When can we stop pretending GBG is balanced?

[King*Terry]

Here is a screenshot of our current GBG map in diamond league 1 hour after GBG opened. Before giving my thoughts, I'm going to start a hashtag called #InnoBalance:

When your 2nd grader reaches the final round in the school spelling bee and has to beat an English professor #InnoBalance

When the state championship football game is a local varsity team vs the KC Chiefs #InnoBalance

When you're in the final round of an interview and your last task is to defend a PhD Thesis #InnoBalance

When your niece/nephew asks you to help them study their multiplication tables so you hit 'em with a little calculus instead #InnoBalance

Come on now, let's either make an apex league or make diamond the apex league and only allow the top 7-8 guilds in. If you're one of the bottom 2 GBG guilds for a season, you're out for the next season and the top 2 Plat guilds move in. This isn't hard, there are a ton of games with apex ranking systems that you can copy.

Seems Inno's only response it to build alliances. Don't exactly work with situations like this.

 

[RazorbackPirate]

Seems Inno's only response it to build alliances. Don't exactly work with situations like this.

DON'T LET AVATAR STEALERS FOOL YOU!!!

The above post is NOT a RazorbackPirate post, the post is not endorsed by RazorbackPirate.

ONLY YOU @TerryH57 CAN PREVENT AVATAR ABUSE!!!

 

[wolfhoundtoo]

Where did you come up with Inno saying build alliances? I don't remember an official response in this thread?

 

[85gt]

How do you invert something that is random?

Its not random, its always 1 or none on beach and 2 or 3 in the middle, nothing random other than what maps get more 2 & 3 placement sectors always toward the center

 

[85gt]

GBG need to be more balanced to guild sizes. It no fun when 2 full size power house guilds keeps everyone else locked to the 4th ring, and they retake the 3rd ring almost instantly when any sectors unlocked. An alliance doesn't help here and is Inno's favorite response to complaints on it. Inno, you balanced out the neighborhoods and the GE a few years ago, it's time to do the same to GBG to level out the playing field here too. Two guilds locking the other five off the map, may be allowed , but it's out right rude and makes player to want to quit the game.

Many of the older players are quitting, B world, last 2 weeks 4 or 5 top 50 players have stopped and many of the top 50 old time players their fight count is down to near nothing, GbG is killing the game

 

[85gt]

New to forum here! I have read some of the newer post but I don't see anything addressing the real issue with battleground .. MMR ranking being capped at 1000 mmr. So a 48th rank team wins a season in platinum and moves to ranking 33 1000mmr. So there next season place them on the same battlefield as first and third place team. I don't think this is right and I'm sure there's others that are thinking the same thing that's been in one of these guilds. Don't give me it's the guild problem or your a nob as I have read in other comments that doesn't solve the problem. There is a couple ways of fixing this problem but seems it's being ignored. One way to fix it would be to remove the cap but a lower or newer guild would have no hope of catching the top guild if this happen. The most reasonable way of fixing this would be to redo the points earned in platinum and diamond. Instead of having a 300/350 point spread (+175to -175) have a 10 point spread for each spot so you have +30 to -30 on a 7 guild battleground. This could all play out over a couple of seasons at the new point scale and the battleground would straighten out. This is broken and in hopes that it gets fixed

The way teams are placed is broken, here in B world 2 guilds have been on same map farming for 6 weeks, lol GbG is a joke

 

[Coach Zuck]

an easy way to solve this would be to track how many seasons guilds have been at 1000 MMR and match them with each other. My guild's never been below 1000 MMR since it was first reached. Only guild to never be demoted to platinum on our server. That would make things more interesting, rather than having to be paired up with 6-7 guilds each round that can't take a sector in less than 20 minutes, and hopefully one where a sector could actually be considered a race. Right now we count ourselves lucky if we get a guild who can keep up and take our sectors quick enough for us to be able to take them back later without running bored. Though lately we've found some strategies for working with the small guilds when it's us plus all small guilds, to help everyone have fun.. even if our encounter count is lower those seasons, at least it's not nil. It's definitely never a competition either way.
Edit: forgot to mention, the 1000 MMR matches would then be matched based on who's been at 1000 for the longest.
You could probably also just sneak it in to the MMR number itself --- give +3 for 1st, +2 for 2nd, +1 for 3rd, then for 4th-8th give them their usual negative amount to get them out of those ranks.
Edit2: just to be clear, before there were 40+ diamond guilds on the server, the matches were much more even and required more thought/concentration, since they involved multiple guilds that were not all allied with each other. We even once got to team up with 4 enemies to punish the strongest guild that would always get 1st in order to teach them a lesson over their constant use of traps and fortresses. Good riddance to them. When the match was multiple guilds all wanting a rank that wouldn't demote them and fighting hard for it, with constant races because multiple guilds wanted a key sector, it was interesting. A bit too fast paced for my tastes, requiring too much map babysitting, but still more interesting.

 

[Kranyar the Mysterious]

Sector limitations assume the other guilds are even interested in taking sectors. All it would take under this scheme is for one or two guilds to decide to boycott a map to create in essence end everyone's season early. That is too much power. Also a bad idea in lower leagues where only one guild ever takes more than a couple sectors all season long.

Also, under this scenario, the first two guilds to get to the center first are pretty much guaranteed to stay in the center all season simply swapping those sectors back and forth.

 

[Tony 85 the Generous]

Its not random, its always 1 or none on beach and 2 or 3 in the middle, nothing random other than what maps get more 2 & 3 placement sectors always toward the center

The first few seasons I had tried to make a map of which sectors had how many building slots. I quickly found out they were random, then they were reduced. D4H had one last season and none this season. D3Z, A3V and A3X each have two this season; last season A3V had none. Last season A1, B1, C1, and D1 all had three, this season only B1 has three. The placement and count is random.

 

[Tony 85 the Generous]

Also, under this scenario, the first two guilds to get to the center first are pretty much guaranteed to stay in the center all season simply swapping those sectors back and forth.

Not sure how that differs from the current schema. LOL

One of the primary aspects of limiting the sector count is to allow the lower strength guilds a chance to get out of the HQ and fight while at the same time making the stronger guilds decide whether to hold the top or pin down a guild/guilds.

Sector limitations assume the other guilds are even interested in taking sectors. All it would take under this scheme is for one or two guilds to decide to boycott a map to create in essence end everyone's season early. That is too much power. Also a bad idea in lower leagues where only one guild ever takes more than a couple sectors all season long.

The number of sectors is available for discussion. If a guild or two does not want to participate, there will be 2 or 3 that will, so the season won't end early. Additionally, a 'Drop Sector' button could be included so as to allow a guild to drop a sector from the siege so they can move on. This would also prevent guilds from grouping together to boycott attacking a guild so they get stuck with the X number of sectors they have conquered; effectively pinning them.

 

[King*Terry]

DON'T LET AVATAR STEALERS FOOL YOU!!!

The above post is NOT a RazorbackPirate post, the post is not endorsed by RazorbackPirate.

ONLY YOU @TerryH57 CAN PREVENT AVATAR ABUSE!!!

Sorry, didn't know I was stealing anyone's personal Avatar here as it's been years that I have posted anything here, I even had to create a new log in. They use to provide avatars for us to select, not great ones at all. So I did a search for them and liked yours. I though this was their new way of doing it. I won't be back as this is still a hateful place full of nasty arrogant people that would rather insult players asking questions or comments than to be helpful here. I have no use for this nasty site at all. Doubt I will ever return here.

 

[Lando6]

GBG is just like any type of European soccer league. If you are good enough, you will get promoted to the top league, but that doesn't mean you are on par with Barcelona or Man City. People need to stop thinking GBG is like a salary cap sports league. Competitive play will not be even, just like GE. And yes, I am in a guild that usually dominates GBG, but not just because we have great players, but because we put the time in to strategize and ally with others to maximize fights (i.e. rewards).

 

[Kestrel WindReaper]

I run a top guild in Y and until a few weeks ago had been working on being the best GbG guild in our world. We have played every round of GbG from the start, and have been in Diamond for at least 14 months.

We are now in our fifth round straight of zero competition. By that I mean that we have won each round by a landslide and we are continually lumped together with the most inactive 1000 LP guilds in Diamond League. They should not even be here because they play at a gold league level and do basically nothing. We can’t even farm the round, it is that bad.

Meanwhile, we just want to fight the other top guilds who enjoy GbG, but the 1000 LP guild pool has grown so large that we don’t even get matched with them anymore. Five rounds of this and now we are so bored and miserable with the game. Many of our long time members are just drifting off to play other games. We built this top guild to be the best in GbG and we can’t even fight the best guilds. After working so hard for years, it is absolutely devastating. Please please please do something about this.

 

[Lord Pest]

I run a top guild in Y and until a few weeks ago had been working on being the best GbG guild in our world. We have played every round of GbG from the start, and have been in Diamond for at least 14 months.

We are now in our fifth round straight of zero competition. By that I mean that we have won each round by a landslide and we are continually lumped together with the most inactive 1000 LP guilds in Diamond League. They should not even be here because they play at a gold league level and do basically nothing. We can’t even farm the round, it is that bad.

Meanwhile, we just want to fight the other top guilds who enjoy GbG, but the 1000 LP guild pool has grown so large that we don’t even get matched with them anymore. Five rounds of this and now we are so bored and miserable with the game. Many of our long time members are just drifting off to play other games. We built this top guild to be the best in GbG and we can’t even fight the best guilds. After working so hard for years, it is absolutely devastating. Please please please do something about this.

something is broken. We have been on the same map for 5 straight weeks with our ally and 5 other guilds. Only 2 guilds sometimes chang... the ones that get sent back to platinum. Very strange.

 

[Insatiable1]

If you've been around long enough, you'll remember that Inno used to have a completely random assortment of players in Neighborhoods, without any regard to the Age players were in. I think maybe Arctic Future was the latest Age when I started playing, and I'd find myself, in Iron Age or maybe in one of the Middle Ages, in the same Neighborhood with Arctic Future players. Needless to say, you hoped that the upper end players didn't think us Lowbies worth the time to attack and plunder on a daily basis (although some did).

Some time later, Inno implemented a "fix" in which all players in a Neighborhood are in the same game Age (and I think at roughly the same point on the Tech Tree within an Age- but not sure about that). I think, overall, that was a good fix.

It would appear that Inno learned from their past mistake and try to group Guilds which tend to be roughly equal in terms of GBG success in the same league level rather than merely have their RNG select entirely random Guilds to compete against each other.

But, even within the top Diamond League, there are top Guilds and then there are Top Guilds. Short of creating a Level above Diamond, what can Inno do to balance things? And even if they did have a Double Diamond League, you'd almost certainly have a similar hierarchy as you do now, so would anything really be "better"?

Inno can create a Titanium League for those guilds that snowplow 6 of the other 7 guilds every season...but change up the rules for it a little bit. Make buildings cost double what they are in Diamond. Make flags start to lose progress after sitting for more than 10 minutes forcing sectors to be closed as opposed to guilds leaving the flag at 159 forever. Sectors can take 250 hits to conquer. My personal favorite idea, would be to have the mountains be volcanos and once a day one can erupt an wipe one sector clean.(But that is like one of my hopes that one day Kraken would eat one of the people in the crowd when you collect from it...would make it so much more fun!) In the current format, Inno can add an algorithm to make guild size a key factor in what maps they go on. A guild of 40 cannot compete against a guild of 70-80. Inno can put the 3 slot sectors in front of each HQ to give all guilds a fighting chance at the start and limit camps as they move towards the center.

 

[The Lady Redneck]

We are now in our fifth round straight of zero competition.

Pretty much the same for us. Luckily we play a lot of GvG which does negate the boredom of GBG which is an exercise in farming and nothing more. But it has its plus side as some of the newer phone players in the guild are making the effort to get onto a PC so they can experience the fun of real fighting that only GvG gives. I suffer the boredom of GBG as I see it as a way to farm FPs and goods which, in turn, lets me level my GBs faster and feed the guild inventory so we can do more GvG. Basically I now view GBG as being no different to GE, it just has a few more bells and whistles.

 

[King Reaper VII]

I agree that GBG is seriously unbalanced. My guild often snowplows guilds, but this happens when you are out with too many good guilds.
Proof:

 

[Insatiable1]

I personally have lost all hope in GbG
on the topic of hard truths people avoid, GbG was designed to replace GvG. It's a GvG that everybody can do and it gives rewards... enough to make the more selfish players quit GvG or cut back a lot.
fortunately for GvG lovers like me, unfortunately for Inno, that didn't happen. GbG has turned into a game of checkers. No competition (except when GvG enemies get placed against each other). It's not Battlegrounds any more, it's farmgrounds. Inno didn't intend for all of this map gridding when they made GbG, so how do they solve the new problem of guilds not competing against each other and instead farming rewards alongside each other? They put guilds who can't or won't farm the map alongside guilds who love to fight for the points and rewards so that the checkerboard GbG model wont work out. They've also done things like reducing building slots on some tiles to try to impede the gridding.
So in conclusion, @Helmet Bro , don't be surprised that inno does this. They are trying to reverse the farming and bring the battle back to battlegrounds. Because right now, victory points are taking backseat to rewards and farming. Thats my 2 cents

Inno declined to make GvG mobile accessible stating that they would need to rewrite it completely to do so, but turned around and wrote an entirely new script for GBG. They could have redid GvG and added more maps for the missing ages...which is really what the players wanted. If GBG was so great, they wouldn't need to bribe people with rewards to play it. GvG still determines guild ranking and GvG has not died, nor will it.

 

[Insatiable1]

It's certainly true that the chest rewards are better in diamond, even if you come in last. But who is doing GBG for the chest rewards?

It isn't always true that you are getting better personal rewards.

Sure, 10 FPs is better than 7. And 25 diamonds is better than 20. But which is better: 500 chances to earn 7 FP, or 50 chances to earn 10 FP?
I tend to earn more rewards when we are in Platinum or the very bottom of Diamond. Hitting 1,000 usually means take a season off. Watch the big boys play checkers and grab whatever meager rewards you can as they run past the front porch. Not complaining about it, but "Your in DIAMOND!!!" is not always a good thing.

No one of needs another Statue of Honor or has room for a 20th Road to Victory, LOL.

 

[King Reaper VII]

It's basically a rotation, some guilds just get to diamond league with a lot of work, and then they get absolutely trashed