a low-end player and a high-end player, so that both can still make a difference for their guild - of course the high-end player should be able to contribute more to be rewarded for having a stronger city.
2.) Improve the balance between negotiations and fights, as we saw that negotiations were too attractive (compared to fights) in the lower and middle attrition levels.

If you thought negotiation were too attractive, you should have just reduced the negotiation advancement to 1 like it is for battle. The cost to do negotiations is too high now. A 4 item negotiation has a significant chance of failing in only 3 turns. A 6 item negotiation is probably only successful a third of the time in only 3 turns.

 

[xivarmy]

@Genco Abbandando @xivarmy I'm still not convinced that raising boost is now pointless. The way I see it, even though adjustments have been made, someone with enough military bonuses to hit what used to be the attrition cap is still able to fight a lot more than someone who could only make it to around GE4 boost levels. If raising boost wasn't 'pointless' before this adjustment, I don't think it's pointless now either. The only thing 'lost' was it being capped, but GBs are already a similar system and with those, you simply stop working on them when you reach the point where the investment isn't worth it. Can military bonuses not be viewed the same way? Just stop getting more when it's no longer worth it. But that doesn't mean everything you've already acquired is suddenly irrelevant once you do, right?

Alright context:
Langendorn(US) - I run 431%/200% Boost in Mars. Not the highest - but "enough" for everything other than GBG (and i actually did delete some in preparation for GBG as I'd already decided my best bet on this world was to negotiate anyways). As the round is basically over I did do an entire day of fighting yesterday and made it to 39 attrition. After the change, that'd probably be 49 attrition instead. Which is still dwarfed by the 50 attrition achieving double the progress I can do with negotiating without any real concern of running out of goods (not really affected by the attrition changes). Furthermore on important days I can (unsustainably) just keep pushing negotiations - i've hit into 70+ attrition some days or 140 progress, way more than I can achieve with fighting. Where with fighting the wall is the wall; there is no 'saving up for important days' when it comes to fighting. The best I can hope for after getting stuck is to keep checking sectors for an 8xsteel warden matchup that even if it had 100000% boost and i had 0% I could win with 8xrocket troops (1 damagex5 troops and 2 turns of fire before they can fire on you is enough to win). The attrition changes slightly increased what I can do on "off" days and did not change my plans to keep developing goods production because I was already prepared to give up on fighting here. So I shouldn't be complaining - but I also don't really count as a fighter here in terms of GBG.

Yorkton(US) - I run 323%/107% Boost in Contemporary Era, but have Hover Tanks available to me to fight. I am able to fight up to about 800% Boost currently in GBG and have made it as high as 55 attrition by fighting if I'm lucky on types of armies I face. I was able to extrapolate that if I hit 900% boost I should be able to handle 1750% Boost defenses. It was a lot, but seeing as it was markedly different from how I was playing other worlds, I felt it worth a shot and was feeling strangely motivated to actually try hard at developing a city again. Notably even if I had pulled it off, I still wouldn't have been significantly ahead of my negotiations on L in terms of amount of progress I can do per day as I would be limited by my rogue stockpile in terms of how far I go past 100 fights a day in the same way as I'm limited by my goods stockpile on L as to how far I go past 50 negotiations a day. I also started progressing my continent map further again, losing the triple-quest lull I was paused in, to get access to AF and OF troops as well, as sub cruisers would be able to handle the armies I tend to get stuck on around 800% boost better than hover tanks. After the attrition changes, I have zero motivation to try for that 900% boost objective (which instead of 45+ more attrition a day(from 55 to 100+) is 25 flat attrition a day (from 65 to 90) and an ever-escalating barrier slowing it down even further) - it's downright wrong to do so for purposes of GBG. I will still progress my boost some to get ready for GE4 in higher ages, but the plan instead has to be to get setup to negotiate GBG.

Now you might say my situation on Yorkton is exactly why they can't let us have the potential to break through an attrition ceiling. It's using a specific scenario that an average player not specifically targeting it will frankly not ever hit. I'd rather say though that it's telling that it already took a situation that extreme for me to consider fighting *even close* to negotiating in terms of high-end viability in GBG in the first place; and that if they wanted to cover that scenario they should just block me from using my hover tanks in Contemporary GBG rather than put some obscene curve to stop high-end fighters in their tracks.

What should the curve look like instead? At some point there should be a cap as to how much % it goes up per attrition. The escalating explosion creates a scenario where there is no doubt everyone hits some point where it's just not worth it to try for enough boost to be able to go another fight or two - that point may be different for different people but it's inevitable because of the curve that it exists. I'd say somewhere around 20% per (additional) attrition would be an appropriate maximum for *normal* combat scenarios (i.e. not me and my hover tank vs some poor little CE troops).

 

[DeletedUser10047]

If you thought negotiation were too attractive, you should have just reduced the negotiation advancement to 1 like it is for battle. The cost to do negotiations is too high now. A 4 item negotiation has a significant chance of failing in only 3 turns. A 6 item negotiation is probably only successful a third of the time in only 3 turns.

Here are my stats for negotiating in GBG:

Number of choices	Number of successes	Number of failures
4	500	39
5	950	255
6	680	610

 

[qaccy]

@xivarmy I have to admit, I'm still not seeing it. Is what you're trying to say that negotiating is now preferable to battling in GbG with these adjustments? Because that was the case before, as well. You've correctly pointed out 'the wall' when it comes to fighting, something that objectively cannot exist for negotiating. Most players were already hitting this 'wall' even with the 1750% cap, long before actually reaching that cap. Even players who could reach that high, you've again correctly mentioned that fighting at that point both relies on luck (getting the right enemy army, though with how units are positioned I don't think your rocket troop v warden battle will play out as cleanly as you described) and is not really sustainable anyway, which is the point. Neither fighting nor negotiating are meant to be endlessly doable; fighting hits 'the wall' where victory is either impossible or suffers heavy troop losses, and negotiations have heavy goods costs. You've also mentioned the significance of negotiations providing 2 advancements instead of 1 per battle, and how that means more GbG contribution per attrition gained. The thing is, none of this stuff is really new, like I said at first in this post. Negotiations have always been better than fighting in pretty much every way except that fighting up to 'the wall' allows saving some goods. Accounting for all of this, wasn't building up an attack bonus for GbG purposes always kinda pointless since negotiations have always been the smarter way to go?

 

[xivarmy]

I'm saying that before, in the majority of cases, negotiation swamped the ability to fight. And now that is even more the case as the corner cases of someone managing to get past 1750% are gone. Meaning past 400%ish getting boost to "GBG more" just isn't worth even thinking about. For most people this was already the case, and that was a problem. But now for everyone that's the case, making it an even bigger problem in my books. Fighting is now 100% wrong instead of 90% wrong. It's something you do to be lazy when the GBG is already settled. It's not a real option. At least when it capped at 1750% while that was ridiculous, it was a target where just maybe it could be viable.

"Fighting up to the wall" and then negotiating never saved goods. It costs goods to reach the same number of advances at a higher attrition. Because fighting up to the wall of say 50 attrition and then negotiating starting at 50 for another 25 taking you to 75 attrition and 100 advances costs more than negotiating from 1-50 and also being at 100 advances. If negotiating gave 2 attrition in addition to 2 advances, then fighting til you can't and then negotiating would save goods and that would at least be something. I believe I suggested this many dozens of pages back before their 'rationale for 2 advances for negotiation' post.

Clearly, yes I agree negotiating was always optimal, my point is this change makes the problem even worse. That fighting should be a serious option, and even in the corner case scenario where I thought it was half-viable it no longer will be after this. Fighting in GBG as it stands is for poor people with no ability to spend goods or for not-giving-a-crap and I have a problem with that.

What I'm suggesting since they want to make sure it's not possible to go "over the wall" with an infinite wall is to replace the wall with an infinite incline. That is that another 100% boost should always be able to say get you at least another 5-10 battles a day, not 1-2.

 

[sirblu]

Guild Battlegrounds was not intended to be a feature that can be played all day.

There are two reasons for this:
1.) There are so many other things in the game already and we didn't want to make players feel required to invest too much time with this new feature.
2.) If it was possible for a player to play all day, it means that those players could contribute so much that all players with normal contribution amounts (let's say ~20 advances) would feel as if they are not contributing at all. Just imagine if someone who "broke" the 1750% attack penalty wall could go to 1000+ attrition. How would the small guild member who "only" contributed up to 20 attrition feel in comparison?

So this attrition change was two ensure two things:
1.) Keep a relative even ground between a low-end player and a high-end player, so that both can still make a difference for their guild - of course the high-end player should be able to contribute more to be rewarded for having a stronger city.
2.) Improve the balance between negotiations and fights, as we saw that negotiations were too attractive (compared to fights) in the lower and middle attrition levels.

@Envoy - thank you for the explanation - Is there a link to where the new attrition values for both goods and battles are posted so I can let my live world Guilds know whats coming for the next round of GbG?

 

[Gab in Beta]

sirblu Inno generally doesnt post oficially the maths behind mechanisms, but fandom wiki does, so better check this out.

Guild Battlegrounds

Guild Battlegrounds is a feature which was introduced to the game by InnoGames on 14th November 2019. It is envisioned as an alternative guild feature to Guild vs Guild. It is also an attempt of bridging the gap between mobile and desktop players. However, it is not a replacement of Guild vs...

forgeofempires.fandom.com

they havent added the new atrition table, will propably do next days . .

As for the new atrition changes
I thought in the begining that fighters will like the changes and negotiators wont. Truth is almost noone like the changes in the atrition.
I understand that the infinite 1750 of 100+ atrition was something that needed change, but as many mentioned above, the curve doesnt seem fair. Having double attack-defence boost in just 5-6 battles is not a nice adition.
I dont have a problem with negotiations become a bit more demanding earlier, but still the whole atrition system needs a new balance.
My proposal is this.
We keep everything as it is till atrition 20. After atrition 20 and till 40 or 50 attack defence boosts go +5 for every atrition, then for another 10 atrition att-def boost goes +10 , next 20 atrition goes +20, next 20 atrition goes +30 or something similar. To have +40 or more boost just for 1 atrition is a joke and its actually punishing players with 1000+ boost. We do need a wall somewhere, but not so early in fighting mode.
Negotiations also need a wall . How ? After atrition 50 or 60 , make it +1 good for every atrition, so if you have atrition 100 you have negotiations x50 or x60.
The wall in negotiations should be more or less near the half atrition of the wall fighters have.
the "wall" in negotiations doesnt exist, someone could have thousands of goods and still being able to drop serious amounts on GBG, but after 1-2 months the goods per day is what will matter.

And yes, Siege camps need a rebalance too, maybe have less impact or make them more expensive. Less impact would be more balanced though, cause treasury goods are almost infinte for some guilds.

 

[CrashBoom]

for all who think their attack boost is now useless:
correct. sell those buildings and build FP buildings

 

[Emberguard]

for all who think their attack boost is now useless:
correct. sell those buildings and build FP buildings

Haha. Somehow I don’t think they will =,D

 

[sirblu]

sirblu Inno generally doesnt post oficially the maths behind mechanisms, but fandom wiki does, so better check this out.

Guild Battlegrounds

Guild Battlegrounds is a feature which was introduced to the game by InnoGames on 14th November 2019. It is envisioned as an alternative guild feature to Guild vs Guild. It is also an attempt of bridging the gap between mobile and desktop players. However, it is not a replacement of Guild vs...

forgeofempires.fandom.com

they havent added the new atrition table, will propably do next days . .

As for the new atrition changes
I thought in the begining that fighters will like the changes and negotiators wont. Truth is almost noone like the changes in the atrition.
I understand that the infinite 1750 of 100+ atrition was something that needed change, but as many mentioned above, the curve doesnt seem fair. Having double attack-defence boost in just 5-6 battles is not a nice adition.
I dont have a problem with negotiations become a bit more demanding earlier, but still the whole atrition system needs a new balance.
My proposal is this.
We keep everything as it is till atrition 20. After atrition 20 and till 40 or 50 attack defence boosts go +5 for every atrition, then for another 10 atrition att-def boost goes +10 , next 20 atrition goes +20, next 20 atrition goes +30 or something similar. To have +40 or more boost just for 1 atrition is a joke and its actually punishing players with 1000+ boost. We do need a wall somewhere, but not so early in fighting mode.
Negotiations also need a wall . How ? After atrition 50 or 60 , make it +1 good for every atrition, so if you have atrition 100 you have negotiations x50 or x60.
The wall in negotiations should be more or less near the half atrition of the wall fighters have.
the "wall" in negotiations doesnt exist, someone could have thousands of goods and still being able to drop serious amounts on GBG, but after 1-2 months the goods per day is what will matter.

And yes, Siege camps need a rebalance too, maybe have less impact or make them more expensive. Less impact would be more balanced though, cause treasury goods are almost infinte for some guilds.

Thank You Gab!! ;0)

 

[xivarmy]

Haha. Somehow I don’t think they will =,D

Oh some of it is on the deletion slate when i get appropriately sized stuff to replace it (and some already got deleted). And you can look forward to spiteful complaints about every event building with worthless attack boost for months to come The GBs and the accidental attack boost on things like Yggdrasil, Asylum, etc will make up more than enough. Attack boost on event buildings will be about as worthwhile as 'more coins'

 

[beelzebob666]

Inno generally doesnt post oficially the maths behind mechanisms, but fandom wiki does, so better check this out.
https://forgeofempires.fandom.com/wiki/Guild_Battlegrounds they havent added the new atrition table, will propably do next days . .

In this case they did... Attrition table is to be found in the official wiki (there I got all the missing values for the fandom wiki ). I/we will update the fandom wiki as soon as it changes on live next week...

 

[DeletedUser9938]

This stuff they doing with attrition is so lame... Im sorry for people who bought diamonds in the last few weeks to spend on attack boost buildings. Now it doesnt matter if your boost is 800% or 1500% you will just be able to do a few extra fights. Good stuff inno, looks like it has been though thru well. I have to admit that having a goal for these few weeks was a great feeling. Now back to collecting pointless forgepoints

 

[lorenzo75]

I hope you choose to listen to the players. This change is bad for those who worked every day to improve their city. You can give everyone the opportunity to do more without bringing such high values. In a diamond alloy one sector requires 160 battles. You wanted to force us to put buildings with diamonds. But forget that we will spend less on the buildings that attack. I was thinking of completing two trains and I already changed my mind because it's not worth it (and I'm talking about serving live)

I am the founder of one of the biggest Italian guilds and I can say that many players willing to spend 2/3 trains have decided not to do it, and there is talk of players who buy diamonds regularly. Maybe many "Small" will choose to spend, surely you will have done your evaluations. But a big player who regularly buys diamonds is a constant, the little ones often stop.