How to Make Fellowship Adventures More FUN

[Tauriel Dragonwood]

Game devs decreased the amount of quest givers to cut down on the amount of clicking we need to do but we're still clicking 12 times to get back to the same quest giver for the badge we’re working on. Here’s my suggestions to help make Fellowship Adventures less tedious, time-consuming and repetitious.

1. Stop alienating new players from the Fellowship Adventures. Remove the quest givers asking for Spells. It’s not fair to new players. Their Magic Academies do not produce all the spells yet, Wholesaler only trades 2 non-boosted goods and new players can only fight or negotiate in 3-4 encounters each day in a tournament. It's very difficult for new players to get both the spell and the goods the quest givers ask for.

2. Decrease the number of Badges needed to get past the waypoints. It’s getting ridiculous the amount of time our fellowship has to spend producing the goods, supplies and spells required for badges.

3. Why not insert a check box in the quest giver slots. We check the box if we are still working on that badge. This will cut down on the time spent clicking through all the quest givers to find the same one again.

Ex. A Farmers Delight Badge requires 5 Baskets of Groceries. You have 10 workshops producing Baskets of Groceries. When you collect from 5 of the workshops, you receive a Farmers Delight Badge. Before you can collect from the other 5 workshops, you need to keep clicking on the quest givers until you find the one who rewards a Farmers Delight Badge. Totally not necessary if we had a way to keep that quest giver displayed until we finish collecting the supplies from our 10 workshops.

 

[DeletedUser4508]

PLEASE implement a 'Treasury' to be used for FA. In another one of your games, Forge of Empires, each Guild has a Treasury. Only guild members can donate, and only authorized Guild Leaders can use the goods. We need that kind of Treasury for the items made for FA. Members can donate their completed items to the Treasury/Warehouse, and authorized Leaders can apply the items to the Waypoints. This would save in so many areas. Not all members report what they are working on or have in their inventory. This causes additional unneeded items to be made. Not every member can be online at the exact same time, for communication. Therefore, we don't always know what is available or what is needed.
When you add in having to cycle through 'givers' to pick up multiples of the same item, the 'fun' is being leeched out of the FA.
Please make it more fun, not more work.

 

[DeletedUser19210]

PLEASE implement a 'Treasury' to be used for FA. In another one of your games, Forge of Empires, each Guild has a Treasury. Only guild members can donate, and only authorized Guild Leaders can use the goods. We need that kind of Treasury for the items made for FA. Members can donate their completed items to the Treasury/Warehouse, and authorized Leaders can apply the items to the Waypoints. This would save in so many areas. Not all members report what they are working on or have in their inventory. This causes additional unneeded items to be made. Not every member can be online at the exact same time, for communication. Therefore, we don't always know what is available or what is needed.
When you add in having to cycle through 'givers' to pick up multiples of the same item, the 'fun' is being leeched out of the FA.
Please make it more fun, not more work.

Nice suggestion

 

[DeletedUser19210]

Game devs decreased the amount of quest givers to cut down on the amount of clicking we need to do but we're still clicking 12 times to get back to the same quest giver for the badge we’re working on. Here’s my suggestions to help make Fellowship Adventures less tedious, time-consuming and repetitious.

1. Stop alienating new players from the Fellowship Adventures. Remove the quest givers asking for Spells. It’s not fair to new players. Their Magic Academies do not produce all the spells yet, Wholesaler only trades 2 non-boosted goods and new players can only fight or negotiate in 3-4 encounters each day in a tournament. It's very difficult for new players to get both the spell and the goods the quest givers ask for.

2. Decrease the number of Badges needed to get past the waypoints. It’s getting ridiculous the amount of time our fellowship has to spend producing the goods, supplies and spells required for badges.

3. Why not insert a check box in the quest giver slots. We check the box if we are still working on that badge. This will cut down on the time spent clicking through all the quest givers to find the same one again.

Ex. A Farmers Delight Badge requires 5 Baskets of Groceries. You have 10 workshops producing Baskets of Groceries. When you collect from 5 of the workshops, you receive a Farmers Delight Badge. Before you can collect from the other 5 workshops, you need to keep clicking on the quest givers until you find the one who rewards a Farmers Delight Badge. Totally not necessary if we had a way to keep that quest giver displayed until we finish collecting the supplies from our 10 workshops.

This is done in other games?
Could (or Does) the treasury list the badges that are needed for the current challenge?

 

[SoggyShorts]

PLEASE implement a 'Treasury'

Unfortunately one of Inno's major sources of revenue from the FA is when a player spends diamonds to push through a waypoint rather than waiting for the player with ____ to come online. Adding a FS bank of badges would pretty much remove this revenue source.

Also out of all the challenges that the FA has, the fairest one is the need for coordinating with your FS.

 

[samidodamage]

I agree it's probably not realistic to expect Inno to reduce a revenue stream. But it would be nice if we could at least see what's already in inventory, even if it's not able to be used. You'd still have folks who would pay diamonds to push through. For me, it's more about making decisions about which productions to start. But that's probably getting closer to the suggestion of meaningful FA tracking tools in-game ...

 

[DeletedUser19303]

I am very appreciative of the Fellowship Adventure feature, as it gives our members a chance to really work together towards a common goal. I have two observations that I think would make the feature more enjoyable, and would increase participation:

Instead of a rotating set of badge offers, why not implement a selection popup screen with all of the badge options arranged on it? This could operate similarly to the production choice screens, allowing the player to choose the badge(s) they want to work on. Whenever a player wants to collect on multiples of a particular badge, an enormous amount of clicking is needed to rotate through the badge offers. Eliminate these clicks, and player participation (and retention) should increase. This would also make it simple to increase the number of chosen badges by allowing multiple selections, since players often work on 3 or more badges simultaneously.

Another simple adjustment that is often requested: Allow unused badges to remain in the player's inventory for the next Adventure. This seems trivial to me, since the player's database already keeps track of so many individual items. This change would increase participation also, as players would feel they "have a jump on" the next Adventure. As it stands, some players feel their unused badges, now worthless, were a waste of effort.

Best, James the Inconspicuous
ArchMage for Utopian Harmony

 

[DeletedUser3489]

The tedium of collecting FSA badges is unbearable for a significant part of the Elvenar community, as evidenced by the underwhelming level of participation and the numerous comments of frustration in the Forums. I've seen the Devs acknowledge this and I expect that there will be a fix someday but clearly not until after the HTML5 version of the game is up and stable. I can appreciate that, but it probably ain't gonna be anytime too soon.

However, if we're going to run FSA in the interim, I think we deserve a quick fix that at least partially resolves the ~ 30 clicks per badge ritual currently on offer (without requiring the Devs to completely recode the quest system in Flash). My suggestion is this:

It would be possible to collect multiples of the same badges simultaneously. For example, if you have 25 toolboxes then you dial-up the blacksmiths badge, collect the 25 toolboxes, and the computer adds up the number of collected toolboxes, divides by the number of toolboxes required per badge (in this case five), does a simple calculation (25 / 5 = 5) and allows you to collect 5 badges at once. Same can be done for collecting the T1 goods badges: collect 7 of the same duration planks & steel & marble productions and collect 7 of the appropriate badges without needing to cycle through all the quests 7 times.

Seems to me to be a significant improvement that is simple, logical, and it just can't be that darn hard to implement.

Please. Thank you.

Respectfully submitted,

-Ked

 

[DeletedUser2870]

I like the idea of a FS treasury, but agree with @SoggyShorts that it is seen as a source of revenue and thus unlikely to be changed.
However, that can be remedied by mechanisms that were used even in the first PBM-games (yes, I'm old enough to have played by mail).

One way would be to have both options open: a player can post the badges himself, or he can put them into the treasury, however that should require a fee of some sort. That can be gold, resources or perhaps a 2:1 ratio so one would have to put in 2 badges to have 1 appear in the treasury. I for instance ended this FSevent with -among others- 85 unused 3-hour factory badges because I couldn't be online when they were needed the most. Had I been able to put them in a treasury at a 2:1 ratio the FS could have used 42 of these badges.

But whatever path is chosen, something needs to be done, since I'm getting to the point where harvesting the badges when they are ready is causing me pain in my wrists from all the clicking and that's just not worth the trouble to me and I can't imagine I'm the only one.

 

[DeletedUser10030]

Clicking through all the quests is time consuming and in fact leads to Carpal tunnel syndrome . I have stopped playing FS Adventures till this can be fixed. It is only some time before some one sues you on this. So hopefully you can fix it. Have a drop down box and we click on what we want to select. It is not rocket science - you should be able to do it.

 

[DeletedUser10030]

I like the idea of a FS treasury, but agree with @SoggyShorts that it is seen as a source of revenue and thus unlikely to be changed.
However, that can be remedied by mechanisms that were used even in the first PBM-games (yes, I'm old enough to have played by mail).

One way would be to have both options open: a player can post the badges himself, or he can put them into the treasury, however that should require a fee of some sort. That can be gold, resources or perhaps a 2:1 ratio so one would have to put in 2 badges to have 1 appear in the treasury. I for instance ended this FSevent with -among others- 85 unused 3-hour factory badges because I couldn't be online when they were needed the most. Had I been able to put them in a treasury at a 2:1 ratio the FS could have used 42 of these badges.

But whatever path is chosen, something needs to be done, since I'm getting to the point where harvesting the badges when they are ready is causing me pain in my wrists from all the clicking and that's just not worth the trouble to me and I can't imagine I'm the only one.

 

[DeletedUser10030]

I like the idea of a FS treasury, but agree with @SoggyShorts that it is seen as a source of revenue and thus unlikely to be changed.
However, that can be remedied by mechanisms that were used even in the first PBM-games (yes, I'm old enough to have played by mail).

One way would be to have both options open: a player can post the badges himself, or he can put them into the treasury, however that should require a fee of some sort. That can be gold, resources or perhaps a 2:1 ratio so one would have to put in 2 badges to have 1 appear in the treasury. I for instance ended this FSevent with -among others- 85 unused 3-hour factory badges because I couldn't be online when they were needed the most. Had I been able to put them in a treasury at a 2:1 ratio the FS could have used 42 of these badges.

But whatever path is chosen, something needs to be done, since I'm getting to the point where harvesting the badges when they are ready is causing me pain in my wrists from all the clicking and that's just not worth the trouble to me and I can't imagine I'm the only one.

Clicking through all the quests is time consuming and in fact leads to Carpal tunnel syndrome .

 

[SoggyShorts]

It is only some time before some one sues you on this.

LoL

 

[DeletedUser19638]

I suggested to support that on the fulfillment of the quest that they have the confirming error message, telling us we got the award, reverse the counter by one so we get the same quest only when you fulfill it.

They said they'd take it under advisement.

 

[DeletedUser8946]

And of course, better prizes, but this has been mentioned before... I thought the Vallorian Valor was an excellent first prize, but the others weren't worth getting, and of course just the Instants as prizes were extremely underpowered and not motivating at all.

Beta's been at rest without an event for almost an ENTIRE WEEK. I'm tense, waiting for something (like a Fellowship Adventure) to happen...

 

[DeletedUser19818]

Good suggestions here, Inno please use something.

Ps. The current rewards are complete crap.

 

[DeletedUser8187]

My suggestion would be to make 1 path easy. The other two can be the same or more challenging. This way everyone can collect the chest prizes which are not that great or exciting. So getting them doesn't seem more work then they are worth. Make the other two paths more challenging/harder.

The money maker comes in the form of making the top 3 teams earning AWESOME prizes, and increasing the prizes for the top 10. Those are the guys who will be spending the money and in order to get the top 3 prizes you need to finish all paths on each stage/spend oodles of money. The rest of us can enjoy the sense of accomplishment and watch the big guys duke it out.

Yes I seen the arguments about not every event if for every level, as someone who lives in a neighbourhood of revolving neighbours or just abandoned cities wouldn't giving newer cities a better shot at these events keep them around. These game are suppose to be challenging and FUN.

 

[DeletedUser12171]

My suggestion would be to make 1 path easy. The other two can be the same or more challenging. This way everyone can collect the chest prizes which are not that great or exciting. So getting them doesn't seem more work then they are worth. Make the other two paths more challenging/harder.

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't this the case already? One path in each stage has lower overall requirements than the other two?

Do you mean that the easiest route is still not easy enough for the casual player? Or that the gradation between stages 1 - 3 is too steep?

 

[DeletedUser12171]

The money maker comes in the form of making the top 3 teams earning AWESOME prizes, and increasing the prizes for the top 10. Those are the guys who will be spending the money and in order to get the top 3 prizes you need to finish all paths on each stage/spend oodles of money.

It has been shown before, from the results of previous FAs, that neither FS ranking nor ability to spend money is a limiting factor to participating in the FA. FS ranking in the 100+ have beaten those ranked top 50, and mid- to mid-high FS have regularly placed within the reward tier. The current FA leader on US4, Wo+Men of Elvenar, have been leading from the start and had fully cleared stage 1 and 2 within the first 36 hours. They are ranked 58 on the server, their smallest guy is 20k+ points and largest 200k+. I don't know if they spent oodles of money, you'll have to ask them that, but I really don't think they fall into the category of "top FS" as you'd define it. So anyway, while "FAs are too hard for the general population" is a popular argument, I really don't believe that to be the case.

The argument that I do see some credibility in is that rewards do not commensurate with the level of effort. This was especially true in the beginning, but things have been improving, with buildings offered for those finishing among the top few that beat regular buildings by a clear mile.

Now, what I really think to be the reason why people don't like or want to play the FA is

1. Unwilling to make space or disrupt usual play for it
2. Unwillingness to make effort for it
3. Poor coordination within the FS leading to an overall frustration with progressing (e.g. stuck at certain waypoints etc)
4. No consensus to do it as an FS leading to some being frustrated with those unwilling to participate

There could be more reasons. I've heard the "money is the only way to win in this game" once too often, in all aspects and events of the game but really I don't believe it. A game wherein you can reach the endgame without spending a single cent (proven many times over by people like Soggy) does not come across as a "pay to win" to me. What it is, is a multiplayer game which means you gotta work together to hit the goals, and truth is probably that more often than not, people just don't do that well

 

[juniperknome]

my first alliance was an all world we had members in eastern Europe al across the world even Hong Kong nothing short of a alliance badge back can help. nobody could be online tighter. my second alliance is mostly all us so we can be together to use badges but that still does not mean all badges can be played when they are needed. there still is issues so not know what is in inventory and arguing on what we need to make