Ability to Downgrade a Building

[OIM20]

Added to the cons list:

• Time required for the developers to debug any issues that may result from code conflicts. It is unknown whether the code affecting event/set buildings is merely a subset of code governing all buildings, or if the code is entirely separate. Either way, debugging will be required to make certain that the feature implements correctly.
• Time required for the customer service team to respond to e-mails regarding mistakes made with or complaints about the new feature once implemented.​
• Time required for the graphics team to adjust the existing Royal Restoration icon so that the item can be used for both upgrades and downgrades without any confusion on the part of users, <or> time required for the graphics team to create a graphic similar to the RR icon but different in order to represent the new 'demolition' spell.​

Where we are on deciding what buildings this should apply to:

• All buildings: 2, with 1 additional statement that including it would not mean a nay
• Event/set buildings only: 4, evolving buildings included
• No buildings/do not implement: 2

I welcome new thoughts on this aspect of the proposal. As presented, it is limited to event/set buildings. Including the ML, but I don't think that being able to decrease the number of scrolls one obtains from the ML by downgrading it would be a detractor. If there is overwhelming support for the downgrade feature to be an undo button, I will have to rewrite the proposal entirely to fit that, but I would be willing to do so.

I will also state that I agree with @Lelanya's assessment that, simply because some players do not wish to obtain an entire collection of buildings, that is not sufficient reason to limit the capabilities of the community as a whole to access Inno's creations' earlier capabilities. Initially, this feature will act very much like a reward for players who have been with the game for some time, enabling them to make use of buildings they might not have placed in their city because they obtained it just after the point where it would have proven itself useful to them.

________________________________​

New questions for everyone:

• What would your position be on using the RR for both upgrading and downgrading (with a new image as noted above)?​
• On having separate tabs for upgrade and downgrade? Would you prefer tick boxes rather than tabs?​
• Because we are asking for a counterintuitive ability, if Inno were to require payment of a 'penalty' – for example, a 3x2 building requires 9 RRs to downgrade rather than just 6 – would that be acceptable? Not preferable, obviously. (I would like to show them that we're flexible on the 'fee' to use this feature if they enable it. Flexibility often helps in garnering positive results.)​
• When to offer the feature? @Sprite1313 suggested chapter 3 and @ajqtrz suggested chapter 2. I initially suggested chapter 9 (my reasons for that specific chapter are noted above; for not being early on are noted below).​
• If this feature were to require research beyond simply “Voila! It's chapter 'A'! You can now downgrade buildings!”, the current recommendation is that it be optional (like some of the squad size upgrades and city expansions). Should there be a new research added to the tech tree to enable players to utilize the 'downgrade' feature?​

My reasons for not offering this in an early chapter: I started playing in February. I'm at the opening of chapter 5 as I'm typing this. I've only bought 3 premium expansions; my city has a total of 41 expansions overall. I've not reached the orc wall on the World Map yet, and I continue to expand outward (though now that I can upgrade things again, not so much; I'd had a temporary moratorium on that during the FA). If I hadn't come into the forum I would never have known about the orc wall… well, not until I encountered it. I know I'm not alone in blowing through the early things, so I do think it might be a bit detrimental to players to offer this up too soon. Also, there would be no real reason to downgrade from chapter two to chapter one on any event/set building (not that I've seen, anyway) so the feature would be useless at that point.

 

[Alram]

I would support a downgrade feature for event buildings that can't be teleported.

 

[Iyapo1]

I would support a downgrade feature for event buildings that can't be teleported.

@Alram That is brilliant! It would exclude the Moonstone Sets completely.

 

[hvariidh gwendrot]

you can teleport the moonstone stuff .. i tried in a smaller and larger city both would have let me teleport them .. this would be good for downgrading a function you passed in chapters same example as before, i get it in ch 13 i want the ch 11 production but otherwise i still see everything as doable with normal game play .. event bldgs i go back to my mantra of pay attention, don't upgrade them till you see what the production is for next chapter, if you do that's not a game design flaw that's a player mistake you are asking for a code to fix ..
edit add: RR enchantments are from tournament if this was made a thing i would not want it taking away from what we are already getting i can't see inno going back to put this in to a set tech tree

 

[The Fairy]

Finally, I do agree with your assessment that a universal code for all buildings would probably be the easiest to implement for the developers – from the outside. But we can see that events and set buildings are handled differently within the code from the game graphics. In fact, it appears that they have their own code; even set buildings which weren't part of an event, such as the ML, show that they are categorized as event buildings:

Today only some buildings can be upgraded with RR spells, so they have a distinction between buildings there in the code - so I would imagine that it would be fairly simple to keep the same distinction for downgrade spells?

I am flexible as to whether it should be a new tab or a tick box or something third - as long as it is REALLY clear that you are about to downgrade so you don't downgrade instead of upgrade by mistake (maybe a different background color or something else).

 

[hvariidh gwendrot]

and it could be put in as a craftable for cc and RR .. don't really see a need for it though

 

[Alram]

What if we had the option to choose a lower chapter level when we claim an event building? We wouldn't need a downgrade feature at all.

 

[OIM20]

What if we had the option to choose a lower chapter level when we claim an event building? We wouldn't need a downgrade feature at all.

That would resolve the issue going forward, yes. There would still be the matter of the buildings already extant in one's inventory that the proposal is meant to address.

I want to ask about there being a 30-day grace that establishes from the date the choice option goes into effect which would allow users to make a request during that 30 days (to allow time for real life; they might not be logged in) for event buildings existing in their inventory as of [choice option start date] to be reissued at the chapter of their choice. That would require a lot of effort on the part of customer service, as they'd be the ones handling it.

Possibly via a form that could be submitted rather than via e-mail, with the form offering the option to add a field for each building that they wanted regressed and each chapter they want it regressed to. It would be a one time thing. You go through your inventory, you pick the buildings you want changed, you fill out the form. Customer service checks your inventory and I'm sure they can see the date a building was added to your account, verifies everything is copasetic, issues the new building, deletes the old one. I know there are sites out there that do forms and I know there's a way to make it so that once a field has included certain information (user name) that it can't be resubmitted. So that would stop people from submitting multiple forms. Something like:
[sample form text removed]

The first three fields would be required, of course, to submit the form. Everything after would be optional as some people might have multiple cities, but others might be like I am at the moment and just have one city.

And it would need to be clearly stated that only what existed in the inventory on that specific date would be adjustable (part of that CYA disclaimer thingy). I doubt there are a lot of people out there who have been playing a while that have ML sitting in their MA waiting to be crafted - even if they never put it in their cities, I imagine some have crafted it just to keep it from continually filling the building slot on the rota. That's only if they managed to never get it in the Spire/sold or disenchanted all of the ones they got from the Spire.

This is an adjustment I'm not cringing at making as a complete overhaul of the proposal.

_______________________________​

Edited 03 May to strike through proposal intended to allow for one-time adjustment of buildings extant in inventory to which the proposal for a downgrade would apply.

 

[Alram]

That would resolve the issue going forward, yes.

We have an accord.

 

[Iyapo1]

This is an adjustment I'm not cringing at making as a complete overhaul of the proposal.

It is your proposal but I think your doomed to disappointment. I really dont think the forum as a whole would vote yes on anything that actually creates paperwork.

 

[OIM20]

"You can please some of the people all of the time, all of the people some of the time - but you can never please all of the people all of the time." (quoting John Lydgate, if you don't recognize it)

I don't expect the whole forum to say, "Yippee!" But I would expect anyone wanting any new feature to be a bit mature and understand that there has to be some give.

 

[Alram]

Are you suggesting that anyone who responded to you and disagreed with your premise is immature?

 

[Iyapo1]

You worked hard on it your presentation and it shows. But you keep presupposing the first yes.

I would expect anyone wanting any new feature to be a bit mature and understand that there has to be some give.

Do we want the new feature. Yes or No. If the feature does anything to encourage the growth or longevity of boneyards my answer is no. This forum is covered in the whys at what fors of that sets issues no reason to rehash here.

 

[OIM20]

Are you suggesting that anyone who responded to you and disagreed with your premise is immature?

No, not at all. This is my bad grasp of English at times. This is why I took so long to respond before. I tend to say something that is misunderstood simply because I meant it one way and it apparently came out another. As my speech professor had hanging on his wall: "I don't think you realize that what I heard wasn't what you said." That's pretty much me trying to communicate.

You worked hard on it your presentation and it shows. But you keep presupposing the first yes.

Because the idea already had support from its original thread, and because there were so many other threads already suggesting a similar downgrade feature, yes. You are quite correct in that, perhaps, I should approach every response with the assumption that there is no agreement.

 

[ajqtrz]

I would support a downgrade feature for event buildings that can't be teleported.

This would, of course, mean one of the goals I outlined, the first, could not be met as teleporting does not lower or raise a buildings level and if the quest says "bring 2 "X" buildings to level "Y" and all you have is buildings at the top of their level -- a step or two above "Y", you still have to clear the space to start a new building of type "X" and bring it all the way up to the right level. Time consuming, wasteful, and frustrating. The only trick I've managed to find to make it at least a bit less than intolerable is to use one building and upgrade it one level past, "Y", which is at least slightly less costly in terms of space and time than actually building 2 buildings up to level "Y" from scratch.

What if we had the option to choose a lower chapter level when we claim an event building? We wouldn't need a downgrade feature at all.

Same problem as above, but also this means once you make the choice you can't "undo" it. So you get an event building, choose for it to make whatever it makes at your level and then find out you should have picked one level lower -- or, you pick the level correctly, but then your needs change. A "one-time" option would probably be much easier to implement so I'd support that if a fully down grade option wasn't available, but I still like the idea of downgrades independent of original choices better.

Other responses.
I do think the idea of using the Royal Restoration route would be the easiest to implement. From a coding point of view, right now, when you use the restoration spells the program simply changes a number for that building in a database somewhere to reflect it's new level and the number of restoration spells in your inventory. I would think those would be the only changes as everything else -- the visual aspects, for instance -- are probably automatic based upon that number. However there is another option. It could be implemented in the Upgrade tab for the building. If so then it would look at the area and decide if you need to "move and downgrade," just as the current "upgrade" tab stops and looks at the available space and says, if needed, "move and upgrade." The tab name, of course, would need to be changed or an added tab (not a good idea, in my mind), but the coding would be about the same level as the Royal Restoration route.

In regards to the cost of a downgrade, one poster suggest it cost more than an upgrade. I would think the opposite would be true, for a number of reasons. First, demolishing is always cheaper than building the the real world. So it's not the real world, but still we don't always need to be different than real life, do we? More to the point though, If you sell a building you get back some of the resources so since you are, in essence "selling" the last upgrade, it would be more consistent to get some of those resources back. If you tie the downgrade to the RR route you would then be losing 1/2 of the resources you spent raising the thing to the level AND the Royal Downgrade spells as well. Remember, if you lower it from, say level 20 to 19, you are eventually, in almost all cases, going to eventually take it back up to level 20. Maybe not in all cases, but certainly in most, I would think. So now you've spent twice the amount getting from level 19 to 20 because you've done it twice AND the RD spells in addition. Downgrades would be very costly, but still better than building a building or two from 1 to 12 from scratch rather than downgrading it from 13 to 12.

I'm a bit ambivalent about which buildings but prefer more rather than less, especially if they are the type where events say "build x up to level y". I would think, given the costs, the more buildings included the better. Event buildings, certainly. Workshops, residences and goods? You bet. They are the ones the events often ask you to raise up to level X. AW's? I'm not why anyone would want to lower them. I don't even think they change in their look, do they? They don't is size or production type so why would anyone want to lower their AW?

Well, those are my thoughts at this time. I like this discussion as it's really good to see people's ideas on the matter.

AJ

 

[hvariidh gwendrot]

i see this as a good option when getting a building in a later chapter and wanting to go back for production values of an earlier chapter as that choice was not available (code permitting) but if you had it and upgraded it then the option should not be available or some sort of limited number of redos's (potential nightmare scenario lol).. that's just me though i take what is there adjust and adapt the play .. as you advance and needs change, so do the options you have and again there are in game work arounds for most of the problems mentioned in here

 

[Lelanya]

Ok, here are some of my thoughts.
I absolutely agree with the position, that downgrading a building should apply to buildings that can be upgraded with the use of Royal Restoration Spells. I will not propose a name but think there ought to be a Forum competition on multiple servers with a final vote on social media (or vice versa) as this would incorporate most of Elvenar's support mediums. I'm fine with separate tabs.

I'd like to see the Spire rewards adjusted minutely, and the downgrade feature should be earned instead of Spell Fragments in the 4th encounter chests where Frags are available. I think that as this would put it more on the par of the Teleportation Spell, as it fits in a similar category of a QoL improvement to game functionality. It would serve the purpose of reducing the amount of Spell Fragments gained on a weekly basis in the Spire, which is a contentious one. The downside is, it will take a bit longer to collect a decent amount of SF, but I would think that the developers would appreciate us assisting them in their efforts to get more folks involved in the Spire. As a fallback plan, I would see these items being earned in the tournament as an addition to chests 5, 10, 12, 16 and 20.

As for when to offer it, that's simple. All event/set buildings that produce sentient goods (for example), offer them as supplies in chapters 1 to 5, as tier 3 in chapters 6 to 8, as mana in chapters 9 and 10, as seeds in chapter 11, as sentients at 12 to 17 (possibly higher). So this should begin to apply when these rewards change, at the increase from chapter 5 to chapter 6 and then onwards, as this is when folks most often experience remorse for the upgrade.

I'm not sure how I stand on your letter idea. But honestly, I can't see that idea flying. We'll be given some of the 'agent x' when the feature is ready for release, it's much more likely that we'll be limited to that, and if we're very lucky, to one free item to test it on.

 

[Alram]

Thank you @ajqtrz.
Your comments and some convo with another player helped me see that we don't need a downgrade feature at all.

 

[OIM20]

I'm not sure how I stand on your letter idea. But honestly, I can't see that idea flying. We'll be given some of the 'agent x' when the feature is ready for release, it's much more likely that we'll be limited to that, and if we're very lucky, to one free item to test it on.

I'm going back through everything, so a longer reply to other things will be coming, but just to clarify: that was a mock-up of a form that would be online, not a letter. I'm sorry that wasn't clearer. But, it has been made quite clear to me that no one would be willing to do that. So, nix the form to make it a one-time thing.

Those who want the downgrade feature, from what I've read (though, disclaimer: I am still reading back through things to make sure I've understood where everyone stands) want it to be a permanent option. So any compromise on that seems to be unreachable from what I understand at this time.

I was trying to find a happy medium, but I've been advised that isn't necessarily possible and also not necessarily what a discussion on the user end of things leads to. It might take me a couple of days before I can respond to everything else that needs a response. I've also been told that I need to shorten my opening post to about five sentences, and I just don't know how to do that on a business proposal. So that's going to take a bit of time for me to figure out.

At any rate, I just wanted to clarify that the white 'page' was only intended to be the text that would be included in the code for a form that would be filled out if there was a one-time option for a downgrade for buildings already existing in the inventory but not yet placed in the city (lots of codicils there, so I understand that it's confusing). But it's not viable since no one will agree to it, so I think just to make things clearest, I'll go back and strike through the post with that notation. That way there doesn't need to be discussion on something that's been completely overruled.

 

[Lelanya]

Ah ok I didn't catch that bit. No, I cannot see the developers working out something that would be used just once. If that's the case, I am still needing compensation for two level 4 Great Crystal Bell Lighthouse Spires!