Noble knights and ladies!
We all know that the order wars currently are not necessarily a source of neverending joy for players, teamlers and for us here at Gameforge alike.
There are various reasons for that:
1. Bugs in the system
The system that is responsible for handling the order wars is not free of bugs and is a cause for constant frustration and anger, for us and for the players alike.
2. Too difficult
The system is much too difficult to grasp. Often players do not understand every single part of the whole system and therefore misinterpret the results. This leads to situations being perceived as bugs where there actually was no bug involved.
3. I am taking part in an order war now…and now?
The player himself has no active part in order wars. He can not actively influence the war and apart from being taken into account for the calculation at the end of the war there is nothing the player himself has to do. This can not be called fun for the player.
4. My order is active…and yet we lost!
An order can be as active and coordinated as they like, there is no clear advantage over less active and less coordinated orders. Due to the order wars taking all the inactive or less active players of an order into account just as well orders with a higher member account will always have an advantage even if they’re less coordinated.
5. The attacking order always has an advantage!
As the attacking order starts the war they have an advantage when it comes to coordination just as well as the simple fact that they can recruit the mercenaries first.
6. Unbalanced mercenary system
The mercenary system is quite unbalanced. There are thousands of players that are less active or even inactive and never removed their mercenary signup. Due to the issue mentioned in number 3 of this list this of course leads to thousands of players being available for the attacking order whether they still actively play or not. This makes order wars end up as a simple clicking game for the order leaders where in the end it is just a question of which order leader clicks first.
7. Unbalanced cooldown system
The intelligent usage of the current cooldown system enables orders to make themselves impossible to attack. This can lead to castles that can never be attacked by any order, those castles are permanently safe.
We know all this and we discussed these matters internally for a long time, especially trying to find a good way to solve these issues. At the end all participants agreed that it is impossible to “fix” the order wars as they are now. It would require too much time and effort and it includes a much higher risk of implementing new bugs than simply recreating the order wars. The logical consequence was: we’re going to rebuild the order wars and replace the current system with a new one. From the points listed above you can already guess which parts will be changed and what we’re going to work on.
However, in course of the following weeks we’d like to keep you updated on each step of this enterprise and introduce each single part of this new system to you in a weekly posting. In course of next week we will provide you a detailled overview to get a better idea of the new system as a whole, whereas the following weeks after that we will introduce each small step to you in further detail. The order wars are a huge thing to take on and require a lot of planning and much love for the details. Our plan is to keep you informed about each step of this journey so please bear with us there.
Your Battleknight Team