Valiant Force Forum

Here are my feedback on Conquest after 7 days experience:

1. Impression on Conquest Battle Design

Pros:

a) I must admit I like the battle design coz I love strategy game myself and its fun thinking of where to attack and where to defend so as to predict enemies’s movements. As a guild master, I have fun assigning defense and plan strategy. (Still there is a downside to be mentioned in Cons)

b) We have whole day to prepare and whole day to battle which is good as i think this is designed based on the thought of not forcing ppl to attack on specific 1-2hrs guild battle. (Still there is a downside to be mentioned in Cons)

c) Having 3 guilds in battle cause us worry and create uncertainty which is very exciting. Even if we use all orbs in 5 mins, we will still be checking how situation unfolded throughout the day.

Cons:

a) Im no longer in my youth and I dont have unlimited time anymore. To balance work and conquest, I feel the weight to discuss strategy, assigning defense and conveying strategy to members can become burden sooner or later, as I found myself get sucked into conquest strategy and assignment for almost 2 hrs before going to bed. I know its 3 days per month that we need to invest thoughts and time but thats a lot of time in 1 day and a lot of impact when u cant spare the time.

In conclusion, I understand that any interactive feature will consume time but Im not sure if the huge load of time needed (at least for GM or strategist) will contradict the original concept of VF design that is built to not take too much time of players and its one of the reason I choose this game as my long term companion.

b) The whole day to battle in real action doesnt exist as we cannot choose when to start battle (for sure we cannot coz its 3 guilds battling each other) and it comes to the battle of speed, especially 4th invasion phase where all captured locations on 3rd phase becomes available to be invaded. Whichever guild attacks faster will have upper hand. For our conquest battle, it usually took 3-6 hrs to see the outcome of the day. For more serious guild, they may see outcome of the day in the blink of an eye.

I dont know what to suggest. I used to play Valkyrie Connect where guild battle last whole day and we only battle AI squads (placed by enemies before guild battle starts). Its more laid back but wont be as fun as interactive guild battle. It seems we cant have it both ways. I dont like the conquest to be boring or too laid back but I also dont want it to put the stress on players base (especially if most players choose the game because they want less time consuming and less time stricted game).

c) 3 guilds battle design can be abused if 2 guilds know each other. Potential of having alliance will kill fair play and destroy the fun of losing guild.

d) It could take out the fun of us/opponents if there is no target to hit (all locations captured by enemies block the way) and they still need to find a place to use 2 orbs to get daily rewards.

2. Conquest Financial

I like the way its designed. The cost system will prevent inactive guilds to get a lot of diamonds, buy wardens and get a lot of buff coz they dont get enough revenue from members to maintain. This will help creating players movement in the non-disruption way coz even if inactive guilds dont get diamonds but they still get ladder rewards.

3. Warden & Castle Guardian Strength

Pros:

All guilds with sufficient finance to buy warden can guarantee gem building protection (guaranteed diamons from your own mine) coz it seems its almost impossible to beat all wardens or may be my guild is weak :’).

Cons:

The points for capturing castle will never be acquired. We will get to find 3 wardens at 3 out of 4 border access points and the game play could be monotone, thus adding another situation where we/opponents have to place to use orbs.

Suggestion is that if its intentional to have warden as full security system of some outposts, may be the devs should remove ability to assign wardens at border access locations unless the outposts are there.

4. Conquest Equipment Price

Despite understanding that the diamonds should not be easily acquired for inactive guilds, the current price will make it seems like we need a year to get 1 conquest equipment set. May be its too early to conclude this issue to be bad or good coz we get to keep max lv so may be intention is to keep increasing max lv of diamond mine. But still the repair cost is there. And spending gems to contribute gold to increase max lv of diamond mine and to repair it is the only way to obtain conquest equipment set fast.

5. Top Conquest Ladder

The matching system is based on activity and strength of the guild. This means no easy fight and easy points for high activity guilds that have good 3 squads. Top conquest ladder gives only mislead information. Usually top guild battle ranking in any game should reflect true strength or activity but here we have the real case of Infinity, Orion and Pandemonium clashing each other and they are unarguably very best guilds in Everglades. This means high activity guilds will unlikely get good score or be on this top conquest ladder.

Just my 2 cents. Cant help suggesting the way to change as some issue is with the design itself and its up to the devs whether to re-invest time and thoughts in new conquest design. For me, in order to lengthen my play time in this game, im willing to give up some fun and get more laid back and less time consuming conquest design. But you have whole players base to consider not just me. Hope my feedback helps.

As i already raised concern regarding wardens giving full security to location they are being positioned. It really becomes a problem as the play field is very limited now.

Our current conquest consists of 2 guilds from Everglades and 1 guild from Hong Kong server. The HK guild has a genius strategist who choose to place 3 wardens at the 2nd row of the map where there are only 3 hexagons (1st row (border) has 4 hexagons). It doesnt take long for 2 remaining guilds including us to realize what will happen so both guilds switched to use the same tactic.

The 1st day is over. Impenetrable row where 3 wardens form the defense line works wonderfully as intended. Battle only took place in 12 hexagons (4 border hexagons of 3 guilds). Ppl who were not active around reset has nothing to do but to throw themselves against warden.

All 3 guilds agree that warden mechanic is not good at all as our play field is limited and the speed matters even more as 2 guilds have to compete for 8 hexagons (they cant attack their own hexagons).

It wont be long until this strategy goes viral and im sure the very same strategy must also be used in other conquest battlefields. This would also mean that active guilds with similar finance have to fight each other with impenetrable warden defense line, thus limiting their points a lot. And as a result of this, less active guilds with less finance that fight each other will again have easier fight and easier (& a lot more) points.

The warden concept is flaw due to unreasonable high strength. I think the devs should seriously fixing this before all funs are taken away from conquest. And i would like to emphasize that releasing new hero with specialty to kill warden is not the correct solution. It may be good for xiibrave to make money but the majority of players base will be devastated as it would mean all units that they have been nurturing for more than 1 year are useless in conquest and they have to build specific units to compete. And if more players quit or leave the game, your quick money making scheme is just another mistake as your game ends up having shorter life.

Only three things I want to see before Conquest is officially launched.

1. Reset all ladder scores.
2. Remove idle guilds from matchmaking. There should be some sort of criteria for guilds to be able to participate in conquest, not just guild level.
3. Nerf guardians.

The funny thing about conquest is the invasion day, it can almost end within 10-15 mins as soon as it starts.  

Only three things I want to see before Conquest is officially launched.

1. Reset all ladder scores.
2. Remove idle guilds from matchmaking. There should be some sort of criteria for guilds to be able to participate in conquest, not just guild level.
3. Nerf guardians.

Didnt have time to check anything but to post recruitment. I fully agree that ladder is meaningless and doesnt reflect anything. More of a place to allow active guilds in lower bracket to get top rank and have better chance to recruit players.

I suspect as much about a guild with several active members fight a guild with some active that only login and dont care about conquest at all. I notice there is a guild that will show up on bottom of raid 2 ladder near reset (due to many guilds switch to heroic for Vulcan), and it shows that they cant beat any raid 2 boss but this guild is ranked so high on conquest ladder too.

I really doubt they will nerf the warden coz they have been releasing and publicizing the new hero specialized to beat warden. And i think some ppl already start investing on these heroes already

Still, now it will come down to who has enough muscle to beat warden and breach inner locations. I heard Infinity is close to kill warden. But they are probably 1 of a few among thousand guilds in all servers. Not sure if we can heal warden durung break but if we can, we will surely get to see ppl healing wardens instead of their own squads for sure.

The funny thing about conquest is the invasion day, it can almost end within 10-15 mins as soon as it starts.  

For us, it takes about an hour or 2. But i can understand that it will be a lot quicker in the highly competitive conquest battle.

We dont get mismatch so far but we have heard some mismatch conquest battles (our 1st match against Legion and Singularity and our 2nd match against Elysium and a guild from HK (the latter is the strongest)). So we have internal discussion in the guild about how to get fairer match up in conquest but we cannot find any good solution so far.

Still, may be its best to point out the flaw that prevent us from helping suggesting a better match up system.

In Castle Age, the match up is divided by rank: platinum, gold, silver and bronze. The points are calculated from players’ activities in guild battle. If a player beats higher lv player, 240 pts. If beating same lv player, 200 pts. If beating low lv player, 160 pts. The total pts from all members of the guild will reflect on rank immediately after the battle is over. This allows the guild with the same activity to fight with each other and is considered fair match up. Although every guilds start from bronze rank and the battles are messed up during the first few days but it gets stable over time. The points reset monthly so the guild that dies out or merge will soon sink to bronze. There are the guilds that enjoy stress-free battle by beating inactive guilds in bronze rank but these guilds will never get pass silver rank due to low activity and not enough strength. And there are also the guilds that are around the border of gold and platinum that often get mismatch battle. But majorily, its fair match up.

Still those wont work in VF coz VF doesnt have conquest daily. Activity from previous conquest wont reflect activity of current conquest. Level in VF doesnt reflect the strength. Lv 109-111 in Everglades may be weaker than some lv 100 who buy every bundles. In Castle Age, money helps a bit but the time ppl invest to build the account means more for the strength.

Some talks about knock out system in Fantasisca that will reward the guild who wins most out of 20 knock out matches to win. But with 3 guilds match, this wont work as well. The unfair that may happen from alliance or being the worst among the 3 can happen as easily as coin flip.

We also talk about matching guild based in similar login number, similar lv, similar raid activity and similar arena ranks but this will not work well when conquest is crossed servers too. Some reports about mismatch like top guild from new server got matched with top guilds from old server or the guild that cant clear raid 2 legendary get matched with top guilds that can clear raid 2 legendary with ease are the solid proof.

So far the conquest system/design that the devs create is the enemy of its own that hinder us from finding solution to poor match up so we drop the discussion and leave it to fate.

IMHO i think 3 guilds match up is flaw. The uncertainty it creates make it feels fun at the beginning but at the end of the day, it causes more problem in balancing aspect than fun. Also one of our member who recently quit said that VF has turned from mobile phone game to platform game.