Dear Humans and Elves,
Please use this thread to discuss the update to version 1.25 and the Tournaments rebalancing. We're looking forward to hearing from you!
Kind regards,
Your Elvenar Team
Please see our answer on some of the feedback/questions you've given us:
The "Did you know" block should get a darker background - Letters are too hard to read.
Thank you, done!
The images of the characters in the loading screen look deformed
Thank you for that feedback, we will look into it.
Players get way less KP and Relics while that is mainly what they do tournaments for. Especially newer players need these resources. Players don't care much about spells and not even really about the broken shards.
The old tournament rewards were kind of broken, and therefore we had to make changes. The AWs were not much of a valuable feature in Elvenar, but with the upcoming AW rebalancing, the broken shards will also become more valuable with that. The goal is to get the broken shards to be “the reward players want”, since AWs will become significantly more useful. We are also working on other rewards (like more appealing spells) but they are not ready yet. We will implement them as soon as they are. To tell you the truth: When we initially made the tournaments, we didn’t have the technical possibilities to give out the rewards we wanted to, so instead we gave out “mediocre” rewards in big numbers. And that is doing damage now, so we have to change that.
With taking away the KP and Relics, you're tempting us to overscout again to get these resources from the World Map. Tournaments were a substitute for that. With changing KP and Relics for Broken Shards and Spells, you're taking that away.
It is indeed still possible to gain Relics and KP this way, but it will take quite a bit longer to reach your goals. We are aware of these issues and are working on improving the situation on the World Map.
The comment on not needing round 6 was misleading but round 6 is definitely needed because if you struggle to get people to go to rounds 4-6 you can bet you ain't going to get them to do 8 provinces especially for traders and especially with escalating costs/losses.
Of course you still need enough people if you want to get the 10th chest without doing any of the 6th level provinces. Before it wasn’t possible at all without doing at least some 6th levels, now it is. It is definitely not easy to reach the 10th chest, though. And neither should it be.
In the Release Notes it was stated that the tournaments would be more in balance for traders vs fighters, but we see now that catering costs (especially goods) have increased significantly and needed squad sizes have sometimes even quadroupled.
The size depends completely on the player’s progress. For some players it can indeed mean that they got way bigger squad sizes, but for others it has been lowered significantly. It’s impossible to make this calculation by comparing it to the previous system.
We will now always ask for a significant number of troops, depending on the player’s progress. Before we could have the case that a new player couldn’t participate because the tournaments asked for way too many units, and advanced players would be able to participate without paying any significant number of units at all. Now, this is more balanced, but that of course doesn’t mean “more easy”.
Also, costs don’t “explode” as much as they did before – the costs increase way more gradually now. So especially the later levels are relatively cheaper.
There's a major issue with the new battle AI. See this post for some examples.
This indeed doesn't sound right and we will definitely look into it. Thank you for sharing.
"The size depends completely on the player’s progress." Could you explain this a little further? If it is based on Squad Size techs, which are partly optional, this means I could just make a new account skip all the optional ones, and have an way easier tournament then I have now.
In the tournaments it indeed depends on your squad size displayed in the barracks. The remark you make is true:
It is the case. But we already know about that and it could be that we will change it.
Besides that, skipping the optional squad size upgrades will make your normal progress harder in exchange. So it’s not the “perfect” solution for easier tournaments.
If the new rewards are especially based on the rebalancing on Ancient Wonders, we'd strongly advise to implement them together on the Live servers or wait with the tournament reward rebalancing until the AW rebalancing has been implemented on Live.
Technically it is not possible to postpone the Tournament Rebalancing anymore. Nevertheless, it is already the right solution to change the rewards of the Tournament first and THEN implement the Ancient wonder rebalancing. It would be worse the other way around. There is no way we can influence that right now.
What exactly will the AW rebalancing look like? Because as it is now, we need large amount of relics to upgrade our ancient wonders, and also to boost our goods production.
The Ancient Wonder rebalancing will make the Ancient Wonder bonusses relative and not absolute anymore. Currently Ancient Wonders give fix bonusses or amounts of stuff. That means that those might be powerful for lower players but not worthy anymore for higher chapter players.
So from the deploy day on the bonusses will be relative to different values ingame. For example the “x number of supplies” Ancient Wonders will change to “% percent of the supply storage” or the “X amount of coins” Ancient Wonders will give “x percent of the coins storage”. This way, the Ancient Wonder will always give a relatively good amount depending on your game progress (in this case Main Hall level).
Possible other bonusses can be:
- “x percent of working population” instead of fixed number of population
- “x percent of required culture” instead of fix number of culture.
- “x percent of current squad size” instead of fix number of BLM units
- And a few more.
This rebalancing is not really about changing the amount of relics you need to upgrade or the needed KP etc.
The ease for which spells can be obtained devalues the Magic Academy significantly along with reduced relics to fuel it. My MA sits idle a lot of the time which isn't a great use for it, even Timon said to delete inactive buildings for space in the recent Q&A. Are there plans to add value back to the MA or make it so we can delete it?
We are currently thinking about a new kind of inventory/spell system that includes the use of the Magic Academy. More news will follow when the plans are more concrete.
Also the MA was extremely hard to use at the time it is received for new players when space is at a premium and relics are in very low supply. Combined with hard world map expansion and now increased catering costs for those towns (most effective way for tournaments in that era). This building/tech should be reviewed when it is available in the tech tree and potentially moved back an era when space and hopefully relics are in better supply. Or at a minimum move the quest for it back further as a 25 square building a player can't use at the time they get it is very painful for small towns.
We keep track of when players leave the game or when they encounter problems, also space problems, via analytics. So far there is no reason to change anything here since it seems to work out just fine so far.
Why exactly are the current prizes broken or "mediocre"? Players have said repeatedly that these "mediocre" prizes are more valuable to them and I am sure someone pointed out even the diamond prices reflect this. Will the need for KP for wonders devalue in that future update? As I don't see players value on KP lessening as long as the KP needs remain so high. It would be greatly appreciated if these reasons where explained a little more and the value of rewards.
As said earlier this week in response to your feedback: when we implemented those rewards we did it because we didn’t have the technical possibilities to give the rewards we wanted to give in the first place. Instead of postponing the whole tournament feature until about now (when we would be able to give the rewards we actually wanted to give), we decided to use the rewards that we used and gave them in high amounts, which harms the game now. Although it might not feel like it as a player, players get too much for their effort.
We know that players are used to the old tournament rewards. As usual sometimes we have to take stuff away to make the game ready for the future. Now we are able to use the rewards we wanted to give out and we do so.
Why can't the points be cumulative instead of resetting? Many people have been misled by this until they realize it resets and then they have to calculate the true points for each level manually.
Because the progress bar would look terrible in that case. For the first few chests the progress bar would just fill a little bit while the later chests would fill it very quick. Game Design wise nothing is against changing it. It just needs a new UI then because the progress bar would not work. Suggestions for improvements are welcome, as always.
Thank you for responding to our feedback. We finally get the feeling that someone's reading it and taking it serious.
Thank you for saying that. The truth is that we are already reading the player feedback since Closed Beta and have always taken it very seriously. We're working on improving the communication with you though, so you actually know we're reading it and we hope to give you a little bit more understanding about why we make certain changes, by giving you the reasons for it. We're happy to hear it's being appreciated!
Please use this thread to discuss the update to version 1.25 and the Tournaments rebalancing. We're looking forward to hearing from you!
Kind regards,
Your Elvenar Team
Please see our answer on some of the feedback/questions you've given us:
The "Did you know" block should get a darker background - Letters are too hard to read.
Thank you, done!
The images of the characters in the loading screen look deformed
Thank you for that feedback, we will look into it.
Players get way less KP and Relics while that is mainly what they do tournaments for. Especially newer players need these resources. Players don't care much about spells and not even really about the broken shards.
The old tournament rewards were kind of broken, and therefore we had to make changes. The AWs were not much of a valuable feature in Elvenar, but with the upcoming AW rebalancing, the broken shards will also become more valuable with that. The goal is to get the broken shards to be “the reward players want”, since AWs will become significantly more useful. We are also working on other rewards (like more appealing spells) but they are not ready yet. We will implement them as soon as they are. To tell you the truth: When we initially made the tournaments, we didn’t have the technical possibilities to give out the rewards we wanted to, so instead we gave out “mediocre” rewards in big numbers. And that is doing damage now, so we have to change that.
With taking away the KP and Relics, you're tempting us to overscout again to get these resources from the World Map. Tournaments were a substitute for that. With changing KP and Relics for Broken Shards and Spells, you're taking that away.
It is indeed still possible to gain Relics and KP this way, but it will take quite a bit longer to reach your goals. We are aware of these issues and are working on improving the situation on the World Map.
The comment on not needing round 6 was misleading but round 6 is definitely needed because if you struggle to get people to go to rounds 4-6 you can bet you ain't going to get them to do 8 provinces especially for traders and especially with escalating costs/losses.
Of course you still need enough people if you want to get the 10th chest without doing any of the 6th level provinces. Before it wasn’t possible at all without doing at least some 6th levels, now it is. It is definitely not easy to reach the 10th chest, though. And neither should it be.
In the Release Notes it was stated that the tournaments would be more in balance for traders vs fighters, but we see now that catering costs (especially goods) have increased significantly and needed squad sizes have sometimes even quadroupled.
The size depends completely on the player’s progress. For some players it can indeed mean that they got way bigger squad sizes, but for others it has been lowered significantly. It’s impossible to make this calculation by comparing it to the previous system.
We will now always ask for a significant number of troops, depending on the player’s progress. Before we could have the case that a new player couldn’t participate because the tournaments asked for way too many units, and advanced players would be able to participate without paying any significant number of units at all. Now, this is more balanced, but that of course doesn’t mean “more easy”.
Also, costs don’t “explode” as much as they did before – the costs increase way more gradually now. So especially the later levels are relatively cheaper.
There's a major issue with the new battle AI. See this post for some examples.
This indeed doesn't sound right and we will definitely look into it. Thank you for sharing.
"The size depends completely on the player’s progress." Could you explain this a little further? If it is based on Squad Size techs, which are partly optional, this means I could just make a new account skip all the optional ones, and have an way easier tournament then I have now.
In the tournaments it indeed depends on your squad size displayed in the barracks. The remark you make is true:
It is the case. But we already know about that and it could be that we will change it.
Besides that, skipping the optional squad size upgrades will make your normal progress harder in exchange. So it’s not the “perfect” solution for easier tournaments.
If the new rewards are especially based on the rebalancing on Ancient Wonders, we'd strongly advise to implement them together on the Live servers or wait with the tournament reward rebalancing until the AW rebalancing has been implemented on Live.
Technically it is not possible to postpone the Tournament Rebalancing anymore. Nevertheless, it is already the right solution to change the rewards of the Tournament first and THEN implement the Ancient wonder rebalancing. It would be worse the other way around. There is no way we can influence that right now.
What exactly will the AW rebalancing look like? Because as it is now, we need large amount of relics to upgrade our ancient wonders, and also to boost our goods production.
The Ancient Wonder rebalancing will make the Ancient Wonder bonusses relative and not absolute anymore. Currently Ancient Wonders give fix bonusses or amounts of stuff. That means that those might be powerful for lower players but not worthy anymore for higher chapter players.
So from the deploy day on the bonusses will be relative to different values ingame. For example the “x number of supplies” Ancient Wonders will change to “% percent of the supply storage” or the “X amount of coins” Ancient Wonders will give “x percent of the coins storage”. This way, the Ancient Wonder will always give a relatively good amount depending on your game progress (in this case Main Hall level).
Possible other bonusses can be:
- “x percent of working population” instead of fixed number of population
- “x percent of required culture” instead of fix number of culture.
- “x percent of current squad size” instead of fix number of BLM units
- And a few more.
This rebalancing is not really about changing the amount of relics you need to upgrade or the needed KP etc.
The ease for which spells can be obtained devalues the Magic Academy significantly along with reduced relics to fuel it. My MA sits idle a lot of the time which isn't a great use for it, even Timon said to delete inactive buildings for space in the recent Q&A. Are there plans to add value back to the MA or make it so we can delete it?
We are currently thinking about a new kind of inventory/spell system that includes the use of the Magic Academy. More news will follow when the plans are more concrete.
Also the MA was extremely hard to use at the time it is received for new players when space is at a premium and relics are in very low supply. Combined with hard world map expansion and now increased catering costs for those towns (most effective way for tournaments in that era). This building/tech should be reviewed when it is available in the tech tree and potentially moved back an era when space and hopefully relics are in better supply. Or at a minimum move the quest for it back further as a 25 square building a player can't use at the time they get it is very painful for small towns.
We keep track of when players leave the game or when they encounter problems, also space problems, via analytics. So far there is no reason to change anything here since it seems to work out just fine so far.
Why exactly are the current prizes broken or "mediocre"? Players have said repeatedly that these "mediocre" prizes are more valuable to them and I am sure someone pointed out even the diamond prices reflect this. Will the need for KP for wonders devalue in that future update? As I don't see players value on KP lessening as long as the KP needs remain so high. It would be greatly appreciated if these reasons where explained a little more and the value of rewards.
As said earlier this week in response to your feedback: when we implemented those rewards we did it because we didn’t have the technical possibilities to give the rewards we wanted to give in the first place. Instead of postponing the whole tournament feature until about now (when we would be able to give the rewards we actually wanted to give), we decided to use the rewards that we used and gave them in high amounts, which harms the game now. Although it might not feel like it as a player, players get too much for their effort.
We know that players are used to the old tournament rewards. As usual sometimes we have to take stuff away to make the game ready for the future. Now we are able to use the rewards we wanted to give out and we do so.
Why can't the points be cumulative instead of resetting? Many people have been misled by this until they realize it resets and then they have to calculate the true points for each level manually.
Because the progress bar would look terrible in that case. For the first few chests the progress bar would just fill a little bit while the later chests would fill it very quick. Game Design wise nothing is against changing it. It just needs a new UI then because the progress bar would not work. Suggestions for improvements are welcome, as always.
Thank you for responding to our feedback. We finally get the feeling that someone's reading it and taking it serious.
Thank you for saying that. The truth is that we are already reading the player feedback since Closed Beta and have always taken it very seriously. We're working on improving the communication with you though, so you actually know we're reading it and we hope to give you a little bit more understanding about why we make certain changes, by giving you the reasons for it. We're happy to hear it's being appreciated!
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