Feedback for the GvG shutdown and the Guild Raids

[jaymoney23456]

Basically Egypt but 1000x worse. I think the point farmers are gonna be disappointed as you get like 10 ranking points per battle

You pretty much nailed it with this reply-you could also say its like some nightmarish version of the movie groundhog day lol

 

[Xenosaur]

version of the movie groundhog day lol

Think someone in beta mentioned that too, a few days ago

 

[P C C]

I think your post actually helped prove the point that using city defense to attack is nonsensical. You end up twisting up your words trying to justify the unjustifiable lol

Why? It was an obvious satisfactory explanation to me as soon as the concept was raised for GE5. You send out a strong army to attack and conquer and also keep reserve forces at home (that may or not be as strong) in case opposing forces decide to attack you. When those forces approach your city, you have already rampaged through the rest of their army in GE1-4 so they won't attack you, but you can decide whether to ignore them or use your defensive reserve to finish them off.

In comparison to being able to boost a man on horseback enough to take out a tank or having extremely advanced troops such that your city would be unable to provide maintenance, both of which I'd bet most of the people complaining about the new uses of blue stats were fine with, it seems much more justifiable

 

[jaymoney23456]

Why? It was an obvious satisfactory explanation to me as soon as the concept was raised for GE5. You send out a strong army to attack and conquer and also keep reserve forces at home (that may or not be as strong) in case opposing forces decide to attack you. When those forces approach your city, you have already rampaged through the rest of their army in GE1-4 so they won't attack you, but you can decide whether to ignore them or use your defensive reserve to finish them off.

In comparison to being able to boost a man on horseback enough to take out a tank or having extremely advanced troops such that your city would be unable to provide maintenance, both of which I'd bet most of the people complaining about the new uses of blue stats were fine with, it seems much more justifiable

Thumbs down to this post

 

[Sharmon the Impaler]

Thumbs down to this post

We get it , you hate the game , just leave.

 

[Flynn013]

Does anyone know why they decided to have separate attack and defending armies in the first place? The two separate (red and blue) stats have caused a lot of confusion. It would be much simpler to have only one attack and one defense stat and only one army that does everything.

 

[Emberguard]

Does anyone know why they decided to have separate attack and defending armies in the first place? The two separate (red and blue) stats have caused a lot of confusion. It would be much simpler to have only one attack and one defense stat and only one army that does everything.

No official information on the why, but I do know players kept bringing up for years how useless defending boosts are and how Inno should do something with them. Could have some influence on the decision

 

[UBERhelp1]

No official information on the why, but I do know players kept bringing up for years how useless defending boosts are and how Inno should do something with them. Could have some influence on the decision

Timeline of the story:

1. Players realize there's not much use for defense boosts.
2. Inno adds a use for defense boosts.
3. Players complain there's a use for defense boosts.

 

[Xenosaur]

Does anyone know why they decided to have separate attack and defending armies in the first place? The two separate (red and blue) stats have caused a lot of confusion. It would be much simpler to have only one attack and one defense stat and only one army that does everything.

There are 3 armies, not 2 - if you really want to keep track:

Red - Attacking Army for attack fighting - most venues use this (GE 1-4, continent map, PvP, GbG, and of course, GvG - may she rest in peace

Blue - City defenders and GE 5, you control them in GE 5, elsewhere, they defend your city via computer AI responses to city attack

Orange - PvP Arena - specialized for that venue, AI controlled.

In fact, it gets even more granular (specific), under the 3 color system: Most event buildings are now delivering boost value by both color AND venue it's going to work in.

For example: In the next event you'll play here in live, the Celtic Tavern (base) continues the design of venue specific boosts.

It has city defender boost that turns on ONLY when you fight in GE 5.

SO they are getting very specific where things are going to work. Get used to it

 

[Johnny B. Goode]

Timeline of the story:

1. Players realize there's not much use for defense boosts.
2. Inno adds a use for defense boosts.
3. Players complain there's a use for defense boosts.

Better timeline:

1. Players realize there's not much use for defense boosts.
2. Most players then ignore defense boosts.
3. A very small minority complains that they can't defend their city from plundering.
4. Most players point out that plundering is not a problem if you play the game well.
5. Inno adds a use for defense boosts, starting in GE at a higher level than any attack boost previously necessary.
6. Players have to choose whether to rebuild their cities or just ignore that one level of GE.
7. Many players choose the latter option.
8. Inno basically says, "We'll show you!" and prepares to add even more areas for the previously (for 10 years) useless boosts.
9. Along with other Inno decisions regarding FoE development, many players decide to start searching for new games to play.

 

[UBERhelp1]

Better timeline:

1. Players realize there's not much use for defense boosts.
2. Most players then ignore defense boosts.
3. A very small minority complains that they can't defend their city from plundering.
4. Most players point out that plundering is not a problem if you play the game well.
5. Inno adds a use for defense boosts, starting in GE at a higher level than any attack boost previously necessary.
6. Players have to choose whether to rebuild their cities or just ignore that one level of GE.
7. Many players choose the latter option.
8. Inno basically says, "We'll show you!" and prepares to add even more areas for the previously (for 10 years) useless boosts.
9. Along with other Inno decisions regarding FoE development, many players decide to start searching for new games to play.

You do realize you fulfilled my timeline

Plus, no one had to rebuild cities for GE. Event buildings are giving plenty of defense boosts on top of other goodies, so if you've been playing the past few events... defense is no issue.

 

[jaymoney23456]

Does anyone know why they decided to have separate attack and defending armies in the first place? The two separate (red and blue) stats have caused a lot of confusion. It would be much simpler to have only one attack and one defense stat and only one army that does everything.

I agree. Its getting to the point that one will soon need an advanced degree in mathmatics to try to sort out what the best buildings to place in your city and the ones to get rid of lol

 

[jaymoney23456]

There are 3 armies, not 2 - if you really want to keep track:

Red - Attacking Army for attack fighting - most venues use this (GE 1-4, continent map, PvP, GbG, and of course, GvG - may she rest in peace

Blue - City defenders and GE 5, you control them in GE 5, elsewhere, they defend your city via computer AI responses to city attack

Orange - PvP Arena - specialized for that venue, AI controlled.

In fact, it gets even more granular (specific), under the 3 color system: Most event buildings are now delivering boost value by both color AND venue it's going to work in.

For example: In the next event you'll play here in live, the Celtic Tavern (base) continues the design of venue specific boosts.

It has city defender boost that turns on ONLY when you fight in GE 5.

SO they are getting very specific where things are going to work. Get used to it

There aren't specific attack boosts for PvP arena aside from your normal attack and defense boost. Granted that its stupid that you can't use AO and Kraken in PvP and the PvP aggressively targets regular units before rogues, which is basically trying to make rogues useless but there is no orange attack stats.

 

[jaymoney23456]

Better timeline:

1. Players realize there's not much use for defense boosts.
2. Most players then ignore defense boosts.
3. A very small minority complains that they can't defend their city from plundering.
4. Most players point out that plundering is not a problem if you play the game well.
5. Inno adds a use for defense boosts, starting in GE at a higher level than any attack boost previously necessary.
6. Players have to choose whether to rebuild their cities or just ignore that one level of GE.
7. Many players choose the latter option.
8. Inno basically says, "We'll show you!" and prepares to add even more areas for the previously (for 10 years) useless boosts.
9. Along with other Inno decisions regarding FoE development, many players decide to start searching for new games to play.

We should also recognize that the only reason for making any player use city defense to attack was to simply rake in more revenue. It sure didn't add anything to the game or make it more playable or better to play. Wasn't a decision that would have been made in a 100 years for a console game for example.

 

[Emberguard]

Granted that its stupid that you can't use AO and Kraken in PvP and the PvP aggressively targets regular units before rogues, which is basically trying to make rogues useless but there is no orange attack stats.

That was specifically implemented because it was requested by Players for the Arena to work that way during Beta testing. It didn't do that on initial release.

 

[xivarmy]

Does anyone know why they decided to have separate attack and defending armies in the first place? The two separate (red and blue) stats have caused a lot of confusion. It would be much simpler to have only one attack and one defense stat and only one army that does everything.

Starting out, way way back, there was only great buildings to add to boost. And there was only so much boost you could get from great buildings. So you had attack and defense for attacking army as one stat. and attack and defense for defending army as the other stat. And you were a pretty advanced player just to have level 10 great buildings. so 90%/90% boost was pretty good.

2013: Next comes watchfires. These were added to allow people who wanted to spend space on turtling their city to do so. To keep things a bit interesting, they only offered defense for defending army. This means you could make your units super-tough to kill, but their damage output remained reasonable.

2014: Next step is attack for attacking army. You had people with unkillable defenses and nothing that could be done about that as an attacker. This enabled you to potentially overcome tough defenses, but not to make your attacking units impervious. Initially you could only get it from barracks, starting in contemporary era, which required large amounts of population. i.e. you might add Strike Team centers for 2100 population and 4x3 space to get 4% attack for attacking army. Event sources slowly started to appear starting with Speaker's Corner in 2015 Memorial Event. Essentially this is the why we have 4 separate stats - it was good for game balance when 2 of those stats (defense for attacking army, attack for defending army) were missing.

2015: The first massive Power Creep: The Arc. This moved the line from "level 10 great buildings are good" to somewhere around level 80 being reasonably accessible. Though it would take time for much of the player base to catch on/catch up. We didn't have the baseline FP income yet for a level 80 Arc to be a *fast* project (100+ FP from collections per day was still quite a rich player). Around this point you might start seeing top players with 300%/150% boost for their attacking army. But it's not like you'd see things get too much further (maybe 400/200 on the most focused player) until:

2017: The next major Power Creep: Event buildings gone wild. Up to this point the SoK from 2014 was the gold standard in event buildings. You measured your success in an event frequently with how many SoKs you won - which was often ~2-4 for free and there were only 3 major events per year. In 2017 we started getting things that kept pace starting with the Cherry Garden Set which was capable of close to the same FP production and also added a strong dose of attack for attacking army. Exciting times! It was probably time to see such things and if it had stayed on top for another 3 years, it probably would've been healthier for the state of the game. Ultimately while this allowed attacking armies to now hit like trucks, they still remained touchable defensively.

2018: Cherry Blossom Level 2, yea, too soon, and too much of an upgrade. Level 1 Cherry Blossom sets would still have been immensely appealing. But they were in full power creep mode by now. One can just imagine the discussions: "We can just keep making better stuff and they buy it! It's like printing money!". The last small events, known as historical questlines happens this year. Which starts to progress us faster towards the 10-big-events-a-year schedule they've now settled on.

Winter 2019-Forge Bowl 2020: And now we break that "rule" that existed since 2014. They needed something new to extend their gravy train. First give defending armies tactician towers in winter event. And then attacking armies sentinel outposts and olympic treasury in forge bowl. This removed the tether where attacking armies would always have limited defense and defending armies limited firepower that made it so it didn't necessarily matter too much that someone had a stronger city - you could balance content that would at least not be trivial to a strong player while being an appropriate challenge for a weaker one. GvG's death-clock due to being limited to at most 75/75 boost begins now basically. Before this you could've been assured to take a decent number of losses because you couldn't raise your attacking army's defense that high. So you had a wish to improve to do better in it (even if it wasn't terribly practical to do so). With the addition of the sentinel outpost and olympic treasury and other buildings that followed you now could reasonably fulfil your wish (along with everyone else), which ripped much of the depth out of the feature.

---

I could continue the history of how things went off the rails faster still over the following year from this - eventually reaching the Mountain Reserve in Wildlife 2021 before they took a pause for ~1.5 years til they decided they were hopping back on the power creep gravy train. But this takes you to how we got here in the first place with 4 different basic boost stats. Initially the stats were separated outside of GBs to keep game balance manageable - and it worked pretty well. Eventually they broke the "rule" that facilitated that to encourage a new wave of spending.

And now it's just a matter of (usually) omitting one or more of the stats on a building to give it a "flaw" that you want to correct with a bunch of another building. They've added more potential flaws by making a portion of the boost only applicable to a specific venue now too - so that they can stoke the demand again later when there's new venues you need it for.

 

[Xenosaur]

Starting out, way way back, there was only great buildings to add to boost. And there was only so much boost you could get from great buildings. So you had attack and defense for attacking army as one stat. and attack and defense for defending army as the other stat. And you were a pretty advanced player just to have level 10 great buildings. so 90%/90% boost was pretty good.

2013: Next comes watchfires. These were added to allow people who wanted to spend space on turtling their city to do so. To keep things a bit interesting, they only offered defense for defending army. This means you could make your units super-tough to kill, but their damage output remained reasonable.

2014: Next step is attack for attacking army. You had people with unkillable defenses and nothing that could be done about that as an attacker. This enabled you to potentially overcome tough defenses, but not to make your attacking units impervious. Initially you could only get it from barracks, starting in contemporary era, which required large amounts of population. i.e. you might add Strike Team centers for 2100 population and 4x3 space to get 4% attack for attacking army. Event sources slowly started to appear starting with Speaker's Corner in 2015 Memorial Event. Essentially this is the why we have 4 separate stats - it was good for game balance when 2 of those stats (defense for attacking army, attack for defending army) were missing.

2015: The first massive Power Creep: The Arc. This moved the line from "level 10 great buildings are good" to somewhere around level 80 being reasonably accessible. Though it would take time for much of the player base to catch on/catch up. We didn't have the baseline FP income yet for a level 80 Arc to be a *fast* project (100+ FP from collections per day was still quite a rich player). Around this point you might start seeing top players with 300%/150% boost for their attacking army. But it's not like you'd see things get too much further (maybe 400/200 on the most focused player) until:

2017: The next major Power Creep: Event buildings gone wild. Up to this point the SoK from 2014 was the gold standard in event buildings. You measured your success in an event frequently with how many SoKs you won - which was often ~2-4 for free and there were only 3 major events per year. In 2017 we started getting things that kept pace starting with the Cherry Garden Set which was capable of close to the same FP production and also added a strong dose of attack for attacking army. Exciting times! It was probably time to see such things and if it had stayed on top for another 3 years, it probably would've been healthier for the state of the game. Ultimately while this allowed attacking armies to now hit like trucks, they still remained touchable defensively.

2018: Cherry Blossom Level 2, yea, too soon, and too much of an upgrade. Level 1 Cherry Blossom sets would still have been immensely appealing. But they were in full power creep mode by now. One can just imagine the discussions: "We can just keep making better stuff and they buy it! It's like printing money!". The last small events, known as historical questlines happens this year. Which starts to progress us faster towards the 10-big-events-a-year schedule they've now settled on.

Winter 2019-Forge Bowl 2020: And now we break that "rule" that existed since 2014. They needed something new to extend their gravy train. First give defending armies tactician towers in winter event. And then attacking armies sentinel outposts and olympic treasury in forge bowl. This removed the tether where attacking armies would always have limited defense and defending armies limited firepower that made it so it didn't necessarily matter too much that someone had a stronger city - you could balance content that would at least not be trivial to a strong player while being an appropriate challenge for a weaker one. GvG's death-clock due to being limited to at most 75/75 boost begins now basically. Before this you could've been assured to take a decent number of losses because you couldn't raise your attacking army's defense that high. So you had a wish to improve to do better in it (even if it wasn't terribly practical to do so). With the addition of the sentinel outpost and olympic treasury and other buildings that followed you now could reasonably fulfil your wish (along with everyone else), which ripped much of the depth out of the feature.

---

I could continue the history of how things went off the rails faster still over the following year from this - eventually reaching the Mountain Reserve in Wildlife 2021 before they took a pause for ~1.5 years til they decided they were hopping back on the power creep gravy train. But this takes you to how we got here in the first place with 4 different basic boost stats. Initially the stats were separated outside of GBs to keep game balance manageable - and it worked pretty well. Eventually they broke the "rule" that facilitated that to encourage a new wave of spending.

And now it's just a matter of (usually) omitting one or more of the stats on a building to give it a "flaw" that you want to correct with a bunch of another building. They've added more potential flaws by making a portion of the boost only applicable to a specific venue now too - so that they can stoke the demand again later when there's new venues you need it for.

@xivarmy --> Fabulous, Fabulous reveal through the FoE "way way back" time-machine. Really enjoyed reading it (and reliving those moments...) and thank you for the investment of time to create that. The game has so much richness, and history, and when you mix that with a good writer and story teller like you are, it takes on a whole new dimension...

Namaste!!

 

[jaymoney23456]

That was specifically implemented because it was requested by Players for the Arena to work that way during Beta testing. It didn't do that on initial release.

It must have been the players with poor stats themselves and low or no AO or Kraken. I doubt that many players with high attack and high AO and Kraken would have wanted this and I know of no one who likes how rogues are targeted in PvP.

 

[Pericles the Lion]

It must have been the players with poor stats themselves and low or no AO or Kraken. I doubt that many players with high attack and high AO and Kraken would have wanted this and I know of no one who likes how rogues are targeted in PvP.

The AI targets rogues in PvP exactly the way a real player would. Kill the real units first and save the rogues for last.

 

[jaymoney23456]

The AI targets rogues in PvP exactly the way a real player would. Kill the real units first and save the rogues for last.

Except it isn't a real player you are fighting is it! Only a small percentage of the fights done could possibly be manual fights given the time it takes to finish a manual fight compared to an autobattle. Therefore, having the AI target rogues this way effectively nullifies the entire purpose of the rogue unit.