Neighborly/Guild Help Interface Overhaul

[DeletedUser]

So I have been playing Elvenar for a little bit now, but I mostly play Forge of Empires.

One of the reasons I prefer Forge of Empires is that I am able to aid my neighbors and guild members without having to visit each person. I can, and there are benefits to visiting each one that don't apply to Elvenar's system. So aiding everyone is a long and cumbersome process with no benefit on my part for visiting each person.

So this is my suggestion and I get the feeling I'm the thousandth person to suggest this: ADD AN AID OPTION WHILE HOVERING OVER A NEIGHBOR/GUILD MEMBERS NAME. Perhaps even an aid button next to the name so no hovering is needed.

I don't think it would be too complicated to create an auto-aid code for the game. It would increase my willingness to play the game tenfold.

My desire to aid my guild members is pretty low when I have to pull up the guild screen, go to members, visit a member, aid, then pull up the guild screen, go to members, visit another member and aid. That's four actions for every guild member. Huge waste of time. It should instead be: pull up the guild screen, go to members, hover over member and select aid (or press the available "Aid" button) without exiting the member screen. Then the rest of the members' aids are just 1-2 actions.

 

[Jackluyt]

So I have been playing Elvenar for a little bit now, but I mostly play Forge of Empires.

One of the reasons I prefer Forge of Empires is that I am able to aid my neighbors and guild members without having to visit each person. I can, and there are benefits to visiting each one that don't apply to Elvenar's system. So aiding everyone is a long and cumbersome process with no benefit on my part for visiting each person.

So this is my suggestion and I get the feeling I'm the thousandth person to suggest this: ADD AN AID OPTION WHILE HOVERING OVER A NEIGHBOR/GUILD MEMBERS NAME. Perhaps even an aid button next to the name so no hovering is needed.

I don't think it would be too complicated to create an auto-aid code for the game. It would increase my willingness to play the game tenfold.

My desire to aid my guild members is pretty low when I have to pull up the guild screen, go to members, visit a member, aid, then pull up the guild screen, go to members, visit another member and aid. That's four actions for every guild member. Huge waste of time. It should instead be: pull up the guild screen, go to members, hover over member and select aid (or press the available "Aid" button) without exiting the member screen. Then the rest of the members' aids are just 1-2 actions.

A 'Visit Next Member' button would be first prize!
So you don't have to go back through all the members' screens.

You are so right!
If visiting one's neighbors were easier, many more of us would visit!
And the game would be sooooo much more enjoyable!

 

[DeletedUser]

I feel that the developers want us to actually visit our neighbors cities to help. I do like visiting my fellows to see what's going on in their city and to help, but a more efficient way to travel to each one would be nice. Even if there wasn't an "aid" button, we still could use a listing at the bottom with everyone's portraits to make visiting more efficient. As it is now, it is a lot of back and forth to get to each one, but I do like visiting the actual cities.

But I recently played on a laptop and can see how slow loading times can take for some players, so I'm sure a choice would be nice for some players.

 

[DeletedUser]

My opinion does differ a bit from yours. There are 3 different 'help' options you can choose from when visiting a fellow or a neighbor. If you do not actually go into the city you will not be able to choose which help to give or what building to click on. I rather like the system and all of the options we get here in elvenar.

You are only hurting yourself by not visiting everyone you are able too. Your rewards far outweigh the the cons in this matter. You receive gold (amount depending upon YOUR Main Hall level), Supplies (again depends on YOUR Main Hall level) and even get random goods once you build your Ancient Wonders. If you visit everyone available to visit every 24 hours the gains are worth it. Just my opinion.

 

[Jixel]

The problem with neighbourly help is that it doesn't scale well.

By that, I mean it's fine at the start of the game, and it's tolerable for a while after that, but eventually the cost (in time and clicking) makes it too much to bother with. A full round of help takes 15-20 minutes for one of my cities - and I have 4. Even just helping 4x fellowships is tedious enough and I sometimes skip a day - but my neighbours hardly ever see me, I don't have a full hour or more in my day just to spend clicking from city to city (two small children in the house, 'nuff said ).

And further in the game the rewards aren't that great - coins are mostly plentiful anyway (but see below), I get supplies back from maybe 5 cities in my neighbourhood (out of 150+), and the goods from the Crystal Lighthouse / Great Bell Spire (at level 6, 19/visit) aren't all that much compared to my production (3000-6000 of each good per 9 hour cycle).

Also - for 90% of my neighbour cities, there isn't any choice to be made - if I'm lucky, and their main hall isn't permanently upgrading, I click on that, otherwise ... there's nothing else to click, because they literally have 4 buildings and gave up on the game.

(Ironically, upgrading to Fairy residences on one of my cities has made me resort to doing neighbour rounds again, because between 3000k scouting costs and the upgrades, I'm broke again )

 

[Jackluyt]

The problem with neighbourly help is that it doesn't scale well.

By that, I mean it's fine at the start of the game, and it's tolerable for a while after that, but eventually the cost (in time and clicking) makes it too much to bother with. A full round of help takes 15-20 minutes for one of my cities - and I have 4. Even just helping 4x fellowships is tedious enough and I sometimes skip a day - but my neighbours hardly ever see me, I don't have a full hour or more in my day just to spend clicking from city to city (two small children in the house, 'nuff said ).

And further in the game the rewards aren't that great - coins are mostly plentiful anyway (but see below), I get supplies back from maybe 5 cities in my neighbourhood (out of 150+), and the goods from the Crystal Lighthouse / Great Bell Spire (at level 6, 19/visit) aren't all that much compared to my production (3000-6000 of each good per 9 hour cycle).

Also - for 90% of my neighbour cities, there isn't any choice to be made - if I'm lucky, and their main hall isn't permanently upgrading, I click on that, otherwise ... there's nothing else to click, because they literally have 4 buildings and gave up on the game.

(Ironically, upgrading to Fairy residences on one of my cities has made me resort to doing neighbour rounds again, because between 3000k scouting costs and the upgrades, I'm broke again )

This is a valid comment!
It took me half an hour to visit all my World Map people yesterday - I timed it!

It would be so awfully nice if there was a button that let you go straight to the Next player on the map without a lot of clickety-clickety-click. It would decrease my visiting time from 1/2 hour to about 15 minutes, I guess, because my WiFi is medium-slow...

 

[DeletedUser]

The problem with neighbourly help is that it doesn't scale well.

By that, I mean it's fine at the start of the game, and it's tolerable for a while after that, but eventually the cost (in time and clicking) makes it too much to bother with. A full round of help takes 15-20 minutes for one of my cities - and I have 4. Even just helping 4x fellowships is tedious enough and I sometimes skip a day - but my neighbours hardly ever see me, I don't have a full hour or more in my day just to spend clicking from city to city (two small children in the house, 'nuff said ).

And further in the game the rewards aren't that great - coins are mostly plentiful anyway (but see below), I get supplies back from maybe 5 cities in my neighbourhood (out of 150+), and the goods from the Crystal Lighthouse / Great Bell Spire (at level 6, 19/visit) aren't all that much compared to my production (3000-6000 of each good per 9 hour cycle).

Also - for 90% of my neighbour cities, there isn't any choice to be made - if I'm lucky, and their main hall isn't permanently upgrading, I click on that, otherwise ... there's nothing else to click, because they literally have 4 buildings and gave up on the game.

(Ironically, upgrading to Fairy residences on one of my cities has made me resort to doing neighbour rounds again, because between 3000k scouting costs and the upgrades, I'm broke again )

Thank you for explaining further. Your thoughts now do make more sense to me. I too am up there in scouted provances and yes it does take a very long time to complete these visits. I am just unsure that any solution I have read so far will actually solve the issues while keeping the integrity of the available help choices in mind.

 

[DeletedUser]

My opinion does differ a bit from yours. There are 3 different 'help' options you can choose from when visiting a fellow or a neighbor. If you do not actually go into the city you will not be able to choose which help to give or what building to click on. I rather like the system and all of the options we get here in elvenar.

You are only hurting yourself by not visiting everyone you are able too. Your rewards far outweigh the the cons in this matter. You receive gold (amount depending upon YOUR Main Hall level), Supplies (again depends on YOUR Main Hall level) and even get random goods once you build your Ancient Wonders. If you visit everyone available to visit every 24 hours the gains are worth it. Just my opinion.

Well if there was a FOE system (shown in image), you could visit everyone a lot more easily. I'm not saying my sole wish is to avoid visiting everyone, but having to go back and forth constantly to pick the visiting person from a list is very cumbersome. That list in the picture I attached is accessible while viewing another city, meaning I can select to visit the next person from the neighbor city screen WITHOUT HAVING TO GO BACK TO MY CITY. As far as programming goes, it is very lazy.

However, having an aid button allows the less committed players to easily apply support to their neighbors and guildmates, meaning that you are more likely to receive those 24 hour supplies when reciprocating aid. If I'm busy for the day and don't have time to visit each city, I could use the aid button to still keep the 24 hour aid exchange going. Otherwise my only other option is to break the streak and not aid the person.

 

[DeletedUser61]

having to go back and forth constantly to pick the visiting person from a list is very cumbersome.

Right now, when you're visting a city, if you click on the Global Rank you get a list that's focused on THAT player.

If clicking on the Fellowship Shield had a similar focus in the Fellowship Roster I would not at all mind clicking on the "next" person in the list, and especially so if the "hands" were replicated in the list so that I could land in their city with the buff icons already activated.

 

[DeletedUser2225]

I have created two suggestion entries to help streamline this portion of the game and allow the use of both hands while doing so, instead of the one-handed point and click. They would not require major code rewrite and could be added to the existing game code.

The game suggestion entries in this forum are as follows:
"Shortcut keys "G" and "F" to assist in Giving Neighborly Help"
https://us.forum.elvenar.com/index....d-f-to-assist-in-giving-neighborly-help.2156/
...and
"[URL='https://us.forum.elvenar.com/index.php?threads/shortcut-key-v-to-assist-in-giving-neighborly-help.2164/']Shortcut key "V" to assist in Giving Neighborly Help"[/URL]
https://us.forum.elvenar.com/index....y-v-to-assist-in-giving-neighborly-help.2164/

They are outlined as follows:

Shortcut key "V" to assist in Giving Neighborly Help

..would assign:

"V" - Visit Fellowship member's City (available from the Fellowship list/selected member)

..and the shortcut keys "G" and "F"

"G" - Give Neighborly Help (available if the "give help" hand is active)
"F" - Fellowship (available when the fellowship shield is visible to select the Fellowship list)


Having the keys "F", "G" and "V" assigned creates an easy to access shortcut key grouping to carry out giving neighborly help, not only for Fellowship members, but also for discovered neighbors on the World map. For world map neighbors you would use "W" and "G".

(These are shortcut key assigns for the existing game code and not major game code rewrite.)

I would think the game developers would strive to make this game platform the most enjoyable possible. Having this portion of the game being so point and click time intensive, I feel, makes players reluctant to carry out the "Give Neighborly Help" portion. Thus not allowing players to get the full effect and enjoyment of the game.