Discussion [Discussion] Release Notes version 1.22

[lika1961]

I can't decide whether it is ignorance or arrogance. There seems to be a determination to stick with an idea even if a lot of players tell them it is bad. A lot of time is wasted by implementing half-baked ideas which cause a whole new range of bugs. Not all of these bugs are fixed, which means that at this point the system is patchy and the "improvements" are actually making it worse.

It is almost like there is a check-list of things to be implemented and this will be done no matter how bad the results. You would imagine that people who work on the game would be able to predict whether a certain change would cause any problems, but they don't seem to. And when it does, instead of fixing it properly, it is patched. And all these patches are ripping the fun and excitement out of the game.

Mostly though, it seems to be a customer relations problem. There seems to be a perception that customers will put up with whatever is dished out to them. That does not work in real life, so why would it work here? The game has lost its sparkle and more and more players are noticing. "Boring" is a term you see regularly on the forums now and bored people move on. If they stop caring, they stop playing.

If you want people to start paying for a "free" game, the way to do it is to dazzle them with ideas and events that are so cool that they can't reach for their wallets fast enough. Flashing lights, excitement, fun, surprise, a clear message of what the game is and the promise of much more to come. And when something goes wrong, you man up and admit, apologise and fix it as quickly as possible. And you give everyone a small token to make them feel better. The players feel important and appreciate the fact that you care. And you should care. A lot.

 

[DeletedUser118]

If its one thing I learned from games like these, a player is NOT a customer. He's a player and will stay one till the very end.

They want you to stay for a while, have some fun and hopefully spend some money (in most games only a small percentage of the overall player numbers do) on their game.

 

[Heymrdiedier]

we still get changes in a game mechanics (players didn't ask for).

Thats not compeltly true, the fairy units sat there idle in the tech tree for a long time. we asked for them to be implemented.
Problem was those units were supposed to fly over the terrain, thats why it took so long to implement them.
That flying was so problematic they had to redo the whole combat system just to be able to do it.

Of course now that we have the whole combat change behind us, at least we have flying units .... ;-)

 

[Heymrdiedier]

• Fixed the problem where Sword Dancers from the Dwarven Bulwark were not credited correctly to some players, and compensated for the missing units for those affected

can anyone tell me what compensation they got, so i can get the feeling if its a lot or not? i wanna know if i need to train swords again on live server, or if i can expect a big supply back

 

[DeletedUser]

can anyone tell me what compensation they got, so i can get the feeling if its a lot or not? i wanna know if i need to train swords again on live server, or if i can expect a big supply back

I got about 10x squads extra, ~14000 units.

 

[DeletedUser736]

I'm among thoses peoples who are not hit by the wholsaler issue. But one thing I agree with peoples is that they really do not seem to care about the players. It's all about making a quick buck, hoping the player spend early and then, whatever.

One thing I really cannot stand anymore is the fact they keep changing the rules of the game. You build your city in a certain fashion, and then BAM the rules change.

The 2nd huge issue is that they do not communicate thoses changes. I know they will claim they publish this on the forum. We knew ON THE FORUM that thoses changes were about to come. We KNEW because we read the forum that we were scouting too far. the VAST majority of player don't read the forum. We're 19 in my fellowship, and I'm the only one who does. How do you think thoses peoples feel INNO? Heck, I should be paid for doing YOUR job as to douse the fires among players in my fellowsship when you come out with major stupid changes.

And to be frank, the single reason I still play this game is that I like the battles. I enjoy manually fighting, I like the redesign. but to be honest, the rest is really getting so so, when not outright frustrating.

For the record, of EVERY SINGLE "free" game I ever played, your very own forge of empire included, I PAID for premium content. EVERY SINGLE ONE except Elvenar. Why? Because I am getting so little for my money, I have absolutely no faith that Elvenar will actually be supported for a long time anymore since I see so many peoples quitting the game, and I fear that if I pay to get some advantage, you will eventually turn the game upside down, and I'll end up having paid real $$$ for nothing.

Case in point. When you introducced the trounament, we had to spend 40 KP to unlock it. I did buy KP to get acess to it faster (with in game $$$ thankfully, not real money) Well, when are you going to refund me thoses 40 KP, now that players don't need to unock it???? Can you imagine how pissed someone who would have bought the right to enter the tourney feels when a few months later, you tell them "HAHA the rules have changed, we charged you for naught?"

Meh. This rant is too long already. And useless. I am stating the obvious.

 

[DeletedUser1817]

@galoyal
Even though I agree changes made to the game during the last months are concerning , as being so frustrating that they might very well end up making too many players leave the game, in my opinion, you are going a little too far in some of your grievances, maybe because of your disappointment in the evolution of a game you initially liked so much (I am also partly disappointed).

Game rules change, sure, but that is quite inherent to such online, innovative, under constant development games. Would you prefer to play a game which remains the same for months, with no new features, replicating other games you have already played elsewhere?

Most players do not bother reading the forum where Innogames decided to publish most of the information on game changes, updates, furthermore, to allow players to react to their announcements, provide feedback end even propose improvements. Do you know a more appropriate tool for such a purpose? Is that Innogames fault if people do not take the time to, at least, read their announcements?

More than change itself, I would say that the problem is the nature of the change. When the developers come up with events that bring cool rewards, nicely designed buildings, new challenges that take us out of our routines, or replace a malfunctioning collaborative part of the tournaments, even though there might be a few issues, most players are rather pleased . But when they persist implementing new features which were not completely thought through (such as the battle re-design, or the new wholesaler), without really taking into account the feedback of players who took time to test the new features and report their eventual concerns (communication problem), then it can only lead to a disaster, minor or major the future will tell us ...

Asking for your 40 KP back? Seriously ? How long does that take to get 40 KP without using any premium currency? About 40 hours, if you only wait and collect 4/5 times. Less if you use some of the excess gold (that you obtained freely, just waiting and collecting it from residences) you might have to buy some and speed up the process. For how long did you play the tournaments, getting many benefits (relics, KPs, rune fragments, maybe ranking score points) from them? Will you stop receiving many bonuses from the new version? Just have a look to the content of the 3 to 5 first chests most fellowships will be able to get and you will see that it is likely that you will get more than the 10/15 relics you could expect from the old neighborhood collaborative system...

 

[DeletedUser736]

It is true I really went overboard. I am very frustrated at how unstable the game is, and how badly we seen to be treated. I just got mad at the Valentine quest requesting me again to scout a province. I could not complete the winter event directly because of thoses. I' just tired of them to keep changing the core of the game. It reminds me when I was a kid, and we were playing games, but kept changing the rules to win. Of course 40 kp is not that much. But I think that is a good example. That is 2 days worth of KP that were spent on air.

Some peoples built their city with the wholesaler in mind, and now it's changed, they have to redesign everything, and so on...

It is not about not changing everything ever, but they always seem to attack the core of the game. Anyway. That's pointless, I was just venting, and I should not have done so.

 

[DeletedUser1877]

Well said. We all vent, admitting and apologizing take a real man (woman).

 

[DeletedUser1721]

I think the biggest problem is the fact that there are people whose experiences are completely different than others, and these people like the wholesaler changes.

There are some people who were never too far ahead of the curve in terms of provinces on the map, who are not troubled by the scout province event quests and who don't have such huge resource costs in tournaments. These people are bored with the old wholesaler. They also, perhaps, feel that the reason no one wants to take their unfair cross tier trades is because people are buying t1 resources from the wholesaler.

Then there are the people who are just starting out, the people who aren't in fellowships which can provide all the resources they need to trade for, the people who are in dead areas on the world map, and the people whose tournament costs are so much higher than everyone else's there just isn't enough in the way of goods in their fellowship for them to get all the goods they need to participate in tournaments. These people are hurt by the new wholesaler, and I feel that Inno should make an effort to fix some of these problems before putting the new wholesaler live. It would be simple enough to remove the part of the equation which calculates how many resources are needed to negotiate tournaments based on provinces scouted over teh required number. It would be easy to tweak the few researches which require maybe too many resources for a new player to assemble easily without access to the wholesaler (again, that 250 250 250 t2 good research is the biggest example I can think of but I cannot remember which research it is) to require more realistic amounts of t2 goods based on the assumption that someone that new probably won't be able to get into a fellowship that will trade them the goods they need, probably doesn't have space to build enough t2 manufactories to produce the 750 t2 goods needed in a timely fashion, and probably is surrounded by dead neighbors on the world map.

Perhaps Inno could even make the wholesaler more dynamic, in that the user's wholesaler markup decreases based on how many inactive neighbors (based on when their last login date was) the user has. Users with neighbors who haven't logged on in months would thus not be expected to pay as much to buy the goods from the wholesaler to make up for the fact that they have no neighbors to trade with.

 

[DeletedUser736]

There is often things that were changed that do not show in patch notes. This week, I did all my battles in the tournament manually, and I noticed a change in the AI. Or at least I think I did. Before, the AI would pretty much automatically target the unit with the highest initiative. Now, it is much more unpredictable. I've seen hounds crash on paladins on numerous occasion, even tough they had a crossbowman within range. Crossbowman are the highest initiative troops and are usually the prime target. Not to mention dogs can demolish crossbowman in an instant.

The setup I used for most battle was 1 crossbow and 4 paladins. And strangely, paladins seems to now be a favorite. I also noticed that it seemed that the higher I was in the tournament, the more the AI began to target the crossbow first, which was a good move. I doubt this is really linked to the number of star of the province I am fighting in, but maybe more related to the relative size of unit.

Anyway, I was wondering if someone else who is manually fighting noticed change in the behavior of the units, or am I daydreaming?

And if I am not, and there was a change, I have to say I am happy about it. I find the AI less predictable, which is more fun, in my opinion. And quite frankly, I find that if the AI does not automatically go for the highest initiative anymore, that will make some tournaments more easy and fair, because the previous AI would trash you in auto battle certain weeks, and not others weeks, making tournament difficulty wildly uneven from week to week.

Anyway, can someone, either on the dev team, or a fellow player confirm that the AI was tweaked, or am I imagining things?

 

[Deleted User - 60107]

I don't know about tournaments, but for the past few days when fighting in provinces I regularly see Steinlings attack Treants instead of Archers even if they can reach an Archer. Usually this seems to happen when the Steinlings can kill at least 1 Treant with at most 2 hits.

 

[DeletedUser118]

I think they are attacking from outside to inside, going for the two outside targets first.

 

[Deleted User - 60107]

Not sure what you mean by "outside targets". Three squads of Treants (on spots 1, 2 and 3) and 2 squads of Archers (on spots 4 and 5 - i.e. the top-most and bottom-most spot) and Steinlings still seemed to prefer the Treants.

 

[Dony]

Did not we (me) asked for this? Will make some fights easier and some other harder, and some guys can be happy because now mages are not useless anymore.
Second behaviour which was changed is that now units attacking more targets, not just one till its dead (2 same enemy squads can hit 2 different same targets even if they can all reach eachother, spreading debuffs more efficiently)

 

[DeletedUser736]

I was'nt complaining, I am happy about it. So you confirm their behaviour is changed? I'm not dreaming?

 

[Heymrdiedier]

Fixed a problem that caused ranking points to be awarded wrongly, including a recalculation of the ranking to correct the error for affected players

Im very interested to see how the real ranking on my live server will now be. The whole top 10 is very unclear because of this bug.
However i do hope you didnt forget to add the gained tournament ranking points to the recalculation, and not just recounted all the points from buildings + provinces

 

[Deleted User - 60107]

@Marindor
You guys "forgot" to mention that Orc Strategist, Dryad Promotion I and Drone Rider Promotion I are now mandatory to research.

 

[DeletedUser1721]

Out of curiosity, why did the devs still put the patch to live today, when players here had given serious feedback about groups of users who are hurt by the wholesaler as it currently is?

Patches can be delayed if there are serious problems, and if they can't, then what is even the point of having a beta forum? : /

 

[DeletedUser1877]

I'm guessing that the update went to live because without it the Valentines storyline quest would not happen and there's obviously been a lot of work put into it.

As to whether the wholesaler will be reworked, anyone's guess.