Grand Conquest change proposals

[NekoKnight]

That fresh new event is out and as with most things, the reception is rather mixed, perhaps leaning towards negative, if I'm reading the general thread correctly. Here I'd like to suggest and discuss what changes can be made to make the mode more interesting and fun to play.

One comment I've frequently heard and strongly relate to is the frustration of your team performance being highly dependent on, well, the team. Being on a good team will let you roll across the map and get you additional rewards but not so good teams makes you feel like it's hopeless and your individual contributions don't matter. I think the solution to this to to take out the "pvp" part of the equation and just make it another single player experience. So how would this work?

Let's say you choose a team and then the other teams are controlled by a computer. You will get say, 30 stamina per day which you can use at any time (battles don't happen unless you are actually playing). After each battle, you fight, the board will be updated with the influence of each army for each area where a battle happened. You might find that while you were attacking one area, another of your territories came under attack and you should consider devoting resources in order to put things back in your favor. Influence from the player would be scored as normal and the computer would score according to a difficulty level you set (playing vs a higher difficulty would result in greater rewards) times the number of stamina they spend. After a 2 hour interval ends, any territory in which a battle happened would be assigned to whichever army contributed the most points.

The main goal of these changes is that your contributions matter because you are picking how your "team" spends all it's resources. You are no longer competing for the limited top tier rewards, you are being rewarded for how well you play and manage your resources. You are also able to play the mode at your own pace, as the mode only progresses when you play it.

What doesn't change is that you can still use ally units and the units you face are the ones other players have built.

Some other changes I might recommend are making it so that units use up their action when they warp, so reinforcements can't instantly slaughter enemies attacking a fort.

What changes would you like seeing?

[The_antithesis]

I personally feel the only real fix that is needed is a change to how turns work in RD. Firstly, increase the turn limit, 10 is too strict. Secondly, make it so that units have to wait two turns to get reinforcements, instead of one, as this will allow players to attack the fort more freely.

[redlight]

It'd make it 4x4 unit battles, the large maps are nothing close to regular FE that it tries to be IMO. Just teleporting and ramming your units. While there can be some kind of strategy, it ends up being messed up by many unpredictable factors. 

They could've made defense maps, win in x turns, reach a point on the map, AA style battles, etc.

[Kahvi]

One of the main things I hate about the bigger maps is that I can't see what I'm doing because everything is so small. Just having an option to zoom in would be nice, so I don't keep misclicking stuff.

1 hour ago, The_antithesis said:

I personally feel the only real fix that is needed is a change to how turns work in RD. Firstly, increase the turn limit, 10 is too strict. Secondly, make it so that units have to wait two turns to get reinforcements, instead of one, as this will allow players to attack the fort more freely.

I disagree with increasing the turn limit, since it's a mobile game and adding more turns would more than likely make people even less interested in the whole thing. However, I do agree with the reinforcements.

[Thane]

So I rather like this mode in theory and have had a pretty good time up until now. However, it seems as though my team has simply stopped playing. We've got four bases left and people are neither attacking nor defending. If something could be done about that, that'd be great.

[Nanima]

I dislike the teleporting army concept that RD has. That and the stupid "capture the flag" and score system from that mode. This doesn't play like FE, this is just throwing a bunch of units into the meatgrinder for maximum points. Now if they made it more like Arena style matches, I'd actually have some fun with it.

[Armagon]

Teleporting, reinforcements and time limits are the biggest issue. However, it's not as bad in Rival Domains because those enemy units aren't player-based. It's like if you're doing Tempest Trials. But in Grand Conquests, having the enemy units be other players' units just makes it not fun. Now you have Rival Domains but with enemies that were built by other players. So if you run into a team that has like, the highest, most optimal builds, you're just fucked.

It should just be regular defense maps to be honest.

[Usana]

I think a change to scoring might be needed. As it is you aren't rewarded for playing difficult battles. A perfect score at a lower difficulty gives you more than an imperfect score higher up. This means there is little incentive to do much other than find the difficulty that is a guarentee'ed clear and stay there. No reward for challenging yourself. I think they need to make it so that holding all camps is equal to a clear lower down at the very least. Perhaps make a holding 1 clamp enemy camp equal the clear. The exact balance would have to be played around with. Point is for someone like me both I and autobattle can clear hard. I can do Lunatic and fairly reliable take and hold at least one camp. If that equaled the hard clear I would have reason to actually play against the challenging fights, since if I managed to take and hold both I may actually be out a bit ahead. As it is I have little reason to do anything other than let autobattle meatgrind its way through hard.

Another option would be to have units lost somehow calculate into the score. Perhaps a point penalty/bonus for every time a brigade is completely wiped out. I.E. when it begins to cycle back through again. This would penalize autobattle a bit and maybe give a bit of a bonus  to folks who get stuck in a trench and just end up grinding through the whole enemy brigade over and over(actually I am not sure if I have ever seen me or the AI get through a brigade twice, so it would at best be a single bonus/penalty).

[Humanoid]

I keep forgetting to use my multiplier and end up doing a 1x battle instead, then I have to repeat the battle with the remainer of my "flags". Would prefer a system where you select the multiplier after the event, like in VG. That, and the actual battles are the two things VG has over this mode.

I'm also a bit wary of how the final "Area Count" rewards are handed out. It looks to me that it's pretty much just going to count the areas held at the end of the 44th hour, which makes all the battling for the previous 42 hours - or at least 40 hours - feel pretty pointless. Smarter to just save your resources for a final round push because given how easily territory is taken, how well you do early is pretty much irrelevant. Fortunately the gap in rewards isn't too huge but it still feels like a bad system (if the game ended now, I would get 2400 more feathers and 5 more coins than team Anna, would be terrible being on the other side of that still).

The map imbalance has been pointed out by plenty, with Anna seemingly getting the short end of the stick. Sharena has that lower right section of the map that's very isolated and therefore easy to keep on lockdown. Should Anna perhaps get a path directly south from her base? But then that'd probably leave Alfonse with clearly the best layout so something probably should be done to expose his core territory more as well.

The "Help Out" button is also pretty ridiculous. With no agency in how it's used, it reduces players to lab rats pressing a button to receive a bread crumb every two hours. At least let us choose where to help out, geez.

Not going to go into the stuff like teleport and reinforcement spam because that's more an issue with the RD system rather than anything specific to do with GC.

[XRay]

4 hours ago, Kahvi said:

I disagree with increasing the turn limit, since it's a mobile game and adding more turns would more than likely make people even less interested in the whole thing. However, I do agree with the reinforcements.

I do not think increasing the turn limit to 15 or even 20 is that bad. That battles still go by pretty quickly. As a compromise, they can allow the player to end the battle early at turn 10 if the player wishes.

2 hours ago, Usana said:

I think a change to scoring might be needed. As it is you aren't rewarded for playing difficult battles. A perfect score at a lower difficulty gives you more than an imperfect score higher up. This means there is little incentive to do much other than find the difficulty that is a guarentee'ed clear and stay there. No reward for challenging yourself. I think they need to make it so that holding all camps is equal to a clear lower down at the very least. Perhaps make a holding 1 clamp enemy camp equal the clear. The exact balance would have to be played around with. Point is for someone like me both I and autobattle can clear hard. I can do Lunatic and fairly reliable take and hold at least one camp. If that equaled the hard clear I would have reason to actually play against the challenging fights, since if I managed to take and hold both I may actually be out a bit ahead. As it is I have little reason to do anything other than let autobattle meatgrind its way through hard.

Another option would be to have units lost somehow calculate into the score. Perhaps a point penalty/bonus for every time a brigade is completely wiped out. I.E. when it begins to cycle back through again. This would penalize autobattle a bit and maybe give a bit of a bonus  to folks who get stuck in a trench and just end up grinding through the whole enemy brigade over and over(actually I am not sure if I have ever seen me or the AI get through a brigade twice, so it would at best be a single bonus/penalty).

Yeah, they need to do more to incentivize players to tackle higher difficulty and not losing their entire brigade. I have been doing Hard (or Lunatic if the map has Armor March bonus) on auto battle usually and it gets me the same or better score as if I did Infernal manually. I still do Infernal for fun for the first and maybe second battle per run, although I rarely capture more than one camp at that difficulty.

That being said, I definitely do not want them to penalize players for auto battling by reducing the current scores they get. Not getting bonus scores from tackling higher difficulty and keeping their brigade alive is enough penalty in my opinion.

3 hours ago, Armagon said:

Teleporting, reinforcements and time limits are the biggest issue. However, it's not as bad in Rival Domains because those enemy units aren't player-based. It's like if you're doing Tempest Trials. But in Grand Conquests, having the enemy units be other players' units just makes it not fun. Now you have Rival Domains but with enemies that were built by other players. So if you run into a team that has like, the highest, most optimal builds, you're just fucked.

It should just be regular defense maps to be honest.

I am fine with facing against other player's units. It makes things a little more interesting.

To make it more fair, they can make Infernal the only difficulty utilizing players' units, but all units in that mode will be treated as merge +10 units, so it does not completely discourage dolphins and minnows from trying the mode out.

2 hours ago, Humanoid said:

The map imbalance has been pointed out by plenty, with Anna seemingly getting the short end of the stick. Sharena has that lower right section of the map that's very isolated and therefore easy to keep on lockdown. Should Anna perhaps get a path directly south from her base? But then that'd probably leave Alfonse with clearly the best layout so something probably should be done to expose his core territory more as well.

I think they should redesign the map and make it symmetrical. Trying to fix the current map is more hassle than it is worth in my opinion.

 

[Dark Holy Elf]

6 hours ago, silveraura25 said:

It'd make it 4x4 unit battles, the large maps are nothing close to regular FE that it tries to be IMO. Just teleporting and ramming your units. While there can be some kind of strategy, it ends up being messed up by many unpredictable factors. 

They could've made defense maps, win in x turns, reach a point on the map, AA style battles, etc.

This for me is the key problem: rival domains-style battles just aren't that great. They encourage me to throw away my units into a meatgrinder, since hey, if they die I'll get reinforcements a turn and a half later anyway. Nothing like Fire Emblem. I find the rewards for thinking things through carefully compared to just "going for it" in a braindead way (or even just auto-battle, and I hate auto-battle) to be not all that significant. I'd like to see something with less teleporting (though I could be argued on this one, there's some interesting things which come from it), fewer reinforcements, and huge penalties for losing your own units... something more like proper FE.

Or just use the normal FEH battle system which is far superior.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

I think this is the best mode added to the game post release, with the indisputable exception of Tempest Trials. I love the game board, the random team assignment, the ability to use ally units from outside your team, and the strategies for taking territories is very engaging. The stamina system is great too. Unlike Voting Gauntlet, you can play a lot at once and don't have to check in throughout the day unless you really care about defending certain points. You can blow your stamina uses early for the sake of nabbing a lot of power throughout the rest of the mode, or save the extra stamina for late game pushes.

The mode asks a lot out of each individual battle, but that's what auto battle is for.  You can get by just fine auto battling Hard Mode with an army of decent units. The only thing I think should be tweaked or removed are the turn limits. There are so many random elements in this mode that the ten turn count feels especially punishing for those attempting harder difficulties. I'm also bothered by a mode that is so difficult that new players can't immediately jump in without either getting a ton of units or registering a lot of friends.

[Lushen]

I just want them to be more clear about how the scores work.  They say that at the end of each battle a bonus will be applied based on how many people from each team have attacked that space - but they don't say how large of a bonus.

They also say that if you win by a "threshold" then you can take it over imminently and not have to wait till the next round.  But they don't say what the threshold is.

 

A lot of people are going to say they want the maps to be more symmetrical.  I disagree - I love the strategy behind the maps, even if they're not perfectly balanced.  For right now either Anna and Sharena can team up and take down Alfonse or Sharena ends up defending her spaces while Alfonse takes over Anna.  I like how there's a strategic bias that you have to figure out.

[Alexmender]

There's quite a few stuff I'd like in order to make this a bit more enjoyable:

1. Make some tutorial/trial map with no turn limit and no rewards. People get stressed pretty quickly because the 10 turn limit doesn't let them learn how to fight in this mode (although you can always practice in Rivals Domain at 0 cost but people can get annoying just because they can). 
2. Give us a way to store at least 3 builds per unit. This mode obviously works different from everything else in the game and the typical arena builds aren't going to work here which means that we need to create the appropiate builds for this mode but no one is going to do that because shuffling skills around is a hassle.
3. Limit teleport shenanigans. Maybe if you teleport you can't attack, that alone would make things seem less random. 
4. Make the system more clear. Maybe it's just me but I've read a lot of how this works and yet I still can't grasp the nuances of the mode. Do I have to fight in my own colored spots to defend or should I go for the opposite to claim more land? Is it better to do eight 1x matches or to throw everything in a 8x match? While those who decided to go hardcore into this will get a better grasp on the mode I still feel like IS didn't explain properly how it works. 
5. The respawn system should be every 2 turns instead of every turn. Many are complaining that this mode makes you throw your units with no repercussions and they hate it because it goes against what FE is although they're wrong because Fates Phoenix mode already did this and this works like AW so it's better and not everything should be 1:1 to the main games, that's boring. Making the respawning every two turns gives the player some breathing room and regroup while also giving a bigger penalty if they lose their units because they'll be vulnerable for 1 turn.

[Ice Dragon]

My only real gripe is the fact that a limited resource (Sacred Coins) is being tied to your team's performance rather than your own performance.

This wouldn't be an issue if Sacred Coins were given out slightly faster than they can be used (which they aren't by a long shot) or if Sacred Coins could be farmed normally, both of which would result in the resource no longer being "limited". However, I don't think it is fair to make the acquisition of a limited resource mostly out of your own hands.

 

9 hours ago, The_antithesis said:

I personally feel the only real fix that is needed is a change to how turns work in RD. Firstly, increase the turn limit, 10 is too strict. Secondly, make it so that units have to wait two turns to get reinforcements, instead of one, as this will allow players to attack the fort more freely.

7 hours ago, Kahvi said:

I disagree with increasing the turn limit, since it's a mobile game and adding more turns would more than likely make people even less interested in the whole thing. However, I do agree with the reinforcements.

2 hours ago, XRay said:

I do not think increasing the turn limit to 15 or even 20 is that bad. That battles still go by pretty quickly. As a compromise, they can allow the player to end the battle early at turn 10 if the player wishes.

I personally think that increasing the turn count to 12 is enough to make a difference in terms of how much you can get done, and it doesn't make the map feel that much more tedious.

 

 

[Dark Holy Elf]

1 hour ago, Alexmender said:

Many are complaining that this mode makes you throw your units with no repercussions and they hate it because it goes against what FE is although they're wrong because Fates Phoenix mode already did this and this works like AW so it's better and not everything should be 1:1 to the main games, that's boring.

Fates Phoenix mode is essentially a gameplay-skip mode (and it's fine that this exists!); sharing mechanics with it is not a defence of something when discussing the merits of its gameplay.

I have no problem with things not being exactly like "normal" Fire Emblem or I wouldn't even be playing FEH, but in this case it rather clearly goes against what I like about FE.

1 hour ago, Glennstavos said:

The mode asks a lot out of each individual battle, but that's what auto battle is for.

If a gameplay mode convinces me the most efficient way to play it is to not actually engage with its gameplay (that is, by using auto-battle) then it has failed pretty badly in my eyes.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

16 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

If a gameplay mode convinces me the most efficient way to play it is to not actually engage with its gameplay (that is, by using auto-battle) then it has failed pretty badly in my eyes.

okay. The battles don't make up all the mode's gameplay. Certainly not even the bulk of the meaningful strategy.

[Johann]

• Adjust the base score going into a new round by the amount of areas an army controls. A losing army is going to need much more than 5000 starting points to stay competitive.
• Increase the max stamina to 10. Also make it so that, when starting a map at max stamina, the counter begins when starting instead of when completing
• Enemy teams should not include Dancers. You only get one, but theirs will respawn, which is pretty unfair.
• Remove teleporting and allow unit to spawn at any controlled fort. I think players should be able to choose where to deploy, but I'd settle for automatically putting them at the furthest fort.
• Remove the 10 turn time limit. Instead, after turn 10, "Surrender" turns into "End Battle" or whatever, and it concludes the match. There's already a 2 hour time limit for the round, and that's more than enough to make players need to hurry. Turn limit in battle is just frustrating and makes it harder to use low mobility units
• Choose which units to deploy when getting reinforcements. That'd just be super convenient

[XRay]

24 minutes ago, Johann said:

Enemy teams should not include Dancers. You only get one, but theirs will respawn, which is pretty unfair.

I thought your own Dancers/Singers respawn too when you cycle through your brigade.

[Alexmender]

27 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Fates Phoenix mode is essentially a gameplay-skip mode (and it's fine that this exists!); sharing mechanics with it is not a defence of something when discussing the merits of its gameplay.

I have no problem with things not being exactly like "normal" Fire Emblem or I wouldn't even be playing FEH, but in this case it rather clearly goes against what I like about FE.

If a gameplay mode convinces me the most efficient way to play it is to not actually engage with its gameplay (that is, by using auto-battle) then it has failed pretty badly in my eyes.

It's not but that was just to give an example that modes that skip gameplay already exist in the main games, whether that's a good or bad thing is a separate issue. For this mode (and Rivals Domain) after giving it a few more tries I found that the idea of bombing units is erroneous, while you don't seem to lose anything by sacrificing units in reality you lose lots of ground, time, points and coverage depending on how you form your brigade which gives this mode a higher strategic potential, it's just that the difference to the usual gameplay is so big that it makes it quite difficult to adapt.

Like I said this mode doesn't play like a FE game at all and it's fine to not like it although it playing like a watered down AW already makes it not suck but just like with Tap battle (which also goes against what FE is because it is a whole different genre and yet there's people who enjoy it enough to S-rank everything in Hard Expert) this is just an optional event which can be ignored if you so desire and the auto-battle option is there so you don't have to play it while not losing any of the rewards.

[Johann]

2 hours ago, XRay said:

I thought your own Dancers/Singers respawn too when you cycle through your brigade.

Something I only just learned about, so yes that's true. Still, given how short maps are, it's pretty unlikely that you'll have that happen.

The more I think about it, the 10 turn limit is the worst thing about the mode, and I think's the source of most people's frustration. I stand by the notion that the 2 hour round limit is enough of a motivation to play quickly.

[Humanoid]

Another annoyance: the menu bar at the bottom disappears while in this mode, making it really inconvenient to exit it. I think this is the only gameplay mode that does this.

[Dark Holy Elf]

6 hours ago, Glennstavos said:

okay. The battles don't make up all the mode's gameplay. Certainly not even the bulk of the meaningful strategy.

I've not been impressed by the overlay strategy game which seems to have more to do with how good/active your teammates are than anything else but it's possible I'm underestimating it. It wasn't very well explained so I haven't really understood all the nuances of it yet. I would probably be more inspired to if I liked the battle gameplay, which certainly makes up the majority of the mode's gameplay time-wise. (In fact, if the mode is supposed to be about the battle overlay strategy, then surely the case for replacing it with something faster - like core FEH gameplay - is even stronger!)

[NekoKnight]

I feel the matches are heavily stacked in favor of the defending team. Not only do you need to kill the enemies on and by a fort but you need to then attack the fort, which might now be blocked by the very units you were using to fight the defenders. Without Galeforce or Dancers, it is hard to even damage the fort before they warp more units to it, which are probably hard counters to the units you have there. So yeah, in order to preserve some actual momentum for your attacks, I would appreciate:

-make teleporting take up an action
-make player reinforcements spawn at the start of your turn rather than the end of it

10 hours ago, Lushen said:

They also say that if you win by a "threshold" then you can take it over imminently and not have to wait till the next round.  But they don't say what the threshold is.

One team has to be winning by an extreme majority. Something like 10:1 players. I've only seen it happen when a team was down to their headquarters so every person on that team was focused on two battles.

9 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

This wouldn't be an issue if Sacred Coins were given out slightly faster than they can be used (which they aren't by a long shot) or if Sacred Coins could be farmed normally, both of which would result in the resource no longer being "limited". However, I don't think it is fair to make the acquisition of a limited resource mostly out of your own hands.

On the other hand, the coin rewards are absolutely pitiful. I can make 27 coins per week off of Arena/AA. VGs give 135 for very minimal work. This gives.... at most 10 (that's 19 areas) per 44 hour battle. This is the equivalent to the 15 daily greeting feathers.

Edited April 15, 2018 by NekoKnight

[Hilda]

I like the concept all they need to do is remove 2 teleporting circles across the mini-forts, the main forts should have their teleports left. Teleporting from Fortress to fortress should be still possible. That way you wont be swamped with units. However i have been abel to capture both mini fortresses quite regular on infernal, its just that there arent enough turns to capture the HQ left. Only managed to do that once on infernal :/