Okay, I bashed the Inno Game developers pretty hard when they first implemented the new message system. So I must take equal effort in applauding the new Guild Expeditions. They finally have added something that is very well thought out.
I've read through this feedback thread and want to make some comments.
1. I am THE heavy quester among all heavy questers in FoE on any world. What that means is that I have parked in: the Bronze Age, HMA, and Colonial Age for months at-a-time worked recurring quests like a mad man and unlocked obscene levels to all my GBs and make extensive use of the Chateau Frontenac bonus doing it. So I am the greediest ****** <self-censored> player out there. With all of that being said Guild Expeditions are not a quest. Quests are given by a quest giver, and have an icon along the left side of the game screen. Guild Expeditions are more akin to a guild-wide equivalent of Continental Map; and as such, a CF bonus should not apply.
2. I agree it would have been better for players if Inno Games had rolled out the non-combat means by which players may solve each encounter at the same time as the combat option. But seriously people, come on! The Inno Games devs knew that they would still need to tweak the balance of Expeditions, and the encounter difficulty levels, from only a combat perspective, based on player feedback. They also need to address any issues that arise, and they need to see how the massive player base takes advantage of everything. And the devs clearly haven't forgotten or ignored our farmville friends. That feature is clearly planned and coming soon. And I'm okay with the devs eating the elephant one-bite-at-a-time and getting each function correct, before they implement the whole new package of features. And just to clarify for everyone, negotiation (or whatever other non-combat puzzle the devs implement) is a different function than fighting on a battle map is (as opposed to Guild Expeditions as a whole being one function—it isn't). So not having the non-combat option today is really: "no harm = no foul", and: "stay tuned for further developments".
3. My one criticism of the whole Guild Expedition roll out is the confusion on how and when Guild Power is scored and during which Daily Calculation(s) it gets applied. When a player opens up GE and hovers his mouse over the Crown to the right of the green progress bar, he sees two numbers:
A. Next check point: +2,249 power
B. Reached: X,XXX power (depends on your guild's current progress)
This is not at all clear to players how many of the X,XXX power has already been applied to the guild's current level progress, or when any of that guild power will be applied. There is no mention in the Help when a player clicks the "?" icon either. And the official announcement does not include an example that clarifies things. Inno Games must do better in this regard to dispel the justifiable confusion that a massive base of players will have.
IMO to keep things simple, it should work exactly like PvP towers do—no guild should score any additional guild power until after the current week's Guild Expeditions conclude, the same way no player scores any medals until after the current week's PvP tower contests conclude. This would have been simplest way to implement when guild power was applied. And it would be much more intuitive to explain, since players already had an example in PvP towers.
As GE stands right now, no one knows exactly when guild power is applied to their guild, and therefore no one can check the math to ensure it is being applied correctly to report any bugs.
4. I also notice that the Inno Game devs added a small place to spend some medals within the context of Guild Expeditions—a player may pay an exponentially escalating medals cost to buy more encounter attempts. This isn't bad, but I think the devs really missed an opportunity here. GE provides a means by which players can score many valuable prizes, which can include:
• Premium buildings
• Special buildings
• Diamonds
• unattached units (and boy can you score a lot of these in GE)
It can cost a guild 1,000s of valuable goods to unlock each difficulty level. The larger your guild, and the more advanced your guild members, the more exorbitant the cost of goods is.
So why not implement a means by which guilds can unlock difficulty levels using medals donated the guild's Treasury, in place of missing goods, or in place of goods a guild would rather use for GvG? For correct game balance scaling, the devs could simply use the same goods↔medals ratio that they use in random quest rewards. For those who are not aware, random quest rewards scale by age. The base amount (before any CF bonus) is always 5 of one random good from that age (the scaling part here is the age of the goods, which change to those of each age you advance to). However, the amount of medals paid out by quests outright scales by age. For example, an HMA quest pays 30 medals per quest reward, while a Colonial Age quest pays 70 medals per quest reward. Therefore in GE, let a guild pay medals in these same ratios from their treasury, in place of missing goods to unlock GE difficulty levels. this would give players a perfect place to make use of excess medals after they have purchased all possible victory expansions. And it would maintain a perfect game balance of how many medals to charge for each member of a guild.
And before anyone brings up the new GvG map, which still in beta, as a place to spend medals. No, just no. That new map is nothing more than a second FE map (possibly TE) , since the NPCs defending it by-default only use FE units. The idea that "you can use any units you want" is complete hogwash, since you are not going to capture sectors from the NPCs using anything below TE units. And no guild in their right mind is going to defend with anything less than FE units. So that new map is nothing more than "FE-lite".
By contrast, Guild Expeditions has been perfectly game balanced to include players of all time periods (except Bronze Age which makes sense to me), and will soon be balanced to include combat-minded players as well as non-combat players (unlike the new Beta GvG map). All that is missing from GE is a balanced way to spend more medals in it. Being able to spend medals on more encounter attempts is nice, but this is not really required, or valuable. Being able to spend medals in place of guild goods is both required (from a player's perspective) and very valuable.
