Perhaps better prizes for placement would help participation and enthusiasm?
The issue with adding better prizes in the ranking part is that a lot of players hate competing in a game that is significantly P2W.
Many of us dislike the idea of doing X work and getting a random prize based on what
other players from different fellowships do.
What if the requirements for each step of the way are random and hidden from view.
A lot of what players do like in the FA is the increased interaction and communication in fellowships. Randomness can make planning pretty hard.
How about that for an idea to get more people involved and enthusiastic? - something that would appeal to everyone
I agree that they need to add more guaranteed prizes for doing more than one path, but IMO the top prizes should still be there for simply completing one path per stage. Smaller, but still desirable prizes should be added for doing more.
You don't see it being in a top FA FS, but in other fellowships where the enthusiasm for FA varies between members, moving the goalposts would add a significant amount of FOMO and fracture fellowships that otherwise work very well together. Simply increasing prizes for full clears can't fix how appealing the FA is because the FA is often seen as disruptive to a city's progress by players. Especially for those who have not purchased significant premium expansions or are not at the end of the tech tree.
In an average fellowship, there are players at various stages and no one feels good about stalling progress to build a turd town and being tech locked instead of placing the portal and progressing.
What is wrong with rewarding those that want to excel in the FA?
The problem with rewarding just the top X fellowships is that any fellowship which isn't in the top X misses out through no fault of their own.
The FA is the only part of Elvenar where the simple system of
"If I do this, I get that" is broken. It's the only PvP in an otherwise rather co-operative game. (not including tournament ranking points which have zero impact on gameplay)
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Now, I know everything I posted above is just crapping on other ideas without offering my own which is both easy and lazy(two of my favorite things). To offset that a little here's my overhaul pitch:
- Remove the need for FS members to place a badge in order to get a prize. I would say that this is the top frustration that fellowships face, and that waiting for a player who has RL commitments to insert their one badge for this stage does not add anything positive to the game.
- Add small prizes to every single spot. Timers, KP, coin rains, and supply instants are the simplest as they have unlimited combinations, but for more challenging spots(waypoints?) a universal artifact fragment would be great. @Jackluyt's idea I think?
- Make every badge usable in the pit like this
- Add significant prizes for reaching point thresholds as a FS, independent of ranking, but with a cap, past which there are more prizes but not ones that are FOMO-inducing.(similar to tournament chests 11+)
- Add combat to the FA as originally planned years ago by introducing new badges that are awarded for solving an encounter.
- Add a feature for mages to highlight routes or waypoints.
- Allow overage when collecting. There is no good reason why collecting 6 toolboxes shouldn't award a blacksmith badge and 1/5 towards your next BS badge.
- Upgrade the map interface with a mouse-over on spots, a FS total for badges, a running total of needed badges to complete paths etc. There's loads of room for improvement here to replace google sheets.
- Add a fellowship/event chat tab. This is actually part of the much-needed chat upgrade suggestion, but relevant here.
I had more which I have forgotten, but I'll post this for now for others to crap upon