I think it's fair to say, since the release of C3 there has been a mixed reaction to how Balak functions. Balak was originally designed to force the biggest towns to fight each other, rather than farming new or weak towns in order to win world capital. It has succeeded in doing this and making the battle for world cap as balanced as it could possibly be.
However this has come at some costs. To fight for world capital you are restricted to a small window where you can fight, which means it locks some players out of ever competing. Continent warfare has taken a back seat, partly as a result of towns not being able to fight the capitals for 4 hours during the peak play time (while the capitals are on Balak). Those fighting on Balak effectively have a 12 hour vuln window (8 hours on continent and 4 hours on balak) as a result of Balak and continent vuln times not being able to overlap. 12 hours is an unrealistic length of time to expect people to defend without completely no-lifeing.
The core issue is we have made conquest too restrictive in order to achieve maximum balance. The truth of the matter is conquest is a fluid and dynamic system. Politics plays a huge part and it's not always as simple as a two alliances fighting it out for world cap with nobody else being involved. The proposed changes massively lift current restrictions, but will slightly reduce the 'perfect' balance of Balak. The changes are listed bellow:
These changes will lift many restrictions, making conquest more free and open like it used to be, while still achieving what we set out to do with Balak.
However this has come at some costs. To fight for world capital you are restricted to a small window where you can fight, which means it locks some players out of ever competing. Continent warfare has taken a back seat, partly as a result of towns not being able to fight the capitals for 4 hours during the peak play time (while the capitals are on Balak). Those fighting on Balak effectively have a 12 hour vuln window (8 hours on continent and 4 hours on balak) as a result of Balak and continent vuln times not being able to overlap. 12 hours is an unrealistic length of time to expect people to defend without completely no-lifeing.
The core issue is we have made conquest too restrictive in order to achieve maximum balance. The truth of the matter is conquest is a fluid and dynamic system. Politics plays a huge part and it's not always as simple as a two alliances fighting it out for world cap with nobody else being involved. The proposed changes massively lift current restrictions, but will slightly reduce the 'perfect' balance of Balak. The changes are listed bellow:
- Balak no longer has a specific vuln window. You can fight on Balak at anytime of day. This also means Balak will no longer have keep on death unless it's a battle zone.
- Balak will now use town/alliances vuln windows. This means it is now possible to fight on Balak at the same time as on the continents.
- You can now only have a maximum of 2 inhibs set up against you at one time. (you can still only be attacked once at a time on Balak)
These changes will lift many restrictions, making conquest more free and open like it used to be, while still achieving what we set out to do with Balak.