When can we stop pretending GBG is balanced?

[wolfhoundtoo]

The real problems with GBG are 2 or more of the more powerful guilds in a particular league teaming together and controlling all the sectors by rotating them every 4 hours between themselves! This could easily be equalized by limiting the number of sectors any one guild could hold at one time. Second the reduction of building slots didnot make much difference in my opinion and probably cost INNO some diamonds in the process and lastly 11 days is just too darn long a season. Reduce it to 7 or 8 days give players a break to build up some troops and guilds a chance to renew goods! You might find more interest in GBG!

The number of camps vary every season as do their locations according to what (no doubt chance based) system that Inno designed. Sometimes you get lucky in where they fall sometimes you get unlucky.

 

[CaptainKirk1234]

The real problems with GBG are 2 or more of the more powerful guilds in a particular league teaming together and controlling all the sectors by rotating them every 4 hours between themselves! This could easily be equalized by limiting the number of sectors any one guild could hold at one time. Second the reduction of building slots didnot make much difference in my opinion and probably cost INNO some diamonds in the process and lastly 11 days is just too darn long a season. Reduce it to 7 or 8 days give players a break to build up some troops and guilds a chance to renew goods! You might find more interest in GBG!

It's not Inno problem this happens, stuff get exploited in every day life, want to have a better chance... get better.

 

[Johnny B. Goode]

It's not Inno problem this happens, stuff get exploited in every day life, want to have a better chance... get better.

LOL.
This is the same advice I remember hearing back when GvG was the punching bag. Those who came to the Forum to complain about the top guilds working together to freeze out everyone else got this response a lot. Never mind that it just doesn't work that way, either then or now. Seems to me that the only thing keeping GBG from becoming another game feature frequented by less than 5% of players is the rewards. Other than that, it's just as boring and unbalanced as GvG. And the players that complained about GvG being locked up by just a few guilds stopped playing it. If that happens with GBG, then the number of leagues on each world will be smaller, meaning fewer leagues at each level. Then we'll have the active GBG players coming here to complain about lack of opportunity in GBG. Personally, I think the way to "fix" both GvG and GBG is to somehow prevent guilds from working together. Make it truly each guild (singular) against all other guilds (individually). No alliances, no arrangements, no trading sectors. Don't know how they could accomplish that, though. And those profiting from the current mechanics would scream to high heaven...which would probably be the biggest upside to it for many of us. LOL

 

[MJ Artisan of War]

I solved the GBG problem on my home world... I joined the only level 100 guild on my world that most other guilds resent because they dominate everyone in Battlegrounds... every season...

As it turns out I now absolutely Love Battlegrounds! But to be honest I was also a big fan of free rewards for fighting before...

 

[Ironrooster]

If the reward for 1st place was increased to be significantly better than 2nd place, I think you would get more competition. The current reward system for guilds is more of a participation award for everyone than a victory award for the winners,

 

[Tony 85 the Generous]

If the reward for 1st place was increased to be significantly better than 2nd place, I think you would get more competition. The current reward system for guilds is more of a participation award for everyone than a victory award for the winners,

Increasing a ones ability to compete is how competition is increased. Looks at every major sport. They all have some mechanism (usually $$$ related) to attempt to eqaulize the competition. (ie., with unlmited spending allowance a few teams could out spend and gather all the best players in the league, thus making it impossible for the other teams to compete)

How do you believe that increasing the final season rewards will increase a guilds ability to compete thereby getting more competition in GBG?

 

[Tony 85 the Generous]

LOL.
This is the same advice I remember hearing back when GvG was the punching bag. Those who came to the Forum to complain about the top guilds working together to freeze out everyone else got this response a lot. Never mind that it just doesn't work that way, either then or now. Seems to me that the only thing keeping GBG from becoming another game feature frequented by less than 5% of players is the rewards. Other than that, it's just as boring and unbalanced as GvG. And the players that complained about GvG being locked up by just a few guilds stopped playing it. If that happens with GBG, then the number of leagues on each world will be smaller, meaning fewer leagues at each level. Then we'll have the active GBG players coming here to complain about lack of opportunity in GBG. Personally, I think the way to "fix" both GvG and GBG is to somehow prevent guilds from working together. Make it truly each guild (singular) against all other guilds (individually). No alliances, no arrangements, no trading sectors. Don't know how they could accomplish that, though. And those profiting from the current mechanics would scream to high heaven...which would probably be the biggest upside to it for many of us. LOL

Everything you have said is correct, except

Those who came to the Forum to complain about the top guilds working together to freeze out everyone else got this response a lot. Never mind that it just doesn't work that way, either then or now.

I do not know about GvG, but there are plenty of posts showing and describing how two guilds working together can and do freeze out another or other guilds in GBG. Two guilds with two layers of softlocks, both paying attention, and not screwing up can pin one guild down to the point where they can never conquer more than three sectors for the whole season.
With that said,

the way to "fix" both GvG and GBG is to somehow prevent guilds from working together.

I have posted a couple of options. The easiest being to not display the other guild's names on the leaderboard until GBG closes on Tuesday's (only your guild name in your position on the leader board. The VPH and especially total VP for the other guilds should be displayed as it provides an incentive in a fox-and-hound way (knowing where the fox is in front of you and the hound is behind you).
Another, slightly more fun way (IMO), is to add a fog of war aspect such that you can only see the color of the tiles adjacent to the ones you have conquered. These options are not mutually exclusive.

 

[Johnny B. Goode]

I do not know about GvG, but there are plenty of posts showing and describing how two guilds working together can and do freeze out another or other guilds in GBG. Two guilds with two layers of softlocks, both paying attention, and not screwing up can pin one guild down to the point where they can never conquer more than three sectors for the whole season.
With that said,

You misread what I said. I was saying that in reference to the response of "just get better", not in reference to what guilds working together can do.

 

[Tony 85 the Generous]

You misread what I said. I was saying that in reference to the response of "just get better", not in reference to what guilds working together can do.

My bad. I agree with your clarification. There have also been posts detailing the "inability" to catch up, or the very long time to get near enough that the difference no longer matters. The ability "to catch up" is a expontential decay, the closer you get the slower the catch up becomes and you can never actually become even. (without paying $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ for gazzilions of fp)

 

[Ironrooster]

Increasing a ones ability to compete is how competition is increased. Looks at every major sport. They all have some mechanism (usually $$$ related) to attempt to eqaulize the competition. (ie., with unlmited spending allowance a few teams could out spend and gather all the best players in the league, thus making it impossible for the other teams to compete)

How do you believe that increasing the final season rewards will increase a guilds ability to compete thereby getting more competition in GBG?

I was responding to the issue of big guilds working cooperatively instead of competing with each other. Equalization of competition is a different issue. Increasing 1st place guild rewards will not equalize competition, but could work to make competition happen.

I doubt there is any satisfactory way to equalize competition since guilds are neither teams nor necessarily single purpose like sports teams. The current set up with 5 league levels may be as good as it gets.

 

[Lord Pest]

This season we are on the worst map I’ve seen. Three 3 building slot tiles. One in the north and two in the south. not a lot of two building slot tiles either. We have 3 other allies and the 4 of us have split the map in halve and we are dominating but the attrition even then isn’t good.

 

[Tony 85 the Generous]

I was responding to the issue of big guilds working cooperatively instead of competing with each other. Equalization of competition is a different issue. Increasing 1st place guild rewards will not equalize competition, but could work to make competition happen.

I doubt there is any satisfactory way to equalize competition since guilds are neither teams nor necessarily single purpose like sports teams. The current set up with 5 league levels may be as good as it gets.

Thank you for clarifying. Based on that I can conclusively say that I'm sorry but it won't matter. Once you are at 1000LP, there is no where to go, no bragging rights.

5-6 leagues is fine. You are working with the problem. The LP points. The fact is that advancing is based on finish position. Nothing more. Nothing based on participcation, strength, number of fights, or any other performance based metric you can think of. Therein lies the problem In a related discussion this morning, I was looking at other aspects of the leagues and LP. I noticed that you could put together a brand new guild, start in copper and independent the number of guilds on the map, P1 advances to silver after only one season. That's no different than the issues of platinum guilds be advanced to diamond. In short the LP system is broken at both ends of the scale. Only I think the copper league players are too new to understand how thinks work/don't work to post on it.

 

[Wildelk68]

Seems to me that the vast majority of opinion here regarding GBG have found it to be a very flawed concept! The goal should be how does it get fixed? Well hopefully someone at INNO is paying attention to these comments and opinions! But there is no question that two top level guilds in any league can team up and dominate the maps! Less building slots is not a viable solution IMO as it is proving. Restricting the number of sectors any guild can hold in 4 hours seems viable! But I honestly believe that without the rewards few guilds would be as involved as now! GE is also a dying concept with the same low level rewards every week!

 

[Ebeondi Asi]

-

 

[Tony 85 the Generous]

The solution is to quit the useless Guild you now are in and join one capable of winning.

That doesn't solve the problem and is not feasible unless you heard that Inno was increasing the guild size. There isn't enough space in those guilds for everyone that would want to follow that plan.

 

[Johnny B. Goode]

The solution is to quit the useless Guild you now are in and join one capable of winning.

More worthless advice. Unless you actually think Inno is going to waive the 80 player limit for the top GBG guilds. The solution is actually for Inno to somehow eliminate the possibility of guilds cooperating/allying. Making GBG completely anonymous might work. Although, Inno would have to disable any messaging possibility between guilds on the same map for it to really work, because guilds would still be able to figure out the matchups if they wanted to badly enough...which the top ones do. Honestly, it may take something drastic to fix the cooperating guilds exploit. Something like actually making it cross-world, which would at least widen the group of possible opponents to the point where it would be really hard to figure out who you're on a map with and how to communicate with them. Realistically, I don't see Inno fixing this problem. They never fixed it in GvG, so...

 

[Tony 85 the Generous]

Restricting the number of sectors any guild can hold in 4 hours seems viable!

That would definitely bring more strategy to GBG. Let's pick a limit of 6 for discussion (that would be all 2x tier 1, 2x tier 2, and 2x tier). Now we would have to strategize which sectors we would hold, trying to get the most VPH to take the top spot. Interesting concept. Would you see adding a 'drop sector' so you weren't stuck waiting for someone to take one of your sectors so you could take a different one?

 

[Johnny B. Goode]

Restricting the number of sectors any guild can hold in 4 hours seems viable!

That would definitely bring more strategy to GBG. Let's pick a limit of 6 for discussion (that would be all 2x tier 1, 2x tier 2, and 2x tier). Now we would have to strategize which sectors we would hold, trying to get the most VPH to take the top spot. Interesting concept. Would you see adding a 'drop sector' so you weren't stuck waiting for someone to take one of your sectors so you could take a different one?

I kind of like that idea, but without the "drop sector" addition. That would be too open to GvG-like manipulation. Strategizing should involve choices that are irrevocable at some point, in my opinion.

 

[Tony 85 the Generous]

I kind of like that idea, but without the "drop sector" addition. That would be too open to GvG-like manipulation. Strategizing should involve choices that are irrevocable at some point, in my opinion.

I don't see this as possible without a drop sector button. If the only thing to take are tier 4 and 3 sectors, no one may ever attack them and then you are stuck there. May be a condition or timelimit on the drop sector button, such as you cannot drop a sector until all of your sectors as unlocked.

Limiting the number of sectors would limit the ability of a guild to pin down other guilds on the map. The top guilds would need to strategize and prioritize are they going to go for the win or are they going to pin a guild in the corner. I find the suggestion a very from-the-side approach to the problem. It may also affect building strategy as once you have the sector you would switch from siege camps to statues and palaces.

 

[Steve Colbert 32468]

I've been on the losing side and the winning side of GBG. I've also played GBG as a 1 person guild. In a top guild, with lots of siege camps and watchtowers in play, and a friendly alliances with guilds, it's easy to get lots of fights and so lots of rewards. In a mid level guild, fighting against that friendly alliance is absolutely horrible. And as a single person guild, against minimal non-interactive competition, it's easy in bronze / silver, but harder in gold+. It can take me 4 days to get one territory in Gold.

So I'd propose the following possible fixes:

1. Siege camps / watchtowers (or even all buildings) get destroyed every time a territory is lost. This would make swapping territories more costly to high level guilds, as more goods would be required to constantly keep building.
2. Number of attacks needed to take a territory scales with size of members in a guild who can participate (researched military tactics, member at start of season), which would make the playing field more even for lower member guilds.