I agree with Katwijk, revival of troops will bring in a lot of revenue for Inno, because after the first few weeks players will have spent the troops they had stockpiled and they will be restricted to the amount of troops the barracks can produce. As we all know, the barracks are way too slow, so the only way to do a lot of battles will be by unit revival.
Even players that don't fight and will cater their provinces in the tournaments will be tempted to spend money, as they will want to increase production of goods in order to do so, and for that, they will end up buying premium buildings like the snail.
As such, I believe the tournaments will remain a good source of income, even if the timers are reduced.
Well, a player can only compete in discovered provinces, so no timer would not make the system explode i think. However, i do feel the rewards should be decreased if the timer is removed, and since there are ranking points to win, there should be different tournaments for each chapter. A player who has just researched the tournaments will have a lot less goods to cater encounters, a smaller army, and only a few discovered provinces. Getting to the top spots in the current situation can be pretty hard for them.
I totally agree with Goryn here regarding how hard it is to a low/medium player to compete in the tournament. I don't know however, how feasible it would be from a technical point of view, to have different tournaments for each chapter, especially considering that one player could move on to the next chapter at any time during the tournament. Does he then compete in two tournaments?
Also, there is a danger with the suggestion that the rewards be decreased. At the moment, with the current rewards, the tournament is really only worth it for very advanced players. Very advanced players, for the purpose of this discussion, are players that are already at least mid fairies, had months of wait between fairies and dwarves, in which to stock on troops and goods, and have scouting times that take longer than 2 days. For these players, the tournaments are worth it, even when its not their boost, because of the value of the kps, because they can only do 1 province on the map every 2 or 3 days, which means they have time to renew their army, or goods, with spare to invest in the tournament.
However, a lower level player doesn't have such a stockpile of troops and goods, and their scouting time is a lot less, so they are probably just keeping up with the scout, and they might even be struggling to keep up with it. In this case, these players will have to choose between using their resources to do normal provinces or to do the tournament. So they will most likely look at the rewards they get from doing both and decide which one is more worthwhile. Lets takes a look:
NORMAL MAP PROVINCES:
- Per encounter: 1 kp, 1 relic, score points.
- Per province: (8kps, 8 relics, score points, 1 rune shard, contribution towards getting 1 expansion)
Doing provinces on the map also allows you to advanced in it, discovering more neighbours to do NH and trade with.
TOURNAMENTS:
- Per encounter: tournament points only. these tournaments points are useless unless you finish the tournament in the top 100, which is unlikely to happen to a less advanced player, so they are useless.
- Per province: there are different rewards depending on the level of the provinces, and they seem to be all over the place sometimes on the same level and between different players, but after 2 tournaments there is a pattern we can identity:
At the first level, most provinces give 2 kps and relics, with just a few of them giving 4 kps. these rewards increase with the province levels, up to 6 kps/6 relics at the higher levels (has anyone gotten more than 6 kps?), and a chance of getting a rune shard from level 3 upwards. Note, if you get a rune shard you don't get kps and relics.
Now, if you compare the rewards, you will see that if you have to choose between the map and the tournaments, the rewards for the tournaments pale in comparison with the rewards from doing the normal provinces, so reducing them further will only accentuate this, and remove any incentive for players to participate at all. As it is, low/medium level players are better off only doing tournaments when its their boost week and even then sparingly so they can keep up with their scout.
As Katwijk pointed out, there are other sources of revenue in the tournaments for Inno, the timers don't have to be one of them. they should be reduced to encourage players to participate, the rewards should be kept the same, and even buffed in some cases ( level 5 i'm looking at you), as there are enough blocking mechanisms to prevent players from overachieving in the long term. Yes, short term very advanced players will be able to do a lot in the first few tournaments, using all their stocked goods and troops, but there is no way to prevent that anyway, and the tournaments mechanism need to work long term, and not just in the first few weeks. After a few weeks even those advanced players will have depleted their stocks and will have to slow down. I bet by the time we reach T3 weeks at the most, players will have depleted most of those resources.
Tournaments should be a source of active play for all players, not just the advanced ones, and they need to attractive enough for players to want to do them regularly, otherwise, after the first round, and when the novelty wears off, they will most likely end up being abandoned.
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