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    Your Elvenar Team

A possible inducement for players to do more helps

Ashrem

Oh Wise One
Very new players who are not in a fellowship cannot return neighborly help 20 or 30 times a day because they haven't scouted that far yet.
Most new players can't visit the neighbors who help them to receive supplies because they have not discovered their neighbors yet.
Yes. We got that the first time. And the answer remains the same. They will be able to return some of them, and the others will help the world to feel vibrant and alive. The more others there are, the more alive the world will feel.
Vergazi, you can't earn the respect and goodwill of people who aren't playing.
You also can't earn it if they don't know you are there.

This thread ("A possible inducement for players to do more helps") is based on the premise, accepted by most players, that neighbourly help isn't particularly helpful at retaining new players, and that it should be. Reiterating that it doesn't work is simply reinforcing the need to fix it. There is nothing stopping anyone from making a thread with the subject "Everything about neighbourly help is fine the way it is and here's why."
 

Vergazi

Well-Known Member
Vergazi, you can't earn the respect and goodwill of people who aren't playing. That's what I'm talking about in terms of luck and placement.
Do you have your auto-relocate enabled? Might help with your gold pits and abandoned cities ( I presume that's what you mean by people not playing )

Has anyone else noticed lately that the pace of turnover on the map has sped up quite a bit lately? At least in my area on Ceravyn I am noticing new players popping up almost daily where once were money pits and dead cities. This encourages me a bit and I hope Inno's gears have finally begun to turn on this issue; it has been long in coming imo.
 

ajqtrz

Chef - loquacious Old Dog
That's the point we're trying to make. Neighbourly help needs to be worth doing if it is going to achieve the goals it aims for.

Twenty or thirty extra helps a day is a random number to make a point about activity. More people helping is more opportunity for coin and/or supplies. Those are things that small cities need.

And to reassert it, you focused on what I consider the least important point. It's far more important for very new players to feel like the game isn't abandoned, than whether or not they can return help for everyone who helps them. A world that feels empty is a problem for any game. It's why the drop-out rate for people who end up on the forums is much lower than the drop-out rate for the general population. We know that there are other people playing, and the sense of community helps make the game more interesting.

The key here is the phrase, "sense of community." Fellowships exist to develop it but of course, many players don't join a fellowship for a long time. Other than that, visits and trade are the "second lines" of interaction with other players. If you are just starting out AND your neighbors don't visit you (inactive or don't care?) you can feel pretty alone. Given that it takes a long time to get a city large enough to actually do anything if you do it on our own, it's probably the lack of connection that makes people drop out.

Other games solve this problem with a community chat window. That helps but of course we don't have that here. The forum serves as a sort "community" thing, but probably less than one percent of players ever comes here, and only ten to twenty percent of them actually post anything -- some small amount of us account for most of the posts, right?

So how do you build community in this game?

I would suggest helping your neighbors is only a small part of it and tweaking the help system will do very little to increase that sense. Getting people to join an active fellowship quickly might be the best thing but most active fellowships want to also be ranked highly, don't they? In the end then, what we need is a way to make your neighborhood known. Perhaps a "neighborhood chat" window? Or an ability to create a "neighborhood list" where you can send msgs to your neighbors in bulk (I've actually sent them msgs one by one and it's a real pain to type all those names...sigh!).

So Ashrem is right in this, I think. We need a way for people to make their existence and presence known to new players AND in such a way that is more inviting of interaction.

AJ
 

Gath Of Baal

Well-Known Member
what we need is a way to make your neighborhood known. Perhaps a "neighborhood chat" window? Or an ability to create a "neighborhood list"

The original Tournament was the way I first connected with a lot of my map neighbors.. Someone had started a neighborhood mail and we frequently communicated with each other during Tournament... And even after they changed the Tournament to Fellowship based, we still chatted for some time on the old mail.

So maybe some kind of new neighborhood event like the old tournament could help.. Off the top of my head, Maybe something like World Wonders, that neighbors would have to build by doing certain task (like neighborly visits) to gain benefits from it, and once built it would show up on the map.. Maybe 1 World Wonder for every 100 or so provinces, that way even if you start in a dead area you could still work your way towards a Wonder in another area by unlocking provinces...

Maybe even something as simple as a task pops up every time a new player moves into your neighborhood, that offers a nice reward for visiting them for the first time (thus letting the new plater know they are not alone)
"A new Lord/Lady has established their kingdom nearby, let us welcome them to the neighborhood" Reward could be an extra daily chest or something like that..

Maybe even something simpler just have the game generate a letter to everyone in that neighborhood that a new player has moved in.. Because I do not pay attention to the world map other then scouting and tournaments and someone new moving in, is easy to miss..

Just my thoughts
 

DeletedUser

Guest
Maybe even something as simple as a task pops up every time a new player moves into your neighborhood, that offers a nice reward for visiting them for the first time (thus letting the new plater know they are not alone)
"A new Lord/Lady has established their kingdom nearby, let us welcome them to the neighborhood" Reward could be an extra daily chest or something like that..

+1
 

Sir Squirrel

Artist EXTRAORDINAIRE and Buddy Fan Club member
I like the idea of a pop up when a new neighbour moves in and a neighbourhood chat would be cool too!! But the problem with most other ideas is there are still to many inactive cities around. That is why tournaments changed to be done in fellowships as it was hard for most players to find active neighbours to do them with!! Even after 4 years they can't seem to figure out how to move long time in-actives to the outskirts so we can have a more concentrated active community in the center. I thought after they started automatically deleting the in-active new cities that they would use the same idea to move the long time in-actives to the outskirts of the map, but I guess I expected to much.:oops:
 
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Pheryll

Set Designer
It wouldn't even have to be completely unnerfed.
Just make the CL generate 1 extra chest at lvl 1, and again at 6, 11, 16, 21,26. Combine that with a slight increase of the yield as well and the CL would become more attractive again. And of course, the chests have to be able to be gathered from the app as well, otherwise it doesn't do much good.
By having it generate extra chests after rune-updates it sure would be a considerably more useful AW.

Let's look at the last chapter for stats. A CL has the good efficiency of a Mountain halls of the same level when you have 1.5 to 2.0 regular (non-sentient) manufactories of each tier. Let's say we do a slight increase so that it is at 2 manufactories, then have the help chests doubled at level 11. Now the crystal lighthouse looks like it can easily outdo the mountain halls in good production, being worth it at the same level with 4 manufactories of each tier. This is not to mention the new found synergy with sunset towers, which allows it to double (or fully upgraded CL triple) its seed production.

But the thing is I can get the three chests within the first page of my fellowship visits. Doubling the number will still make me likely to get all 6 chests by the time my fellowship is visited. The few extra chests do not do much to give an incentive to reach out to neighbors.
 
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Ashrem

Oh Wise One
But the thing is I can get the three chests within the first page of my fellowship visits. Doubling the number will still make me likely to get all 6 chests by the time my fellowship is visited.
Part-and-parcel of the idea is having the additional chests appear on a much rarer random. The first three appear to be pretty close to 50/50. it could even be made a near infinite number of chests, if the chance of a chest was 100/(the number you've already found) Then after the third chest, you've got a 33% chance of finding number four, then a 20% chance of dinging number 5, a 17% chance of finding number six. Soon you have to help at least 10 people to have a decent chance of finding another chest. If they used 1/(the square of the number already found), it would be even more rare, with a 4% chance of finding the sixth chest and less than 2% of finding a seventh.
 

Enevhar Aldarion

Oh Wise One
As more and more new players use only the app and not the browser version, Inno either needs to add the chests to the mobile version or they need to get rid of the chests and just have the chest rewards pop up automatically when a chest would normally be triggered.

And the chests are already sometimes annoyingly random for me. Sometimes the first three helps will each result in a chest appearing and sometimes I have to complete around 15 helps to get the third chest to pop.
 

CanDaMan

Active Member
A world that feels empty is a problem for any game. It's why the drop-out rate for people who end up on the forums is much lower than the drop-out rate for the general population.

Maybe make a quest (or quests), in the earlier chapters, to post on the forum (if that is possible). Perhaps post a code on the forum, that the player can input in the game, to allow completion of the quest.
 

DeletedUser2870

Guest
What if there were seperate chests that you got for doing FS helps and for Map Helps?

I did not say 'double' I said a slight increase.
Like I said, I sold off my CL when the screwed it over. Before, I used to do about 40 visits every day + my FS visits, mostly because of the additional goods. And once or twice a week I would do the entire map, which at that point meant about 350 additional visits.
That amount of additional goods allowed me to trade at heavy losses so I could get goods for my FS.
By tying the goods to the chests, it reduced the amount of goods it generated substantially (as in by 75%) and thus the AW was no longer worth the space to me. Even less so since the chests can not be gotten on mobile.
Btw, I find it interesting you manage to get all 3 chests with so few visits. I often have to do about 20 visits to get the 3 chests and the time it takes on the computer to find them is generally not worth the effort.

Adding one more chest for every rune-update is not exactly something that would be unbalanced. But it's all moot anyway since it won't be changed.
(I like the idea of having more chests appear, but with a reduced chance each time. In that case, the CL could be used to either increase the chances for instance).

The argument that it would outdo the Mountain Halls is hardly an argument at all. They are different AW's with different abilities and have no correlation. It's like saying the Elvenar Trade Center influences the Mountain Halls because it empowers the magical manufacturing spell and thus should not be allowed to become better. People have limited space and will choose what benefits their style of play.

You asked for inducements for players to help more often. As I said, coins and supplies are nice, but mostly of interest for players in lower chapters. Especially since the introduction of coin-rains and supply-windfalls as instants AND have those available in huge quantities for almost no effort at all, coins and supplies are really not much of an inducement to spend time on doing more visits.
 

Vergazi

Well-Known Member
@Dhurrin I was responding specifically to @Pheryll 's post https://us.forum.elvenar.com/index....ers-to-do-more-helps.20166/page-3#post-148677
I was responding to this quote. Quoted here in more full context perhaps.
But the thing is I can get the three chests within the first page of my fellowship visits. Doubling the number will still make me likely to get all 6 chests by the time my fellowship is visited. The few extra chests do not do much to give an incentive to reach out to neighbors.
I implicitly inquired of @Pheryll . Or to anyone, which is pretty much how these Forums operate.
What if there were separate chests that you got for doing FS helps and for Map Helps?
The specific thing I was reacting to was the idea ( accurate as I judge things ) that Pheryll can finish Fellowship Helps and have all three chests gotten so World Map Helps aren't needed if all you want is the chests, over and beyond merely doing helps for Fellows.
(I like the idea of having more chests appear, but with a reduced chance each time. In that case, the CL could be used to either increase the chances for instance).
I liked this idea when I first saw it suggested in the Thread. There have been many thoughts and ideas provoked by this Thread and lots of good comments and ideas, so in all I think it was good and I thank all for the robust discussion and debate on this "issue"?! Idk, is this even an issue? Well, in any case, I would tend to conclude that players would do more helps if there were more reasons to do so, but I get the distinct impression that late or end-game players wouldn't do helps more just because of the enormous time required to do them all on such huge world map areas.
 

Ashrem

Oh Wise One
I did not say 'double' I said a slight increase.
Like I said, I sold off my CL when the screwed it over. Before, I used to do about 40 visits every day + my FS visits, mostly because of the additional goods. And once or twice a week I would do the entire map, which at that point meant about 350 additional visits.
That amount of additional goods allowed me to trade at heavy losses so I could get goods for my FS.
By tying the goods to the chests, it reduced the amount of goods it generated substantially (as in by 75%)
I'm sure the chests were introduced to reduce the goods reduction, not that the goods reduction was an unintended side-effect. Nobody ever seem to remember that just a few months before that, we weren't getting the large number of goods from the Lighthouse at all, and we are still getting more than we were originally.

Btw, I find it interesting you manage to get all 3 chests with so few visits. I often have to do about 20 visits to get the 3 chests and the time it takes on the computer to find them is generally not worth the effort.
The first one appears to be 100% guaranteed. I'd say about 30% of the time I get them in the first three, most of the time in the first 10. I suspect that people who take more than ten to find them on anything like a regular basis are simply helping too fast and not giving the server time to receive the click and send the message to say there is a chest and where it is. I regularly see the message that there is a chest appearing after I've returned home or opened the next city from the map. And very frequently see it appear just as I click the "back" or the "map" button.
 

Vergazi

Well-Known Member
I regularly see the message that there is a chest appearing after I've returned home or opened the next city from the map. And very frequently see it appear just as I click the "back" or the "map" button.
All the time. Then I have to keep going until i get another alert and when that happens it often takes many helps to get the alert again. The code it seems is not without a sense of humour.
 
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