People complains about Customer Service

[DeletedUser]

I want to "reopen" offtopic thread from Fairy Production Times are irritatingly bipolar
Muf-Muf... you wrote:
"I hereby lock this thread for further replies as it's offtopic beyond the point where we can go back to the original topic (being production times in Fairy Manufactories). In case of complaints about the (level of) customer service at the Beta server, please get in touch with our Beta Support, so that we can process your feedback properly."

And this is funny... Why? Because you locked complains about quality of service and try to move it outside forum. Beta Support it is not publicly accessible and visible only to complaining. It is another way of silencing thread, more subtle, but still it is hiding problem. People cannot access complains in Beta Support from other players. This is not open issue tracker so your "solution" is nothing more than way of closing inconvenient thread How people will know about poor service when cannot access complains of other players? Where they can read about them? Your "solution" is simply silencing voices of dissatisfaction and try of making them private.

Don't go this way. Forum is not only for suggestions, bugs and adoring game management. People are frustrated, because product is simply broken. After months of waiting we got incomplete Fairies with a lot of bugs. Bugs hits players from any direction. Every aspect of this game is buggy, badly implemented or not interacting with rest of game. People after such treatment will go mad when realize even Faeries Portal is bugged and don't give production bonus, some technologies are switched off, barracks and many buildings with queue also have problems and many, many more. When they notice that on forum their voice is also not seen as acceptable, they change game. When top players are against and have common voice, other people will start thinking: "Something is not right here. Someone is lying or not saying whole truth." and very quickly will get info about Inno and problems in this game. This is real reason why people are abandoning game. People are treated as morons. Now answer yourself how long they can take.

 

[Muf-Muf]

Complaints about support and/or moderators do not belong on the forum, but at Support. This has always been this way and is unlikely to ever change. If you have constructive feedback for us on how to improve our services, then by all means go ahead and share it. Singling out a team member is not the way to go, though - even if that team member may be the only person from the team responding at that given time. I will leave this thread open (at least for now), but as soon as it turns into finger-pointing, it will be closed immediately.

 

[DeletedUser]

@Muf-Muf Reason I created this is no bashing at team but pointing that redirecting Quality of Service to Beta Support is bad move. It simply hide complains from other players and create illusion that everything is fine, game is great and so on. But it is not. Delivering of everything is painfully slow. Many topics are ignored, like deserting of world map. It was raised in January 2015 in closed beta already. We have now almost end of March 2016. Nothing was done over more than year and this problem is raised on every server, so priority of this should be highly critical. And did you seen over last year something more than "new players will be placed in first free place counting from center"? What should say people already placed somewhere on edges? Where they will see new players? In 2020?

Such problems are common for this game and pointing Beta Support is simply hiding them from other players eyes. Because problem not raised by players on forum are "non-existent". Community see, even raised dozens of times are ignored. And management is deciding how game will be evolving. Their ignorance is root of a problem. Not you, forum team or players. Players frustration is flooding all Elvenar forums, because people see they are ignored in almost every aspect. Management is not playing game and thus their ideas are not with game balance. Players are against and what is a result? "If people don't want to play our way, we force them to do this! Make changes obligatory!" This will end badly to this game, because people will not tolerate long such rudeness. More and more will abandon game and "black PR" appear. And I understand them, because Fools Day in this game is all year round. At least I can say that about management treatment of players. We also have limits of patience and many of players are reaching them. Avoiding problems or making invisible to community is not a solution. Even short term. It only accumulate anger, frustration and all bad emotions toward whole company, not only Elvenar. People are paying only because it is only way of progress at some point if you don't want to fall in ranking. But fast realize it is pointless. So resign, because don't see reason for playing. In Elvenar we aren't attacked but we have nothing instead. What should we stick to? Brotherhoods are simply waiting rooms. For many only way of playing ths game, because somewhere on edge of map it is not possible to play without it. We have no real alternative, where active players can waste their time and with feeling they progress. Scouting costs in billions and taking few days are really irritating. PvE battles at some point aren't to win by fight and costs of negotiations are insane. Bugs hitting every game aspect and reappearing few weeks after they were fixed are really pushing the line. When we add, that new content is introduced with a speed of snail and with dozen of bugs, we got more clear image of game.

I even don't count how many suggestions I gave and how many bugs I informed about. In almost all cases dehumanized automated responses only if we talk about bugs. Suggestions? When people upvoted, also by forum team, always it ended in Archive without feedback what with it later. This is quality standard I used to in this game. Not very nice image, don't you think? Ignorance is I think first and main sin of this game. And we cannot do nothing with it, because it begin on game owners. Only way of reaching some goals would be complete abandon of game by players forcing game owners to shutting down whole project. And I suppose to an end game owners will not see their decisions were and are root of a problem. They will not blame itself for collapse of project. Despite signals about that came from many players. Example? On my server forum in one player signature is quote from other player about this game, which can be translated to:
"I would still think, if we are not threatened by decisions of developers". And I cannot disagree with it. With every update I am more and more worried what their ideas broke than what they introduce new.

 

[DeletedUser651]

If you have constructive feedback for us on how to improve our services, then by all means go ahead and share it.

1. Fix the issue with neighbors. We need people who play the game around us. People need a way to delete their city. As it stands now, if I quit playing after I have been here for a few months, my city will sit there useless until the end of time. If someone buys a diamond, that city too will never go away. More than 90% of cities don't have actual people playing in them. That means we don't have neighbors. We don't have friends. We don't have people around us. This is the biggest issue.

2. Never bring over a known bug to the live servers. Nothing makes people angrier than reading these forums, or hearing about bugs from beta players and then being subjected to them on the live servers. I don't care how long it takes to fix the bugs. Don't bring them over. It is insulting.

3. Why do you bring over buggy versions to beta? Don't the devs test the stuff before they dump it on us? Some things I get might be unusual. But some bugs are huge and have been awful for all of us. Though, I guess one set of recent bugs was kind of fun.

4. 2 day plus scouting times are unreasonable and very un-fun. People shouldn't have to wait one month just to finally get an expansion that fits one culture building and then wait another month before they can do anything else. At one point I did the math and realized it would take me over a YEAR to get all the expansions. Over a year! That is silly.

5. End the chests and the required provinces you need to clear. I am not affected by this issue, but I have read the complaints and people are very very unhappy about this. I can't see any reason to have them there. This has really harmed players and the game.

6. End the requirement to have the magic academy. We don't want this building. We don't want this building. We don't want this building. The undeclinable quest to have a magic academy should be deleted.

7. End the Gain granite and copper quests once you have deleted the dwarven portal. Those are absurd. People don't like to be faced with quests they can't possibly do.

8. Now that you have decided to let people keep their granite and copper after a portal is deleted, go back and give all the people who already deleted their portals the maximum copper and granite they could have had. The only reason a lot of people deleted the portal was because Inno told them to (in the form of a non declinable quest). Don't punish people who play your game for listening to Inno....or they will be very very angry at Inno. The same thing happened with the Ancient Wonders. Early players were punished badly by not having the runes.

9. Fix the Ancient Wonders. They cost WAYYYYY too much in time and relics. Now that another chapter is here people won't be able to ever build those things. They need their KP too much. And the way you get random shards you don't want? Come on. How annoying is that? Not to mention the sniping issue which has caused great dissent around here. Now we have to work against each other. None of us wanted that. We don't like the game play of getting those runes. Listen to us. Paying players have QUIT the game over fights over those runes. They have quit. No one has stayed because they thought they were great. Listen to us.


All of that is constructive. All of that has been said multiple times by others. The world map issue as stated above by thekandor, has been an issue since the first month of this game. It has crippled this game's progress and it is the number one issue.

The number two issue has always been asking us to build manufactories for which we have no boost in the form of non declinable quests. All Inno had to do to fix the latter was remove two little quests. Thousands of times people asked Inno to. All it would have taken was to remove two little quests. That's all. Simple. Take out two quests. Just delete them. And players would have been so happy. But nope. Newbies still get angry over that issue. And some wonder why we don't feel heard? I honestly wonder if you want constructive criticism when an issue so simple to fix never was. If we can't even get something so small yet so maddening taken care of......

 

[DeletedUser]

As you see @Muf-Muf it is not that we point "It is your fault!", because we know those are bugs mostly "by design". Many of problems are because someone from game owners said: "We do that way and we don't care if people will hate it". We have seen this arrogance many times already. They really don't care about what people are saying, so what we should do? Complaining more through Support on Beta and regular servers? We are not blind and see this go directly to bin without even being read. Team probably do this and our problems are maybe in reports, but that is all. People are already giving up and show Inno middle finger.

Many of points mentioned by @Bobbykitty were also in my post from referred, closed, topic. That means people know these problems and inform about them, but there is not even one person in management who want to listen about. This is more than sad. People are giving solutions how to solve many of those stated problems, also this one with neighbors. Give many suggestions how to improve gameplay. There is also huge feedback related to bugs, which means people do care even about so buggy game with a lot of patience. But unreasonable behavior when owners do a lot against players is harming everyone in many ways. Especially trust between those two groups. When I see even team is quitting or resign from their position, this means a lot to any thinking person. Give me at least one good reason I should trust and have more patience? I don't see any change from months. And people are quiting game, because they care more than owners and cannot stand bad community management. Not on your level @Muf-Muf but above you and other national Community Managers.

Look how many of us avoid beating everyone on their path of rage. Most of people in many productions blame in such situations game developers who directly write code. How many complains about their work did you seen here? We do know, bugs are and will be. We only inform, that probably there is too small amount of them to properly develop game and increase is not only reasonable but a must. And we also know this is something you have no impact on. If they are overworked, thy have no enough time to test game properly. And if there is no real testing, a lot of crap goes into beta. But if this crap go into live, people are more than mad, because it means only one: quality is not a main factor. Now realize how small amount of complaining is hitting game mods and forum team, even indirectly. We simply knows who is pulling the strings, and blame them. Not those who are at ends of those strings, because we know alot of people are only puppets throwed at us. But we aren't stupid and obey them. We hit those "shields" only by mistake sometimes and when we run into them because clash was unavoidable.

 

[Muf-Muf]

It seems we may have two different views on "complaints about our services and/or moderators" here: what you seem to mean is "please improve the game itself in way X", but what I meant when I closed the other thread was "if you have complaints about the support team and/or a particular moderator, contact support". Obviously we can discuss the first (game improvements) on this forum, but we cannot discuss the second (complaints about staff).

I will reply to a number of statements below.

Many topics are ignored, like deserting of world map.

It is more than obvious to everyone that this is indeed a (huge) problem with Elvenar at this moment. That does not mean we can easily fix it, though. But, that also doesn't mean that we won't. We are working on a solution to distribute new players in another way, so that it's a lot more likely to get new neighbours, even if you're at "the edge of the world". Can we offer this soon? I sincerely hope so, but as of yet I cannot give a date.

because people see they are ignored in almost every aspect.

I have worked for many of InnoGames's projects, and Elvenar is one of the projects most open to community feedback. Please do realise that we have a LOT of players worldwide, who all have a lot of ideas, and that it is impossible to implement every single one. Does that mean you are ignored? No, it does not.

Management is not playing game and thus their ideas are not with game balance.

I can tell you for fact that this statement is untrue. What do you base it on?

2. Never bring over a known bug to the live servers.

If this were possible, I would be a very, very happy man. Unfortunately it is not. Since the beginning of Beta we, the Beta Team, have done our absolute best to ask for as many bugfixes before a Live update as is possible. Since the beginning of 2016, we have received an extra week of testing time at Beta, which has helped reducing bug numbers a lot: we are regularly releasing patches on Beta to fix bugs introduced with the newest version, so that they won't reach the Live servers. The Elvenar Team is very much willing to implement as many bugfixes as possible, but sometimes it's just not an option. Some bugfixes require (very) complex changes to the code, which cannot be imported into the same version and will have to be done with the next major update. That does have the consequence of sometimes bringing a bug from Beta to Live, yes. It won't stop us from trying to fix as many bugs as possible, though.

Why do you bring over buggy versions to beta? Don't the devs test the stuff before they dump it on us? Some things I get might be unusual. But some bugs are huge and have been awful for all of us.

Of course updates are always tested before they are released to Beta. We have a team of QA'ers who work very hard on this. Many bugs are caught by them and are fixed before an update even reaches the Beta servers. As those bugs don't affects your game at all, you obviously can't see them ingame and they are not listed in the release notes for an update either for that same reason. We do know that the Beta release of an update is not always perfect, and we're constantly working on improving our workflows so that as few bugs as possible make it from our development environments to our Beta (and Live) releases. Over the past year, we have made huge progress on this front and we'll continue to do so.

End the chests and the required provinces you need to clear. I am not affected by this issue, but I have read the complaints and people are very very unhappy about this. I can't see any reason to have them there. This has really harmed players and the game.

These chests were implemented to make sure a player's progress is balanced. It would have been better if this was done from the start of the game so that everyone knew it and could make their own strategies with this requirement in mind, but that goes for any change that is implemented. The required numbers are actually quite low when compared to the average number of provinces a player has at the certain points, and are well below the average. So, an average player should not have any issues unlocking these chests. Some others may have to fight some more provinces before being able to access the next chapter, though - that is true.

End the requirement to have the magic academy. We don't want this building.

The Magic Academy was intended as a mandatory building from the start, but it is impossible to implement it as mandatory straight away. That is why we had to implement it as optional and make it mandatory with a later update. We want the Academy to be a very powerfull and worthwhile building to have in your city, much like e.g. the Barracks.

End the Gain granite and copper quests once you have deleted the dwarven portal. Those are absurd. People don't like to be faced with quests they can't possibly do.

This has been forwarded as a bug already. The quests that come up are declineable, so they won't stop your progress.

Now that you have decided to let people keep their granite and copper after a portal is deleted, go back and give all the people who already deleted their portals the maximum copper and granite they could have had

Unfortunately this is not a possibility.

Fix the Ancient Wonders. They cost WAYYYYY too much in time and relics.

You are not asking for a fix (they are not broken, but work as intended), but you are asking for a change in the intended behaviour.

Many of problems are because someone from game owners said: "We do that way and we don't care if people will hate it".

None of our staff have ever said that, nor do I believe anyone ever will.

When I see even team is quitting or resign from their position, this means a lot to any thinking person.

Then please share what this means to you. If you're referring to the Beta Team, I am (very) proud to say that we have one of the most stable teams out there.

 

[DeletedUser1555]

The Magic Academy was intended as a mandatory building from the start, but it is impossible to implement it as mandatory straight away. That is why we had to implement it as optional and make it mandatory with a later update. We want the Academy to be a very powerfull and worthwhile building to have in your city, much like e.g. the Barracks.

But please, then do it the right way. Make the academy a "very powerful and worthwhile building to have" first, and then as a next step consider making it mandatory. At the moment it seems that a lot of players (myself included) don't want to build it because it's rather useless and too big just to build it only for the quest without any desire to use it afterwards.

I really don't see why this building (as it stands now) should be "powerful and worthwhile". I need relics to craft the spells (and don't have a never-ending supply in relics), the spells are of rather little use (considered that it needs a long time to craft them compared to the duration of the spells), and moreover, instead of wasting 25 squares for the building, I could simply build a manufactory delivering supplies day after day if I need more of them.

I just started researching the dwarves' part of the tech tree, and have never been in lack of coins, supplies or goods in the last weeks. Soon, I have to build manufactories for granite and copper and need enough space for them. Thus, I have absolutely no interest in building the Magic Academy which only blocks a full expansion tile, but doesn't help me in any useful way justifying its construction. As it seems now, I am stuck with this strange quest in the main quest line.

 

[Jixel]

Of course updates are always tested before they are released to Beta. We have a team of QA'ers who work very hard on this. Many bugs are caught by them and are fixed before an update even reaches the Beta servers. As those bugs don't affects your game at all, you obviously can't see them ingame and they are not listed in the release notes for an update either for that same reason. We do know that the Beta release of an update is not always perfect, and we're constantly working on improving our workflows so that as few bugs as possible make it from our development environments to our Beta (and Live) releases. Over the past year, we have made huge progress on this front and we'll continue to do so.

For me, the most frustrating kind of bug is a regression bug - something that was previously working breaks in the new build, even if (especially if) that feature wasn't being changed in the new build.

Mature development organisations build automated regression testing into their process to catch this kind of thing, because this particular type of bug tends to make everyone unhappy - developers, testers & the "customers".

Unfortunately, we've seen a lot of those - just to pick something I will report as soon as my scout returns - the "info" popup on the bottom row of the battle screen is now back to showing per-unit HP/damage stats instead of per-squad totals. This bug has been around at least once before, maybe more.
Seeing that sort of thing come up again (and again and again) makes me want to yell at someone "Why were you even touching that code ?! It was working already !"

And I believe many of the bugs we see (especially ones affecting calculations) should be caught by a proper automated set of unit tests. Once the way to calculate the amount of goods being produced, or the coins to harvest, or the provinces available, or any other number in game, has been coded, that code should have an automated unit test that runs every time anyone checks in any further change, and if a change breaks the unit tests, they get to revert their change and fix it !

So, I'm sure the QA-ers work very hard, but they can't catch everything, and they shouldn't have to if there's a proper development process in place before they see the release.

 

[Jixel]

5. End the chests and the required provinces you need to clear. I am not affected by this issue, but I have read the complaints and people are very very unhappy about this. I can't see any reason to have them there. This has really harmed players and the game.

These chests were implemented to make sure a player's progress is balanced. It would have been better if this was done from the start of the game so that everyone knew it and could make their own strategies with this requirement in mind, but that goes for any change that is implemented. The required numbers are actually quite low when compared to the average number of provinces a player has at the certain points, and are well below the average. So, an average player should not have any issues unlocking these chests. Some others may have to fight some more provinces before being able to access the next chapter, though - that is true.

I guess I'm a somewhat above-average player - and yet, on my 4th world, I got stalled for weeks because I had 72 provinces completed and needed 100 to get into the dwarves. My other worlds had 215, 170 and 150 provinces unlocked at the time - it wasn't a matter of not being able to complete them, but it wasn't a priority, it took time that I wanted to spent on other worlds, and I strongly resented having the choice to leave them until later taken away. That's why people are unhappy with this.

The development/design team say "make sure a player's progress is balanced", but the players see "taking our valid play-style choices away".

8. Now that you have decided to let people keep their granite and copper after a portal is deleted, go back and give all the people who already deleted their portals the maximum copper and granite they could have had. The only reason a lot of people deleted the portal was because Inno told them to (in the form of a non declinable quest). Don't punish people who play your game for listening to Inno....or they will be very very angry at Inno. The same thing happened with the Ancient Wonders. Early players were punished badly by not having the runes.

Unfortunately this is not a possibility.

Well, can you see why we consider that rude behaviour on the part of Inno ? Why not choose the "gracious" solution rather than the rude one ?

9. Fix the Ancient Wonders. They cost WAYYYYY too much in time and relics. Now that another chapter is here people won't be able to ever build those things. They need their KP too much. And the way you get random shards you don't want? Come on. How annoying is that? Not to mention the sniping issue which has caused great dissent around here. Now we have to work against each other. None of us wanted that. We don't like the game play of getting those runes. Listen to us. Paying players have QUIT the game over fights over those runes. They have quit. No one has stayed because they thought they were great. Listen to us.

You are not asking for a fix (they are not broken, but work as intended), but you are asking for a change in the intended behaviour.

To the players there isn't this separation between the all-powerful "intended design" and the actual released code. If the behaviour of the game that we get to play is unreasonable in some way, we consider a change in the behaviour a "fix", whether it's the design or the code that has to be changed. And as we get no input into the design process, and as there seems to be a deep black hole at the end of the "Ideas and Suggestions" forum, of course we'll report it as a bug - a design bug - and that's a perfectly valid thing for us to do !
It feels like we're getting the run-around just because we haven't filed the correct form in triplicate and delivered it to the right office in the right building with the right paperclips on it !

Many of problems are because someone from game owners said: "We do that way and we don't care if people will hate it".

None of our staff have ever said that, nor do I believe anyone ever will.

Of course no-one has specifically said the exact sentence above.
But we get that message anyway from the way that releases are delivered, with more and more cases where for "balance" reasons, people are forced to play in a certain way. Again, every time something like the magic academy, or the chest requirements, or the choices of non-declineable quests that is made comes along, that sends a message to the players, and maybe not the one that is intended.

 

[DeletedUser]

deserting of world map

• This was brought up when neighbors began to vanish because people left the game because they found it boring. So it's nearly a year that players live with this 'indeed (huge) problem'. If you need a year to fix 1 problem, it can be assumed that for 7 problems you'll need 7 years.
• Only counting the 'problems' above, I would say there are about 83 problems ...

Please do realise that we have a LOT of players worldwide

• If you can't face the amount of players you have, you should close the game. A player is a client, or better said: you wanna him to be a client. As there are such a LOT of players worldwide, if you ignore them for being TOO much, they never will convert in paying clients.

.. to make sure a player's progress is balanced.

• Why not let play a player the game in his own way? Might be the problem is the disaster in the general balancing of the game. Instead of trying to 'correct' the players (and tell them that they are bad people for not following your balance ideas (which you evidently are unable to implement it ...) you should to try yo resolve game's balancing problems: one problem more, what means 1 year more, so we reach 84 years ...

You are not asking for a fix (they are not broken, but work as intended), but you are asking for a change in the intended behaviour

• This could be said a little bit nicer (if you want that players convert into paying clients) - what you say with this words is: you are pretty silly and stupid, don't bother me anymore ... - which is exactly what people above accuse you.

"We do that way and we don't care if people will hate it". - None of our staff have ever said that, nor do I believe anyone ever will.

• see there

 

[DeletedUser]

to distribute new players in another way

We again hit one-way thinking. Owners think about changes for new players, but this is invalid perspective. Why? Some servers are having switched off registration so new players aren't coming. Additionally such process will be neverending, because every day accounts are deleted. I remember my first server with more than 60k accounts. After about 2 weeks it had 30k, after another 2 weeks - 20k, and when for long time registration was switched off it went down to less than 8k and only switching it on didn't made situation even worse. But after short time registration was again switched off. Limiting to only new players is completely wrong, because new players will not fill gaps after players that are constantly deleted. Only way is to move old players near center of map, and a lot of players is shouting this loud and clear. But of course without response.

Can we offer this soon? I sincerely hope so

Every day is important. If there was no solution for more than year players doubt if it will be available ever. More than year is enough to not only design solution but also implement it at least 2 -3 times and also patch many times. I know, because I'm programmer.

Please do realise that we have a LOT of players worldwide

I am aware of that. But among players many ideas are same regardless of server they play at. I've seen a lot of ideas same on many servers (I use, 2 additional languages: german and english, next to my mother tongue) so know that even if we gather all ideas, from all servers, a huge part will be common for all of them.

What do you base it on?

I base on changes made in game. Real players are smart enough to by looking only at statistics on wiki and say: "This is good, and this is crap". Many on their own create tools to calculate something or optimize production. They interact with real players to gather data and don't base on statistic only. And you also base on it showing data. Many times it is wrong perspective, because we mix paying and not paying users and after that calculate something. For example If there is 3 players, one with 5 builders and rest with only 2, doesn't mean their overall progress will be comparable.

Beta Team, have done our absolute best to ask for as many bugfixes before a Live update as is possible

But it is not about team on forum only. And not only here. There are forums in many languages. And still we seen very nasty bugs known on beta from first day... and still after 2 weeks they were live. That is really not nice.

So, an average player should not have any issues unlocking these chests

Maybe when we put in one bin players paying and not and calculate average But this game should give options to play own style. I know many players forced to fight/negotiate despite they don't want to. Game is advertised as giving choice in own gamingstyle - but this is lie. Main plot is forcing players to do as owners want.

We want the Academy to be a very powerfull and worthwhile

So do this first and will see they build it on their own.

The quests that come up are declineable, so they won't stop your progress.

But this also hit side quests, which are declineable, but are returning in every cycle.

None of our staff have ever said that, nor do I believe anyone ever will.

But people see this between verses

If you're referring to the Beta Team

World not end only on Beta Team

 

[DeletedUser651]

Muf-muf,

Most of the replies I would have made have already been made. But I have a few more comments:

1. If a bug simply must come over to the live servers, then own up to it. When you release the update, say....this comes with this bug, we are SORRY but we had no choice to bring it over. In fact, many issues could be solved if anyone ever apologized to players. It isn't as bad when a bug hits beta, this is beta after all, but when a bug goes live....you are saying essentially "we don't give a flying fig if you folks are harmed. Too bad, so sad for you." If you are sorry, then make amends.

2. You say you want the magic academy to be a powerful building. I want a puppy and a unicorn. Right now, I have no room for a puppy and I have never seen a unicorn. When the magic academy is a powerful building it might be important, right now it is NOT. We do not want it. WE do not want it. The customers DO NOT WANT IT. Perhaps listening when customers don't want something?

3. You didn't address the non-declinable quest about building unboosted manufactories. This also falls in to the category of things NO ONE WANTS.

4. Yes, thank you, Jixel. When I said the wonders need to be fixed, I was indeed talking about a design defect not a manufacturing defect. I understand they are working as designed. It is a bad design. It has caused dissent, as designed, and as long as the game is progressing and we aren't all stalled, it requires too many kp, it takes too long, and getting the runes is too difficult, and it pits players against each other causing a lot of dissent. After 6 months I am still only half built of one wonder. It shouldn't take longer to build a pixel building as a real brick and mortar building. If people hadn't been stalled waiting for the fairies, they all would be screaming en masse. Or just think about how hard it would be for anyone reaching the dwarves right now to build a dwarven wonder.

5. This is a video game. I frankly do not believe that there is no possible way that players who had their portals deleted already and lost all those goods cannot be compensated. It may be hard, but of course it is possible. There are alternatives too....you could give all those players diamonds. You could give them a free diamond culture building. But again saying, yes, we harmed you in relation to the other players but too bad, so sad for you, well, that just makes us ANGRY.

So over all the issues all fall in a couple of categories:

a. Choices removed.

Inno forces us to do things that we think are against our interest (stupid quests, bad buildings, chests. (That causes the most anger.) Why does Inno think it knows exactly how a player should have progressed? If players don't want to do something....LEAVE THEM ALONE. We are grown up adults, who frankly understand this game better than the designers. But even if a player is making a grave error that could block further progress....LET THEM. (Unless you need to do something to make money, and if so, own up to it.)

b. Refusing to make amends

The devs make a mistake and errors are introduced that harm the players. Errors that Inno can't fix because they are hard, things that harm the players, but Inno never offers any amends. And don't tell me how much you care. If I smash into your car and tell you that I really really care how much it harmed you, that still doesn't get your car fixed. If I smash into your car repeatedly, and keep telling you how much I really care that it has harmed you and yeah, it makes me really sad, but I never give you a dime to fix it...well....soon you might punch me in the nose.....or take your car far away from me. To make the analogy even closer to what we have here....you were paying me to park your car!

 

[DeletedUser]

complaints about our services and/or moderators

Just to clarify... For me this game is service. SaaS (Software as a Service) model.

Obviously we can discuss the first (game improvements) on this forum, but we cannot discuss the second (complaints about staff).

Both cannot be treated separately. They both connects to each other. If I said something about GFX, some graphic designers can feel offended. If I write something about algorithms, designer can take some punch. And when about bugs in implementation - I hit programmer/gamedev. I may attack them indirectly only by mentioning some game aspects, they are responsible for. And this game is hit by many design bugs, which point to game owners, who are responsible for driving of game development.

Over the past year, we have made huge progress on this front and we'll continue to do so.

But with this progress is also connected huge increase in codebase. When codebase is growing and staff not - project is slowing down. Same amount of people is forced to work with much bigger application. Tests takes more time and gamedev is shifting from writing new functionalities to not breaking old codebase.

That is why we had to implement it as optional and make it mandatory with a later update.

But this is really wrong thinking. When this building will be powerfull? Not now, not even in a matter of half a year. And this was clearly written that this may change after few months, not now or even not in nearest updates. So why do owners force players to do so, if for half a year they will not use this building and only wasting one whole expansion for it? This building is having not even one pro! Only cons...Why players are forced to build it if in a matter of at least half a year they will not use it? This is real problem - forcing players to play in a way, owners think is good. Not as players want

Academy to be a very powerfull and worthwhile building to have in your city, much like e.g. the Barracks.

This is also questionable. Game is advertised as free choice between economical or military conquest. Despite it isn't truth. We don't have splitting those both paths. They aren't separated. Main plot at some point suggest it is possible in first era, but this is only illusion and after short time main plot return to second option as mandatory. We may look at tech tree and will see that only City Expansions and Squad increase are in fact optional sometimes, but all other techs are mandatory. How this match to "free choice"? Any free choice is illusion and game owners add more and more restrictions which are killing choices that were left. Why I cannot destroy for example Barracks or Magic Academy? In late game conquering with troops is impossible so this huge building is useless. Why not allow players to remove it to build instead manufactories? Only City Hall should be mandatory. Rest of buildings should be optional. All of techs should be reorganized and splitted into few trees/tabs (military, economy, culture, other, guest races) and some techs should require optionally one of military or economical tech. Current tech tree doesn't allow separation of both ways. They are bound too much. This is another place where game is very inconsistent.

 

[DeletedUser867]

We are working on a solution to distribute new players in another way, so that it's a lot more likely to get new neighbours, even if you're at "the edge of the world".

If immigrants are a lot MORE likely on the edge of the map, that necessarily means that they are a lot LESS likely on the interior of the map, which strikes me as a VERY BAD IDEA. After a very few months, the consequence would be bigger and bigger holes, anywhere on the map. The thinner we spread the cities, the MORE difficult it will be to discover 200 active neighbors.

What's needed is an Archive/Retrieve/Move capability, with the consequent ability to shift active, but isolated, cities toward the center of the map.

Archiving: Any city that has not been active for EIGHT days, should be taken off of the world map and archived. If the developers wish to prune the archive database, after 3 months or so, by deleting accounts that have NO active cities in any world, nor any developed nor premium buildings, that's fine as it would not effect the active players.

(Note that we've finessed Main Halls that are forever under construction. They'd be archived after 8 days.)

If an archived city is a member of a fellowship, the city should be greyed out or red-dotted The city won't be on the world map any more, so visiting it would not be feasible. The "visit" menu command should therefore be suppressed in all of the rosters.

The Knowledge Points that you had invested in the Ancient Wonders owned by an archived city would be lost, unless the player returned. Contributions that were made to your own Ancient Wonders, by an archived player, could be attributed to an anonymous donor (or grayed out).

• No Mon, No Fun, Your Son
• Too Bad, So Sad, Your Dad.

Retrieving: If an archived player returns, it will be necessary to rebuild their list of scouted and acquired sectors. There are 9 unique City+Relic combinations, and a "matching" city slot would need to be selected. The "new" set of relic sectors would therefore look and behave exactly like the "old" set of relic sectors. There are more elegant ways to accomplish the task, but a simple coordinate translation would suffice.

Isolated: Each city currently has a list of up to 200 (undiscovered) trading partners. If fewer than 1/3 of those cities are occupied, the city should be flagged as "isolated."

Moving: Within a few days, every "isolated" city should be Archived and immediately Retrieved. As indicated above, the Retrieval would provide a new set of scouted and acquired relic sectors that were functionally identical to the old set. The list of trading partners would have to be entirely rebuilt, and while there's certainly a possibility that you'd lose one of your favorite trading partners, it's more than likely that they would ALSO be moved simply because you were BOTH in the same lousy neighborhood. An undiscovered trading partner might even land in one of your previously discovered city sectors.

The algorithm does not need to be clever. If there are NO better locations, which would be the worst case, then the "isolated" city would simply immigrate back into the sector that they just vacated.

Immigrating: Immigrants, including the snobbish "we're going to reject 8 of the 9 possible City+Relic combination sectors" Movers, could continue to use exactly the same hexagonal spiral that's been in use for several months.

Consequences:

• Inactive cities, regardless of their premium/development status, would be archived after 8 days.
• Archived cities would be red-dotted, grayed out, or suppressed in the various rosters.
  The archived cities would not be represented on the world map, and could not be visited.
• Active cities with fewer than 66 active neighbors would be shifted to a more fertile area, typically closer to the center of the map.
  .
• The Archive/Retrieve/Move procedure would be able support user initiated moves, to a new random map location, and in any case the city would get a new map location if the owner returned after an absence of more than 8 days.
• Note that the same procedure would allow the various worlds in a region to be combined, if the regional market is shrinking, or rebalanced/split to optimize server utilization.

 

[DeletedUser]

I guess I'm a somewhat above-average player - and yet, on my 4th world, I got stalled for weeks because I had 72 provinces completed and needed 100 to get into the dwarves. My other worlds had 215, 170 and 150 provinces unlocked at the time - it wasn't a matter of not being able to complete them, but it wasn't a priority, it took time that I wanted to spent on other worlds, and I strongly resented having the choice to leave them until later taken away. That's why people are unhappy with this.

The development/design team say "make sure a player's progress is balanced", but the players see "taking our valid play-style choices away".

This.

 

[DeletedUser978]

Regarding the world map... Obviously a big problem. Considering how quickly many players are leaving this game, these empty holes around our cities won't go away any time soon. Possible solution... Dwarves have moved out of my city recently. Where did they go? Would it not be a good idea to have Dwarven cities fill up some of them empty gaps? Few possible ideas on their interaction model...
- Players can perform 'neighbourly help' on them.
- Some kind of goods trading would be nice.
- Perhaps interacting with these cities would allow for extra KPs.

Talking about KPs, I find it ridiculous how long it takes to level them Wonders. On one hand, many players opt out of KP donations due to incredibly low payouts from all top five spots. On the other hand, now that Fairy tech is here, nobody's doing anything at all with Wonders.

Few ideas regarding that disaster called Magic Academy... I got mine at level 2. Now I can't even level it up any further, as it requires diamonds. Is this a bug or a joke? Current spells are worthless to me, definitely not worth permanently loosing runes on them. You talk about making the Academy into a powerful building. Fine, give us some spells that we can actually use, and a way to produce runes. The way it is now, if I start using spells, eventually I loose all my runes, and the Academy becomes truly useless. As for spells, a few come to mind...
- Spells for diamond production.
- Spells for shortening the scouting missions.
- Spells for KPs.
Of course, none of this will happen, but... whatever.

Here I'd like to elaborate on the above points. Scouting missions take absolutely idiotic amounts of time in this game. There is tech that makes scouting cheaper instead of making it quicker. I do not need more coins, I'm already drowning in coins. What I need is another province to take over, otherwise I go and play some other game that actually allows me to play and have fun. Yet I have to wait for my scout nearly two days before I get another province.

I've noticed that this scouting problem can be alleviated by the use of diamonds. Again, you're joking, right? If anyone at INNO actually expects me to fork out real cash for their buggy product, they must've been hitting their bong again. The interesting thing I've noticed about Elvenar is that it doesn't provide any way for players to earn diamonds. Forge Of Empires - another buggy product by INNO - at least has the wishing wells, their beta players get diamonds with each update, and it comes with quests which give out small amounts of diamonds. I also play couple of other games, made by other companies, and they all make it possible to earn them diamonds, or emeralds, or whatever rocks they happen to exchange for real cash. Elvenar... nothing.

Now that I'm done with this post, I'd like to say I'm going back to playing more Elvenar, but I can't even do that. That ten or fifteen minutes which took to collect from my city, set a building upgrade, and win a few battles... it is over, and there is nothing more for me to do. Scout says he won't be ready for a day plus eight hours. Upgrade says it won't be done for eight hours. There is, literally, nothing to do.

 

[DeletedUser651]

Scouting missions take absolutely idiotic amounts of time in this game.

That.

 

[DeletedUser118]

If I'm not 100% wrong, there should be an idea of mine in the ideas section about those dwarven cities replacing empty spots on the map. They could work as quest givers too or places to fight.

 

[DeletedUser]

@Katzenprinz when I first time seen September InnoTv about guest races and was mentioned that when we finish race it will be spreading on world, I thought they utilize that to populate empty spaces around player "releasing" them... I was too optimistic Such move would be great for all players on borders. Especially those low level, because high-end players could give neighbors for them.. Look how much your idea was close to what I was hoping for from releasing info about them.

 

[DeletedUser118]

Yeah, plus the races would be kept around in the game and not just vanish.