Discussion Tournament Changes (post-release)

[Lovec Krys]

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

So the only way to convince you that this new formula is wrong is if majority of the big spenders refuse to invest any real money on the game, because they would be punished by that formula for their investment.
Or when the exponential formula makes any new chapter uplayable.

Will developers be happy when fellowhisps easily making 10th chest now will be doing it hardly because they have too many end-game players and the exponential grow gets them to such extreme that doing even 1600 points will become very hard for those who are now making over 10K regularly?

 

[Verde]

Re the squad size calculation, apologies if this has already been discussed but couldn't see it and with the length of the thread now ...

Would there be a way of calculating the squad size based on ranking points (excluding tourney ranking points)?

As Ancient Wonder levels are already included in this, cities that don't progress but just sit and build wonders have that aspect included.
Cities with many expansions (normal or premium) are using that space for something, which would also be reflected in the working population and required culture components of the ranking points.
Cities that have scouted out a long way, whether normal sort of range for their chapter or extended, have that aspect included by the World Map Progress component of the ranking points.

Just seems to me that using ranking points (excl. the tourney component) ties together many of the aspects relating to size and power of a city, and it already exists and is understood.
But perhaps I'm missing something ... ???

 

[baypen]

the most helpful thing to do is to just keep sharing your experiences, like specific situations that get you stuck right now

Dear Marindor,
I would really appreciate, if traders would get the same chances in tournaments like fighters. I cannot understand, why a trader is forced to build space-consuming military buildings for ork-production for trading? in the tournaments. Generally, fighters seem to be privileged more and more, so I can imagine,that maybe some or even a lot of people, who have chosen Elvenar because it is NOT a necessary FIGHTING game , disappear more and more - as we can also see here in the thread.
A few comments try to focus your attention also to the general disadvantage for traders since a very long time, that will not be really changed by the new system, BUT .... the feedback is nearly nothing; only concerning Orks, because they touch also the fighters armories
Only to mention it, I am not an exclusiv trader, but I see, how they are constantly ignored and I wonder about that, beause I really think, not the fightng part makes elvenar special (as I said, there exist lots of fighting games).

 

[spennyit]

So the only way to convince you that this new formula is wrong is if majority of the big spenders refuse to invest any real money on the game, because they would be punished by that formula for their investment.
Or when the exponential formula makes any new chapter uplayable.

Will developers be happy when fellowhisps easily making 10th chest now will be doing it hardly because they have too many end-game players and the exponential grow gets them to such extreme that doing even 1600 points will become very hard for those who are now making over 10K regularly?

Yes, for the first part.
About the second part, getting 1600 points will probably be easy. The problem will "just" be to get more.
They know who pays them and we can inference that the "casual players" are they who give them the most of the money and not the " fanatic / end tech players" as we expected it to be

 

[DeletedUser2803]

why a trader is forced to build space-consuming military buildings for ork-production for trading?

You can get orc nests from crafting or orc buildilngs from events that are way more efficient in producing orcs than armories. You don't need to build a single armory to get orcs.

 

[CrazyWizard]

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.

According to some customer service managers I have spoken (normal CS not inno-games) the most expensive thing in the buisness is getting new customers. see al the FoE advertisements on TV, and PC, those arent cheap. for some buisnesses it takes at least a single year or longer for a customer to become "profitable" thats why you get calls and offers when you decide to terminate your contract with them, as it's cheaper to offer you something than it is to find a new one.

So once you have a customer hooked you goal is to "milk" them as long as possible.
According to that wisdom it would be a bad choice to try to go for the quick turnaround options, you need so many new customers since only a few will be willing to spend money. it sounds to me much easier to "milk" the players who have already been seem to be willing to spend money than to find new one for a quick fix.

When I started playing elvenar it was because of a TV commercial, while FoE is still spammed, I never see elvenar anymore, guess the Roi was not good enough to continue advertising.

 

[Marindor]

Guys, I know a lot has been said already and maybe for now, there's not much more to add, but before this thread derails into a whole discussion about which players would be the most valuable customers (which is a fine discussion in itself, so please feel free to create a thread for that if you'd like to debate on that further), please in here let's stick to the subject of this thread, which is sharing your experience with the changes. Thank you.

 

[Lovec Krys]

@spennyit For now. The problem is that with the exponential grow, for endgame players it will only get from bad to worse, so only harder and harder, so it's only a matter of time until it gets to the state I described.
I can already feel the pressure in the Spire - especialy with coins,orcs & seeds rising prices, now tournaments will be the same, with each wonder level, expansion & research (once ch17 comes out, before it I'm done with current research) the fighting will be more costly and negotiating impossible.

 

[Arthus]

Chests 15-19 could have a little more, the reward is not worth the effort in my opinion.
Chest no.19 should have wishing well or Djinn in my opinion, or evolving building teleport.
Overall i see difficulty changes as ok because i rarely make more than 10 provinces on live (chapter 16 end) so majority will benefit.
Who will lose a lot are players who make constantly 20-30k scores with unfair ammounts of brown bears like 4-8 from last year's autumn tragedy event.

 

[Steelhail]

Post 628:

And then with the AW in the formula, exclude the number of levels as your chapter. So, a player in chapter 8 who has 15 levels on any AW has it counted 15-8=7, and that same player in chapter 16 would not have that AW counted at all. The player in chapter 16 has had a lot more time to level AWs then the player in chapter 8. This is just an idea to fix the AW penalty.

My preference is tournament squad size based on chapter level (and avoid exponential issues), but barring that, I hope edeba's compromise idea gets further consideration. I understand that INNO wants to avoid the scenario of a low-chapter player getting huge AW benefits with no penalty, which edeba's proposal helps address. However, instead of chapter 8 player gets all their level 8 AWs free, I'd suggest this modification:

Every unlocked chapter you get a certain total number of "freebie" AW levels (e.g., unlock chapter 16, you can build 20 free AW levels that won't be factored into tournament squad size), similar to how INNO already uses advanced scouts tech to reduce province costs.

That tweak might make it easier to calculate than edeba's (you're looking at total # of AWs, not having to factor in which AWs) and wouldn't penalize players who favored a high level AW over diversifying AWs.

Effects:
-it would reduce the AW hardship for high-end players.
-it would give players incentive steadily to progress through chapters, in order to get the AW cost reduction. (I assume balanced advancement is one goal, since INNO already gives "advanced scouts" for chapters, and the new tournament formula is instended to prevent low chapter players with super-high AWs having unfair tournament advantages.)
-it would make having at least a certain minimum level AW a clear advantage.
-it would give players a ballpark sense of what AW level INNO "expects" players to be near when entering a chapter. (After all, INNO already uses a chest at the end of a chapter to indicate minimum # of provinces completed, introduces orcs as a province requirement to prevent too many provinces before orc chapter, etc.. I am guessing that INNO does not want players to rush through chapters without building up AWs at all, what with divine seeds requirements, etc., so players might move at a balanced AW pace rather than getting frustrated later.)
-this would be more consistent with INNO's standardized practice for reducing costs ("advanced scouts" tech, etc.).

 

[Deleted User - 88256]

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.

Which is what you just did...

 

[baypen]

You can get orc nests from crafting or orc buildilngs from events that are way more efficient in producing orcs than armories. You don't need to build a single armory to get orcs.

Thats right, but so I can say, fighters can win troop-boosters in events, so they don´t need to increase production.
I mean, we should maybe speek about regular structures and not occasional ones that we cannot really calculate.

 

[T6583]

Chests 15-19 could have a little more, the reward is not worth the effort in my opinion.
Chest no.19 should have wishing well or Djinn in my opinion, or evolving building teleport.
Overall i see difficulty changes as ok because i rarely make more than 10 provinces on live (chapter 16 end) so majority will benefit.
Who will lose a lot are players who make constantly 20-30k scores with unfair ammounts of brown bears like 4-8 from last year's autumn tragedy event.

I respectfully disagree. Chests 11-19 are bonuses. The goal is still 10 chests. The last thing I want is for them to change the prizes and remove the blueprint from the 10th chest and make it even harder to get then it already is for alot of players. Also I'm not sure of your playstyle but I have a Ch. 16 city and a Ch. 14 city in Live. My Ch. 16 city completes 30 providences without much issue. My Ch. 14 city does 15 providences weekly though could do alot more if needed. I only have 1 Brown Bear and 1 Fire Phoenix in each city. On both of the live servers I play on I have yet to see a player with all these brown bears you claim are out there. Maybe that only occured on Beta. But this is Beta and I understand that changes are made sometimes in the middle of events. While they might make some difference I'm not sure they're making the difference to be as huge as you think they are. Right now the bigger issues with the new tourney system are the difficulty scaling and catering costs in my opinion followed by the random troop selection. I'm also curious on how the tourney will go for my Ch. 2 Beta city once the event is over with as I feel that the only reason that city has even been able to complete some of the tourney encounters was due to getting troop instants and coin / supply instants in the event.

 

[LOKINHO]

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.

Sorry @Marindor , but ... I put 6 points in which I ask very important or interesting things, and in your answer, I do not see a single one of the questions answered ... you have left me the same.

which makes me think , that you are really going to modify little and that you are paying little attention to these comments, nor have you told me anything even regarding the tower, nor have you told me anything regarding the tournament, nor the premium expansions, nor the level of wonders, nothing about the amount of kp that we "will lose" for not being able to win as before in tournaments, nothing about the high cost of orcs and mana both in tower and tournament, nothing about equity and equality between two players in the same chapter (although before the one who tried hard and bought expansions, was benefited with the space, kp and wonders, now he is harmed and the player with hardly any expansions or levels of wonders is better) when it is assumed that two players in the same chapter, they must fight equally , unlike everyone's effort to achieve a better city, but never being penalized for it ... the full VIP rank of the games is loaded, I never saw anything like this ...

 

[CrazyWizard]

I respectfully disagree. Chests 11-19 are bonuses. The goal is still 10 chests. The last thing I want is for them to change the prizes and remove the blueprint from the 10th chest and make it even harder to get then it already is for alot of players. Also I'm not sure of your playstyle but I have a Ch. 16 city and a Ch. 14 city in Live. My Ch. 16 city completes 30 providences without much issue. My Ch. 14 city does 15 providences weekly though could do alot more if needed. I only have 1 Brown Bear and 1 Fire Phoenix in each city. On both of the live servers I play on I have yet to see a player with all these brown bears you claim are out there. Maybe that only occured on Beta. But this is Beta and I understand that changes are made sometimes in the middle of events. While they might make some difference I'm not sure they're making the difference to be as huge as you think they are. Right now the bigger issues with the new tourney system are the difficulty scaling and catering costs in my opinion followed by the random troop selection. I'm also curious on how the tourney will go for my Ch. 2 Beta city once the event is over with as I feel that the only reason that city has even been able to complete some of the tourney encounters was due to getting troop instants and coin / supply instants in the event.

Just let the man be, it's already amazing he restrained himself this long before his wishing well /brown bear rant returned.
btw I do own 3 brown bears myself, and there are people with 5 or more, they do exist.
but that doesn't mean that any player with x expansion or x wonderlevels should be punische because a few own multiple of those buildings.
This is totally unrelated and disconnected with the topic.

btw those 2 buildings brought elvenar a good revenue stream as not every player used the cheap way, and plenty players forked out a considerable sum of money to aquire them. in case of the fire phoenis all players with 2 or more on live spend a lot of money on them. I do not know the exact number but I expect in exces of 200 euro as just getting 1 was difficult enough and then you had to buy yourself 2 and a bit or more "extra" phoenixartefacts / blueprints. that was not a cheap option.

 

[Deleted User - 89361]

Whatever my opinion about these changes could be, what I get from the moderator's responses is that there is a clear disconnection between the developers priorities and what the core of players commenting here expects from the game. All these allusions to the 'fanatical, die hard players', the 'very vocal minority' and other things makes me feel like a dad competing with his daughter in a shopping mall's games room, just for wanting to know the concrete numbers behind the new gameplay features.
Given that the game's main base are casual players who just want to chill a bit and not 'do the math and stuff' (as the moderator said), it seems reasonable that these new updates could improve a little their game or simply go unnoticed. But then I see many concerned people in this thread calculating the numbers, comparing statistics and deducting formulas, and I can't help but wonder if all that knowledge, effort and especially time won't be better invested somewhere else more receptive to these kind of traits, with developers more commited to their 'fanatical, vocal, die hard' base instead of playing them down with sugarcoated words. The message seems to be that investing them here is overkilling it.

 

[Pauly7]

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.

I meant to say this earlier, but I didn't get around to it. What I'm wondering is - how do you know that the majority of players are happy and think this is all working fine? Is it because you've established that there is a greater proportion of total players not coming to the forum to object? You must realise that this doesn't indicate everyone is happy. Whilst this forum doesn't include everyone, it is the best chance that you have to hear a cross-section of opinion on things. Or are you saying that there are swathes of people sending Inno messages to say they are really happy with it? Because the consensus of this feedback is certainly not of contentment.

It's a word you've used before, but I also have to say that I am not completely happy with you using the word "fanatic" to describe your base of beta testers who are, on the whole, the most knowledgeable Elvenar players and who are taking the time to provide details and describe the reasons why things don't work. Fanatic is a really negative description of someone.

The tone of this post says to me that you aren't really interested in hearing negative feedback at all and that it all just comes from "fanatics" who are not representative of the player base. It makes me wonder why we're doing this. This is, of course, at odds with the fact that you do keep emphasising that you do want to see the feedback. Hard to know what to think now.

 

[DeletedUser2378]

I'd say that the majority of the feedback from players on the Beta Forum fall into category 2. of the word "fanatic". It's not negative. It's a realistic description of all of those who are commenting here with calculations.
How many changes have been made over the last five years due to Forum feedback? A lot!
He specifically said that *several departments* are looking into the technical side of the tourney system.
What else do you want them to do?
They ARE reading what we say and doing all of the other things they do that you and I don't see.
They said they are taking their time with this.
Being disrespectful in the feedback doesn't help speed things up or do anything for your frustrations.
Side note: I run an entire franchise of fellowships and guess how many of my long time members take part on the Forums? Just me. That's it, out of the hundreds of members I play with every day. They don't feel comfortable writing anything on the Forum...and who could blame them? All they want to do is play the game and enjoy Elvenar for what it is. Let's not beat down this game or its community (players, moderators or developers).
Give them time and constructive feedback.

 

[Marindor]

Hi guys,

Just to emphasize: I indeed don't mean the word "fanatic" in a negative way. Call it passionate / hardcore / die hard, whatever you like. The point is, as @CiraKelley indicated above, that it's generally this group of players who find their way to the forums and react the most strongly, especially on Beta, where it's in general the most passionate players who want to be part of that process. While it is of course very valuable feedback, we should not forget that it is not always representative for the entire player base. We have multiple ways to ask for/receive feedback, also out of the Beta forums. E.g. we have our social media channels, support tickets, we regularly send out player surveys etc etc.

As I said, we're still looking into all the feedback about balancing so for now it's no use to ask me to already comment on that. We have people like game designers, product managers and analysts who are still figuring it all out, and at this point the answers are just not there yet. It's a complicated issue. I'm trying to keep you all updated as good as possible whenever there's something new upcoming, but for now the only thing we can do is be patient and help the game team as good as possible by keeping providing them with feedback and examples.

 

[Pauly7]

Thank you for the follow up @Marindor. I certainly did not intend any disrespect, as was suggested, so I hope you didn't view it in that way. Hardcore or die hard would certainly sound fine. Fanatic does have a negative connotation of extemism and that touched a little nerve when in combination with saying that the majority of players are happy with all the changes. It all sounded dismissive of the vocal minority.

I could continue with some of the reasons why these hardcore players' views should be the most relevant, as a group, but I would only be going over old ground and dragging this thread off-topic, so there's no need. In this case it's possibly just a semantics based misunderstanding.