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Activity Time Comparison

DeletedUser1685

Guest
It seems to me that I can spend the most time in Elvenar on combat activities.
If I battle every province without using Auto Pilot, that activity takes the most time.
There doesn't appear to be any building activity that takes the same amount of time.
Sell a building takes seconds.
Build a building takes a click then wait, possibly a day or two.
Cater a combat tile takes a click.
Yet if I combat, I can be busy for a long while working out the best way to get through certain maps and opponents.

What I want is a building activity that is comparable to combat activities.
Elvenar is meant to be a building game but it seems to put most weight on combat.

Lego and Minecraft show how popular that being able to build is. Neither of them has much combat at all.

Innogames seems adamant on not supplying the various requests for building suggestions from its customers. Mostly those suggestions involve being better able to redesign cities.

So let's not go down that path again.

But I would like to spend more time building in this building game.
 

DeletedUser3337

Guest
Inno knows what kind of player they are targeting at, me thinks.
If I have to make a guess ... Average:
Age: 35-40?
Daily time invested in game: 30-45 min?

So most are probably working class middle aged players, who log in once (or twice) a day.
Do their routine a couple of minutes and log off again, no need for social interaction.
Does more building options really make this group of players more active, passionate or social?

And I am not talking about the exceptions to the rule, players who are able to play during work (or housewives).
Or even new players who have not yet been turned into zombies.
Not even the ones who come to this forum, zombie forum too btw.
 

DeletedUser1685

Guest
More time ! You must be joking ! I spend 3 hours a day just doing neighbourly help, :eek: :rolleyes: :mad: :(

I only do clan members, the fast way to do them involves using the F key, and skipping Treasures found. Press F go to a city, do Help and press F again.

There are probably other shortcut keys that could help, such as C.

Myself, I don't see any reason we need to load everybody's city every time we go to help them. We should be able to just tag the city and move on, then each tag is piled up for the owner of the city to use as they want when they log in. Much easier, and fewer of the disconnection errors that happen when loading huge cities up.

Playing games is about fun. Doing neighbourly help is not fun, and the "treasure" isn't worth it, nor is it fun, just an annoying little detail we have to chase down 3 times a day, if we want to do it. Personally I'd prefer a toggle to turn "treasure" off.
 

DeletedUser1685

Guest
Inno knows what kind of player they are targeting at...
...Or even new players who have not yet been turned into zombies.
Not even the ones who come to this forum, zombie forum too btw.

Most gamers are women over 30 years old. That's been the case for a decade or two now, and explains how Farmville got so big, back when it was allied with Facebook. Also explains the mammoth success of Candy Crush et al.

Elvenar feels like a disjointed game, like Innogames took one of their other games, and changed the graphics and a few rules and made it a game about building. Their version of Sim City, but with mostly combat as the activity to do.

I feel that Innogames would have more success if they targeted their efforts on what their game is about, rather than targeting players as customers.

I prefer a game built by gamers, rather than a marketing department. :)

So, one way we could make building more involving is that every building becomes upgradeable, like an Ancient Wonder. But each upgrade requires some strategy and forethought, and additional involvement, for instance you might need people to hit it with Neighbourly Help type assistance a certain amount of times. Or it might need certain building types used on it to achieve a certain look.

This would let each player have control over how their city looks. Right now most of that control is from Innogames and we end up with cities that have huge lawns of the same type buildings. Monoculture, and boring to look at and not individual.

Perhaps road building could be a fun addition...hmm
 
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Maillie

Spellcaster
I'm afraid you may have missed the mark with the "women over 30 years old" remark. I remember vividly a top MMORPG forum discussion asking if anyone else was over 55. The forum was flooded with page after page after page of retired. They have the time that the "housewives" don't have. You might be a little surprised to learn that Grandma is not sitting in a rocking chair knitting while watching Perry Mason reruns, but instead is building a city, or intercepting an attack in Grepolis, or dashing into a dungeon with a group of college kids on her way to kill the Lich King. Grandpa's "hobby" just might be trying to get through the Orc chapter on his way to Woodelves. I'm not sure there's an average age of 30, but that doesn't sound like the age that has the time for much of anything but work and family. I'd add a few years to that or subtract several years, either one would have more time, I believe.
 

DeletedUser3337

Guest
Quote:
"InnoGames just completed an in-depth player survey, which confirmed its projected success: women are flocking to its most recent title Elvenar"
"Elvenar also attracts the oldest players in the company’s portfolio, with 70 percent being over the age of 35"
https://press.innogames.com/innogames-draws-women-with-elvenar-finds-monetary-success

Game is meant to be low energy ... "relaxed" .. ">fun< for those seeking half an hour of busy-rl-distracting"
I belong to the targeting group but please wake me up if they change this low energy approach and things indeed get 'active'.
 

DeletedUser1685

Guest
Sheesh, we women, such feeble critters only interested in Candy Crush...

Women have always been gamers, but it was the introduction of gaming to Facebook that opened up gaming to a whole new marketplace. You know this, no need to take my comment out of context.
 

DeletedUser1685

Guest
I'm afraid you may have missed the mark with the "women over 30 years old" remark.

Women over 30, doesn't mean an average of 30. And we all know that retired people are a huge market segment.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzkY7wa8Ksxv4M5NyUYgTmA

Even famous old people, way back in 2011 Terry Pratchett was playing Oblivion

https://bookwitch.wordpress.com/in-...-always-be-the-fellow-who-writes-funny-books/

I should know better than talk about the market makeup of games without putting down a whole lot of prework to make sure people understand where I'm coming from. But I forget and just tend to talk as if I'm talking to friends who know me and my history with gaming.

However, what is probably more interesting than the gamer population is the makeup of the game developer makeup. Here is some reading that shows the population makeup of gamers and devs. With about 75% of devs being male.

What would be nice is to see how many game devs are old. Say over 45.

http://www.unite-it.eu/profiles/blogs/why-are-so-few-women-developing-video-games

Again all this is pretty much meaningless to me, anyone can make or play games.

But I would be interested in how gamers play Elvenar.

What activities do the male players mostly perform? What are the female players doing? Is there a significant difference?

I imagine a game with mainly 20something males is built around fast-paced combat. Competitive clicking. Is that my bias?

And so on, that's the interesting part of being a dev, access to thousands of data piles :)

Be like Samuel Tarly in a library.

Which brings us back to the main point of this forum post.

What are we doing in the game, and how can Innogames help?
 
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