I'm curious. Out of all the players saying they won't build either GB, or that they are worthless, how many of you actually built either GB here on Beta to test it? I'm not taking sides, I am genuinely curious.
Thanks all
I am camped in CE on Beta and obviously haven't built them, so please take my opinion with a grain of salt (I only play Beta for the sneak peek at events). However, here are my thoughts on them:
Stargazer: By the time most players reach VF, goods have generally become a minor concern, if at all. On my Live worlds, I already have huge stockpiles of VF. The goods numbers would have to come up to make this thing worthwhile. In addition, it's usually fairly easy to trade down at the top levels.
Virgo Project: IMO, this GB is going to be
vastly overrated. Which I'm perfectly happy about; I expect a steady trade in selling VP/SA:M goods packages to boost the GBs I actually care about. The Virgo Project is essentially "you get this battle for free". It will be the shiny new toy everybody wants. However, consider these points:
-The probability and chances are extremely low. At level 10, it's likely to give an average of just over 1 per day. Who cares? A lot of players who are advanced enough to get the resources to build this thing do dozens, sometimes hundreds of battles per day. One free one is insignificant in the grand scheme. Imagine if the VP "hits" against an 8-spear army? LOL.
-This is already essentially available from the Kraken. If you can't beat a DA with one of them knocked out ahead of time, you really shouldn't be going into that fight anyway. However, unlike the Kraken, there is no useful collection, and the number of opportunities is drastically reduced.
-The only real point of this thing is to get through massive defense bonuses in PvP. So it's not useless, but it is limited to very select circumstances.
I should note an important point here. I'm
not saying these GBs are bad. They're certainly not Gaea Statue/Colosseum level. Nor is building them an issue; as I stated previously goods are not a concern for most SA:M players. The concern is that leveling them will require thousands of Forge Points
that otherwise could have gone to more essential GBs! It's not that they're not worth it per se; it's that they're not worth re-directing resources to.
Some closing thoughts:
-Innogames is going to get a ton of hate on the Virgo Project in the form of "I spent years building up my PvP defense, now you give a GB that can destroy it all!" I genuinely feel sorry for the in-game moderators who are going to be flooded with tickets from people who think "Contact Support" is the appropriate venue to whine and moan about a game feature they don't like.
-Either of these GBs would become worthwhile with a Kraken-esque Forge Point collection bonus. Innogames refused to offer a FP-producing GB in VF, now we won't get one for SA:M either. At SA:M level, FPs are by far the #1 resource people are looking for.
-If we were to evaluate GBs based solely on "special combat bonus" (and only the bonus), I'd rate them as 1) AO 2) Kraken 3) Virgo. However, not only is Virgo the weakest bonus (based on the extremely limited number of "hits"), it doesn't give FPs while both AO and Kraken do. So IMO it's not even in the same conversation as the other 2.
-Need to add a caveat; my strategy on my Main world is to not build "novelty/gimmick" GBs and instead focus on leveling the fundamentals. I even deleted ToR, leading many in my guild to ask if I'd lost my mind. Most SA:M-level players have more GBs than I do, so I expect they may be more favorably disposed towards these two than I am.
