Orc Planning

[DeletedUser2191]

I looked all over and I don't see a single person anywhere with orc buildings.

Depends which world you are playing in. The 2 worlds I am in, the top ranked 2 - 3 players in each world already have them. Especially in the one world, my lord the amount of Diamonds they used, like they were going out of style ...

-level 4 orc portal, 3 maxxed armories, 2 maxxed orc rally points, couple dozen mushroom farms, all houses to level 20 and 21 ecetera. Normal non diamond playing wouldn't allow such fast progress in a week. That's A LOT of KP buying and upgrade speed up time bought with diamonds.

 

[DeletedUser2753]

In the industry this player is referred to as a whale and whales make up the vast majority of Free to Play game company revenue.

 

[DeletedUser2191]

In the industry this player is referred to as a whale and whales make up the vast majority of Free to Play game company revenue.

I'm all to familiar with the "whale" comparison. In my past gaming history, non browser based though, I was part of these "whale" categories. Even though I was a spender, I still backed up the non paying players concerns over balance between them and spenders.

 

[DeletedUser61]

it makes perfect sense to have twice or thrice or more what we need for research.

To maintain the rhythm, it may make sense TO YOU.

• Every time you use Coins or Goods to buy Knowledge Points, subsequent purchases are more expensive, so there's an effective soft cap.
• You can still purchase KPs to plump up your Ancient Wonders once you've rushed to the end of the Technology Tree.
• You can also use Diamonds to purchase KPs and hence AW levels and hence Rank.
• The Orcs provide a soft cap on negotiation, which is now restrained to vaguely the same acquisition level as fighting.

Excess manufacturing capacity is now a terrible investment. , because goods provide NO secondary benefit once you've reached the negotiation soft cap.

Without "enough space" for twice as many manufacturing buildings as one needs, and without the lure of negotiated provinces, the natural adjustment will be for folks to dump a few of the manufacturing buildings. Using goods to buy KPs , and investing those KPs in your Ancient Wonders (or swapping for them) provides permanent buffs that are increasingly attractive, so I'd expect folks to "find room" for more and more Ancient Wonders.

 

[DeletedUser43]

Excess manufacturing capacity is now a terrible investment. , because goods provide NO secondary benefit once you've reached the negotiation soft cap.

Without "enough space" for twice as many manufacturing buildings as one needs, and without the lure of negotiated provinces, the natural adjustment will be for folks to dump a few of the manufacturing buildings.

Why do you think you know what other people's cities need? Why do you think you should decide for every player how they should play? If you only want players just like you so no one "pushes" the envelope, then you and your 5 friends can enjoy the game...except Inno won't support it because it won't make money. If you want a going concern and a popular game that is a lot of fun for many people, then it would behoove you to start to support other types of players.

I already have level 20 armories built so I am making orcs, yet I am still fighting hard to remove this limitation because it hurts so many others. In fact, most of the things I fight for are things that don't affect me, but I do it because I know that it will help other people.

Every change that has harmed everyone else has been good for you. I find that very interesting. YOU don't want to bother to clear provinces, so suddenly no one else can. YOU want ancient wonders and suddenly we are all forced to research them. YOU are in love with the magicless academy and it is forced on all of us. YOU hate producing goods and suddenly we all need orcs now. Curious.

 

[DeletedUser61]

Every change that has harmed everyone else has been good for you. I find that very interesting.

Perhaps that's because I'm primarily interested in what makes the game itself work, regardless of the conveniences of the moment.

I've been a supply consultant for 40 years, and while Elvenar is complex enough to be interesting, we're not making any of the "fix it or sell it" decisions that you're usually facing when you're brought in as a consultant. Nor are modifications to Elvenar going to ruin anybody's career nor are the adjustments going to much anybody's bottom line.

If I can make the case that an adjustment is needed, in terms that resonate with the developers, then of course the folks on the development team who are ALREADY leaning that direction, will have more influence.

So think of Elvenar as a business system, or as a health issue. What does the GAME ITSELF need to be healthy, and provide a more satisfactory experience?

 

[DeletedUser43]

Perhaps that's because I'm primarily interested in what makes the game itself work, regardless of the conveniences of the moment.

Conveniences....aka customers.

 

[DeletedUser2231]

So just out of curiosity, is it a push to perhaps "need" a snail or two? I know a lot of people will not spend money on a game, but Inno isn't a non-profit organization obviously. My plan to eliminate stress and frustration is to simply buy a few snails. I think that clears up the culture/pop problem fairly easy, right? Now, I'm not saying I'm right or better for doing it, but I am saying that it's an alternative and I'm lazy, so it makes perfect sense to me. I suppose...?

 

[DeletedUser1987]

This is probably true, and it's one of the main reasons I don't like it, even though I've only just started dwarves and am not at orcs yet.

It is one thing to have a "free to play" game, where given time and effort the free to play players can reach a similar point to the pay to players. It is another thing to design the "free to play" game so that eventually you HAVE to spend money to progress. The players who don't pay exist to make the world more interesting for the people who do pay. So that the players who pay can contrast their slightly larger, more advanced city, with snails, and other paid advantages, with the slightly smaller, no paid advantages, no premium expansions, cities of the free to play population. Driving the free to play population out in the name of an act that tries to force you to buy snails can have a serious negative effect on the experience of the people who are willing to pay, because it takes the people they were paying to compete with out of the picture.

As an addition, I'm WILLING to buy diamonds to buy premium expansions because I like nice big cities, but I'm not willing to buy snails when I reach that point because I have seen both snails and ponds in other peoples' cities and the ponds are prettier.

 

[DeletedUser627]

I don't have a problem with spending money on Elvenar per se - I'd hate to even admit what I've spent in the past year!

During Fairy, I opted to avoid them as a sort of strategy game - just to see how far I could get with the handicap. The game with snails and without, well, it's completely different. Moving into Orcs without them isn't very fun, though. I stayed on the first page of Arendyl without snails during Fairy, but am immediately plunging now.

Personally I'm not against them per se. I wrote about them originally from the perspective of making clear the effect they have on the game. I know we've always had premiums...but at one point it was still true that residences were better than the Fertility Goddesses for overall game score and productivity. Snails, however, are a massive game changer. Think about it: the Goddesses were attractive because we could get relatively equivalent population plus the culture boost. With Snails, there's double the population plus that huge culture.

I laugh at myself - probably if they weren't so ugly I'd have given in myself! Hopefully the next premium release will be attractive...

 

[DeletedUser2855]

to have all built to max 3-4 snail is needed why snails because house and culture buildings cant cover to build all to max i test it,,,

 

[DeletedUser43]

Every balancing change they make is to push people to buy things from them. I think it is a horrible business model. They could instead offer us things that were super cool that we WANTED to buy. New skins...new looking cool buildings....new backgrounds....things that don't affect play but affect the aesthetics. This is a game all about aesthetics. They could sell a storage shed where you could move some buildings and keep them for a while.

As long as they are going to treat people terribly, change things with no notice, and keep forcing people to spend money, they will never get a dime from me.

 

[DeletedUser1987]

Exactly Bobbykitty. Blizzard makes TONS of money from selling extra hero skins for Heroes of the Storm. They don't actually DO anything, but people are willing to spend thousands of dollars on new appearances. And the people who don't pay for skins play with the people who do, and both enjoy the game, and no one is made to feel like they have to quit because they can't pay.

 

[DeletedUser43]

What they never take into account here is the things they can't see. They can't see how many people quit and then take their friends with them to another game. They can't see that people are unhappy about everything because their friends quit and now the game just isn't that much fun any more. They can't see how much joy some new skin brings people.

Imagine if they showed us the inside of the main hall? And then we could buy things to decorate it? Or just decorate our city? And maybe have pet dragons and tigers and elephants and monkeys and griffins and whatever else? I played this one game for a while that people seriously spend $500 a month on and more just to get a pillow....a picture of pillow...that they would drag and drop in a scene. Want to know the brilliant part? That game didn't have to spend money on designers of these items because they would have the customers submit items for a tiny percentage of the profits. Oh, not real profits, but a percentage of the game money. So it cost the devs NOTHING and they got tons of things designed for free and people were thrilled to buy.

Instead I am stuck day after day staring at the same city that I can't even rearrange for fun because it is too hard to move anything. I have to wait more than a month to get an expansion that I can fit half a building on. Snoresville!

 

[DeletedUser1987]

And being able to buy skins for buildings would also solve the problem that people hate the buildings we currently have. I would buy a skin to make the horrible looking mushroom farms be not mushroom farms.

 

[DeletedUser43]

That magic academy might be worth building if it could cast a spell and turn that dung center into a lovely field of nice smelling flowers! Have you seen the rally point? Personally, I think that is the ugliest building yet.

 

[DeletedUser1987]

Yes, but my slightly irrational fear of mushrooms makes all mushroom related buildings such as the mushroom farms and mushroom culture buildings (and my boosted manufactories! Why do I have to have boosted magic dust when mushrooms truly freak me out?) ten times worse than the rally point, which at least does not have mushrooms.

 

[DeletedUser43]

I'd like to talk about how to make all the things you need to progress. I am getting so stuck. I need to make orc poop and all that other stuff so I can make shrooms of wisdom and the other things I need to unlock the tech. Does anyone have an actual good plan for how to do this?


edit: I don't think the upgraded shroom farms are that useful except from a space point of view. If I upgraded the shroom farm, yes, I can make more shrooms of wisdom, but it takes me more orc poop to make them anyway. Wouldn't just a lot more shrooom farms be better? Then I'm not using all the resources i need for other things. We need to upgrade the orc portal for sure because we won't have enough capacity for the shrooms of wisdom and the loot needed for the tech, but I don't think upgrading the shroom farms are worth it. Maybe upgrading the rally points, idk.

What if we just deleted half our city to make nothing but these awful orc farm things so we can hurry up and get all the orc stuff we need and then rebuild our cities?

 

[DeletedUser1016]

If I upgraded the shroom farm, yes, I can make more shrooms of wisdom, but it takes me more orc poop to make them anyway.

I'm just starting the Orc chapter and I've got 1 lvl 4 armory and 7 mushroom farms...but no rally point. I'm planning my space out and I'm wondering if you're suggesting that the rally points are the choke point? Hence build multiple rally points and upgrade?

 

[DeletedUser594]

Same sofrt of question as Osidegklin just posted- does anyone have a general set of #'s for the manufactories in Ors age- how many ofg each?