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When can we stop pretending GBG is balanced?

If Inno wanted to have a competitive Battlegrounds game, there are several options.

1. First and foremost would be to limit the number of "high prestige point" members in the Guild. The prestige points are a surrogate for the kind of player with 1000+ attacking boosts. Presently, these folks congregate in a few Guilds, and they dominate the server World that they are in.
2. Limit the time that a Banner can exist on a sector without taking the sector. This tactic creates the checkerboards and collusion that are rife in the game today.
3. Introduce new buildings that can break up a block of sectors quickly. Sappers could reduce the advances needed to take a sector that is contiguous to other enemy sectors.

There are endless ways to make Battlegrounds competitive. But Inno isn't interested, apparently.
 

Emberguard

Well-Known Member
1. First and foremost would be to limit the number of "high prestige point" members in the Guild. The prestige points are a surrogate for the kind of player with 1000+ attacking boosts. Presently, these folks congregate in a few Guilds, and they dominate the server World that they are in.
I could see that causing quite a few issues if it's within the current structures. Guild cohesion goes well beyond just battlegrounds. It effects Guild Treasury, ability to trade goods and your ability to swap FPs (I'm including 1.x in that). That's not even getting into player hierachy structures or people having entirely different ideas on how they wish to play the battlegrounds.

Also, those ranking points keep changing. A low pointer isn't going to remain a low pointer forever. So if we're limiting guilds on that metric we'd also need to be shuffling guilds with each season.


So while the point you're making is a valid point and I agree the most powerful players being in the same guild is part of what causes a top heavy result, if that were a metric used I think we'd either need to (a) completely change how Guilds work or (b) keep Guilds as is, but create temporary Groups in addition to your Guild with that temporary Group being exclusive to GBG participation. I'd rather keep our Guilds as is and introduce temporary Groups just for participating in GBG

2. Limit the time that a Banner can exist on a sector without taking the sector. This tactic creates the checkerboards and collusion that are rife in the game today.
While on the surface that sounds like it might stop checkers, in practice that'll just make checkers much *much* easier to maintain. There's only one reason in checkers to ever capture a province: to reset the advances. Your idea achieves that with no cost involved

Think about what happens when we capture a province. 50% chance of losing each building. If we can get to 158/160 and then wait for the advances to disappear we don't need to capture provinces anymore. We'd have a permanent farm at 5+ Siege Camps on every province we're farming as we'd be able to set up checkers on the provinces that are most profitable and then never finish the swap. It'd remove a large chunk of the building cost we have now by enabling a once off payment that never has to be repeated

Meanwhile the weaker guilds that can't capture a province quickly might never get out of their HQ due to a timer wiping their progress whenever they start to get anywhere

3. Introduce new buildings that can break up a block of sectors quickly. Sappers could reduce the advances needed to take a sector that is contiguous to other enemy sectors.
New buildings could potentially spice things up, but it would require the playerbase to want competition more than they want rewards
 

The Lady Redneck

Well-Known Member
. First and foremost would be to limit the number of "high prestige point" members in the Guild. The prestige points are a surrogate for the kind of player with 1000+ attacking boosts. Presently, these folks congregate in a few Guilds, and they dominate the server World that they are in.
These players did not suddenly decide congregate in a few guilds because GBG was added to the game. Many have played together since the game first started. They have build up friendships and loyalties because of shared experiences in learning the game over the years. That is why they can run successful guilds. To arbitrarily say that they can no longer play together would make nonsense of the whole concept of the game. Plus many people have different ideas of how to play the game. So a motley group of players just thrown together on a seasonal basis would spend more time arguing between themselves over how things should be done than they would actually playing the game.

2. Limit the time that a Banner can exist on a sector without taking the sector. This tactic creates the checkerboards and collusion that are rife in the game today.
What Emberguard said above is exactly how this would end up.

3. Introduce new buildings that can break up a block of sectors quickly. Sappers could reduce the advances needed to take a sector that is contiguous to other enemy sectors.
A Sapper is a soldier therefor a military unit, so would need to be included as part your army. I could see new types of buildings working in some instances. But I think that, just like present buildings, there would be some that were seldom if ever used. Like traps for instance. There is an unspoken agreement in my main world (Even between the worst of enemies) that they are just not used at all by anyone.
 

Pericles the Lion

Well-Known Member
Here's something to ponder. Guilds that are heavy into GBG "checkerboards" build a lot of SCs and commonly rush them. It has been estimated that they may rush 10 SCs per swap times 5 swaps per day. 50 diamonds/rush times 10 times 5 = 2500 diamonds per day per guild, or approximately 5000 diamonds per day per map assuming 2 guilds are participating in the checkerboard. I don't have a clue how many GBG maps there are in the GBG universe but my guess is that there are a LOT of diamonds being spent. Some, but certainly not all, come from GBG rewards. The rest have to come from somewhere.
 

Emberguard

Well-Known Member
50 diamonds/rush times 10 times 5 = 2500 diamonds per day per guild, or approximately 5000 diamonds per day per map assuming 2 guilds are participating in the checkerboard
That may be the case at the very start of a season, but timer lockouts are 4 hrs and siege camps 2 hrs to build. So if a guild is “heavy” into GBG there’s something wrong if they’re using that many diamonds each time. It should only be a once off cost for a heavy GBG guild, after that they shouldn’t need to keep consuming diamonds as placing Siege Camps immediately after a swap ensures no diamonds are needed
 

Ebeondi Asi

Well-Known Member
The idea a Guild can hold sectors forever is wrong. THey have to trade them to let the players gain FPs. Sometimes a Guild is stuck with a slow partner, and that is annoying since it means the sectors cannot be traded.
I do ahve to say the current setup since the change in how the group is chosen has changed to number of top Guilds in a map. Now a lot more fighitng between Guilds, and three or five way or four way sharing. (rather than the usual two)
I thought a ay to give the weak Guilds something. Afte two days of GbG session the bottom two can elect to leave and all those in the World who elect to leave (who are in Diamond) get to form new sets of maps with each other for the remainder of season. of those the bottom half get sent back to Platinum.
Some penalty, perhaps rewards are like in Platinum though still 160 fights. The main thing is the Guild gets to choose stay or try new group.
Another good idea that has been mentioned is no attrition in any sectors touching home base.
 

Pericles the Lion

Well-Known Member
That may be the case at the very start of a season, but timer lockouts are 4 hrs and siege camps 2 hrs to build. So if a guild is “heavy” into GBG there’s something wrong if they’re using that many diamonds each time. It should only be a once off cost for a heavy GBG guild, after that they shouldn’t need to keep consuming diamonds as placing Siege Camps immediately after a swap ensures no diamonds are needed
Mostly correct. Ring 1 and ring 2 get capped and SCs built where needed. Ring 3 remains open because it is supported by neighboring ring 3 tiles, sometimes ring 4 tiles and the newly closed ring 2 tiles. Newly built SCs on ring 2 tiles supporting ring 3 tiles being attacked need to be rushed. First attack of the season has everything rushed. After that, some number of SCs built on ring 2 tiles get rushed every swap.
 

Pericles the Lion

Well-Known Member
I'm wondering about any need to modify GBG. My question is this: is there anything inherent in the structure of FOE that prevents a weaker guild from growing stronger? I mean, this ain't MLB where teams like the Yankees are destined to dominate (because they have deep pockets and there is no salary cap in MLB) small market teams. I'm not aware of anything that prevents a small guild from recruiting to 80 players; from requiring ARC/OBS/ATOM/SOH to build the treasury; from requiring x-number of encounters per season, etc., etc. A new season started yesterday. Two of the guilds on our current map didn't attack a single tile at the opening which is not unusual. I can't get excited about changing GBG to help guilds that aren't engaged now.
 

wolfhoundtoo

Well-Known Member
I'm wondering about any need to modify GBG. My question is this: is there anything inherent in the structure of FOE that prevents a weaker guild from growing stronger? I mean, this ain't MLB where teams like the Yankees are destined to dominate (because they have deep pockets and there is no salary cap in MLB) small market teams. I'm not aware of anything that prevents a small guild from recruiting to 80 players; from requiring ARC/OBS/ATOM/SOH to build the treasury; from requiring x-number of encounters per season, etc., etc. A new season started yesterday. Two of the guilds on our current map didn't attack a single tile at the opening which is not unusual. I can't get excited about changing GBG to help guilds that aren't engaged now.

You are correct guilds can grow stronger and weaker as players come and go and as new players develop. It is generally a long term process which requires both time and commitment from a bunch of players. It's tough to keep players motivated and involved in GBG (or FOE in general for various reasons). Telling them to get stronger doesn't really change the factor that much (various explanations exist in this thread if you go back). I do believe guilds can grow into what they need to do but then I"m in a guild that at least can get in on the swaps every few seasons generally with the way it is currently structured. Sometimes we mostly get shut out for a season or too and we tend to lose the players that want to do better than that.

The general problem I see is most ideas that can help weaker guilds will also help the stronger guilds and will make it even easier on them to dominate. If obvious penalties are put in for stronger guilds (such as limits on 'strong' players as suggested above) that comes off as Inno choosing to penalize individual players. That's never taken well. And of course I do wonder how any tweaks suggested would impact diamond usage because how many of those big guilds not only spend diamonds but spend to get those boosts? That doesn't even get into the 2nd balancing impacts arising from more guilds being able to take sectors which would be how many would be willing and able to fund the goods needed or pay diamonds to raise camps? Yes you can wait to do it but that assumes the sectors you are using as a base will open within a safe enough window for you to use them (and you have enough people on). Given the small amount of time the top guilds can roll a sector the opening time differences in sector can make a difference.
 

Ebeondi Asi

Well-Known Member
Big strong Guilds got big ad strong over a very long time. The fact is the little Guilds whine because they do not have the time in to get to be big or strong. they expect it to be 'fair' which to them means getting the same perks as the players who put in years of effort. And to me that is the number one problem in Foe. new players think they should be able to go up against the long time players and get an even ("fair") match up. sorry, no way dudes.
The only problem I see that might be worth 'fixing' in GbG is to stop it being so easy for weak Guilds to get into Diamond. Or even platinum. When the useless weak Guilds have to be strong to get int Diamond. then the whining might stop about the big guys crushing the weaker. Then the whining would be about why did Inno make it so hard to get into Diamond. LOL
 

Sharmon the Impaler

Well-Known Member
Another good idea that has been mentioned is no attrition in any sectors touching home base.

This would be wide open to abuse , 2-3 member guilds form a pact with adjacent homebases where they take each other sectors touching home bases and do this for the whole season. This would guarantee a 2 member guild 3 sectors X 2 times per day attrition free and would vastly increase the number of tiny guilds that would see this as a twice monthly windfall of rewards.
 

Ebeondi Asi

Well-Known Member
This would be wide open to abuse , 2-3 member guilds form a pact with adjacent homebases where they take each other sectors touching home bases and do this for the whole season. This would guarantee a 2 member guild 3 sectors X 2 times per day attrition free and would vastly increase the number of tiny guilds that would see this as a twice monthly windfall of rewards.
So what. all those sectors now usually are often used by those Guilds. who cares? part of GbG is Guilds making pacts. Great. I suppose you think it would affect who? the bigGuilds? they might miss out? no because the big Guilds can afford to take them back. so what if it is trading back and forth with the little Guild. no problem I can see. Except maybe the litlte Guild might gain a few Fps for it's members doing it.
 

Sharmon the Impaler

Well-Known Member
So what. all those sectors now usually are often used by those Guilds. who cares? part of GbG is Guilds making pacts. Great. I suppose you think it would affect who? the bigGuilds? they might miss out? no because the big Guilds can afford to take them back. so what if it is trading back and forth with the little Guild. no problem I can see. Except maybe the litlte Guild might gain a few Fps for it's members doing it.

There are 4 sectors touching each home base which will now no longer require goods to make them attrition free which will remove the need for a treasury or for that matter any need of a guild goods producing building as long as you stick to those 4. Each guild gets 4 to start and then at the swap 4 coming back that would require no goods or treasury. You don't see this as a fundemental change in game play ? A one or two person guild can change GbG into a secondary account mine with only a high attack needed and a jacked up Traz to produce the units to do the swaps. As there would be no hurry doing the swaps you could basically go the whole season making 1280 fights/day (640 out and 640 swap if in Diamond) only gaining attrition on the swap with the other guild that gets reset the next day.
 

Johnny B. Goode

Well-Known Member
Big strong Guilds got big ad strong over a very long time.
That used to be true, but with the effect of the Arc and various other GBs on the game (not to mention an incredible acceleration in power creep over the last couple of years) it isn't any longer. And that's not even considering that a few strong players can form a new guild and immediately be a "big strong guild".

The real problem with GBG isn't that there are "big strong guilds", but that guilds conspire to turn an intended battleground into a checkerboard farm. Until that's fixed, GBG is nothing but heavy RQ looping on a guild scale.
 

Emberguard

Well-Known Member
The real problem with GBG isn't that there are "big strong guilds", but that guilds conspire to turn an intended battleground into a checkerboard farm. Until that's fixed, GBG is nothing but heavy RQ looping on a guild scale.
Yeah and that’s down to free will + the length of each season being so long but the competition result already being pretty clear without any collusion or cooperation in the first day, often within the first hr(s).

If it were a daily competition instead of by-weekly that’d greatly reduce the need to swap. It wouldn’t necessarily remove it due to it being so well established already, but it’d sure reduce it.
 

The Lady Redneck

Well-Known Member
Daily competition GBG without even the four day break? No Thank You! LOL
Might not be a bad idea. And why not divide each sector a number of sub-sectors that need to be conquered. A bit like the Cmap. Only once a guild has fought off other guilds and won the whole sector do the get to keep it for a given length of time. HHMMMM now what does that remind me of?
 
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