Discussion Fellowship Adventures - May Contain Beta Spoilers!!!

[Giraffi]

Must be a sobering thought if your team don’t really need you.

 

[Gargon667]

Must be a sobering thought if your team don’t really need you.

I find it very liberating and relaxing On top of that, it makes me proud how awesome they are

 

[Oscar Park]

I'm surprised we haven't seen a badge for collecting spell fragments.

At least that would make worth getting! As it is, thousands of these are stacking up with no purpose.

 

[Oscar Park]

Right, which just pushes diamond use and Spire. We should have a vote on pass or fail for this version of FA.

Definite FAIL from an FA fanatic.

 

[Lelanya]

Definite FAIL from an FA fanatic.

LOL
First off I want to say, I do not see myself as an FA fanatic. Back in the days when badges were truly grueling to make, my Iceni were truly great at buckling down and making a ton of badges. We sold batches of buildings, armories and mana producers in the main, (and once, the entire S&D settlement!) and my crew of overachievers went all out, and yes, we won a fair few FAs. This brought us all together, we blended various skills to create one of the first FA spreadsheets, which has been copied many times and is now widely available in several versions. By the third FA we were ready to run in two realms, and again, we were proud to take a run at a top spot in 2 realms, not just one.

The fact is, once barriers were removed, my crew's interest waned. Teleport spells are nice, but then, that's not "Sacrifice" to push an event, and many others found it possible to do what we had always done. Our special Spreadsheet had been pilfered. Badges became much easier to make. And the nature of the prizes changed. Where once the awards for top spots were Grand Prizes like Edrasil's Village, The Cozy Farm, The Great Auction and the Ice Giant Hag, now they are special buildings. I own a few Arches of Triumph, and I'd never sell any, they are my pride and joy.

Nowadays the nature of event awards has changed, first to set buildings, and then to Evolving Buildings, and so the "Grand Prizes" have themselves become devalued. They became Artifacts interspersed with various small prizes, which have become of ever lesser value, and they are given out as map rewards. Many folks complain about the awards for the Adventure, but the fact is, you have failed to note that you are being given GRAND PRIZES for each and every map. The problem lies in the fact, that the Grand Prizes themselves have lost value ever since the Spring of 2017! And as InnoG has apparently acquiesced to our desire for every player who has completed a map to receive something, that something is of ever smaller value.

There were improvements to the overall mechanics, absolutely. I did not get a single forced reload over simultaneous pit donations. I found I still needed to refresh the pit by going out and back in, but it was less pronounced this time than in the past. I did not get a bad lag with the FA quest giver conditions loaded a day or two prior in a sub push. I still had to refresh my city after resetting the 'field' of small workshops. Folks in parts of the United States reported multiple stream errors, another chronic FA issue, and this appears to have worsened a bit. I read a couple of reports of "stalled chat" but not nearly to the same degree as in the past.

AGAIN, although the pit mechanics have vastly improved, the ending of FA was at a time that is convenient for only one time zone, UTC+1. Please feel free to avoid explaining why this is, we've sussed out the reason: Obviously you are creating a false positive by placing the ending at a time that the least convenient for most of the players. I guess InnoG is afraid to end the FA when the maximum number of players are around.

 

[Lelanya]

What I am asking, is this a Pass, or is this a Fail? is do you all think that this has done for you, what FA has always done for you?

In previous FAs, this event has engendered a feeling of teamwork that is unparalleled. Yes we worked together, as always, but.

New badges were introduced, some of which were clearly out of balance with just about any city's ability to produce. Some old badges were kept. Some old badge names were kept but given new conditions. Some old badges were discarded. The players who excelled at creating treants, bakers, carpenters and flacons were quite upset, and participated a good deal less than they have in the past; they feel that their role was minimized, and they're right.
The badge orders were irritating, and required a lot of special work, tedious work to adapt our old spreadsheets, and then the Wiki's order of badges did not match the order in which badges were displayed either. For players who are meticulous, this was very annoying. Some adaptations of Spreadsheets were done by slotting new badges in places held by prior ones, some were done ahead by using the wiki, which was also incorrect once the Adventure was underway.

I liked that some effort is being made to change things up, and renew, refresh, an old face. But this still needs work, still needs better balance.
Overall, although I liked some elements, and I appreciate that the new developer is eliminating some errors, I call this a FAIL.

 

[Deleted User - 1829734]

To give my comments some context, our fellowship is currently ranked in the 200s (highest chapter is one person in Halflings) but we've done pretty well with FAs for our city sizes/ages. The last couple of FAs we've completed all paths of all stages, spent some time in the Pit, and managed to finish in the top 20 three times now.

This time we did all of Stages 1 & 2, but skipped a few points in Stage 3 as we were finding Residue (it's a swear word for us now) badges difficult to come by. Considering the Residue situation we went with the decision that after finding a path through Stage 3, any Residue badges were effectively better spent in the Pit. We might have been able to get one more dot done in Stage 3, but couldn't find out how many all members had. I say the Residue badges were difficult to come by, but that is with pretty much regular game-play. Going through the Pit I know a lot of members were using their time boosts etc to get them faster.

Some people have commented here or on the beta forums about how there is always going to be a badge that is the hardest. Yes, that is true, but the main factor is the magnitude. How much more difficult is it compared to the next hardest? Residue badges are well clear as the hardest badge and certainly needs some balancing. I had been inclined to think that it would be better as 2 or 3 spells, but I'm starting to lean towards lowering the VV amount (maybe 6-8). There is still going to be overflow of VV going to waste unfortunately, but I think having an amount of VV would actually better reflect the crafting that has been completed. For a badge that is so dependent on chance, the difficulty needs to be reduced further to bring it at least closer to the other badges. Even if it remains as the hardest badge.

Bracelets we found to be a little bit tricky, but were manageable (maybe because we have a number of younger cities?). It could still do with some tweaking to balance it better. We don't have anyone in the high levels, so can't say what it would be like for a player in the top chapter. I had originally thought that it should have been similar to what 3 maxed T1s would have got from a 9 hour production (since the old Bracelets had 1 of each T1). Reduce the amount needed a bit more seems to be the most obvious answer, but including other tiers might be better overall across chapters.

We got held up on occasion with Farmers in the Pit, but that perhaps came down more to who was on at that time (having a large spread of timezones in the fellowship). I wouldn't be at all surprised if in future Farmers change to an amount like Bracelets did.

The FAs do allow a number of different ways to play. Just finding one path through to get the rewards from each stage, the challenge of completing all paths of each stage, or the challenge of seeing just how many points your fellowship can get. It does cover the small/young to large/older cities, the casual to the more hardcore players. The changes to the FA for the most part just need a bit of adjusting, but I do think there's a few badge requirements that do need some adjusting too.

The other comment that a number of members made was that they hope there won't be another FA for a while! They have become too frequent. To an extent this FA did fit in with regular game-play a bit more than previous editions, but the drive to get VV in particular has depleted resources because some felt compelled to spend them on crafting items they wouldn't normally bother with. The VV requirement as is, definitely doesn't suit regular game-play.

And to follow on from Leylanya's comment on the timing of the FA finishing... I think we'd prefer a change too! A number of our players are in the Oceanic timezones, and now it's super early in the morning when most of us are sleeping still. A couple hours more would be nice!

 

[Deleted User - 1829734]

The badge orders were irritating, and required a lot of special work, tedious work to adapt our old spreadsheets, and then the Wiki's order of badges did not match the order in which badges were displayed either. For players who are meticulous, this was very annoying. Some adaptations of Spreadsheets were done by slotting new badges in places held by prior ones, some were done ahead by using the wiki, which was also incorrect once the Adventure was underway.

Oh yeah... updating of the spreadsheet! That did take some time, not just updating the new info after removing the obsolete, but also making sure formulas would still work. There were a few I didn't catch until we were in Stage 3 heh. I'm glad I had seen things on the beta forum and noticed the badge order seemed a bit odd, but used the Pit information to order the badges on my spreadsheet.

 

[DeletedUser8406]

We won in our realm but it cost me and others years of hoarding, I don't believe we will ever achieve the scores we all did again. I was mad as hell when I saw the new FA, it was obvious from the start it was about diamond spend and I must have used over 1500 of them flipping the MA so now my savings for them are gone which is ok as I have fully upgraded MA and builder anyway but newer players don't and want to join in and help where they can, to win you need to flip the MA offers simple as. If you remove residue completely I think you have a great new FA style because the rest of it was great as we even had to think about using instants to create coin badges which were a throw away badge before. One other suggestion I was really upset that my troops platoon instants didn't count towards the guard badge I had been banking on this but luckily others were there to cover the needs but it really should be counting towards guard badge and they will stay unused in inventory until you make them so

 

[Julian]

I agree that it is odd that coin instants count towards the coin badge, but the troop instants don't.

 

[Arusi]

Alright this is going to be a bit longer. But since our community managers always like to get facts to take back to the devs here comes a fact.

First of all I want to say that this was the best FA in a long time, in my FS the majority of payers seem to prefer the new system over the old one. But there are some rather simple improvements that can make the experience even better for both casual as well as competitive FS.

The intention was to make as many badges as possible of all the different ones. I didn´t spend any all week with exception of a couple of garbage badges, so I could post this here in the end (not going to do that again I think, heck of a boring thing to do). This is my inventory 2 hours before the end of the FA:
View attachment 4962

City setup: 150 WS, 75 lvl 1 factories (reduced from 100 after day 1), 10 lvl 31 T1, 4 lvl 23 T1 (built after day 1).
I played 2 full tourneys (total of 30k points) and 2 full spires.
My MA was running CC 24/7 and I have 11 Spire Libraries producing CCs.

I stopped producing guard badges early on and as you can see still by far the most common badge. yes I produce more troops than most people, but we have now 3 separate training queues and the badge does not reflect this change. So at least triple the costs for this badge based on when the training buildings become available. Personally I would prefer more than just tripling the requirements to give this badge a semblance of value.
I also never used instants to make the AW badges, since they also invariably always end up in the garbage bin. Please increase requirements here as well based on chapters.
My tourney scores are of course not representative for average players, but the 3 connected badges are of very different values, elemental marbles and ghost bottles are so common as to be rather useless for me (but should be faily balanced for average players), while the witch hat is one of the 5 limiting badges in the FA.
WS and small factory badges are very easy to make and pose no problem to increase or decrease according to needs, so I don´t see much need to change them.
The Druid staff seems to be fairly balanced as well.

Now on to the difficult badges that decide on the score in the end. I here talk about our FS as a whole.
The obvious 2 first ones are: Bracelets and Vision Vapour: these two were extremely limiting right from the start, we saw a huge underproduction on day 1 and decided to upgrade our T1 production as a consequence. For VV of course timeboosts and occasionally diamonds for flipping the MA were necessary. As we increased the production of those 2 badges another 3 started to become similarly limiting: Money bags, witch hats and tiaras. All other 11 badges are of no consequence in this form of FA.
As a general rule these 5 badges need to be increased to get a semblance of balanced badges.

Bracelets: Include all 3, better all 6 Tiers allowed for production, it will make the badges easier to produce mainly for casual players (who do not teleport factories), but also for competitive players, because of other sources of goods, like event buildings that produce other goods than T1. The main benefit would be the lowered disruption of game play for everybody. Right now the situation is that instead of shanty towns we now build T1 farms, that is not exactly a big improvement. Let us use all factories it will greatly increase participation in FAs.

VV: I see no reason why 1 VV should not be enough for one badge? It is enough to collect 1 CC for a druids badge and I would say that is easier to accomplish and a rather well balanced badge. So 1 VV per badge is not too easy. Mass production will still cost both timeboosts and diamonds (for flipping the MA) of course, but somewhat less so.

Money bags: Are roughly in sync with bracelets/VV and should be made easier accordingly. It takes roughly 60 Neighbour visits per badge right now in higher chapters, It should definitely be decreased somewhat.

Witch hats: Why do you need to gain 2 enchantments to gain a badge when 1 CC is enough? PoP and EE are a little faster to make than CC in the MA, but the most commonly produced enchantment is MM and that takes longer than CCs, so the average should be the same. Why have higher requirements for less useful enchantments than for CCs?

Tiaras: same again: if gaining 2 enchantments is too much how is spending 3 supposed to be balanced? I can´t spend more than I make. This is only possible to maintain by hoarding tons of enchantments in the inventory, from a perspective of disturbing gameplay less I say as well: 1 enchantment is enough.

Since all these changes will remove "critical" badges and make them normal badges instead it means of course FAs will become easier, if Inno finds the current difficulty OK, they will have to increase the requirements on map waypoints to make up for the change, to keep the difficulty constant. But it would be far preferable to have a much more equal value of badges that on top of it would allow more participation of all kinds of towns.

Agree with you in every aspect!

 

[Piglets For All]

Its interesting to see how others take part in the FA - we're an FS who have no interest in the FA other than 1 path 1 map, get prize, move on, this time around we did all paths on Map 1, 1 path on the other 2 maps and were in the pit with 4 days to go, so we were there faster than usual, our time in the pit came to an end on the last day with a few hours to spare because we'd run out of statues.

We don't do spreadsheets, just 1 mail per badge type with people doing the countdown with badges produced or cooking.

As an FA-hater myself, the thought of them coming every 4-6 weeks makes me feel somewhat ill... really Inno, have you absolutely no imagination at all?

 

[Hekata]

A lot of people have already talked about the problem with the residue badge (and some other badges) so I'd like to point out a few other issues that had bothered me and that haven't been mentioned as much.

1. Ending the FA on work days is a terrible idea. For me it wasn't so much a problem of making badges, it was a problem getting online to pick up thing and start new ones and deliver what I have. It's especially a problem for pits. Sometime a couple of players have the needed items but can't come online for a long time ant that can offset the whole team, especially now that we have items that can't really be mass-produced. And let's not forget that some players have more than one city which makes this problem even more frustrating. Instead of enjoying the last days of the FA over the weekend I just kept trying to log in for a minute and then in a hurry sometimes messed thing up. Inno seems to think that all their players have nothing else to do except be on Elvenar 24h.

2. Since I love doing FA (although much less with this new format) I always try to think of ways to optimise my contribution and it occurred to me that one thing that would help with the new system is upgrading is 2 AWs to higher levels. BUT then we hit the new tournaments problem. If I upgrade those aws to get more bracelets I will have permanently a harder time in tournaments which also affects the badges we get by doing the tourney. So we are back at how flawed the new tournament system is, again forcing us to pick just one thing we want to do well at.

3. This has already been mentioned a lot but I want to say it again: having FA this often is just too much, and with this new system that requires us to spend so much of our resources it's just ridiculous. I see FA as the Olympic Games of Elvenar and imagine having Olympic Games like every 6 months? Would they be special? Would anyone even be interested in them anymore?

 

[Gargon667]

I fully agree that 1 per month is too much, but the new FAs are already a bit less disruptive than they used to be and if they get adjusted further they could become even less of a trouble to play. So at least it could somewhat counteract that part of being too frequent. I love FAs, but increasing frequency doesn´t make them better. On the other hand what else are we gonna do? The events lately are nothing I long for either, other forms of events (like mini events and challenges) have been discontinued by Inno, supposedly because of not making enough money. So we´re stuck with alternating boring events and fun (at least for me) but too frequent FAs. Inno can´t do nothing at all (that would make no money whatsoever). So until they invent something new we´re stuck with it as it is.
Events would be easy to fix if they improved the rewards to something useful again, but they seem not to be interested in doing that. FAs could be improved as I outlined above to make them less invasive. So I hope Inno at least considers that change, it at least would be in line with their other changes as of late. More accessible for everybody (including newbies) while not lowering difficulty and without even having to improve the rewards on it. I´d think Inno should love this.

 

[Hekata]

I'm sorry @Gargon667 but I see it differently.

I think the new system is more disruptive. Before players could chose what items they could make every day depending on their schedule; sometimes you'd pick farmers, sometimes bakers and sometimes necklaces and blacksmiths. Now everyone must make bracelets and the most efficient way is the 3h production so it requires you to try to fit as many 3h production as you can every day. I tried to but because I just didn't have time to log in during the work time. Sometimes I can, but often things line up so that I can't. The druid badge: if you log in in time to collect just 1 CC you get 1 badge, if you log in too late you get 1 badge for 2 CCs.

And I don't think the new FA is more accessible to smaller cities, not at all: they have lower level MA, less provinces in tournaments, less time boosters, less spells, some not even access to the Spire yet, no timewrap, often no polar bear, few (if any) diamonds and ofc much less space... Before it was mostly a matter of space, now it's everything.

Also, I find that between the weekly tournament & spire and the frequent events we have plenty to do. I don't think the events are boring because of poor prizes; poor pries make them disappointing, what makes them boring is that they come too often, just like FA. If you eat your favourite meal every day you'll get fed up of it sooner or later, no matter how much you liked it in the first place

Having challenges and mini events and other similar short events maybe wasn't making Inno money directly but I think that by keeping players less bored they would ultimate achieve that result. Most players that are willing to spend on a game have a max monthly budget they can use for that. Giving them more event won't make them spend more money simply because they can't. Giving them a good event less often will make them spend all they are willing to spend. Well that's how I see it anyway

 

[Gargon667]

I'm sorry @Gargon667 but I see it differently.

I think the new system is more disruptive. Before players could chose what items they could make every day depending on their schedule; sometimes you'd pick farmers, sometimes bakers and sometimes necklaces and blacksmiths. Now everyone must make bracelets and the most efficient way is the 3h production so it requires you to try to fit as many 3h production as you can every day. I tried to but because I just didn't have time to log in during the work time. Sometimes I can, but often things line up so that I can't. The druid badge: if you log in in time to collect just 1 CC you get 1 badge, if you log in too late you get 1 badge for 2 CCs.

And I don't think the new FA is more accessible to smaller cities, not at all: they have lower level MA, less provinces in tournaments, less time boosters, less spells, some not even access to the Spire yet, no timewrap, often no polar bear, few (if any) diamonds and ofc much less space... Before it was mostly a matter of space, now it's everything.

Also, I find that between the weekly tournament & spire and the frequent events we have plenty to do. I don't think the events are boring because of poor prizes; poor pries make them disappointing, what makes them boring is that they come too often, just like FA. If you eat your favourite meal every day you'll get fed up of it sooner or later, no matter how much you liked it in the first place

Having challenges and mini events and other similar short events maybe wasn't making Inno money directly but I think that by keeping players less bored they would ultimate achieve that result. Most players that are willing to spend on a game have a max monthly budget they can use for that. Giving them more event won't make them spend more money simply because they can't. Giving them a good event less often will make them spend all they are willing to spend. Well that's how I see it anyway

Well I agree the more often you log on, the better you´ll do that is the universal truth in the game And I also agree, before "lazy towns" could be valuable for an FA with making BS all the time. That has been somewhat decreased.
With disruptive I mean having to delete/teleport your whole town. For competitive teams the advantage is small (or non-existant), because instead of shanty towns we now need T1 farms of silly proportions. But for regular players the need has been decreased I would say.

On the small town argument I disagree completely. Before it was about space 100%. The smaller the city the smaller the potential contribution. Now there are badges that do NOT depend on space. The biggest point here is bracelets, they are FAR more easy to make the smaller the town is. And the bracelet is one of the absolute most important badges right now. A small town that makes nothing but bracelets in the new system will be a far better contributor to the end result than any small town in an old FA could ever have been.

I agree FAs and events both come too often, the problem is Inno has nothing else to offer in that slot of the game (because they removed the alternatives they had). I think they know very well how to make money, I guess half their budget goes to figuring that out.
I doubt people making conscious decisions about buying stuff ingame are their target group for sales in events (or anywhere). They mostly design everything for newbies nowadays (at least to me it seems that way) that have no idea of what is a reasonable amount of money to spend on a certain ingame bonus. The more events they have the more newbies get fooled into buying something and the "collectors" that need to have everything, but don´t want to put in the effort to get it for free. And then there are those that don´t care about money at all. All of them spend more money the more events there are. The ones with a monthly budget will spend their monthly budget, you don´t have to worry about them. They´ll spend it on something no matter what you do. FAs are more likely a different target group: pay to win. I suppose that is why they alternate with events.

 

[Hekata]

With disruptive I mean having to delete/teleport your whole town. For competitive teams the advantage is small (or non-existant), because instead of shanty towns we now need T1 farms of silly proportions. But for regular players the need has been decreased I would say.

Well, maybe for a regular payer it was decrees but I found that for me, who always tries to do more than the average in FA, it was a bit of an increase because we actually use more teleports. Before I'd teleport all my big buildings, build a shanty town, then delete the shanty town and bring back my usual stuff. Now I teleport big buildings to summon other big T1 buildings + make shanty town but then after it's done I need to use more teleports to remove the temporary T1s. I don't know about others but I am really not that lucky with getting teleports. Despite going to the top of the Spire every week. I had weeks when the only one I'd get is the one from the team rewards. And I have forgotten what the purple chest looks like, I get it once in a blue moon and then never teleports from it.

On the small town argument I disagree completely. Before it was about space 100%. The smaller the city the smaller the potential contribution. Now there are badges that do NOT depend on space. The biggest point here is bracelets, they are FAR more easy to make the smaller the town is. And the bracelet is one of the absolute most important badges right now. A small town that makes nothing but bracelets in the new system will be a far better contributor to the end result than any small town in an old FA could ever have been.

If that's really the case then it's an improvement indeed but I'm not so sure. For one it depends on what we call smaller cities. The really small ones don't have a big relic boost. But a very small cities run by a super active player who has achieved an above average relic boost might have a big advantage indeed. I think that how efficient a city is at producing bracelets depends more where you are in the game than the size of the city. For instance I have played this adventure with 2 cities: 1 in elemental and one in chapter 15. With the elementals one I had already unlocked the T1 upgrade and had 5 t1s at max level + 4 at pre-sentient max. With the one in chapter 15 I haven't unlocked the upgrade yet but I had 8 T1 at max possible (which are in fact the same T1 I have in the "smaller" city). With MMs on I could make 2 bracelets in 3h with the elemental city and less than 1 in the other (I had always to timeboost 1 additional 3h production to get the bracelet). So basically if you are in a chapter that has an T1 upgrade and you have unlocked and upgraded T1s then you're at an advantage, in other cases you're at a disadvantage

As to your last point, I suppose, as you say, they have a team of experts that do know what they are doing but I really can't imagine who these offers are for. You are probably right in your estimate but all those ways of thinking are strange to me plus it makes the game a bit boring for those of us who try not to take shortcuts and play the full thing.

 

[Sir Derf]

A few less-trumpeted thoughts...

1) My fellowship went through the Maps in 3 days, about the same as the previous FA in the previous style, and so spent about the same 3+ days in the pit. My fellowship has a wide spread of players, with some higher players able to make shantytowns, and others with less capabilities. That said, they all felt more involved in the FA through the whole 6+ days this time, as they were more able to continue to contribute into the pit in what felt like more meaningful ways. Partly, it's the younger cities in the old-style FA feeling bummed when they enter the pit and half their badges became useless, and now they see a use for all badges for all 6 days.

2) At least in my opinion, the wider number of needs for the badges made the FA feel more like a regular quest-based event. Collecting Relics, solving Encounters, gaining Vision Vapor; those have been quest goals, not FA goals. If this is the style of FAs going forward, and we're going to continue to follow Quest Events with FAs (at least the major QEs), to me it's just going to feel like we've doubled the number of QEs per year.

 

[Gargon667]

As to your last point, I suppose, as you say, they have a team of experts that do know what they are doing but I really can't imagine who these offers are for. You are probably right in your estimate but all those ways of thinking are strange to me plus it makes the game a bit boring for those of us who try not to take shortcuts and play the full thing.

I don´t mind much honestly, see the whole thing is that noone thinking logically will buy any of these offers, people that do not think logically will never be competitive players. So either way I can´t loose because of the offers Well the exceptional very rare case of a logical thinker with unlimited amounts of money could buy lets say 500 DAs for 400000 diamonds. They would have a serious tourney advantage over me. So be it, it would be 1 case of pay to win, but it would not destroy the game. This person just payed the game for me playing forever without me ever having to feel like I should donate money to the game. So even that person I am happy to have here!

 

[Gargon667]

A few less-trumpeted thoughts...

1) My fellowship went through the Maps in 3 days, about the same as the previous FA in the previous style, and so spent about the same 3+ days in the pit. My fellowship has a wide spread of players, with some higher players able to make shantytowns, and others with less capabilities. That said, they all felt more involved in the FA through the whole 6+ days this time, as they were more able to continue to contribute into the pit in what felt like more meaningful ways. Partly, it's the younger cities in the old-style FA feeling bummed when they enter the pit and half their badges became useless, and now they see a use for all badges for all 6 days.

2) At least in my opinion, the wider number of needs for the badges made the FA feel more like a regular quest-based event. Collecting Relics, solving Encounters, gaining Vision Vapor; those have been quest goals, not FA goals. If this is the style of FAs going forward, and we're going to continue to follow Quest Events with FAs (at least the major QEs), to me it's just going to feel like we've doubled the number of QEs per year.

I agree especially with your first point! I would take it even further and say: The old FAs were basically over the minute they started. The only brain power and actual work involved was done in the days prepping before the start. Once the city was setup the only thing left to do was collecting and resetting WS and sets. The plan for maps was also made before the start. The winner of the FA had been decided by that point as well as how many points they would make. It was rather boring to know we´d win an FA before it started and with how many points (and what margin to second place). The whole thing could have been ended right at the start point with no major difference in outcome.
Now it is not 100% predictable anymore. And having all badges in the pit is certainly a big improvement, at least now there is a chance to put the garbage badges into the pit. The main problem persists that thebadges are very much out of balance and garbage bages still go to the garbage bin to a very high degree. Babysteps in the right direction...

Point 2 i am not sure if you find this good or bad. But I agree that the FAs are moving towards integrating more with the game in general. Events have gone this way before (they also used to require shanty towns, but don´t anymore), now FAs follow suit slowly. Of course they still need shanty towns, but much smaller ones than before (mine got cut down to about 30%) I think this integration with regular game play is a good idea, it makes it easier to get into FAs for people that are not pros. The step into it becomes smaller doing things they know how to do.