Well, let's start the discussion
Guild expedition:
The only rewards that are good here are the Forgotten Temple and the feathered serpent statue, everything else is useless. But it doesn't require any diamonds, goods, or high bonuses to finish so I am fine with those rewards. In case you are active in 1.9x threads you can finish all five levels in around 15 minutes so it's not even a time-demanding activity.
GvG:
I used to play GvG so I am well aware of the costs, but because Inno never brought it to the mobile version of the game, GvG is up to this day being played by less than 10% of the player base so a completely useless feature for the majority of the player base. But for those who play it, it's activity for up to 10 minutes a day in most cases.
Attacking neighborhood:
If I remember correctly you can have up to 100 neighbors so 100 fights to do, can be done in less than 10 minutes easily. In case you are into plundering it takes significantly longer, but most people collect in time so I really never saw it as something that is worth investing the time into.
So far activities have been for roughly 20-30 minutes a day including collection, so don't know where you came with the idea the game had so many add-ons it required a lot of time to go through them
Now GbG:
First of all, you fight once every 8 hours, not 4 (you take sectors from the enemy guild 4h lock, then they it from you another 4h lock). Only around 20 to 30% of sectors on the map were possible to take with 5 siege camps so why are you still repeating the fairy tale about attrition-free GbG that was never true? I would put GbG into two scenarios:
1. You played against a guild that was capable of beating you
In this scenario you had to take as many edge sectors as possible, as many times as possible, those were 0 to 3 SC sectors so the winner was based on total guild attrition capability and tactic.
2. You played against guilds that were never capable of beating you
Here you could ignore edge sectors and focus on the map rotation in case there was a guild capable of doing the rotaions with you. This was indeed the most effective way to play GbG. As the entire map was taken in one go, sectors were opening one after another and most of the sectors could be taken with 4 siege camps, yet there were still roughly 20-30% of those with 3 SC only where the attrition build-up was a bit higher.
In general, most of the sectors you were taking had a 96% attrition reduction, and minorities had a 72% and 100% attrition reduction.
As you mentioned the benefit of smaller guilds was obviously fewer people to share the fights with so indeed if you wanted maximum out of GbG you were playing in a smaller guild. To be a successful fighter and successful guild it required time, dedication, and of course some money. Only with high attack stats, Traz, and guild goods producing GBs you could become a successful fighter a successful guild needed to have players across the globe to cover the entire day, and members willing to log in and fight on a regular basis is not an easy feat.
So yes your placement, development, and resources were based on your skill, activity, and success of your guild which is far better than pre-GbG time when your position and development was based on the amount of year you sat through.
Why do I think the "new" GbG is wrong?
In short, for much more resources you get far fewer rewards.
A longer explanation would be:
1. Guild goods
New support structures require much more goods than the old ones, so players need to build and level guild-supporting buildings much more than before.
2. Diamond costs
New structures cost much more diamonds to complete than the old ones.
3. Attacking army bonuses
Due to a maximum 80% attrition reduction, you are forced to fight much more on higher attrition levels than before so you are losing troops than ever before. So especially in SAT when troops aren't that strong you are forced to fight far below your maximum attrition so you are not losing more droops than you can get or you are forced to add hundreds if not thousands to your bonuses.
So you are forced to pay more goods, pay more diamonds, and pay for more event buildings to be at last able to get a fraction of the fights you were getting before the change. Why should anyone be interested in paying more for less?
