Going against what was originally intended by devs, I think, is probably the best and only solution. What was intended to begin with clearly isn't working and hasn't been working from day one. To date, I don't think I've seen a single post saying "Well done, GvG is really good and works well.". All we ever see are complaints that it's boring, stagnant, stale, dead, dying and so on. The GvG concept itself I'm not a fan of, but it can work to a good standard. This can't happen however while the more active and dedicated players get punished for their dedication and activity. Until that is stopped GvG is, and always will be, a bad feature.
I was actually referring to the premise of GvG in that it was for everyone as opposed to the implemented game content.
As you said, you've seen guilds spring up out of nowhere, top ranking and high performance guilds at that. Those people made a good decision. They chose to be a strong guild of active players who aspired to reach the top. Other make the bad decision, they choose to join a low level guild which, unfortunately, has no hope.
Now that GvG is here, in it's current format, point requirements to join a guild are completely pointless (<--- See what I did there ;p). With GvG in it's current format guilds need to compete in as many maps as they can if they want to reach the top. This is because attempting to compete in just 1 or 2 of the higher age maps, you will eventually run out of goods and be able to continue any further other than 1 sector every couple of weeks. So guilds now need players of all ages so they can conquer all maps and dominate to be #1. This change would remove that requirement. Guilds would no longer need to have a strong presence in all maps. High age guilds would battle it out on high age maps, and vice versa for low age guilds.
It's a very one sided view. People make choices yes, they choose to play with real life friends, they choose to join a smaller family guild, some are just an effect of circumstance, and a few, are quite happy staying in their small guild because either it gives them the time to play or they want to be without imposed rules as many of the higher guilds (like yours I'm guessing and mine) have. Others want more from the game because they can either afford the time, or like me are very much into gaming and understand the concepts of most styles of play.
The point being here is there is a small part of it about deciding to be in Uber Guild Alpha, but EQUALLY every person should be able to participate in GvG.
What if it's approached from another way? So I'm in a relatively large top 15 ranked guild, we play across EVERY age, and in fact play more so in HMA/LMA and IA than we do in PE/ME, although we have quite a few higher level players. Now all of a sudden there are guilds, who's players probably haven't got out of those ages and are trying to take some initial sectors, and here are people in ME/PME building 15-20 IA barracks........ Now fair enough there may, possibly, speculatively, be a small shift back to PE/ME with those guilds, but why should they? where is the incentive? isn't that a something that is nothing more than a gamble in it happening?
We (and other large guilds) blast through every IA sector now because guess what, our siege cost is 500 IA goods and we can afford to simply siege until our hearts content...... What happens to those guilds, or players or better still players that have paid, that want to take part in GvG? You've just completely alienated them from the game or GvG even more, because they say "Whats' the point"
Unbalanced, which refers me back to the point i was making, in that GvG was for everyone, regardless of how they play. This favors higher up players/guilds. I couldn't find the quote, mainly as I'm tired but it was mentioned about points not being used any more, well it is, it's the only measure, it's just not used as a rank. But that coupled with other factors such as
*Number of guild members
*Tech Tree Progress
*Total number of guild points
*Individual member points
*Capability of larger guilds to field bigger attacking forces with less players
All contribute to the point.
I'm not saying indeed I have the answer, I'm saying I agree with you partly, because frankly I think Inno Devs have lost the plot, but it needs compromise to ensure a level playing field, but for some of it i think we may have to agree to disagree
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EDIT: Just wanted to add some context to my reasoning.
I don't know how much simpler I can make this, but if there is a gradual incline in cost of a siege from the size of the smaller guild, to the size of the larger guild, it creates balance, it's not about favoring one over the other.
EXAMPLE:
Guild A - 28m Points, 73 Players, highest player in ME, 29 Observatory's, 2 Atomium's, 25 active players in GvG, all of which are playing across ALL ages and have a good player based including a large percentage between 500k and 3m points in size.
Guild B - 3m points, 69 Players, highest player in Industrial, 8 Observatory's, 13 active players in GvG, all of which are playing between IA and LMA.
Guild B is laying a siege in LMA, it takes 7 of there best sub 300k players to even attempt to make a dent.....but they have to siege 4 times and don't succeed.
Guild A is defending one of those sectors, they only field 3 of their top GvG players, all over 1m points, all have at least 3-4 barracks for that age. It's like swatting flies.
Guild B, because they at an earlier stage in the GvG/guild lifecycle, it costs them less to siege, but ultimately may actually cost them more because of the attempts they need to make.
Now lets reverse that.
Guild A is laying a siege in LMA, they only field 3 of their top GvG players, all over 1m points, all have at least 3-4 barracks for that age. Defending armies don't really stand a chance, because they can go for some time, they either only need to siege once, or maybe twice to take the sector.
Guild B is defending one of those sectors, it takes 7 of there best sub 500k players to even attempt to make a dent on the siege........they lose.