Sabotage Feature

[DeletedUser1993]

@ Explosive
what i have done is retaliation. tell me, which villages have i targeted? those that you used at me first. hit me, and i will hit you. and i will hit you as hard as i can.
still, i do not enjoy it. it is unbalanced and needs fixing

 

[DeletedUser924]

Lol - the negative effects of the features to a gaming experience is the highest priority. That is the purpose of a Beta. Why is it, whenever someone who is 'beta testing' and points out something that needs to be improved, you get players saying people shouldn't point out the problems because it is a Beta? If we all followed your logic, then the feature would make it to the final game - and by that time, too late. Bear in mind we are talking about a company with 10 years, 50 million registered users from TW1 - you would have thought they would have a better idea how to make a balanced game by now.

Did i say you shouldn't point it out? no look at the guy i replied to. he was flaming the game makers saying that its their fault they should have known better than to make the features. The point is to improve the game not that we should have a perfectly built game. If the game was perfect we would not need a beta. If he doesn't like that the game is bugged that's his fault for being a beta tester not the game designers fault for opening the beta before the game was bug free. So they decided to try a new feature. what did you expect that TW2 would be the exact same as TW1? what logic are you following?


Edit:
Also in all honesty when i had first talked about my thoughts on the sabotage feature i had only 3 thieves guilds and i used them on a target 75% of them failed even on a inactive target. At this point i gave up on the feature because the cost out weighed the gain. Since then i have used them more extensively. still at sending 50 spies at a time against an active target i barely dropped him 3000 points in a matter of three days so to say you can level a village in hours i still feel is an exaggeration. It is also a lie to say there is no defense to the sabotage feature. The defense is to send equal # of sabotage attempts at your enemies thieves guild villages or cat the HoO down to 0. While i'll not say its unfair because to be unfair it would require that one side gain an advantage the other doesn't have which is not the case. I will say it does seem to take some of the fun out the game. But keep in mind this feature was put in the game to balance the fact that the hospital and provinces(faith) in combination with stacks makes the defender the most likely winner even when faced with a superior foe. The idea behind it (as best i can tell) was the fact that the churches, walls, and hospital among others could be easily dropped a few levels to compensate for the fact that all things equal the defender will win 100% of the time. I'm sure the potential for abuse was not seen in its initiation.

 

[Barbiearian]

Suggesting that simply sending an equal amount of sabotages is a defence really doesn't cut it imo. My main point is this. If, you want the game to survive, there has to be a way that those who are not ranked in the top 10, or in the top alliance can still manage to at least play the game, even if they are not likely to win it. Without the sabotage feature a smaller player had many things at his disposal, not least being the distance away from the big players, being on the rim of a world. He also had the opportunity to join or create his own alliance, and by working together, could help defend the smaller players in the alliance. As soon as you give players the opportunity to wipe someone off the game, with relatively no cost to themselves, its not going to come as a surprise, when they take that opportunity. Take away any morale bonus, negate the issue of siege engine and nobleman travel speeds (as spies are so much quicker), remove any incoming warning, not provide any possibility to send support either yourself, or receive support from others, make recruitment times for defence too long to help your city even if you are online - thats just a short list of the problems. Yes, this is a beta, and yes there will be mistakes. But maybe the devs should consider talking to the players who have, between them, centuries of experience, before coming up with an idea that, to any player who cared to give it some forethought, was going to be clearly flawed. Let's just say, if they had put the idea out there first, it wouldn't have done any harm listening to the views, even if they chose to ignore them for practical reasons. The guys are here, quite rightly, to beta test - but not here to teach the ABCs of game design.

 

[.ExplosiveMinds.]

Did i say you shouldn't point it out? no look at the guy i replied to. he was flaming the game makers saying that its their fault they should have known better than to make the features. The point is to improve the game not that we should have a perfectly built game. If the game was perfect we would not need a beta. If he doesn't like that the game is bugged that's his fault for being a beta tester not the game designers fault for opening the beta before the game was bug free. So they decided to try a new feature. what did you expect that TW2 would be the exact same as TW1? what logic are you following?

I do not expect a perfect game. The only thing that suprise me is the fact that the gamefeeling is been destroyed by this not well thinkover sabotagespies. Everybody could know that in mass attacks the village is destroyed in minutes.. There are no restrictions..

What they already could do. (but never will do because who are we? they say that they listen to us but I havn't saw any big adjustment by the developers that came from us, the players...)
- Sabotage spies can only attack in 2-3 provinces around the homevillage of the spy.
- Make the sabotage less succesfull (not that difficult I guess)
- Make it possible to support other villages with spies
- Don't kill the same amount of attackings spies by the defending spies... You have only 5 defensive spies.. The attacker has surely more...


(My apologize for my bad English)

 

[DeletedUser924]

But in mass attacks villages aren't even destroyed in days. only inactives are destroyed that fast. an active target takes days to destroy. I've spent the last 4 days doing nothing but sabotaging. the target started at 9564 and now its at just over 6500. Half my spies fail don't tel me that is be cause he recruited spies because i spy it with other spies just to kill them off. this has lea me to conclude that even an empty village will have failures. And if any body could think that this feature will cause a problem why did you not bring it up day one? You had plenty of time to read the wiki and see what kind of feature it would have therefore you knew before you even had a hall of orders that this feature was bugged and yet you waited until it hit you and became publicly known to bring it up. You even then claim that they had plenty of time to fix it when i think no updates have passed since this was bought to their attention. I'm sorry to say that the issue of the feature being bugged was not the problem here. the problem is you want to whine and gripe and make what happened someone else's fault. If they say they are working on it then they are working on it end of story. Too make it even more clear this is the last of this conversation because its become clear to me you are too swallowed up in your own infallibility that you can't even be made to see reason.

EDIT:
Just a tidbit you'll all find interesting this is not speculation because i have not slept in over 48 hours and have been sending round the clock.

 

[DeletedUser1587]

Yo bro, your missing the whole point, they say it is impossible to def against tribes or bigger players... dont be pathetic and always try to contradict if you dont even get the point of the discussion...For example I got 60 villas, which translates to 300 potential spies.. I can time them all to hit withing 30 min.. ad it takes max 10 spies to take max defending spies (5, and if I time them withing 30 min, which is easy, the defender wont be able to build even 1 spy even if he is online).... which then translates to min 290 sabotaged levels.... HQ from 30 to 0, pits from 90 to 0 (3 x 30), farm from 30 to 0, warehouse from 30 to 0... still 110 levels to go.... and 60 villas aint even a big number... missing the point bro...

 

[DeletedUser997]

@Samuri 4 life: I know you are going to contradict me (as you do with almost every message that's being posted here) but I'll post anyway.

At first I thought the sabotage was useless, since I thought the wiki said you needed to send multiple spies and they would have *a chance* to sabotage *a random building* and your spies always died.

Afterwards I saw that the technique was to first clear the defending spies, and every sab attempt afterwards is effective. (you're the first at complaining about the success rate that I have heard)
And almost immediately I realised the imballance of the feature. Since you can help others sabotage players, but you can't help others protect themselves.

You talk about too costly and it takes too long? Have you even made a calculation? How much resources do you think it takes to build a nuke? How much time does it take? The fastest nukes take weekS to build ... and the resources are alot. The buildings you take down with a spie that costs next to nothing and is build in 30 minutes is for a farm IMMENSEly unfair advantage if you ask me. the cheapest possible spy takes down the most expensive lvl of the longest building-time building ... and there is nothing you can do.

If you decide to sabotage your neighbour, you don't even need friends, you can non-stop sabbotage because by the time your first badge arrives the next can be build. With a few villages you can continuously attack your neighbour ... who can only build 1 spy at the time, while you can build them in paralel ... how about that for efficacity ...

If you take down the church, lvl1 you half the defense power of the village, if that is the only village with a church in that province you half the entire defense power of that entire province (ofcourse I'm talking about the villages of your victime) ... and there is nothing you can do ... you can stack defense in a church village so that it takes more then a few clears to take down that strategic point ... but you can't do a thing against sabotage ... you can kill a few spies.

Also, you can try to sabotage back ... but for instance trying to get back to players like RustyNail ... you'd have to convert to all sabotage because if you don't put the same amount of time and at least the same amount of spies in the ballance ... you'll loose ... Basic strategy dictates to not start wars you can't finish ... either that or you go kamikaze but that's also a recipe for disaster ....

No matter how you look at this, the feature is seriously flawed and should have some kind of counter-technique. I can imagine sabotage as a valuable strategy against turtles like Seecretlar explained ... but it shouldn't be immune either. It should be really costly and This cost should be in direct relation to the size of the one playing, that way, a big player has to pay the same ratio as a small player. That way it stays as easy or difficult to use no matter what size you are.

 

[DeletedUser2370]

Fix this broken feature. Some guy was sabotaging from 1 to 3 of my buildings buildings a day, and I could take it. Last night though, i lost about 800 points, without even an academy (cuz he sabotaged it yesterday). And yes, I do use spies, always have my 4th spy queued up in every village. This situation really makes me want to delete my account and forget about Tribal Wars forever.

 

[DeletedUser2258]

You are lucky if you lost just 800 points I already stopped playing mainly bec of this, I am waiting now the upcoming updates and if they will come with a decent solution maybe I will resume the game. A lot of good ideas were given by the players including me let's hope they will listen this time.

 

[DeletedUser1587]

The noobs didn't change anything... gr8

 

[DeletedUser924]

Please fix this forum i had a long massive response that covered everything in extensive detail but invalid server response crashed it all. But i will summarize it.
@nightlord
If you rad before you post you'll notice that you are arguing invalid points. and you even at one point proceed to explain how sabotaging destroys 1 building level which is pure fact and was never debated. the only valid statement you made was that the system was broken. And you then proceed to make it as if you were addressing me two weeks ago. What you failed to do was read anything past the second page of this thread or you'd notice the reason why i thought the way i did back then and the way my views have changed over time.

Theblackone
I do get the point here i just have a different view than the mainstream one. my view is that players n equal footing so if you have 60 villages and i have between 40-80 then we could sabotage each other until we were assured of mutual destruction. Its my belief that would be enough to keep players of equal size from implementing such a tactic on each other. I see it as a way to remove small players much fast and at much less cost than normal. but what i have not seen is any talk of how this works when you are talking with players of equal size. so i ask you why does a player with 60-100 villages not use this strategy on another player with 60-100 villages? Now as for being broken hell ya it is. the late game it only matters about who builds the fortresses so ya it will be nothing more than spying to find the fortress and then spy wars to destroy the other fortresses while trying to build you own because of course the fortress will have an immeasurable stack so nuking it will be useless. They will also be in a provence where the tribe controls 100% thus you won't have faith against it.

I really wish i could have posted my full post but it took me 40 minutes to write it the first time and am not going to try again with no guarantee it won't crash the same way. So i know there will still be questions unanswered.

 

[gencyde1]

I honestly thinks that the reason why this feature is not yet taken down - despite the obvious cry for change of the masses - is because the devs want to see the extent of a super late game sabotage attacks (i.e. a full on 100 village vs 100 village spy war). But then, there is an imbalance in terms of sizes and tribal affiliation - so in the end, it's who has more active friends wins the battles. It is typically rare to find a spy war that is between even players. I have yet to find those that actively retaliates with the same amount of attacks as I do - most just ended up quitting really. As this feature being tested out - there will be those that will be subject of such experiments - some dont make it in the end.

No matter what the case - those that actually uses this feature shouldn't be faced with pitch-fork-and-mob-with-torches kind of treatment. The devs are completely aware of this and they put you in this kind of environment. This is not just a war game - it's also a survival one. If you can't adapt to your surroundings, you will be left behind the race against those that could adapt better than you. If anything, they made this game more realistic than ever - an opportunity for an imbalance, take it or leave it.

Most useful weapon in this game so far: Psychological warfare. Level their chapel villas to 1k and see what happens. It's also great defensively - level their captured barb (intended for church) in your cluster, that would take them weeks just to have enough farm space for a church.

 

[DeletedUser924]

Well i refuse to attack smaller players i have no problems taking a player with equal number of villages or points into it but i will not pick on the guy with 2 villages. However my target basically just gave up might have been because the turtle had only one nuke so he knew he was no match for my stacks regardless of if he spied me or not. He did however mock me for destroying his villages but i wasn't about to continue his verbal argument because this was not going to be a war won by words. As it stands now he swears he on't quit but he has no chapel and is down to one church. Though i do have to wonder how much fun will there be in spy wars considering how quickly the damage will be dealt will mean massive time and resources expended on both sides.

 

[DeletedUser2258]

Samuri you are keep trying to prove that sabotage works 1:1 but this is simply irrelevant bec we are talking about mass attacks here when a tribe with over 100 members starts sabotaging 1 player. So that one player could have 20+ villages and will be taken out of the game in a few days or less whatever he does and whatever his place is in the map and he can do absolutely nothing to defend. This whole thing makes the armies meaningless so basicly the main concept of the game is thrown away.

 

[gencyde1]

Has there really been anyone reduced from....let's say....100k to 0 points? Notably when more than 5 saboteurs involved or so.

 

[DeletedUser2399]

I strongly agree with this post. Sabotage is unbalanced feature. And is destroying the strategy part of the game. Why I bother to loose troops if i can destroy your villages, make you quit the game and then noble you.

There is no way to defend yourself. With spies 1 & 2 that cost almost nothing and build very quickly, you can destroy buildings that cost a lot and take more than 10 hours to build.
Moreover, if you have Thieves Guilds in all villages, you can spam and almost destroy the entire village.

I know the defender can rebuild spies, but it takes longer to rebuild 5 spies than the attacker to rebuild 2 spies from his differents villages.

I'm now in a sabotage war... i'm online all the time sending sabotage, receiving sabotage from the attacker and rebuilding my spies. In spite of that, I'm losing a lot of buildings and the enemy too.

What is the point of that? What is the fun of destroying a village?

Devs are working in balance and tweaks. I hope they make the balance release soon. Or my enemy and I won't have buildings and probably will quit the game.

 

[DeletedUser431]

There is another problem that may or may not be a bug that just adds to the overall unfairness of the sabotage feature. There was an earlier suggestion that as a means of defense, you cat the attackers HoO to zero. Unfortunately, losing your HoO does not make you lose your order. In essence, a 200ish point village can still send saboteurs if they were a part of the Guild of Thieves at one point in time. All they need is a level 1 tavern and a spy. I would think you should lose your order when you lose your HoO just like you lose your faith if you lose your church.

 

[DeletedUser2258]

At first I thought that is a bug and maybe it is I dont know but it actually helps the weaker player because if you are getting mass sabotaged over night and you loose your orders you still can retaliate. Anyway hopefully the sabotage system will be balanced with the next update, I really hope so because how it works now make the game unplayable for many people.

 

[DeletedUser924]

Sir you have never been able to read and i'm really getting annoyed of you arguing with claims and words i never spoke. I never once tried to prove anything. I asked for cases where a 1:1 instance had occured and there is not one plain and simply. I asked for a case where a 100K-200K player has been destroyed and still you can't provide one. I'm sorry but trying to make this game so your punny one village can hold up to 20 or more attackers is a waste of time so stop whining about that. Next you do claim to be talking about 100 players targeting the same person but i see no incedent where that happened? i've seen as many as 2 players attack one before but again its always been two players 200=K attacking one with few to no villages. Now let me make this clear i'm not saying the feature is perfect now am i saying its balanced. but i am saying fixing the feature to prevent the weak from being destroy by the strong is impossible. And i have said the reason why two 100K or otherwise equally strong players wouldn't use this on each other is that they would not be able to do so before the enemy has the opportunity to return the favor and thus they would both destroy each other one village at a time. Now stop coming up with insignificant complaints to argue about and find something useful to add or simply wait for the problem to be solved but nothing will be gained by this broke record crap.

@gencyde1 as far as i can tell never. I've target a player of equal size who was primarily inactive or so i thought. he proved to be active moving his D around and stopping my nobles rebuild and such. he never spied back and quit in 2 weeks. of two week of keeping up the attacks i managed to knock him from 135K to 98K before nobling him.

 

[DeletedUser924]

Well my quotes aren' working still. that above post was responding to a post by elphin on the last page and now im responding to coolmite.
If what you are describing is true it has to be a bug no questions about it. The tactics clearly go that catting the HoO down or nobling are the only ways to change order before the ability to reset was introduced. this means when it goes to 0 the order is lost. now introducing the reset ability might have altered that but i highly doubt they intended to change it such that a building you no longer had gives you the ability. if so why don't we all buid our HoO up get the order then cat them down to save the farm space?