Discussion Tournament Changes (post-release)

[Lovec Krys]

@Enevhar Aldarion The difference between my beta and live at that time was 292 lvls vs 96 lvls + at least 10-15 more expansions on live vs beta.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

thats only when all players do the tournement. with the current setup in the live world top players can gather more points so the lower ones can save up some suplies.

The first page of this thread has a post with a difficulty chart in a spoiler tag. If those stay the same when this goes to Live, then you can do all 6 stars of the first 10 provinces for 2700 points and still have the fights be easier than a current 6th star fight on Live. There will be less hard fights, but also less easy fights, to achieve that, so it balances out.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

@Enevhar Aldarion The difference between my beta and live at that time was 292 lvls vs 96 lvls + at least 10-15 more expansions on live vs beta.

Now that is a big difference and I could not tell you at all how much that caused the differences you saw in the tournament.

 

[Lovec Krys]

@Enevhar Aldarion I rushed through chapters in beta as fast as possible to catch my live city (so I could have the event buildings stats first hand and also I want to finaly test new chapters before they hit live servers). And also my beta city is not tournament oriented - If I wasn't in 10th chest fs I wouldn't have bothered doing even the avg 1600 points I do on beta - contrasting to live city with more than 10K points each tournament (with exception of the last where I had slightly below 10K).
Now they are taking that away, and by adding coins they made sure we can't negotiate too much thx to the limited coin production and storage.

 

[CrazyWizard]

What is the difference in AW levels between your two cities?

I don't know what value they assigned to them for the tournament, but expansions for the Spire add either 20 or 28 troops to your starting squad size, depending on the type. And an AW level adds about 6.5 troops for the Spire. Say you are in chapter 15 or 16, you would add three expansions between scouting and research, plus any premium you might buy, but during the course of the chapter, how many AW levels would you add? 20? 30? 40? Maybe you add 2 AW levels per week and it takes you 4 months/16 weeks to finish the chapter. That is 32 more AW levels or around 200 more troops added to your starting Spire squad. Those three expansions are adding a lot less. And a premium expansion is equal to about 4 AW levels for squad increase. But like I said, they could have easily changed the values for the tournament and none of these numbers would work.

Maybe it adds those numbers for you,
How much an expansion adds or a wonder adds or a research adds depends on the other 2 factors

The formula is in general research * expansions * wonderlevels.

If we add some arbitrary values to those numbers

15*12*9=1620 or 18*12*10=2160

Now if we change the middle number to 13

15*13*9= 1755 (difference 135) and 18*13*10 = 2340 (difference 180)

So the impact of 1 similar change can have a much severe impact between player A and Player B depending on the multiplying values it is multiplied with.
This is what I referred to as the lever effect.
This is also that makes the "claim" that the impact of an increase will be lower than it's gains.
Because of multiplications you have no clue how much "impact" something will add and therefore you have no clue if that the impact is less, equal or more that the gains.
But I can guarantee you that if the multiplication numbers are "too big" the impact will exceed the gain at least for the spire.

(in the spire there is another "lever value" for relic boost since it adds another miltiplication of 3.574, since this number is bigger than 1 it also has a "lever" impact on the formula, we know this is also a factor in the tourney formula but we do not know it's value)

 

[DeletedUser3289]

Actually, the new setup should make sure that with a full Fellowship you can reach 10th chest with 1600 Points per player, which comes down to about 6 provinces on 6 rounds, which should not be too hard. Is your experience different at this point?

very much. Do understand that fellowships are not orderly robots. People do or do not do and participate according to their level of involvement. There are many FS that get 10 chests due to top 4 contenders. And many who push it one a month. What about those ?
And why are most avid gamers crushed. Avid gamers are more loyal to the game than casual gamers.

 

[Marindor]

@Marindor are we expecting this change to go through to live in the usual 2 weeks? Some of your comments about analysis hint that maybe more time is planned to assess the changes and impact. I am sure it will take more than 1 tournament to assess.

I can understand if you can't share the time frame but it might help people if they feel it is not been rushed and time for feedback and adjustments is factored in.

We are certainly not going to rush this. We have indeed planned more time for this than usual, since it's quite a significant change and we indeed want to process all the feedback and data and get it right before implementing it on Live. How long that will take, will depend on the way things develop from here, but we're not going to push it as long as it's not ready yet.

 

[Dony]

i will give my feedback after i end with tournament on beta later this week, too many things to consider, to many data to process, i can think of many improvements and balancing issues as of right now, but i need clear mind before doing so

 

[DeletedUser3289]

Maybe it adds those numbers for you,
How much an expansion adds or a wonder adds or a research adds depends on the other 2 factors

The formula is in general research * expansions * wonderlevels.

If we add some arbitrary values to those numbers

15*12*9=1620 or 18*12*10=2160

Now if we change the middle number to 13

15*13*9= 1755 (difference 135) and 18*13*10 = 2340 (difference 180)

So the impact of 1 similar change can have a much severe impact between player A and Player B depending on the multiplying values it is multiplied with.
This is what I referred to as the lever effect.
This is also that makes the "claim" that the impact of an increase will be lower than it's gains.
Because of multiplications you have no clue how much "impact" something will add and therefore you have no clue if that the impact is less, equal or more that the gains.
But I can guarantee you that if the multiplication numbers are "too big" the impact will exceed the gain at least for the spire.

(in the spire there is another "lever value" for relic boost since it adds another miltiplication of 3.574, since this number is bigger than 1 it also has a "lever" impact on the formula, we know this is also a factor in the tourney formula but we do not know it's value)

Is this true @Marindor I want you to please answer me.

 

[CrazyWizard]

Is this true @Marindor I want you to please answer me.

They will never "reveal" or "confirm" a formula
But you can read @MinMax Gamer research on the subject he conducted witrh help from the community
https://minmaxgame.com/spire-squad-size-model-v5-0/

The formula for the tournaments might not use the exact numbers from them spire but since it uses the same parameters as this formula as stated in the video it's likely very similar in nature. I would even be very suprised if it's not the exact same formula with slightly different values added to it.

For example the "cost" for a (premium) expansion or a research might be different, for example 1.0041 instead of 1.0042 for a research.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

@Marindor As I have been looking at the numbers and information others have posted and what I have seen in my little Beta city, in addition to what I have already posted, while I am not happy with the loss of KP from completing the 2nd star of 40 or 50 provinces, I think my Live city will still be able to get about 3300 points by completing all 6 stars of the first 10 provinces and the first 2 stars of provinces 11-20. But even with a Fire Phoenix and a Brown Bear, I believe my losses after that point will be too much to go further. If my fellowship needs the points, I could probably do 6 stars in the first 15 provinces instead and that would be about 4000 points. So if I did not care as much about those KP, this new system would not change my scoring in my Live city much at all.

By the way, my Live city just made it to the final quest of chapter 16 today, about three months after it was released to the Live servers. All that extra KP from the tournaments was part of what got me through the chapter that quickly, and I do not even feel like I was rushing anything. This new system will definitely slow me down in chapter 17, but I believe that is part of the reason for this update, to slow late-game players down, so we do not get bored and quit while waiting for the next chapter to be released.

 

[Pauly7]

To put in perspective the difficulties of getting 25 players to all score 1,600 points. On my fellowship on Live, we're a good team. We always open 10 chests without a second thought. We're not one of the crazy competitive tournament fellowships, but we've been up to 90k points before and always score over 50k. The requirement, as set out, is for everyone to reach 1,600 points each week. However... I have not known one single occasion when all 25 have broken 1,000... and this is on the old system. There needs to be a good deal of flexibility to allow people to score higher some weeks and lower some weeks. If you take away the flexibility by saying it's going to be tough for people to score much beyond 1,600 and then tell 25 people they all have to play 6 rounds every single week, that will just not be possible for those marginal fellowships who get there with some difficulty.

For us, we will still get there, but it will be a challenge. That much is fine. Maybe it's also OK that they wish to make the 10 chest prize a little more exclusive, but I wonder how many teams there are out there which are in that phase when they are just starting to pull together and galvanise themselves as a unit with something to aim for... and I wonder how many of those groups are now going to 'down tools'.

 

[CrazyWizard]

Some units in Tournament battles would always be level 3, regardless of Province number and level, instead of level 1 or 2.

Shocking move. I know the early battles are super easy with only 14% enemy SS in the very first battle, but......
now it's consideren too easy?

On the other hand I haven't been able to find them in the first 6 provinces. or is this update not active yet, or was I lucky to not encounter them?

 

[Lovec Krys]

I believe that is part of the reason for this update, to slow late-game players down, so we do not get bored and quit while waiting for the next chapter to be released

I don't see much difference from the boredom perspective between waiting several months between chapters and wait 2 (or more) weeks for each research - the only difference is that between the chapters I have a free space in my city instead of a full settlement, so I can use the free space in an event / FA or for anything else.

 

[Kersepitje]

I now researched one of the prior optional squad upgrades, I checked before troops counts as well as catering goodbeforeand after, but there was nothing changing, it stayed exactly like before the additional research. Can you maybe explain to me, what exactly is changing in torunament with additional squad research? Because I couldn´t identify this effect.

Just to clarify, in the new setup your tournament cost is determined at the start of the tournament (just like the spire) so if you research something once the tournament has started it will not impact your cost until the next tournament starts.

 

[maxiqbert]

Just to clarify, in the new setup your tournament cost is determined at the start of the tournament (just like the spire) so if you research something once the tournament has started it will not impact your cost until the next tournament starts.

I think that baypen was expecting a raise in her troops

 

[baypen]

Just to clarify, in the new setup your tournament cost is determined at the start of the tournament (just like the spire) so if you research something once the tournament has started it will not impact your cost until the next tournament starts.

Thanks for the explanation, I thought the effect will be immediately.

 

[Konys]

[...]the new setup should make sure that with a full Fellowship you can reach 10th chest with 1600 Points per player, which comes down to about 6 provinces on 6 rounds[...]

Just to clarify this point too: we know that 6 provinces - 6 rounds is enough for getting all 10 chests (it's always been like this, if every member in a full Fellowship take part to tournament); we ensured to make these first provinces easier, so more Fellowships should be able to motivate their players to do (at least) those 6.

 

[DeletedUser3289]

Just to clarify this point too: we know that 6 provinces - 6 rounds is enough for getting all 10 chests (it's always been like this, if every member in a full Fellowship take part to tournament); we ensured to make these first provinces easier, so more Fellowships should be able to motivate their players to do (at least) those 6.

Please read above.

 

[Deleted User - 87976]

Just to clarify this point too: we know that 6 provinces - 6 rounds is enough for getting all 10 chests (it's always been like this, if every member in a full Fellowship take part to tournament); we ensured to make these first provinces easier, so more Fellowships should be able to motivate their players to do (at least) those 6.

You are completely missing the point that depending on your time zone doing 6 rounds with the current tournament schedule varies from very inconvinient to nearly impossible and includes setting alarms at night, playing in the middle of the workday and stuff like that which isn't exactly what most players are ready to do. I understang that this update is targetet at slowing down the most hardcore player, but why it's also assumes that all the players are harcore and ready to build their life schedule aroung the game?