Declinable quests change coming to beta

[DeletedUser61]

I would imagine if you don't care much about a game, you would rarely spend any money because you simply don't care to buy things that keep you playing. But, I am guessing here. I mean, isn't that the point of micro payments?

[td][td]InnoGames is undoubtedly aware that folks CAN AND DO get carried away with microtransactions. Along with designing a game that's entertaining, and fascinating, they ALSO need to ensure that folks don't plunge down the microtransaction rathole, and burn themselves out. The game DOES need to resist compulsive play.

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[DeletedUser]

It still seems like an overreaction that can't be good news for them or the gamers.

 

[DeletedUser61]

It's also a pretty clear message that the developers are worried about the declinable quest clickfest, and intend to stop it.

To be quite clear about it, the "fix" is currently ONLY in the Beta release. We're discussing a problem that we don't even HAVE yet, nor do I think that the once-per-day decline limitation is anything other than a temporary step while the developers sort out what they intend to release to the production environments.

Also, they've very carefully avoided calling it an exploit, which suggests that they're not interested in taking away the points that folks have already "earned" by repeatedly declining most of the cycle quests.

 

[DeletedUser]

Not yet, but didn't they say they intended to apply it to the other games?

 

[BlueNova]

This is the first time I've commented on anything in Forum. I have 3 accounts. One on Beta! and 2 on the U.S. server. I have money invested (diamonds) in all three accounts. I'm doing this because I'm very upset about this issue. I feel that the many are being negatively impacted due to a few over-zealous players. I do not fight or flip, but I do use the declining quest feature. I can play without flipping, but only if I can continue to use the declining quest feature. In reality, excessive flipping (by a few) is the issue and not the declining quest it's self. That is what the developers should be addressing. I should not be forced out of a game because of the abuse of a game feature that, is perfectly legal, by a few aggressive players.

I will be finalizing the closure of my Beta1 game today (Rapture is my name there). I don't want the few real players on my map to lose NH coins, because of open construction. I'm hoping I won't have to close my U.S.1 (Fair Trade Academy) and U.S.2 (Fair Trade). I would much rather the abusive players (after given fair warning) be ejected from the game. I did nothing wrong to be penalized like this. See my notice regarding account closure at https://www.facebook.com/rtdewitt12.

Please note: As of 9/2/15, I am no longer a member of Fair Trade Academy (U.S.1) or Fair Trade (U.S.2). I have left both of my own accord.

 

[DeletedUser]

I think ejecting players for doing something totally legal and not discouraged by game rules is overdoing it, but I agree, they really should only be preventing abuse, not hog-tying everyone. Idk what a reasonable number of skips a day would be, but it's more than just one.

 

[DeletedUser]

I must say thank you for the upcoming update, without it I would have wasted even more time changing around meaningless numbers.

Btw.: I have an idea for a new competition:
Who replaces his city with the best good bye message. Reward: 5 million diamonds.

 

[BlueNova]

I think ejecting players for doing something totally legal and not discouraged by game rules is overdoing it, but I agree, they really should only be preventing abuse, not hog-tying everyone. Idk what a reasonable number of skips a day would be, but it's more than just one.

So do I. But isn't just as unfair to me and others who don't fight, not to be able to still play the game. Frankly, I think the players should be allowed to continue playing the way they were. Was it hurting anyone? No. It was a means for people like me, who have a limited budget to play. It doesn't bother me if others flip. I can't because I recently had surgery, otherwise I might be right in there with with those that do. I'm not saying I don't do it because I disapprove of it. Do I want other players ejected? Heck no!! But I want to be able to play too. What difference does it make if the are doing it? I totally enjoy the game and the players. I just want the "no declining' issue to go away and not be implemented on the U.S. server.

 

[DeletedUser]

I really don't care one way or another if they prevent the abuse of the decline feature. They didn't intend for it to be used that way. It's up to them to decide whether they want that available or not. It has nothing to do with whether people are being hurt or not. They simply didn't want people to be able to do this.

I just think it's a serious problem the way they've decided to 'fix' the issue. They're fixing it alright. They're chasing people right out of the game.

 

[BlueNova]

I really don't care one way or another if they prevent the abuse of the decline feature. They didn't intend for it to be used that way. It's up to them to decide whether they want that available or not. It has nothing to do with whether people are being hurt or not. They simply didn't want people to be able to do this.

I just think it's a serious problem the way they've decided to 'fix' the issue. They're fixing it alright. They're chasing people right out of the game.

Yes, I totally agree! I don't give a damn who flips or doesn't. I just wanted to be left alone and be able to play. Heck, let them do it all they want, but don't cripple my game playing so that I'm pushed out.

 

[DeletedUser43]

First off, no one has "exploited" or "abused" anything. If people follow the game rules, there can be no abusing. This isn't a place to attack other people. We are all Elvenarians.

Second, certainly if one quest or two was used in a way they didn't foresee, then of course they should change it. However, what some of you may not know is that everyone has talked about all of this since the game began. None of this is new. No one has done anything that wasn't openly and vociferously discussed in forums on beta. There is no new behaviour all of a sudden. The only thing new is chat. If you didn't know how other have been playing since day one, that isn't anyone's fault. So, please, all this shaming others has to stop.

Not one player on beta, not one player who is upset about this change isn't ok with them taking away a quest or two. But it is the entire game that has now changed. At least players here now have some fair warning as to what might be coming. It isn't that they changed the system that is so awful, it is that they changed it without balancing it out with other things or without any notice.

Will this change come to the US forums? Idk. Every other change in beta has come straight here either a week or two later. I can tell you that players are trying to adjust to this in beta right now as this has been in play for almost 2 days now. People are tearing out factories, making room for more workshops. We are all running frantically low on supplies.

If this change does come here, I would suggest that you write down the quests in the order they appear so that you will know when you decline one what is coming. It will help you to decide whether or not to decline something.

I can also tell you on the beta forums we are constructively discussing possible changes to the quests themselves as some of the quests are just a stupid waste of time and resources. So, hopefully, we will get some movement there. But I can also tell you that a ton of people have quit over this treatment. The way it was handled left a lot of room to be desired. But at least players spoke up. They know now how drastically this affected a lot of people.

Peace to all.

 

[DeletedUser749]

City Builders are notorious for creating extreme cities, as a means of exploring what's actually possible regardless of what the developers had in mind. So I have no objection, whatsoever, when somebody decides to see how far they can run up their score. There are a LOT of ways to play the game.

But neither do I see any particular need to get all upset because the developers are taking steps to block activities that are likely to trivialize future content, because folks will have tons of resources sloshing around.

Just as a point of reference, on Beta I've maxed out my Tech Tree, all of my Residences, Workshops, and Manufacturing buildings are at max level 15, and I have more than 10,000 units of each type of goods, and every few days I buy more goods from the wholesaler to clear the the level 15 caps from my Main Hall.

I have somewhere around 1000 troops with 473 relics, so I've discovered around 60 sectors, mostly on autocomplete, and I've lost maybe 2 battles in that past two months.

My score is 34437 and I'm ranked 470th. The highest ranked player, in Beta, has TWICE my score.

I still have two expansions that I could use, and the only quests that I decline are the one's that would require me to upgrade a type of building where I'm already maxed out, and don't want any more of that type of building nor do I want to tear down a building just to satisfy a declinable quests.

I'm looking forward to the upcoming Guest Races, and I'll certainly be eager to develop the related structures, but I've never seen any need to chase declinable quests, just to run up my score.

I've actually had a LOT more fun experimenting with minimum score cities. It's interesting to see how far you can get, on one of the regional servers, WITHOUT running up your score. So far my best effort has been a Elven City with an Armory and a Trader, and a score of ONLY 293 points.

The score is trivially calculated as an aggregate of spent culture, working population and each relic times the distance it is from your city. There is nothing fancy or difficult in getting lowscore cities, and nothing magical about racking up a high score one either. It's a pretty bland city-building game that has some overpowered real-money buildings. If you want the top place you buy the fancy population and culture buildings to maximize score for each land square.
Since coins, ressources and supplies does not factor in, you can simply build an absolute minimum score city, and trade your way up through use of the quests and allies... This is the ideal strategy given the current rules. This is the exploit they aim to combat. Infinite ressources at the cost of having at least one dedicated ally.

Personally for me, if this comes to the server I play on, I'm out. I don't want to log in once, click buildings and then log out. The combat system is dumbed down and pretty meaningless, either way you lose some troops. If you autocombat you're losing excessive troops because the AI is stupid, but it's not a huge deal because you would lose some anyway. It's a matter of how many you mind retraining.
It's a sandbox game. There is no endgame "win" achievement, it's all about building the city you want for yourself. The horrid combat system, and ridiculous amount of clicking needed to loop (e.g. the 18-20 quests in era 2) to progress faster is more than enough deterrent for most people. Effectively your city is limited by your land, which means your troop retraining and research. Only research can be capped out by this exploit, leaving the combat for higher score on who retrains better, and who posts more money in the game. It's that simple.

I can relate to everyone defending the devs move by saying that they need to fix the exploit to make the game into what they want it to be, but surely they don't want a game full of redundant quests and claim that these are a "guide" for the players who have finished the tech tree? Who the F needs a guide at that point?
Do you really need to forcibly slow down an already very slow paced sandbox game? Can anyone here tell how long it takes to finish the tech tree without using the quest loophole? Months I'm sure!
So yeah, it may be an exploit, but it is of little consequence to anyone who fights for score since they need to do so with real money, and it is certainly of less consequence for the casual player who cares only about his or her own city. If anything it currently serves to let you get that little extra step forward on a day where you log in and want a sense of accomplishment or just a small "win".
What I'd like to see is a focus on more gameplay rather than a misguided removal of an exploit that is in no way gamebreaking. Heck, adding stuff to the game could allow for more quests and much less need for a loop of mostly redundant quests. There is so many ways to make a moderate change to this if they really want to change it, but instead the path chosen seems to be that of extreme measures whereas things like "upgrade 3 residences" with a completely underwhelming reward is passed off as a non-pressing issue because it isn't exploitable

And here I am, wasting my time on debating something as mindnumbing as a facebooktype-game.

 

[DeletedUser754]

I can play without flipping, but only if I can continue to use the declining quest feature.

What is flipping?

 

[DeletedUser]

Someone in my FS said this 'fix' was probably because of people on Beta who have no workshops and just use the quests to get supplies. I can well understand that being an issue, but I'm sure there's better ways of combatting that.

I'm not entirely sure what flipping is. I assumed it meant cycling through the quests to get the easy ones over and over. People can burn through quests like they're nothing if they plan it right.

 

[DeletedUser61]

To follow up on your point, Workshops don't need very many workers, as compared to Goods Manufacturing, and if you're tying to maximize your score you need manufacturing, anyway, because you have to negotiate the World Map sectors if you can't win fights any more.

But InnoGames is making it pretty clear that that's not where they want the game to go.

Flipping quests is like flipping through your rolodex, looking for the "right" address.

 

[DeletedUser43]

There are a lot of problems with this game that were solved by the declining quests....problems that made this game pretty unplayable for all but a few.

1. Culture help:
If you can't get more supplies and coins by doing more quests, then you really really need neighborly help on culture. It means that every player must ONLY ask for culture because it becomes so important. Every town was titled Culture Please for the longest time. That was boring. Plus, the devs never fixed the problem that culture helps only lasts for so many hours. If you aren't playing on the same schedule as the people who helped you, or if they are helping you right before you both go to sleep, then that culture help expires and is useless to you.

Players complained about this for the longest time. Then we just gave up on that ever getting fixed and found the decline the quest work around.

2. Excrutiating slowness in the middle of the game

Oh, the slowness....omg.....when you hit a place in the tech tree where you have to get through things that take you more than a hundred hours, this game is awful. Especially where you hit that first tier 3 goods....you need to research all 3 goods even if you never plan on having unproductive factories (anything other than a factory for your boosted good is an unproductive factory). There is thread after thread and comment after comment of players who were miserable about the speed of the game. A lot of players leave this game around the same time even now (just look at all the abandoned cities).

3. Impossible costs of negotiating the far away provinces

When you need 4000 tier one goods to negotiate one province, you need the extra coins from quests to buy those tier one goods. Or what? Have tons of tier one factories? Those take population. Population comes from houses that take a lot of room. You only have so much room. But you need your tier 3 factories too because you need 4000 tier three goods to negotiate in that province too. And of course you need supplies to put all those factory workers to work.

4. The number one watched and commented on thread in the beta forum (by far) was people complaining about a quest that requires them to upgrade a factory for which they have no boost. This is a quest on the storyline quest so you can't decline it. If people freak out about ONE quest that you can't decline, you can imagine the amount of anger about this issue.

5. Fighting has always been a big problem for players even though they have been working on this part of the game. At some point, it is just impossible to win battles by fighting. The numbers of enemies continue to increase while your armies stay the same size....forever. Because of this, if players want to get through a province, the only way is to negotiate. So, you have to have those goods to do the negotiating.
And that is just a tiny few of the problems that the declining quests fixed. Number one is a gigantic problem that has had many players upset for a long long time.

6. Players who have finished the tech tree are bored out of their minds around here. They have been told for 90% of the history of this game to just wait for more content...they are still waiting. At least the fellowships gave them something to do and they could give some of their goods to other members. Now even that has been taken away. And the only response....is more stuff is coming! Yup. It is always coming. Too bad it never gets here. Maybe it costs too much in scouting charges? (That is a little joke)

 

[DeletedUser]

How is giving goods taken away?

 

[Valtitude]

This is the first time I've commented on anything in Forum. I have 3 accounts. One on Beta! and 2 on the U.S. server. I have money invested (diamonds) in all three accounts. I'm doing this because I'm very upset about this issue. I feel that the many are being negatively impacted due to a few over-zealous players. I do not fight or flip, but I do use the declining quest feature. I can play without flipping, but only if I can continue to use the declining quest feature. In reality, excessive flipping (by a few) is the issue and not the declining quest it's self. That is what the developers should be addressing. I should not be forced out of a game because of the abuse of a game feature that, is perfectly legal, by a few aggressive players.

I will be finalizing the closure of my Beta1 today (Rapture is my name there). I don't want the few real players on my map to lose NH coins, because of open construction. I'm hoping I won't have to close my U.S.1 (Fair Trade Academy) and U.S.2 (Fair Trade). I would much rather the abusive players (after given fair warning) be ejected from the game. I did nothing wrong to be penalized like this. See my notice regarding account closure at https://www.facebook.com/rtdewitt12.

Please note: As of 9/2/15, I am no longer a member of Fair Trade Academy (U.S.1) or Fair Trade (U.S.2). I have left both of my own accord.

I'm really sorry ladyhawke12 is so upset she's resigned from fellowships because of this, but I understand. Not all players who use flipping abuse it. However, some players have gotten overly carried away with flipping, insisting everyone in a fellowship participate in it - or else. I've watched it become a major problem in several fellowships, including one I'm in.

Nerfing seems tame in comparison. There are only so many clicks and cycles a player can do to gather resources each harvest.

I've been playing Elvenar for sixty-seven days, nerfing for about a week. I've played multi-player games before, but never one of this magnitude. I'm at level 8 and 9, building tier 3 factories and sit a little beyond the middle of the research tree on both US servers. As far as I'm concerned - and the consensus of most of my fellowship mates, several of whom have much more gaming experience than I do - nerfing makes the game more playable. Especially as resource requirements become higher and higher. If I stay with the game as it stands, I'll still be playing in December 2015. I can imagine that if developers include interesting game expansions and updates, I'll still be playing well into 2016. I have purchased diamonds. I know software development is expensive.

Flipping can easily throw off the game's overall balance. The numbers being flipped are incredible - close to 1M resources in less than 10 minutes. I've watched it happen on the trader and in chat. Nerfing doesn't come close to those numbers.

Almost forgot! On US1, we lost nearly all of our neighbors approximately 3 weeks ago. My city is basically at a standstill there - even with nerfing. Players are stuck without neighbor visit income for their cities. Nerfing helps make up for that loss of income.

InnoGames has known about these practices for some time ... please don't over-react and go from the extreme of allowing this to go on, to an extreme where players get one skip of quests per day. Surely, there's middle ground here.

Thank you for giving us a beautiful, challenging game to play. Bugs 'n all, most of it is working well.

 

[DeletedUser]

Or else? I hate it when fellowships get so controlling that they start telling people how to build their cities and play their games. On another game, they were telling people what buildings they could and couldn't build and where to put them all. It was awful.

Lol, I've never seen 'nerfing' before. Nerd surfing? I have no idea what that refers to.

I agree, I like this game a lot. I dropped several other games to play this one. In fact, this is the ONLY online game I currently play and I plan for that to continue a while. But if players start dropping like flies because of an update making gameplay difficult and slowing things to a crawl, there's not much point in continuing, is there?

 

[DeletedUser43]

Here were Inno's options:

change the code so trading goods between players doesn't satisfy the Gain x goods quest.

Or change the game and destroy it.


Any fellowship that demands ANYTHING of its players is a fellowship you want to stay far away from. You don't have to join them. I sure wouldn't.

Now, all that said....flipping connects players. It keeps them here all day long. It keeps players on the servers and in the forums and in the chat and makes the game a lot more lively. It gets friends to tell other friends about the game. It is excruciatingly boring but it provides those that have more time than money a way to still have an interesting game to play. Does this stop those that have even a little money from spending it so they don't have to do the mind numbing activity? No. Does it become less and less useful as the cost of KP goes up....yup. Is it a way to instantly win the game? Nope. The game is STILL incredibly slow even with flipping.....and omg.....just try it without. The longer the game goes on it is as interesting as watching paint dry. And if there are hardly any people who stay and most of the neighborhoods are filled with empty slots? What "game" is there? Those neighbors only started staying when people learned how to make the game more interesting. Do they really want to take that away? What are the most active fellowships? The ones that are flipping all the time.

So...would I have removed the option if this were my game? idk Sometimes games are played in ways the designers never intended but yet became better games that way. Would I look to see if this was hurting my bottom line...obviously...and if so, I would have to tweak it. But one thing for sure....if players are sitting here getting carpal tunnel and having their eyes go cross eyed just to make my game fun....maybe the fault isn't with the players?

But, if this were my game I would listen to my beta testers and then I wouldn't have a game that made you wait half a week for the next interesting section....so I guess not everyone does things the same way.