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