News from Beta - May Contain Spoilers!

[DeepTerminal]

I know this is very tentative data, but I made this chart using @MinMax Gamer 's data, only showing the enemy squad size ratio.
The black solid line and the dotted line are two ways to get 1620 points.
Colors are in comparison to current star system.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

@n00bslayer420 you typoed the 10-1, 9-2, etc diagonal. Those are 1.150, not 1.105.

 

[DeepTerminal]

@n00bslayer420 you typoed the 10-1, 9-2, etc diagonal. Those are 1.150, not 1.105.

thanks corrected

 

[Pheryll]

It is still sort of annoying that there is not a specific province where the tournament squad size equals our normal squad size, like with the old system.

The only way to do that is to base tournament squad size on your squad size, which they moved away from due to SS tech skipping.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

The only way to do that is to base tournament squad size on your squad size, which they moved away from due to SS tech skipping.

Yes, but it still bugs me. lol

 

[Risen Malchiah]

So what's the consensus so far on the beta forum itself?

 

[Kekune]

So what's the consensus so far on the beta forum itself?

Well... if tried to quickly sum up what people REALLY think, Xelenia would have to slap my hand. Let's just say it rhymes with "pit glow." Folks ain't happy.

Mid-chapter cities and casual players are apparently fine (my beta city is in this group) and should be able to feasibly hit 1600 IF they can get in 5-6 rounds. Bigger tourney-oriented cities will clearly not be able to sustain previous performance, by a long shot. Concerns are around the obvious limit to kp, PoP, etc. in upper tourney provinces, loss of flexibility to go either wide or deep for points, and the impact on up-and-coming fellowships who usually rely on a few hardcore players for their tourney points.

Edited to add: Marindor indicated they may take more than 2 weeks to assess and make changes, but wasn't specific about a timeline.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

So what's the consensus so far on the beta forum itself?

I don't see a consensus yet, but I think I see how it will go. Players who normally do the 2nd star of lots of provinces for the KP are upset. Players whose fellowships are unbalanced in getting points are upset. Many players are both of these. That 5k or 6k or 8k points from doing dozens of provinces will no longer be possible without very heavy losses, so those players that support their fellowships cannot any more. But despite other griping, it seems the changes will keep things about the same, or even benefit, most other players, though players who could do 1600 points in a 10-chest fellowship before will have to adjust which provinces they do, if they are not able to time things to do the 6th star. I honestly do not believe Inno will tweak it much because it seems to benefit the majority of players, while only hurting the power players. And as we have seen with other changes, Inno would rather find new paying customers than keep the old paying customers happy. And unfortunately this will probably get worse as more of the old power players either quit or stop spending money on the game.

Just to add, if a player can already do the 6th star, then that player will just have to adjust a little bit to the new system and be fine. Right now, it is all about the loss of KP from the 2nd star.

 

[DeepTerminal]

That 5k or 6k or 8k points from doing dozens of provinces will no longer be possible without very heavy losses, so those players that support their fellowships cannot any more.

This actually affects way more players than those hardcore players themselves. A lot of low- and mid-level players rely on getting carried in fellowships in order to earn RR and Blueprints. Now the high end players are not able to carry their FSs as much, many more people will no longer be getting as many RRs and blueprints.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

This actually affects way more players than those hardcore players themselves. A lot of low- and mid-level players rely on getting carried in fellowships in order to earn RR and Blueprints. Now the high end players are not able to carry their FSs as much, many more people will no longer be getting as many RRs and blueprints.

Which probably won't bother Inno, or get them to change it, because fewer RRs and blueprints means more diamonds spent on upgrading. I don't sit around waiting to get a blueprint if I want to upgrade a magic residence. I just spend the 300 diamonds, if I have them to spare. You can spend the same 300 diamonds per missing blueprint when you are crafting RRs in the MA, though I have never done that before.

 

[Lelanya]

Folks I have another matter. There is a poll on Beta Forum's "Ideas and Suggestions", to allow mages to lock strategic waypoints in Fellowship Adventures. You have until late Sunday in the US Time Zones, to vote on this, if you have a Beta Forum account. Please contribute if you feel strongly about this.

 

[Risen Malchiah]

Concerns are around the obvious limit to kp, PoP, etc. in upper tourney provinces, loss of flexibility to go either wide or deep for points, and the impact on up-and-coming fellowships who usually rely on a few hardcore players for their tourney points.

Right now, it is all about the loss of KP from the 2nd star.

Those are my concerns as well. For me, it's not just the KP I lose from round 2, but the KP I lose from round 5, and my ability to help my fellowships get 10 chests. My 8k-13k won't be possible to help carry the fellowship. Instead of the potential 9 extra chests we could get, I'm now worried we might not even make the 10 we've been getting for a long time.

Games that remove core features or rewards that players have grown accustomed to for years don't last very long.

 

[Mykan]

^This

There are a lot of things with the changes that will be impacted. With a mass loss of KP it will be incredibly hard to impossible for newer towns to "catch-up" to the bigger ones now in terms of wonder levelling. Drop the amount of KP they can earn by 30-50% (or whatever it will turn out to be) and those with lots of wonders will be at an advantage that is incredibly hard to bridge.

That loss of KP is also going to have a big impact in the later chapters where the KP in the tech tree goes crazy. In earlier chapters you spend time waiting on resources to unlock a tech, it was not uncommon to spend time in ch 16 waiting on kp to unlock the techs. The good news is, less chance of tech lock

 

[mikeledo]

My understanding from reading the Beta forum is that the best city will be one that builds up their AWs, moving slowly through the tech tree. The higher the AWs the better, and they also said they don't want to encourage push accounts. The overall difficulty will remain the same with there being some tweaking on unique cases of the game being overly superhard. Going beyond 15 provinces will most likely not be worth it.

 

[Kekune]

they also said they don't want to encourage push accounts.

It seems that severely cutting legitimate access to kp is the wrong way to go about this.

 

[mikeledo]

They recognize the irony in their statement.

 

[Pheryll]

That loss of KP is also going to have a big impact in the later chapters where the KP in the tech tree goes crazy.

From what Beta is looking at chapter 17 will not be any better. How long will the wait be for chapter 18? Is there another method that KP will be injected so that enough players will be able to trade T7 goods when chapter 18 is released?

 

[mikeledo]

My understanding is that INNO will delay the release of the chapter until there are enough players to make it work. At least that is what I am lead to believe. I think the way to get around some of the difficulty is through Dwarven armors etc. and instants. Instead of building factories build event buildings that give goods.

 

[Pheryll]

My understanding is that INNO will delay the release of the chapter until there are enough players to make it work.

And how long will the delay be? That is the question. For chapters 15-17 no new trading features were introduced, so no delay was needed. Chapter 18 is a whole different story.

 

[SoulsSilhouette]

My understanding from reading the Beta forum is that the best city will be one that builds up their AWs, moving slowly through the tech tree. The higher the AWs the better, and they also said they don't want to encourage push accounts. The overall difficulty will remain the same with there being some tweaking on unique cases of the game being overly superhard. Going beyond 15 provinces will most likely not be worth it.

@mikeledo From what I understood from the video and all the comments is that raising your AW level is going to be detrimental to the fighting calculations. If you have expansions, beyond the tech tree requirement and/or premiums, it will also have a negative impact. So which is it? Because there were many comments relating to the added difficulty from having leveled AW's.

Push accounts are something that they should have a computer program to find. Not really that hard to identify. The account is in the same fellowship. The account will donate heavily to another account almost exclusively. And in some cases, will be set up to be a push account for the FA. Discouraging is not the same as eliminating. Alt accounts are all over the place and people OPENLY talk about them in forums and in chat.