Hey guys, as promised a little news from the back office from an interview that was done with our Project Manager, Lukas. We thought you may find this interesting!
How long have you been with InnoGames/Elvenar, which team do you belong to and what exactly is your job?
I have been working at InnoGames since the beginning of the year, and thus also on Elvenar. In my role as Product Manager I am responsible for making sure that we, as a team, work on the right topics, that we implement these topics efficiently and finally that we can release new updates with useful improvements and extensions for Elvenar on a regular basis. For us in "Team Content" this mainly concerns the new guest races and improvements to other core elements of the game, such as the Spire of Eternity or the Ancient Wonders.
Is there a specific topic you and your team want to address next?
We are currently working on the technical basis to be able to exchange the rewards in the Spire of Eternity. So you can prepare yourself for a refreshment of the rewards in 2021.
Do you play Elvenar yourself? Do you have a favorite Chapter?
Sure! I am currently in the Woodelves Chapter. I'm really looking forward to the next chapter, the Sorcerer & Dragons. I really liked the style of the buildings during the Sorcerer's Pilgrimage event in summer.
What do you like the most about Elvenar?
What I like most about Elvenar is that I'm not under constant pressure to defend my city against attacks. In other games it happens all the time that you wake up in the morning and parts of the city are destroyed. In Elvenar I start with a good feeling: This morning my city is a little more advanced already than it was last night.
And very important: Do you like unicorns?
At the risk of voicing a very unpopular opinion: I've never been a big fan of horses or unicorns, but in Elvenar, unicorns are often given as presents and then they are in my town. Gifted horse and so on.
In the new tournament system, there are now also more chests as a reward. Why don't the rewards within increase as well but rather stay the same? It takes a lot of effort to earn these chests.
We have deliberately chosen the current rewards after the tenth chest, for the very reason that these chests are very hard to earn. We were concerned that fellowships might feel compelled to replace players who earn fewer points in order to receive more chests. By making sure the additional rewards are not a must-have, but a nice extra, we've been able to give the strongest tournament fellowships a new challenge without putting too much pressure on smaller fellowships.
Will there be any changes regarding the formula of the troop size? Why will player be punished when they buy premium expansions? Why are they punished when they build ancient wonders?
We've been evaluating tournament data, reading player feedback (in fact, thanks to your nice CMs, we get a lot from the forums), implementing player feedback and understanding the impact of tournament changes on the game. The basic goal of the cost formula is to provide all players with a challenging but fair tournament. However, progress in the game - in any form - should still be worthwhile and improve the tournament success. We are convinced that we are much closer to this goal with the new system than with the old system, which determined the squad size solely based on squad size research. In this old system, the top rankings were only distributed based on the available provinces a player had.
We understand the frustration of players who are now able to earn fewer tournament points and individual rewards than before. Nevertheless, no player should be afraid of further progress. For example, from the analyses that we have been running, we can't see that players with more premium expansions now perform worse than players with fewer premium expansions. On the contrary, these players continue to perform significantly better than comparable players. The same is true for Ancient Wonder levels, progress in the research tree and ordinary expansions. How much better these players should perform is of course open to debate, but we can't see any "penalty" that would disproportionately slow down the tournament progress based on any of these factors.
This is not to say, of course, that there will be no more adjustments. Over time, we will certainly continue to monitor tournaments in general and the cost formula in particular. For example, we currently see a possible weakness of the new system in the equal treatment of all ancient wonders. We certainly agree that some wonders are much more valuable for tournaments than others. The formula does not make this difference at the moment. In addition, we continue to monitor players at the top end of the spectrum to ensure that costs are not disproportionately high at a certain point. However, since the number of players in this area is quite small, it takes a little longer to have any meaningful results to our analyses there.
Will there ever be a complete alignment of mobile and browser version? E.g. for the mobile version the display of duration for spells, player and fellowship searches? For the browser: the fast neighborly help.
We are constantly working on further aligning the two versions. For example, we added the search function for fellowships and players to the mobile version a few weeks ago. At the same time, we added the fellowship suggestions for new players in the browser. Further adaptations will follow.
Will it be possible to get artifacts for old evolution buildings? After all, it is possible to craft some of them in the crafting, but without artifacts they will not be of much use. What are the chances of ever exchanging artifacts between players?
You already sometimes get the opportunity to obtain old artifacts in events, or the option to exchange (most recently the case with the bears). But we also have some other cool ideas how to make old artifacts available again in the future (also outside of events). Let's see what will become of these ideas. What will not change is that events with new evolution buildings are always the fastest and most resource-efficient sources for related artifacts.
A possibility to exchange artifacts between players is currently not planned.
To discuss the content here, please head over to the dedicated discussion thead!
How long have you been with InnoGames/Elvenar, which team do you belong to and what exactly is your job?
I have been working at InnoGames since the beginning of the year, and thus also on Elvenar. In my role as Product Manager I am responsible for making sure that we, as a team, work on the right topics, that we implement these topics efficiently and finally that we can release new updates with useful improvements and extensions for Elvenar on a regular basis. For us in "Team Content" this mainly concerns the new guest races and improvements to other core elements of the game, such as the Spire of Eternity or the Ancient Wonders.
Is there a specific topic you and your team want to address next?
We are currently working on the technical basis to be able to exchange the rewards in the Spire of Eternity. So you can prepare yourself for a refreshment of the rewards in 2021.
Do you play Elvenar yourself? Do you have a favorite Chapter?
Sure! I am currently in the Woodelves Chapter. I'm really looking forward to the next chapter, the Sorcerer & Dragons. I really liked the style of the buildings during the Sorcerer's Pilgrimage event in summer.
What do you like the most about Elvenar?
What I like most about Elvenar is that I'm not under constant pressure to defend my city against attacks. In other games it happens all the time that you wake up in the morning and parts of the city are destroyed. In Elvenar I start with a good feeling: This morning my city is a little more advanced already than it was last night.
And very important: Do you like unicorns?
At the risk of voicing a very unpopular opinion: I've never been a big fan of horses or unicorns, but in Elvenar, unicorns are often given as presents and then they are in my town. Gifted horse and so on.
In the new tournament system, there are now also more chests as a reward. Why don't the rewards within increase as well but rather stay the same? It takes a lot of effort to earn these chests.
We have deliberately chosen the current rewards after the tenth chest, for the very reason that these chests are very hard to earn. We were concerned that fellowships might feel compelled to replace players who earn fewer points in order to receive more chests. By making sure the additional rewards are not a must-have, but a nice extra, we've been able to give the strongest tournament fellowships a new challenge without putting too much pressure on smaller fellowships.
Will there be any changes regarding the formula of the troop size? Why will player be punished when they buy premium expansions? Why are they punished when they build ancient wonders?
We've been evaluating tournament data, reading player feedback (in fact, thanks to your nice CMs, we get a lot from the forums), implementing player feedback and understanding the impact of tournament changes on the game. The basic goal of the cost formula is to provide all players with a challenging but fair tournament. However, progress in the game - in any form - should still be worthwhile and improve the tournament success. We are convinced that we are much closer to this goal with the new system than with the old system, which determined the squad size solely based on squad size research. In this old system, the top rankings were only distributed based on the available provinces a player had.
We understand the frustration of players who are now able to earn fewer tournament points and individual rewards than before. Nevertheless, no player should be afraid of further progress. For example, from the analyses that we have been running, we can't see that players with more premium expansions now perform worse than players with fewer premium expansions. On the contrary, these players continue to perform significantly better than comparable players. The same is true for Ancient Wonder levels, progress in the research tree and ordinary expansions. How much better these players should perform is of course open to debate, but we can't see any "penalty" that would disproportionately slow down the tournament progress based on any of these factors.
This is not to say, of course, that there will be no more adjustments. Over time, we will certainly continue to monitor tournaments in general and the cost formula in particular. For example, we currently see a possible weakness of the new system in the equal treatment of all ancient wonders. We certainly agree that some wonders are much more valuable for tournaments than others. The formula does not make this difference at the moment. In addition, we continue to monitor players at the top end of the spectrum to ensure that costs are not disproportionately high at a certain point. However, since the number of players in this area is quite small, it takes a little longer to have any meaningful results to our analyses there.
Will there ever be a complete alignment of mobile and browser version? E.g. for the mobile version the display of duration for spells, player and fellowship searches? For the browser: the fast neighborly help.
We are constantly working on further aligning the two versions. For example, we added the search function for fellowships and players to the mobile version a few weeks ago. At the same time, we added the fellowship suggestions for new players in the browser. Further adaptations will follow.
Will it be possible to get artifacts for old evolution buildings? After all, it is possible to craft some of them in the crafting, but without artifacts they will not be of much use. What are the chances of ever exchanging artifacts between players?
You already sometimes get the opportunity to obtain old artifacts in events, or the option to exchange (most recently the case with the bears). But we also have some other cool ideas how to make old artifacts available again in the future (also outside of events). Let's see what will become of these ideas. What will not change is that events with new evolution buildings are always the fastest and most resource-efficient sources for related artifacts.
A possibility to exchange artifacts between players is currently not planned.
To discuss the content here, please head over to the dedicated discussion thead!