LONG POST
I spend a lot of time observing things. One of those things is how formerly decent (often originally PC) games have been altered since being moved to mobile.
In particular, I notice which games are persistently advertised, their no. of downloads/popularity, which companies buy/own them, the alterations that are made to them over the years, and what their legitimate (i.e. not AI-generated, as many now are) player reviews say.
The result is that I see very consistent patterns in the behaviour of mobile gaming companies, and very predictable strategies.
Elvenar is attempting to emulate what are generally known as 'base-building' games, combined with elements of so-called 'gacha' games. Short of direct PvP and gambling games, those are the two most profitable genres on mobile. Both are nominally F2P but very expensive if players actually want to get anywhere.
Base-building games rely on slowing progression so dramatically that paying for the [by design] central (and very few, sometimes only one) required Resource(s) ~ which are always awarded randomly in tiny amounts but only via cash purchase in useful amounts ~ becomes necessary in order not to spend literally years achieving only trivial progress.
These games have many other in-game Resources, freely awarded in often huge quantities, but only the intentionally limited central ones will actually matter. In Elvenar, these are now (to nobody's surprise, I'm sure) RRs, CCs, and Spell Fragments.
The artificial hard limits placed on these central Resources means that only high-paying players, or the few who stocked up and/or upgraded all the useful AWs BEFORE the game was so radically altered, will be, and will remain, at the top of the game's strongly promoted ranking tables of various kinds. No amount of strategy or grinding/dedication will be able to beat this system, because the core Resources are hard-limited by the software's design.
New players won't know that they are playing a completely different game from the Top 100 (or however many) older players. New players will try all ways to beat the system, and fail. And then they'll either pay a LOT to try to catch the older players/FSs, or will content themselves with making only trivial progress, or (and here's where reading reviews of base-building games comes in), they will write sad/embittered comments as to how "a few rich players spend 1,000s to own the game Servers/rankings...", while never realising that those 'rich' players actually got where they are by playing an entirely different game which now just LOOKS the same.
Inno/MTG is simply following the latest and most cynical move yet in mobile gaming... the deliberate creation of an envy-driven and permanently divided Haves vs Have-Nots in-game culture; the 'élite' few older players, and the rest who join later, and then strugge forever to catch the uncatchable old-timers who succeeded because they played a completely different game.
My City has suddenly become so much more powerful that it's almost laughable. Everything is greatly multiplied, from Standard Goods incoming (and I already had 90m surplus, and growing), to Units generated, to Combat performance, to Discovered Resources stocks (Mana, Seeds, etc.).
Perhaps I'm meant to be pleased (although I, like many, won't be upgrading AWs any longer at more than a glacial pace, nor Crafting without serious thought, either... and I'm also suspicious about some kind of 'rebalancing' being the next move, to be sure we don't start doingTOO well without coughing up some cash...).
BUT. I didn't EARN this huge overnight improvement to my City, and I can honestly say that I don't WANT to simply be handed near-OP status in return for zero effort on my part. I did nothing to deserve it. I enjoyed strategic play, and carefully trying to improve my City build. Why bother, now?
And more to the point, I VERY MUCH don't want to be one of those old-timers who are, as described above, effectively used by gaming companies to push newbies into spending, because those newbies will think that I did, too ~ then into despairing when the costs are shown to be ridiculously high.
I don't want to be the cause of envy, division, expense, and angst in others, thanks to blatant sleight-of-hand in the game's core design.
No wonder Inno don't want the Forums to remain; new players can read here, in one place, reasoned accounts of what ACTUALLY happened to the game's foundation, rather than just arguing trivial sub-issues on Discord and the other Anti-Social Meeja which Inno ~ for obvious reasons ~ prefers them to use.
I'm honestly not sure what to do, now.
Thanks for reading.
Cheers ~ Laurelin
