12 Things You Can Do to Avoid Game Burn-out

[BrinDarby]

well @ajqtrz ,
Infinite redundancy ( mindless clicking ) can/does
contribute/lead to, Burnout. Thats why I removed the
good/bad part, and just wanted to define "maint",
because like NH, its nothing more than a bunch of clicks.

If someone sets up thier city, for 1 collection/day, then
I say all of those clicks are "maint" , once a day. NH sure
seems to classify that way too, in my book.

While Tourn/Spire seem to classify as "playable", events
not so much... because 1/2 seem to be "open a chest" a
bunch of times, and all require selective manufacturing
among other things, that to me are still maint items.....

Building a city can be accomplished solely by completing
provinces and using free KP. Maint at that point is just
making troops/resources to complete provinces/research.
As this is a citybuilder game, is everything else a mini game ?

 

[senate7]

I'm thinking about starting a "Freaky Fridays" event ... where I throw out a poem line, a song line, etc, and the person who adds the next line of it wins a rune in a random wonder (probably one of their lesser ones, but what the heck). It can go all day with multiple winners, each adding the next line. I'd probably have to make a limit of 2 or 3 per person, in order to have enough runes, but it might be fun. Heck, I have more runes than I'll ever use, especially in certain wonders, so at least I'd have something to do with my Enar's and Tome and stuff. Whatcha think?

we had someone in our FS that used to tell us a 'Dad' joke every other morning or so. They were stupid and corny but it did brighten my day. I know a lot of the others thought so too because there would be funny comments or groans from the audience, sometimes a 'wah-wah' : )

 

[getmomo]

Why are active topics being moved into the archives? Why are there even archives? It was much better without the archives. I really don't see the point of them but if we are stuck with them please stop moving active threads into the archives. What is the point of a 2023 archive? There shouldn't be one until 2024.

 

[Dreamyn2]

Should we just start new threads in the archives ? Save them the trouble?

 

[crackie]

Why are active topics being moved into the archives? Why are there even archives? It was much better without the archives. I really don't see the point of them but if we are stuck with them please stop moving active threads into the archives. What is the point of a 2023 archive? There shouldn't be one until 2024.

You don’t enjoy scrolling through 4 needless subforums at the top every time? It’s a great browsing experience, esp on mobile. They only take up 70% of your screen for no reason. I’ve always wanted to read content by year. No event ever carried over from the end of one year into the next. They know to keep themselves neatly categorized by year.

 

[Deleted User - 849777001]

12 Things To Avoid Game Burnout​

After a few years here you may finally feel you are getting a bit bored. Here are a few suggestions on how to avoid burn-out. They, essentially make the game a different game in some degree or other, and that’s what it’s all about – new challenges and new horizons.

1) Stop battling. If you have been fighting your way to the top of the Spire and Tournament and it’s old hat, try doing the Spire, the Tournament, or both with just catering/negotiating. Probably have to do some rebuilding of your city and experience some dropping in rankings, but think about how it will be when you get back to the top with that different of a city and a different method of having climbed that high?

2) Take the lead. Start a new fellowship, recruit small to medium players only, and slowly climb the rankings. You could, of course just bypass the whole thing and get some of those big, strong, buddies you know to join you, but what’s the fun in that? Try raising a really small fellowship from number 200 to number 1! That’s a challenge.

3) Small is beautiful. Set small goals. Like having 90 million goods on hand. For a big city this may be nothing, but it doesn’t have to be 90 million, it could be 900 million. The point is, have multiple small goals you are working on. Like having 2 million Spell Fragments or 1 million of every sentient good (my personal goal). Whatever small goals you have give you a set of reachable targets and, as you know, achieving anything tends to make you enjoy yourself more.

4) Make friends and influence enemies. Join the forum and share all that game knowledge you’ve accumulated. You may even be able to persuade others their approach isn’t the best. It’s a tough thing to do but a worthy goal for you, the “Master of the Game.”

5) Reset and Restart. Okay, at the end of the last chapter, now what? If you did things perfectly with your end of game city, pay no attention to this suggestion. But if you did make a few mistakes, well, here’s an opportunity to try again. This time doing everything perfectly, right?

6) Time is of the Essence. Set a time frame for achieving things. Like you will finish this chapter in 102 days! Or 365, or 10 or whatever. Pressuring yourself may seem to be counter-intuitive, but since it’s you who are putting the pressure on, it tends to motivate you more than hurt. So be a Speedy Delivery guy and take off.

7) It’s a Group Thing. If you’ve mastered herding the cats in your fellowship, why not try herding a bunch of fellowships? Like the Star Fleet group. On all worlds and doing fairly well. They may not do it perfectly but they do it. Maybe you could do it better? Star Wars, anyone?

8) Join the Talkies. Get a Gabber Group together and start a fellowship with the game as only the background thing. Like playing a card game with friends...who cares who wins the game you aren’t there for that. It’s the fellowship in the fellowship.

9) The Master of One. Pick one thing you think you are better at than anyone, or can become better at than anyone, and go against the best. Top the Tournament every week for a year….without a lot of extra things others don’t have, like more than one Fire Phoenix. In other words, level the playing field and then try to be the Master of One.

10)) Make it Beautiful Set your city up like a park. Make it color coordinated, make it look like Paris, London, or Goshen (in Oregon if it still exisits I mean Goshen still existing, not the state of Oregon, which may or may not have been torn down).

11) Take a break. Yep, better to take a break before total burn-out then push yourself until you hate the name of the game. When you come back reread this list and pick one.

12) Add to this list. Just my way of suggesting this isn’t exhaustive and I’m sure others have great ideas. Let’s make it 100 things to do to combat burnout.

Hope this helps.

AJ

There really is a way to stay positive!
I'm having to get injection in my Right eye (for detached retina) and my greatest joy is just to be able to SEE the game without the big red cloud!
I am focusing (no pun intended) on choosing the "best" AW to support my city...not just placing those recommended. It makes me happy to actually "experience their power".

 

[hvariidh gwendrot]

city builder game, so play for your city then as it can, add in tournaments and spire, most of the ones i have seen burnout focus on doing tournament and spire and either don't develop the cities (leave it small) or build just to do tournaments and spire and not to enjoy developing the city for the fun of it, all broadstrokes and always exceptions .. speaking from experience i advise serious thought to the adding new fellowships as that just means more recruiting and retention efforts which is probably the least fun thing in the game, because no matter how good you are at it, it won't ever end, i wont burn out on this game at all, but that's the only part of the game i take a beak from now and then

 

[ajqtrz]

@hvariidh gwendrot You are certainly right about recruiting. It's tough, and seems to have gotten even hard after the Great Migration a couple years ago when they moved everyone. The reason, I suspect, is that before, if you didn't have an active fellowships and were in a bad area of the map, you had to move to an active one. Now, with many (but not all, certainly) in better areas, they can rely on their neighbors for trades as much as on their fellowship. And since cross tier and other types of trades have become more acceptable (though certainly not in all corners of the globe) that "good map" is paying dividends. I hear far fewer complaints about trades than I remember hearing then. And thus, to every change come unexpected downsides.

A new way to recruit though, is to do it as a group of fellowships. You have something like The Consortium (8 fellowships -- now 18 10/10/2023) and you recruit based upon the idea that if they don't fit your fellowship you can probably find a home for them in one of your group. And if so, then they become both a member of that fellowship and The Consortium (in this case) and if they want to move for whatever reason -- maybe their time commitment goes up or down -- they have a place to go. Then you have one good recruiter who can offer more and do more with more success. It still takes a massive effort but not nearly as much as finding one needle in the haystack.

This is less than the model used by Starfleet as it only focuses on retention and recruiting, but more than what most fellowships have in place.

AJ

 

[MagicPagan]

The issue I have with the game becoming a burnout is the fact that there is no break between events and FA's. It is more like work having to stay right at it all the time...

Where is the "love" button for this?

 

[Tuschunreal]

12 Things To Avoid Game Burnout​

After a few years here you may finally feel you are getting a bit bored. Here are a few suggestions on how to avoid burn-out. They, essentially make the game a different game in some degree or other, and that’s what it’s all about – new challenges and new horizons.

1) Stop battling. If you have been fighting your way to the top of the Spire and Tournament and it’s old hat, try doing the Spire, the Tournament, or both with just catering/negotiating. Probably have to do some rebuilding of your city and experience some dropping in rankings, but think about how it will be when you get back to the top with that different of a city and a different method of having climbed that high?

2) Take the lead. Start a new fellowship, recruit small to medium players only, and slowly climb the rankings. You could, of course just bypass the whole thing and get some of those big, strong, buddies you know to join you, but what’s the fun in that? Try raising a really small fellowship from number 200 to number 1! That’s a challenge.

3) Small is beautiful. Set small goals. Like having 90 million goods on hand. For a big city this may be nothing, but it doesn’t have to be 90 million, it could be 900 million. The point is, have multiple small goals you are working on. Like having 2 million Spell Fragments or 1 million of every sentient good (my personal goal). Whatever small goals you have give you a set of reachable targets and, as you know, achieving anything tends to make you enjoy yourself more.

4) Make friends and influence enemies. Join the forum and share all that game knowledge you’ve accumulated. You may even be able to persuade others their approach isn’t the best. It’s a tough thing to do but a worthy goal for you, the “Master of the Game.”

5) Reset and Restart. Okay, at the end of the last chapter, now what? If you did things perfectly with your end of game city, pay no attention to this suggestion. But if you did make a few mistakes, well, here’s an opportunity to try again. This time doing everything perfectly, right?

6) Time is of the Essence. Set a time frame for achieving things. Like you will finish this chapter in 102 days! Or 365, or 10 or whatever. Pressuring yourself may seem to be counter-intuitive, but since it’s you who are putting the pressure on, it tends to motivate you more than hurt. So be a Speedy Delivery guy and take off.

7) It’s a Group Thing. If you’ve mastered herding the cats in your fellowship, why not try herding a bunch of fellowships? Like the Star Fleet group. On all worlds and doing fairly well. They may not do it perfectly but they do it. Maybe you could do it better? Star Wars, anyone?

8) Join the Talkies. Get a Gabber Group together and start a fellowship with the game as only the background thing. Like playing a card game with friends...who cares who wins the game you aren’t there for that. It’s the fellowship in the fellowship.

9) The Master of One. Pick one thing you think you are better at than anyone, or can become better at than anyone, and go against the best. Top the Tournament every week for a year….without a lot of extra things others don’t have, like more than one Fire Phoenix. In other words, level the playing field and then try to be the Master of One.

10)) Make it Beautiful Set your city up like a park. Make it color coordinated, make it look like Paris, London, or Goshen (in Oregon if it still exisits I mean Goshen still existing, not the state of Oregon, which may or may not have been torn down).

11) Take a break. Yep, better to take a break before total burn-out then push yourself until you hate the name of the game. When you come back reread this list and pick one.

12) Add to this list. Just my way of suggesting this isn’t exhaustive and I’m sure others have great ideas. Let’s make it 100 things to do to combat burnout.

Hope this helps.

AJ

i found this thread shortly after I joined forum and loved it then. I recently started a new FS on Harandar to see if "small cities" that stop at chapter 5 can be successful gold spire/10 chest tourney FS. It is bringing a different aspect to the game. Trying to finish quests at same time trying to optimize city layout and trying to keep my city small. Just getting to chapter 4 so the biggest challenge is fighting the urge to expand and just add buildings without the goal in mind. ANyone want to join me come aboard..."Small but Powerful" in Harandar

 

[XLWizard]

I would wait the week out offline if Rush was the band of the week. lol

"and the meek shall inherit the earth."

 

[ajqtrz]

@Tuschunreal Thanks for the kind words. I've always tried to give advice on how to have fun without the drama.

 

[Dhurrin]

It is a game, so it needs to be fun. When it starts to be a chore, it's not a game anymore.

One way to deal with / prevent burn-out is to just scale down; let someone else take the lead for a bit. Instead of doing 8.000 or 10.000 points in the tourney every week, do half that. Or even less, just lean back and relax a bit.

Spread it around; find a smaller FS. You don't have to take over, but with a large city and a lot of experience, doing 3.000 points weekly is easy. However, for a small FS that extra 3.000 points might make a huge difference. The amount of goods you produce will far outstrip theirs, so give them a boost (say an extra bunch of goods for the top-5 scoring players each week) until they reach the 10 chests weekly (or bi-weekly). This will help attract other good players to their FS. Once that is done and they can hold their own, move to another FS and do it again.

Themes. Start a new city. Can you get it going without doing any events?
Or maybe after a few events without any residences? (or maybe 4, just for the questline stories)
Or without workshops, apart from 10 lvl 1 workshops for quests?
Or without T2 and T3 factories?
Or based on a specific theme.
Can you place 1 of regular cultural building from the building-menu in your city?

 

[ajqtrz]

I run my city with no workshops but the 10 level 1's for quests. Been there for about 2 years and it works fine. I even have to dump to the wholesaler about 4 times a day. I'm trying to get to "no residences," but that's proving a lot harder. I have 8 magic ones and can get down to 6 if I have the EE spells, but lower that than in chapter 20 seems to be impossible. And that's just part of my fun.

AJ

 

[Pheryll]

I run my city with no workshops but the 10 level 1's for quests. Been there for about 2 years and it works fine. I even have to dump to the wholesaler about 4 times a day. I'm trying to get to "no residences," but that's proving a lot harder. I have 8 magic ones and can get down to 6 if I have the EE spells, but lower that than in chapter 20 seems to be impossible. And that's just part of my fun.

AJ

Chapter 21 might reorient you a bit. You will probably need the prosperity (if nothing else) that the leveled workshops provide.

 

[ajqtrz]

Chapter 21 might reorient you a bit. You will probably need the prosperity (if nothing else) that the leveled workshops provide.

Thanks for the warning. I'm in chapter 20 now. Fortunately, I saved some of those big workshops so I won't have to rebuild some of them. How many you think I'll need?

AJ

 

[Pheryll]

To place the Vallorian dragon tower you will need 600 prosperity. At that point the only thing you can rely upon is your main hall (300), barracks (180), chapter 21 magic residences (54 each) and workshops (58 for regular 120 for magical each).

The prosperity needed for all upgraded settlement buildings the quests will later require is 995. While these buildings are capable of producing faster than you can typically feed them, it is useful to keep them all there due to the production bonus they give by consuming prosperity.

Note that once prosperity is consumed, you can get rid of the prosperity producers and have the buildings still function (in a similar way to going into the negatives in population or culture), you will have to return to the positives to place or upgrade more settlement buildings.

 

[Dhurrin]

Thanks for the warning. I'm in chapter 20 now. Fortunately, I saved some of those big workshops so I won't have to rebuild some of them. How many you think I'll need?

AJ

Not that many. I have been running my main city on 2 magical workshops and a maxed PT for quite a while now and had no issues with supplies at all going through chap 21. And that city battles 95%, so it goes through a lot of troops.
So if you have managed to get to chap 20 without workshops I doubt that will change during chap 21.
In chap 21 mana is the great bottleneck
But you may need to place some for the 'prosperity' they generate, which will be a new feature from then on.

 

[ajqtrz]

Thanks for the info, @Dhurrin I do wish this forum would continue. It's so much easier to use than Discord...and it seems you get better discussions here.

AJ