News from Beta - May Contain Spoilers!

[Yogi Dave]

@Turtle2045II, thanks for pointing this out. I does look interesting and it will cause us to make adjustments in our tourney strategy as we've done before. I strongly suspect there will be adjustments in beta before coming to live, so it won't be coming in just 2 weeks or so. It's not yet time for us to panic. It's time for beta players to panic. The discussion thread sounds like the pundits over there are doing a good job of pointing out potential problems with the new tourney style.

Overall, I like that they are changing things. Gives us new things to learn how best to deal with and new things to complain about. Should be fun.

 

[DeletedUser19458]

I'm now in chapter 16, and for the longest time I've been looking forward to getting to end game so I can just camp out and play tournies. I'm in a 'normal' FS where once a cycle, maybe twice, we hit 10 chests. These changes as proposed sound like they are going to penalize me for pushing to advance my city to the end, and resulting in less individual rewards for a tournament (or in other words, much more cost & effort to maintain same level of rewards).

Tournaments and their strategy are about 75% enjoyment I get from this game ... if that's taken away, as these proposed changes appear to be doing, I can't see myself hanging around this game after I complete chapter 16; there won't be anything keeping me attached.

 

[rvtdragon1]

So, we now have two spires with different rewards?

If optional SS techs are no longer considered in the formula for tourny should we go back, rebuild the quest race settlements, make the necessary goods, and do all of those upgrades that we passed on? (And, no, I do not have the goods left over to do this.) This will be really difficult with 15 & 16 as you need hundreds of thousands of Orcs to do those SS techs.

 

[Deborah M]

I watched it again. Are they seriously going to penalize people like me who spent a ton of $$ and have all the premium expansions. So they are actually going to make weekly game play worse because I spent $$ on their game? How can they be serious about making it detrimental to buy expansions? Those are very expensive expansions at this point so... ??????

 

[DeletedUser19458]

So in summary (nothing against @Jackluyt on this reply, more a reply in general to Inno):

Tournaments remain fair, regardless of progress. You've played this game and put in your dues? Too bad, your effort is meaningless.
* One fight per province not 4 to make the encounters easier and less repetitive Appreciated change; However, a battle misstep is now 4x as costly.
* Five enemy in all fights to make squad comparison easier So less thinking and less strategy. Is this a strategy game or not?
* A variety of factors will influence difficulty of fights and catering - not just squad size. Costs will be based on a series of progression factors, which involve city development and researches in general. Scary. We've seen the Spire calc now, that does not give me confidence that I will not be penalized for improving my city.
* Changes to the types of goods needed to Cater to prevent weekly shortages of one particular Goods type So less thinking and less strategy. Is a goods shortage even a thing? I've never seen it in 2+ years. Balance your FS = strategy.
* Difficulty of Provinces will increase the deeper you go and also from round to round. Nerf of individual rewards.
* 9 extra tough bonus chests - mainly for the top fellowships, with KP Instants and RR Spells Sure. No significant downside, unless Inno thinks this offsets increased difficulty. But what % of players will reap these rewards? 1%? 10%? Not me, for sure.
* Still to come - Boosters or Diamonds can be used to skip the cool-down time direct from the Tournament Window. Sure. Also no significant downside.

 

[Deleted User - 1178646]

I watched it again. Are they seriously going to penalize people like me who spent a ton of $$ and have all the premium expansions. So they are actually going to make weekly game play worse because I spent $$ on their game? How can they be serious about making it detrimental to buy expansions? Those are very expensive expansions at this point so... ??????

Yup, thats why I even consider quitting if this comes to live, how much fun is it if I get a penalty for every premium expansion I bought, and for every wonder level I worked my ass off to level up either using tournament or spendings hours and hours and hours searching for wonders I can invest in with a profit.
5 years of work in optimising for the tournaments and it's all thrown down the windown without the opportunity to compensate or fix it.

They claim they have balanced it well so you get less penalised than you get a profit.

But please explain to me how any levels of for example the spire library will help me in any way in the tournamnts or spire??
Could anyone explain this to me how that is even possible?

Therefore I believe that this formula will be at least as flawed as the spire one, and as a result most likely will make it impossible for me to keep playing and having fun.

 

[Deleted User - 4646370]

The change in goods asked for catering are meant to fix goods imbalance issues, but I'm worried it'd have the reverse effect. Currently, we're quite guaranteed to be able to trade our boosted good at good rates every third week (although I've already seen excess scrolls during a scrolls tournament). Now this will not be the case anymore.

 

[Deleted User - 1178646]

The change in goods asked for catering are meant to fix goods imbalance issues, but I'm worried it'd have the reverse effect. Currently, we're quite guaranteed to be able to trade our boosted good at good rates every third week (although I've already seen excess scrolls during a scrolls tournament). Now this will not be the case anymore.

Well they are even going to ask for mana now, how are you supposed to cater during the mana heavy chapters, how are you supposed to cater when a main hall upgrade or wonder upgrade asks for millions of mana?

Just like spiritual goods they should have stayed away from, all decaying goods.
And now yours coins compete between both the spire and the tournaments.

 

[AtaguS]

The change in goods asked for catering are meant to fix goods imbalance issues, but I'm worried it'd have the reverse effect. Currently, we're quite guaranteed to be able to trade our boosted good at good rates every third week (although I've already seen excess scrolls during a scrolls tournament). Now this will not be the case anymore.

Exactly. I used to look forward to the scroll tournaments as a chance to dump my scrolls but that hasn't been the case for a while. Now....if they want to make catering heavy on scrolls in every tournament week after week...maaaaaybe scrolls boosted players will start to play on a level field again? Doubt that's the plan though.

 

[kctanzen]

-- Difficulty scaling based on expansions / wonder levels is not pleasant and seems ... backwards thinking to penalize players who have spent time and likely money to gain those expansions and wonder levels.

-- If the exact same amount of troops is needed for the single battle versus 4 encounters per province, that is a double edged issue. Less time due to fewer encounters yet even greater need to get the correct mix of troops just right and if the RNG for both the damage output and terrain map is not in your favor, this could lead to a potentially catastrophic loss of troops in one fell swoop .. aka most spire battles now.

-- Randomizing mix of troops and goods instead of a fairly predictable assortment of enemy troop types and concentration of goods for a particular tourney is HORRIFIC.
=== Takes away a lot of the strategic planning, training of troop types, and battle buff building placement for a given week.
** Special note -- this also greatly penalizes newer players who were unable to get a fully evolved Fire Phoenix, since that is an all around boost.

-- A player who has been in the game for a couple of years or more *should have* better performance than someone who began playing 6 months ago (unless that 6 month player has spent a lot of money on diamonds to improve their city .. but see the first point made for that downside).

-- Keeping the province difficulty as is through number 20 (currently where our squad size is equal to enemy squad size) and then changing from there would be a much less painful approach and still move towards more balanced than the matrix I saw in the video presentation.

-- I don't have the time to start / play a Beta city to see how these changes will actually work -- but based on the information given in the video and past experiences a la Spire and the excellent analysis of the math provided by MinMax of that new feature, I am not at all hopeful for a generally positive outcome of these changes.

 

[Deleted User - 4646370]

Well they are even going to ask for mana now, how are you supposed to cater during the mana heavy chapters, how are you supposed to cater when a main hall upgrade or wonder upgrade asks for millions of mana?

Just like spiritual goods they should have stayed away from, all decaying goods.
And now yours coins compete between both the spire and the tournaments.

Agreed. I'd be okay (even though it's not ideal) with mana in tournaments if it were restricted to chapter 14+, once you are after the mana heavy chapters and you've had the time to level Dragon Abbey. But asking for mana in chapter 10-11 is terrible.

 

[Pheryll]

If the chart lines up with what they mentioned in the Beta announcement then the following formula is at play:

Old system:
Enemy strength: 85% SS for 1 star, +15% for each additional star

New system:
Enemy strength: 60% NewSS for 1 star of first tournament province, +5% for each additional star and for each increase in province number.

 

[The Unbeliever]

At this point I think it's pretty clear that the lunatics have taken control of the games dev, and now the inmates are burning down the asylum.

These changes are idiotic to say the least, and will simply help to further destroy this once great game...
All they're doing is helping to further divide the player base into the tiny fraction of whales who will just keep blindly spending for the sake of it & maybe stroking their egos, while the rest of us end up with an unplayable mess once you develop far enough and hit an impossible to scale difficulty fortress!

Most laughable of all to me for example is the farce that's:
1. AW levels will now hyper inflate your tournament difficulty.

2. After 2+ years of asking for a handful more levels on our capped AW's, INNO gives us 5 more levels, but now half the time leveling up adds 0 bonus, and will simply make your game play way harder instead!

Stupid for the Stupid God! Random for the RanDUMB Throne!!


I'm just about through with this dumpster fire of a game honestly... at least FoE still has GOOD events, worthwhile prizes, Guild Expedition, Battlegrounds & OP AW's that aren't tech-locked by chapter.
...oh, and battle system that favours smart, intelligent, TACTICAL PLAY vs. the drooling idiot fest Elvenar shoves at us.

Honestly, the one and ONLY reason I still even stick around is because of my fellowship in my K-world city. (go Derps!)

 

[DeepTerminal]

if having premium expansion is going to penalize the player even in tournaments, then i wont spend any more money on this game ever.

 

[tincture]

Players on mobile will be punished for more Spire-style battles that cant be defeated on auto-fight.

 

[T6583]

I definitely have some concerns about some of the changes. Yeah less clicks is nicer but at the same point I'm not really thrilled with the changes in general. Once again it feels like veteran players and players who've spent real money on the game are being punished. I also don't see how this would make it easier for new players if everything is going to be randomized with goods and troops. Where's the stragegy in that? I'm gonna try and take a wait and see approach. I'll be following the Beta thread on this. I may even start a beta city just to learn about this more and provide feedback.

 

[Deleted User - 1178646]

I definitely have some concerns about some of the changes. Yeah less clicks is nicer but at the same point I'm not really thrilled with the changes in general. Once again it feels like veteran players and players who've spent real money on the game are being punished. I also don't see how this would make it easier for new players if everything is going to be randomized with goods and troops. Where's the stragegy in that? I'm gonna try and take a wait and see approach. I'll be following the Beta thread on this. I may even start a beta city just to learn about this more and provide feedback.

How much feedback could you give in a chapter 1-2 city?
How much of it could you see and experience?

maybe this is why they are asking people to make a beta city so they can slam those not realistic vieuws fropm 2 week old city at the critics of this proposal.

Everything that is an issue with this proposal you will not find in a brand new town. only when you spend time and/or money on it, and be more advanced will these issues surface.

 

[Risen Malchiah]

As someone who does 30-40 provinces for 5-6 rounds every week, some of these changes will drastically impact my interest in maintaining that level of gameplay if I start to hit an impenetrable wall of difficulty just to keep doing what I currently can. What incentive will I have? The 9 extra fellowship chests offering 10 KP each? That's nothing compared to what I currently earn individually.

 

[T6583]

@CrazyWizard more on how the mechanics of how it work with the troop selections and enemy troops, how random is it, how similar it is to the spire, and how the difficulty factor advances from providence to provience and star to star. I'm looking at it as a learning experience and to hopefully provide feedback to my FS on what they can expect. I'm fully aware that the larger issues that I'll experience in my Live cities will not be present in any Beta city I start. I can still provide feedback on it from a new city's perspective. Plus I've been debating starting a Beta city and this just might give me a kick in the pants to actually do it.

 

[Deleted User - 1178646]

@CrazyWizard more on how the mechanics of how it work with the troop selections and enemy troops, how random is it, how similar it is to the spire, and how the difficulty factor advances from providence to provience and star to star. I'm looking at it as a learning experience and to hopefully provide feedback to my FS on what they can expect. I'm fully aware that the larger issues that I'll experience in my Live cities will not be present in any Beta city I start. I can still provide feedback on it from a new city's perspective. Plus I've been debating starting a Beta city and this just might give me a kick in the pants to actually do it.

According to Dony from the beta forum, a tournament junkie and someone who obviously seems to have access to "internal" information it's very similar to the spire, no longer can you predict your opponent. His main comment was your result will depend how lucky / unlucky you are how often you encounter the mistwalker.

I can't verify this as I havent seen this myself yet just like many other players havent seen it as it's not yet active on beta.