Balak and its influence on the daily PvP meta

[Maxopoly]

Conquest 3.0 has changed significantly what kind of PvP the bigger groups (and thus the majority of the player base) are participating in.

Instead of multiple daily inner-continental Tgen fights with the possibility of reins we are now seeing open world PvP in the race to place an inhib on Balak or to prevent the enemy from placing. In my opinion this is a negative development and multiple of the current dynamics on Balak should be changed significantly.

The first and most important one is the lack of content. Previously we'd see multiple Tgen fights a day, now we are at one or two per week, at least for the first half of the month.
Balak has a total of 18 tiles over which 2 groups are fighting with 1 attack per day each. In almost every situation it's better to just play safe and take a neutral tile over attacking an enemy tile. As a consequence, there is little to no incentive to attack enemy tiles during the first half of the month, in fact it is rather the opposite. Both sides have been playing this meta game and only one attack has occured, which was due to someone accidentally stepping on the pad. No PvP is no fun, the mechanics should be changed to create more content for players.

One of the following needs to happen in my opinion:
- Decrease the amount of tiles on Balak
- Increase the number of participating factions (difficult because no other big groups exist)
- Increase the amount of attacks per day.
- Divide Balak up between the participating alliances at the start of the month and remove neutral tiles

Another issue that this would adress is the importance of individual fights. Previously losing a single fight wasn't a big issue, we'll get them next time, at the next fight in an hour. Now though with the very limited amount of fights per month, especially after claiming all the neutrals, just a few fights decide for the entire month.

Now you might argue that instead of Tgen fights we are getting daily combat in the form of Balaks open world PvP. While this is true, I think its significantly inferior to Tgen fights.
Tgen fights are great, because they open up opportunities for players, whose main focus is not PvP. You don't need to be able to quickdrop the enemy baddies to take part. You can be one of the people supplying shulkers and pots, you can go for charges with a shield, you can specifically counter enemy-charges with kb swords etc. All of these inclusive mechanics are nonexistent in the open Balak fights, instead worse PvPers are actively punished by losing their inventory on death. As a consequence there is no incentive for bad PvPers to take part in the Balak race, the opposite is the case. To be successfull, your group needs faction players and nothing else.

Don't get me wrong here, open world PvP has interesting aspects and it should exist as a mechanic, like it did pre Conquest 3.0. It should not be the main way to fight on Loka though.

In general the Balak dock races featuring Sonic the inhib placer are a very questionable mechanic in my opinion. With cutoffs being removed and the importance of single fights there is pretty much always a single tile closest to the dock, which is the obviously best choice for both sides. There are no tactics required, which tile to go for was already decided by Balaks geometry. The only thing that really matters is reaching this tile first. I fully agree that the current dock mechanics are necessary as a consequence of how Balak works, but I feel like they end up preventing a lot of strategy and tactic that could possibly exist. This is a direct result of the many neutral tiles on Balak which seem like an inherently flawed mechanic to me.

Either way I feel like it'd be interesting to get some thoughts and discussion on Conquest 3.0 going, I dont think I've heard from anyone outside of my alliance.

Thanks for reading


TL;DR:
- Too many tiles + not enough attacks = No fun
- Tons of neutral tiles are bad

 

[BuscoNombre]

Balak isnt big, its just that rn only two sides are figthing on it.
And the action in continents is basically bc there arent towns trying to fight for continent tiles more than in Garama, those things are common in loka, sometimes there is lot of action and sometimes towns are just there, doing the photosynthesis

(Btw i havent read everything, jeez this people should write shorter things and make it more simple)

 

[Skuhoo]

Great post! I share a lot of your grievances about the current state of Balak with its tic-tac-toe marathon.

The exclusion of players not confident in their pvp abilities is the driving force behind the idea to turn keep inventory on in Balak. Early in Conquest's history player's dropped their gear and as a result, all but a small group of players stopped participating in fear of losing their gear. A similar situation is occurring now, and it feels necessary to make the same change so that more players can be included in the action.

With regards to your criticism of the number of territories and attacks, there's an average of 28 days in a Conquest cycle. With 18 neutrals and 2 factions claiming, the neutrals dry up in just 9 days, leaving 19 opportunities to directly attack and gain the strength lead. On a continent where the territory gets reset monthly, do you not think that's sufficient? The decision to restrict towns/alliances to a single Balak attack each day was made to accommodate players who can't dedicate a huge chunk of the day to Loka. If Balak had the same attack limit as normal (5), one side can catch the other at a bad time activity-wise and put themselves hundreds of strength in the lead in just a single day. This is still an issue for continent battles, but that's partially remedied by player-chosen vulnerability windows and is generally a more forgivable issue considering the stakes are a lot lower.

The current marathon/inhib camping meta is a difficult issue to solve for and one I can try to address later since I've gotta run, but wanted to get these thoughts out now.

 

[ModernMozart1787]

Add more attacks = problem solved.

 

[Maxopoly]

With 18 neutrals and 2 factions claiming, the neutrals dry up in just 9 days, leaving 19 opportunities to directly attack and gain the strength lead. On a continent where the territory gets reset monthly, do you not think that's sufficient? The decision to restrict towns/alliances to a single Balak attack each day was made to accommodate players who can't dedicate a huge chunk of the day to Loka. If Balak had the same attack limit as normal (5), one side can catch the other at a bad time activity-wise and put themselves hundreds of strength in the lead in just a single day.

I suppose my complaints regarding lack of content are mostly fueled by the initial monthly dry spell. I can agree that once attacks actually start happening, 1-2 fights per day is okay. 5 attacks per day is not necessary on Balak, though 2 could be considered imo. I also fully agree that one of the things that Conquest 3.0 definitely got right is catering to players in different time zones by having a set time during which attacks can happen. I certainly prefer knowing that we're forming up at half past 9 every day over getting randomly @ everyone'd at 2 am.

Most if not all of the issues named here seem to boil down to the neutral tiles. Especially the ones without buffs seem like an unnecessary buffer, they only end up delaying the actual fight over who wins. After sleeping over it, here a few more thoughts on how the current system could be improved imo:

• Add counter-inhib placing. During the time period inbetween placing on a neutral and the neutral fight starting, any other group can also place an inhib on the same tile, consuming their daily attack. Placing a second inhib will delay the start of the fight to 15 minutes after the second inhib was placed. The fight following this will basically be a Tgen (conquest) fight over the tile, except that both sides are using an inhibitor as base. Whoever wins by getting enough charges off on the enemy inhib gets the tile. If noone has won after an hour, whoever has gotten the most charges off wins. If charges are equal, whoever has gotten the most kills wins. If kills are equal, some kind of golden goal policy is used. Whoever gets the next charge or next 5 (10?) kills (whichever happens first) wins.This way there can be an actual fight over neutrals, but there doesnt have to be. Participating alliances can pick fights as they wish, which could create much needed room for strategy and also severely reduce the importance of reaching the inhib pad first (if not completly remove it).
• Divide up neutral non-buff tiles at the start of the month between the partcipating groups. Even though counter-inhibing would adress some of the issues with neutral tiles, I still feel like alliances would tend to not contest them if the tile isnt bound to a buff and instead go for a different neutral tile in their own half of the map. It's safer and not exactly unreasonable. Thus I'd divide the map up like this for example:
  
  
  
  
  
  Gray tiles are neutral buff tiles, red ones are owned by alliance A, blue ones are owned by alliance B all as of Day 1. Obviously this would have to be adjusted to fit for more than just two participants, but I think it describes the idea sufficiently.
  
  
• Enable Keep On Death in Balak. For the reasons described above and brought up in the thread regarding it.
  
• Increase the time window during which inhibs can be placed in Balak by 60 (90?) minutes on saturdays and sundays and give each participating group an additional attack during these. Most people should have more time during the weekend, so giving more opportunity for content seems appropriate.