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Discussion Tournament Changes (post-release)

DeletedUser1657

Guest
No. I'm not 'sort of OK' with it. While the main problem is the SS, it's still unacceptable for the difficulty getting as high as it does. Don't just sweep that under the table.

Agreed. There are 2 distinct issues here which impact in different ways.

We have already seen smaller towns say the difficulty is good but they can't field an army due to the SS size. While others are experiencing both and to many players they see this as the same thing even though there are 2 distinct drivers.

I can certainly see them addressing these as 2 different updates (if they address them) as they would need to assess the impact of each separately.
 

Enevhar Aldarion

Well-Known Member
Whatever system they end up with, and whoever does or does not like it, because there will be people on both sides, Inno's big mistake was made years ago when they switched to the current tournament system. They could not have envisioned back then that people would abuse the ability to go so deep into provinces just for the low stars as they have been doing.

So instead of messing with the system we are used to, give us the regular system back and just cut off how many provinces people can do. Base it on game progress. We already have the Orc gate for scouting in general, now we need a chapter gate for number of provinces playable in tournaments. If Inno wants to see an end to all the low-chapter cities that just sit there and stagnate for the sake of the tournament, do something similar to the need for Orcs. It would have to be a cutoff that is fair to the players who actually advance their cities and play the whole game, while cutting down on the small cities that are gaming the system. Maybe something like a limit to the first 20 provinces completed for any city that is in chapter 10 or earlier. And each chapter from 10+ finished unlocks another 10 provinces. So someone done with chapter 16 would have 90 provinces to play with. There can't be more than a handful of players from all the servers combined that this would still hurt.
 

Dl. Goe

Active Member
why is he penalized for generating more WP than I did in the past? And why should I keep trying to get as many WP as possible out of each tournament when using those WP to build additional wonders will be a severe disadvantage in the future?

If the idea with switch on/off AW (their benefits) sounds acceptable, than no one will suffer penalties, unless deliberated chooses so.
 

Deleted User - 86438

Guest
If the idea with switch on/off AW (their benefits) sounds acceptable, than no one will suffer penalties, unless deliberated chooses so.
This would need some sort of cooldown or it would be easily abused. If tournament and spire squad sizes are calculated at the beginning (as they currently are), you could turn off all of your wonders just before start and then turn them back on. If they changed it to scale immediately, you could micromanage your wonders to do the encounters (turn on Needles for a fight that uses light ranged, then back off when not using them).

The end result would be that players willing to go through the extra clicking would have essentially the same experience as not having wonders count in the calculation at all.

If there's a lengthy cooldown in place, switching off a wonder and having it continue to take space in the city (space which, incidentally, we also pay for in squad size) wouldn't be very attractive.
 

marcovaldo19

Well-Known Member
If the idea of balancing between fights and trading is not really working, why not introduce costs reducing buildings like the expiring buildings that give live and strenght ? I'm thinking to buildings that for 5 days could reduce all trading costs by 5-10% or orcs trading costs by 30%.
 

DeletedUser2630

Guest
They said they are still looking into the feedback specifically on balancing do you not know how to read

They may be looking at the cost. Nowhere was it mentioned that it solves the exponential. They claim everywhere that there is no greater penalty than profit, which is not true and many players with high AW have been proving it for months.
 

Lovec Krys

Well-Known Member
@ExplorerFfff By my opinion, they never will. In one of the upcoming chapters they will probably silently change that formula when it becomes clear that both tourneys&Spire becomes unplayable for anyone in the latest chapter who has more than 0 extra expansions & 0 AW levels.
 

Pauly7

Well-Known Member
They could not have envisioned back then that people would abuse the ability to go so deep into provinces just for the low stars as they have been doing.

So instead of messing with the system we are used to, give us the regular system back and just cut off how many provinces people can do. Base it on game progress.
I would argue that it isn't abusing the system. It's just deciding on the best strategy with what we're given. I'm inclined to agree, however. Their big problem became people winning more KP than they want. The enchantments could come into it too. They are no doubt aware of how many people have 1,000+ PoPs and EEs in their inventories and they're thinking that this isn't how they meant for it to work.

There are lots of simple ways to deal with all this. It seems to me that the easiest would be to move all the KP prizes to the 5th and 6th rounds, then possibly cut off all KP and enchantment prizes after about the 25th province. No doubt they would've considered options like this, but someone in the Inno PR team would've been saying that people will see the direct nerf and not like it... So the upshot is that they come up with an incredibly complex and incredibly flawed new system which upsets everyone... and all because of the misguided notion that they think there's less chance people will see the nerf if they wrap it up in all of this.
 

maxiqbert

Well-Known Member
@ExplorerFfff By my opinion, they never will. In one of the upcoming chapters they will probably silently change that formula when it becomes clear that both tourneys&Spire becomes unplayable for anyone in the latest chapter who has more than 0 extra expansions & 0 AW levels.
I think it should be made clear that we don't accept this situation
Totally agree that decaying goods should not be part of the catering cost! The actual exponential growth of cost/difficulty are way too brutal the way they are now. What are we trying to achieve here, really? Don't Inno see the risk of disgusting/discouraging all hard tournaments players? The benefits for smaller players are so negligeable i..m.h.o, I can't see these changes as a win win situation.
IMHO, inno WANTS to disgust hard tournament players. I can even see why, since it's obvious that newer/ more casual players can't feel they are playing the same game and thus don't try to match the crazy scores they could do. not trying = not spending, so...
 

DeletedUser2021

Guest
there seems to be about a million different ideas on how Inno should make it harder.
I thought the idea was to make the tourney easier by reducing the number of clicks, not the best way to nerf the top players,, the people like me that have spent thousands of dollars to gain an advantage. Seems like Inno is looking for the best way to stop players buying diamonds.
 

CrazyWizard

Well-Known Member
Hmm, I understand your view and sustained up to a point, but let’s be honest…what you say now it’s not really true…wonders are probably the most important booster, far more than expansions, probably equalled only by research.

If you need an example, think about someone with Needles at top (100%-112% speed) and Simia as well (140%-146% collect bonus, not added but multiplied); that gives a 300% production speed compared with someone who plays without them. If we add up the Monastery (30% more health) and probably 40% strength for all troops, that makes a huge difference, nothing roughly the same…

What I want to say is, if they decided to narrow the gap between players in tournaments, they should be focussed mainly on AW levels (the benefits they bring) and less so on expansions or chapter, which are not as powerful and everyone can improve these two faster than AW.
Small correction to this story, it was chapter 4 accounts so you do not trigger T2 with 222 provincies unlocked (orc limit) they did 7020 point in 7 out of the 9 tournaments (7*26 provincies unlocked and 2x20 bsed on your bonus)this way you only needed coins, supplies and T1,
This 7020 was insanely hard to reach, you could go all out once but then suffered many times.
This was changed not by simia in any means but the introduction of the fire bird. thats what made the transition for more advanced players to breach that 7020 limit.

Whatever system they end up with, and whoever does or does not like it, because there will be people on both sides, Inno's big mistake was made years ago when they switched to the current tournament system. They could not have envisioned back then that people would abuse the ability to go so deep into provinces just for the low stars as they have been doing.

So instead of messing with the system we are used to, give us the regular system back and just cut off how many provinces people can do. Base it on game progress. We already have the Orc gate for scouting in general, now we need a chapter gate for number of provinces playable in tournaments. If Inno wants to see an end to all the low-chapter cities that just sit there and stagnate for the sake of the tournament, do something similar to the need for Orcs. It would have to be a cutoff that is fair to the players who actually advance their cities and play the whole game, while cutting down on the small cities that are gaming the system. Maybe something like a limit to the first 20 provinces completed for any city that is in chapter 10 or earlier. And each chapter from 10+ finished unlocks another 10 provinces. So someone done with chapter 16 would have 90 provinces to play with. There can't be more than a handful of players from all the servers combined that this would still hurt.
We had 2 changes in the past, one is going from a unloicked province difficulty rating to a SS based difficulty rating. this in no way has a link to your claim.
the second was going from 8 to 4 fights increasing the enemies SS accordingly (about 2x)
Again not related to your claim.

Since day one we had the current prize system, and the difficulty ramp up system. this never changed before. So this "problem" was never related to a change as you claim.
 
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spennyit

Well-Known Member
Is "disgusting" spending players a good idea for INNO? I don't think so since they "need" our money and we will not give them real money if we don't enjoy the game. It seems they don't know what they want or they know what they want and find "solutions" for something else. I wish I knew what they want :-(
 
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edeba

Well-Known Member
Good strategy is abuse? What you are describing as abuse is specifically what made the second tournament design better than the first and won people over to it. The original design was a dud, and this new design is a dud.

Whatever system they end up with, and whoever does or does not like it, because there will be people on both sides, Inno's big mistake was made years ago when they switched to the current tournament system. They could not have envisioned back then that people would abuse the ability to go so deep into provinces just for the low stars as they have been doing.

I turned down a 100% diamond bonus offer yesterday. I had been waiting for one before this dud tournament release. Inno isn't just biting the hand that feeds them, they are mutilating the hands, feet and have a guillotine precariously balanced ready to cut off the head.

Is "disgusting" spending players a good idea for INNO? I don't think so since they "need" our money and we will not give them real money if we don't enjoy the game. It seems they don't know what they want or they know what they want and find "solutions" for something else. I wish I knew what they want :-(
 

LOKINHO

Well-Known Member
I would like to ask marindor a series of irregularities regarding the changes, which leave much to be desired ...

First of all, I will ask the following: With Chapter 16 you have found a way to retain more players, asking for more than 6000 kp for research (even if you were very good in tournaments ...) And I see it as great, since the race has been slow but comfortable. My doubt is, if you progressively raise the kp required to investigate, it does not make sense to limit the kp that can be deservedly earned in a tournament, don't you think?

Second question: I find it difficult to understand, how you get into the negotiations, an exacerbated quantity of orcs and mana, since they are products that either are not produced in excess, or disintegrate, to compare it with the tower, that they do not ask same amounts of T1, T2, T3 as T4, T5, T6? Not because? because these last three disintegrate and we do not have cities with so many factories ... whereupon using logic, the required quantity of sensitives is much less in proportion to that of basic products.

Third: We all continue to question this ... it does not make any sense or foundation to include in a difficulty level equation the level of wonder (since it is something that a player has been working on and has taken years ...) and much less, the expansions (since what you will get is that nobody buys diamonds, because it would make their game much more difficult)
These two things are something that makes the game "strategically easier" thanks to spending diamonds or buying, and thanks to a brutal dedication of time in the game to climb the wonders, which on the other hand, are already special buildings, the which at a certain level help you so much as to decide to remove or eliminate other buildings, but this is time consuming! They can't penalize a player for these two things, it's nonsense!

Fourth: As they have been saying in other messages, taking the example of two cities from the same chapter, but one with more premium expansions than the other, and with more levels of wonders, you will have to spend much more army in battle, you will send to death more troops than a player of the same chapter, but nevertheless, the two barracks produce the same amount ... does this make any sense or logic? Of course not. If that player has spent "x" money, and has dedicated 2 more years to the game, he does not have to have more difficulties, it should be the opposite! You will be rewarding an inactive or very recent player, and killing the player who kept you on your feet and alive for a long time ... serious company error.

Fifthly: My question will now go to the two new wonders ... I will focus more on the one of the tournament, since it is the one that concerns us, but I will not lose sight of the one of the tower, since it also has part of guilt...
How do you get a wonder, in which you can get classification points depending on your tournament points, if you now do a tournament in which you can not do as much as before? Another nonsense ... The main idea of this wonder, is to allow, from time to time, with the help of buildings and phoenixes, to make a brutal score, and to have competition between the great players. Now with this novelty, there can be nothing at all, they are all limited and they will be able to make higher scores, small players who do not have access to this wonder ... it cannot make less sense.
Without neglecting the new wonder that gives points for the tower, he also wanted to say something about it.
All these problems of the "new tournament", are preceded by allowing that (without explaining anything to us) in the tower, you already implanted this formula including level of wonders and expansions, another mistake !! A player from Chapter 16, can not pay more than another from Chapter 16 to build the tower, or lose more troops, just for the sake of having more expansions, or more levels of wonders, it is outrageous! I repeat the above, that player has spent more money on INNO, has spent more playing time, and is a faithful player to ELVENAR, with this you are "kicking" us or forcing us to look for another game ... Please, do not kill this way ELVENAR ... open your eyes and realize the huge MISTAKE you are committing.

Sixth: Is it really worth it to you to make these changes at the tower and tournament level? I sincerely believe that apart from harming the player who has invested the most time and money in ELVENAR, you harm yourselves as a company ...
If the idea was to redirect the investigations that penalized some on the size of the platoon, so that there were no differences between who did and did not investigate them, to have made a change ONLY dedicated to that ... or thought otherwise, but not attacking expansions, or levels of wonders.
Many of us are here talking about the tournament, the difficulty that now entails, and the exacerbated expenses in case of negotiation with respect to orcs and mana, for example, and I ask ... are they not just as expensive in the tower? or even worse !! Because as we all know, if you fail, you must spend again !!!
All this comes from allowing that change that was made in the tower, and not having protested enough ...
The tower, by including the expansions and the levels of wonders is very expensive (I always negotiate everything), if we now add a tournament like this, but worse for not being able to go far, I predict a bankruptcy of the players, who will run out of resources without troops and with no desire to continue playing or advancing.
As some have already said, it is now more fun to play with an account in chapter 3 (where you make the entire tower fearlessly with a little help from some big teammate) and where you can also score quite a few points in tournaments, simply by opening provinces .. (Obviously also with the help of a colleague who provides you with products).
Is this what elvenar leads us to? to create this type of accounts / profiles, to be able to have a little fun, and destroy the big ones? Or that they act as farms for the small ones? It does not make any sense! They are very BIG ERRORS, which if not given a correction, balance or balancing, will destroy elvenar forever and with this uncertainty, many of the big players, or those of longer time, are already warning that, unfortunately, they will be seen forced to leave.

What do you answer to all this @Marindor ?
 

B-kvgg

New Member
@ExplorerFfff By my opinion, they never will. In one of the upcoming chapters they will probably silently change that formula when it becomes clear that both tourneys&Spire becomes unplayable for anyone in the latest chapter who has more than 0 extra expansions & 0 AW levels.
If this should be the case, then the problem is the way tech research adds up way too much. Just for the fun of it I changed the research from 20 to 1 in chapter 16 using @MinMax Gamer calculator, my TSS went from 801 to 739 all other values remained the same. My current live TSS is 768 if you count all 4 battles.
So if this version hits live servers I will tell all in my FS that they should stay in chapter 15 until we se what chapter 17 brings, chapter 16 gives so little to those who fight, that it alone won't justify the increased TSS by research.
 
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CrazyWizard

Well-Known Member
All this comes from allowing that change that was made in the tower, and not having protested enough ...

What do you answer to all this @Marindor ?

Good post but I like to point out this little line, the main reason why we could not protest enough is because we could not proof what we said as we did not know how the formula was build.
We noticed weird behavior but could not proof it was weird.

We even asked for the formula to we could debate to no avail.
Thanks tot the work of MinMax gamer and all those who helped them we now do understand the formula, we now do understand how painfull wonders and (premium{ expansions are, and we now have the firepower to backup the claims.

This is what makes this "battle agains the changes" much more interesting than the feedback on the tower.

But you are on the spot that what they are doing now is destroying the hand that feeds them, this whole change seems to be targetted to backfire as much as possible on those that support the game the most financially.
That to this day is most puzzling to me, that are there reasoning for doing this, what do they think to gain from this.

As @edeba pointed out before, he refused a 100% diamond deal because of this mess, I also still think the real nightmare still has to come when this change goes to live unless seriously modified. a lot of people only start responding the second these kind of changes go to live and the game becomes unplayable for a good portion of them.
 
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Pauly7

Well-Known Member
So if this version hits live servers I will tell all in my FS that they should stay in chapter 15 until we se what chapter 17 brings, chapter 16 gives so little to those who fight, that it alone won't justify the increased TSS by research.
Before all this happened I had already come to this conclusion, but this change has confirmed that I won't ever be tempted to look at chapter 16, unless (as you say) that chapter 17 brings some amazing things that can't be ignored. I have a suspicion that chapter 17 will be just as underwhelming because it follows the pattern of trying to subdue everything about Elvenar going forward.

Some wise person (I can't recall who), brought up the fact that Inno are now trying to solely target new players to the game. The thought is that they're trying to change Elvenar into a mobile only game that makes its money from new players who spend a few pounds and leave and then having a huge turnover of new players, but not retaining any. If this is true then it's likely everything we are saying will fall on deaf ears because those concerns won't be noticed by all those new players who never knew any better. This would also be why they are trying to make the new players just as powerful as the older ones if they are not planning to keep players. It's like playing a driving simulator with an insanely powerful speed up for those who lag behind. It makes it really playable for someone very new to the game. It also makes anyone who has become good at it in their own right to get bored and quit.
 

Marindor

Well-Known Member
What do you answer to all this @Marindor ?

My answer at this point is the same as my answers in the last couple of days: We see that for the majority of our players, the changes are already working fine as they are and many are happy about the less clicking and the fact that they can get more points with their casual play style. The feedback of the more fanatic / end tech players, which are the most vocal part of our forums, is still being looked into by several departments. All the feedback is still read and forwarded, but considering big balancing changes, calculating them etc takes a lot of time, which we are going to take for that.

In the meantime, we will already start introducing the first (and often easier to implement) changes in the upcoming time. These tweaks will be done little by little, so we can monitor the impact each change has, rather than making 5-6 changes at once and not being able to tell which caused what.

As soon as we have any updates or specific info/changes to share, we will. In the meantime, the most helpful thing to do is to just keep sharing your experiences, like specific situations that get you stuck right now, so we can keep forwarding those and the right people can investigate them, so we can make sure that also for this player group the changes will turn out as intended.
 

Karvest

Well-Known Member
In the meantime, we will already start introducing the first (and often easier to implement) changes in the upcoming time. These tweaks will be done little by little, so we can monitor the impact each change has, rather than making 5-6 changes at once and not being able to tell which caused what.
There are not so many things to change that can cause noticeable impact:
1. different difficulty distribution among provinces
2. different formula for tournament SS
3. different enemy troop types selection algorithm
4. different distribution between T1-3/money/supplies/orcs/mana
5. different ratio between SS and negotiation amounts.
And adjusting something from the end of this list without touching the beginning is nonsense, since you would anyway need to readjust it after changes made to 1/2.

Changes like quick use of time instants / quick move to next province are just QoL, and won't affect game balance at all.
 

Verde

Well-Known Member
The thought is that they're trying to change Elvenar into a mobile only game that makes its money from new players who spend a few pounds and leave and then having a huge turnover of new players, but not retaining any. If this is true then it's likely everything we are saying will fall on deaf ears because those concerns won't be noticed by all those new players who never knew any better. This would also be why they are trying to make the new players just as powerful as the older ones if they are not planning to keep players.
If this is the case then they're going to need a new Server Farm just to keep all of the little paid-once-or-twice but no-longer-playing cities.
 
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