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Discussion Fellowship Adventures - May Contain Beta Spoilers!!!
Timneh
Artisan
My FS is seriously thinking about forgetting doing any more FAs. Players should not have to use all their relics to craft stuff they don't really want to get a badge nor should they have to use loads of time boosts for badges either. Why use all resources for prizes that are not really worth it. I have never been a fan of FAs and now INNO have just made it a whole lot easier to ignore them.
Pauly7
Magus
I know what you mean. We will still play them, but I can imagine us just doing the minimum, as a rule, to pick up the artefacts, and then maybe every once in a while we will have a tilt at a better score. We've got involved in this one and had some fun, but there isn't any way for us to overtake the teams above us and at this point you know that it comes down to who wants to burn the most diamonds or other resources. I'm now depleted of everything and I don't really see what we're gaining from this. The motivation is in the competition, of course, but if there are higher rollers there's not much else you can do to counter that.
I'm not saying I particularly liked the old system of having to teleport whole cities away, but at least everyone had a chance. If you had enough committed people and so long as you had the teleport spells, then you could engineer a way to compete at the top. I don't see that being the case anymore.
Maillie
Spellcaster
Well this time it´s tough with building all those silly big T1 factories, but next time I´ll have them all ready in the invemtory, just swap out all the other factories for T1s and I´ll be half set for the FA
Why should we have to do this? Sentient Goods came out in Elementals. There are now SIX chapters that use them. Six. Why are you asking for tier one goods for bracelets? There should be an "or" in the requirement for that badge. 79,000 tier one is the amount that is required for one single badge for Chapter 17. An event shouldn't require teleporting everything away to make room for useless buildings that each take up an entire expansion and a road. We went through this before and it's no more pleasant this time.
BlueBlou
Illusionist
I think it will be quite tough running sentient buildings at the rate we can run tier 1 buildings. Seed production and availability will be the controlling factor. We don’t have seed refills like we have tool refills. Was a bit sad that the sentient goods did not count as t1 goods though. Every little bit helps.
DeletedUser2838
Guest
Yes we know, we are after points, rather than in a desparate rush to the Pit. If we get there we will, but we will certainly finish Map 3. The Pit screens now requiring up to 15 badges for the same 50 points we used to get for 9 badges don't look so enticing now.
DeletedUser2838
Guest
I assume you are talking about Arcane Residue. Who on Earth do you think has sufficient time instants to produce enough Catalyst spells and Vision Vapour, such that they can produce 5 or 6 Arcane Residue each per day for 6 days. - we have just come out of an event that had a large demand for time instants. Perhaps those who are big diamond buyers, but certainly very few in my two FS, where the number who can could probably be counted on the fingers of one hand of someone who had been in a chainsaw accident.
Another problem is that;
1. I win 3 Catalyst spells on the Spire, and 1 gets counted for a badge
2. I win 7 Catalyst spells at the end of the Spire week, and 1 gets counted for a badge
3. I use up these catayst spells producing VV in units that, for me, have included 16 and 19 and 29 VV only to have 10 count for a badge and the rest ignored. It is extremely difficult to make just 10 VV without any waste.
Collection of the most time consuming and expensive badges in this FA is so dispiritingly wasteful.
DeletedUser2838
Guest
So essentially calling Arcane Residue problem a bottleneck is a severe understatement. The only way to get enough is to use huge numbers of relics and time instants to acquire items most of us don't want, just to get badges.
This whole FA has been predicated around depleting all of us of our time instants for some reason.
We do need them in our day to day running of our cities as well, otherwise growth is going to get tediously slow. Those we use in a FA are surplus to needs, and we don't have thousands of them!
I hope there is some compensatory event after this that is "generous" with time instants to allow us to recover. Even if the next FA is 2 months away it is doubtful that I will have built back up to the same stock levels, so at the moment this style of FA is a one-off for me.
This whole FA has been predicated around depleting all of us of our time instants for some reason.
We do need them in our day to day running of our cities as well, otherwise growth is going to get tediously slow. Those we use in a FA are surplus to needs, and we don't have thousands of them!
I hope there is some compensatory event after this that is "generous" with time instants to allow us to recover. Even if the next FA is 2 months away it is doubtful that I will have built back up to the same stock levels, so at the moment this style of FA is a one-off for me.
BlueBlou
Illusionist
I think I see another problem the players in your fs may have and that is a low level Magic Academy. This means that crafting times for a CC or a MM will take so much longer for them than for those with a level 5 MA, which means you will need more time reduction boosters of which you do not have a lot.
Pauly7
Magus
There are some good ideas with this new system. It's good to have some different sorts of badges that don't require sprawling shanty towns. It's good having other badges relevant to the bottomless pit... but due to how they've placed all the importance on one or two badges, it renders all the good elements irrelevant. So for me, my vote is - epic fail.
Julian
Sorcerer
My verdict on the changed FA.
Disclaimer: we won the previous FA in our world, so we had a vested interest in the status quo.
The positives:
I like that the necklaces and elegant statue don’t need one of each type of factory. The previous requirement meant difficult layouts or having to dot all over the city to collect items. These badges are now much easier to harvest (and required less space, as you could pick the smallest factory type).
I also like having new badges in principle. It helps mix things up a bit and gives a novelty factor.
The neither here nor there’s:
The increased requirements of farmers could have been a problem, but it didn’t become a limiting factor. In truth, it used to be too easy compared to blacksmiths. It’s now too hard compared to carpenters. Maybe the solution would have been to have kept farmers at 5 and have reduced blacksmiths to 3.
The negatives:
The new system created a lot of discussion prior to the event, in working out the new tactics. However, there has been a lot less chat during the event than usual. This might be the peculiarities of my fellowship, but may reflect the shifting relevance of certain badges and the loss of others, meaning that people just get on with their individual badges and don’t discuss who does what. Enhancing discussion is one of the challenges and benefits of the FA, so everything should be done to maximise it.
Bracelets – there’s nothing the matter with this in principle, but it needs rebalancing. 90% of our bracelets came from one city in Chapter 1. I do not see the logic for making items easier to do for smaller cities than larger ones. It is a disincentive for people to grow bigger.
Residues – as discussed by many, this has become our limiting badge. It is too expensive to make. And there’s not much you can do to make more, other than to become a diamond spender (Good for Inno’s coffers, maybe).
The shanty town – We ended up deciding to delete our shanty towns with about two and a half days left on the clock. We’d already produced about double the badges we will get through. This is a real disappointment. One of the challenges and enjoyments of the FA is working out the best tactics to make as efficient a shanty town as possible.
I know many complain about shanty towns. But it means the rest of the game becomes a challenge, geared to creating it. One does the Spire to get teleports. One does the events to replace other buildings after the FA. All that is naught if you don’t need many small workshops or factories.
At the end of the FA, I’ve always asked how could I improve my score. The answer has always been to grow bigger and place more expansions to expand that shanty town. Now there seems to be no incentive. The only way I could increase my score is to spend money and diamonds. Sad.
Disclaimer: we won the previous FA in our world, so we had a vested interest in the status quo.
The positives:
I like that the necklaces and elegant statue don’t need one of each type of factory. The previous requirement meant difficult layouts or having to dot all over the city to collect items. These badges are now much easier to harvest (and required less space, as you could pick the smallest factory type).
I also like having new badges in principle. It helps mix things up a bit and gives a novelty factor.
The neither here nor there’s:
The increased requirements of farmers could have been a problem, but it didn’t become a limiting factor. In truth, it used to be too easy compared to blacksmiths. It’s now too hard compared to carpenters. Maybe the solution would have been to have kept farmers at 5 and have reduced blacksmiths to 3.
The negatives:
The new system created a lot of discussion prior to the event, in working out the new tactics. However, there has been a lot less chat during the event than usual. This might be the peculiarities of my fellowship, but may reflect the shifting relevance of certain badges and the loss of others, meaning that people just get on with their individual badges and don’t discuss who does what. Enhancing discussion is one of the challenges and benefits of the FA, so everything should be done to maximise it.
Bracelets – there’s nothing the matter with this in principle, but it needs rebalancing. 90% of our bracelets came from one city in Chapter 1. I do not see the logic for making items easier to do for smaller cities than larger ones. It is a disincentive for people to grow bigger.
Residues – as discussed by many, this has become our limiting badge. It is too expensive to make. And there’s not much you can do to make more, other than to become a diamond spender (Good for Inno’s coffers, maybe).
The shanty town – We ended up deciding to delete our shanty towns with about two and a half days left on the clock. We’d already produced about double the badges we will get through. This is a real disappointment. One of the challenges and enjoyments of the FA is working out the best tactics to make as efficient a shanty town as possible.
I know many complain about shanty towns. But it means the rest of the game becomes a challenge, geared to creating it. One does the Spire to get teleports. One does the events to replace other buildings after the FA. All that is naught if you don’t need many small workshops or factories.
At the end of the FA, I’ve always asked how could I improve my score. The answer has always been to grow bigger and place more expansions to expand that shanty town. Now there seems to be no incentive. The only way I could increase my score is to spend money and diamonds. Sad.
Timneh
Artisan
That was asked for and ignored a long time ago.
Hekata
Artisan
Actually to me this makes sense. It is very difficult for small towns to produce most other badges (too little space, MA at level 2., too few provinces, no Spire etc) so this gives them a way to contribute to a FA in a more meaningful way. A lot of FS are mixed and have players from chapter 1 to chapter 16. Small players often have to "sit on the bench" during the FA because they can contribute very little. Giving them an advantage with a difficult badge makes them feel part of the team and makes them enjoy the FA more.
On this I wholeheartedly agree. I like building shanty towns, to me it's like solving a puzzle how to fit the most possible L1 buildings. I was very disappointed when they removed the need for it from events, now they are slowly disappearing from the FA too.
It's also slowly eliminating the difference between events and FA, the quest are becoming very similar, which leads to the game becoming a bit monotonous and boring (constant events and FA and more of the same).
As others have pointed out this FA was designed just to wipe out all our instants. Maybe they hope then we'll be happy to get 1 relic or 1 spell in events.
My vote: FAIL
Timneh
Artisan
If that is what they were aiming for they failed with me. I refuse to use all my instants, spells or relics for something that gives such poor rewards.
cwgiii
Shaman
I suspect that this is exactly what Inno wants. Designed to drain away these items from inventory,
Gargon667
Mentor
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:
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.
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:
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.
Pauly7
Magus
I'm interested to know why you'd have all that inventory left and not use it. Were you just so far in the lead that you couldn't be bothered to place them?
I was left hanging with 150 guard badges, 150 AW badges and about 100 marbles badges. Everything else had either run out or was in single digits. (I might have had about 50 coin badges left.)
Arcane Residue badges are just insulting to us though. I'm going to suggest to our team that we don't try to play the FA properly any more than one out of every three (maybe less)... because I don't want everyone to constantly bleed themselves dry of all resources, even if they're willing to do it.
I was left hanging with 150 guard badges, 150 AW badges and about 100 marbles badges. Everything else had either run out or was in single digits. (I might have had about 50 coin badges left.)
Arcane Residue badges are just insulting to us though. I'm going to suggest to our team that we don't try to play the FA properly any more than one out of every three (maybe less)... because I don't want everyone to constantly bleed themselves dry of all resources, even if they're willing to do it.
Gargon667
Mentor
That is why it was 2hours before the end
1:50 before the end bracelets, VV, money and tiaras were at 0....But yes my FS is good enough without me, there was never a need for me to put in any badges, I only increased our final score by a little bit.