I am much in agreement with the OP's opinion that Elvenar has largely become, in effect...
[a] hamster wheel of time instants, supply instants, more troops, grab every troop booster, hope I get something useful in the MA or Spire, do an event, then do an FA to get the boosters that weren't possible in the event, do another event, need more boosters, make more troops, on and on and on [...]
... although I do
not believe that this type of incessant and interrelated in-game activity has simply 'happened' because InnoGames is staffed by 'idiots' who do not realise the effect(s) of the long series of [more or less visibly] interconnected changes which they have made to the game. In fact, I believe this string of changes has been meticulously planned, and that the consequent increasing 'busy-ness' of the game, including the fast-growing significance of the game's competitive elements (the Spire and Tournaments - in that order of importance) is
very far from accidental. And while I could (but probably won't) bore on at length about how and why the game has changed in the past two years or so, I will for now highlight just a couple of points which seem, to me, to be illustrative of the game's intended direction.
Oh no, I have to make choices in order to voluntarily participate up to arbitrarily chosen levels in the optional components of a game.
Optional? Realistically? If so: where else can anyone now gain, and even then rarely/randomly, any building which produces Diamonds?
* Where else can we now win any Time Boosters? How else can players gain
enough Time Boosters
both to speed up gameplay - their original purpose, even if now often seen as secondary to Troop production, largely
for use in the Spire (!) -
and maintain the
only other method of gaining Time Boosters, i.e. Crafting? And without Crafting, how can players obtain such semi-essentials as Orc Nests, Festival Merchants, and/or enough Combat Boosters to get anywhere in, er, primarily the Spire (again, the irony is apparent) and also, in their new 'Spire-style' incarnation, the Tournaments
as well - which, in turn, provide Relics
also needed for Crafting and Spells, including Combining Catalysts... again, needed for Crafting... and so on, and so forth.
* NB: In 'free to play' gaming, giving away some Premium Currency (e.g. via Genies) and/or Premium items (Magic Residences/Workshops) is known to be one of the best ways to encourage players to spend real money on further Premium Currency and/or items.
It must surely be obvious how important and interdependent - and therefore effectively
required - the game's so-called 'optional' components (Tournaments, Crafting, and notably the Spire) have now become...? One
could play without them, yes - but only very slowly, with very little to do, and with few reasons to log in more than occasionally. However, it is very well known in 'free to play' gaming that the less frequently players log in, and the less they have do to in-game, the fewer chances (and the less motivation) they have to spend money - and on another, but related, note, this basic premise of F2P gaming is also the (Inno-stated) cause of the shortening duration and increasing frequency of Events which we have seen lately.
Furthermore:
Voluntarily? Are you sure? How many Fellowships which have any sort of success will for long
happily tolerate any player (who doesn't have something 'special' to offer, such as a high personal Ranking or great Tournament score) who
doesn't want to contribute to the Spire? There are some, I'm sure, but they are certainly in a minority. I suppose a solo player
could ignore the Spire (which, incidentally, used to give far better personal rewards until it was 'improved' by having its best rewards 'redistributed' into the top-level Chests which can [without paying] only be won via a joint FS effort...), but then again: could such a player
really keep their Crafting going for long without Time Boosters and Fragments earned in the Spire?
And finally:
Arbitrarily chosen levels? Do you really believe that the Spire prize points (especially Diamond prizes) were randomly set, or are randomly chosen by players as ending points? I would be very surprised indeed if Innogames placed those prizes where they are by using guess-work, rather than by analysing existing game metrics
and taking into account how much 'encouragement' to 'spend-to-win' Resources/Diamonds the average player will tolerate - especially considering that the initial, and more generous, individual prizes were reduced in favour of FS-level rewards - but only after the considerable initial hostility to the Spire (which many players may now forget?) had died down in the minds (and comments) of most.
As I've said, I could continue a lot further in this vein, but even based on what I've already said, there can be little doubt that, far from being genuinely 'optional', the Spire is fast becoming the centre of the game - and this is no accident, nor is it the result of players making unguided, 'optional' choices. The concept of the Spire, like all in-game mechanics of its type, is built squarely upon (a) peer pressure, (b) the re-categorising [or initial creation] of the game's best wins/rewards as Spire-only items, and/or (c) many players' sense of competition, with all of these factors being strong drivers of revenue in 'free' mobile games, since
at least one of them will be difficult for the average player to resist - especially if they want to progress at any more than a snail's pace in what is already an intentionally very slow game full of mechanisms specifically designed to impede [non-paying] players' progress. And this strategy is evidently working, too, if Innogames' PR material is to be believed: while they do not go into detail, they do state that their 'conversion rate' (the percentage of players who convert from 'free' to 'paying') is between 5% and 20%, which is well above the F2P mobile gaming average.
I rarely cater the final level of the Spire; never unless the troops are too far out of whack. Always feed the Bird, drop an extra UU, or raise the Sanctuary, and then give get em. Use the Brown Bear to beef up the boys, too.
And if one
has no Fire Phoenix or Brown Bear, and has seen only two or three UUU buildings in the Magic Academy in the past several months - or cannot afford to Craft them even when they
do appear, due to a lack of CCs and/or Fragments (yet another non-accidental and hard to avoid Spire-Crafting connection)? Should it even be the case that, in a 'strategy-based' game,
three of the four Combat-supporting (and arguably necessary) items you have listed here are available largely on the basis of RNG,
if at all? - and the fourth (Sanctuary/Monastery) takes a very long time to level-up for the average, non-hardcore player and gives a comparatively small Combat advantage in return, with even this now being questionable because it
also causes a Combat
disadvantage due to the weighting given to AW levels in the Spire Squad Size calculation Formula.
And speaking of the Spire Squad Size Formula: without a Fire Phoenix and, in particular, Brown Bear, how does a player who does not have enough Troops even to
fill five of the Spire's enormous and rapidly increasing later Squad Sizes have any choice about whether to use Diplomacy...?
I don't have enough trrops under the new ournament system to figh both tournament and Spire. So the Spire is by diplomacy. [...] I can only attempt the full spire about once every 6 weeks, and I'm still getting through my stocks of coins and supplies instants dspite having magic residences and workshops. The Spire costs are now far too high under the new tournament system
I have
always considered the Spire Resource costs to be far too high, especially because Diamond expenditure is not so much an option (as it is, for example, in Events) as it is a
requirement for many players who have to use the Spire's Diplomacy option in order to get anywhere. And now that I, for one, can no longer get far in the Tournament
either without Catering to a level which I cannot afford, the Spire and Tournament costs together have now become, in my opinion, intentionally unsustainable for the average player who wishes to compete with others or even, in some cases, to make reasonable progress in what is an artificially slowed game, but who does not have the time or motivation to play in a 'hardcore' manner.
For me, it is bad enough that the Spire, which is being placed ever more centrally within the game, requires the sacrifice of large amounts of otherwise-needed Resources each week (especially for those who do not have long-term large stockpiles), but what makes it such a very apparent money-grab (rather than simply a Resource sink) is the fact that the Squad Sizes are so large that many players have no chance at all of fighting beyond the early Spire stages, and so
must resort to Diplomacy if they are to win anything worth having - and even then, only if RNG allows. This is evidently
intended to cost Diamonds in the long term, whether or not
some players are either lucky enough and/or good enough at logic games (actually, both) to get through some or all of the Spire's higher stages without a net Diamond loss. The whole thing is so painfully obvious.
