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Discussion Tournament Changes (post-release)

Lovec Krys

Well-Known Member
Does anybody know if your tournament SS is dependant on SSU researches or not?
If it is, is the extra unit wonder production worth the increased absolute losses, or with the difficulty of the tourneys we will still damage ourselfs by researching the optional SSUs? (especialy if we are endgame 10K+ tourney cities in the old system)
 

DeletedUser1953

Guest
You speak about the orc problem.
I hope they resolve the mana problem with sorcerer, i remember that in the spire, there is really a problem (1 point in III need the daily production) with mana that had never fixed, i hope someone are in sorcerer era and do some tests.
In all case, I think that mana requirement in tournament is a bad choice for players not at the end of research tree.
 

Marindor

Well-Known Member
Hi guys,

Just letting you know we are still reading your feedback and working on improvements, even though we don't always have anything specific to share every day. A small update we can share already: In addition to the unit types per tournament and the balancing issues we're investigating, we're currently also looking into ways to make skipping provinces easier.

When we have anything new or more specific, we will of course let you know!
 

edeba

Well-Known Member
It is insane to make it that a beginner or mid-level account can do more than a high-level account. It's insane that game purchases make you less competitive and count quite drastically against you. It's insane that AW levels count against you and that we are even having discussions about sweet spots for the tournament that require destroying AWs.

Hello,

I don't find that coherent. How should a beginner or mid-level account do more than a high-level account?

What interest for a player in this case, to say, I will do my best to progress?

Totally agree, people that work their game and invest in it should do better, not worse. Seriously, I already think games are pointless and I think it is incredibly stupid to magnify this truth.

That's a brilliant idea that rewards should be calculated with the same formula. If anyone is up to making this calculation it would be a great exercise in demonstrating the extreme nature of the forumula.

Totally in agreement with what some colleagues comment. Tournament and tower difficulty calculations allow mid-level players to score more points more easily than more advanced players.

Another option may be that if the difficulty of each tournament province is going to be calculated based on the chapter, the levels of wonders and the expansions that we have, that the rewards are calculated with the same formula, so that if the difficulty increases by advance in the game, also increase the points and rewards we receive.

Great points about the easy wins for Inno.

The squad size formula needs to have a much lower range for the possible difference in squad size.

Orc requirements are simply insane. They were already going up at a high rate and now it is insane. I think people could tear now half their manu and replace them with armories and still hit the wall with orcs first.

Two easy wins for Inno:
  1. Remove Premium Expansions and AW levels from the spire/tourney squad size calculation;
  2. Remove Orcs from tourney catering requirement or drastically reduce it.
Two things Inno must do to avoid alienating its long-term endgame players:
  1. Adjust the tourney squad size formula so that it increases at a slower rate;
  2. Adjust the tourney difficulty table so that the enemy squad size increases at a slower rate.
In principle, I agree with Inno's vision for the tourney changes, but they went overboard with the squad size and difficulty ramp up. Both aspects need to be scaled back.

I do not remember seeing screen shots of orc demands for chapter 16 players in the new tournament, but I went from not needing orc to insane requirements in my beta account.

A couple chapters ago the new chapter demonstrated how orc requirements were drastically increasing. I played a game that was fairly tight on orcs. I was accumulating a few, but not many and all of a sudden it was impossible to keep up with orcs. The change in production compared to the increase in costs was insane.

I fail to understand why we are back in that place, massively gross orc imbalance.

Hello again

I just compared the costs between my beta city and my live city on wyniandor. This is quite telling I think as an example to illustrate the increase in trading costs.

I posted just a little higher, a print screen of my province 9 to 0 *. Knowing that it is carried out with an amuni chapter city (13).

I post below, the costs requested for the same level of provinces 9, but this time on my city live wyniandor where I am chapter 15 (elvenar).

Beta : amuni chapter city (13).province 9 to 0 *
View attachment 7644

Live Wyniandor : elvenar chapter city (15). province 9 to 1* fight 1
View attachment 7645

Live Wyniandor : elvenar chapter city (15). province 9 to 1* fight 2
View attachment 7646

Live Wyniandor : elvenar chapter city (15). province 9 to 1* fight 3
View attachment 7647

Live Wyniandor : elvenar chapter city (15). province 9 to 1* fight 4
View attachment 7648


Beta : amuni chapter city (13).province 9 to 0 * = 1900 orcs
Live Wyniandor : elvenar chapter city (15). province 9 to 1* = 220+37+150+150 = 557 orcs

We can see here that despite the fact that I am 2 chapters more advanced on wyniandor, the demand for orcs on the beta with two chapters less, is clearly more important and problematic !

So yes there is the advantage of classic goods which is less in demand. But it is precisely this type of merchandise that normally allows a trader to make his tournaments.

The balancing of resources requested by inno does not seem good to me at all.

Shlaag

"There are facts, there are opinions, and there are lies."

That they reduced the cost of catering is simply false unless you add a caveat of some kind, and that is probably up to province 6 or something.

Just an observation (even leaving aside the ludicrous costs of catering with Orcs) - The cost of catering is supposedly halved, but, when you want to cater just occasionally I think that the total cost of catering is, if anything, higher now. Previously you may have picked a single difficult encounter to cater. When you do the same thing in the new version you are effectively catering 4 encounters at once. So you can end up spending twice the goods that you're used to.
 

Jaxom

Well-Known Member
Just an observation (even leaving aside the ludicrous costs of catering with Orcs) - The cost of catering is supposedly halved, but, when you want to cater just occasionally I think that the total cost of catering is, if anything, higher now. Previously you may have picked a single difficult encounter to cater. When you do the same thing in the new version you are effectively catering 4 encounters at once. So you can end up spending twice the goods that you're used to.
Very true! I have yet to cater a single province under the new system. By the time the fight gets too hard the costs to cater are too high. No reason to pay a bunch to go further because I know that the next province will be even harder.

I have been doing this week's tournament using the mobile app. For each fight it shows a single number for enemy squad size and my squad size.
What I see on round 2 is that the those numbers shift exactly one province. On Round 1 the sizes for Province 2 appear for Province 1 in Round 2. Province 3 appears for Province 2, etc. Maybe it has always been this way. I certainly have never written down the numbers before.
 

edeba

Well-Known Member
That is new. I think a lot of people were playing strategically and doing the provinces where odds favored the player. I think we now have 27 province encounters where odds favor the player and we used to have the first two levels for as many provinces as you had open.

Very true! I have yet to cater a single province under the new system. By the time the fight gets too hard the costs to cater are too high. No reason to pay a bunch to go further because I know that the next province will be even harder.

I have been doing this week's tournament using the mobile app. For each fight it shows a single number for enemy squad size and my squad size.
What I see on round 2 is that the those numbers shift exactly one province. On Round 1 the sizes for Province 2 appear for Province 1 in Round 2. Province 3 appears for Province 2, etc. Maybe it has always been this way. I certainly have never written down the numbers before.
 

DeletedUser3314

Guest
Does anybody know if your tournament SS is dependant on SSU researches or not? ...
Any mandatory research is part op the new formula to calculate your base TSSo, just like in the Spire. That does includes SSU research but NOT the optional SSU research..


... I have been doing this week's tournament using the mobile app. For each fight it shows a single number for enemy squad size and my squad size. What I see on round 2 is that the those numbers shift exactly one province. On Round 1 the sizes for Province 2 appear for Province 1 in Round 2. Province 3 appears for Province 2, etc. Maybe it has always been this way. I certainly have never written down the numbers before.
That's already known, see for example MinMax Gamers website / Tournament Requirements Calculator sheet
 
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edeba

Well-Known Member
Problems with the new tournament design:

1) The rate of increasing difficulty needs to be less steep.
2) The level of orcs required needs to be reduced.
3) There is a massive nerf on the ability to get spells.
4) The penalty for improving your game through in game purchases and leveling AW exceeds benefit and makes people less competitive for the tournament.
5) The level of coin and supplies required seems high.

So very clearly the new design is to make it exceedingly more difficult past province 20 than in the past and this is a major, major, major nerf for anyone that was mostly playing the first two levels. It is a huge PoP and KP nerf. People that were not playing their level 5 can make some kp recovery. I pretty much always play my level 5 to at least province 20, and usually further. So this is a massive nerf of EE spells in addition to the kp. It is also a nerf on the runes, but I think for more aggressive players this doesn't make any difference.

There was an earlier suggestion to reduce the increase in difficulty in half so we don't reach the kind of difficulty we face until province 40. With the increase in squad size I thought province 50 would be more fair compared to what we have been able to do in the tournament, but it is still a nerf because people have been able to do so much more. However, I concede that with the benefit of the reduced monotony of the tournament, flattening the difficulty curve in half and making it so the real competition is in the 40+ provinces would make me feel like the trade off was acceptable.

I wonder if the massive increase in orcs is related to the reduction in goods. I tracked goods and orcs and it worked out that each orc counted for about 1700 goods, so when orcs were high. I did the calculation quite some time ago and I probably had a multiplier for whether the goods were t1, t2, or t3. So, if the goods are supposed to be approximately half to start, unless whatever was in the formula for the orcs is divided by the square of the reduction, orcs are going to go up in an extreme way. Orcs have increased in an extreme way and I don't want to spend the kind of time I put in looking at this to find that relationship. But, it just looks like this relationship has not been adjusted and it is showing up with an extreme increase in demand for orcs.

It would be nice to add a PoP and an EE to each of the extra 10 chests to help compensate for the massive nerf on ability to get them. Make no mistake here, on live last week I got 56 each of PoP and EE from provinces 10 to 65 on live. With this new tournament I would expect that number would decline to around 20. If you flatten the difficulty in half, in an all out effort, I might get 40, but I think 30-35 is probably more realistic. People that do not use their spells probably do not care, but if you do use them, this is a major nerf.

The difference in squad size depending on in game purchases is insane and from working your game. An idea that I have about the formula for expansion is make it so one premium expansion per chapter is excluded from the formula, and reduce that coefficient on the rest from 0.75 to 0.5.

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.
 

Maillie

Well-Known Member
One thing that proves to be a disaster for any gaming company is to give players exciting and fun things to work toward, then deciding that they have too much fun with it and start taking it away, piece by piece. The top MMOrpg did it and lost a million subscriptions a month, mine included, until in their 12th year they had less subs than in their first year and had to stop printing subscription numbers.

A simple way to stop players from getting needed kp from 100 tournament provinces a week is to simply not offer the kp after a certain point, say 40 provinces, not to put out what feels like a huge penalty for playing the game that was presented to us, and was fun for the players.

It's difficult to condone making a single tech in the tech tree cost 250 kp, then removing the ability to get 250 kp without sitting and staring endlessly at a stuck tech tree. Then punish again if the Ancient Wonder tokens, which replaced the previous kp rewards, are actually used in Ancient Wonders.

You may not call it "punished" but those that are hit the hardest feel punished.
2020-07-22.png
 

CrazyWizard

Well-Known Member
Hi guys,

Just letting you know we are still reading your feedback and working on improvements, even though we don't always have anything specific to share every day. A small update we can share already: In addition to the unit types per tournament and the balancing issues we're investigating, we're currently also looking into ways to make skipping provinces easier.

When we have anything new or more specific, we will of course let you know!
Thanks for the update, but skipping? what did I miss?
 

Ashrem

Well-Known Member
It might seem irrelevant in the context of the current changes, but a more efficient way of selecting which province to do next would be welcome.
 

Lovec Krys

Well-Known Member
if it means that, it means again they are focusing on irrelevant things instead of the real problems.
I guess we have to wait for a clarification.
Well, they aimed to make for us - top tourmanent players - tournament much harder from the start, so they are probably satisfied and major changes might occur within next few chapters, when both tournament and Spire becomes unplayable after the exponential cost increase defeats linear production increase and both will be dominated by mid game cities while end game cities will have no chance to beat them.
 

edeba

Well-Known Member
Skipping was not explained. My immediate thoughts were if a province blocks you for lack of resources you could mark it to skip it. That's what it sounded like to me. So, maybe you wanted to do another province and it takes a gazillion orcs, so you skip and do the one after...

The original structure of the tournament was the points per province doubled for each level. So say 1 point for level 1, then 2, 4, 8, 16, 32. It was totally top heavy so that if you really wanted points, you had to do that 6th level. The 16 hour timer was built to give challenge to get that level. So we still have that same timing and I'm not sure why. There's a lot of players without a time reduction bear or time warp. 16 hours is simply really difficult to get 2 levels in a day. If you do it first thing, by 16 hours later you are cutting into sleep time. 15 hours would be better. It isn't weighted as strongly towards that 6th level as when the tournament first came out.

Thanks for the update, but skipping? what did I miss?
 

DeletedUser1657

Guest
Well, they aimed to make for us - top tourmanent players - tournament much harder from the start, so they are probably satisfied and major changes might occur within next few chapters, when both tournament and Spire becomes unplayable after the exponential cost increase defeats linear production increase and both will be dominated by mid game cities while end game cities will have no chance to beat them.

Well tournament is basically unplayable now in terms of ever being able to achieve the 9 bonus chests. It requires 25 players to get 6,640 pts each, a difficult but attainable task under the old systems, especially with players who can achieve far more that 7,000+ pts. In the new system they are talking about 5,000 pts as top tier.

So they have implemented the new chest based on the old scoring not on the new design. They need to either adjust the difficulty or adjust the bonus chests, both most likely. Considering they recognise that a fellowhsip doesn't evenly score those pts based on the chests they really need to allow top scores of around 10K pts as attinable so a fellowship can have a sliding scale of performance.

If they however feel the bonus chests are just another spire and everyone must do everything type concept, then they iseriously need to increase the bonuses as you will never cnvince a person who does 2,000pts to do 6,000 + pts in a push and decimate their resources and army in the process for 10 kp and a restoration spell I mean restoration spells are nice but they are somewhat redundant with the frequency of events and sameness of benefits. Now if they through a second BP in at chest 9 or some other incentives in addition...

We need to wait and see how they will address this misalignment.
 

galrond

Well-Known Member
1) I must admit, that I don´t understand how the heck Shlaag (#613) got: "How should a beginner or mid-level account do more than a high-level account?", from what I wrote :rolleyes:
What I wrote is: If a top player does 5k less, this can be compensated by 10 others doing 500 more each. This is simple logic, unless ppl. think a point earned by a highend tournement players weigh more towards chests, than a point earned by a lowend tournament player. Sure as hell would explain a lot of the comments :mad:

2) No Holyelf (#612). I´m not jealous, that someone earn 10k+ in tounament. They work for it, so it´s well earned and deserved :cool:

3) No I do not blindly support the changes. I DO support, that province 50 should be harder than province 15. But not that it should be many times harder. There should be a way softer scaling!

4) I think, that the way they want to determin enemy SS is outright stupid, and disencurage growth. It should NEVER count against you, that you up your production, battlestrength, or space in town. NEVER!!! Deep Terminal (#618) hit it spot on :cool:

5) The catering cost should never include deminishing goods (mana, seeds, sentient goods or whatever they come up with in the future). It should be an option, that all players can stockpile catering goods. So also NO coins or supplies in catering costs. That they use it in spire.... fine with me. It´s part of the Spire challange. But they should not make tournaments into "Spire version 2" :eek:

If ppl think I´m rude and step on toes: FINE!!! I´m SO fed up with ppl jumping to conclusions about, what I think concerning things, that I have said nothing about o_O
 
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