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Beta server is in trouble

Alcaro

Well-Known Member
Today I was checking in Elvenstats possible FSs for merging.
To my surprise (more like dismay), I found over 10 FS completely inactive and other dozens with just 1 or 2 active players (if they are still there, it means they login once a week and didn't even notice the rest of the guild is dead). Just to be clear, I looked at FSs with at least 10 members.

Is @InnoGames planning to do something to make this server a bit more attractive? Lots of new players are parking their cities in low(er) chapters or worse, they abandon the game entirely since there's not much to test here, there's Zero enticing new features and Zero reward for playing in advance new events.

Also, reading the Forum, I noticed that many of the known and very known players are gone or posting once in a blue moon.

Opinions??
 

Heffernan

Well-Known Member
a friend of mine described beta server as a train stop server - next stop beta, 10 minutes.
he was referring to players who have several accounts live servers. he has in maybe two and a half years been in a few fellowships and in his oppinion that is quite widespread, many just don’t play beta as dedicated as they do live server - chats are very quiet.

i myself have made a couple of attempts starting a new account during this year. i know basically what to do, but i found the starting chapters so absolutely boring grind that i just had to stop and delete the accos. so i wonder what the players really new to this game are thinking. oh, and those accos were beta accos.

and my main account… i’ve been trying to muster energy to go on with the chapter i’m in (was it 15 or 16, can’t remeber) i stopped in the early stages when i felt that i just don’t feel like spending best part of the year doing that same chapter just to get to another one of the same.
so, just a habit coming here, playing tourneys, events and reporting back to live server fs. i do spend more than 10 mins per stop and do make 2 or 3 stops per day in case your wondering. but not really entertained.
 
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TomatoeHu

Well-Known Member
chapters 1- 5 were just redone, much less of a grind now. I encouraged as many Live server players to join and test that out but in the end i believe a lot of players have just the right number of cities and playing full time on Beta will break that rhythm or add a wee bit more stress in daily play ( as a gold spire & tourney player ).

Beta is also a place to test new things, and that has slowed down in my opinion. I am not complaining. I like that we got a new mini game but when there is nothing new to test, Beta slows down and people go back to playing more competitively on Live Servers.

As for missing players on the forums, sometimes Real Life is just more demanding sometimes.
In the past 6 months, Soggy and I have lived in 3 different countries, we barely know what time it is or the day of the week or what language... But I will let him know you miss him ;)
 

ekarat

Well-Known Member
Today I was checking in Elvenstats possible FSs for merging.
To my surprise (more like dismay), I found over 10 FS completely inactive and other dozens with just 1 or 2 active players (if they are still there, it means they login once a week and didn't even notice the rest of the guild is dead). Just to be clear, I looked at FSs with at least 10 members.

Is @InnoGames planning to do something to make this server a bit more attractive? Lots of new players are parking their cities in low(er) chapters or worse, they abandon the game entirely since there's not much to test here, there's Zero enticing new features and Zero reward for playing in advance new events.

Also, reading the Forum, I noticed that many of the known and very known players are gone or posting once in a blue moon.

Opinions??
I suspect that a lot of it is that there is no new chapter.
 

Alcaro

Well-Known Member
You need an account to post on the forums,

So 1 reason to have a useless city on beta is for the forum account
beta is not a "play server" at least not for me. more to see new things in game, or to dig into the gamefiles
As I said - Beta server is in trouble.

Beta might not be a "play server" per se but if the server would be populated only with little cities or dead ones then how things can be tested?
You say that your goal was to have a forum account? I ask you ... why? You are not testing anything, you are just looking at new things and dig in the game files. How can you have an objective perspective about something if you don't use it?

I have a very different opinion about what a testing server should be and this one is far far away from that. It's not the fault of the players, I think it's the fault of Inno Games. No rules were established: who can play here, what are the obligations and the rights of the players and not last, how the players-testers are rewarded.
 

Prueba2

Well-Known Member
I have a very different opinion about what a testing server should be and this one is far far away from that. It's not the fault of the players, I think it's the fault of Inno Games. No rules were established: who can play here, what are the obligations and the rights of the players and not last, how the players-testers are rewarded.
Neither, how new features are supposed to work (according to design), in order to be able to identify bugs or other non-conformities.
 

salandrine

Well-Known Member
I am using Beta only for new things, just to spread this news to my Guild at live. I am at lvl16 now and I have no clue to play this level again. Its so boring and taking a lot of my time, so I had it on live, not needing it again at beta.

I just test the news and take the experience to my guild and my playing the live server.

I am still a little bit active, but not interested in playing i.e. an event very succesfully or a FS adenture extremly, as I do on live. And also I am not interested in spending money, because I wont get a rabatt for expensions or something else at Beta. I have more than 11.ooo diamonds in stock, waiting for a reason to spend this dias, which will never come.

Even I am not very interested in earning Diamonds, because there is no reason to spend them.
 

Deleted User - 101740

Guest
chapters 1- 5 were just redone, much less of a grind now.
It's the opposite imo. It's now so slow & boring. Each day is just the chore of collecting goods and fulfilling quest requirements. Without tourney & spire there's nothing to do, events are far more limited because its impossible to get spell frags or huge numbers of relics event quests ask for.
 

Jammin

Well-Known Member
The game is developing very slowly, beta is not dying out, beta just fell asleep from boredom.
For me, the chapters after 15 aren't that important or interesting anymore, yes you can do them, but they're also terribly boring.
I would like more features like the spire...give me a dungeon, let me in the mountain, I want to spank dwarves or help the dwarves spank something else to win something usable.
Gives me an inn where I can play cards with my guild and win something or other games or play against other players from other guilds with individually definable stakes or predetermined stakes.
I want to fight pirates on the coast or look for treasure on the island behind the Spire
Gives me a minigame that I have to complete in 30 days to get a fat prize... more to do!

then Beta will surely wake up again ;)
 
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Deleted User - 101740

Guest
The game is developing very slowly, beta is not dying out, beta just fell asleep from boredom.
For me, the chapters after 15 aren't that important or interesting anymore, yes you can do them, but they're also terribly boring.
I would like more features like the spire...give me a dungeon, let me in the mountain, I want to spank dwarves or help the dwarves spank something else to win something usable.
Gives me an inn where I can play cards with my guild and win something or other games or play against other players from other guilds with individually definable stakes or predetermined stakes.
I want to fight pirates on the coast or look for treasure on the island behind the Spire
Gives me a minigame that I have to complete in 30 days to get a fat prize... more to do!

then Beta will surely wake up again ;)
I really like the mini game idea. I sometimes play hidden object games which feature mini games that stay available (but with no additional prize) once you've solved them. Imagine how much more interesting elvenar would be if you had something like that here.
 

Laurelin-Beta

Well-Known Member
@Alcaro : Well said, and all very true. Being me, though, I will go further - if anyone wants to know my [not too lengthy, this time] opinion.

Nobody's going to like my viewpoint - and I won't re-hash all of the reasons why Elvenar's Beta Server is a test server in name only (the primary and very obvious reason being the fact that Beta players must buy [or grind for] Diamonds, and must also produce, themselves, at the standard slow in-game pace, all 'free' in-game Resources, too - rather than being freely given both of those, in unlimited amounts, to do real, broad-spread testing, as is the case on every other game test server of my experience) - not only this, but also, in my [long-standing] opinion, the main reason why the Beta Server and therefore its Forum are both dying is the same reason why the rest of the English-language Forums [I don't know about any others] are also dying; namely, because Inno wants it to be so.

Inno are, I am sure, never unaware - far from it, in fact - of their no doubt very detailed in-game and Forum data. They aren't making some kind of strangely amateurish mistake or misjudgement.. about this, or about anything else, in fact. Examples would include : the 2020 Tourney Formula and its inbuilt 'lever' effect - the end-Chapter grind - the [new] early-Chapter grind - the negative impact of re-valuing Rune Shards - all of it.

It's become quite apparent, over about two years, that Inno now sees Elvenar as a mobile game, with a few still-lucrative/influential browser-based players. And on that basis, consider how most [other] prominent mobile gaming companies typically behave with respect to testing:

- Do most mobile games not even have a public test server, or any forums at all, unless you can call Social Meeja and/or easily ignored or brushed-off Play Store reviews 'forums' of sorts? Instead, do mobile games instead always publish their news, PR material, and 'player incentives' on FB or similar - or in Inno's case, either parallel with or, increasingly, before/instead of on their Forums?

- When changes to the game require testing, do mobile games simply impose game changes upon their Live playerbase, usually without announcement (unless the change is meant to be a high-profile revenue-earner, such as Events), and then test the changes themselves, often via randomised so-called A/B testing and metrics [and in some cases also by auto-scraping key-words from various comment sources, as well]?

The answer to both is : Yes, they do this, whether or not [most of] their players realise any/all of it. And has Inno gradually moved to doing all of the above, even though they have access to an expert, voluntary, playerbase, here, who are more than happy to test extensively for them? Yes.

With specific reference to the Beta Forum (and subsequently the EN Forum too - and ? I think also the US) : Did Inno, a while back, 'un-person' any Forum member - including many of Elvenar's most expert and vocal commentators [and critics...] - by suddenly deciding that all accounts which did not log into the Forum within one month would be deleted (actually : renamed as DeletedUserXXXX) - as I've never seen any other Net forum do, in 30+ years? - meaning that even if new players join the Forum, searching for old content has become extremely difficult? Yes.

And do Inno very rarely invite players, in-game, to start a Beta Account - and if so, almost always when content Inno wants to promote is being 'tested' - or, more accurately, voluntarily bug-hunted, since the comments Beta players are invited to make are so rarely actually heeded? Yes.

Are the two English-language Live Forums always told, when players try to address the developers, that Inno's devs don't read the Forums? Yes.

Has anyone ever seen a comment from a developer on any Forum? To my knowledge : No, but if anyone knows any differently, I'd love to know.

And does any of this indicate that Inno values its Beta players' opinions, as of course a normal test server's community is highly valued?... No.

I'm not a prophet, so I can be wrong, but I see a very deliberate effort here, on Inno's part, to sideline the Beta Server, Forum, and community.
 
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Bor de Wolf 1965

Well-Known Member
In the past I have played on a couple test servers.
They gave me the option to start a new game AND to copy my normal game to the test server as well.
The only rule was I had to level up on the new game to test that part as well and do some end game levelling/playing as well.
Also a rule was, if you stopped for 2 month levelling/playing on 1 of the 2 accounts, both were blocked from beta including your beta forum access.

Why can't this be done here?
  1. you have a bunch of high chapter players ready for in this case chapter 20.
  2. you have also a lot of players testing the new beginner chapters as well.
  3. and only active players can use the forum.
I would say a double win for Inno and we as players will have the bonus of using our main account town as an template for the new/higher chapters, including all the stuff we have collected over the years we play this game.
 

Dorfl the Clay

Well-Known Member
According to me, everyone can use the betagame and betaforum for any purpose and/or as they see fit and are free to do so, as long as they comply with 'the rules'... Nobody has any obligation towards the owners (Inno) or moderators or any other player to use the betagame and/or betaforum in a certain way or to please anyones standards or assumptions.
 

Laurelin-Beta

Well-Known Member
According to me, everyone can use the betagame and betaforum for any purpose and/or as they see fit and are free to do so, as long as they comply with 'the rules'... Nobody has any obligation towards the owners (Inno) or moderators or any other player to use the betagame and/or betaforum in a certain way or to please anyones standards or assumptions.
And that is [near enough] what I was describing in my longer post above - because the Elvenar Beta Server - by Inno's (? in my experience) unique Beta Server [and Forum] rules - is just another Live Server, with another Live Forum. All other Beta Servers and Forums of my own and acquaintances' experience - in the entire software industry, not just in gaming - have very different rules, with definite expectations of their test players - and so usually produce definite - and very different - results from the results (and purposes) of Live Servers. And unless that changes - nothing else will change.
 

TomatoeHu

Well-Known Member
It's the opposite imo. It's now so slow & boring. Each day is just the chore of collecting goods and fulfilling quest requirements. Without tourney & spire there's nothing to do, events are far more limited because its impossible to get spell frags or huge numbers of relics event quests ask for.
This is not the features that changed, the KP requirements were reduced. Main quests remain declinable after completing the advanced scouts so skip the quests if you don't like them. The game does not expect pre-race chapters to complete events, participation is only what they offer. Diamonds guarantee everything, and elvenar is more of a pay to play game everyday. If you spire weekly to the top, you will acquire free diamonds to spend how you like.
 

Deleted User - 101740

Guest
This is not the features that changed, the KP requirements were reduced. Main quests remain declinable after completing the advanced scouts so skip the quests if you don't like them. The game does not expect pre-race chapters to complete events, participation is only what they offer. Diamonds guarantee everything, and elvenar is more of a pay to play game everyday. If you spire weekly to the top, you will acquire free diamonds to spend how you like.
Not only kp reduced. Spire & tourney are massively delayed so players must rely on quests for resources (very bad advice to decline them). Also, new tech tree cities don't have cycling requests to gain coin & supplies like the other cities.
Your advice to climb the spire is moot given Im not ch 5 yet.
 
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