• Dear forum visitor,

    It looks as though you have not registered for a forum account, or are not signed in. In order to participate in current discussions or create new threads, you will need to register for a forum account by clicking on the link below.

    Click here to register for a forum account!

    If you already have a forum account, you can simply click on the 'Log in' button at the top right of your forum screen.

    Your Elvenar Team

The Spire is the worst idea you ever had.

  • Thread starter DeletedUser24016
  • Start date

DeletedUser20819

Guest
You don't need spire to get a decent amount of fragments, the spire just has an excessive amount of them. The alternative however is to do a decent amount of tournaments, you can farm up plenty of excess spells every week and disenchant those, their value didn't change ;)

Umm you get 30 spell fragments per spell which means you need about 50 of them per week to be able to craft decently which just isn't happening.

There is no other way for fragments other than tying you to things that may or may not be there for you. I don't have a guild that pushes tournaments hard and am 80k in size. Maybe this system of forcing us to play spire works for people with big cities but a bunch of us don't have big cities or the resources to throw into spire. Lastly, you generally don't get spells in visiting cities anymore, you get materials.

The only way that forcing spell fragments works is with a healthy disenchanting system and it's not healthy anymore. Anything else forces people to "somehow figure out some way" to be able to GET AROUND the spire being greatly unfair.
 

qaccy

Well-Known Member
@Psyberius I think part of the problem you're having may be differences between your expectations and reality regarding how the game is balanced. Many features expand as you grow in the game. A newer or less developed player may not be able to utilize some features as well as an advanced one, but the game is balanced like that intentionally. The tournaments are a great example. As you acquire more provinces, acquire stronger units, and start producing more goods, you're able to unlock more tournament provinces and complete more rounds in them, thus leading to more tournament rewards as well. The Spire's similar, albeit rather less approachable than tournaments are. Newer/smaller players aren't intended to be able to make it very far into the Spire, at least not without using diamonds. But the idea is still that as you grow, you can make it further and get more out of it.

In addition, the crafting system and everything related to it isn't really required for game progression. It doesn't matter too much what it looks like overall since everything from it is (or can be) pretty much bonus stuff that you can acquire over the course of otherwise normal play. That, and its prevalence is significantly affected by what level your Academy is at, as it affects both how quickly you're able to produce Combining Catalysts and the amount of fragments you get from disenchanting.

@Nonchalant Antipathy I generally don't go 'out of my way' for anything, as I spend relatively little time on the forums compared to many of the other active posters. If I happen to see someone being negative for the sake of being negative, I may say something but I don't always; far from being 'consistent' with it as you're claiming. You may think you're 'sticking up for the little guy' here by attempting to call me out, but I suggest you take a look at who I responded to in order to see what kind of self-entitled thinking you're lending your support to. As for me, I don't even attempt to leverage my spending on a free-to-play game. I've been playing Elvenar since it released and Forge of Empires since 2013, spent money on both (far less on Elvenar though), and not once have I included any form of the words 'as a paying customer' in any of my ordinary posts, support tickets, feedback, or even complaints as a way to put myself above anyone else or as a preface to any tut-tutting I might have for Inno. That being said, none of this has anything to do with my post as I was only making a point of reminding this 'pure' player that without spenders, there would be no game for them to be 'pure' in. Doesn't mean the spenders are better or should be treated better, but it is a fact that they're the ones keeping the lights on for everyone else.
 

Mykan

Oh Wise One
@Nonchalant Antipathy to be fair the player using the word pure comes across as though free to play towns are entitled. The reality is it was offensive and a poor word selection. It is also not uncommon for players who spend money on one town to have another town they do not, giving them a variety of perspectives.

I have actually found spire far easier to do on my chapter 4/5 free-to-play towns then on an end game :diamond: town. The formula for costs/squad sizes in spire has not been revealed, so it really is hard to say how it is balanced and what aspects of town design are better than others. In the majority I hear people saying map 1 is ok, map 2 I hear mixed feedback and map 3 I only hear a handful of people say they do it.
 

Enevhar Aldarion

Oh Wise One
@Nonchalant Antipathy to be fair the player using the word pure comes across as though free to play towns are entitled. The reality is it was offensive and a poor word selection. It is also not uncommon for players who spend money on one town to have another town they do not, giving them a variety of perspectives.

Most free-to-play players are perfectly fine. It is those who post in forums, or other places, about being all proud that they have never spent anything at all on a game, and never will, and look down on the players who do, and take advantage of those paying players, whether someone spent $10 or $1000, that get on my nerves. They are probably the same ones who refuse to ever spend money on music or movies or books and pirate everything instead. Those are the entitled free-to-play jackwagons that do not deserve to be allowed to play this, or any other free game.
 

DeletedUser20819

Guest
@Psyberius I think part of the problem you're having may be differences between your expectations and reality regarding how the game is balanced. Many features expand as you grow in the game. A newer or less developed player may not be able to utilize some features as well as an advanced one, but the game is balanced like that intentionally. The tournaments are a great example. As you acquire more provinces, acquire stronger units, and start producing more goods, you're able to unlock more tournament provinces and complete more rounds in them, thus leading to more tournament rewards as well. The Spire's similar, albeit rather less approachable than tournaments are. Newer/smaller players aren't intended to be able to make it very far into the Spire, at least not without using diamonds. But the idea is still that as you grow, you can make it further and get more out of it.

In addition, the crafting system and everything related to it isn't really required for game progression. It doesn't matter too much what it looks like overall since everything from it is (or can be) pretty much bonus stuff that you can acquire over the course of otherwise normal play. That, and its prevalence is significantly affected by what level your Academy is at, as it affects both how quickly you're able to produce Combining Catalysts and the amount of fragments you get from disenchanting.

And you just broke your own reply. I have to play Tournament a lot just so I can somehow get a bunch of pitsy enchantments to make pity amounts of spell fragments? Newer and smaller players aren't allowed to make spells unlike before spire? They could craft things then just fine to be honest.

I have to be FORCED to use diamonds to use an awful part of the game, 95% of the players hate because I'm not swimming in resources and army?

So the more I grow in order to access this forced change to the game I have to BARF my crafted things/forces into a system that annihilates someone's inventory. Just so I can get spell fragments.

Can someone less brainwashed on the company line please explain to me that an awful part of the game most of my F/S doesn't play because its frustration/not fun is REQUIRED to be played? Spire is pretty much generally accepted as pretty awful. BUT like usual, it's not like the company monitors these forums, gives a crap if any of us actually enjoy the hardship they've put on us with a thoroughly unenjoyable part of the game. I've seen FIFTY of these threads and yet you still get crap fragments from everything and we're still forced to play something that is painful.
 

Enevhar Aldarion

Oh Wise One
Can someone less brainwashed on the company line please explain to me that an awful part of the game most of my F/S doesn't play because its frustration/not fun is REQUIRED to be played? Spire is pretty much generally accepted as pretty awful. BUT like usual, it's not like the company monitors these forums, gives a crap if any of us actually enjoy the hardship they've put on us with a thoroughly unenjoyable part of the game. I've seen FIFTY of these threads and yet you still get crap fragments from everything and we're still forced to play something that is painful.

So, did you read the new update thread yet where it talks about the adjustments coming to the Spire for the multiplayer, Fellowship team-up rewards being added to the Spire? If you hate it now, you may hate it even more when that goes live.
 

DeletedUser20819

Guest
There's an old saying...if it ain't broke, don't fix it. They really screwed up with The Spire because it has broken the spell fragment system and made it so tons of people can't craft things that they NEED to be able to do certain things.

The system before might not have been perfect but it was simple and it worked. Now with Spire, the system is far from perfect, it's annoying and it puts a cost of "being strong either in f/s or personally" on getting usable amounts of Spell Fragments.

I realize games go through periods where they THINK they're doing us favours when they're not but they truly didn't do a bunch of us any favours by FORCING people to throw themselves on their swords and drain their manufactured goods in an attempt to get Spell Fragments that ALREADY had a sufficiently hard system to force people to work hard to get Spell Frags in the first place.

I've tried every single Spire I could and have made it to the other end of the first floor...two times? Three? Then I was presented with the idiotic "guess what thing each person wants to rape out of your character" option that doesn't take into consideration that tournament and growing your city already rape players hard enough.

Right now it appears to me that this game isn't scaling right anymore. They have a lot of older players of years and now they're making systems to work on those higher people that are DECIMATING lower players. I literally cannot play Spire unless lined up battles are there...meaning they line up with a particular fighter with having their two strong points. If they add a third, offsuit attacker, I can't even beat Spire spot two without eviscerating my army.
 

Pheryll

Set Designer
Umm you get 30 spell fragments per spell which means you need about 50 of them per week to be able to craft decently which just isn't happening.

I assume "craft decently" means to craft enough to fulfill event requirements, and events are requiring more vision vapor due to more people crafting due to extra spell shards and combining catalysts from the spire. If this is the case then your complaint is that events are setting their difficulty based on competitive players and not the population in general.

If events are not the factor that such a large amount of crafting is needed, I wonder what you are crafting that is so expensive. Military structures, festival merchants, rainbow cage and unicorn, lava codex, time boosts, supply instants, enchantments?
 

qaccy

Well-Known Member
@Psyberius You basically completely ignored the central point of my post. That being: As you grow, you'll be able to participate more in features that are intended to be available to EVERYONE, including advanced players. If the Spire (or tournaments, for that matter) was something that a brand new player could clear with their limited resources, how does that then get balanced for someone who has 15 different military units, 18 different goods and 3 special resources, along with a whole selection of AWs? The answer is that it gets balanced the way it currently is: You can't get very far in the beginning, but as you get 'stronger' you can go further.

Also, before you try pushing the point that Inno 'broke' crafting just to 'force'' people into the Spire, I should point out that when they reduced the amount of spell essences obtained from disenchanting, they also reduced the cost of a lot of crafting recipes and removed several that were basically just filler. Or are you going to overlook those parts because they don't support your negativity? It really sounds like you just want to be mad.

As a final point, I'm going to re-iterate that crafting is optional. Crafting is not required for research nor for advancing your city. Crafting is used for obtaining optional/extra things that can help you out, but it's never necessary.
 

Deborah M

Oh Wise One
Awe ;) Don't feel bad if you can't get very far in the Spire! I'm in Chapter 15 with over 1M Ranking points and every AW. I still can't figure out how to get very far at all in the Spire :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes: I've even tried cutting my tournament down to FS minimum a couple of times and still it is a fail :eek: But of course it left me with no troops :mad:
 

DeletedUser20951

Guest
I absolutely loathe that Spire difficulty is based, apparently a lot, on how many Wonders you have and how leveled they are. I feel that if you devote your game and time to this, the leveling, it should be a benefit, not a punishment. I have a very difficult time in the Spire, and this is likely due to the Wonders I've built and upgraded, along with relics I've gained through hard tournie work (THIS SHOULD AFFECT NOTHING. STOP SLAPPING OUR HANDS FOR PLAYING THE GAME DILIGENTLY, INNOGAMES).
 

samidodamage

Buddy Fan Club member
IS IT?!?!?!?! :eek::oops::eek::mad::eek:
I don't know about the 'apparently a lot' part, but I believe # of AW lvls is one of the multipliers in the formula for squad sizes. The response from Inno was that AW lvls were a small part of the squad size calculation. I've been doing some tracking of squad sizes over a couple weeks now; haven't started comparing the data yet, but should at some point have enough info to decide if the impact is a lot or a little. <<Which will be the extent of my evaluation of the numbers, lol! I'm not taking the time to do an in depth numbers thingy to determine the exact impact, lol! Anyone who likes doing that stuff and wants access to the raw data is welcome to it:D
 

qaccy

Well-Known Member
Yeah, AW levels do indeed factor into squad size within the Spire. Something like a military AW will still give you a benefit that outweighs the squad size increase, but other AWs provide little to no benefit in the Spire yet they still have the 'penalty'. Of course these are just numbers in an equation like calculating seed production for the trader, so it makes sense in that regard that all AWs would be treated equally. It does lead to players who don't invest in military bonuses having huge squad sizes in the already fairly unfavorable battle conditions though. At least by levelling military AWs I can get stronger troops to keep losses to a minimum as squad sizes continue to grow.
 

DeletedUser20819

Guest
Really? You think that we just need to "catch up" to somehow not be so destroyed/annoyed by spire every time it comes? HOW, Sherlock? YOU guys all got your Supply and Coin windfalls and crafted boosts of population/culture! YOU guys got all sorts of special buildings that came up a 3rd and 10th and 20th time so you could finally craft them and add them to your city. The Chess Set? It's a JOKE to even possibly CONSIDER adding it to your city unless you're a hell of a lot stronger than I am at 80k and trust me, I am one hell of a crafty chick which it comes to saving and planning and using my resources to the maximum. IF I'm wasting their absolute potential by even 5% including logging in 4, sometimes 5 times a day for a 3hr refil on my goods...I would be STUNNED.

I'm sure Spire sounds FANTASTIC to people who can trade 100k of goods at will but there are a bunch of us who are not and WILL NOT be making that any time soon because they've effectively DISCONNECTED a gigantic boost...the crafting system...from our games. Oh, we get bits here and there but it sure as hell isn't much.

I frigging hate it when games get like this. The top players completely lose touch with what it was like as a new player, the game makers adjust a system that obviously the high-level players were somehow abusing the FRIG out of OR they decided they needed to shake things up with a small bit of code...BUT nobody views how much it screws new/newer players by tossing an important part of the game out the window. Can *I* craft a 33% coin or supplies rains at 750 spell shards with the 1500-2000 spell shards I can make per Spire without eviscerating my character/making it impossible to do my F/S's Tournament every week? But wait, it gets BETTER! I'd be trying to finish the first set of quests as part of this event if I hadn't squirrelled away 80 of every Enchantment. Damn good thing too because I sure as hell could never craft them. Timeskips and buildings are just a joke now. And oh yes, it's now asking me for 20 vision vapour, WHAT vision vapour? The ones I can't afford because even though I save every last frigging thing in this game, I can't blow 2500 Shards I don't have because the game doesn't provide it to me? Oh wait, or is it supposed to be a diamond/cash dump game now? Trust me when I say I'm not spending 1 hot dollar bill on this hot mess game now. I was buying things before but screw that. At this rate, I won't be playing this game in three weeks if things don't somehow get better.

Right so 20 Vision Vapour is now asked for after...was it 18 and 15 and 12 and 10 and 8? So, yesterday I looked at the event, sighed, today, I'm looking at the event, sighing, tomorrow I'll be looking at the event and sighing because the game literally can't provide me what I need(It did for you guys now cruising in your 150-400k toons though! Was juuuust fine for you guys)...You need to look at this from OUR position maybe? I add the Spire Joke/this Event together and I don't see balancing, I see a line. I see people who are above it who can weather it/throw themselves at the crafting system/throw their crafted enchantments into the event. Then there are people who are below the line. They're not being fairly represented by this game now because I know most don't have the things I've saved and are throwing middle fingers at both the crafting/"Christmas" event because they quite literally CAN'T play. All this does is increase the distance between older players and newer ones. Trust me when I say that a two plus year old game doesn't need to slow me down. It's already hard enough to catch the higher levels.

I think you get the point. The game, that was nicely balanced BEFORE Spire is no longer balanced for a bunch of us. This event? Don't even get me started on having to barf supplies into the game 5 times out of 8 quests. It just keeps coming and coming and coming. Without timeskips from TWO previous events of 14/8hr (remember I told you I was a resourceful little squirrel?), I'd be DEAD in this event LONG before now. Didn't really matter because I'm dead now no matter HOW HARD I work.

So I guess events are a high-level player deal too on top of crafting now?
 

NightshadeCS

Well-Known Member
I think it is definite that high-ranking players can lose touch; however, it is not a certainty. Many of us who have cities in the last few chapters start a new city in another world and get to experience that newbie-ness all over again. We have some experience to keep us from making blind blunders, but we get to experience the game again under the new standard.

Participating in the tournies and events should make it easier to get spell fragments, not harder. The enchantments from the tourney can be disenchanted, the relics used for crafting. Event buildings that are won can also be broken down. Granted, this event is NOT useful for obtaining multiples of the daily prize and ensuring that you had a few spare to break into fragments, but other events should be better than this (fingers crossed).

The Spire is difficult, no question. Events, also, become more difficult as you go along in the quests. But they are not meant to be "completed" (impossible, since there are endless quests). You are meant to go as far as you can based on your level and play style. Same for the Spire. Higher-level players needed something to challenge them, and the Spire was born. Since they are still working on the mechanics of it, adding a fellowship co-op element, I think we can safely exercise a little patience and see how things develop and whether or not they improve. I would not, though, expect it to become a cake-walk for younger cities. I feel fairly safe in positing that is not its intention.
 
Top