Discussion Spells feature and Magic Academy

[Muf-Muf]

Dear Humans and Elves,

We have recently be getting a lot of feedback from you on the Spells feature and the Magic Academy building in particular. As this is a very important topic of conversation in our communities worldwide, we want to take this moment and ask you for some specific feedback on this topic. Of course we have already had some suggestions as well, and we won't be ignoring these either.

Among the most-heard suggestions are the ones summarized below. Please allow us to list them and give you some feedback on those.

Community feedback: Researching and/or constructing the Magic Academy should be optional.
The Spells feature has been designed to be one of the core features that Elvenar has to offer, not just for now, but also for the future. You can compare this to e.g. the Battle feature and the Barracks accompanying this feature. We always intended on making the beneficial for everyone, so that they can be (and: are) used by everyone. With this in mind, it made sense for us to "require" a player to build the building, and we still intend on improving this feature so that you, our players, will value the feature the same way we do.

Community feedback: Make the Magic Academy smaller.
The building has quite a big size, yes. With the intention that it is a (very) powerful building, we had to adjust the building size accordingly. We have heard your request to make it smaller, but this is not the way in which we want to go. Instead, we want to make the building worth the space it takes up in your city.

Community feedback: The Spells are weak and/or not useful for me.
This is exactly what we want to ask feedback on here: we want the spells to be beneficial for you. We thought we were on the right track with it already, but given the feedback we received from the community it seems we may not have provided in all your wishes just yet.


And then the important part: how can YOU help us with improving the Spells feature and/or the Magic Academy?
You can help by providing your feedback in a reply in this topic. We are looking for very specific feedback:

1. What exactly is it that you do and do not like, and why?
2. Do you have suggestions for new Spells, and if so: what Spell(s) do YOU want?

In order to guide this discussion, we will be setting a few guidelines:

• Everyone's opinion is valuable and valid, and nobody has a "wrong" opinion, so treat each other's responses and feedback with that in mind;
• Please be constructive in your feedback, try to answer the "Why?" question when giving feedback: why do you or do you not like something?

We are very much looking forward to your feedback!

Kind regards,
Your Elvenar Team

 

[DeletedUser]

Give us the choice to build it or not but don't make it mandatory.
Maybe it will be a useful building in the future but for the moment I don't need it. Unfortunately I already build it but I wished I had waited because now I don't have enough space to build other buildings I really need (granite/copper). Currently I don't need any spells to boost production because I've got enough workshops to do the job. That said I would like to see spells which can do stuff which I can't get normally, like faster scouting.

 

[DeletedUser]

1st - Regarding the building size and your unwillingness to change it or making the building of it optional. Please consider giving us an extra expansion in the tech tree, in the same chapter we research the Academy to make up for this. I don't think it is too much to ask, considering we will still have to spend valuable KPs and other resources to get said expansion, but it would go a long way into making the players accept this decision better. You keep giving us these extra buildings, like the Academy and the ancient wonders, but their benefits are marginal and they take up so much room in our cities. This, for players who can't afford to buy premium expansions especially, is like a slap in the face. At least the wonders are optional, if you do want us to build this, give us the room to do so! Otherwise I will just play the game like there is no main questline, and I'm sure I will not be the only one doing so.

2nd - The spells and their lack of usefulness.
During the repeatable quests debacle, we were all told repeatedly that we should aim to make our cities self-suficient, with no need to rely on extra sources of resources, like the said quests. With that in mind, most players did that, which now made the existing spells redundant. I produce enough coins/supplies and goods in my city without using any spells. My culture is more than enough for my needs, and to make it worse, the culture spells doesn't work for the players that could actually benefit from it, the ones whose culture is at 100%.
There have been countless suggestions on spells that could actually be useful. A spell to reduce the cost/time it takes to scout new provinces, a spell that increases our troops power are just a couple of examples. Why not a spell that you can spend as a currency to gain additional expansions?
Think out of box and come up with more creative spells than the old "lets increase production of resources a bit" model.

3rd - Allow the academy to be upgraded without diamonds, at least until level 4. Create a level 5 if you want for diamond players, but two slots are just not enough to make it worthwhile for everyone else.

4th Lastly, until we have a reliable source for relics, no one will produce spells continuously, as that would just deplete the relics we have and we would end up not being able to level up the Ancient wonders we have. I know the tournament is coming, and I have seen the inno tv spisode about it, but it seems we will only be earning a type of relics per week, which will make our stocks unbalanced, and i doubt we will be earning enough to make up for having the magic academy working non stop.

In the end I think point 1 and 2 are the ones that need to be solved first. Without space ppl will simply not build it in the first place, making everything else unimportant.

 

[DeletedUser]

I've already a collection of about 80 spells, but don't know how to use them makin' sense:

• to get out once 140 supplies instead of 96 supplies, the 'costs' for the spell seem to me me to be a little bit to high. And for havin' 600 - 700 K supplies neither 'spells' nor leveled workshops are needed.

• to improve help bonus for culture doesn't seem be a good idea, because I'm always on 170% of culture by my own, without any neighborly help.

• boosting goods production isn't really an option: I have all my manufactures on 24 hours (because one also has to 'pay' production, and this seems to be best balanced for me) and to produce once 5000 planks instead of 3500, the 'costs' for the spell seem to me me to be a little bit to high.

So the only choice left is to produce more and more spells hoping some day one can do something with them (for example: trade them).

We lived a year ore more with 2 types of relics we couldn't use.

This changed with the implementation of the Magic Academy.

Now we can use this 2 types of relics to produce something which also doesn't make any sense ...

But devs are workin' hard, so in July 2019 there will come out something buggy which also will be useless ...

 

[DeletedUser651]

• What exactly is it that you do and do not like, and why?

• Do you have suggestions for new Spells, and if so: what Spell(s) do YOU want?

1. I do not like that you have to use relics. They are a practically a finite resource if you are greatly advanced. We have almost no way to get them and if you aren't advanced those players WILL have almost no way to get them. Scouting times are insane. If you did get used to them as a player, you'd be so SOL by the time you get to 1, 2, and then 3 day scouting times. Then they would all be gone and you'd be yelling at us that we relied on magic goods when we should have a self sufficient city. I will never use relics for a recurring need. That is so foolish.

2. The spells take way too long. If you did build a city that needed them, your city would be at a standstill most of the time.

3. The spells are not powerful enough. If they affected every building in your city that might mean something, but one building? That just doesn't matter.

4. The spells are not for things I need. I need shorter scouting times. I need shorter scouting times. I need shorter scouting times.

5. To all who have 100% culture (and if you are wasting space on more culture that might be a lot of your problem with space) the magic academy has ZERO benefit. Why would we want a gigantic building that we can't remove that is useless? Even if it did give us the culture, 5% isn't worth caring about.


Frankly though, I don't see it. Everyone here got highly upset when they found out players were using quests to give them more coins and supplies because the players got to the end of the tech tree too fast. Then, you did all you could, at nearly every update all year long to slow the game down with rebalancing issues. Now, you are saying you want a building that will speed things up again? The only way this building would be useful would be if it really sped things up....a bunch....but you don't want that. So, how could you make something that we want given both of our underlying and competing desires?

You want the game slower, we want the game faster. If you give us the magic academy we want, then the game will be much faster. If you want to keep the game slow, we won't want the magic academy.

 

[DeletedUser1257]

I do not like the fact that some of the quests related to the Magic Academy are not able to be declined.

Example: The Magic Academy -- Produce Spell "Power of Provision" 1 time. Cannot decline this quest, which is annoying.

Personally, I think all quests should be able to be declined, except the first few introductory quests that show you how to play the game.

 

[DeletedUser]

Thank you for opening this thread, and for the specific introductory comments. Even though we may disagree in point, in principle it's great to hear from you.

The Spells feature has been designed to be one of the core features that Elvenar has to offer, not just for now, but also for the future.

Please recognize that you're introducing a "core feature" after many of us have invested months and/or lots of $ into the game. We're likely to be somewhat apprehensive over a blind change. It's likely that you were feeling excited - we were feeling apprehensive - with disappointing results for both.

Do you know what would make lots of this frustration go away? Give Beta players free Academy upgrades, and existing real time players a chance to earn the diamonds necessary for upgrading the Academy. It's pretty essential for you to understand that most players consider it underhanded when you require a new core element and then expect vested players to either pay up or get screwed. A Level 2 Academy will never be able to produce sufficient spells (based on your description of this as a core element). I'm saying this firmly, not with intent to be aggressive, but to emphasize the extent of player reaction thus far.​

Conceptually everyone seemed interested in the idea of Spells. It's the Relics which presented the conceptual problem. All the other core buildings utilize reproducible assets: coins / supplies / goods. We make them and spend them, over and over. But a "core building" which runs on Relics is an entirely different matter - we can't produce Relics. In fact...

We value our relics. Province encounters are challenging. We like the challenge. Spending Relics on a Spell that lasts a couple of hours and produces nominal results - here you have the crux of the problem. It feels like insult to injury when we are required to build a large building in order to do this process we don't want to do at all. I'm hopeful that this is a big misunderstanding, and look forward to seeing the corrections and follow up to restore some mutual confidence.

During the repeatable quests debacle, we were all told repeatedly that we should aim to make our cities self-sufficient, with no need to rely on extra sources of resources, like the said quests. With that in mind, most players did that, which now made the existing spells redundant.

Yep! We were slammed and insulted for using Quests to boost production - now it's magically okay to boost production. This is one of the reasons players are balking - we'd like some ability to be Frank Sinatra, and "do it our way". Not all the time - just enough of the time. After all, this is a magical world.


The last negative thing I have to say is our concern about where additional Relics will come from. Relics from Quests was mentioned - and you won't hear any complaints when that occurs. Relics from some tournament where we compete against an independent standard - this will also be good.

Relics gained from direct competition against one another - where a limited number of resources are made available for players to fight over - this will change the nature of the game. Elvenar is a blessed relief from real life: here, I don't want to fight a world of finite resources. I don't want to win if that ensures that others lose needed resources. I don't want to compete against my best friend here - gaining Relics she may need. Please give us a standard to compete against - everyone who does such and such gets x relics, etc.

Aside from the competition issue, now that you're making Spells a core feature, Relics are the primary coin of the Realm (they can't be produced, only won). Then if you choose to make Relics available primarily according to fighting skills, once again you're changing the nature of the game by giving the advantage to fighters. This isn't the hallmark of a city-builder game. If you want to avoid this, you're planning on awarding just as many Relics via production Quests, right?​

Specifically:

Either give us Spells that don't cost Relics - or drastically upgrade the caliber of Spells so they equate to the value of a Relic. We can easily spend 25,000 goods to negotiate one Relic - or lose hundreds of troops. We're unlikely to appreciate the value of using 2 Relics (40,000 goods apx) to gain a few thousands goods via a Spell.

This will mean reconsidering the calculation of Spells to benefit all cities. Because: A single manufacturing boost of 50% may be helpful to a fledgling city fighting to upgrade residences to Superior level....but what good is this bonus to a developed city? None whatsoever. (Think about it: what responsible city planner past Section V would be so irresponsible as to place his city in a position where gaining 50% of one manufactory could be meaningful?)

Since 1 Relic is equally valuable to players at all levels, the purchased Spell should also be of equal value to players at all levels. An equitable manufacturing Spell could be "All goods produced in x hours are increased by x percent". This produces a result equivalent at every city level. so long as the hours / percentages bring a truly "powerful" result - not a miserly one. (Note: if the programming can't be re-written to this extent, then keep the 1 Spell per 1 manufactory ratio - only make the results truly spectacular and equally costly). Please keep in mind how costly these Relics are!

Alternately, if the Spells could be attached to the Quest line - where outcomes increase along the way - you could have Spells that yield goods plus coins / supplies like a Quest. Everyone would enjoy the thought of Spells which grow more powerful as we progress.

On the same note, Ensorcelled and Supply spells should probably apply to total production - not one building at a time. And please reconsider the Ensorcelled Spell's application to the 100% culture bonus - this is another area where Spells efficacy varies depending on the size of a city.​

As for other random Spells:

Straw into Gold: bottomless coin for 7 days
European Holiday: workers are at the ocean, bottomless Supplies for 7 days
Fairy Godmother: every NH click you make has 4x the result
AutoPilot: Manufactories produce at lowest level automatically until supplies / coin run out (we could save up for 3 big spells and actually go on vacation for a week...definitely worth saving up the Relics)
Spring Cleaning: Rent a storage space for 24 hours so we can clean up and rearrange (at least 12 x 12)
DoubleDecker: Very expensive permanent Spell! Allows us to stack two identical buildings
Secret Passageway: Another expensive permanent Spell! Allows us to replace a city Wonder with a 1x1 tall marker indicating the secret passage to the Cliff Wonder.
Clickers Delight: Skips the "do you really want to" second popup for declinable quests. LOL
Wonder Widget: Doubles the KP donation made by others for 24 hours


Please note: NONE of these speed up the game (I'm not suggesting faster scouting, lol).

 

[DeletedUser867]

A Level 2 Academy will never be able to produce sufficient spells

Levels 3,4,5, which are the premium levels, just allow you to queue up more spells.
Producing the manufacturing spells takes more than a day, so just 2 slots already covers a couple of days.

we can't produce Relics.

As indicated in the April YouTube video, a level VII player, who has the bare minimum of 130 sectors, will be able to generate an additional 32 Relics per week merely by revisiting sectors that they've already acquired.

We were slammed and insulted for using Quests to boost production

No - the problem with the declinable quests was that they were an infinite resources. Relics, and thereby spells, are limited to a few dozen per week.

if you choose to make Relics available primarily according to fighting skills

You can negotiate to acquire sectors, as has always been the case.

Please note: NONE of these speed up the game (I'm not suggesting faster scouting, lol).

I don't expect to see a spell that will reduce the scouting costs/times, but I'll lay you good odds that one of the Fairy Ancient Wonders will reduce Scouting costs/times by, let's say, 10% per level, just like the Advanced Scouting technology lowers them by 25%.
100%*75%*75%*... = 56% ....

 

[DeletedUser]

Katwijk, with all the politeness request by the Mods at the outset of this thread, I'm going to suggest that you're significantly underemployed. You'd be a fabulous working for a politician - few people have the knack of taking snippets out of context using them as a distorted basis for ostensibly meaningful retort.

******************

So I just looked up the video - which interestingly hasn't been posted on the forum. I'm at a loss for words. They're releasing a Provincial Tournament that they already know won't work. How sad.

 

[DeletedUser867]

taking snippets out of context

I didn't want to quote your entire post. You CAN make good judgements when your facts are crooked, but it's not likely.

 

[DeletedUser]

1. What exactly is it that you do and do not like, and why?

- I like the idea of spells, there's plenty of things you can do with them. However, the current spells are pretty much pointless. So far I haven't used a single spell. Our cities already give out more than enough coins / supplies / goods. And if you're still somehow lacking resources then all you need to do is (ab)use the repeatable quests (trade with fellowship members) and you're set. Same result, but it doesn't cost any relics whatsoever.

1. Do you have suggestions for new Spells, and if so: what Spell(s) do YOU want?

- Faster scouting. Perhaps in addition to an update to the whole scouting system (add more scouts & have the ability to rescout provinces for random / hidden / special rewards and features).

- Stronger armies / Attack spells / Support spells / Healing spells.

- Spells that can help fellowship members (for example, spell to send temporary worker to fellowship member)

- Spells that affect the entire fellowship (for example, stronger armies / additional KP from City Hall every day)

And, of course, a fix for the repeatable quests exploit (trade with fellowship members for unlimited gold / supplies) would make the current spells a bit more interesting.

 

[DeletedUser1596]

I've been waiting for a comment like that, thank you Boko.

And why it should be optional? It's a matter of choice. If I don't have a choice to build or delete, I don't need to play it, you can play it for me.

 

[DeletedUser1095]

If you insist on making the building nonoptional, completing the research should provide the building + an expansion at no extra cost. (It would be better to make it optional but so attractive that players will want it - that way you'll get "built-in feedback" about whether it's satisfactory or not, by checking what percentage of players are opting to build it.)

Types of spells I want more than the ones now available: Speeding up the scout. Lowering scouting costs (eg 10%, stackable). Lowering negotiating costs for one province. Speeding up military training. KPs. Higher values for the existing spells. Thanks for asking.

 

[DeletedUser]

What exactly is it that you do and do not like, and why?

The size is the biggest sticking point for me. My worst stalls in Elvenar have been for two reasons: 1) lack of population and 2) lack of space. I don't like the MA because it makes these choke points worse rather than improving them. If you are going to insist on keeping the MA so enormous, you MUST add another expansion to the tech tree right before it.

You can think of the MA as a "ghost" building that is sometimes worth half a factory, two workshops, or some culture. The problems are as follows.

• I have never been stalled for lack of goods so I don't care about the factory spell at all.
• I don't need coins either, so the only benefit of the culture spell is 5% more supplies. Better to cast a workshop spell which will work reliably instead of hoping my fellows boost me to 125% and hit the right building so the spell kicks in.
• The MA is introduced too early in the game. It's wasteful to use spells until you have lvl 15 workshops or factories because they are percentage-based.

That means the main use of the MA is to boost supplies production of high-level workshops. Problem is, it's better to use the space and build one workshop that is active 100% of the time than to have two "ghost" workshops for short periods of time. To make the MA a net gain to build, I'd need to be able to earn relics and make spells fast enough to keep a workshop boosted at least 3/4 of the time.

The duration you put on the workshop spell is actually a slap in the face for people who work. You extended the spell duration from 2h to 10h, but I work full-time so I'm typically away from the game right around 10h on a work day. It's almost as if you wanted to be absolutely sure I couldn't cast the spell in the morning and still have it active when I get home. Essentially I only get a 3h duration to play a bit in the evening despite the buff. (Hint: people with full-time professional jobs are the ones who have money to buy diamonds.)

Do you have suggestions for new Spells, and if so: what Spell(s) do YOU want?

In order to be useful, the culture spell should provide the 5% boost if the building has NH even if the city boost hasn't reached 125%. Even better, buff it to 10%. Why are you being so stingy?

Extend the workshop spell to 16h so it's not so biased against people with jobs.

Increase troop damage by 20% for one hour. (This is a big number but you said you wanted the MA to be powerful.)

Increase troop health by 20% for one hour.

Increase KP accumulation by 20% for 12 hours. Who doesn't want free KP?

Increase troop training speed by 20% for 12 hours. We're going to need a lot of troops for the tournaments.

Guest race motivation. All your guest race factories/farms produce 10% faster for an hour. Stackable.

 

[DeletedUser651]

Please note: NONE of these speed up the game (I'm not suggesting faster scouting, lol).

It takes an advanced players YEARS to get all the available expansions due to the length of scouting. I think that needs to be sped up.

 

[DeletedUser408]

the 2 main reasons why Magic Academy is junk you the devs will not go back as explianed in your post, Obviously you might have more plans for it or make it better but till then we should not be forced to build, make 1 spell, disconect it and leave it parked in corner of city taking up 5 by 5, it was going to get more powerfull start it at 1x1 currently is it value in size and then just like any other building make it better and bigger as it grows its powers simple really

EDIT: BTW as some have said this is beta, i would love to test new features and such it is why this time on this game i joined Beta for beginning, but alas, no 500 diamonds per upgrade now instead 1 year into to please give us feedback 1st and you get 100 Diamonds. Well i am not going to waste my time reporting anymore that is for sure, don't see this game going in a great direction honestly, very stingy on rewards and it looks like this torunament we wil lget 1 hole relic in 1 week maybe from what i could see, remember this Volume of players playing a game will give you more potential for diamonds to be bought and spent on your servers, i am sure your accountants have run the numbers on FOE, i am pretty sure you are not gettign same payout in linve servers for this game, its simply not worth it, BTW you do need a large base of players that will not spend 1 dime like me, as they more payers daily the more chance some will by from you so consider that as well

 

[DeletedUser]

By the way, I'm so disappointed in the 10h duration of the workshop spell because Elvenar is getting worse and worse for people with jobs with each expansion. Most days I miss out on KP because I can only accumulate 10 and it's often 11-12h before I can log in again. I was tolerating that and the shabby return of the 9h timers. However, next the 4h granite timers came, meaning I miss out on a lot of the granite my city can potentially produce. Now there are fairy farms that are even worse since some of the crops have to be collected every hour, despite numerous players' feedback that the timeframe doesn't work for them.

You haven't written a mobile app so I can't even log in and grab some granite or flowers over lunch. The game doesn't seem to be positioned as a "clicker" with the way the workshop, high-level house, and factory timers are structured, yet things like the fairy farms and granite really penalize people who can't log in frequently.

You know what spells I'd really use?

Make KP accumulate for 12 hours.
Make granite mines and flower farms produce for 2x as long. (stackable)

 

[DeletedUser]

What if the Academy functions as permanent Culture Bonus, increasing at each level?​

Start with 5% bump at Research Section III or IV, then increase it by 5% each section.

1) Building the Academy then offers a concrete reward commensurate with the space devoted. The Spells themselves can be more or less powerful, since they're the icing on the cake.

This makes the build VERY powerful - and gives developers the freedom to design any kind of spell they have in mind. Players are likely to want this building, not dislike it. It suits our objectives of maximizing the efficiency of our grid, and still allows us to play the "Spells" game which devs want.

I mean, who wouldn't want a 5x5 building that gave a 25% culture bonus by time for Fairies (when we need space for creating population)? We'd love it.

This would put the Academy in the prime spot devs are hoping for. And it doesn't change the course of the game...

 

[DeletedUser1075]

Answer to your first question:
I don't like having to build a building that I can't use as designed. The size is just icing on the cake there. I just don't want to build something that is useless. And the spells are useless - therefore the building is too.

Answer to your second question:
TBH, the real pain point I have in this game is Expansions. Any spell that helps with that would make the MA more interesting.

• Reduce scouting time
• Bonus "province" point
• Clone a scout for the time it takes for the clone to scout one province (so long as it doesn't stop me from using my regular scout during that timeframe)
• Produce diamonds by magic
• This from Bobbi:

  Secret Passageway: Another expensive permanent Spell! Allows us to replace a city Wonder with a 1x1 tall marker indicating the secret passage[...]

  Yep, saves me an expansion for the one wonder I have that I'm now thinking about deleting because it's not wondrous anymore. I'd do this to keep it once it is built. In fact, this would make a couple of the wonders (that I've chosen not to build) much more appealing. Frankly, you should enable this automatically once a wonder reaches level 10, without the 1x1 marker and without the spells.

There were a number of other good and entertaining suggestions from players above, but none of those alone would make me build an MA.

I can manage well enough with supplies, coins, goods, troops, and guest resources that I can't see a use for any spells for those parts of the game. This is exacerbated by the fact that those spells apply to individual buildings and therefore wouldn't have enough of an impact to justify using them even at times when resources/goods/etc are tight. If the existing spells applied to all of a specific type of building, at least they would be potentially useful on the rare occasion. I still wouldn't have an interest in the MA. But it wouldn't be embarrassingly useless. Just mostly useless.

Shout out to Aydenn:

You haven't written a mobile app so I can't even log in and grab some granite or flowers over lunch.

Have you tried the Puffin browser on your phone? The game works well enough on that browser - when you want to "mouse" around the screen, use the right menu of the browser to select "Theater" mode and you'll be set. I use it regularly there.

 

[Muf-Muf]

A big thanks to everyone for the very extensive and detailed feedback as well as the many ideas. Reading this kind of feedback is great and very helpful - please keep it up (also for the future)!