Discussion Changes in declining quests

[DeletedUser778]

Repeating the same one or two quests all day long reaches none of these goals, which is why we made the decision to change that. Did we do that in the right way? Maybe, but judging from your feedback, there is still some more work to be done to make the system perfect.

Apparently not...
I can totally understand why there should be something changed with the repeatable quest, especially with the highly exploitable, but how it was done is almost like diasbling sidequest at all, without asking for feedback in the first place and without a heads-up...

Elvenar is not meant to be played through within a few weeks. It is meant to be able to enjoy for many months. Also, see it as a new challenge: building the buildings in your city to make your economy thrive on its own, without relying on sidequests all the time (or did you enjoy doing the same quest over and over and over?).

It is a fact that over half a year it was intended and not a bug that repeatable quest are declinable and now from one day to another you almost totally shut down this type of income a lot of players and especially the most highly developed players are used too.
For players in the early and middle stage of the game it should be not so hard because they, can compensate by planning their growing city differently.

I put a lot effort into planning my city and was glad I "only" had to think about using space efficient, a good balance between the production of different tiers of goods, using culture and population efficient so I wouldn't have a large surplus of one and a quite good look...
and I din't had to think about supplies so much because of the possibilities of side quest.

Resulting in this plan

Spoiler

And this ingame transposition

Spoiler

It already changed in the developement that I wanted to stick with level 10/11 manufactories to have a little population/culture surplus for further techtree improvements and i decided to have one level 7 armory less and therefore a workshop more, but even when I finish my plan (4 level 15 workshops to go on the still missing expansions, for a total of twelve) I would only produce 50% of my supply needs.
I feared a new techtree improvement and possible new expansions a little bit, because I would have to rethink a lot, but it would still be a 100% functioning city.
Now it's 50% broken.
I think with my kind of planning I am one of <10% of all players, but I think still a lot of players (near) at the end of the tech tree have build their city to their likes without looking at supplies so much and now they would have to sell stuff, rearange, build new workshops... so a lot of effort is wasted and frustration is at hand, so probably some more leave too.

Elvenar is not meant to be played through within a few weeks. It is meant to be able to enjoy for many months. Also, see it as a new challenge: building the buildings in your city to make your economy thrive on its own, without relying on sidequests all the time (or did you enjoy doing the same quest over and over and over?).

I played over half a year now (with temporaly really excessive use of repeatables) and I am still doing my scout thing: Going for far away boosted relics/neighbours first before they get impossible and still need 1-2 month of scouting until I have all at the moment possible expansions, so even with exploiting the sidequest it will take way longer then weeks.
I don't know if it is under the definition of doing the same quest over and over, to do a couple of quests twice after a 3h production, but yes I enjoyed it more or less, especially the gain 2k of type x goods, while i was on the hunt for relics I was always exited how much my production will raise and when I will hit the boostrate that makes it possible to do these quests twice after a 3h production. So now after reaching this boostrate it always filled me with some kind of pride doing these quests, because I know I worked hard for it on the worldmap (sounds a little wiered, but I don't know how to exactly express it )

I guess now it's time for getting headache by city planing 2.0
Think about using space efficient, a good balance between the production of different tiers of goods, using culture and population efficient so I wouldn't have a large surplus of one, a quite good look and think about how to put in enough workshops for supplies to make sidequests useless.

PS: For your next improvement: Change the sorceress ability from one day to another. I know it is OP and there should be done something about it. It is unfair for us elves to have this nice ability to make some of the far out extremly hard encounters a little bit more doable, even if it is more a combat problem of far away provinces.

PPS: If you wonder why I am still building a garden of harmony... I started to go on with the main quest a couple of days ago and there was this nice quest to have a temple of ages and it was not enough that i had half a dozent some time back.... NO NO NO I had to sell a garden, to build a temple just to sell it again to build the garden again...

PPPS: This repeatable quest thing should have been adressed a lot earlier. I was around the middle of the tree, when I first realized it and looking in the forum it was stated as intended and therefore not forbidden, so I started to use it and spread the word too, even it felt a little wrong.
So with the repeatable and their usefullness coming up every now and then in the forum it should have got attention from the devs way earlier.
It is a thing that shouln't have come to the live servers and makes the feel that the game went live way to early even bigger. I don't know how big or small Inno is and if there is a boss setting up deadlines and stuff to squeeze semi finished/not really thought through stuff into time schedules, without being part of the development at all, but I have the feeling there must be something like it, otherwise I can't image how the devs can come up with such "improvements"

 

[DeletedUser802]

This discussion continues to amaze us: the amount of feedback is overwhelming. Keep it coming, please!

I have been following this entire thread, and already posted my opinion earlier. I dislike this change-----I believe that putting artificial delays into the game will only annoy players. Quests are declined for good reasons, which have been discussed in earlier posts. If the designers actually want to make quests more interesting and entertaining, why not make the rewards something special, not just coins or supplies?

How about something like this:

How about quest rewards that offer special troops---- not something that you make yourself in your barracks, but a special kind of troops that can only be won in quests.

A quest reward that offers a certain amount of permanent increase in your city’s cultural level? This increase would have to change, depending on the level of your city. When you have a brand new city, a cultural increase of 300 is wonderful, but when you get to the more advanced levels, that amount would be useless.

A reward of a special building or decoration (similar to the kind of thing done in Forge of Empires as prizes in Special Holiday Events.) The building or decoration should be beautiful, making it something that you want in your city. It should also offer a decent benefit, whether coins, or supplies, culture, population or whatever.

How about a quest reward that gives you a certain amount of permanent population increase? Like the sort of thing that is offered by some of the “diamonds only” cultural buildings. Again, this would have to increase as your city advanced. In a new city, a population increase of 100 is great, but in later levels, it is nothing.

How about a reward that offers a “free” upgrade or scouting? So that you could use it to upgrade a building, or scout a province, but not pay for it?

In my cities, the population strolling the streets keeps disappearing. But regardless, how about a quest reward that offered a special kind of people or creatures to walk the streets of your city? Something like “Congratulations! 5 unicorns have come in from the forest, and will now be seen galloping in your city!” or “My Lord! A group of Tree Ents have arrived to visit our city. They will be walking around and seeing the sights!” or “My Liege! One of our mages has conjured a dragon and it is flying over our city!” or something like that. I would love to see some different creatures walking around in my city. Yes, I know---that would not give any "real" benefit to a city, but I think that many players---myself for one----would like to see things in our cities that are simply attractive or interesting.

Some different and unique quest rewards would make quests more interesting and fun to work on. You can always get coins, supplies, and goods in other ways, but what about offering special things that you can only get via the quests?

One other note: At one point, a manager stated that they wanted to make the quests more "challenging". Whenever I hear that word "challenging" it makes me shudder! Basically what "challenging" means to me is that you are going to drop me into a large pile of crap and watch me wallow. In other words, it means something that is difficult, demanding, expensive and ultimately unrewarding! So how about we keep the "challenging" to a bare minimum?

I must agree with many other posts here: quite a lot of players here in beta are advanced to the point of finishing the Research Tree, have upgraded all building to the maximum of level 15, and have used up the last expansion. We have tens of thousands of goods stockpiled with nothing to do with them. We cannot accumulate more Knowledge points and there is no reason to accumulate more relics. So, basically, our game has ground to a halt. My fellowship, when it first opened, was very active. It was fabulous to talk and trade with my fellow members. But now, most of my fellowship has reached the end of the game, and one by one, members of the fellowship have fallen silent. Back in April I asked the moderators is there was going to be an extension of the Research Tree, and was told the designers were "working" on it. Well here we are 5 months later, and there is still no extension of the game in site. I really ,really think that the designers need to start coming up with something to extend the game. Otherwise, players get to the "end", and after awhile, stop logging in.

Frankly, it surprises me that the designers were apparently surprised at how fast players can blaze though the game. I wonder why, since this is the exact same thing that happened in Forge of Empires. The designers seemed to think that it should take about a year for a player to advance though the entire Tech Tree to the end, when it really only takes about 5 months, if you keep at it. When I began playing Elvenar, I was totally enchanted (no pun intended) and played a lot. So I advanced quickly. Since I am retired, I have more free time to play, so that also helped me to advance more quickly. So I banged into the termination point of the game just as quickly. But putting artificial roadblocks in my way, who's only function was to delay my playing, would not have made it better. It would have served only to aggravate me, and make me less inclined to stick with the game. The thing the designers need to do is not to try to control how their customers play, or how fast, but to stay ahead of the consumer demand, just as every other business strives to do.

When I got stalled here in beta, I opened a new city on the USA server. I now have four cities in total, and will eventually face the same problem in all four----hitting the dead end. I would really like to see some of the new things that the designers have been promising for months and months.

 

[DeletedUser778]

One positive thing about the change:
The fair trading ratings between different tiers of goods feel more realistic for the first time ever

 

[DeletedUser867]

There are some pretty indignant soapboxes around, and they SHOULD NOT be allowed to carry the day. I'm delighted that a cork has been jammed into the Declinable Quest strategy/exploit/call-it-what-you-will bunghole. I enjoy city builders, and I prefer challenges that are related to the structure of my city, rather than "how to run up your personal score."

This is NOT any sort of surprise. The question, for a couple of months now, has been not IF the quest cycling clickfest would be blocked, but rather when and how. Here's a quote, from more than a month ago in the US forum at https://us.forum.elvenar.com/index.php?threads/greed.503/page-2#post-4496

I have a sneaking suspicion that repeatable quests are going to get nerfed in a future update...

That said, there are a couple of adjustments that I would indeed like to see.

• Quests related to buildings should be skipped if ALL of my associated buildings are already at the current maximum level, depending on where I am in the tech tree. If I want the repeatable quest, for some reason, it's easy enough to hold one of my buildings at less than max level.
• Military quests should be sensitive to how many troops of that type are already available. The quest could perhaps require you to double the number of troops that are currently on-hand. Folks would then need to make a strategic decision: do they use the quest ahead of time, and get LOTS of troops, or do they use the quest after a battle, when they need to replenish their troops anyway.
  
  
• I don't regard a decline timer nor a once-per-day limit as a useful approach.
  
  
• There should be a counter on each of the repeatable quests, and after perhaps a dozen cycles they should not be offered any more. This would introduce some strategy into the use of your repeatable quests, because you'd want to use them to your best advantage.
• We should be able to opt-out of a declinable quest so that we don't have to decline it repeatedly.

 

[DeletedUser408]

wow and it seems the declining penalty gets worst, my 1st decline with 13hrs and now my second decline is 21hrs, This is just fantastic

 

[DeletedUser867]

wow and it seems the declining penalty gets worst, my 1st decline with 13hrs and now my second decline is 21hrs, This is just fantastic

The declines all reset at midnight server time.

 

[DeletedUser]

I have my next three days of declining lined up ;-)

 

[DeletedUser802]

In an earlier post, one of the managers asked for specific examples of quests that are usually declined due to them being more trouble than they are worth. So I wanted to post one that I just got hung up on. I just got the quest "produce 3 potions" for magic elixir. Now, fulfilling this quest using the elixir buildings that I already have is just not worth the time or the trouble. My elixir buildings are at level 15, and to make each required "potion" costs over 183 thousand coins and over 18 thousand supplies, and takes 24 hours. The coins are not the problem---the supplies are. If I use that many supplies to put one Elixir building into one 24 hour cycle, I will not be able to run any of my other goods buildings, since it will use up all of my supplies. So I will not be able to produce any goods at all in the next 24 hours until I spend many hours producing more supplies. And it will take 3 days to complete the quest if I use one elixir building, and 1 day if I use all three. Except of course, that I cannot run more than one at a time because the cost in supplies is so high. So I am wasting not only my elixir buildings, but all of my other goods buildings as well, since they must all still idle until I can gather many more thousands of supplies. And the reward for fulfilling this quest? a great big 200 elixir and 20 thousand coins!

Consider me underwhelmed. Does anyone need to ask why I usually delete such a quest? Does the law of diminishing returns ring a bell with anyone?

I usually never use the 24hr choice in the goods buildings menu----it simply is not worth it. You get far too few goods for far too much cost in time and resources. Frankly the cost to run higher level buildings is just too high. But now, since I cannot decline this quest, I have no choice.

Now there are other options, but neither is really attractive. I can build 3 new elixir buildings, (at the cost of population, space, coins and supplies) and leave them at level 1, and then use them to fulfill the quest. Then delete them when the quest is over. Which again costs me in time and resources for a miserly reward.

Or I can wait 18 hours to decline the quest. To get another that might be just as bad.

Faced with a short list of very unattractive choices, I will just have to wait the 18 hours for another quest. At this rate, I can see myself actually taking a quest maybe once or twice a week.

Now, of course, here in beta my city is at the highest level, so I really don't have anywhere to go. But I have other, younger cities in other "worlds" where I am still actively playing.

That being the case, I really take exception to the statement that players like myself are "abusing" the quest system. At no time was anything published or announced that you are only allowed one quest a day. If you did not want us to delete quests that were not attractive to us, then why give us the option? Playing smart is not the same thing as cheating. Let me give you an example of how I play.

I have just logged into the game after leaving it run for the night. All my buildings were on a 9 hour cycle. Now everything is ready for "harvesting". The quest system gives me a chance to get a bonus for each of the different collections. I decline quests until I get the one that says "gather xxxx coins" . I then harvest all of my residences, which allows me to fulfill the quest, and get the reward of supplies. I then decline quests until I get to the quest that asks me to "gather xxxx goods"---I then harvest all my goods buildings, thereby fulfilling the quest and getting the reward. And so on and so forth. This is not using the quest system as a major supplier of resources. Frankly the rewards offered are just not big enough for them to stand as a major supply of anything. But they are an attractive bonus on the goods, coins and supplies that you have spent time and resources working for, and are now ready to collect. Why not use the quests to get whatever bonus you can? Most especially in younger cities, where supplies are very short, and are required for everything you do. In many cases, going though the quests to get the bonuses every time I was ready to "harvest" let me afford to set my goods buildings running again for another cycle, or afford that upgrade, or pay for opening that new tech, or build that cultural building.

Far too many of the quests are simply not worth the investment in time and resources. It makes no sense to accept them. They are designed strictly to delay the players game, and for no other reason that I can discern.

If the designers do not want players to decline so many quests, I have to suggest that the quests themselves need to be drastically re-designed. They have to be shorter in duration, and make some sort of sense. Why, for example, would I want to make 500 sorceresses? By the time your city is at an advanced level, the troops in AI so far outnumber mine, and are so much stronger, with boosts that I cannot equal, that there is no point in battling for territory. Your only option is to negotiate. So I have no use for 500 sorceresses, or any other kind of troops, since I will not be using them. Why spend 4 days and thousands of supplies producing something that I don't want, don't need, and won't use?

Players will accept quests that best fit their cities and their playing choice. What is wrong with that?

Another thing, if the designers want to make quests attractive, they need to give them way better rewards. Again, it is the law of diminishing returns. Why should I invest enormous amounts of resources, space, population and hours or days of time, in return for a miserly reward that is worth only a tiny fraction of what I spent to earn it? It is like giving someone a $100 bill in return for a $1 bill. It just makes no sense. Why not come up with quests that are fun, or interesting, and make you want to work on them? I already posted a few suggestions as to what could be offered as special or different quest rewards in an earlier post, so I take up room repeating it here.

Instead of putting artificial road blocks in the path of players, that they have to labor to get past----why not offer intriguing detours, that players will want to spend time taking?

 

[DeletedUser590]

If the designers do not want players to decline so many quests, I have to suggest that the quests themselves need to be drastically re-designed. They have to be shorter in duration, and make some sort of sense.

I can understand that position of Inno not wanting players using quests as a huge cash machine... But then Inno chose an easy, lazy and bad solution, that is penalize players and impoverish the game.
A little bit more imagination and work would be appreciated.

 

[DeletedUser1037]

2. Day and again nothing to do or to gain for me.

 

[DeletedUser1348]

you guyz do realize that muf-muf will will back-fire every affirmation you make because it's his job to say "no we don't care about what you say, it will remain as we want" in a very polite manner. In my opinion this is a game-breaker considering the huge amounts of supply and coins that are needed for production and army buildings. instead of including more content so we can spend the resources from the quests, they have decided to ruin the quests and make us return only once per day to collect the 1day resource cycle. SHAME ELVENAR TEAM AND INNO! You killed this game faster that FoE, Gratz!

 

[DeletedUser651]

@michelelyons that was very well explained!!

 

[Preator]

It was intended that the quests were possible to skip an unlimited amount of times, which is why we said it is not a bug. And it was not, and still is not. But, it is not intended that the quests are used as an unlimited supply of coins and supplies, or making it possible to do the same quests over and over again, just for the rewards. We want quests to be engaging, challenging and most of all fun to complete. Repeating the same one or two quests all day long reaches none of these goals, which is why we made the decision to change that. Did we do that in the right way? Maybe, but judging from your feedback, there is still some more work to be done to make the system perfect. This is why we are having this conversation with you now, and will continue to have this conversation with you for as long as is necessary. We want invest our time in making this feature work in a way that everyone is happy with. It may take some time to pull it off, but that shouldn't stop us from trying at all.

The problem here is, back then it was clearly emphasized that this quest system is abusable and tends to be the source of unlimited resources. Still, it was said that this is not a problem, and it is intended. In some post there was a comment that said, this "feature" is there to reward the more active players. So I, like many other players, planned to build my city accordingly. I have only 8 workshops, which were (with the old sidequest system) more than enough actually. 8 is because at appropriate times i was doing "Produce Bread 8 times" quest. If such a quest didn't exist, i would have maximum 5 workshops i guess. A few weeks back, i began thinking of even selling them all. I am pretty sure there are players with no workshops running at all. Here is a discussion about workshops. (And this happens to be that particular thread that i said i couldn't find )

Now you change the rules in such a radical way, that many players' plans go to waste. And you do this by informing us only a couple of hours prior to the implementation.

Again in short, you solved a problem that really needed to be solved, but in a very very wrong way, so that the solution caused a much much worse problem.

 

[DeletedUser]

Before this change I enjoyed the game but now it feels like a very long tutorial on how you must play the game. What happened to allowing the player to decide how they would build their empire, fight or negotiate, now just do as you are told. I used to run 1 hour and 3 hour cycles and yes I did skip quests to get the rewards but my town was growing I was helping out where I could in my fellowship with the goods I produced, now I am stuck on 24 hour cycles for minimum reward and cannot afford to do the most basic upgrades to my town due to lack of space and goods. I am just starting out with this game so well done Inno for your well thought out changes, I really cannot believe that you all play this game as you say you do or you would realise how bad this idea is.

 

[DeletedUser590]

I really cannot believe that you all play this game as you say you do or you would realise how bad this idea is

I suggest to the Dev. Team you try playing the game at normal speed with those quests. You have several choices :
1. Follow the quests... Good luck in developping your town !
2. Cancel the useless quests with the 1 day delay... Then it means that the quest system becomes useless, better stop it.

You logically should conclude and recognize that you made a mistake : Errare humanum est, sed perseverare Diabolicum. Hope perseverare will not become... Elvenar !

 

[DeletedUser967]

No need to be sorry, we appreciate any feedback! While I don't think that simply removing a lot of quests is going to solve the problem, it should certainly be reviewed what incentives certain quests give. If you have quests that you don't want to do, please tell us why it is that you don't want to do them (this goes for everyone, of course!).

Also, we are working on new features for you to enjoy already, and we hope to deliver you more information over the coming weeks. Please stay tuned for that!

I think that could solve these problems but fact is then you'll need to remove many of quests. Now unfortunatelly I can't tell you which quests are not important - I need 8h to decline and check next quests

I agree with Bobbykitty with some things, it is true that IG should first ask us if the changes which you want to implement will be good for us. Do not make big discussion about that - it is not the point - just ask and wait for some answers and reasons why Yes and why Not and then you have really good view on the opinions from players because still WE play here and we must got some reasons to stay here for long time.
Of course I understand that here is much more important things to do first before you make something new but sometimes the changes are not good for players or for moore players. I still belive that we'll see many new features in maybe near future, I don't complain I just try to tell you should first listen our opinions about changes - not all, but in situation like this with declining quests, it is really important( Maybe you are not aware of this case ) and look, now many players complain on that, you listen us but NOW not before you did it, maybe you change something later when you'll listen our opinions but look, it is more job for you - you first implement, then listen opinions and then you try to fix it - why do not do this at once?
Now this implementation is really big reason to players complain on forum - I understand them - andnot only complain as you can see from other posts.

Good question right now is what you want to do with that? You can see many opinions right now, maybe just tell us if is some possibility to change this and if you can/you know some solutions? I think change time to wait doesn't change anything, remove some quests could help but depends on that How quests you can remove? Or if you can't do these things, so maybe change array of quests where these profitable quests will be one by one not need declining 10 quests for do only one but here is problem - we make these quests and now we need to wait week for do it again so .... In my opinion only one good solution is remove some quests, better will be waiting example 3 days for this one good quest than waiting one week.

I think something else, you shouldn't looks on high-end players, they DO NOT need these quests - they can get everything from buildings and don't tell me you have problems with that guys because then you'll be funny, I'm top 600 with 30k points and I don't need these quests I have tousands of goods from buildings and the same with gold/supply - where you top <600 need that? Please....

Just look on new players, the new players are important because for actually players needed is something else - you know what, technology etc but it's not subject on this topic I think.

 

[DeletedUser1095]

Innogames seriously needs to introduce something attractive to the game before taking away and limiting more. What attractions have been added since the last restrictions (the cultural happiness % and the devastating removal of inactives instead of moving active players closer to each other)? None that I can think of - and here we have yet another restriction, and nothing but promises of new content.

It truly seems to me it should be obvious to Innogames that that's not an okay way to do things.

You need to improve the game FIRST and then add this new limit. When you improve the quests - reducing the number of recurring quests, making them more interesting and worthwhile, providing more imaginative rewards - THAT'S when it would be fair to limit us to one decline per day. You need to keep the game entertaining, and (as has been stated eloquently and clearly multiple times already) slowing it all down with artificial barriers is NOT entertaining.

 

[DeletedUser967]

Because they first want to improve actualll things, if they make some new features when older features still aren't good or fixed then we can see many many bugs in future - we don't want this, we don't like bugs.
First improve actually things to perfection then make some new but by the way they can make some little new - problem is that What they want to do in future? Because if they want to make some really big what can't be segmented for a few little changes - then it is impossible to do "something new".

 

[DeletedUser1095]

Because they first want to improve current things

In that case they need to do that before burdening us with yet more limitations.

 

[DeletedUser967]

Only one limitation right now which I don't understand is declining quests. Others are good.