Autumn Zodiac Event Feedback

[The Unbeliever]

Re: needing current chapter level buildings;
The way Elvenar does this:
- doesn't announce this MAJOR extreme change, so the vast majority of the player base is caught off guard by it and have to waste days at a time building and/or upgrading multiple new buildings to meet the criteria.
- double down on the dumb by then keeping the various timed productions for the workshops. (namely the 9hr & 24hr productions, which massively screws with needed in-city production)

The way FoE does this:
- simply demands a number of "productions" from a building of the current chapter, or slightly more productions from a previous chapter building/s
(ie: Finish 16 productions in a production building of your current age, OR, finish 24 productions in a production building of your previous age)

Why the FoE way is better?
Because now you can have more variety in quests overall, as the longer multiple productions (3hr, 9hr, 24hr) can be demanded in greater and greater numbers as the event rolls on, since they are doable via Lv1 'turds', (aka Blacksmiths in that 'other' game), while NO ONE is unfairly hosed by the requiring productions from their current era workshops!!
ie: it's a toolbag move to demand an endgame player *must* do 5x 24hr productions in their monstrous sized & pop+culture hungry workshops, while a Ch4 player can do those exact same productions but with Lv1 turds!!

So while endgame players will still *need* to keep 4-5 or so high leveled workshops for events, the idea is that they can get through the quest with just multiple 5min production runs!
The early game players still keep their big advantages of getting to use much larger quantities of smaller buildings, and also (very likely) clearing out those quests much quicker vs. the late/endgame player, but at least now the later/endgame players don't get their entire city production grinding to a complete halt because 5 or their 6 workshops are stuck producing fething toolboxes! (4x in a row for an added junk-punch too!)

Doing this quest the proper way, (ie: just complete X number of productions vs. specific number of set timed productions) is most especially important for the large number of players who are also hung up in the midst of the various Guest Races! These poor sods are probably the most hard done by with the radical shift in event play this time around, as they have no choice in giving over an ever-increasing % of their city space to the various settlements.
It's one thing a player who has finished the whole tech tree, or else is nicely slotted at the 'in-between' point of the guest race settlements, to suddenly be forced to build & grow 6-8+ new Workshops + Factories. (pop + culture can be an issue, but space is very likely to be found in spades!)
On the other hand, anyone who's in Ch's 6-14 (so over 50% of the total game itself!) and is stuck with all their guest race stuff sucking up land is probably pretty boned when they're told out of the blue to plonk down those same 6-8 new buildings.



That the Elvenar team actually need these kinds of simple & logical explanations spelled out for them is shocking in the extreme...
A bloody 8 year old can understand this gak!

 

[Pheryll]

You tell me. Here's my data. I've added five fully upgraded from scratch to level 24 marble factories and four fully upgraded from scratch to level 26 workshops in the last two weeks, and I have 6500 keys and still have 230 8-hour instants and 640 1-hour instants left from Mermaids.

My question had to do with the province expectation of the Mermaid event. If 4 Mermaid's Paradises is not overachieving, then can one reasonably be expected to clear 30 provinces an event for a good 5-6 events a year when only 1-2 chapters are released each year? At the end game that going through at a very fast pace.

 

[Deleted User - 3932582]

You tell me. Here's my data. I've added five fully upgraded from scratch to level 24 marble factories and four fully upgraded from scratch to level 26 workshops in the last two weeks, and I have 6500 keys and still have 230 8-hour instants and 640 1-hour instants left from Mermaids.

I would be safe to assume that you don't do any guest race settlement at the same time, correct?

 

[Deleted User - 3932582]

My question had to do with the province expectation of the Mermaid event. If 4 Mermaid's Paradises is not overachieving, then can one reasonably be expected to clear 30 provinces an event for a good 5-6 events a year when only 1-2 chapters are released each year? At the end game that going through at a very fast pace.

I am with Pheryll on this one. I have a decent feeling as to what my usual event progression is, and for Mermaids I've got 2x MPs and then stopped. Could I do more than 2? Definitely, but then I felt that I would certainly be overextending myself, especially with the provinces. That, and I didn't see a pressing need for more. Just because someone can go balls to the wall in a single event doesn't mean that this is sustainable pace in many cases (it might be for select few). It's just like with tournaments - quite a few people can hit 10K once in a while; hitting it every time, or at least consistently is entirely different story.

Putting severe restrictions on the event based on a few examples of extreme effort seems misguided. Now with these changes everyone is going to get less rewards - and this includes most of the players who in no way benefited excessively before.

 

[qaccy]

Sheesh, reading over the recent posts talking about success in the Mermaid event...if a player who got 2+ Mermaids is still considered 'casual', what's that make me? I barely got halfway up on my 2nd one (only one maxed) and I thought I was doing pretty well lol

 

[Shyama1]

"A few who complained" and "all casual players" are not remotely the same thing. If you're going to accuse someone of insulting all casual players and all forum users, they should at least have insulted a large number of them, rather than the twenty-or-so players who actually complained about the requirements.

And let's keep in perspective that fact that the devs' answer to the small number of complaints was to make the game harder for everyone, including both those who complained and those who just got down to it and spent two weeks decimating their current layout and leveling buildings only to have it do no good at all and still have the event be oven more ridiculously hard than if the second changes hadn't been made. Personally, I think a little outrage at the whiners who caused itis called for, whether they were casual or not.

Thanks Ashrem ! At least someone who got it right

 

[T6583]

Just because a small handful of players got a large number of mermaid paradises doesn’t mean it ran true for a majority of the players. Outside of the forums I don’t know a single player that got more than 2 fully evolved MP’s. And those that did most of them got the extra relics to finish those evolutions with the FA. That includes members in several top fellowships, and active daily players. I’m end game, extremely active (logging on multiple times a day), play in more than one city, spends a decent amount of real money on this game, and was only able to get enough for 1.5 MP evolutions. Most players I personally know can make the same statement. Now I’m not even sure I’ll be able to level one bear let alone 2 that I was hoping for. But the bigger issue for me is that this event is boring due to lack of variety in the quests, the constant back to back quests or same 3 or 4 quests total over the past almost week of the event, the complete seemingly unfairness of the random quests since not some players are definitely getting easier quests that others are and therefore it’s not leveling the playing field in my opinion (you can read my previous post on that one), there doesn’t appear to be any real story line to this event like past events because the quest givers keep saying the same thing over and over again. I dislike this event on so many different levels and have stated so with reasons why. Maybe I’m just over frustrated. Maybe I’m over tired due to real life and taking things the wrong way, but it seems like we’re starting to fight more among ourselves. We all have different play styles and we shouldn’t be complaining about that, but what is currently being done is that we are being forced to play a certain way. For the record the chapter level requirements didn’t affect me as my play style includes having everything at max level. But those who don’t feel that is necessary shouldn’t be forced into that. I’m also a player who preferred to build the shanty towns when I had the space, pop, and culture to do so because it allowed me to still keep my city up and running during events as composed to being stalled.

 

[Ashrem]

My question had to do with the province expectation of the Mermaid event. If 4 Mermaid's Paradises is not overachieving, then can one reasonably be expected to clear 30 provinces an event for a good 5-6 events a year when only 1-2 chapters are released each year? At the end game that going through at a very fast pace.

As with every single event for the last year or two (except the current one), I had close to 20 explored provinces waiting to be cleared. Now, at 60 hours per province, that's harder to do.

I would be safe to assume that you don't do any guest race settlement at the same time, correct?

Incorrect. I started Amuni in June (my unplaced Stonhenge is Elementals) and finished it just after the August F.A. (My Black Lotus from the FA was the last thing I received during amuni.)

 

[T6583]

And yes I feel that the developers shouldn’t be catering to the few but should be catering to the masses. As this was a sentiment expressed by Elvenar Mod’s specifically when addressing complaints over when Chapter 15 was coming and the shear number of events. I wish I could find the original post to quote but it went something along the lines of only a small percentage of the player base was end game and therefore the release of Chapter 15 which would only benefit a small percentage of players was not as important as the events which benefited all players. And yet here we see an instance of where things were changed based on the minority without any regard to the majority. And that’s something I take some issue with. Because in my opinion that’s hypocritical.

 

[Deneb]

I totally don't think it is fair to change the rules once the game has already began. I think that not enough of a study was done on the Beta launch of this event and hopefully they take some time to review and get feedback from the Beta players. There are a couple of more issues with this event than just the nerf on keys, however, I do totally understand your frustration, Shyama and agree wholeheartedly that this should never have been done. There are a lot of players that were very happy with the way things were...nobody asked.

 

[Alistaire]

Sheesh, reading over the recent posts talking about success in the Mermaid event...if a player who got 2+ Mermaids is still considered 'casual', what's that make me? I barely got halfway up on my 2nd one (only one maxed) and I thought I was doing pretty well lol

Mermaids was also unbalanced (though this one's worse). You'd get hard-stopped casual or not if you were just starting orcs, or go nuts like me if you were on elementals due to having all the "advanced scouts" done. Having those done meant "overscouting" no longer existed for me and I went from the minimum required for the chapter all the way to the max that give expansions, which would've been the correct game-plan even without the event.

 

[DeletedUser21745]

I am pleased to report that after an endless loop of "Scout a province, complete a research or gain 15 VV" I have had the following sequence of tasks;
- 3 toolboxes
- 7 bread
- 5 marble mosaic
- 4 admirable altar
- 3 advanced tools
- gain a fair amount of supplies
- 5 marble mosaic
- recruit 2 squads
- Now I am back to "Scout a province..."

This is far more refreshing than getting "Scout a province 4 times in a row" followed by collect <x> relics".
Hopefully the problem has been fixed and I am not entering a new cycle of "Scout a province..."

 

[Deleted User - 312108]

@qaccy For my part, I would object to any quest (other than WS/T1 production quests but even those get aggravating if you get produce 3 hour x5 3 times in a row) occurring twice (or more in a row). One of my main issues with the 'random' endless quest cycle is that it has far too many gain relic and solve encounter/tourney encounter quests and the rate of occurrence and ask for them is painful for lower level players. For me, the solve 7/35 is doable, but it is 9 tourney provinces which is beyond my comfort limit for tourney at chapter 7. If I do encounters, that can easily push me past the point where I need to be to unlock the chapter which will eventually lead to me being blocked or having provinces that cost so much that they cannot be completed until my research catches up. I fully realize that different levels of players will have different pain points. My point truly is that quests that impact the game in a long term or permanent fashion should be rare, not the most frequently occurring quests.
@Alistaire I agree that the quests with OR Spire or OR tournament encounter should only pop during those events (which would also reduce the change of getting those quests! Win/Win)
@Risen Malchiah & @Nonchalant Antipathy The bears and the currently loot box constellations are both beautiful. I think the constellations are the best work they've done for those random boxes.
I also want all three bears!
@Shyama1 The issue with the level requirements for the workshops and factories isn't so much that they are present, but that they were not announced prior to the event hitting beta. For players who do not participate in beta or watch those forums they would not have had any time to prepare for it. A great many players do not run with current or maxed level workshops and not always maxed/current level factories due to many reasons. One of the very simple ones is that many event buildings give a generous helping of some of these so they aren't as needed or in later chapters, good requirements are not the same as earlier chapters. If this had been a more gradual change (and in beta, many players were unable to participate until the workshop was moved to chapter -3), it wouldn't have been objected to as much. As for the keys, they should not have been at 188 to begin with for endless currency, but should not have changed it once the quest was in the live worlds (or not quite so much). I know how many keys I got on beta and while I am dedicate and focused, I am very certain there are folks who make me look lazy in regards to events.
@ElegantZara please do not feel guilty. Offering constructive criticism is not whining. Coming on to the forum or FB or whatever with the comment 'this event sucks' without being specific is whining. From what I have read of your comments, you tend to lay out your reasons.
@Ashrem Yes, I said before I like the concept of the endless quests, but in mermaids the implementation was flawed. Here it was even more flawed. To me the core flaw in their concept is that they have arbitrary quest currency rewards vs. the scaled rewards based on the quest being completed. Hopefully they keep tuning it and find the medium point.
@T6583 I think 'this is boring' is appropriate feedback. Having the same quest especially ones that day 24 hours+ multiple times within a short period IS boring. They should want to keep us in game. Granted, I am not fond of the 5 minute and 15 minute quests since I have several cities to cycle through, but being able to complete 10 quests that award a fraction of the currency that the scout/encounter/gain relic/VV etc do is far more engaging to me than this long slog of encounter (even though it's active in game the sheer amount of them has made them a huge chore), scouting, toolboxes etc.
@Burger Meister Meister Yay!

And yes, I am one of those scary people who reads the threads she missed while she was gone for the day and STILL comments Now it is time to go check on my cities.

 

[Ashrem]

Hopefully the problem has been fixed and I am not entering a new cycle of "Scout a province..."

Nope. I just got my third consecutive "Scout/Research3/15VV"

 

[Shyama1]

[...]Inno basically told us for the last several years to reduce our workshops and manufacturies to almost nothing, now they've changed that with no notice.[...]

Where ? When ? I don't remember ever seeing such advices. And I started playing 2 years ago.
But as far as I recall, most chapters up to X had non-declinable mainline quests requesting to level up 2 WS and 2 Residences to current chapter level

I totally don't think it is fair to change the rules once the game has already began. I think that not enough of a study was done on the Beta launch of this event and hopefully they take some time to review and get feedback from the Beta players. There are a couple of more issues with this event than just the nerf on keys, however, I do totally understand your frustration, Shyama and agree wholeheartedly that this should never have been done. There are a lot of players that were very happy with the way things were...nobody asked.

Thanks Deneb for your support on what I believe is a big mistage on INNO's side, and the first thing that should be fixed in this event.

 

[Deborah M]

Looks like I’m done for another 3 days. After waiting a day for toolboxes I’m right back to encounters. Of course I had to do vapors first. 3 days left on 4 1/2+ days scout. Just how many times do they imagine anybody can do these over & over & over? I am so that they managed to find so many ways to ruin events! They used to be a plus that kept me wanting to play. Now they have made it so bad that I feel like they are ruining the game by taking any fun out of it. Maybe I’ll find a new game to start while I wait more than 3 days yet again

 

[Black watch]

As I've said several times. Everyone can, and should, post what they think is wrong. Nobody has the "right" to whine and scream and threatening to quit. "I can't make/level enough workshops to do well in the event. This is the final straw, I'm done" Tells them what they did wrong, and what you are doing about it. "Why do you hate the players?" "Everything is about diamonds." "This event is horrible and I refuse to play." Is non-useful whining

As far as the game is concerned, I would tend to agree with you... on another level though, the player level, it's a clear indication that people are upset, frustrated with a game they enjoy or at least used to enjoy. It's their way of blowing off steam in a safe way... no guns, no spousal beatings, no kicking puppies... just good old fashion words expressing dismay, and longing for the good old days... perhaps more, probably more.
I don't think it's such a big deal to "hear" people rant... I've posted plenty of posts hoping INNO will read them and know their fan/player base is not happy with their decisions.
I hope they get better at addressing their players responses and I hope they get better at producing events and communication. But I don't take it personal when someone has to vent.
It's just humanity leaking out all over the place.
So when does it become their right to bitch and whine... when they've spent hundreds of dollars on this game? Perhaps thousands or only fifty. Don't YOU have a right to express yourself?
You post plenty on here and I see that it's not ALWAYS technical. I enjoy your posts, along with just about everyone else's.
The one post I didn't (if I remember correctly) was a post from a player, I think a few years ago, that said they couldn't and wouldn't fight in the provinces because it was in essence racist and demeaning... something like that, and that they thought of the graphics as alive and couldn't kill them.
I actually beat my head against the wall after reading that one.

One thing I will add and it even applies to the nut that thinks graphics are alive... it would sure be a terribly boring world if we are all the same.

Let's the party continue and hope INNO does something proactive to remove all these repetitions from the game.

 

[Deborah M]

Where ? When ? I don't remember ever seeing such advices. And I started playing 2 years ago.

I VERY clearly remember Timon going into a fairly long explanation about why we didn’t need more space because players needed to reduce the number of mfg & especially workshops to make room for guests races. I’m thinking it was the Amuni Q&A but after 4 years I can’t claim to be sure what was in which Q&A.

 

[Deleted User - 312108]

@Black watch You mean those little elves running around my city don't actually have lives?!

 

[Lyinaral]

I am almost to the end of halfings, this Autumn Zodiac is no fun, I had toolboxes, started them then the next morning, they had changed them to advanced tools, then got toolboxes back to back. This will make the 4 scout, research or 15 VV, in a row. I won't use or buy diamonds to hurry them along. They really messed this one up as far as I am concerned. I have gotten 1 daily prize so far & have two bear heads, as far as mermaids & the others ones all I got was enough to have 1 to level 10, I play daily & am on several times a day. I have heard several others complain about how this event is being done.