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FA map change - considering the intended change from beta

Gargon667

Mentor
I suggest a change towards higher badge cost for maps (as previously tested and rejected on beta) but with the inclusion to also cater to low performing FS, which was as far as I can tell the biggest problem with the last (non)change.

Instead of adding 50% to all badges in all waypoints as in the failed attempt, add 0% to 1 path (say yellow), 100% to all waypoints in another path (say blue) and 200% in the third path (say green). Of course also the rank points gained in these waypoints have to be raised by the same percentage.

Addon: Make all waypoints actually beneficial compared to the pit. Which probably is easiest achieved by reducing the amount of Blacksmiths needed in them (one of them has no BS, but the Farmers could be reduced). What is the point of having waypoints on a map and then one gets actually punished by the game by doing them? Doesn´t make sense in my eyes, although it adds a level of planning and skill to skip those waypoints...

The benefit: All FS can choose a path that suits their performance level. All the low performance FS that are struggling in the current system (and presumably where all the complaints about the increase came from), would encounter only minor inconvenience, by not being able to choose a path. All the higher performance FS (that as far as I know mostly welcomed the increase) can get an increase in badge requirement according to their performance level.
 

Timneh

Artisan
All the higher performance FS (that as far as I know mostly welcomed the increase) can get an increase in badge requirement according to their performance level.

I don't know what makes you think that higher performance FS welcome the increase in the number of badges required, I have not read a single post here or on the beta forum FA threads that says the increase is a good idea.
If they want to make the badge numbers higher then they need to make the rewards A LOT better.
 

Pauly7

Magus
If they want to make the badge numbers higher then they need to make the rewards A LOT better.
This is the important point. FAs do not even come close to being worth anyone's time to play... not even in the same ballpark... so the notion of increasing badge requirements is fairly laughable.
 
I don't know what makes you think that higher performance FS welcome the increase in the number of badges required, I have not read a single post here or on the beta forum FA threads that says the increase is a good idea.
If they want to make the badge numbers higher then they need to make the rewards A LOT better.
I am AM of one the higher performing FS in adventures and we would have really welcomed the increased number of badges required in map E that was promised, and after talking to the people in the FS that won in our world they would have liked it as well. If you had ever had to go through the repetitiveness of 4 days in the pit to hold your position after completing the maps, you may understand.
Yes the rewards are poor, but the positive effect it has on a group as far as team building goes makes it worth doing, and we all love our trophy buildings, that we are getting a nice collection of.
 

Timneh

Artisan
OK yours is the first post that i have read that likes the idea of higher number of badges being needed but you are still in the minority when you read all the FA posts both here and on Beta.

My opinion is that the new higher number of badges version will piss off more people than it pleases so it is almost certain to be introduced in the near future. Makes me really happy to be in a FS where we do what we want, when we want if we want to do it at all and we are all very happy with that arrangement.
Rewards should be equal to the effort needed to get them and FAs have never had that ever since they were introduced. As for team building, we are a pretty good team anyway in my FS so if we do take part in FAs it is purely for fun and we don't care if we finish 1st or 100th, they are not worth getting stressed over. Of course other people with have different views as is their right but i doubt i will ever change my opinion about FAs.
 
What some people call stress, other people call fun :} or we may just be a little bit crazy, but my thoughts are the people who don't bother with adventure never will weather there are more badges or less, so inno should change the adventure to make it better for the fs's that do enjoy it, rather than making it easier for the ones that are not interested and will not join in whatever they do. I think keeping the first 3 chests as they are and adding a 4th chest with loads of badges for the ones that want to go a bit silly, would probably be a better solution than increasing the number of badges in the lower chests, we will just have to wait and see what they decide, but a change is needed, because that pit is going to put off the ones that do enjoy it.
 

Pauly7

Magus
so inno should change the adventure to make it better for the fs's that do enjoy it, rather than making it easier for the ones that are not interested and will not join in whatever they do.
People are only not interested because there are no rewards worth winning for the effort so they can look at that equation logically. There's never a case of people not being interested come what may.

Increasing the difficulty ratio just makes that worse and makes less people play. As someone who loves FA you must surely love the competition (what else is there) so it's weird to be suggesting that it gets made even harder so that only a handful of FA obsessed teams are playing.
 

Timneh

Artisan
I have to agree with what @Pauly7 says. As i have already said, rewards need to be equal to the effort expended to get them and i know i am not the only person that thinks that. If the rewards were worth the effort then i believe that a lot more players would be willing to take part. Making it harder for the same rewards that are not worth having in the first place will just make less people want to take part. Increase the rewards to something worth having and that might increase the competition which should please the players that enjoy that. I have been in FAs where we have been stuck in the pit for 3 or 4 days and i have to admit that we found it mind numbingly boring but i feel that increasing the required number of badges so it takes longer to get to the pit is not the answer. As has already been said it will just make more people not want to take part. Will the FA focused FS really find any joy in coming top when only a small handful of FS take part ? Maybe they will i guess if they have nothing better to do.
 

RainbowElvira

Sorcerer
Instead of adding 50% to all badges in all waypoints as in the failed attempt, add 0% to 1 path (say yellow), 100% to all waypoints in another path (say blue) and 200% in the third path (say green). Of course also the rank points gained in these waypoints have to be raised by the same percentage.

Increasing the required amounts of badges by 50% and leave the rest unchange was an extremely bad idea. Leaving one path unchanged is already much better.

However, fellowships going only one path per map have 3 options right now. The proposed change would make 2 paths so expensive that there would no longer be a choice for them.

While better than what the devs came up with on beta, I'm not convinced.
 

Piglets For All

Soothsayer
As somebody with a city in Beta, the extra badges were universally hated and most FS didn't bother to do the FA, we only cleared the 2nd map because one of our members needed the artifact, but I'd suggest that Inno didn't make any money selling extra badges and that was the reason for abandoning it.
 

Gargon667

Mentor
This is a thread for suggestions, so all of you who have nothing better to do than whine, do it in an appropriate thread please, there is lots of them out there, you have found them all already :)

Some constructive suggestions would be very welcome though! And if your only suggestion is to increase rewards, you would be better off in any of the 17 other threads suggesting the same before.

@Timneh: you may not have heard it, but there are people that like FAs, talking to them results in opinions that agree with this statement. however being in a FS that does not like FAs will result in you never hearing anything of the likes. On facebook or other places you usually get a ratio of 90% haters and 10% lovers or so... they are out there and when I voiced the same opinion there I did get a few likes, of course not as many as dislikes, but they are out there. I am far from saying we are the majority. But judging from server traffic at the start of the FAs I would say a fair number. A few people doing a lot makes up for lots of people doing nothing.

@Pauly7: (like the avatar btw): No, rewards are not at all the point. they are in fact completely besides the point.
Your other point is more interesting: Competition:
We already have 2 weekly competitions with groups of greed motivated individuals (sounds bad, but I am trying to make a point and will explain it later). We are proud to be the most greedy of them all lol. However we also enjoy the competition of other great teams and there is only one of those competitions every other month or so. I wish this to stay as it is, rather than a third interchangeable greed competition. To interest more greed motivated FS would be counterproductive. We want to interest team work motivated FS in this event in order to in the long run have more competition. Therefore my suggestion: 1 easy path for "newbies" to learn what it is about and get interested and also for the "greedies" so they can easily grab the rewards there are. and then skip the rest of the event. But also more paths for FS that want to grow and do better in FAs without the endless dizziness of spinning round and round in the pit.

I do not see much point talking about rewards, but if you all insist, here is my take on it: The rewards are completely and utterly unimportant. We would play the FAs exactly the same way if the only rewards for the whole thing was 1 Gold coin! Actually that would be a funny joke ;)

I see many reasons for playing FAs in order of importance (my personal preference, order may vary for others):

1. Most important: they are insanely fun to play, more than any other part of the game I can think of!

2. It is the only event that needs serious amount of team work. Explanation for those that care: 10 chest Tourneys can be done by 10 or fewer egoistic towns, team spires by 22. Yes, we do those as well for the rewards! We have done 10 chest tourneys every week for a year now and to be honest 1000 encounters every week is soso in terms of excitement, it is more like a very rewarding chore, that cannot be passed up because I want more stuff lol. The team spire is certainly also fun, because of the challenge it presents (see higher difficulty = more fun) and also its novelty of course. Still team work is only necessary in terms of a bit of motivation in the beginning to get everybody going in the same week. But still everybody plays their own spire and points are added up in the end, not much in terms of team work, but a few towns do a bit extra and more than they would for themselves. So yes there is some degree of teamwork.
But the only event that actually needs towns to cooperate and build something together is an FA. Unless you have played an FA in an actual FA Fellowship you will never understand what we are talking about. It is a completely different story from the other 2 (or a different order of magnitude if you are more of a science type or even a different ballpark...)

3. FAs make towns better. Explanation for those that care: Yes I know that 99% of elvenarian residents believe the opposite to be true. However all I can say is deleting half your city makes your city better, because half your city is filled with junk anyway! Getting rid of it makes your city better, not worse. Obviously hard to prove. it is just my own experience, that my town works far better after I deleted half of it for an FA and then repopulate it after the FA with new buildings. One could also say we are by far the best FA FS in our world (won all in 2019 and 2020), but we are also the best tourney (most wins in the last half year or so) and spire FS (only one to finish so far, well as far as I know) in our world. So doing well in FAs does clearly not hurt our performance in other areas, my point is: it helps us. This is true both on FS level as well as on individual level. Higher performing towns in FA within our FS are also our best tourney/spire towns. Blaming it on diamonds is also nonsense because the towns spending most diamonds are not the highest preforming towns. Now of course it would be highly flattering if you would call us all the gods of elvenar blessed with supernatural abilities, wisdom, and whatnot, but I stick to my somewhat more earthly explanation: We do more FAs, therefore we have become better at other aspects of the game, too. Should make for some entertaining discussion, if someone is inclined to do so, but maybe better in a different place than this ;)

4. Crappy rewards! Yes I find that a good thing, the one event in the game that is not greed motivated, very refreshing! It also shows if a FS can get their fellows together for a reason other than personal greed. :) I would say "team spirit" is not something purely greed motivated, but opinions may differ...

5. No more important reasons I can think of: Maybe a trophy collection for those inclined that way. And of course as before mentioned: The stage rewards. Well if you want those, do one path each map and grab them, cheap and easy rewards. Small rewards + no work = good deal. I obviously am in a FS, so I never actually did it, but I could do 1 path each map by myself. I produce way more badges during an FA than is necessary for that. If you have a FS with something resembling teamwork, there is no need to talk about this. You can grab some small rewards, for no work at all. If you want more rewards, go play the tourney more, gives you something to do and lots of rewards. Enjoy the time off from other events for a week.

So can we now go back to discussing the suggestion from the first post?

The only contributions that haven´t been answered yet:

@Boobear2: Thanks for the support :) I adress the 4th stage later.

@RainbowElvira: Yes that is exactly what I said. It will take away options for FS that don´t play the FA much. However it will leave one easy path, which should be enough. I do agree this is an inconvenience (a small one) for FS that don´t play much FAs, but I would argue it makes more sense to adjust FAs for FS that actually like to play them. And there would be great benefits to that with this change, however I am very interested in better suggestions.

@pompeywolf + Boobear2: certainly worth considering! I would not mind more stages with higher badge requirements. From the developers point of view much more work of course than changing a couple of numbers on existing maps. But something to consider for future changes in FAs. My guess would be that the reaction of a majority of players would be similar to 4+ stages as to the simple change of badge numbers. FA lovers will like it, while everybody else will keep complaining about crappy rewards. In terms of efficiency developers can get the same result with 5 minutes of work or hours and hours plus testing and whatnot. But if they are willing to put in the time I am all up for it!

Just as a comment I am rather certain that we will get a big overhaul of FAs at some point. No idea what and when, but FAs are not in line with all the other events any more. For example sets have been phased out in events already. The need for upgraded lvl WS and Factories has been introduced (however I am not convinced they´ll stay, there seem to be better solutions to the problem, they tried to solve). The handling of Magic WS (count double in events, but not in FAs). If these changes are meant to stay in events, they will probably make their way to FAs eventually. Another thing is the collection system. They already have the technology to collect either WS productions or Factory productions from the challenges without the need to fill and claim badges individually. This of course still needs refining and extending to all the badges, but they have taken a step into that direction with hose challenges, my guess would be as a test. However they apparently didn´t continue their work on those challenges in a long time now, so it probably was too big a task to finish and they put it on the back burner for a while... Inno seems to do that occasionally ;)

I think this has become far longer than anyone is going to read anyway so kudos if you made it to the end of my ramblings lol.

Cheers everybody!
 

Timneh

Artisan
@Gargon667 The forum is a place for players to voice opinions be they good or bad. Just because you do not like or agree with what some people say does not give you the right to call people whiners, they are expressing their own views and opinions just as you have done. If you do not like what some people say then just use the ignore feature so you do not see anything they write anymore,that is what the feature is for.
I have not said that there are no people that like FAs, some of my FS like them but they do not like doing them for things they do not want or need i.e. artifacts (this is personal opinion to those people). Because i can not be 100% certain i will say that i am assuming that the devs created the FAs and wanted everyone to take part not just a relatively small number of FS. I read somewhere that there was a drop in the number of FS that took part in the last FA on beta when the number of required badges was increased by 50%. Obviously i do not know if that is true or not only INNO will know that for sure but if it is true that would enforce my belief that some FS do not like the thought of doing 50% more for something they don't really want in the first place. If you would be happy to do the FAs for nothing then good for you, i am happy that you are so easily pleased. Not everyone finds FAs fun, some find them to be stressful or tiresome or even a lot of work, i even know someone that finds them annoying for reasons that i will not go into. At the end of the day all people are different with different views and opinions and just because one persons views are different to another persons that is not an excuse for one to say the other is wrong.

I apologise for going off topic.
 

Pauly7

Magus
I agree with @Timneh that it is not a pleasant start to label those who disagree with you as whiners.

But anyway...

You outline several different reasons for enjoying the FA, but I still believe that it has to come down to enjoying the competition. If they are "insanely fun" for you to play then I wonder why else that would be. As you say it requires a lot of effort and organisation to do well. There has to be a point to all that effort and I am assuming that it is because you like to see your team near the top and getting that prize building, etc.

This being the case then I wonder if it would be as much fun if you were putting in the same effort, but finishing about 50th. If the answer is yes then you should welcome the notion that great rewards may inspire all fellowships to play which would possibly put you in that position. If the answer is no then with the greatest respect are you looking for the satisfaction of being a winner without having to compete?

In my world I suspect that there are not many more than about 10 fellowships that go "all out" for the win. Most others are somewhere along the scale between not playing to getting involved at a fairly casual level with perhaps an eye on the leaderboard and hoping to improve. If it isn't about the rewards then there has to be another way to motivate everyone in order to make it a good competition.
 
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Gargon667

Mentor
No offense meant, only a statement of expression of displeasure with irrelevant comments.
I have no problem with people voicing an opinion, I actually enjoy disagreeing on and discussing various topics. The problem here is this reflex that everybody disliking FAs seems to have to enter every thread that has the letters "FA" in the title and start crying "the rewards suck!" This has been publicly accepted as a known fact (a fact that I would dispute in any discussion about rewards of FAs, the short version can be found above) and has been posted thousands of times in every thread about FAs before and adds 0 new value to any discussion about FAs. So what can I call this constant complaining about widely accepted facts that on top of it has never had any effect so far and is not all that likely to have any effect in the future? I call it whining (maybe spamming or trolling would be more politically correct?). Yes it also is an opinion, that anyone is entitled to have, contributing it over and over again in exactly the same way without adding new value to the argument itself or the discussion at hand is an annoyance. This thread has no mention of the word rewards either in the title or in the first message anywhere, neither has it anything to do with the proposed suggestion. There really is no reason to bring it up that I can see. However I think I did address all other points anyone has made, without calling it whining.

Now back on topic:
@Timneh: I would agree devs would prefer everybody to play everything all the time. I also agree that 50% more badges for everything was a bad idea and will cause many FS to play less. That was the whole point of starting this suggestion. All of this is stated in the first post of this thread. We agree 100% on everything you just said. However I miss the part where we actually discuss the suggestion as a possibility to solve exactly this problem.

@Pauly7:
Definitely I agree with you: the competition is a big part of the fun. More competition would be more fun (I would say in my world fewer than 10 FS go for the Top3). Making it a reward based event like tourneys and spires is however not the solution! It would take away the uniqueness of it. What do I need another reward based competition for? I have 2 of those every week already. FAs are unique in the way that they are and they only happen once every 2 month! If all you care about is rewards, play the 2 weekly events every week and forget the fact that FAs exist. Noone looses anything. You gain 1 week of holidays from events (big complaint for many people btw, often comes up when an FA is up next, don´t know about you of course) which you can use to gain even more rewards in tourney+spire. I gain 1 week of fun.
Now in your very last sentence you seem to agree with me that there can be events, not motivated by rewards? "Another way to motivate people"? Well that is exactly what FAs are! The only non reward motivated competition in the game. Motivations for playing FAs can be many different ones (see my above post on why to play FA). The first one I did not elaborate on much, however it has probably the biggest potential to be number 1 for others as well: Fun, well as I agreed earlier the fun includes the competition. Competition for the competitions sake, or in other words: "The desire to be good at something, or even better: the best" I like playing games and I like winning them (any game of course, be it computer, real life or sports) Elvenar is not a game you can win. But it includes little mini games that can be won (called FS events, like FA, tourney and now recently added the team spire). If you can´t win you can still be successful in getting better. Anyway, what is wrong with that for FAs? As before mentioned tourneys can be won. But who cares who gets most points in a tourney? Every 10 chest FS makes 10 chests, after that noone cares, what is the point after all? Rewards have run out and are the only purpose of the event. In FAs the competition starts after the rewards run out on the maps.
So I say: being the best team you can be is the motivation for doing FAs, since there is no other event that actually needs teamwork on a higher level.
What other motivation would you like the game to present, if it is not rewards or any of the ones I proposed?
 

DeletedUser3571

Guest
The main problem i see with your proposed plan is this that currently each of the 3 paths are difficult for different people 1 might need more blacksmiths 1 might need more statues and 1 might need less of both but more of everything else. This means that fellowships who just want to do 1 path per stage can pick the path that best suites them, your idea would take this choice from them and could lead to them not being able to finish.
 
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