I am launching an internal survey tomorrow in MSG's guilds that have participated in Battlegrounds for round one. I will share some of what we get here later. For now, the following are some of the things we've heard most from regular players in our guilds:
1. They like the fact it allows mobile players to contribute to guild leveling
2. They like the fact it works much like Exepditions -- negotiate or fight
3. They feel the algorithm used for negotiating is too difficult -- to begin with "it forces you to pay diamonds most of the time". Many have also said that they think Innogames has this backwards -- fighting for one point (as opposed to negotating for two) seems wrong.
4. They do NOT like the fact you cannot withdraw a siege, nor defend when attacked. Several have commented that this reminds them of kids'"King of the Hill" games or Tic Tac Toe .. .in other words a pointless venture since it is impossible to keep what you gain for more than 4 hours.
5. In general, comments are equally positive/negative save one thing we have heard from almost every player we ask for feedback .. "IT IS WAY, WAY TOO EXPENSIVE FOR THE AVERAGE PLAYER"
Again these are just general reactions -- a loose accounting only. I'll post more detail once we do the surveys.
I editied this also to add a few things pointed out to me by some of our leaders -- including one big item I forgot. Innogames I know was counting on this having a major impact on GvG, reducing participation there. That does appear to be true for now as GvG is noticably quieter in some places -- however there has been a side effect as well. GUILD EXPEDITIONS has taken a major participation hit in many of our guilds. I personally suspect this was in the plan, as the GbG requirements almost mandate a reduction in Expeditions activity by their design. If not -- Law of Unintended Consequences applies here.
Yes, I had fun chewing on one of those guilds in the opening season:
Here's how things played out on our map: Warriors started in the upper center, and quickly went for the center and grabbed as many of the provinces in rings 1 and 2 as they could, planting VP boosts all over them. We started in the lower left and went for the neighboring provinces at first, but then after the first day or so, focused on the center. Postmen started in the upper left, and grabbed much of the upper part of the map, while making plays for the center. After the first day or so, Postmen had Warriors mostly surrounded in rings 3 and 4, and made plays for the center. Warriors didn't bother to reclaim any of those provinces and spent most of the time trying to control as much of ring 1 and 2 as possible. We seized control of most of the lower left, and made plays for the center as well. Early, Warriors were earning a little over 1600 VP/hr, but after Postmen ate up their lower ranked provinces and we kept going for the center, their earning rate fell. Postmen's control of those lower ranked provinces gave them a steady income of VP, and there was a constant shift between us and them in 2nd and 3rd place as the center provinces changed hands. We managed a decent balance by holding onto lower ranked provinces while constantly grabbing the valuable center provinces. These top three guilds have around 20 players, so in terms of numbers the matchup was pretty even.
Nephilim was in the lower right, and while they never really managed to hold anything in the center, they controlled the lower right side of the map because their immediate neighbors weren't very active. UFOP was right above us in the center left, it's a level 20 guild with one guy in it that has 12M points, so I'm guessing it's a ghost. He had some low value provinces near his start and he occasionally sniped at us and Postmen, but there wasn't much he could do on his own. The other guilds were mostly small low ranked guilds that didn't really accomplish anything, but one of them (Knight I think) had something like 50 or so members.
We and Warriors got promoted to Gold, and the bottom three guild got a demotion to Bronze.
Negotiating isn't terribly difficult, but it's a bit too luck reliant when there are 6 choices. You can't directly stop a siege, but you can end one if you can capture all the provinces the besieger has bordering the province their sieging. I stopped two of Warriors' attacks on our provinces by leading a counter capture one of their provinces. So there's some definite strategy involved in taking a lower valued province for defensive reasons. We did lag a bit in GE early in the week, but yesterday we pulled ahead into first place while securing second on GBG, so it can be done. I can't speak for GvG since we really only have 3 players who dabble in it on occasion.
Another thing that kind of bugs me is that the difficulty is uniform across the whole map. It makes rings 3 and 4 less strategically valuable since the attrition and advancement costs are the same as rings 1 and 2, but the rewards are far less. On this map, the center provinces were worth around 200 each, but some of the provinces in ring 4 were less than 20. Yes, those more worthless provinces can generate a steady amount of VP income, but it's worth quite a bit less so you don't want to rely on it either. I think it might be worth increasing the difficulty and/or attrition costs in the center to better reflect the value.
#1 HOF's take up valuable real estate and IIRC can get plundered . That very same real estate can be used for goods producing GB's .
A HoF can be plundered if it's not motivated. This is a case where players need to improve their social contacts. I'm not a big fan of the HoF since it does take up valuable production space. It does help the guild over the long run, but the Statue of Honor is a huge improvement since it provides both guild power and guild goods while giving the player a nice amount of FP.
Ok we have played this and are coming up on the end of it. Our guild will more than likely be a close 2nd. It was competitive and lots of back and forth of being #1 and #2. My observations and feedback speaking as a founder of one of the higher ranked guilds with most member points and battles on our server and holding #1 overall every winter. So yes we have long time players, we have diamond players, we have fighters who know what they are doing, and we have lots of resources like goods, and we have leaders who know how to manage and teach. That said.....
*GBG is not going to be sustainable for many guilds season after season especially if the goal is to win. Even those with the advantages and resources will see a depletion. The goods costs for buildings are so random and skewed it makes no sense. I think the worse one I saw was 11,700 of a PME good for one building and that was just one of the goods.
*The attrition rates: fighting for many doesn't last long, not like it does for those of us with insane attack bonuses. Then when one has to turn to negotiating the goods costs are going to break people's banks sooner than later. These are goods people need for tech unless you are lucky enough to be at the end. Just in my SAM hood the trades up looking for Virtual Future Goods multiplied astronomically overnight.
Remember, the Statue of Honor produces a decent amount of guild goods when motivated, 50 at the maximum level, and the fragments for it are pretty plentiful. So the costs to the buildings might not seem so steep after a while. Then factor in Observatories, high-level Arcs and whatever players dump in from DC and event quest requirements. I think guilds with a lot of active mobile players are going to be at an advantage here since they're not spending the goods on GvG. There's also the guilds with a lot of AF+ players who do a lot of fighting on the AA map and have tens or hundreds of thousands of high age guild goods they weren't using too.
I do agree the attrition goes up too fast. One of the downsides to GvG is that it's not very accessible to newer players, you need to build up the combat GBs and Traz to be competitive at it. I think the fast attrition growth in fighting poses a similar problem; a newer players will probably be able to do only 5-10 advanced a day before hitting the wall, while the power fighters probably aren't getting slowed down until at least 40 or 50. I think having a shallow growth a bit longer, then a spike would be better here.
I don't really find the goods cost to be a big problem for me. I produce a decent amount of goods every day, but it might be a little harder for a lower player to keep up.
But there's also a long-term view to consider here, and the rewards for even a moderate success here are very good. The potential awards after a fight are really better than what GE offers, FP, units, goods, Statue fragments, and even diamonds. While most of that can be won from GE, there's a lot of coins and supplies, and it's hard for me to feel excited by that:
Getting tens of thousands of coins and supplies is a big meh for me when I'm in the hundreds of millions and the amount is little more than a rounding error. My city makes at least a million or so coins every day from normal collections and at least half that in supplies.
It's possible Inno will tweak the feature here and there too after some initial feedback.
Is there any thought to changing the reset time from 12 midnight ET to an hour or 2 earlier? There's a lot of activity at reset and it's very hard for members especially in the ET to participate then.
I think it's fine the way it is and I'm in EST. First, it kind of balances out the advantage EST players have with GvG recalc timing. Second, attrition lasts 24 hours, so having everyone burn out on attrition right after midnight isn't necessarily the best approach. You might want to have a team of players that can respond to things later in the day.