Guild Battlegrounds Feedback

[K--O]

GvG has been broken for some time. Having to be on at reset, defenses not keeping up w/ offensive bonuses, and ghost guilds who can do dirty work for next to no cost are just a couple issues. I'm willing to give this new approach a try. With that in mind here are some items for consideration.

There needs to be a fairness around the clock. Everything resetting at the same time of day severely restricts the ability to compete fairly. Not sure how best to do it but find a way to not reward guilds who can have big numbers of people on at the same time over guilds who may have players on at various times throughout a 24 hour period.

"Negotiation" needs to be a "chance" and not a "guarantee" so it needs to work like GE negotiations and not sector negotiations.

Negotiations needs to balanced and equal to fighting. To do this I think fighting needs to lose the "auto battle" and the "auto complete" during Guild Battlegrounds. This not only evens the negotiation and the fighting as one will not be significantly faster than the other but it also equals a "smart" fighter against someone who just has massive attack bonuses.

Currently in GvG there are alliances and enemies. Either this needs to be taken into account in some fashion as to who is pitted against whom or, more probable, the Guild Battleground needs to go across worlds and not internal w/i a given world.

Not directly related to this new feature but you need to revise how Guild Ranking is determined to make it more indicative of all aspects of the game (Guild Battlegrounds, GE, City size, Advancement of players through the ages, balance of a guild across ages, GB sizes/levels/quantity, Medals, Treasury, etc).

Just a few thoughts on how to make this the most beneficial for all.

 

[DeletedUser12884]

So they are adding another feature without addressing a huge problem with GVG is what I read.

 

[DeletedUser12884]

How about this for GVG. . . Couple of suggestions
1. Each player is only allowed 5 fights per sector, and also only allowed 2-3 fights to break a siege?
2. Put GVG recalc on a 23 hour cylce so it changes everyday and more people can be on instead of the same 8EST everyday which is perfect for East Coast players but suks for everyone else. . .

 

[DeletedUser33825]

I am excited to have something new to contribute to the guilds in my worlds. Will this will be able to be done at any time like GE? (The current recalc is during family time in my timezone: dinner, homework, bedtime) I also agree that GvG is difficult to learn... even when the "older" players try to advise, things would happen too quickly for me to understand how to be helpful during the few battles I could attend.

 

[IngeJones]

I'd have thought a lot of problems with GvG could be addressed by taking away the Autobattle and Results buttons. It would be hard to write a script to do a manual battle, and what's more a seige would take longer allowing more time for the rest of the guild to join. I've been known to miss a seige in the time it took for the kettle to boil. Very frustrating.

 

[DMan4u]

I applaud your attempt to revamp a little-used aspect of the game. It really sounds like a combination of the existing system with a Fortnite-style battle royale, which makes me suggest a few more changes along that concept.
Comments:
1. 10 days is hard to sync with people's schedules, I recommend either 6 days like GE or 2 weeks like our neighborhood rotation.
2. I would challenge the concept of entire guilds actually fighting on a common battlefield, this game is almost entirely about individual city management and development. I would recommend basically another mini-game like the Cultural Settlements, but base it on fighting, the guilds would supplement the goods costs and collect the victory points, etc to help advancement along with some personal rewards.
3. To conserve your own computer resources, allow some sort of "opt-in" or sign-up period for each battlefield, there is no sense in forcing masses of inactive guilds or players to be on this battleground, you could even allow the opt-in to be based on different age of troops to be used, that way a VF player that just loves fighting in LMA could still do so...even if they have massive combat bonuses they will quickly move themselves into a league with other players with similar bonuses.
4. To accommodate those that persistently call for a "level playing field", create an option for battling without any combat bonuses allowed, just pure troops and straight strategy...maybe give point bonuses for the winners of those matches.

Thank you for accepting feedback, you will never make everyone happy, I have played for almost 3 years and I just wanted to share my perspective on what I have seen in online gaming trends overall, plus the experience I have from my own GVG battles here.

 

[DeletedUser14453]

If data analysis is showing only 5% of all FoE players doing GvG in all 26 US Worlds, then the resources invested by the Inno Games R&D teams to satisfy this minority group of players can be better spent in other areas of game improvement. I am sure the technical issues and costs associated with the conversion away from Adobe flashplayer makes this financially and technically difficult, especially when only a small minority use this feature.

On GvG Fighting:

Large and powerful guilds who can bring together several high-level ranking GvG players can overwhelm even other top 10 – 20 guilds (true in any battle scenario), as such, these GvG powerful fighting guilds hitting a single event versus 1,2 or 3 less GvG fighters from the other guild not only overwhelm these other guilds but can create response time and server performance issues all the way around. This frustration prevents many other want-to-be GvG players from getting into this type of game play.

This is the theory behind a denial-of-service attack (DoS), only this is an “internal server-attack” vs a “cyber-attack” scenario where the perpetrator in this instance is a larger guild of active GvG players who understand the FoE “lag time” problem and purposely seek to make the resource unavailable to its intended users by temporarily or indefinitely disrupting the services of the server where the GvG action is occurring. Out numbered players may kill 1 unit before 10 of their DAs are destroyed).

FoE is not going to throw money at this issue for a minority of players to increase bandwidth. Performance can be impacted by even the browser software the player is using (SeaMonkey . . . the old Netscape browser often seems to work the best in many GvG situations).

On improving participation in all areas:

Guild and Player ranking is impacted the most by GvG sectors (territory held) and battles won. The more powerful players continue to become more powerful, while others become less enthused and less powerful. Once an FoE player breaks into this top 5%, it becomes very difficult to move up in either of those rankings unless you are constantly fighting. I have yet to break into the top 100 in O:world and have been fairly stagnant in my ranking (120 – 140) for the last several years, although I play consistently each day

Moving forward on your tech tree and continent map, building and advancing GBs, donating to the guild treasury, GE participation and/or events, daily challenge and story Quest completion appear to carry less weight in helping the guild or individual player improve in the rankings.

Perhaps a more balanced and weighted solutions of allocating points in all these areas would improve overall participation and game play activity. Making the game more exciting for those folks who enjoy certain features of game play, other than GvG or PvP.

Regards,

~Billy

 

[AloneOnTheRiver]

Please leave your feedback here 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

I do not play GvG and have no future plans to do so. That being said, I understand most of the concerns about the update and agree with most of the comments. But to those who complain about the game and some of the aspects, we all have had to live thru them. In short, 'Suck it up, Buttercup!'

 

[DeletedUser26660]

I like GvG and think this new suggestion is the wrong way to go. The approach should be to alter the existing GvG to attract new players, not invent a whole new game again...who is to say this will attract any more players than the existing GvG does at the moment?

We have enough side games already like Vikings and GE and multiple events, so another one in my opinion is too much. I also like a lot the suggestion above by nomics27 regarding changing the recalc time as the current rigid recalc time does not cater for the majority, only a minority.

 

[Magically Mysterious Zed]

Well whatever happens, I feel no significant improvement will come of any idea.
Let me explain my thought process....with the introduction of the new Fighting GB's bonuses and the build up of those GB's to ridiculous levels, only the very dedicated players or diamond spenders are going to have the most power to fight. It is currently what is happening and there is nothing to stop this.
The common place farmer style of play is going the way of the dinosaur. IMO
I agree with EnchantedKing2016 post #17.
I have been saying for years we should have somewhere for the higher era people to fight on a more even playing field. It dentures younger players when the big boys come in and dominate.
Very frustrating to those who are mostly farmers and only dabble in GVG for the growth of the guild they are in.
As for those needing guidance on GVG game-play, that's where the guild-members come in. Any guild that does GVG should help every member understand the principals.

Off topic: As a farmer, would be advantageous to have an 'Aid All' button, with a pop-up menu of 'Aid all guild-mates', 'Aid all friends' and 'Aid all neighbors' [ Thinking out loud ]

Side note: I started this game with the intent on the history aspect. I am very pleased with your historical accuracy.

 

[DeletedUser38856]

This battlegrounds thing is weird with NEGOTIATION. If they are negotiating, will they be using the guild treasury goods? Otherwise lower age treasury still has almost no use.

If current GVG had a point system so that for EACH sector you have by reset, you get 1 point (same amount for all sectors) which can be used to spend on things for like a guild house/guild skills - emissaries with benefits, treasury goods, attack % for guildies, stuff like this. That would fix make capturing lower ages sectors useful. Because the reward is only GP right now, and its low low GP compared to higher ages, that's why low ages aren't attractive.

If that is the goal, then something simple like this would fix GvG without a whole new system.

Also, it'd be easy to make up a quick GvG tutorial, it's not that complicated like you did of the combat system. You don't need to change how things work. By making what you currently have attractive, that will bring more players to join in, especially the player can also benefit off of it. The 5 FP for the new GEvGE is attractive, maybe something like this to GvG too

 

[DeletedUser26660]

GvG is an expansion of GE in some ways, similar looking battlefield with 8v8 troops. If 50% of players play GE v 5% play GvG then surely the question is why? Answer is mixture of personal incentives and also flexibility of GE v rigidity of GvG with recalc always at same time daily, forcing everyone to congregate at a set time.

 

[EarlofKnight]

Most important it has to be STABLE and non buggy. Current GVG is way to fragile...constant kick outs...freezes...etc

 

[85gt]

What world do you play on? Let's see if your stats back up your ridiculous accusation. I play on V World -- name is the same.

I do see one 85gt ranked 6,906 with 640 battles. You definitely scary, bro.

I play on B world, v,n and z are farms

 

[Godly Luke]

Refresh Rate- GvG needs to be able to update the map more frequent. When we are defending at calc, sometimes, we'll see 'siege' or we under attack basically, but most of our team would have to refresh, causing unneeded D/A casualties.

Stability- self-explanatory

 

[Salsuero]

Each player is only allowed 5 fights per sector, and also only allowed 2-3 fights to break a siege?

This would dramatically benefit the guilds with more players and specifically the ones with more players who are active in GvG and limit the ability of smaller guilds or ones with fewer GvG players to participate effectively.

 

[85gt]

GvG is an expansion of GE in some ways, similar looking battlefield with 8v8 troops. If 50% of players play GE v 5% play GvG then surely the question is why? Answer is mixture of personal incentives and also flexibility of GE v rigidity of GvG with recalc always at same time daily, forcing everyone to congregate at a set time.

GvG came before GE, they started the downfall of GvG with the now 96hr. no fight rule after changing guilds. That change alone sent many GvG players down the road. get rid of the silly rules such as that will help GvG gameplay.

 

[DeletedUser37440]

First I would like to say I think the new feature sound interesting and has great potential. I look forward to trying it out.

Reading through the posts and thinking about it here are some ideas:

• It would be nice if you could incorporate support pool. Perhaps it generates a bonus attack% for all members to help out those just getting started, perhaps it benefits defense, maybe it gets converted to a currency for battlefield bonuses. It just feels like it should have some role.
• I would like to see some value from the guild treasury. Generating hundreds of arctic future+ goods every day is pretty much useless today. Right now GvG is the only way to spend vast quantities of goods in general (and only up to future age). 100,000 colonial goods will simply never be spent unlocking GE. So I'm hoping battlefield will not only have a use for AF+ goods but also have a use for these quantities.
• I think you should include some general improvements for the guild treasury:
  • It would be nice to be able to convert goods even at a significant penalty. At least this would help make overproduction from arcs especially in the higher AF+ ages useful for something. Also since all goods are spent evenly, unbalanced goods are also otherwise useless.
  • The log isn't very useful especially in a big guild, a summary would help. A quick view of how much each player gave or how goods by age are changing, would be helpful even if it doesn't drill into significant detail.
  • Some kinda of war chest feature would be nice. As a guild when planning to do something in GvG we often wanted to give new players a chance to play around in the early age maps, but it was a major concern that they would overspend and interfere with GE funding. If trusted members could transfer funds to a war chest that regular or leader members were then free to spend it would really help with management.
• I was hoping that GvG would someday be on mobile, but I imagine this isn't going to happen, that this new feature is basically the realization that its not going to ever work out. So if GvG is never going to be fully on mobile, maybe there is still a way for mobile to participate a little? I mean battles themselves are already in mobile, so if there was some summary screen (like hex count/siege count) and a list of active sieges, it would allow mobile players to just jump into battles, even if they had to coordinate with a browser player to actually start the siege. That and placing troops in open slots is pretty much all non-leader members can do anyway. As long as you were considering full GvG might go to mobile there was no point in going in a partial access direction, but if the full feature is just not feasible I think you should really look into partial access. Besides the summary screen would make it easier even on the browser for new players to get involved even if they don't understand anything else about how it works.

 

[Salsuero]

That being said, I'm disappointed that we aren't addressing real issues with the GvG:

Me too, but I'm not sure it's as clear to me as it is to you:

- The lag is outrageous at recalc

I know this is real because MANY people have and continue to complain about it. But I don't experience lag... or not enough that it bothers me. I wish there was video demonstrating the "terrible" lag because I experience none of it... or I just don't know I'm experiencing it because it's always been there.

- There are clear cheaters using scripts unbalancing the game

Is this really clear? I had no idea people were cheating. Is there video online of this happening? I would really be interested in eliminating this, but I can't see where it is happening, maybe because I don't know HOW it's happening. Again... would love to see something posted showing this in action.

- No mobile

100% Agree.

- As mentioned several times, there is no incentive to fight lower age maps since the prestige is so low

Many of the top guilds fight the lower age maps in our world... sometimes the incentive is to bully enemies... sometimes it's to show total dominance. I disagree that there is NO incentive. Fighting in GvG provides tower points too.

- Everyone has waited patiently for AF, OF, VF, and soon SAM GvG maps to open up and you aren't even considering this option because of a flawed GvG design? If newer ages weren't taken into account, it's a flawed design

I mean... everyone in those ages has waited patiently for it. I haven't. We don't own a single tile in GvG above the PE map anymore. I don't disagree that there are players who want more maps, but I don't think it's as big a deal as some suggest. I think the uselessness of treasury goods from AF up and the fact that the All Ages map uses medals for siege costs... that's more problematic than the lack of new maps.

 

[gonsell]

Please leave your feedback here 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

This new Guild Battleground revision.. will not be enough.. it would be better to get rid of it and create a newer version based on all platforms. GVG, is one sided in how it is played.. only the higher end guilds can play in it effectively.. Military combos are Stuipid
and does not always work. Get rid of GvG and replace it with something else..