[Archived 02/2020] News from Beta

[Risen Malchiah]

On the plus side, this might persuade people to participate more in Tournaments, to eventually get 10 Chest and be eligible of upgrading Event Buildings. Sadly.. I don't see it happening in my FS and many others

You have an impressively high tournament average and I know you're practically the only one in your FS that does them every week. You deserve a fellowship that appreciates your commitment. Hit me up in-game on Felyndral.

Wanted to add, this might also make people start spending $ or more $

That's obviously Inno's ultimate goal and I can appreciate that for what it is. If they didn't make money, the game wouldn't exist. But I'm not sure nerfing existing buildings would accomplish this optimally. Players who are already inclined to purchase diamonds would no doubt jump at the chance to upgrade event buildings immediately, so that's good for Inno. But for those who are on the fence, rather than taking the plunge to upgrade the buildings, they might feel cheated that in some cases, they now have to buy something to upgrade their building back to what it previously was. (For some older event buildings, even an upgrade won't bring it back to it's old value.)

 

[Pheryll]

Even before this change, my recommendation to players in chapter 8 has been to spend all event currency on instants and military temp buildings because of what I see as unbalanced rewards, even though those prizes aren't exactly "fun". This nerf will certainly do nothing to change my advice.

My spending of event currency during orcs was on traveling merchants III. I had a fairly low score going through orcs due to savings in pop and culture for not fully upgrading my tier 3 manufactories beyond level 16, and was able to devote a decent amount of space to 50 mushroom farms and 4 rally points. I might well have overdone the guest race production, but my point is you do not have to use a whole lot of pop/culture to go through orcs. Cutting back or going through with a low score, can often get you through the chapter much quicker than taking all upgrades available.

 

[Deborah M]

My prediction: we finally get this awesome feature we have been asking for, but first, instead of being cause for joyous celebration, the forums are flooded with players who suddenly have negative population.

First, Thank you for the list! What to do? I am so upset my unicorns are going to lose.pop & culture Just kidding! Building a not magic house anyway so I have pop to build baby buildings for next FA so I'll see how it works out. I am really glad I don't still have a bunch of gardens though. That would have really hurt when I did. The good news for me is that my Valentine's bridge is going up in culture since that is one of my must keep

I'm expecting quite an uproar when the balancing rolls out! Since the upgrade function is something a whole lot of people have harped on for so long I just hope people realize this is simply going to be give and take. In the end I do believe there is going to be a whole lot of "But I wanted a handout" even if they are happy that the devs are giving them something on the long term wish list.

 

[Ashrem]

I'm expecting quite an uproar when the balancing rolls out! Since the upgrade function is something a whole lot of people have harped on for so long I just hope people realize this is simply going to be give and take. In the end I do believe there is going to be a whole lot of "But I wanted a handout" even if they are happy that the devs are giving them something on the long term wish list.

That seems like a somewhat unpleasant assessment of your fellow players.

There are a couple of problems. The stick part of this particular carrot-and-stick is being delivered first, rather than at the same time as, or after, the carrot, and also with no actual indications (let alone firms ones) of the plan for when the carrot will arrive. Those combine to mean people who can't afford to wait indefinitely will have to tear-down these buildings, even if they were never one of those interested in an upgrade.

As with almost everything they do, the Elvenar team keeps more information closer to the chest than pretty much any other development group out there. this denies players the ability to plan accurately for the future and leads to bad feelings.

There are a number of things that might have been done to make this more smooth.

1. Providing the details (of both carrot and stick) ahead of time, so players could make meaningful decisions about going forward and have time to implement those decisions before the choice is removed.
2. Deploying the upgrades and the downgrades at the same time, so people could immediately make a decision on whether to invest in upgrades or tear down buildings and replace them
3. Deploying the ability to upgrade, with the upgraded buildings having a minuscule change in their definition files, so that upgrading put them onto the new number plans while those not upgraded stayed on the old number plans.
4. Deploying the upgrades first, with a clear warning that the downgrades would follow, and details of how that would work, so people could decide whether to upgrade or tear down and replace before the downgrades hit and restricted their options.

Any of those would have given players some agency in deciding how to go forward, instead of the current plan, which appears to consist of jumping out from behind the wall and hitting them with the stick then letting them decide whether to wait to see what the carrot looks like in a few weeks.

 

[SoggyShorts]

Cutting back or going through with a low score, can often get you through the chapter much quicker than taking all upgrades available.

True, and I had under 80K when I did it, but I had 10 fairy level winter stars which weren't quite as good as an orc Father treeCC. Each winter star gave 1,000 pop(111/sq) vs an orc res at 900(66/sq)
Basically each winter star gave me room for another farm, which was significant.
http://www.elvenarchitect.com/city/planner/ac4c20e90214436aa19a6fdaa7e1bbc2/ (ignore the levels of the orc stuff, this was back before importing)

I just hope people realize this is simply going to be give and take. In the end I do believe there is going to be a whole lot of "But I wanted a handout" even if they are happy that the devs are giving them something on the long term wish list.

Yeah It's just how they are doing the give and take that seems off to me. My level 11 Father tree CC is gaining 300 pop, and the orc one is losing it.
Technically that is "balance", but it feels more like a store jacking prices by 50% so that they can have a 30% off sale.
I would be much more optimistic about how this will be received if inno did not give me 300 pop and did not drop other players into the red.

As @Ashrem pointed out, it's not "give and take" , it's "take, and then some undefined amount of time later in an unclear way, give"

 

[Deborah M]

@SoggyShorts I completely agree. I don't think it is a very wise move to not do the give & take at the same time. I cannot imagine this take & give later is going to go well.

That seems like a somewhat unpleasant assessment of your fellow players.

I know I just hate when Inno does something that really ticks people off. I really do believe there are a whole lot of players who are going to flip out if they lose a bunch of pop & culture even if they harped on getting a way to replace or use blueprints for these upgrades. I really hope I'm pleasantly surprised! I am also still of the opinion that there will be a lot who wanted Inno to make this change but without having to give up anything. While I understand why the devs have to line up the buildings to give players what they have wanted for a long time, I doubt for 1 minute anybody realized this would be a necessary step to do so.

 

[DeletedUser]

Even for the community based building I think chapter 8 got the fewest votes (can't seem to find the poll ATM)

Got it:

 

[SoggyShorts]

. What I can share right now, is that based on your feedback and the data we see, we are indeed currently investigating solutions for the drop in population. We expect to have more details on that next week.

Yay!

 

[The Unbeliever]

I'll just be sitting here with my bowl of popcorn & waiting for the inevitable flood of angry posts and non-stop whining.

While it may not be even a halfway decent way of rolling things out, it *IS* nice to see that Inno actually cares about the overall level of balance in the game...
If people really want to play a horrifically busted-as-bat-gak game, FoE exists... You can happily enjoy sitting in Ch.3-4 with massively OP great buildings, millions of pts in your player score, while daily plundering & pillaging your defenseless neighbours.

 

[Ashrem]

I am also still of the opinion that there will be a lot who wanted Inno to make this change but without having to give up anything.

I think an unbiased look at what's happening is that the theoretical ability to upgrade buildings has zero to do with the reductions. I'm highly-confident that is a smokescreen from the developers to cover their own mistakes and an attempt to deflect anger over a necessary rebalancing. They offered event buildings in the past that were too powerful, so they had to stop giving those buildings out in any significant quantity (Charming trees, winter and glossy gardens, etc.). That represents a waste for them on two fronts:

1) They have paid for that artwork already, and no longer using it is lost investment.
2) As long as a single player keeps one of those buildings in their city, that artwork has to be sent out to (at the very least) any player who might visit them, taking up room in the files and bandwidth for which they pay.

As such, it is in their best interests to make those buildings usable again for future events, which means reducing their affect so they are no longer over-powered. That was almost guaranteed financially required regardless of any ability to upgrade the buildings. Upgrades are nothing more than (I'm sure they hoped) a more palatable excuse for players than their profits. If you look at it impartially, there is no reason why upgrading the buildings inherently required them to be less powerful, unless they were too powerful to start.

 

[Deborah M]

@Ashrem Yeah, I'm guessing you are right. Smoke & mirrors I also realized after thinking about it a bit more that this is plainly wrong for all of the players who spent $ on the events these came from so they could get those buildings. I know it ticked me off when I had to sell off some event buildings I really liked and had spent $ while the event was running so there are going to be a bunch of players who may feel like they are being stolen from. I relieved by the quote Soggy posted above since that may make the hit not as bad.

 

[kctanzen]

If I reviewed the list Soggy provided and my current city buildings correctly, I will lose 182 population (didn't count up the culture).
Assumption being the existing buildings convert to current chapter without any additional [input] effort from me AND they don't need road connections unless they already needed them.

This probably stems from my being in the hardest hit chapter (as indicated by Pherryl) of the dreaded orcs and goblins.

I won't drop into negative population with my current build - and several of my existing constructions are already on the tear out list as needed for upgrades elsewhere - so I guess this is just a part of the cost of doing business.

I'm *still* not enamored of post implementation changes in a live environment, however.

 

[Pheryll]

As such, it is in their best interests to make those buildings usable again for future events, which means reducing their affect so they are no longer over-powered. That was almost guaranteed financially required regardless of any ability to upgrade the buildings. Upgrades are nothing more than (I'm sure they hoped) a more palatable excuse for players than their profits. If you look at it impartially, there is no reason why upgrading the buildings inherently required them to be less powerful, unless they were too powerful to start.

If they are pursuing the multi-upgrade approach, not only upgrading to chapter but also to a higher tier, they could have given the legacy buildings a tier 2 or whatever standing for those that still had them. Then they could offer only tier one in events, and it would be on the players to upgrade those to tier 2 to compete.

 

[SoggyShorts]

Assumption being the existing buildings convert to current chapter without any additional input from me

I don't see any evidence that such is the plan....

 

[Ashrem]

I don't see any evidence that such is the plan....

Quiet, you. There's no downside to acting like it's a done deal complete with righteous indignation if we're wrong.....

 

[kctanzen]

I don't see any evidence that such is the plan....

I realized after reading your response that a better, more contextual word for what I was trying to get at was effort, not input, from me -- meaning that the change would be taking place without additional steps by the player.
Didn't mean to imply that any feedback about the change would have any bearing!

 

[dikke ikke]

if the elvenarchtiect list is correct then i will not loose pop nor culture on my herd of rainbow unicorns and also not on my 3 remaining glossy gardens. But on my 8 father threes of candy cane I will lose for each one 1490 culture and win 300 pop. Winning in total 2400 pop I can handle but loosing almost 12000 culture, I can not recuperate that with paving streets only

 

[SoggyShorts]

@kctanzen
If I understand correctly, your calculations were based on getting your buildings upgraded for free, and I don't think that will happen.
Then again, @Marindor did say they were looking at ways to fix the negative pop, and that is a possible solution for players who have completed a chapter since winning prizes, so there's hope.

 

[samidodamage]

Assumption being the existing buildings convert to current chapter without any additional [input] effort from me AND they don't need road connections unless they already needed them.

I don't see any evidence that such is the plan....

meaning that the change would be taking place without additional steps by the player.

I'm confused. kctanzen, do you mean that the buildings you have will change to current chapter values? I haven't seen this anywhere. Granted, the only bldgs I have that will be impacted are a couple cute unicorns and a rainbow flower cage, so haven't looked in-depth. But I presume my chapter 2 unicorn will remain a chapter 2 unicorn unless I either win one of these future enchantments in the 10th tournament chest or premium purchase one (with diamonds). I'm currently in chapter 9 Woodelves.

 

[juniperknome]

kind of mixed on this some good some bad mostly I will need to replace most of the culture. I am staring wood elves in about 2 weeks. mostly i have been going for the big culture not really interested in buildings with population and poor culture.