Discussion Autumn Zodiac

[DeletedUser]

Also, if possible, could you add the same thing for workshops on a tab when you click on the workshop - the levels by chapter.
Love that you reduced the number of productions as well. Can't wait to try this all on live.

 

[Maillie]

The main object of any game is to have fun. We play games to have fun, and we don't mind spending a little now and then for the sake of entertainment. It was always great to be between chapters, or better yet to be finished, and be able to set up size ones to prepare for events. I loved having a list from a fan site to prepare my little workshops and manufactories. I loved finishing the events early and having extra time to work on my city. It was fun.

Building massive Workshops and Manufactories day after day while the event timer is ticking away is the exact opposite of fun.

If the devs can design the crafting so that if you already have one event building you can't make more, then why can't they implement this idea into the events? If you have 1 (or 2) of the same bears you can't get more, and then let us enjoy planning the events like we used to when they were great fun.

 

[DeletedUser1953]

It becomes totally random (on previous event, more steps with less random (2 choices).
On 6 quest, 3x => Do 25 Tournaments encounters or ... => it is not elvenar, it is lotterynar !

 

[DeletedUser2630]

This is also great. You won't let us get it through the marketplace. I have to make it for a total of 9 hours. Whoever invented this event is definitely divorcing the woman who took everything. Otherwise I can't explain the malice. But I enjoy it. I play it just to find another stick that fits under my feet.

 

[DeletedUser1953]

This is also great. You won't let us get it through the marketplace. I have to make it for a total of 9 hours. Whoever invented this event is definitely divorcing the woman who took everything. Otherwise I can't explain the malice. But I enjoy it. I play it just to find another stick that fits under my feet.

View attachment 6300

It is the same as 1 day but with less constrains, it is a good quest for me, and you said even faster (9h in place of 1 day). And the system can not ask 1 day of your current/previous level because after elemental, it is impossible.

 

[Marusia]

I thought I would never ever write anything again, but...

We had a problem with players being able to 'cheat' the system by placing too many workshops and factories then that was intended, this would become a huge problem when we made the quest endless. So we try to tackle this issue on different ways, last event we tried it with 'complete province' quests

...and you failed.

this time we try it with current advancement quests.

Sadly, you will fail again unless you change a thing or two. Please let me tell you that players were not the problem. Your event mechanics was. You have created a "Perpetuum Mobile"-style mechanics that allowed many players to turn your intended pretend-to-be-endless quest cycle into a really endless one.

There are two possibilities: eighter event testers by IG are average players at best and they hit the wall too soon (in other words: at some point they were not able to jump over the "two provinces" hurdle any more) or some event designers by IG suffer under lack of imagination. Well guess what ? Players don't
Leave the quest line endless and some players will always beat the system, they will always find a way to do it. No matter what what you try, no matter what hurdles you put in their way - you will not succeed as far as some players are concerned, but the "normal" casual players will suffer because of these hurdles.

Therefore, please drop the idea of pretend-to-be-endless-quest-line-which-we-try-to-prevent-to-be-endless-anyway. It does't make any sense and since it's going to fail again, it only will punish the majority of players. Moreover, if this event appears on live in this shape and form you will damage the game balance permanently (at least the tournament balance) or even worse: you will have to fix or "rebalance" few things after the damage had been done. It will be possible to obtain more than one powerful Bear of a kind, are you kidding me ? Although "possible" is not the right way to describe it. It WILL happen. One Brown Bear is totally OP in my opinion (as the Fire Phoenix was), but allowing players to have more than one is... I don't know, "careless" is a polite way to describe it, especially the Brown Bear is waaaay to powerful to allow that. You think the reduced amount of pet food will make it impossible to "run" more than one Brown Bear on pet food permanently ? Surprise, surprise. Players are already exchanging some ideas how to deal with it and they will succeed (as I mentioned before, they don't suffer under lack of imagination or creativity).

Few suggestions to make my feedback constructive:

1. It would be reasonable to make some quests easier (e.g. by introducing some reasonable additional alternatives as mentioned by other players).
2. but please make it impossible to get more than one Bear of a kind.
3. or add some REALLY hard quests to the late cycle.
4. or reduce the amount of keys for late cycle quests significantly.
5. Last but not least (as a matter of fact, it's the most important point): the randomness of the quests won't stop players from "cheating" the system (as you put it) unless you remove 4x8h time boosters from the 85-chest. They make it possible to "cheat" in the first place. Using the quest- and the chest system wisely makes it possible to complete nearly every single quest using time boosters and never run out of them. The only thing that can stop you is running out of ressources due to a huge number of map conflicts solved. I tried to estimate the average cost (time boosters are meant) of the late cycle quests in the current event. It's not significanty higher than the cost of Mermaids event cycle quests. Conclusion: you are creating a Perpetuum mobile again (being one of those "cheaters" I know exactly what I'm talking about).
6. Please dont't try it with the endless quest line ever again

It's a bad idea and it will always go wrong, one way or another. You will never be able to balance it properly, you will never be able to prevent some players from finding a way to jump over your hurdles and you will always have a great number of unhappy players as a result. Even those "cheaters" aren't as happy as you might think. Winning literally hundrets of main- and daily prizes, thosands of % in portal instants and thousands of hours in time boosters takes the whole challenge out of the game.

 

[Dony]

I tried to estimate the average cost (time boosters are meant) of the late cycle quests in the current event. It's not significanty higher than the cost of Mermaids event cycle quests.

i would like to see how you estimated this, because you are dead wrong

 

[Marusia]

i would like to see how you estimated this, because you are dead wrong

One has to take into account how much currency you get for completing a quest from the cycle. It's not 64 like in the previous event. it's 104 to 188 for different (random) cycle quests. Take a certain amount of event currency (let's say 3000) and calculate the cost of time boosters you need to spend to "earn" that much. Compare it to the cost of earning 3000 using the last event cycle.

 

[Deleted User - 56274]

It is the same as 1 day but with less constrains, it is a good quest for me, and you said even faster (9h in place of 1 day). And the system can not ask 1 day of your current/previous level because after elemental, it is impossible.

I like this quest. It takes a bit of time and effort which is good, but doesn't have the limitations of factory/chapter level and hopefully scales based on what chapter you are in. I wouldn't mind seeing t2 and t3 versions of it either.

 

[Dony]

Compare it to the cost of earning 3000 using the last event cycle.

and thats the fail part, you can have 50 scouts quests in a row now, you could only have conplete 2 provinces every 10 quests

 

[Lovec Krys]

Oh come on. Another vision vapor quest - that's the third during last 24hrs (out of maybe 5 or max 10 quests).
Now that totaly ruins statistics about recipes which are being crafted. If it wasn't a choice between crafting garbage or wait until morning, I would have never crafted any of that garbage I'm crafting now.

@Dony if that's true, than the developer behind this great idea should definitively be fired for his great work (or promoted to the cleaning lady post).

 

[Deleted User - 60657]

After two years, I came back to the live server and if you're serious, I'm leaving again. And I'm happy I didn't buy dia. Do I get Fenix artifacts or a bear? There is no point playing this game and losing your nerves. So little is enough. Start production and take production and it doesn't matter if I have 1 manufactory or 10.

 

[Marusia]

and thats the fail part, you can have 50 scouts quests in a row now, you could only have conplete 2 provinces every 10 quests

You are right, but still, is that supposed to be a valid argument in your opinion ? You can have 0 scout quests out of 1000 as well. You asked me how I estimated it and you got your answer. Estimating means, by definition. using average numbers, chances and probabilities and.(in this particular case) calculating average cost per certain amount of currency, where cost = time.

 

[Maillie]

If we have to add Boosted Manufactories and high level Workshops to complete quests, why are we not told what the maximum numbers of these useless things are that we will need? My level 33 Workshops require 4,881 population each. My top level houses only provide 3900 population. Obviously, with Manufactories needing nearly 5k pop each, I'm going to not only need massive new buildings but also enormous houses to provide population. Am I supposed to take a wild guess as to how many?

This feels quite unfair when the problem was caused by a lack of programming, limiting the number of receivable event prizes in the past, which we, as players, had nothing to do with. We are not the problem, we are the result of a problem.

I set up all of my Workshops for Toolboxes. Before they were finished I got a quest out of the blue asking for 9-hour Workshops. This is not fun, this is frustration, along with an uneasiness that the next quest will require Toolboxes.

 

[DeletedUser2406]

I think that there are some issues with this event. But mostly the problems arise from the "endless missions" system.
I understand that you want to control the maximum amount of missions that a single player can do, but if you need this, why make the missions endless? You could simply guarantee that the last set of missions can be done a lot of times, so that the most intense players play it up to the end, but most of the players never reach that limit. Put a high limit, otherwise you make the event less playable for most of the players only to avoid that some of the most "addicted to the game" exagerate with the missions. Maybe there is no sense in taking too many bears, but you can't avoid it by forcing most of the players to never finish the first one.
Moreover an endless set of missions is very difficult to manage, since starting players and players at the end of the research tree have very different requirements.
I don't understand why you are not making different requirements for the different chapters. I mean, wholly different missions. That could allow you to make balanced sets of missions for the starting and the experienced player.
And I agree with Marusia: some player will bypass every barrier you try to set up against winning too many prices, if you give the possibility of endless missions. Your only weapon is to give an end to the event. Or you could increase continuously the requirements for the missions, so that the players stop because the cost of the missions becomes too high.

I have also to say that the idea that the players are "cheating" by building level 1 labs or manifactures is foolish. And it is also foolish the fact that you seems to notice the problem only now. It is years that I build level 1 building when I need it, I can't believe you think this is "cheating".

Regarding the use of high level buildings for the missions, I don't agree. You give us event buildings producing T1 goods, but on the other side we need a lot of high level T1 manufactures only for the events? It seems that you want to force us to occupy more space in the city (i.e. to buy expansions). But I think it would be more efficient to offer some truly unique/special buildings/effect for diamonds, that you cannot obtain in other ways. We all know Inno must earn money to continue developing the game, but why spend money if I can obtain the same things in other ways?

 

[palmira]

After the bugged quest I got the 6th "Scout one province; no alternative". I was lucky with the 142 keys chest, got 3x 500 keys plus 1x200 but I am very far from 5 artefacts. I will surely have some more scouting to do until I run out of time instants but maybe I will be able to get my bear close to fully upgraded here on beta. Live scouting a province is over 6d; scouting 6 provinces is over 36d, well above the time limit for the event and I have nowhere near that amount of time instants so no way I will get one bear close to fully upgraded. The worst event ever indeed and if the next ones will be on this format time to start looking for a new game, it is really frustrating to have events one can't do.

 

[maxiqbert]

this event is not going to make any money for you inno
the previous was too generous, making $$ useless
this one is too greedy, making $$ useless

 

[Marindor]

Hi guys,

Thank you all once again for your feedback so far. We are currently in the process of investigating it and comparing it to our data to see if there are indeed things that need tweaking. A few things I'd like to emphasize here:

I see some players calling themselves "the problem", but these are definitely not our words The simple fact is that the old system had some flaws which in combination with the endless quest system leads to events that are balanced too easy. Let's face it: The Summer Mermaids event was simply too easy to rush through. That doesn't mean that you, as a player, are "a problem" or were "abusing" the system. The mechanics gave you the opportunity to build a lot of level 1 buildings to easily get through these quests, and as a player it was only smart to do so. However, it is an event strategy, which we found out, that we can't maintain with our current setup anymore. Players, like in Summer, who can relatively easily get 5-6 reward buildings at max level is not the situation we want. Getting the reward building at max should still be quite some effort, so we need to find a way to adjust the quests to this new system, so that it both provides a challenge, yet does maintain the abilty for very active players to get more rewards (in this case evolution artifacts) than casual players. For us this is a new situation as well and we're still exploring how to tune everything just right. Summer Mermaids was way too easy, which was lucky for you of course, and now we're trying to find the so called "sweet spot". As said, this means things can still change based on both feedback and data, but it's kind of an exploration for us as well.

The other point I'd like to address is the players who actually seem to be surprised that certain quests are meant to slow you down in the event progress. If you could just solve all quests endlessly in a row, we'd again get to an event which is way too easy. The events are meant to provide you with a challenge to really try to get your main reward building at the max level. This means that there will always be quests that require more time from you (either with the need for high level workshops, scouting or any other similar things). You have rightfully pointed out that the scouting condition can really take a very long time for high level players, especially without any alternative, so we're actively looking into that at the moment, but other than that, please understand that there will always be some quests which are put in place to slow you down and require some more effort to get through or e.g. make it attractive for you to use some time boosters on. The event is there for several weeks and in the end you will get enough event currency as an active player, even with the quests that are meant to slow you down a bit. Another option would be to remove all these quests and drastically lower the event currency you get per quest, resulting in needing to do e.g. 3 times more quests, which will then result in everyone complaining that the events wear them out so much

So as you see, balancing these things is not always as easy as it seems but hopefully this explanation puts things a bit more in perspective, since we're a Beta community here so I think it's important to understand how things work from our side as well As said: We're still reading and investigating all the feedback, researching our analytics and data and changes might still be made, so please keep any suggestions coming so that in the end we can find a solution everyone is happy with before the event goes to live. Thank you all for taking the time

 

[Deleted User - 60107]

The more time passes the more it becomes obvious that the problem lies in the endless quests. Because endless quests == endless event currency == too many rewards.

Clearly whoever came up with the idea for endless quests (and also whoever approved the use of that idea) did not consider all the consequences of such a system. And the worst part is that this whole thing could have been easily avoided: All you had to do was ask us about it BEFORE implementing it. Many, many, MANY, players would have pointed out what I wrote above: endless quests == endless event currency == too many rewards.

If you want to be able to control how many rewards we get: Go back to having a limited number of quests. If you won't go back, at least let us build Residences, Workshops and Manufactories directly from our Chapter instead of having to spend WEEKS (literally, in some cases) upgrading them from level 1.


EDIT: Just saw this post on the EN forum:

I was creating a table for my FS about the minimum WS levels for the event and how long it takes to get to them from scratch. And I came up with this list:
Dwarves: 35h 32m,
Fairies - 106h 58m,
Orcs - 138h 26m,
Woodelves - 174h 49m,
S&D - 213h 47m,
Halflings - 255h 52m,
Elementals - 299h 50m,
Amuni - 345h 43m,
Constructs - 394h 58m.

And I can't even... Being in elementals, I'll be lucky if I get 5 workshops ready before the event, and that's with the two weeks notice and five builders. And if I manage to time this between sleeping and working just right to not have any pauses. And that's not to mention the need to build additional manufactories. Are they serious? Giving players lot's of opportinities to make an efficient city without workshops by providing us with AWs, event buildings and supply instants and then make an event that require buildings that take literally hundreds of hours to build. One of the worst game design choices I've seen, the person who came up with this bright idea should be fired.
I wonder how the players who don't read the forums would react to this madness once the event starts.

Source: https://en.forum.elvenar.com/index....-may-contain-spoilers.5411/page-64#post-63586

I hope there's been an error in the time calculations for the list I quoted because if not... more than two WEEKS... *shakes head*

 

[DeletedUser2865]

Strange, today from quest 50 => 81 ... Inno changes sth ? or ... i will go to the lotto's site ^^