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Frustration

Nighthawk1

New Member
I just have to express my frustration with this game. The main frustration comes from a lack of being able to expand. The maximum expansions for conquering provinces is 480. I’m at 535 now and cramped for space. I have the potential for 17 expansions, but no way to get them without spending 14,000 diamonds per expansion. At $80 for 14,000 diamonds, I don’t think so. ($1,360 to get full expansion???)

I understand it’s all about money and Inno is just like any other company. Still, I think they’re shooting themselves in the foot with this attitude. They’d make more money by lowered prices that would entice people to purchase diamonds. If expansions, for example were at 1,000 or even 2,000 diamonds, I’d purchase.

Or, if they would should show some compassion for those of us who have been loyal to the game, then give a discount to 2,000 diamonds for all players that have capped out their 480 provinces. Even if they required a province expansion for every 10 provinces conquered before allowing the discount, that would show they cared about the players. (I’ve been on the Beta site from the beginning.)

I’m a dialysis nurse and work 12 hour days. I usually work 3 days per week, but since Covid, we’ve been extremely short-handed, so I’m working 5 days, sometimes 6 days per week. I was using the game to un-stress and decompress. It doesn’t work anymore. I’m frustrated over the game now.

I’m about ready to quit, as have a few of my friends already done.

Anyway, that’s my opinion. I’m done.

I wish all the other players well.
 

SoggyShorts

Well-Known Member
expansions.png

They increased the cap to 525

It's also worth looking into re-designing your town if you decide to stick around. You have over 200 squares (8 whole expansions) of empty space right now, and if you replaced some of your older, less efficient buildings with better ones you could free up a lot more.
As well there are some significant inefficiencies in your road layout that if corrected should free up 2-3 more expansions.
 
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Deleted User - 81190

Guest
Also, if your next premium expansion is 14k diamonds, this means you have almost all of them, which is vastly more than is the case for most players. You don't need that many expansions to play the game.
 

Lovec Krys

Well-Known Member
@Nighthawk1 I suggest, you might want to optimize your culture building first. I looked into your beta city and found a lot of old cultural buildings. Few of them even from ch13 and one from chapter 12. I suggest to get rid of them, then rearrange whole city to optimize street usage.
Also if you want to get fast through ch17, I suggest to use the same tactics many others has used - teleporting 1/3 of the city away once you research small ships and build as many of them as you can (I ran with over 70 small ships in my live city).
 

Sir Squirrel

Well-Known Member
While all the posts from others here are correct in their info. The OP's request for them to look at the pricing of expansions is still very valid. They are very over priced and I myself can't see how they make any money from them except from a very small amount of players. Only a select few could or would be able to purchase all of them. I stopped buying them a couple years ago when they raised the prices. Although they have started giving more diamonds ( for spire and entering some chapters) they are still priced crazy high for most players. I could buy all the premium stuff from three or four other games I play for a 3rd of what INNO wants for their expansions.
 

Arthus

Well-Known Member
Deleting wishing wells was the strategy to force players into buying expansions.
You won't have place for new bigger and bigger buildings, chapters and event rewards if you won't buy.
Free diamonds are not enough. Some players are already 180+ days without Djinn from Spire.
There's a reason why each evolution building is not teleportable and takes 4x4 space.
 

Pauly7

Well-Known Member
Honestly I don't really know why the cost of expansions increases the more that you buy. It's like - Spend some money with us, and next time you do it we'll charge you more.

If anything the value of an expansion is less the further you progress through the game.
 

Enevhar Aldarion

Well-Known Member
Honestly I don't really know why the cost of expansions increases the more that you buy. It's like - Spend some money with us, and next time you do it we'll charge you more.

If anything the value of an expansion is less the further you progress through the game.

All the forms of gaining expansions are like that though. Each research expansion costs more coins, or diamonds, than the last, each premium costs more than the last, the number of completed provinces needed increases, though at a more staggered rate. And ever other free-to-play game out there that uses expansions to increase your home base area or explored area or whatever, also increases with each expansion. Many of those games also divide their expansions into those capable of being acquired through normal gameplay and those only gotten with the game's premium currency. I do not think I have ever played a game where the premium expansions all had the same cost, no matter how many your bought. They all had the price slowly increase with each one purchased, so Elvenar is nowhere near alone in this practice. Now, I do understand if Elvenar is the only game someone has ever played and them getting frustrated by the increasing costs, but it is a standard model in the Free-to-Play, microtransaction world of browser games.
 

Pauly7

Well-Known Member
Just because other games do it doesn't make it right. Expansions that cost in-game coins or other resources can increase. There's a logic there because each account gets comparatively "richer", but that isn't the same as premium currency.

Imagine you go into a pub and buy a pint of beer and the barman says "that's £4 please". Then half an hour later you get back to order another pint and he says "that's £5 please"... and you're all like "hold on a minute..." and he says "well you already bought one for £4 so logically it's going to go up".
 

Lelanya

Well-Known Member
Oho, Ontario!! My Dad just wants to go the Library and read the newspaper. It doesn't seem like much to ask out of life when you're 85, does it?
Don't leave us @Nighthawk1, you're a good Archmage. We all feel pinched with new chapters. Remember Elementals? And you got through it.
 

Smiler

Member
It could be the price is used as a deterrent. Loading issues become greater the larger the city is. The price is effective in keeping cities within certain size limits.
 
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Deleted User - 81190

Guest
Honestly I don't really know why the cost of expansions increases the more that you buy. It's like - Spend some money with us, and next time you do it we'll charge you more.

If anything the value of an expansion is less the further you progress through the game.
It's just basic economics. Number of expansions is capped, so they can only sell you so many. So increasing costs allow to extract maximum total value from people who are prepared to pay different amounts. Think about it this way - if someone bought 38 premium expansions already, that's about 280K diamonds total, with the last one at 16K. Now, they can only sell you 1 more (in the near future, at least). So do you think what price would maximize total value extraction? Same 16K, more than 16K, less than 16K? It's obviously more than 16K. While you will lose some demand with increased prices, it would be quite minimal (would be strange for someone to pay 280K in total, 16K for last, but draw the line at 16.5K), so that would be inefficient pricing.

You can apply this reasoning backwards and see that optimal pricing is ever increasing. Now, the shape of this price curve really depends on aggregate demand, but if anything, the last few premiums should be much more expensive (see the reasoning above - people who are prepared to pay 16.5K for premium #39 would be just as likely to pay 17K and more). Well, one reason for that is probably that the last expansions are not really last (as you get more with new chapters), so they keep the end of the curve linear.
 

Pauly7

Well-Known Member
I understand your point @MinMax Gamer, but I'm not sure this is basic economics. Like my pub example above, it is not standard practice to charge a consumer more for a product that they bought once, just because they are more likely to be prepared to pay a little bit more than they did previously.

It does remind me a bit of car insurance, though, where an insurance company hikes up the premium on someone's renewal, banking on the fact that people aren't going to be motivated to get other quotes or bother to change.

Personally I think it's taking a liberty where InnoGames holds something of a monopoly - i.e. if you want to play this game and buy an expansion you can't go to anywhere else to get it. I'm aware they do the same thing with the cost of diamonds themselves, though that is publicised less.
 

Deleted User - 81190

Guest
I understand your point @MinMax Gamer, but I'm not sure this is basic economics. Like my pub example above, it is not standard practice to charge a consumer more for a product that they bought once, just because they are more likely to be prepared to pay a little bit more than they did previously.
There are several reasons why it doesn't happen in the pub case (or why it is not a standard business practice) - because in most cases circumstances are different, and incremental pricing won't make sense. One very obvious one is that they can sell you virtually unlimited number of pints over time, so incremental pricing doesn't make much sense - it will cut off demand too much. Another one is that you can buy your pints from any bar out there, so they don't have a lot of flexibility with pricing. And the system like that would be difficult to implement in a bar context (keeping track of each customer purchases).
 

Pauly7

Well-Known Member
There are several reasons why it doesn't happen in the pub case (or why it is not a standard business practice) - because in most cases circumstances are different, and incremental pricing won't make sense.
Well it's quite difficult to cite an example where the customer doesn't have the option to purchase it somewhere else. As I say, it's like InnoGames holding a monopoly... although that's not 100% true because people could look for other games that have cheaper options.

Even where there isn't an obvious route for someone to buy from a competitor, that doesn't mean prices usually rise incrementally. OK, here is an example - I buy a software package for work. This software becomes embedded in our system, so you're not easily going to look elsewhere in the short term. I buy 10 user licences for the software that costs me £100. Later I discover that we need a further 10 licences so I go back to the company to purchase the extra. Are they now going to charge me £200 because I already bought some at a lower rate? In my experience I've never seen that happen.
 

Deleted User - 81190

Guest
This software becomes embedded in our system, so you're not easily going to look elsewhere in the short term. I buy 10 user licences for the software that costs me £100. Later I discover that we need a further 10 licences so I go back to the company to purchase the extra. Are they now going to charge me £200 because I already bought some at a lower rate? In my experience I've never seen that happen.
First of all, this absolutely does happen in real life, though for somewhat different reasons. It is not uncommon to have low license prices when they are trying to sell you the product initially. Once as you say it is embedded into your system, the price goes up - because it would be costly for you to switch. Same goes for product renewals (extra time bought) - the price rarely goes down ;)

Rather than a pub comparison, think about different classes of airline fares. Everyone on board - from economy class to first class - gets on the same plane, and gets from the same A to B in the same amount of time. So in order to get from A to B you don't need to pay more than economy. So that's F2P Elvenar option for you - we all know that you don't need to pay anything in order to complete the game. But you can pay more to fly with more comfort, if you want to. And let's say that you primarily pay extra for extra space on the plane (so that's premium expansions for you). There are some other perks out there, but these are relatively cheap. Well, guess how incremental inches are priced? Yep, incrementally more.

So transatlantic flight in coach may cost $2 per sq.in. in economy class. If you want to upgrade to premium economy, you'll get ~33% more space (and nothing else) for about 2x the price, sometimes more. That's about 2-3x cost per additional sq.in. If you continue upwards in classes from there, you will see that these additional inches cost more (even though there are some additional services there). But if you care about getting from A to B with more space, generally speaking every extra inch will cost you more. That's why most people do not do it - but some people do, and that's why there are seats worth 10K+ where a lot of people can fly for less than 1K on the same plane.
 

CrazyWizard

Well-Known Member
While all the posts from others here are correct in their info. The OP's request for them to look at the pricing of expansions is still very valid. They are very over priced and I myself can't see how they make any money from them except from a very small amount of players. Only a select few could or would be able to purchase all of them. I stopped buying them a couple years ago when they raised the prices. Although they have started giving more diamonds ( for spire and entering some chapters) they are still priced crazy high for most players. I could buy all the premium stuff from three or four other games I play for a 3rd of what INNO wants for their expansions.

I agree with this...... untill they made changes.
While the "value" in money is insane, with all the free diamonds you can aquire these days the old prices from back in the day do not make any sense anymore.
While the monetary value is high, with all the free diamonds you can get it's not that expensive anymore and early expansions are way to cheap.
 

Pauly7

Well-Known Member
Rather than a pub comparison, think about different classes of airline fares. Everyone on board - from economy class to first class - gets on the same plane, and gets from the same A to B in the same amount of time. So in order to get from A to B you don't need to pay more than economy. So that's F2P Elvenar option for you - we all know that you don't need to pay anything in order to complete the game. But you can pay more to fly with more comfort, if you want to. And let's say that you primarily pay extra for extra space on the plane (so that's premium expansions for you). There are some other perks out there, but these are relatively cheap. Well, guess how incremental inches are priced? Yep, incrementally more.
This is an entirely different thing. This is like saying when you paid more for an expansion you get a better class of expansion. In which case there would be no problem with that.

For MinMax Airlines to work as a comparison you'd have to buy one first class ticket for £1,000 then when you came to fly again they'd say "Oh I see you've already flown first class with us once before Sir, therefore we'll charge you £2,000 this time."

I wouldn't be surprised if some software companies employ that underhand tactic, but that's what it is - underhand.
 

Deleted User - 81190

Guest
This is an entirely different thing. This is like saying when you paid more for an expansion you get a better class of expansion. In which case there would be no problem with that.
No, the comparison is valid. A single flight is your Elvenar journey from beginning to end. We all start the same, and we all end in the same place. Some of us want to travel with more comfort, and are prepared to pay for that. You can travel with 500 sq.in. of space, you can travel with 750 sq.in. of space, you can travel with 1500 sq.in. of space. Incremental inches will cost you more. You don't have to buy if you don't want to, you'll still end in the same place after the flight.
 
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