Discussion Upcoming Tournament Changes (pre-release)

[Karvest]

With random tournament encounter and goods it takes away of the strategy and planing, as many stated before, wich is basically all a building game is tbh.

I'm ok with random goods, it just change strategy "collect more marble + crystals + elixirs to cater appropriate tourneys" to strategy "have a good balance overall for any tourney". Strategy is not going away, it just become more generic.
Not sure about mana, it's not an issue for me, I have winter set, but for newcomers or in upcoming chapters it can become a big issue. Coins/supplies are questionable change too, more and more of them needed everywhere.

 

[Knoggaknorr]

Scaling on expansions and AW levels both penalize trying to play a balanced city and make it more effective to focus heavily on either military or goods production (to conserve space and limit the wonders needed).

While i agree with the expansions since i also stated that before. If you implemented AW scaling in a way that only levels in military wonders affect military encounter and goods wonders affect the catering. It would make no sense to inculde difficulty scaling for wonders that don't have any effect on the coresponding thing. Also some wonders are more efficient than others in their help the provide wich should be included in the calculations as well. They should be able to run simulations with diffrent scalings for every single wonder and combinations of wonders to get the percentages they want. Increasing everything by x% because you have x levels of AW is just wierd.

 

[Knoggaknorr]

I'm ok with random goods, it just change strategy "collect more marble + crystals + elixirs to cater appropriate tourneys" to strategy "have a good balance overall for any tourney". Strategy is not going away, it just become more generic.

The problem with that will be wether they have any form of "bad luck prevention". If you get 12 of the same good and only 2-3 of the others then you were not able to plan anything with having a overall balance. You can't plan random. It is just making a percentage decission. That is still a form of gambling and one i deem unecessary, if a diffrent aproach achieves similar results but takes away from negative side effects.

At least i don't see the point that is worse to balance it as i said but feel free to point it out since i only thought for a short time on it.

 

[Karvest]

I'ts already a gamble now, you need not only 3 exact types of resources in each tourney, you can get other as well, nothing change in this regard, just using flat chances instead of priority ones. And having some stockpile for the fluctuations is not bad idea anyway.

 

[Jaxom]

I really dislike the removal of planning and strategy from tournaments. I enjoyed helping weaker members of the fellowship get ready for our once-per-cycle 10-chest pushes. Giving them tips on how to fight the specific enemies and which goods to gather. Top players would help with 1-star trades to stock up the players who use goods.

This all seems to go away. You can't plan on anything. Except which type of relic is offered in a given week.

I will give it a try. But if the predictions about troop boost buildings becoming worthless prove true then I won't be making many efforts at 10-chests.

Blueprints are NOT reason enough to put in the effort. I can go buy a few diamonds and upgrade my Magic Buildings that way.

The Spire offers chances for Magic buildings and diamonds. Not sure what the tournaments are going to offer. Certainly not the strategy and planning that they used to offer. Might as well play solitaire.

 

[alexgreat]

We have both very good changes and very bad changes in this announcement.

The reduction in the number of encounters from 4 to 1 is an awesome change. It should have been implemented two years ago, when it had majority support.

At the same time, the redesign of battle difficulty is a particularly troublesome example. It shows both bad engineering and the lack of love for this game. First, it is not necessary because tournament already have increasing difficulty due to increase in the number of troops required from province to province. Second, this change punishes people for making progress in this game. Third, it shows the luck of game knowledge (top players do 70 provinces today, not 22). Finally, it introduces massive unnecessary complexity.

We had overly complicated special event quest line a year ago, which was a complete disaster. I am glad game developers switched back to simple event quests line. Simplicity is all we want. The Spire is still broken today due to its accelerating cost curves. Therefore, the majority of Elvenar players do not play Spire today. But current Tournament is beloved by everyone because it is so simple and enjoyable. If you cannot make it better, please do not to touch it at all. Please adopt “do no harm” policy.

So, reducing the number of encounters from 4 to 1 is important and already been supported. The rest of changes should be implemented only when the majority of people on this forum understand the rationale and support the change.

 

[Dony]

The problem with that will be wether they have any form of "bad luck prevention". If you get 12 of the same good and only 2-3 of the others then you were not able to plan anything with having a overall balance

I remember to have 4x same sentient goods in spire in 4 consecutive spire encounters, i doubt there is any prevention on this, only good thing is we wont have 5 goods to offer per encounter so it would feel more random (3 resources from 13 resources, dont know if 2 or 4 can be the case as well)

 

[Verde]

You can't plan on anything. Except which type of relic is offered in a given week.

Well, why not change that too ... make the relics random as well? No need for a 9 week cycle really, relic type, quantity, other rewards ... all up for grabs.

Could even just make it simply random chest selection, like in events ... bid the amount of goods or troops that you want to wager and open the chest ... see what you win (forget about fighting, manual or auto). Although that approach could start bringing Inno to the attention of the gambling regulators in various countries, as promoting.

Being a little facetious I know but the takeaway so far from the changes seems to be ... if planning to play in the Spire or tourneys,

• don't buy expansions
• don't build and upgrade AWs

or did I miss something?

 

[DeletedUser2705]

Why are you writing about extensions, but not about levels of miracles? Players who pumped them to level 30 and above, violating the rules, suffer to a greater extent and this is their main problem. No need to hide behind extensions, it's disgusting. You can adjust to the complexity, but it’s a pity to take down miracles.
Translation, I'm sorry.

 

[maximuskiller]

Hello
With so many changes that will happen in tournaments, I will leave here a suggestion that can help all players a lot.
As the enemy troops are going to be random and we don't know what we should train for each tournament, why not find a way to train our troops in the 3 military buildings at the same time.
That way we would have more troops available to be able to play against any enemy.
I think it would be good for everyone and more competitive.

 

[DeletedUser1657]

wow so much change incoming, some of which can only be assessed at the time it appears on beta. However based on the announcement and video:

• Fewer tournament encounters - awesome, less clicking and faster completion is appreciated. One potential downside is it might feel like just another spire. There should ideally be enough to keep this from being an issue (more on that comparison later)
• Cheaper catering - will have to wait to see how this plays out. catering is already inherently cheaper with 1 encounter verse 4, will see how this is balanced once in game
• Difficulty not linked to squad size - this could go either way. I am wondering why bother having optional squad size techs as they seem to have minimal impact in the game now? A technology should provide a benefit and it is disappointing that there is no real incentive to research this tech. It would have been nice to actually get a benefit from doing the tech as these require an investment in kp and goods which get sizable as the game progresses.
  • Impact on free troops - Yes I am aware it helps those wonders but as stated it is minimal. Wonder strategy needs a complete rethink due to tournament changes
  • World map benefits - a town skipping these techs can be at medium difficulty by dwarves and it only gets easier from there. A town researching them gets to manageable world map fights 1 chapter earlier, 2 at most and experienced. So again minimal benefit and one could still research them in first couple chapters and then skip again from dwarves with no real downside.
• Easier entry for newer players - This is a confusing statement as newer players had an easy start to tournaments, where they have it tough is the world map but that is not addressed. Multiple aspects to this area
  • An early town can cater or combat reasonably easily and this builds up as the town progresses. A person can design their town to do this as they progress or seek assistance from willing fellowships.
  • Limiting enemy sizes to 5 squads only is excellent in this endeavour.
  • The new change has the potential with its spire like difficulty to force new players to cater like they do for spire. This creates competition for the same resources and will hinder either spire or tournament play. This is even harder if the fellowship has minimums in both which a new player wanting to grow will likely have joined a fellowship doing one or both.
  • new towns are prevented from going beyond province 8 unless they can combat because negotiation require resources they won't get for many chapters
  • Timezone becomes a big issue especially for towns without timewarp or polar bears, which will be new towns. While round 6 in the early provinces will be easy (according to the heat map graphic) it might also be impossible from a time perspective. Certain parts of the world have a timezone where they realistically get 4 days, with a 16hr cool down it is very hard to get 6 rounds in those cases. So a new town is potentially limited to less provinces/rounds then before. Of course we have to wait and see if rewards/pts account for this hindrance
  • Tournaments were a perfect training ground for new towns to learn how to handle world map provinces as the encounters mirrored the world map but the squad sizes were small and manageable. Sadly this is no longer an option with random enemy compositions and will likely be a barrier for new towns to learn combat, especially because world map encounters are impossible for them until several chapters in
• Catering - change in goods. This is probably beneficial in terms of goods balance. This is likely reasonable and encourages a balanced amount of goods and thus trading more. It does limit teams planning for push weeks to get 10 chests and the value or orcs and mana will need to be assessed once in game and at each chapter stage.
• Battle - several concerns in this area
  • The random nature of enemies would remove the strategy aspect of planning and preparing for a tournament. This will hurt towns who need to push for relics to get more boost (newer towns) or push for relics for sentient boost or push for relics for spells
  • The randomness will need to be assessed once in game. If it is like spire and completely random it will make combat harder and more difficult for people learning. If it keeps the same mechanic as world map but randomizes which "province type" is available it will be better but still prohibit planning and temporary building effects.
  • Again certain timezones can be adversely impacted by this prior to the ability to reduce cooldown, so some players will be penalised more than others because of where they live/work
• General
  • Will have to wait to see if rewards and points are rebalanced with this change
  • Will have to wait to see how heat map colouring reflects in actual difficulty
  • Will have to wait to see how points rebalance impacts what is required to reach 10 chest and then 19 chests for those wanting to go hard.
  • Am concerned this is becoming just another spire. It was enjoyable having to mini-games requiring different approaches and different rewards and difficulties. The formula shown including things like spire feels like it will just be another spire which reduces fun and choice, potential becoming boring because of the sameness.
  • Really far into tournaments 5000pts is interesting, obviously players are doing far more than intended. I would describe 5,000pts as a serious tournament player but the really keen players do 2 to 3 times this. Is that even possible with the new difficulty?
  • Strategy in which words to target to best benefit my town and approach are limited due to the change in approach to difficulty. Yet to see how badly this is impacted and will take time once on live to see how adjustments can be made
  • The change in difficulty approach impacts learning and strategy in terms of approach. Before it was easily known what the difficulty was and a players could assess their ability to cope and learn and compete at a new difficulty rating. It was very obvious that each round got harder. Now it will be unclear as the heat map shows provinces and rounds getting harder so it is tougher to plan where they should stop what level of play they would like to plan and invest into. It also looks like they will have less options at a certain difficulty to test themselves so take even longer to learn as they have to wait another week.
  • Difficulty should not penalise players for buying expansions (spending money on the game) or for growing their towns with wonders. Wonders are a point of difference between towns and allow for strategy, diversity, and fun. They also reward a player for the huge effort to level a wonder by making a minor improvement to the aspects of the game they enjoy. This change like spire actually removes the joy of leveling wonders due to the penalty. Player experience with wonders from what I read is the penalty is more noticeable than the benefit (spire). I fear that tournaments will become the same. We are encouraged to build wonders for seeds and to facilitate aspects of our town but then penalised for it. If wonders are part of the formula they need to be incredibly small part (to the point they might as well not be in it) or highly limited to certain wonders only, so that only wonders with a direct and significant benefit draw the penalty.

Some things I am looking forward to but some are very very concerning, others will only be known once we see it on beta. Other things I can say but many others are mentioning those as well.

 

[Karvest]

As the enemy troops are going to be random and we don't know what we should train for each tournament, why not find a way to train our troops in the 3 military buildings at the same time.

That way we will just have less choices of which troops we really want to train. I don't want 1/3 of my troops to be Cerberus or anything else from training grounds.

 

[Alcaro]

That way we will just have less choices of which troops we really want to train. I don't want 1/3 of my troops to be Cerberus or anything else from training grounds.

Possibility to train simultaneous in all 3 military buildings doesn't mean that you have to. I might want to train Treants, Banshees and Frogs .. why not? But I might want only in Barracks and Merc. Camp. I will be limited by Supplies, but there are instants for that and PoP spells for WS.

 

[Karvest]

If it would be possible to train in all 3 buildings - game balance would be assuming that you are training in all 3 buildings. And skipping either one would result in worse situation than now with single shared queue.

 

[Deleted User - 87976]

The changes that are penalizing players for upgrading their town (judging from the spire, we'll end up with AWs after some point making the tournament harder, not easier, no matter what the announcement says) and, especially, for spending money on this game are questionable at best.

Besides all that was said already, there may be yet another issue with the new setup. Players that (again) spend money to upgrade their MA need 252 relics to maintain CCs crafting. This requires 3k+ points and covers a good chunck of a medium difficulty zone according to the chart we have. We are yet to see the exact implementation, but I'm betting that reaching this would become much harder than it is now, especially since the devs consider 5k points to be high tournament results. Compared to all the other losses it's much less significat, but again we apparently getting +2 boosted goods and stockpiling relics for them and maintaining CC production now will be much harder for anyone who hasn't done that already.

 

[edeba]

Looking at the color coding, right now the first two levels are fairly easy and some players go out much further on those levels because of that and because of kp rewards. Looking at the new proposal I count 27 provinces that are as easy as the first two levels, but I can go out all the way on those two provinces, which is 40+ for me on beta and 60+ on live, for 80+ or 120+ provinces. By the 3rd level losses really start to increase and without military boosts can be quite high. For competitive players the majority of the troop losses are on the 5th level. That orange is difficult and you've got difficult showing up by the 13th province. Players tend to play the higher levels on the lower provinces because troop losses aren't as big because the over number of troops required to play is smaller. But, a level 6 province 20 comes with significant costs, so unless you are competing for place or need runes, it isn't worth it.

Players were requesting an easing on the number of clicks, not a tournament reward slaughter, and that is what it looks like, and massively so.

I made a chart based on what I believe we have. So what I did was make level difficulty increase by half of what I believe it to be, so instead of 15%, 7.5%. The increase in difficulty by province with your proposal is extremely steep looking and a massive slaughter to the benefit of the tournament. I do not know what you are doing to the amount of troops we use as we go further with the changes, but currently the first 10 provinces don't use a lot of troops or goods, although it is very difficult for newer players. So making those provinces easier makes little difference on the resource demands for advanced players, but really helps the newer players. The chart with numbers show easier in red and more difficult in black. You need to keep in mind that level 6 is often not completed, and even level 3 to 6 is left not completed on many provinces. I went out 45 province this tournament on beta, and I left level 3-6 on 25-30 of those provinces.

There are players that have can regularly go out 60-70 provinces and cutting that ability in half isn't reasonable. With what I've done is at around 32 provinces the difficultly gets to be about the same, before it is easier and after more difficult.

If you were able to get a score of 14k and 600-700kp from the tournament before changes, and you can only get 9k and 400-450kp and maybe 40kp from say 4 extra chests, that even the player that only did 2000 in the tournament also gets, well, you've drastically punished competitive players, I bet that player that did 2000 was only doing 1600 before the changes, so they also gained in ability to do more.

If you cut the player that does 14k down to only being about to do 12k, and cost them 100k in tournament but they get 4 chest rewards and it was so much easier to play because of the way less clicking, well, that's an acceptable trade-off.

 

[Deleted User - 87976]

Players were requesting an easing on the number of clicks, not a tournament reward slaughter, and that is what it looks like, and massively so.

Well, technically they are reducing the amount of clicks, even if they left the 4 encounters per province. Funny that each time I remember this topic was arised players who wanted the reduced amount of clicks were warned that we'll end up in the exactly this situation. Oh well...
Btw your calculations miss an important detail about the randomised troops. Combined with the four times bigger armies which is much more punishing if you make a mistake, this by itself would result in reaching the same scores being much harder than before. It really feels like with all the changes combined devs are doing a bit of an overkill. And all in pursuit of punishing 10-20 players a server for being well-adapted.

 

[edeba]

Yes, the idea about reducing the number of encounters per province was given with the expectation that relative costs and rewards for each province would remain about the same. They drastically improved the tournament with the big change they made I think around 3.5 years ago. From what I saw in the video, it isn't looking like an improvement.

Funny that each time I remember this topic was arised players who wanted the reduced amount of clicks were warned that we'll end up in the exactly this situation. Oh well...

 

[DeletedUser3289]

Don’t have the strong feelings of quitting yet but strongly feeling a desire to branch out into other games, so the disappointment isn’t intense.
And yes, it’s disappointing that they hate players who are at their best. And in the name of balancing a bland platter is presented before us.
Nobody likes to be shepherded... and into the same pen.

 

[Ashrem]

Difficulty not linked to squad size - this could go either way. I am wondering why bother having optional squad size techs as they seem to have minimal impact in the game now?

Minimal is over-crediting it. The only thing they do is put people who don't take them at a disadvantage in the provinces. There is no longer any positive to a decision we once made based on give and take. The only thing left is the negative of having to replay earlier chapters to level portals and buildings to make goods we need for nothing except not being penalized for an earlier decision.