Valtitude
Active Member
I'm replying in mid-November 2020. My experience in a different type of software development, says you are absolutely correct about what you see happening in Inno's corporate development structure. Who wins? Hmm, let's see ...I work in user experience field and maybe my pessimism comes from being so deep in the workings of product experience, but this change is extremely counter motivating to play Elvenar any further. Before anyone says 'we need to test and see for ourselves' or 'benefits outweigh costs'; I have already followed that in beta and MinMax's formula is 100% accurate. My thoughts on this are not based on personal opinion, but rather on numerical objective facts.
Let me explain why I feel so, there are two aspects of Elvenar;
1. Build and progress your city. Without this aspect there is no more reason to log in anymore or play any further.
2. Put the outcome of your effort to test and get gratification for the time and thought you put in it.
Without the second aspect of testing, choices and planning done for the first aspect become pointless. That reward system that tells you how well you did is what pushes you towards wanting more out of your city.
Let's look at the things that fall under first category, Build and Progress aspect; Research, Expansions, Building and leveling AWs, upgrading buildings, improving layout, optimazing number of building types (culture/residence/WS/resource buildings).
Inno's business model relies on people wanting more out of their cities or wanting it faster. Collector's drive is particularly a big push for wanting more AWs and keeping event buildings and therefore needing more space, as well as hoarder's drive for people wanting more resource buildings hence needing more space for them (and the residence/WS need they create). Even when I know I am being tricked into their business model I didn't have a problem with paying money for what I want, that extra space that will satisfy my drive of wanting more.
And that drive was gratified by the way Inno set up how I can put my effort and (time and money) investment to test: Spire and Tournaments. I enjoyed doing better than before once I invested a bit more into planning as well as time/money.
Now it is a clear fact, (not an opinion but rather a mathematical calculation reality) there are two high optimum points in terms of how well your city can perform in the test part. One is as early as Orc chapter, other is mid-15 chapter. If you do the optimized Orc chapter build, you can stop there and your progress will only make your success in spire and tourney worse till you hit that next optimum point at chap 15. And beyond that there is no rewards, just downsides to any change you do in terms of build and progress.
I do not like the idea of stop progressing at such an early chapter at Orcs, and intend to keep pushing to 15. But knowing that at point I will have to stop makes me really unmotivated to progress faster. Knowing that there is nothing more I will want out of my city at that point, combined with having no reason to want it faster; makes me disengaged. What baffles my mind is that it is 100% againt Inno's business model interests as well!
My thought is that they assumed players would never know about these facts, but we DO know thanks to efforts of many. One would think that since this is the case now, Inno as a business would improve things. But sadly I am involved in how things work enough to know that; Inno upper management decided that this game has enough content and it should cease development costs for more content; then some middle manager was tasked with reducing player progression speed; and some developer was tasked by that middle manager to accomplish that. At this point admitting their work is poor quality will make that developer and the middle manager look bad, so they will pressure community manager to keep people happy, and paid community manager will pressure unpaid volunteer moderators to achieve that. Those moderators who one day want a paid community manager role will try to do so. And this will be the end of the story. A sad end to a beautiful game..
Customer satisfaction is a thing of the past in too many places. It needs to be revived and regenerated.
Thank you for putting this into words.
I love the game of Elvenar, but dislike the heavy shift to content - too many events and freaking FAs.
Tournaments are working very well for me with the changes, but building troops - not so much.
Have to admit, I'm still not clear about AWs ... are AWs worth filling with KPs or just AWs for military and culture, which I have done already? Forget the rest.