Guildbattles

[Alper]

Please make the guildbattles in basics like festival battles in regular ca:


1 hour
daily once
ranking depends on win/lose ratio not in total coins gained

+ Every month a reset combined with "special rewards" for the ranks which lasts only a month. For example entering guild battles for free for alpha rank for the whole next month or so.

[zserg]

i can agree with short battles, but would be great if they invented a different system.

I am rather bored of CA guild battles :eek:

[pull lead]

Definitely need festival style guild battles!

[zserg]

I really really hope they manage to something different than CA guild battles, whether they last one hour or 10...aren't you guys bored of them?

:hopes devs will be more creative than that:

[TBee]

zserg, yes a bit bored.

Having some "campaign" style (multi-stage) combat would be a change of pace for guilds .. a bit like CA deathrune siege. Regular guild battle format was never bad, though Strider's (I think it was Strider) suggestion for allowing a guild to fire up another GB (just like multiple GMs) while the collection timer runs out on the other GB should be given some serious consideration for both CA and HoD.

The Fest battles offered a different rule set, and drove players to change characters and play-styles. Having different "arenas" (like match lists for 360/PS3 shooters) with different rules and objectives can only challenge the devs and players to explore new tactics and teamwork.

[Alper]

the festival is a good system. one hour is good, the ranking system too.you dont need to "farm" points, you need just to win, and this way a leaderboard should be: showing the strongest guilds at top ranks, an not the best farming ones.

im fine if its the same system, but the rewarding should be different. the trophys MUST have a effect, a monthly bonus or whatever.

[A.Castus]

the festival is a good system. one hour is good, the ranking system too.you dont need to "farm" points, you need just to win, and this way a leaderboard should be: showing the strongest guilds at top ranks, an not the best farming ones.

im fine if its the same system, but the rewarding should be different. the trophys MUST have a effect, a monthly bonus or whatever.

Totally agree with you. I was an officer in a competitive CA guild, until these 5 hour battles made me tired after a few months. I finally completely moved away from battles. So please if you implement them in HoD, keep them short and I would also prefer the leaderboard to favor guilds that win battles.... Just my 2 cents

[Alper]

I really really hope they manage to something different than CA guild battles, whether they last one hour or 10...aren't you guys bored of them?

Its boring without real rewards (like in regular gb) and without a reset (like in festival gb).

[Bristolen]

im pretty bored of regular guild battles in CA. they are pretty predictable, and they dont actually require an overwhelming need for teamwork.

its like this...

1. lets decide which gate to go after
2. lets go after active clerics and nonactive clerics first
3. oops, bounced...we need mage splash in this gate
4. we killed all the clerics in gate

rinse and repeat -.-

[TBee]

I know this post is long, but consider that whatever we help shape we have to live with far longer than it takes to read this.

One hour isn't totally bad, but if it's the only option, then some folks are going to go to extremes (can you say 5,000-10,000 health) and just game the rules ... winning the battle but losing for 90-95% of all tokens fired (offensively and defensively).

Take two guilds of comparable level mix:
- 1st focused on adding SPs to health (victory through having more hp than can be stripped during the allotted time)
- 2nd focused on adding SPs to attack and defense (victory by inflicting more damage than is taken)
- assume 100% activity on both sides

1-hr format:
The bloated hp guild is likely to have the most members remaining above 200hp and thereby receive the win. The W-L record doesn't show real combat ability either (battle activity points would be a marginally better indicator, a 160pt win helps the team score more than a 100pts loss) just a willingness to exploit the victory conditions for a limited duration battle.

5-hr format:
Here the 2nd guild is likely to take the win as the 1st continues to lose more health on offense and defense. With a longer battle duration, the cumulative loss of health due to individual PvP losses catches up with them.

Both systems have "flaws". Leaderboards for the 5-hr guild battle format should focus solely on the W-L record (doesn't matter who gets farmed for activity/coin just who consistently kills off the higher percent of an enemy guild); however, picking a single factor to rank guilds (or even set victory conditions) for the 1-hr fest battle format is tough:
- (highest percent above 200hp) .. just bloat health until the math says few/if any can beat your guild
- (highest activity points) .. doesn't work for a match up of higher levels vs lower levels guild, more 200/240ap for lower level guild and 160/200ap for higher level guild
- (highest win percentage vs tokens fired) .. highest level attacks the softest target, 1 token, 1 win, 100% win-to-token ratio

The goal of kill clerics/gate, rinse and repeat is hard to avoid without significant structural changes; however, the level of activity on both sides determines the level of boredom involved in accomplishing that goal. I've seen battles where the targeted tower (or maybe the only tower) was well built, active, and tough to bring down. Other days someone on the other team must have been bored and opted in without any other real activity to speak of .. a truly boring landslide bloodbath.

I could get behind monthly trophies/crests having boosts (like fest banners/standards) and some form of individual rewards would be nice as well (MVP-type criteria: most points, highest number of battles participated in, etc .. that sort of thing) or even something at the discretion of the GM to reward (if the GM is corrupt, the membership won't stand it for long, so some self-policing is natural). Any automated rewards could be done randomly like Rare, Epic, Legendary loot (from a list) .. or something fairly arbitrary like the Festivus Sword/Valhalla.

Now I turn it over to you all to rip to shreds .. lol. Cheers

[Bristolen]

the devs biggest considerations needs to be:

are people already burned out on guild battles and festival battles?
will people want to still keep doing guild battles/festival battles in CA?
will people want to play both HOD and CA guild battles?
will playing both HOD and CA guild battles make them burn out on battling faster?

during arena 3 there was a massive whine fest about people screaming at devs, "WE HAVE LIVES!!!!", "we dont want to be chained to computers all day!!!," etc. and there are people who are just tired of 5 hour battles in general. HOD guild battles and CA guild battles might become a pretty bad version of arena 3 if your battles fall one right after the other 0_0.

devs need some way to make HOD guild battles 'different', 'interesting', and not a source of 'burnout' - especially if people are still doing guild battles in CA. so pretty much, devs need to make the guild battle itself - fun...not be so focused on the rewards, etc. if the guild battles are fun - the people will come play them. if guild battles are just a way to get shinies, rewards, or whatever - people will begrudgingly do the battles hating the time-sink and wanting to move on with their lives.

[TBee]

Bristolen, to be honest, the devs biggest consideration is "are we building something that is consistent with OUR vision for the game, not cow-towing to the whims of players that may or may not be there in six months".

The devs will be maintaining and growing CA and HoD long after some folks lose interest and quit, get banned, or find that real life just swallowed up 100% of their free time. Devs can't assume that the people playing HoD are only those that are currently playing CA (I know for a fact that new players have already been introduced to HoD that have never played CA, so one goal of the spinoff is already working). If they made that assumption then the depth and breadth of their development options are immediately constrained before the product ever leaves beta (not good).

If a player decides to play both and gets burned out then that is a consequence of the players decision more than the developers design choice. If I chose to play 20 games and only have time to realistically play 5, that is not the devs fault for building engaging and challenging games that's my fault for lack of self-control and time-management. Similarities run rampant among FB games (jobs and questing with energy, PvP and Boss battles with stamina). CA devs strike me as having done a better than average job of filtering out the game ruining requests and realizing what can generate money and entertainment without diving into a Mafia Wars-style downward flaming spiral (some behavior should simply serve as a warning to other dev teams).

My first impressions were that HoD (post spinoff) was going to be leaner with a more individual focus without the need for spamming your way up to 500-1200 army, no daily elite guard to refill, hundreds of guardians to plug up our keeps, etc. Just come in when you want and hit monsters, team up with friends in guild, and take the best of CA and explore new types of content and combat not possible within the original format. My first post in this thread agreed that a detour wouldn't be bad (explore some multi-stage combat, or multi-objective combat) for GvG play that would encourage different tactics even within a single campaign between two guilds. The second longer post tried to point out personal observations of weaknesses in both 1-hr and 5-hr formats (not thinking Captain Obvious needed to appear and reiterate/acknowledge horses that have been beaten far past recognition). Much of the entertainment value of GvG, as far as personal experience/observation, has been derived from the activity level on both sides .. boredom, farming, and other derogatory remarks were less due to some unbearable flaw in the design.

Flaming threads on guild matters are no different than those regarding monsters .. some folks just don't step back and think of a way to deal with things, they just want the game modded to their personal play-style. A single example is tagging: the tagger saw the CTA from someone's wall or keep (going Public without planning a tough beast is also your own fault. don't whine to the devs about taggers and failures on a 700M health Chimera if you don't take more than 5 sec to decide to summon it), so they belong to someone's bloated army and FB friends list ... easiest solution rather than ask for game mods to eject/punish taggers from within the monster is to take a little personal motivation and responsibility to defriend them in FB and exile them from your army (or keep them just long enough to get your Feat and then eject them for you and your real friends to chain for the next week).

[Alper]

dont think people will be burned out with gb that fast. Easiest way is, as said before, to have monthly boni for reaching different ranks including a reset every month. reaching this ranks not with points gained, thats farming. instead with win/lose ratio, like in festival.