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    Your Elvenar Team

Chapter after Halflings?

DeletedUser1390

Guest
ekarat said:
I'm trying to understand why people would have an issue with there being more grid spaces for expansions than total expansions you can get.

I see that as a good thing, since it gives me some freedom to shape my city how I want.
Click to expand...
I think this is apples and oranges. Of course when you're growing your city it's nice to have the choice of directions in which to expand, we all have that in any case. And in any case your options become fewer as you reach the edges of the grid. But when you reach the limit of available expansions, the fact that there are more on the grid does not give you more freedom.

However Mykan's and Ashrem's point about placating the premium players does seem reasonable to me, I can accept - if not adore - that argument.
 
ekarat

ekarat

Well-Known Member
Elven Ivory said:
I think this is apples and oranges. Of course when you're growing your city it's nice to have the choice of directions in which to expand, we all have that in any case. And in any case your options become fewer as you reach the edges of the grid. But when you reach the limit of available expansions, the fact that there are more on the grid does not give you more freedom.

However Mykan's and Ashrem's point about placating the premium players does seem reasonable to me, I can accept - if not adore - that argument.
Click to expand...

I will try to understand your point of view if you try to understand mine:

I want the grid to be as large as possible so that I don't reach the edge and don't have to feel constrained by it. (In particular, I don't want to run out of vertical space and be forced to expand horizontally when I don't need more space along that axis.) By necessity, this means there would be many grid squares that will never be filled because as we get closer to filling them, more grid squares will be created. I believe that even a premium player should never be able to fill the grid.

This conflicts the the opposite desire of wanting to fill the grid -- of not expanding the grid until the number of expansions exceeds the number of grid spaces. Why would someone want that? A sense of completion, maybe? I really don't understand.
 
Ashrem

Ashrem

Oh Wise One
I think the largest factor is investment vs return. Players who don't have the newest hardware are already experiencing problems when visiting large cities. some of us are having to clear our cache several times a day to avoid having large cities rendered as a single lump of mixed buildings to which help can't be delivered, even on lower graphics settings. Increasing that load for them is going to drive some small percentage away, while increasing irritation in another group.

it also means more programming time. I don't know how many active players are bumping up against the city limits, but I'm guessing it isn't 5%. that means devoting programming resources to a larger map must be weighed against whether it will generate more income than providing something that more than 50% of players can use.

The complexity of the ornate graphics also affects the bandwidth demands of the game, which pushes up hosting costs for Inno. When you are spending thousands of dollars a day on bandwidth, adding as little as 1% or 2% more is large chunk of money. Another cost that has to be balanced against whether it will generate comparable revenue when it only positively affects a small chunk of the player base.
 
Mykan

Mykan

Oh Wise One
Elven Ivory said:
But when you reach the limit of available expansions, the fact that there are more on the grid does not give you more freedom.
Click to expand...

What I understood that ekrat was saying was that by having a possible space that is larger than the maximum expansions allows a player the freedom to have whatever shape city suits them. This way we aren't all forced into identical size and shape cities, if a person wants a rectangle, square, doughnut, triangle, whatever then this is only possible is the grid size for expansions is larger than the maximum expansions a person can gain. The alternate which is very common in this style game is we all end up with the same size and shape as the possible grid and maximum expansions are normally the same.

Perhaps only a free to play player gets this freedom :rolleyes:
 

DeletedUser5800

Guest
I vote they not only don't add any but remove the front row! :p
upload_2018-1-26_12-34-50.png
 
ekarat

ekarat

Well-Known Member
Mykan said:
What I understood that ekrat was saying was that by having a possible space that is larger than the maximum expansions allows a player the freedom to have whatever shape city suits them. This way we aren't all forced into identical size and shape cities, if a person wants a rectangle, square, doughnut, triangle, whatever then this is only possible is the grid size for expansions is larger than the maximum expansions a person can gain. The alternate which is very common in this style game is we all end up with the same size and shape as the possible grid and maximum expansions are normally the same.

Perhaps only a free to play player gets this freedom :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Thank you. That is, in fact, what I meant. Thank you for phrasing it more elegantly than I can.
 

DeletedUser3507

Guest
I have had maxed city size for 5 months, it's no fun when you can't expand your city.

Screenshot_15.png

Yes @SoggyShorts I have got better on spoilers
 
Last edited by a moderator:
SoggyShorts

SoggyShorts

Mathematician par Excellence
jps54 said:
I have had maxed city size for 5 months, it's no fun when you can't expand your city.
Click to expand...
You seem to have fallen into what I call the "premium trap" in FTP games.
The trap has 3 parts:
1. You move through the game much faster than average, so you run out of content, and are stuck waiting for an update.
2. You can reach a point where there are no real challenges left because the game needs to be balanced somewhere between free and premium players.
3. Since so much of your city is filled with premium buildings, you can't make a lot of changes without feeling like you are losing money.
For example you have 7 of each tier factory, and supporting them is a bunch of magic residences and magic workshops.
If you wanted to adapt to the limited space by removing unnecessary factories to make room for guest races/events, you would end up with a massive overflow of population and supplies, so what then? Delete unneeded Magic buildings that you paid for? Yuck.
 

DeletedUser3507

Guest
SoggyShorts said:
If you wanted to adapt to the limited space by removing unnecessary factories to make room for guest races/events, you would end up with a massive overflow of population and supplies, so what then? Delete unneeded Magic buildings that you paid for? Yuck.
Click to expand...

Exactly
 

DeletedUser5800

Guest
SoggyShorts said:
Delete unneeded Magic buildings that you paid for? Yuck.
Click to expand...
Enter: Why I would never buy premium buildings. I actually did get a Snail Palace waaay back and it pisses me off everyday but I'm not selling it... I can't imagine having half a city like that. I also can't wrap my head around spending on the scout as you just hit the cap and wonder what you did that for... Maybe rushing productions if you aren't here excessively but I've never had that problem. The only thing I ever felt was worth the price were expansions and that went out the window when they broke $20 a piece.

Really all of these type of games are playing a money or time metric. The only reason to spend is to buy time you weren't here and if you are here all the time there isn't much motivation to spend. A well balanced game should have the pace set by the people that play it like a job and everyone else should have to use some of what they made at their job to keep up with them. LOL
I've never figured out the people that are here to much and spend to much. :confused:
 

DeletedUser1390

Guest
ekarat said:
I will try to understand your point of view if you try to understand mine:

I want the grid to be as large as possible so that I don't reach the edge and don't have to feel constrained by it. (In particular, I don't want to run out of vertical space and be forced to expand horizontally when I don't need more space along that axis.) By necessity, this means there would be many grid squares that will never be filled because as we get closer to filling them, more grid squares will be created. I believe that even a premium player should never be able to fill the grid.

This conflicts the the opposite desire of wanting to fill the grid -- of not expanding the grid until the number of expansions exceeds the number of grid spaces. Why would someone want that? A sense of completion, maybe? I really don't understand.
Click to expand...
Thanks for explaining further, I think I do understand better what you're saying. And we're indeed talking about different things: what you're saying is you'd love to have the freedom to expand your city indefinitely in whatever direction, meaning that they keep adding more grid squares indefinitely. I think most would be delighted with that in the abstract, I certainly would. The problem, according to the developers, is one of graphic rendering, like what Ashrem said. I heard the lead developer say the grid we have now is basically the max they plan to go, because beyond that the graphics become unmanageable on most machines. I'm certainly not qualified to evaluate that claim, but that's what they say.

So I don't think anyone is saying they are dying to have every grid plot on the map as such. What we're saying is, given that the size of the grid is fixed, we would prefer to be able to use the available plots rather than not be able to expand further. Yes, that means that everyone tends eventually toward the same shape city, which is the shape of the grid, assuming they keep growing - that is inevitable. But of course no one is obliged to keep expanding either, anyone is free to keep their doughnut city and work with it as it is! (Though I don't think even anyone in Legion of Doughnuts has a literally doughnut-shaped city - will research further.);)

I would add though that this is not at this point purely a problem of premium players; I and others who have bought few to no expansions have reached the hard cap the game has set (at 467 provinces).
 

DeletedUser5800

Guest
Elven Ivory said:
because beyond that the graphics become unmanageable on most machines. I'm certainly not qualified to evaluate that claim, but that's what they say.
Click to expand...
I've had to keep the graphics on low since orcs to not get lags and freezes on a yr old mid grade hp and if I try to visit anyone at woodelves+ with the graphics on high it just kicks me out of the game and reloads so I would say it's probably a valid claim. If they want to add rows they need to add a graphics setting lower than low. LOL
 
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