Feedback Quick and Dirty Summary of Ancient Wonder Changes

[Astram]

the need for BPs/RRs to upgrade AWs is just as much
or more problematic than SFs. Period.

As I have said before, the Spell Frags are the only real issue as both CC and RR can be won, bought outright, and earned, whereas Sf can only be earned and won. I am not counting defragging as that is a short-term solution that does not apply universally to all players.

 

[BrinDarby]

RR can be won

yeah like 2 per week in a 10 chest FS..... yet upgrades cost 5x more RRs than CC's and ppl can make , whaaat, 20-40/week , not 2 !!!
com'on Astram just cause they can be barely won, doesn't mean they have any place in AW upgrades.....

 

[Dhurrin]

As I have said before, the Spell Frags are the only real issue as both CC and RR can be won, bought outright, and earned, whereas Sf can only be earned and won. I am not counting defragging as that is a short-term solution that does not apply universally to all players.

I disagree. Yes, RR's can be won and you may be able to get a few from an event, but not everyone is in a FS where you get 10+ chests every week.
Even my top-5 FS does on average 16 chests. So that would be 6 RRs a week. If I need 25 to upgrade something to lvl 21 that means 4-5 weeks. And that's for players who are in a FS that performs well above average! How many players in say chap 5-10 do 12 chests or more every week?

Crafting RRs is possible, but only for blueprints. Newsflash: smaller players who often are in a FS that doesn't even make it to 10 chests, or do not every week, do not have a crapload of blueprints laying around.
Even less so since you need a truly ridiculous amount of blueprints to be able to get phoenixartifacts, which is something you will need to bump your ability to do better in the tourney. And it is a fact of the game that the larger/better/higher ranking FS will require people to do well in the tourney, because they want that blueprint. So in order to get into a FS that gets blueprints, you basically already need a lot of blueprints.
Something needs to be done about that too; a way to convert blueprints from 1 type to another, even if it is at a 2:1 or 3:1 ratio.

Only players like myself, end-game, all magical residences, all magical workshops, with several of them in storage and already a stack of blueprints stored, can really afford to regularly convert blueprints into RRs. That excludes by far the largest number of players. And again, it means that whales are not slowed down overmuch, but everyone else is. Just about the opposite of what this was supposed to do.
And the need of RRs in AWs means that those cannot be used for what they were intended for; to give people an opportunity to keep event buildings current.

No, this whole overhaul was incredibly badly thought through. and to add insult to injury Inno got something like 99.9% negative feedback when it was introduced on beta. And yet they pushed it down the throat of every player anyway. What is the use of having a beta-server and people giving feedback when it is completely ignored?
And in this case you can't even make the argument that it was 50-50 or even 60% against and 40% for. I have not yet found a single player who was in favor. Some, a very few, just shrugged. But most are unhappy about it. To a point where I have seen even longtime, large-city, players just quit because Inno decided to rip the foundations from their city which was built up over years of play and now their style of play was no longer working.

 

[Astram]

yeah like 2 per week in a 10 chest FS..... yet upgrades cost 5x more RRs than CC's and ppl can make , whaaat, 20-40/week , not 2 !!!
com'on Astram just cause they can be barely won, doesn't mean they have any place in AW upgrades.....

both CC and RR can be won, bought outright, and earned

Rather than pick one portion try looking at the whole picture, "won, bought, earned" vrs "earned, won" I have never said it was easy or that it was even enough. I am looking at the structure here and can see that the SF are the real killer.

As for the Idea that you can earn SF for the low chapter or new player that might complete level 1 of the spire the likely amount of SF earned and won would likely sit around 5K per week and that is being generous, IMO. But getting 30 or more RR is possible through the MA and the same with CC in the MA you can craft and produce them.
So at 5K in SF you will fall behind the curve very fast in leveling and the supply of CC and RR can continue to grow.
By looking at it from a level 1 wonder you can only do 2 levels before you are out of SF but you will still have more CC and RR than you need.

Does that clear it up for you

 

[StarLoad]

I have not yet found a single player who was in favor.

You are not on discord I presume, because there are several that see the change as a positive. Nothing is ever perfect so every change involves some level of GOOD vrs BAD or even BAD vrs GOOD. overall the change was a big positive for 2 of my cities and a big negative for 2 of them.

 

[Silver Lady]

@BrinDarby A 10 chests tournament result will give you 5 RR and 1 BP. If I remember correctly 1 BP and 3 CC will craft 10 RRs.

@Dhurrin A 16 chests tournament result will give you 11 RRs and of course 1 BP.

 

[Pheryll]

@Dhurrin A 16 chests tournament result will give you 11 RRs and of course 1 BP.

The issue that @Dhurrin is citing is that the average player will not be in a fellowship that regularly gets 10 chests in the tournament.

 

[Silver Lady]

@Pheryll

Even my top-5 FS does on average 16 chests. So that would be 6 RRs a week.

This was the statement that as worded is incorrect, for 16 chests you get 11 RRs (not 6) and 1 BP.

 

[Pheryll]

Rather than pick one portion try looking at the whole picture, "won, bought, earned" vrs "earned, won" I have never said it was easy or that it was even enough. I am looking at the structure here and can see that the SF are the real killer.

As for the Idea that you can earn SF for the low chapter or new player that might complete level 1 of the spire the likely amount of SF earned and won would likely sit around 5K per week and that is being generous, IMO. But getting 30 or more RR is possible through the MA and the same with CC in the MA you can craft and produce them.
So at 5K in SF you will fall behind the curve very fast in leveling and the supply of CC and RR can continue to grow.
By looking at it from a level 1 wonder you can only do 2 levels before you are out of SF but you will still have more CC and RR than you need.

Does that clear it up for you

It looks like you are advocating for the player to spend diamonds to get 30RR per week but not to spend diamonds on diplomacy to get further in the spire (and get more SF).

 

[Astram]

It looks like you are advocating for the player to spend diamonds to get 30RR per week but not to spend diamonds on diplomacy to get further in the spire (and get more SF).

Not at all I am looking at the economy of the game and have said that the inability to Directly buy SF is what is causing the structural scarcity, this alone is a fatal error that must be corrected.
I cant and wont dictate how a player plays, I am only looking at the options available and for RR, CC you have many but for SF you have exactly two buildings that produce them and only 1 is available to all and that produces a minor number per day, you can craft a limited amount if you get the correct offer in the MA. There is no other fixed way in game to get SF.

 

[Dukester69]

When the game did this AW change, I predicted that AWs would back up because I can't afford to level them. Well, here is an AW update:
I'm stuck in Chapter 13. I can have up to 22 AWs if I like. I choose to have 16 AWs out of those 22. Out of those 16 AWs I have. I've upgraded 2 AWs and still have 4 more that is ready to upgrade. The cost total to upgrade them. 86k Frags, 86 CCs, and 85 RRs. Real soon I will have 1 more ready, so add in another 22k Frags and 22 CCs. I said I would play till I couldn't because I enjoyed playing the game and the people that I have met all over the world. I sure do hope inno comes up with something to fix this problem. This slow death of my city and the game is painful.

 

[Dhurrin]

@Pheryll

This was the statement that as worded is incorrect, for 16 chests you get 11 RRs (not 6) and 1 BP.

My bad there. But it actually only reinforces my point; as a big player, I don't really need to keep track too much. So I'm getting some more RRs from the tourney than I realized. But if I need some more, I can convert some blueprints.
Now try and tell me how many players in chapters 5-12 or so are in such a position? I'll be needing something like 60 RRs soon enough for some upgrades and I'm not worried about it. Sure, my stock of frags now is down to 80.000 or so and I'll probably be needing 400.000 or so for foreseeable upgrades in the relatively near future and again, I'm not worried about it. I can disenchant 1.000 of the 5% PP instants for 420 frags each and still have a bunch of them left over, not to mention craploads of the higher percentage ones.

The whole point is that if this system is supposed to slow down whales like me, it doesn't. However, it basically does slow down everyone else. And smaller/newer cities are not just slowed, they are stopped in building/upgrading AWs.
Plus it introduces the extremely unfair situation that larger players like me already have a crapload of high level AWs and this are way LESS affected by this change than someone who wants to build up 10 AWs from lvl 15 to lvl 30. Or gods forbid, has to build them up from lvl 3 or so.
The devs do not seem to even have a clue how many frags it would take to have a city with...say...6 AWs in it, lvls 5, 8, 10, 12, 15, 16...to upgrade those 10 AWs to lvl 20 (which leaves yet another 10 levels to go) and would not include any other new AWs for that city at all. Math does not seem to be something Inno devs are good at.
(spoiler; to upgrade those 6 AWs all to lvl 20 one would need 693 CCs, 693.000 frags and 155 RRs. To bring them all to lvl 21 it would be 819 CCs, 819.000 frags and 305 RRs). And as I said, that doesn't include any levels on any new AW to be placed. For most players, something like that is just not do-able in any way, shape or form. And 6 Aws is really not anything special.

Now say I want to up 10 more of my AWs from 30 to 35 (which basically I do, though actually quite a bit less since the ones I'm talking about are already over lvl 30, but who knows, there may be some more at some point). That means I need (31+32+33+34+35) * 10 = 1.650 CCs and 1.650.000 spellfrags and 300 RRs. .
Pretty bloody steep, but if I really wanted I could disenchant spells and instants and get enough frags right away. The CCs would take a while, but I can harvest 50 chests from the MA * 14 CCs from the Dragon Ark, so the first 700 are there. Plus the 200 I have in store. 37-40 every week from Tinlug. And I could just start cooking more in the MA. So, maybe a month, maybe 2 at most. 300 RRs spells are a bit more work; I have 135 in stock now. I get 7/week from the Oracle. And apparently 11 per week from the tourney, so 18/week. So that would be 10 weeks. Close to the 2 months for the CCs. I can speed it up a bit by grabbing some of the MA offers and convert some blueprints into RRs, as I have more blueprints than I have magical workshops and -residences up right now.

So I need more CCs and more frags, but I'm also doing 10 AWs compared to 6, and at the final levels instead of mid-level. But the amount of RRs is about the same.

Try comparing that to most players in the field, who are struggling to get 5 RRs a week, need the MA for other things than just CCs and already are having a hard time getting enough spellfrags to craft and now upgrade their AWs.

(post edited for typo's)

 

[Dhurrin]

Not at all I am looking at the economy of the game and have said that the inability to Directly buy SF is what is causing the structural scarcity, this alone is a fatal error that must be corrected.
I cant and wont dictate how a player plays, I am only looking at the options available and for RR, CC you have many but for SF you have exactly two buildings that produce them and only 1 is available to all and that produces a minor number per day, you can craft a limited amount if you get the correct offer in the MA. There is no other fixed way in game to get SF.

NO. It's not the inability to buy them that is creating scarcity. The problem is that your (well, Inno's) Devs just added an incredible extra demand for spellfrags (and RRs) without adding additional sources for them.

And additionally the Devs and/or management seem to think that a lot of players suddenly will start spending a crapload of money to buy them if they added that feature. That is a possibility, but personally I predict that will turn a lot more players away as it makes it more and more a pay-to-pay game.
And again, you may keep a small base of longtime larger players, but many of those get diamonds enough from the Spire, and their need to buy that stuff is less since they already have most of their AWs maxed or close to it. Whereas 'average joe' is going to look at a choice of suddenly having to spend hundreds or dollars or more, just to be able to keep playing. My guess is they will take their business elsewhere.
I know I will. I'll keep playing my main city for now, because I have so much time and effort invested in it, but see no reason to spend money on a company that treats it's customers like this

 

[Astram]

NO. It's not the inability to buy them that is creating scarcity. The problem is that your (well, Inno's) Devs just added an incredible extra demand for spellfrags (and RRs) without adding additional sources for them.

The Scarcity is caused by making the SF a Currency overnight. Look up Structural Scarcity and it should explain the underlying issue.

 

[Dhurrin]

You are not on discord I presume, because there are several that see the change as a positive. Nothing is ever perfect so every change involves some level of GOOD vrs BAD or even BAD vrs GOOD. overall the change was a big positive for 2 of my cities and a big negative for 2 of them.

You are bloody right I'm not on Discord. I despise the fact I would need to go there and will not. in fact, that was another really bad decision as they meant to replace the forums with it and Discord is useless as a forum.

So there are 'several that see the change as a positive'...so what? Several does not make any kind of majority. I'm sure there are 'several people' who think grizzly bears would make good pets. Doesn't make them a majority either. And I will make you a bet that if this isn't changed we will have more than 'several' players quit because they are getting stuck. There already are way more than 'several' players who have (rage)quit over this.

I also never said everything is perfect. I did say this change was
- NOT an improvement for most players
- Incredibly badly thought out
- Not doing what it was supposed to do; really slowing down the big players and slowing down the rest a bit. The big players are only slightly hampered, while everyone else is seeing mostly negative effects.

But I would suggest you carefully read my evaluation. Which is stated to be MY evaluation. Everyone is allowed to disagree, especially if they come with some real arguments I'm happy to see those

 

[Dhurrin]

The Scarcity is caused by making the SF a Currency overnight. Look up Structural Scarcity and it should explain the underlying issue.

I'd rather have the Devs look up some basic math-skills, because they seem to be lacking.

And you just re-iterated my point: the scarcity was created by creating a ridiculously huge extra demand overnight, without any extra supply.
Basically, that is something one could very well use as a definition of deliberately unbalancing the game. While trying to sell it as a way to balance it.

 

[BrinDarby]

@Astram ,
you don't get it, we talk apples you talk oranges.

you say its about game economy, ie revenue......

RRs were designed and put in the game for 1 freak'n reason,
to upgrade current bldgs to the next CH, NOT upgrade AWs
This AW chg, is Nothing more than desperation to get
more revenue, yet the changes themselves have made ppl so
angry they'll never buy stuff anymore, AND all the newbs we
do attract will quickly see all the paywalls especially when
they can't get anywhere as F2P players, and quit... Thats just
more lost revenue....

This chg is killing revenue, not adding to it.

 

[Astram]

@Astram ,
you don't get it, we talk apples you talk oranges.

you say its about game economy, ie revenue......

RRs were designed and put in the game for 1 freak'n reason,
to upgrade current bldgs to the next CH, NOT upgrade AWs
This AW chg, is Nothing more than desperation to get
more revenue, yet the changes themselves have made ppl so
angry they'll never buy stuff anymore, AND all the newbs we
do attract will quickly see all the paywalls especially when
they can't get anywhere as F2P players, and quit... Thats just
more lost revenue....

This chg is killing revenue, not adding to it.

Game economy is not revenue, it the things we spend and use in the game to do things, like Coins, supplies, Orcs, Mana, and now SF. Everything that has value to get something else is a part of the game economy. I do not even consider the games revenue. So yes I get it.

 

[Astram]

I'd rather have the Devs look up some basic math-skills, because they seem to be lacking.

And you just re-iterated my point: the scarcity was created by creating a ridiculously huge extra demand overnight, without any extra supply.
Basically, that is something one could very well use as a definition of deliberately unbalancing the game. While trying to sell it as a way to balance it.

I have been saying this since day 1.

 

[TimeMachine]

I hope it will be somehow like when I play the spire too hard with my smaller cities and ran out of tools and supply windfalls, I often find a crafting offer for a 100% supply windfall in my magic academy.

Just wanted to mention that my Beta-City, which meanwhile was getting short of spell fragments, is very happy getting this offer in crafting the second time this week.

Spoiler

The question I am thinking about at the moment is, what to do when all my Combining Catalysts are gone?