They should just go back to the old system. It would be easy to do. Just sub-out the daily prize with store currency.
Tinfoil hat conspiracy
GB's update may make major changes before going to live server
Ok so we like to give the player base a head's up on what is going to happen. We're just players. We love and hate this game probably like a lot of you. We're not on the payroll and have no obligation to sugar coat things in fear of losing a sponsorship. Always be wary of any source that is.
We don't break embargo and we protect our sources because retaliation is real so there are times where we hold back information that might be good for the player base to have in advance. I say all that because when talking about the GB update you need to know why we're at the place we are now with GB's.
So forget about Beta for a moment and think of your awesome main city. What is scarce?
- city space
- diamonds
That's it. If I'm missing something please let me know in the comments.
What is so plentiful you don't really have to think about it?
- FP
- coins
- supply
- goods (especially goods of your age)
- medals
- all the fight boosts
While we can always use more if Inno just randomly gave you an extra 100 FP a day would you even notice it? If you got a 100 fight boost randomly from one of your buildings would it make a difference to you in GE or GbG? If they gave you 1k of every good of your age but didn't tell you would you even notice?
When a game has a broken economy where players can generate 100k FP/day from city collection then that's a problem. When players can easily autobattle GE trial 55 and fight with full attrition in GbG what difference will a bit more fight boost make? What incentive do those players have to try to earn higher boosts when they can't even find good places to spend their FP now? Why play events or GE/GbG when the thing they win is only tiny fraction better than what they have to take out to make room for it? In a broken game economy you have to have massive inflation to keep players on the hamster wheel and spinning hard for the new shinny thing. So the reason we have massive inflation and power creep is due to the broken game economy.
Inno is well aware of this and has taken steps to fix the broken economy. I use "economy" as widely meaning things you accumulate and rewards you get so fight boosts are included.
So what has Inno done to address this?
Diversity
It used to be red attack go up = building good. One attack per square was awesome.
Then attack defense was introduced. We got two red defense per square then four with a lv2 tactician tower. The meta went from one to four seemingly overnight. They increased by 4x and the arms race was on.
Then they started making blue stats matter. For new players who only started playing this game two years ago were red and blue fight stats are on par you should know blue stats didn't matter even a tiny bit the first ten years of this game. It was called city defense and did nothing. The game's AI for city defenders is such that a human attacker with a lot lower red stats could win fight against player's higher blue stats especially when manually fight. So when GE lv5 was introduced using only blue stats suddenly there was a shock to the system and two new stats mattered.
Fast forward where blue and red fighting is completely integrated in the game and individual game mechanics have their own boosts we're now left with the following.
- Red attack base
- red defense base
- blue attack base
- blue defense base
- Red attack GE
- red defense GE
- blue attack GE
- blue defense GE
- Red attack GbG
- red defense GbG
- blue attack GbG
- blue defense GbG
- Red attack QI
- red defense QI
- blue attack QI
- blue defense QI
- and now we're going to see % boost increase for all these things
- and we'll get Guild Conquest boosts when that's introduced
That's a long way from red attack go up = good and all in a very short period of time.
We also have % boosts for FP and goods as well as an entire separate economy for QI.
Chain buildings aren't new but it's an example of an item that by itself isn't good but may be good as a multiplier effect on the main building.
They also introduced limited time buildings like the Forgotten Temple which is the only reason I play GE at all. The Ancient Temple doesn't give enough fragments to have one perpetually yet. We're hearing trial 70-75 will but that's a long way away.
Limited time buildings that need other buildings to keep it perpetually ascended. Those support buildings by themselves may not be great but they serve a greater purpose so you have to weigh their worth cumulatively.
So diversity has given people a choice of being good at everything or outstanding at some things.
So what used to be broken but isn't anymore?
- city defense
- happiness
- population
So we discussed city defense (blue stats) but the other two used to be irrelevant until some really good event buildings started costing happiness and/or population. Looking at you every Halloween event and some ascended buildings.
So what happened when they didn't increase inflation/power creep for every event? People didn't play the event and most importantly didn't spend diamonds on the event. That is the most important part.
Inflation/power creep = diamond spending
So it has gotten so out of hand that people were deleting GB's to make room for event items. That's a problem because if people stop valuing GB's where the hell are they going to put their FP? Back in the day GB's were the only source of fight boosts. The holly trinity of GB's reigned supreme. Forge points are fundamental to the game and they're so devalued they almost didn't matter anymore. The GB's had to change and change dramatically.
The GB's already had a big change years ago when they used to be capped at lv 10. When they eliminated the cap they also nerfed the boosts so your GB was still lv 10 but not nearly as strong as it once was. People got big mad and rightfully so but eventually got over it and it became the new normal.
This current GB change was needed and should have happened 2 years ago. We fully support making GB's great again.
They want to fix the economy by introducing "sinks - things that require resources to increase scarcity".
So requiring goods, coin, supply, medals and a lot more FP is good for the game economy. Having players pick between fight boosts or FP boost with an Eco is a good thing.
Doing all of this at the same time can be be good if done correctly.
So full disclosure time. We've been aware of most (not all) of these changes for about a year. If you search this site we've talked about this a lot and have always said how this change will not meet the moment and people will be justifiably upset. While the specifics have changed several times the broad strokes were always the same. Create sinks for the economy and make the GB's so good that people will build and level them to perpetuate the economy sinks even as power creep and inflation continues.
To us the refinery system is like the goods trader merchant. It can be completely ignored over time because getting spots on GB's is easier than using that system. The way it was going to work originally is all existing GB's would be condensed down to lv 100 if they were over lv 100. Nobody would have silver or gold levels and everyone would have to use the refinery or just wait until someone else did and jump on their GB. The problem with the previous plan to reshape GB's was that people who had a GB over lv 100 would not be compensated when it was condensed. Everything else was fine. Simply compensate players who invested time and resources into making a big GB and let's go. They didn't do that and instead pulled the plan upgrade and here we are 6 months later. More people have deleted GB's and we're back at it. This time people would not have to be compensated as the new system would reward players for their existing levels. So what's the problem? Why did we say people would be justifiably angry?
Ok people were going to be upset regardless of what happened. It's just the nature of humans and the unwillingness to accept change. That's not justifiable anger. So let's list the problems with the new GB system. While doing this let's ignore the GB's that were not given tiers yet to make this easy.
We posted here the results of all the GB changes on all the GB's.
Keep in mind that the goal is to make the GB's so awesome that everyone would want to build them and invest FP, coins, supplies, medals and goods of that GB's age into levelling it up. Look at all the level 400 GB's and tell me if you had it today for free would you plant it in your city? Keep in mind you're also taking something out to put it there so that loss partially offsets the gain of the new thing. For the most part it's probably a yes or at least a maybe if it's lv 400.
To us that's a fail. At level 100 it should be a slam dunk yes it's great again and look how good it can be eventually! That's what it's supposed to be. A long-term stretch goal where players will definitely want it and want to improve it with every collection. Does anyone think it's that right now?
Sure they improved the copper tier and all the GB's are better. If you had one before the upgrade it's better now. The biggest disagreement we've had collectively here is in buildings like AO. It gives FP and crit chance but you don't build it for the FP. The crit chance stays the same at lv 200 after the change as it was before. The FP improved by 10x. As it levels through silver and to 400 gold it adds red attack GE (not very valued), goods of your age (better when aging up but less valuable when camping in the most current era) and red defense which is good. Ok so would any player if offered a lv 400 AO NOT place it in city? No, absolutely everyone would. OK so now we come to the second fail part of this GB change. Is the cost to level it up worth it? Absolutely not. And here we are.
The boosts are not enough to make building these GB's a no-brainer.
The costs to level are too onerous to justify spending.
By not making the lv 100 super awesome and by massively increasing the cost to level further they may have made GB's more obsolete. People that were levelling their GB's will be looking at the costs for the next level and wondering why bother? Who has 500,000+ OF goods for ONE additional level of TA?
If a player makes 100,000 FP/day they would still need a decade + to level some of these GB's to lv 400.
So to make things clear we think it would be bad if people could just level all their GB's to lv 400 in a year and then say bring-on the next two tiers. That's now what we're saying at all. I think if a player making 100k/day took a year to get a GB to lv 400 I can live with that. I'd prefer 2-3 per year but I'm reasonable. Ten years for one GB? Go fuck yourself. That's not a stretch goal it's a bunny at a dog race you will never catch.
Will you level a GB that costs 5 million FP and half a million goods for one level just to give a new player in your guild some BP's? Yeah that's gone. These changes will really hurt the new player experience.
So this is getting way too long and I'd like to offer some hope to the playing community.
Do you remember when GElv5 was introduced and people had to stack blue potions (something we can't do anymore because of that) because it was impossible to complete otherwise? That's where we are now with the GB update.
We also know (not speculate, know) that they're considering nerfing the requirements and do to GB updates what they did with the GE update. Shock the system when it's introduced then tune it down before it goes to live server.
Our plea to Inno is make lv 100 undeniably good and make levelling it up further worth the cost. Make it hard to get to lv 400 but not impossible. The quit point for players will be more on the goods side than the FP side although that is way too high.
Just for once as players are quarrying their rocks to build GB's don't poop in the rocks. Do right by your player base. Maybe take the developers OFF the "May day" black Friday/pay to win package and put them on GB's. Marshal all forces because I truly feel this will be a deal breaker for a lot of people.
Yet another small update on the new GB changes
Not a big update just a FYI. The folks at Inno were very surprised that people on beta unlocked 400 levels and completely bypassed the new levelling system. Who could have possibly seen this coming?
They're also taking a look at both the cost to open levels and the cost of FP to level. We're not done yet.
Results of the GB changes
Edit: For anyone upset that this site was down for a period of time today we apologize. This post alone has had just under 17k visitors in the first 12 hours and blogger is not set-up for that. We were also notified that if we want to keep this blog they will start putting ads on it. Thank you for using this site as one of your resources. We're not asking anyone to click on an ad when they eventually come. Just enjoy the site as you were before. Again sorry for the downtime it should be resolved now.
So the GB changes have gone live on Beta.
If you play on the app you will eventually see it but the app is currently broken so go to browser. On browser you will get a lot of
The too long didn't read is...
- Unlocking a GB to level 400 before the change works. See top picture.
- Base (copper) levels have improved and cost more
- The refinery will be very costly so just take spots on other people's GB's to get BP.
- Opening levels costs BP and goods (depending on GB coin, supply and medals)
- Those costs will increase exponentially as the level goes up.
- Copper and silver tiers and silver and gold tiers do level in parallel.
- If you read our post here there are no changes. People on live server should be getting the BP's for the GB's they want so you can unlock to lv 200 or 400 respectively but don't do it yet. Let's see how Inno reacts to all the people that just bypassed their tier system costs.
And while all 400 levels are unlocked for my Arc this is what it will take to go from lv 180 to lv 181
And here's a better idea of what it will look like as it gets upgraded.
Now to illustrate the costs to level when GB's do not have their levels unlocked I have asked for screen shots of other player's GB. They did not want their name on here so no attribution will be given but you have my thanks.
Let's start with GB's that do NOT get the new tiers. Here's a low-level Hydra.
So just regular copper BP to increase to lv 200 where it will be maxed (for now). The FP cost increased from 9446 and the SAT goods cost increased by 100 per good. The higher the copper level the more you'll notice the cost increase.
We did not get a complete list of the upgrade costs for all GB's. That should come shortly and land on a wiki but just know the cost to upgrade GB is going up by a lot. The gold and goods sink is in place.
For GB's that do not require a goods cost to unlock a level it will look like this
So you need both the copper and silver to unlock that level or you'll need a silver and gold to unlock levels 200 - 300
This unfortunate player primed his Traz and only needed 19 FP to level. After the GB changes he needs 18.5k more FP to level.
You can see the increased costs and increased boost. You'll have to decide for yourself if that boost is worth the cost.
Red QI fighters are getting screwed. It took a while to find someone to take a screen shot of the Virgo Project. So this has been a useless building for a long time and you can judge if it still is. I'd bet nobody has the ability to open level 400 because it's never on the 1.9 threads.
For people that built this in anticipation of getting red QI boosts there will surely be some buyer's regret. I would probably be able to justify putting it in my city if it was already levelled to 400 but considering the cost to level it? Give me a break.
That's the cost of just opening a low level. The refinery will act as a goods sink while the actual levelling will act as a FP sink. And some GB's are still trash.
So it's very early morning and we want to give you as much information as possible so here are the rest of the GB's boosts.
To be fair to the Atomium (spelled incorrect in game) which is garbage now. You may want to keep this when the next set of upgrades come out.
You'll notice a lot of these that do not have tiers are still never build. Just remember that these too will get upgrades and those upgrades may be for game mechanics that are not out yet and very scarce boost when they do so the value goes from nothing to must have.
For all the old players that remember the Holly Trinity of GB's you'll be happy to see they're good again. Hurt my heart to delete all of them.
Anyone around long enough to remember when the CF was so good they nerfed it? Well it's a top-tier GB again! Given the costs to upgrade GB's people will start doing RQ again.
Inno shit the bed when they made this a GE boost. What a wasted opportunity to make this building great.
I think that covers all of them. Hope this helps when planning what to start building on live server.
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