Forwarded: Fixing a lot of GvG issues with a single solution.

[DeletedUser13082]

Proposal:
Change siege costs from how they currently work. Instead, have a set cost for every siege.

Have you checked the forums for the same or similar idea?
Yes. Mentioned in a few different manners in multiple threads but choosing to give the idea an independent thread to offer better recognition of the suggestion. Also the idea I am going to suggest differs slightly from all that I have previously seen.

Reason:
There are multiple issues in GvG that this idea will fix, the main issue being stagnation.

Details:
Rather than starting siege costs ridiculously low and then working up to ridiculously high, have one set amount of goods required per siege despite how many sectors are owned by the guild. A set amount of 200-500 of each good from the age is a good amount in my opinion. It keeps the challenge of gathering goods alive. It's not low enough to cause maps to break into chaos and require 24 hour watch to ensure your guild doesn't lose sectors. It's not high enough for large guilds to hit a stagnant point where it requires weeks of preparation for a single siege which may not even be successful.

Issues such as ghost guilds will be fixed. It would be pointless for players to jump into a new guild to siege somebody when they can siege from their own guild for the exact same cost. Some people use GvG simply to gather PvP points and better their personal score; GvG means Guild vs Guild, players looking to better their personal score can do so in many ways, ruining GvG for those who participate for guild score is unfair in my opinion.

Guilds which hold no sectors on a map or very few sectors on a map can hit larger guilds for very low siege costs and cause a lot of damage. The time and effort put into acquiring those sectors is completely destroyed by this fact. If 1 guild has to pay 2000 of each good from the current age in order to siege a sector then it shouldn't be possible for another guild to siege the exact same sector for just 5 or 10 of each good. The already established guild has no advantage over the none established guild, they shouldn't be penalised. They put in the time and effort, others should have to do the same despite their current GvG standing.

It is possible for guilds to drop their HQ by deleting all the armies from the HQ sector giving the ability to leapfrog from sector to sector across the map for very low siege costs. Those guilds are then able to reach safe areas of the map with large amounts of high power sectors available to them. The HQ cannot be granted freedom for a reason. This exploit would also be fixed by this solution as it would be far to costly to leapfrog through that many sectors.

The overall idea would change the costs of GvG entirely, rather than cost being based on the guilds current progress it should be based on the sector which the guild wishes to acquire. There are 4 different power sectors on each map. The lowest being 0 trees on hex up to the highest being a hex full of trees. Each hex should have a siege cost based on the power which it offers. Starting from the lowest power being 200 of each good and working up to the highest power sectors being 500 of each good.

All of the main issues currently in debate concerning GvG would be fixed by this one simply solution.

Please note that the numbers suggested for siege costs are simply for examples and not to be taken literally. The exact goods cost for placing sieges with this idea is open for debate.

Visual Aids:
No visual aids required.

Balance/Abuse Prevention:
No abuse that I can think of would come from the update, rather it would prevent current abuse situations in GvG.

One issue could be concerned as a balance issue however in my personal opinion it is not. I will mention it anyway though as it will simply be mentioned in later posts if I don't. Some people will say that this idea is unfair to smaller guilds. It is harder for them to gather these amounts of goods for their later attacks let alone their first sector of the map. As I said, in my honest opinion, this is not an issue. If a guild is struggling to generate those amounts of goods then they should consider taking on more members or negotiating a merge with another smaller guild to form a larger guild. If people choose to participate in smaller guilds where GvG is obviously going to be more difficult then that is their own decision. Others should not be penalised for the way you choose to play the game. If you choose to be a member of a smaller guild then you are also choosing to deal with the issues that come from GvG due to being in a small guild.

Reason why I believe that my above suggestion will be the best solution to the current issue:

The reason for this idea is to completely fix certain issues rather than patch up a problem until a new work around is discovered by players. Two ideas spring to mind for use as an example:
1. A cool-down period of time between leaving and rejoining a specific guild.
2. A time period between leaving a guild and founding a new guild.

These two patches do not stop ghost guilds entirely, instead they reduce the likely-hood of ghost guilds occurring. What about the players who use GvG as a way of gaining PvP points? They are still ghost guilds who are destroying the efforts of GvG active guilds simply to benefit themselves. Neither of the above ideas will stop them from doing what they are doing. Also with the latter of these ideas, what happens when a player genuinely decides he/she wants to create their own guild? They now have to wait days or weeks before they are allowed to do so? That to me doesn't seem fair.

The idea I have mentioned however will put a stop to ghosts completely. A player who wants to leave his/her current guild to ghost another guild would find it pointless. He/she could do the same damage and also gain more from simply attacking a sector from their own guild instead of a ghost guild. Those who are currently using GvG as a personal rank boosting option would now find it far more costly to do so and therefore GvG would no longer be a usable function for simply gaining rank points, instead the person attempting this would have to pay the same as anybody else who wishes to participate in GvG.

For these reasons I feel that currently a set siege cost dependant on the power obtained from a specific sector is the most logical solution to fix current issues in GvG while still offering a variety of different siege costs and still preventing guilds from being able to dominate an entire map easily. Not only does it fix ghost guilds, rather than simply patching them, but it also provides a fix for other issues in GvG such as HQ dropping and the imbalance of current siege costs causing stalemate scenarios.

 

[Supermum1]

In my opinion this is a great idea, and would make life simpler for all guilds, small or big in the long run.
I might want to ask should the cost of aquiring sectors on BA maps be same as on ME map?
Maybe the cost should be lower, the lower lvl the maps are, as the sectors obviously offers less power anyway ?

 

[DeletedUser13082]

Although they offer less power, if the siege costs were too low I think it would cause far too much chaos on the maps as mentioned in the OP. If you think of every siege costing 20-50 goods for example, it would mean that each day a single person could generate enough goods for 2-5 sieges depending on the age of the map. As an entire guild, it would be far too easy to generate goods for sieges and GvG would reach a stage where it becomes too active, meaning that it would be close to impossible to defend sectors from a siege. With the costs being the same across all maps it keeps the balance well as the cost to produce the lower age goods is also a lot less. Less price to pay = less power to gain. Also the younger guilds would stand more of a chance in my opinion. At the later ages, large players would rather produce higher age goods than have a city full of IA goods buildings. This way the majority of IA goods would be in the possession of younger guilds and therefore give them a better chance on the lower age maps. That being said, an older guild with more advanced players (tech wise) could still easily stock up on lower age goods but that's an issue that requires other solutions

 

[Supermum1]

ah, got it...see your point, and have to say it makes sense to me, even if I tend to be a bit blonde at times

 

[DeletedUser103004]

Like it DO. Would certainly make things fairer and I think GvG more enjoyable.

 

[DeletedUser17143]

+1 from me. Great idea. Lets just hope its seen by someone that can take it to the devs.

 

[DeletedUser]

I'm on the fence about this. I would like it for the established guilds that i am in to prevent us been constantly ghosted, however just getting on the map in a 'young guild' (say iron age) i think 200 would be far too extreme, though what you have said are of course examples. With thought and development i suppose it could work and prevent the whole GvG issue or for a while until a way around it is found.

 

[DeletedUser15432]

I like this idea as well. therefore a plus 1 from me, it would do away with the ghost guilds and also make GvG more interesting

 

[DeletedUser13082]

Thanks all

@Tom, read short conversation between supermum and myself, may help with the what you mentioned

 

[DeletedUser3157]

I would assume the reason for current cumulative siege costs is to avoid any single guild becoming overly dominant in their world eating up the entire continent and killing up competitive GvG for everyone else. Current system is supposed to give advantage to the weaker guilds and disadvantage to the stronger guilds. There is nothing wrong with this idea, other than all the numbers in it being unbalanced(hence also open for abuse). Starting siege costs should be way higher and the curve should not be that harsh. With everything static you would put all the hopes in players naturally developing balance of powers and it wouldn't happen in all the worlds I'm afraid(this game has 100+ worlds by now i think, right), at least not right away.

 

[DeletedUser13082]

I would assume the reason for current cumulative siege costs is to avoid any single guild becoming overly dominant in their world eating up the entire continent and killing up competitive GvG for everyone else. Current system is supposed to give advantage to the weaker guilds and disadvantage to the stronger guilds. There is nothing wrong with this idea, other than all the numbers in it being unbalanced. Starting siege costs should be way higher and the curve should not be that harsh. With everything static you would put all the hopes in players naturally developing balance of powers and it wouldn't happen in all the worlds I'm afraid(this game has 100+ worlds by now i think, right), at least not right away.

-1

Understand where you're coming from, but as stated in OP in the balance issue, why should players in a large guild be punished cause others chose to be in a smaller guild instead? It's their decision to be in a smaller guild, many of the larger guilds are currently recruiting more active GvG players no matter what their stage in the game. If they can help out on a map which is active in the guild then the large guilds welcome them. Those who choose to be in a smaller guild are at an obvious disadvantage, that's a disadvantage they have knowingly let themselves in for.

As for where you mentioned the numbers, what would you suggest in place of what I currently suggested? Truthfully I didn't really put much thought into the numbers, just stated what sounded suitable at the time I was typing

 

[DeletedUser3157]

Understand where you're coming from, but as stated in OP in the balance issue, why should players in a large guild be punished cause others chose to be in a smaller guild instead? It's their decision to be in a smaller guild, many of the larger guilds are currently recruiting more active GvG players no matter what their stage in the game. If they can help out on a map which is active in the guild then the large guilds welcome them. Those who choose to be in a smaller guild are at an obvious disadvantage, that's a disadvantage they have knowingly let themselves in for.

As for where you mentioned the numbers, what would you suggest in place of what I currently suggested? Truthfully I didn't really put much thought into the numbers, just stated what sounded suitable at the time I was typing

By weaker and stronger guilds I did not exactly mean their strength of numbers as much as their success in GvG map. My point is that with all around static costs, somebody could "win" GvG much more so than they can now.

Think of a world where right now a single very good guild really dominates the GvG landscape. They would eat up what percentage of total GvG sectors? (I really have no idea cause I haven't seen any GvG map almost 3 months now, they don't load for me). Anyways whatever it is, I'd be quite suprised to hear if any guild has the resources to control more than 50% of map, lets say. And if someone were to rally resistance against such power guild, they would have big theoretical advantage in terms of siege costs when sectors get traded back and forth. So that's the 'advantage' I meant the "smaller" guild has.

Now imagine if we have static siege costs everywhere and there would be 1 super guild in some world. They would fight everyone on even basis and due to being better than everyone, they would likely win and could control around 90-100% of all sectors. It would really demoralize everyone else in that world, since they would have no chance competing against that guild or holding/doing anything in GvG. Ofcourse it's possible that everyone else could unite against the power guild(read my balance of powers in last post), but just as easily they could give up.

Regarding giving more exact numbers, I could no longer do that. I have almost no first hand exp with GvG. But all I can say is that these exponentially or who-knows-how growing siege costs is a basic gaming logic that makes sense and is out there to keep powers more balanced artificially. You can meet something similar in almost every similar gaming concept. It's the right kind of "formula", but it's just very very off in numbers. It should most def not start at 0 and it shouldn't progress as fast as I've heard it does.

 

[DeletedUser7719]

Another solution would be to set a siege cost at 1000, decrease it by 50 everyday, and add 100 to every consecutive siege on the same day (will reset back to 1K by the next day if siege cost passes 1K).
This solution is also a nice one (Falcon suggested the same thing too way earlier), so I'll also +1 this one

 

[DeletedUser]

I'd like to +1 this idea aswell, this is the best solution they can do for the current problems

A few thoughts though:

- I think that the costs are too high. Let us say that a guild tries to take a sector from another guild which has all 8 slots filled with units, and maybe even has a defensive bonus. That gives a total of 64 defending units which requires atleast 6-8 sieges if the attacker should have a fair chance. If the cost is 300 of each good for one sector, that would be a total of 1800-2400 goods just to try to take a sector. GvG will still remain in the stalemate-mode where noone dares to attack each other, and without the ghost guilds, GvG will be even more dead. So my suggestion is: Each siege should cost 100 of each good regardless of sector type. This would make it too expensive to do ghost guilds, but still not too expensive to fight against other guilds.

- I think that the same cost should apply to all provinces, so even in IA a siege would cost 100 of each good. The main reason that I think so is because guilds should try to "focus" on 1 province, and if they have an average amount of players from IA, then IA is best suited for them, and they will most likely not have any problems to gather 100 of each IA good.

Otherways I fully support your idea and really hope that InnoGames can listen and apply this

Now imagine if we have static siege costs everywhere and there would be 1 super guild in some world. They would fight everyone on even basis and due to being better than everyone, they would likely win and could control around 90-100% of all sectors.

This is the exact same scenario that InnoGames thought of when they designed GvG, but the problem is that this will never happen in reality. Sure, it can happen in theory, but in reality it can never happen

Imagine a guild that holds 90% of all sectors in a province. Firstly, think of how many agressive NPCs that will attack their sectors every day, they will need to change a LOT of defences. Secondly, think of how many other guilds that will target them just because they are the biggest target. There's no way that they can hold on to all these sectors.

Let me give a realistic example. I don't want to mention any special names here because I'm not sure how sensative the subject is... But imagine world war 2. When "they" went up 1-vs-1 it was surely simple to advance forward, but what happend when the rest of the world joined the war? The exact same thing will happen in GvG if 1 guild gets too powerfull

And as death ouron also said, if a player chooses to join a smaller and weaker guild, that player will simply have to accept the downsides of being in a smaller and weaker guild aswell, for instance, less sectors in GvG. I don't know how InnoGames thought when they designed it, but I've never ever heard before that the stronger should get punished and the weaker should get rewarded, that sounds very strange to me. If InnoGames want to call this a strategy game, they should know that the strongest win and charity is out of the question

(Falcon suggested the same thing too way earlier)

Haha yep That was a long time ago, and nothing has happend yet, but I'll still keep my hope up. One day, maybe just one day, they can start to listen

 

[DeletedUser13082]

@Hint, what falcon said in his above post pretty much hit the nail on the head for what I was going to say in response to your message. Although it is a distinct possibility, in reality it simply wouldn't happen. As a quick example, just look how many guilds allied along with Titans and Avengers in E world to stop the Order of the Black family of guilds from dominating everything. When multiple smaller groups see one large group taking control they unite to prevent it. It happened in E world and I'm pretty sure it would happen most other places too if the situation were to come up.

@Falcon, as mentioned in the OP and other posts, I still fear that 100 per siege is too low. I can produce far more than 500 goods per day just by myself. Imagine how many a guild could produce when working together. If sieges are too low then we come to a point where the balance falls in the opposite direction, very similar to the offence GB nerf, where the imbalance was pushing too heavy toward attackers, it now pushes too heavy toward defenders, the same situation will happen here if siege costs are kept too low. Rather than hitting stagnant points which happens now when sieges cost too much, it will turn to all out chaos with everybody losing their sectors day in and day out which will get far too annoying and cause people to give up. It's simply not feasible for a guild to be able to keep a close watch on their sectors 24/7. With costs being too low, in effect they actually grow to worse rates than they are currently at, by this I mean it becomes far more expensive to have to keep reclaiming the same few sectors over and over. All the goods you spend will be taken away too quickly and you then have to spend more to take back what you lost. It will come to a stage where guilds on each map will be at a stalemate between themselves. Guild A claims sector from Guild B, 24 hours later Guild B take back sector from Guild A, loop the situation and that's where the issue arises.

For that reason, I suggested that the costs vary dependant on the power of the sector being claimed. This brings a wider variety to the table and makes for a more strategic game plan being required. If you want to be at the top you're going to have to spend more goods to claim the higher power sectors of the maps. Also because of the costs I suggested, the above mentioned situation would be avoided. We all want to rid ourselves of the very slow paced outcome that has come into GvG in the later stages but a pace too fast will be just as bad.

As I mentioned in an earlier post to hint, I didn't really put much thought into the siege costs that I suggested, I simply thought up numbers that I personally feel would be a good balance. Not too fast, not too slow.

 

[DeletedUser3157]

Secondly, think of how many other guilds that will target them just because they are the biggest target. There's no way that they can hold on to all these sectors.

Let me give a realistic example. I don't want to mention any special names here because I'm not sure how sensative the subject is... But imagine world war 2. When "they" went up 1-vs-1 it was surely simple to advance forward, but what happend when the rest of the world joined the war? The exact same thing will happen in GvG if 1 guild gets too powerfull

In my prior post I summed up most of what you said here with this sentence: "With everything static you would put all the hopes in players naturally developing balance of powers and it wouldn't happen in all the worlds I'm afraid".

Remember how many worlds there really are out there. And it would need to meet just a few demands:
a) True super guild of all the best players in that place with ofc good leadership.
b) Not a very competative/active world with too many such players to begin with.
c) Enough prolonged success for the Mono-guild to really demoralize normal player base about GvG

Remember it's not like there will be any ghosting or such with static costs, it's gonna cost u to mess with them, and later they will take that sector back with ease.

And as I said again, it's not likely, but it is not impossible either.

When multiple smaller groups see one large group taking control they unite to prevent it.

Yes that's excatly what I meant by balance of powers. It usually works, but not all the time. Past 20 or so years on this planet have been a good example. Although now slowly China and Russia getting closer again you'd think.

 

[DeletedUser7719]

I have to disagree with all of you. The map will be shared with 5 guilds who made an alliance with each other if siege costs are too low :p (with constant guild hopping to gain sectors back)

 

[DeletedUser13082]

I have to disagree with all of you. The map will be shared with 5 guilds who made an alliance with each other if siege costs are too low :p (with constant guild hopping to gain sectors back)

What happens when those 5 guilds sharing everything have no competition left? Inevitably the members would get bored, they would either start attacking each other to keep GvG alive or they would jump to a new guild and become the new enemy. Both scenarios open up a rift in the power guilds which will give others an open opportunity to take advantage and jump in. I think this also answers hint's previous post to an extent .

In a more simple and honest way of saying it, greed would take over, if things hit a stalemate and all sectors are claimed, guilds would want more. It would make no sense for the #2, #3, #4 and #5 guilds to sit back and do nothing to try and progress further simply because they are allied with the #1 guild. The lower guilds turn on the higher guilds, war breaks out, other guilds jump in on the action too. Natural balance restored until the next time

 

[DeletedUser7719]

What happens when those 5 guilds sharing everything have no competition left?

They will have "competition" because they either will be fighting each other for points (so gain a sector loose a sector), or other guilds try to enter for a day when they get shut out the following one

 

[DeletedUser13082]

They will have competition because they either will be fighting each other for points (so gain a sector loose a sector), or other guilds try to enter for a day when they get shut out the following one

Taking one sector back and fourth simply for PvP points isn't competition. Guild who are highly active in GvG all have the goal of being #1 at the end of the day. If they are unable to achieve their goal due to an alliance then the alliance won't hold up in the end. Also, those 5 guilds which could control all of the maps, as I've said before, maps can't be watched and guarded 24/7. Sooner or later others would break through and start claiming sectors.