Guild vs Guild Improvements Feedback

[K--O]

So first, thank you for addressing GvG and some of the issues.

On the point farming and the use of champs it seems the solution may increase point farming as has been mentioned by many others. This is, drop a bunch of drummers, rogues or low age troops, release the sector and get to fight SAM troops. WRT point farming and the use of champs I would suggest replaceing ONLY champs when a sector is dropped and replace them with random troops from all ages. If there are no champs then don't replace any troops. This removes the "champ premium" aspect from farming. If you are going to replace all troops (not just champs) per your original proposal then I concur with the many other posts that the troops should be replaced with random troops from all ages.

 

[Emberguard]

If you add 4 hr resets, you're going to eliminate the use of tactics in GvG.

Reset doesnt line up with player schedules? Thats not a problem for the devs to fix; its a problem for players and guilds to fix.

That’s not a problem players can fix under a single 24 hr reset. You’d be relying on your opponent being absent to get in at all if you’re not in the right Timezone

 

[Flavius Belisarius]

Most excellent.
GvG become possible for the mammal sized guilds vs the dinosaur guilds.
Alliances/agreements will now have to consider "watch my back - I'll watch yours!"

 

[Flavius Belisarius]

My thought would be to fix bugs such as maps refreshing in real time and sieges showing up when placed would be a good place to start before making wholesale changes to GvG. Can things that have been "broken" in recent months be fixed so they worked as before when they were fully functional? Many issues occur throughout the day and night and not just around recalculation. Are these items being addressed? How about the map refreshing at recalculation too?

Since it looks like you are addressing point farming (Yay!!!), any chance we can get the "One Down" kit to age down special buildings?

One Down for Champs? or a Change Age for Champ Retreat.

 

[Flavius Belisarius]

As always, we'd love to hear your feedback, so please leave any comments or concerns in this thread. We're hoping with your help, we can shape these improvements to achieve an overall better experience for all who participate in GvG.

Many thanks,

Your Forge of Empires Team

Announcement: https://forum.us.forgeofempires.com/index.php?threads/guild-vs-guild-improvements.26594/

When will change occur?

 

[DeletedUser40350]

Still no update that I can see, that any of this is actually being read or subject to change based on our feedback given.

As many have repeatedly stated, as the current proposed message states, this is the best news that all point farmers in the game could ever ask for. They may not be able to farm champs like they were before for higher points (unless they set up a ghost guild or friendly guild next to them to just take each others champ tiles everyday instead of dropping tiles), but they will certainly will capitalize on the mass amounts of low age (like iron) troops being filled and dropped cheaply and easily into high value SAM troops across the map all the time. You are going to see small mercenary type guilds rise with the small recalc timers because they can't get locked out of areas as long as the current 24 hour. You are going to see many more 1 man ghost guilds everywhere because guilds won't be able to have enough people online 6 times a day to always fight them off. Not many guilds will bother trying to fill sectors anymore because the cost to hold a fair amount of land is going to rise a ton with needing to constantly take more sectors after losing sectors because of all the ghosting that's going to happen soon, and attempting to open all the DA slots constantly on all new sectors will add a lot to that cost as well. Overall the changes will certainly shake things up in terms of the maps changing more frequently, but the actual strategy involved in GvG to hold anything will be a joke. Safe to say GvG is going to quickly turn into a "hulk smash" kind of thing, where people just keep it small and hit whatever is next to them everyday where they take stuff after they lose stuff every 4 hours everyday. I for one have always appreciated the strategy involved in planning things out on the current GvG format, and it's all about to become a little to no strategy function of the game. At least do us a favor (as you seem intent on making radical changes), and add a rule that if a guild gets "removed" from a map, that guild is not allowed to return to that map for 96 hours (consistent with someone changing guilds, and have to wait 96 hours). This will drastically reduce the obvious upcoming choice to adapt to changes by people doing more small ghost guilds, or mercenary/pest guilds that hold hardly any land, and just milk big guilds out of their goods just to help other big guilds that they are really loyal to. They would get kicked back off maps easily after attempting to ghost, and then not be able to fight that map for 4 days. That will quickly discourage this type of lame gameplay, and you will see most people stay in their respective guilds as they should be, and see GvG played more as it should be...which is to actually fight for the guilds you are loyal to. Sure this may also discourage some legitimate smaller guilds that can't "hold their own", but that's why guilds create alliances, truces, non aggression pacts, etc to add to the actual strategy aspect of GvG...or get into a bigger guild that's more of a contender to be on maps to begin with. If a 96 hour is deemed too drastic of an idea, even 48 hours I'd be happy with, and would still reduce a lot of the above cheap tactics from happening. This would also give guilds satisfaction of feeling that removing a guild from the map is a good thing...not a tough choice because of them being able to pop right back onto the map immediately and start attacking you again where you aren't shielded, often doing more damage than not removing them at all, which is one of the broken things about GvG currently. It would certainly make guilds think twice when they get low on sectors, and HQ to the coast, drop everything else, and ask a guild to remove them on many situations to reland in a position to jump ahead to places they are having trouble getting to easier if they had to wait many days to get back on again.

 

[DeletedUser28124]

Still no update that I can see, that any of this is actually being read or subject to change based on our feedback given.
You are going to see small mercenary type guilds rise with the small recalc timers because they can't get locked out of areas as long as the current 24 hour. You are going to see many more 1 man ghost guilds everywhere because guilds won't be able to have enough people online 6 times a day to always fight them off.

You are missing the part where you can still only move your HQ once per day. This will not favor attackers, it will again only favor the defenders.

At any rate, do not expect anything to change from player feedback. The people that work so hard coming up with pointless nuisance side games are just trying to kill GVG and tell us we should like that. I'm already at wits end with their inability to stop simple cheating from people with alt accounts. This game is pretty much over.

 

[Algona]

At any rate, do not expect anything to change from player feedback.

It;s true INNO does not take a lot of advice from players.

The problem is';t that INNO is ignores feedback, it;s that so much feedback is self cetnered and or awful with little to no consideration of the good of the game.

Still no update that I can see, that any of this is actually being read or subject to change based on our feedback given.

Uh-huh. Are you really sure you want INNO making hasty decisions on the last major changes GvG will ever see?

Maybe this is one time where it's best if INNO takes a lot of time to think things through and maybe realize the mistakes they have planned and correct them.

Personally I'm hoping for a couple more loops of INNO proposing changes and asking for feedback. And if those loops take a month or longer, that's good, too.

 

[DeletedUser40350]

Uh-huh. Are you really sure you want INNO making hasty decisions on the last major changes GvG will ever see?

The only good decision i can see that they made on any of these decisions, is making it possible to disregard the secondary window on sieges and fills (which makes people that cheat on 0.000001 sec sieges currently an even playing field). Everything else sounds terrible or non productive. Any change of plans at this point to their original post showing they are reading feedback, would be refreshing

 

[DeletedUser4441]

Keep the ideas coming folks.

 

[DeletedUser10131]

Best way to see how it works is take it Live. Let it run a couple weeks, and you'll find out real fast what works and what doesn't

 

[DeletedUser27713]

Everything sounds good EXCEPT the idea to eliminate point farming. Units in sectors that are dropped should be swapped out for units from the LOWEST age of any unit in that sector. If there is a single rogue, then all units should become rogues.

 

[Flavius Belisarius]

Still no update that I can see, that any of this is actually being read or subject to change based on our feedback given.

As many have repeatedly stated, as the current proposed message states, this is the best news that all point farmers in the game could ever ask for. They may not be able to farm champs like they were before for higher points (unless they set up a ghost guild or friendly guild next to them to just take each others champ tiles everyday instead of dropping tiles), but they will certainly will capitalize on the mass amounts of low age (like iron) troops being filled and dropped cheaply and easily into high value SAM troops across the map all the time. You are going to see small mercenary type guilds rise with the small recalc timers because they can't get locked out of areas as long as the current 24 hour. You are going to see many more 1 man ghost guilds everywhere because guilds won't be able to have enough people online 6 times a day to always fight them off. Not many guilds will bother trying to fill sectors anymore because the cost to hold a fair amount of land is going to rise a ton with needing to constantly take more sectors after losing sectors because of all the ghosting that's going to happen soon, and attempting to open all the DA slots constantly on all new sectors will add a lot to that cost as well. Overall the changes will certainly shake things up in terms of the maps changing more frequently, but the actual strategy involved in GvG to hold anything will be a joke. Safe to say GvG is going to quickly turn into a "hulk smash" kind of thing, where people just keep it small and hit whatever is next to them everyday where they take stuff after they lose stuff every 4 hours everyday. I for one have always appreciated the strategy involved in planning things out on the current GvG format, and it's all about to become a little to no strategy function of the game. At least do us a favor (as you seem intent on making radical changes), and add a rule that if a guild gets "removed" from a map, that guild is not allowed to return to that map for 96 hours (consistent with someone changing guilds, and have to wait 96 hours). This will drastically reduce the obvious upcoming choice to adapt to changes by people doing more small ghost guilds, or mercenary/pest guilds that hold hardly any land, and just milk big guilds out of their goods just to help other big guilds that they are really loyal to. They would get kicked back off maps easily after attempting to ghost, and then not be able to fight that map for 4 days. That will quickly discourage this type of lame gameplay, and you will see most people stay in their respective guilds as they should be, and see GvG played more as it should be...which is to actually fight for the guilds you are loyal to. Sure this may also discourage some legitimate smaller guilds that can't "hold their own", but that's why guilds create alliances, truces, non aggression pacts, etc to add to the actual strategy aspect of GvG...or get into a bigger guild that's more of a contender to be on maps to begin with. If a 96 hour is deemed too drastic of an idea, even 48 hours I'd be happy with, and would still reduce a lot of the above cheap tactics from happening. This would also give guilds satisfaction of feeling that removing a guild from the map is a good thing...not a tough choice because of them being able to pop right back onto the map immediately and start attacking you again where you aren't shielded, often doing more damage than not removing them at all, which is one of the broken things about GvG currently. It would certainly make guilds think twice when they get low on sectors, and HQ to the coast, drop everything else, and ask a guild to remove them on many situations to reland in a position to jump ahead to places they are having trouble getting to easier if they had to wait many days to get back on again.

I completely agree.
add a rule that if a guild gets "removed" from a map, that guild is not allowed to return to that map for 96 hours (consistent with someone changing guilds, and have to wait 96 hours).
I would go further, if a Guild Grants Freedom to a sector, it can't attack that sector for 96 hrs.

Still no update that I can see, that any of this is actually being read or subject to change based on our feedback given.

As many have repeatedly stated, as the current proposed message states, this is the best news that all point farmers in the game could ever ask for. They may not be able to farm champs like they were before for higher points (unless they set up a ghost guild or friendly guild next to them to just take each others champ tiles everyday instead of dropping tiles), but they will certainly will capitalize on the mass amounts of low age (like iron) troops being filled and dropped cheaply and easily into high value SAM troops across the map all the time. You are going to see small mercenary type guilds rise with the small recalc timers because they can't get locked out of areas as long as the current 24 hour. You are going to see many more 1 man ghost guilds everywhere because guilds won't be able to have enough people online 6 times a day to always fight them off. Not many guilds will bother trying to fill sectors anymore because the cost to hold a fair amount of land is going to rise a ton with needing to constantly take more sectors after losing sectors because of all the ghosting that's going to happen soon, and attempting to open all the DA slots constantly on all new sectors will add a lot to that cost as well. Overall the changes will certainly shake things up in terms of the maps changing more frequently, but the actual strategy involved in GvG to hold anything will be a joke. Safe to say GvG is going to quickly turn into a "hulk smash" kind of thing, where people just keep it small and hit whatever is next to them everyday where they take stuff after they lose stuff every 4 hours everyday. I for one have always appreciated the strategy involved in planning things out on the current GvG format, and it's all about to become a little to no strategy function of the game. At least do us a favor (as you seem intent on making radical changes), and add a rule that if a guild gets "removed" from a map, that guild is not allowed to return to that map for 96 hours (consistent with someone changing guilds, and have to wait 96 hours). This will drastically reduce the obvious upcoming choice to adapt to changes by people doing more small ghost guilds, or mercenary/pest guilds that hold hardly any land, and just milk big guilds out of their goods just to help other big guilds that they are really loyal to. They would get kicked back off maps easily after attempting to ghost, and then not be able to fight that map for 4 days. That will quickly discourage this type of lame gameplay, and you will see most people stay in their respective guilds as they should be, and see GvG played more as it should be...which is to actually fight for the guilds you are loyal to. Sure this may also discourage some legitimate smaller guilds that can't "hold their own", but that's why guilds create alliances, truces, non aggression pacts, etc to add to the actual strategy aspect of GvG...or get into a bigger guild that's more of a contender to be on maps to begin with. If a 96 hour is deemed too drastic of an idea, even 48 hours I'd be happy with, and would still reduce a lot of the above cheap tactics from happening. This would also give guilds satisfaction of feeling that removing a guild from the map is a good thing...not a tough choice because of them being able to pop right back onto the map immediately and start attacking you again where you aren't shielded, often doing more damage than not removing them at all, which is one of the broken things about GvG currently. It would certainly make guilds think twice when they get low on sectors, and HQ to the coast, drop everything else, and ask a guild to remove them on many situations to reland in a position to jump ahead to places they are having trouble getting to easier if they had to wait many days to get back on again.

 

[DeletedUser3690]

Well, every time I tried writing a response to this, it turns into a book, that I think no one will read. But I want to get some stuff posted. I think the idea from Dave the Narcissist is a very good one, with the 96 hour delay after being removed from a map. I think it will help counter the guilds who just point with no goal of actually claiming or holding land, which claiming and holding land does seem to be the intent behind GvG. Make trying to stay on the map important.


The 4hr calc will eliminate a lot of the worthwhile strategy in the game. There will still be strategy of course, but not strategy that can make you safe, so that you do not have to watch the maps all day long. Or a strategy that can actually stop a strong guild from taking as much as they can when you are not looking. Offense and availability will now be the biggest form of defense and could lead to GvG burnout for any guild actually trying to accomplish goals and control territory. Assuming they have at least equal competition for that land. The constant back and forth will be a major resource drain. Where I feel, if you want to make GvG more fun and get more people involved with the 4hr calc, reduce these resource costs. Let us fight, without major concern for resources. We will be losing way more sectors(goods) and sieging way more often. If all the fighting and losses are not as big of a blow to a guild’s treasury, I think this will be more fun, make losses not as rough, and allow guilds to continue to play and try to have some size. Right now, if you get into a big fight, you have to constantly release sectors and control your size to fight back in a small/ghost like state. Make the first 20 sectors like 1/5th the current cost, so that guilds can try to hold some land and still fight. After 20 sectors make the costs go up dramatically to prevent strong guilds from trying to claim a whole map. Cheapen the defense unlocks as well, which really seem to be way too expensive. We will have to use way more resources due to the 4hr calc, where the resource cost should be changed to accommodate that.


My next idea, I anticipate will not be well liked, but I’m gonna mention it anyways. Increase the amount of defense allowed in a hex. Double it up to 16 armies that can be filled (of course with cheapened defensive slot unlocks, as I suggested above). If a guild can afford to fill it troop wise anyways, then this can make sectors a little stickier. Strong guilds and pointers could still probably get through a bunch of them, but maybe not as much as they can do now. Would also allow guilds more opportunity to catch and defend from attacks. We are losing a key defensive strategy with the 4hr calcs, where I feel something like this can help provide more defensive options. It would allow a guild to still attempt a control strategy, while still remaining vulnerable. I think pointers will love it, but maybe they will not be able to do as much damage and get as far as they can now. Smaller guilds should be able to still take the equivalent of 2 full sectors currently, or they can just target the sectors that don't get filled all the way. If you think its too much for the lower ages, then maybe just make it 16 armies in like Progressive on up. Keep the lower ages as more of a looser training ground with the current 8 armies.


I agree that Bronze Age units should not be allowed on the AA map, due to how quickly you can pump em out. You can fill hexs in minutes with BA recruit timers. I think if you really want to stop guilds from farming their own hexs, then upon release, a hex should just be filled with low point fodder. Make a nomadic peasant NPC unit, that will just automatically fill in any released hex of any age with very weak troops, providing very little points. The sector was abandoned, armies scattered, and a bunch of squatters moved in. No matter if the release was just one army or 8, the whole hex just will be filled with 8 full armies of nomadic peasants. Easier to kill then spears. This would prevent pointing off your own hexs, trying to quickly reshield a hex within a few secs, and basically eliminate a lot of NPC strategies. Making it guild vs guild strategies.


So, not the biggest fan of the 4hr calc, but I can roll with it if it happens. Especially if there is a reduction in resource cost and would be cool to balance the lost defensive strategies with more allowed defense in a hex. I do agree it will increase gvg participation and activity though. I also like Dave’s idea with the 96 hour delay of re-entering a map after being removed from it. I think the 4hr calc alone may fix some of the farming your own sectors situation. But I think replacing any released sector should just become a full hex of low point fodder. The rest of the suggested changes from the devs I give the thumbs up to.

 

[DeletedUser3690]

Another suggestion:

The 4hr calc will create issues with troop supply, as others have mentioned. And reducing recruit timers could be a good way to help with that. Another way i thought might be an easy fix, is make Alcatraz affected by the Recruitment Boost in the Tavern. This could make it so people who want to pay the tavern silver could collect their traz's 2-3 times a day. With a level 75 guild, and max recruitment boost from tavern, you can recruit a rogue in 7hr and 55 mins. Where if the Traz was affected the same way, then that could be good boost to troop supply.

 

[RazorbackPirate]

Another suggestion:

The 4hr calc will create issues with troop supply, as others have mentioned. And reducing recruit timers could be a good way to help with that. Another way i thought might be an easy fix, is make Alcatraz affected by the Recruitment Boost in the Tavern. This could make it so people who want to pay the tavern silver could collect their traz's 2-3 times a day. With a level 75 guild, and max recruitment boost from tavern, you can recruit a rogue in 7hr and 55 mins. Where if the Traz was affected the same way, then that could be good boost to troop supply.

Big time NO! on all of this.

 

[Flavius Belisarius]

So, you take a sector and what once was 24 hour protection is now gone in 4 hours. The number of drops is still on a 24 hour clock, as is the HQ move.

What Inno is doing is trying to kill GvG. There will be no more team activity with it and no strategy.

Changing the RECAL times let's more players from other TIME ZONES have a life

 

[Flavius Belisarius]

I was so excited about the prospect of the champ farmers losing their inflated points that I am seeing I may not have read everything thoroughly.
Here is my feedback and suggestions on each proposed change:

Additional Recalculation Timers
Probably the biggest change we plan to implement is that we're going to change the daily calculation to a 4-hourly calculation. A huge draw of GvG is the camaraderie at reset time when the strategizing and teamwork happens. I agree something has to be done about lag and glitches but many of us have stuck it out in this game because of the people we GvG with and I think it would be a huge mistake to take that away. What if you had fewer calculation times than you are suggesting like every 12 hours? I also think a guild shouldn't retake a tile they drop for at least 24 hours or somehow make it less desirable to retake. Beach bubbling the same tiles every night to protect their inner tiles as well as the all the champ farming just creates more lag I believe. If there has to be lag at least let it be because guilds are actually fighting other guilds in the true spirit of GvG.

With this we hope to improve the issues we have with lag around the recalculations, as well as increase the GvG participation by opening accessibility of the feature not only to those who are available during the recalculation time each day. Don't discount the impact that every new feature you add to the game and each time you have an event running has on bogging down this game.

Removal of Bronze Age Units. Sounds good.

Reduce Point Farming Profitability
To combat farming ranking points with Champions, once a sector is freed, all units that were placed there will be replaced with random, NPC units of the sector's age. In the All Age Map, the units will be replaced with units from the highest age. I like the end of champs for their inflated points but you also need to make sure people aren't just putting in EMA troops into the AA tiles and getting Space Age back at no cost to them. If they put EMA troops in and then drop the tile to farm then replace with random troops from the lowest era that were placed in that tile.

Confirmation Checkboxes Sounds good.

Camera FocusSounds good.

Bug Fixes
Finally, we plan to address several bug fixes specifically impacting GvG, to improve the quality of the feature. These bugfixes will be detailed in future changelogs. Waiting to hear more about this. First and foremost get the maps to reset/refresh so we can see bubbles up or down and sieges up or down and the siege/defense army boxes orange when a siege is down.

RESET TIME only favors players in TIME ZONES where REAL LIFE is not affected.
Pacific/Mountain are during afternoon commit and dinner.

 

[DeletedUser40780]

Keep the ideas coming folks.

Inno has a huge following and could crowdsource some amazing ideas, yet when feedback has been given, it seems that it's been largely ignored. Then you get stuck with the forum warriors spam threads to up their post count, and the truly creative thinkers (and/or those that are actually playing the game at a high level) don't bother to keep coming back.

SAM GB's are a great example. There were 20+ pages of 3 things being said:
1) TVP sucks
2) SG sucks and needs a second effect
3) Remove TVP effect from PVP because then people can beat my 1800% defense that I spent my entire life building.

There were TONS of great ideas for how to improve TVP and SG from several dozen players. And the only thing we got was a nerfed TVP. The pvp aspect was the best part, and it got removed. I had someone ask about buying the goods a couple of days ago, until they saw it doesn't work for pvp. Then they said nevermind, why bother? https://prnt.sc/ogkclw

There have been a lot of good ideas here. Most agree that 6 recalcs per day is too many. 1- too much unit/goods cost 2- frustrating losing land overnight/off truly off hoursand thus needing to watch maps 24/7. 3- enable ghost guilds to have way more impact than they really should be able to.

Just on this page, krydis had some good ideas. Not in love with the idea of more DAs, but really like the idea of cutting goods cost for both sieging and unlocking DAs. One way to ramp up activity and make 4hr recalcs work is to make it more affordable. Faster recruitment. Lower goods cost. Make it so huge wars were actually possible and sustainable to some degree. Make war more profitable than farming

Otherwise, we're going to see nothing but 1DA tiles and GvG is going to get boring real fast :-\

Regardless, I think everyone that's left feedback would appreciate seeing that inno is listening and will make changes based on well thought out feedback, not simply complaining.

 

[Algona]

yet when feedback has been given, it seems that it's been largely ignored.

This is a fairly frequent observation. It's accurate, INNO doesn't listen to the players often.

For good reason. So much of the feedback and so many ideas folk have are awful with no thought for the effects on the game, just how it makes the game easier or better for that player.

Just as bad, anytime a thread reaches more then a few dozen posts, the opinions and ideas are contradictory. This and the first GBG thread are filled with splendid examples of lots of people wanting lots of thigns that conflict with the wants and ideas of lots of other people.

INNO does listen, but what message is being sent?

----------

The following was a response to a question about INNO listening a few eeks back:

Here are some random things INNO has changed after player postings on the forum:

Changes to the 2019 Soccer Cup.
Alternate Quests.
Revision of DC Quests.
Reducing the bad 3 Event Quests (scout, acquire, tech) or giving an alternate Quest.
Sets.
Remodeling mode and improvements.
Hood shuffler.
Special Building deletion confirmation which led to
Great Building deletion confirmation.
FP Bar timer does not reset to one hour when the FP bar goes over 10.
Revised Aid priority list.
The experiment of a different recalc tme and the change back.

That's off the top of my head, there are more. Note well, I'm not saying any of these are due to the players asking for them, just that the players asked for them in the forums before INNO implemented them.

A purely personal observation: Most of the above changes were not submitted Proposals, it's quite rare for a submitted Proposal to be adopted. The majority of the above were postings in official Feedback threads or in random discussion threads.

----------

Then you get stuck with the forum warriors spam threads to up their post count

That'd be me. If you don't pay attention to the forums, if you don't engage in conversations, if you don;t follow topics and discussions for months and years, then you really have no clue what's happened in the past or how we got to where we are today.

I'm in a much better position to discount or dismiss your opinions of what the player base thinks on any topic and understand what INNO is doing then you are to discount my opinions. I haven't and won't do so, I'd appreciate you extending the same courtesy and stop doing so.