Make Events Great Again

[The Unbeliever]

We now have a very active yearly events calendar; Carnival, Phoenix/Spring, May/Fairy Queen, Sorcerer's Homecoming, Summer/Elvarian Games, Bears/Fall, Halloween & finally Winter Magic.
8 events total, yet for 5 of them, we do the same damn thing again, and again, and again - the boring as all gak 3 rotating chests. This has led to events events devolving into a tedious chore of just looking up charts, finding the most efficient 3-4 choices, and repeating them until your wrist breaks from constant clicking.

In order to spice things up and make events more challenging & diverse in their game play, thus keeping things fresh & engaging, I heartily propose that we demand the devs bring over the following event ports from FoE:
1. For the Carnival event, port over the St. Patrick's Day mini game.

Spoiler

[youtube]

**Note: this can be played one of two ways - minimal towns + opening up all 6 prize boxes to gain the missing artifacts, OR, for those who enjoy micro-management & hands-on efficiency, you can ignore the boxes for completing festivals and instead run through 11-12+ festivals for additional grand prizes.

Either option is readily doable to complete a full grand prize building without spending diamonds.


2. For the Elvarian Games event, add in the Player Cards & Tournament system from the Soccer Cup event.

Spoiler

[youtube]

**Note: it's possible to readily get into bronze league by always choosing the weakest opposing teams.
The Tournament mechanic is simply the 'Weapon Triangle' from Fire Emblem games, and success is achieved by always ensuring you use the right counter players. (usually just by going for 4-5x the best option - ie: vs. a team of Defender - Midfielder - Midfielder - Midfielder - Attacker, picking 5x Attackers will result in a larger win % because you have advantage vs. 3 opponents & are neutral vs. 1. Trying to match player-for-player will always result in lower win %'s due to ending up with too many counters.)


3. for the Bears/Fall event, port over the new Wildlife mini game

Spoiler

[youtube]

**Note: this event absolutely looked like it was going to be hell, but it ended up being insanely good fun! 25 moves is actually quite a lot, especially once you get the hang of the tactics involved to really make a killing.
We won so much stuff it wasn't event funny! It was actually very doable to achieve 1 full grand prize AND get at least 50% of the way towards a 2nd grand prize building without spending diamonds!


Adding in these various different mini games would really liven up events, and ensure that there's something for everyone, instead of the current dull click fest that most events sadly are...
These other mini games will *also* greatly reduce the 'sheer dumb luck' factor, especially in the league rewards, as better mini game strategy will lead to higher scores vs. just being a lucky git who wins 50-60% more 'free' event currency from random chests over the other guy.

 

[Iyapo1]

I heartily propose that we demand the devs bring over the following event ports from FoE:

If I wanted to play FOE I would play FOE.

 

[Kekune]

I do like mini games. The Halloween event last year is still my favorite. That was addictive. I'd be happy to see more variety along those lines.

 

[ajqtrz]

An interesting suggestion. And lyapo1 has responded in a reasonable manner. After all, if the two games become more and more alike, why play both? The answer is not in the game itself, but in the "skin" of the game which is what is actually the difference between FoE, Elvenar, and a lot of the other Inno games. To my knowledge they all use the same "engine" and that's by design.

Why this is so is because Inno is in the business of making money. First rule of capitalism: Money flows to where money grows". Second rule: "Money flows to where it grows fastest." After that all other rules (I exaggerate but it's got some truth to it) are correlaries.

Here's the explanation of why Inno will continue to port the core code of it's games from one to another, even as it changes the "look and feel -- the "skin" of the game.

The key thing is to understand cost distribution. That's the act of distributing the cost of development across a large enough customer base to get a reasonable return on investment. Let's say you have just one customer who provides a revenue of 1 million US dollars at a gross profit of $100,000 per year. If you wanted to develop a new product for that customer and it costs $1 million, you have a distribution of 10 -- meaning it will take you 10 years to recoup your investment, Given you could invest that 1 million in something else which gives you 5% annual return you'd not make the investment because, in the long run, you'd make more on not producing the new product.

However, if you had 100 clients who provide $100 million in revenues and 10 million in profit, and you made the product generic enough to be usable by all 100, your return on investment would be far, far shorter AND that means you'd invest the 1 million in development. The overhead of making the product more generic would add to the cost, maybe 35%, but even then you'd do it.

And that is how Inno looks at it, I'm pretty certain. They have quite a few games and the more the code in each game becomes inter-changeable with the other games the cheaper it is to add new features. In that scenario they let the "look and feel" distinguish the games from one another. It's like putting the same engine in a number of different model of cars...Detroit does it all the time and it works. Reusable and modular code is the standard of the industry and that means you will see more and more "ports" of features from one game to another.

So you will probably see your wish over time. "Porting" a thing from one game to another depends on the initial differences between the games and the longer any application is in the hands of a single company the more it is integrated into the companies portfolio and will take advantage of interchangeable and modular code.

At least that's how I see it.

AJ

 

[Soleil Nightbloom]

I do like mini games. The Halloween event last year is still my favorite. That was addictive. I'd be happy to see more variety along those lines.

@Kekune, I agree. I have been playing Elvenar for a year now and my very first event was Sorcerers Pilgrimage. So far, the best event in a year hands down has been The Misty Forest Halloween event. That event kept my interest, was fun and had one of the best evolve buildings in the game! I hope they can come out with more events like that and/ or improve on it to come out with other cool events in the future.

 

[Darielle]

Don't have anything to say about FOE because I've never played it, but I just want to mention that for some reason, Lyapo and Kekune, the thread won't allow me to like your posts. Strange how I can like some but not others.

 

[The Unbeliever]

If I wanted to play FOE I would play FOE.

Sooooo... I guess then because "they're FoE and I don't want to play that...", you'll stop using Set Buildings, Evolving Buildings, playing the Halloween event & playing the Spire?
Both games borrow heavily from each other, yet still stay within their given lanes. Regardless of what came from where first, FoE will always be the war-focused bloodbath & plundering game, and Elvenar will always remain the city-puzzle-building high fantasy & non-PvP game.

What I've really been growing to HATE about Elvenar vs. FoE however is just how utterly boring and monotonous events especially have become. It's almost always the exact same thing, with a couple of minor exceptions, only one of which is genuinely engaging. (Halloween event)
I'm not advocating that we get rid of the 3x rotating chests format at all, just that can we please not have it for 63% of our yearly events?!
Elvenar events have simply become "Malibu Stacy but now with a hat!" Why can't we borrow a few new things & re-skin them to fit, so we can have a Ninja Turtle, G.I Joe & Transformer toys alongside the 3 different Malibu Stacys?

Compare our current lackluster, boring mini game line-up to the event mini game spread in FoE:
- Forge Bowl = 3 rotating chests (football players), but with added 'Coaches' mechanic for League manipulation
- St. Patrick's Day = 'festival towns'
- Spring = 3 rotating chests (lately, origami animals hopping onto lily pads across a pond)
- Archaeology = 'Misty Forest' game (but w/exploring a mysterious tomb for an Indiana Jones vibe, complete with Golden Idols!)
- Soccer Cup = 3 rotating chests (Soccer players), AND, Tournament mechanic (w/League results based 100% on just Tournament mini game)
- Wildlife = 'if Toonblast & Candycrush had a baby it's be this game'
- Summer = ...will never work in Elvenar due to how neighbourhoods are so radically different - just ignore this one!
- Fall = 3 rotating chests (baking recipes) but with unique 5 event currencies to balance out
- Halloween = Misty Forest mini game (...but a haunted circus tent instead of a creepy forest!)
- Winter = Shuffleboard, but holy hell does FoE's suck vs. the much better Elvenar one!!

So that's;
1x '3 rotating chest'
3x '3 rotating options' but with added mechanics that bring more nuance to the mini games & especially the League aspects, rewarding better strategy vs. just being stupidly lucky on winning more bonus currencies than the other guy!!
(...honestly, isn't this whole "sheer dumb luck" gak the reason why we're so pee'ed off about Leagues!? We don't have that BS in FoE)
2x 'Misty Forest' styled games
1x Shuffleboard (but yeah, FoE's still sucks the big one - at least Elvenar has fixed it!)
AND, 3x entirely unique mini games. (St. Paddy's, Wildlife & Summer)

While the quest lines for every single event are almost entirely copy-pasta just like here, the fact that there is a much better spread of differing mini games means that events are kept fresh & entertaining. Also, if a certain style of event isn't your favourite, not only will you likely only have to suffer it 2-3x/year at most, but there's almost certainly at least 2-3+ completely different formats that you might find much more entertaining!

I've honestly never understood how more options & a bigger sandbox to let players pick and choose from is a bad idea?

 

[Iyapo1]

On of my favorite events was the Fairy Queens Garden. I appreciate the story and the art more than the underlying mechanic. I like that Elvenar puts so much into other aspects of an event and do not mind that an underlying mechanic is being repeated. I have no interest in "demanding" that the devs copy FoE and bring it to Elvenar. I like Elvenar. And Malibu Stacy needs an entire wardrobe.

 

[Alram]

I think Inno is clearly doing something right. Some people like Elvenar and some people like FOE. Some are fans of both.

 

[Talaedraiia]

I could care less about football and soccer and I HATE Candy Crush

 

[BrinDarby]

@The Unbeliever ,
Part of the problem as I see it is everything is known.... Other games use "Beta" to make sure
something works, but like for an event, doesn't release ahead the details... This makes the
excitement of it being new, @least something better than just .... ohh another chest event.
Yes its still another chest event, but @least you havent seen it before....

Yes Elvenar could use more variety, no I dont play FoE, nor should both be the same.
Last year right after AirTraders or right before there was a mini 3 day game here.....
I haven't seen one since, we could have more of those too.... I totally agree that if
we have only 3 formats.... chest/post office/fog , @least if there's 6 events, give us
2 of each... but not 4 chests and 1 each of the other 2.
To me, part of the monotony is so many boring FAs... Right now all they are is a way
to make an event harder, then gift you 2 artifacts after the fact, so you end up even.

 

[Aritra]

I could care less about football and soccer and I HATE Candy Crush

When not Elvenar, it's sudoku and nonograms for me

 

[Talaedraiia]

i also do sudoku but don’t know nonograms

 

[The Unbeliever]

@The Unbeliever ,
Part of the problem as I see it is everything is known.... Other games use "Beta" to make sure
something works, but like for an event, doesn't release ahead the details... This makes the
excitement of it being new, @least something better than just .... ohh another chest event.
Yes its still another chest event, but @least you havent seen it before....

Yes Elvenar could use more variety, no I dont play FoE, nor should both be the same.
Last year right after AirTraders or right before there was a mini 3 day game here.....
I haven't seen one since, we could have more of those too.... I totally agree that if
we have only 3 formats.... chest/post office/fog , @least if there's 6 events, give us
2 of each... but not 4 chests and 1 each of the other 2.
To me, part of the monotony is so many boring FAs... Right now all they are is a way
to make an event harder, then gift you 2 artifacts after the fact, so you end up even.

I honestly find the FA's at this point to be more engaging than the bog standard '3 rotating chest' events...
at least with the FA's, there's some level of communication & forward planning required. The events though? Just look up relevant chart and click lots and lots, until your wrist feels like it's about to break!

Dare I say it, watching a Make Beliefs game at this point is probably more entertaining!?

 

[ajqtrz]

When not Elvenar, it's sudoku and nonograms for me

Sudoku every day. Evil level because I'm a masochist. Hardly every get a very good score but I'm improving and that's good enough for me.

AJ

 

[Talaedraiia]

Sudoku every day. Evil level because I'm a masochist. Hardly every get a very good score but I'm improving and that's good enough for me.

AJ

I do expert level and my goal is to keep beating my highest score. I’m a masochist also