Does anyone like the AW cost changes????

[Pheryll]

Even if you ignore the Spell Fragments (as the values have changed since the above post was made)... 24 years to upgrade all Ancient Wonders? Obviously this means the developers do not intend players to build all 40 AWs. So what do they intend? How many Ancient Wonders do they expect the "average" player to have? Do they intend for players to have only two or three? Maybe four or five? Do they intend for players to mostly upgrade their Wonders to level 10 or maybe 16 at most (note they point out that this is 75% of the power of max level), and intend for levels 20+ to be "expert" levels that require a lot of time and effort to get to that only the most hardcore players (and/or those willing to spend Diamonds) would ever achieve?

My estimate is that at late chapters a casual free player would be able to upgrade 1 wonder to level 16-21 in the time it took to move through the chapter (this estimate was made before the announcement of the decreased SF). Thus I would assume that at end game free casual players might reasonably have half the wonders moderately leveled.

 

[JayJayP]

I never had a reserve of RRs to upgrade AWs. My AW upgrading is already at a halt. I have 20 RRs right now. I've been playing the game for YEARS, like 4. Not a hugely active fellowship, but we're getting more activity. These costs make AWs a non-starter for us. Even spell fragments are not that high. While with a little work I used to be able to upgrade all the wonders I had, that is a thing of the past. Another game did this to me with advancement and I was so glad I never spent money on that game. I was kinda mad when spending $10 to get some diamonds no longer bought me even one expansion. Now there's NO REASON TO PUT MONEY DOWN. I see the game collapsing on itself before the year is out. And what can I do with the thousands of relics I have??????????
Started a fortress in Chaos and Conquest, thinking about taking any money I would spend this year there.....

 

[TimeMachine]

For paying players to have functioning fellowships and other people to take their trades, the game needed a large pool of players, many who would be non-coiners. Chasing those away by making aspects of the game much more difficult, only hurts the paying base.

That is exactly what I am thinking about this too.

But originally I came here to write down what I like about the Ancient Wonders-Changes.
Although it is maybe (stil) too hard for a large number of players and although it wasn't well scaled and not well thought through to the end,
I generally liked the aditional challenge of having or "organising" enough spell fragments, CCs and/or RRs to upgrade or the need to plan a little which wonders comes next or in what sequence upgrading wonders would be sensible.

I understand that @InnoGames wants (and maybe has to) to invite more humans and elves to play the spire harder that way.
Could have worked but what I observe is that there seems to be only a little increase in generall spire-activity and those who didn't like the spire before the changes, like it even less after the changes and often felt or stil feel treated unfair.

To me it was and is no big problem to "organise" everything I need to upgrade my wonders without cheating.
But since I red that only about 5% of US-fellowships are "really" playing the spire, I became aware that this change could hit about 95% of the playerbase way too hard and again it seems to me like not well thought through.
Good in the beginning but not in the end.

I was very happy that in one of my smaller towns which plays in a fellowship with lots of endgamers I could take very good use of my runeshards for Enars Embassy and especially for the Thrones of the High Men.
Without the changes - I would have probably never have been able to use those in KP-Threads.

Plus I did never understand how such a beauty of an Ancient Wonder could deliver such a small income - very nice that Enars Embassy has its "raison d'être" now!

Spoiler

 

[Dhurrin]

That is exactly what I am thinking about this too.

But originally I came here to write down what I like about the Ancient Wonders-Changes.
Although it is maybe (stil) too hard for a large number of players and although it wasn't well scaled and not well thought through to the end,
I generally liked the aditional challenge of having or "organising" enough spell fragments, CCs and/or RRs to upgrade or the need to plan a little which wonders comes next or in what sequence upgrading wonders would be sensible.

I understand that @InnoGames wants (and maybe has to) to invite more humans and elves to play the spire harder that way.
Could have worked but what I observe is that there seems to be only a little increase in generall spire-activity and those who didn't like the spire before the changes, like it even less after the changes and often felt or stil feel treated unfair.

To me it was and is no big problem to "organise" everything I need to upgrade my wonders without cheating.
But since I red that only about 5% of US-fellowships are "really" playing the spire, I became aware that this change could hit about 95% of the playerbase way too hard and again it seems to me like not well thought through.
Good in the beginning but not in the end.

I was very happy that in one of my smaller towns which plays in a fellowship with lots of endgamers I could take very good use of my runeshards for Enars Embassy and especially for the Thrones of the High Men.
Without the changes - I would have probably never have been able to use those in KP-Threads.

Plus I did never understand how such a beauty of an Ancient Wonder could deliver such a small income - very nice that Enars Embassy has its "raison d'être" now!

Spoiler

View attachment 16966

I too have no issue with the game offering challenges, but those need to be balanced. Making the building and upping AWs so hard for all players, especially the smaller/newer ones will be a huge turn-off.
I know any FTP game basically needs to generate some kind of income, nothing is ever really free. So such games need to either generate income through adds, or entice their players to spend money on it. Generally you will always see some big spenders, then a much larger group that spends small amounts regularly, then a group that spends only occasionally and a huge group that plays for free.

Nothing wrong with that, but if you start chasing away a good part of your players the game will become less playable and less enjoyable for everyone.

In one of my earlier posts where I did a review of this change I made the suggestion that the use of frags, RRs and CCs for upgrading should be limited to the lvls 26 and up. One could make that 21 and up, but at least that way everyone can still get their AWs up to a reasonable level without having a ridiculous struggle for RRs (for many players the absolute bottleneck as there are only very limited ways to get those, many of which are out of reach for the majority of players) or having to spend the spellfrags which means they can't craft anymore.
It would be ok to have to struggle to get them to higher levels, that would be something to work for, but players should be able to enjoy at least a reasonable effect from their AWs.