Release Notes version 1.39

[DeletedUser2870]

No. I asume you did not do basic arithmatic once.
Because the fixed amount is NOT dependant on how many people one visits in between opening the chest. It is the same every time one opens the chest, which is only generated 3x per day.

So if I do my first visit, get a chest and open it, I get 1575, where it used to be 248. Sounds nice.
But if I then visit another 5 people before opening a chest, I get another 1575, where I otherwise would have gotten 1240. A bit more, but not significant.
If I then do the other 18 members of my FS and open the chest, I get another 1575, where I would have gotten 4464. A definite loss.
The total I got, for only my FS, now is 4725 (3x1575), where otherwise I would have gotten 5952 (24x248).
So even if I ONLY visit my FS members, I am getting LESS than before. Every visit after that, the loss increases.
So yes, the 3x one opens the chest the amount is more. But that would only encourage people to do only 3 visits now, which means it is definitely not encouraging people to make more visits and thus interact

So where this AW used to inspire me to do a few more visits than just my FS members and the active neighbours, I now see no reason at all to do so, since I do not need the coins from the visits. And the non-active neighbours dont give me supplies, and now no goods either. So why bother?
This change will only accomplish that I'm going to do LESS visits and thus spend LESS time on the game.

 

[DeletedUser9279]

Absolutely a downgrade. I visit way more than 30. Is this truly to improve thru put time or a way of reducing our ability to collect goods? Process thruput is always important to the quality of the game, but I am more concerned with this being a deliberate take away for the advanced players.

I agree completely. I visit all of my neighbors and my FS members every day - which is currently 131 players. That was getting me 7,598 goods a day - which roughly amounts to 2,500 or so of each tier (assuming its all equal). So yeah, getting 545 of one of them in a chest 3 times every 24 hours is a HUGE ripoff. Sure with the developers would stop making this game LESS fun to play.

 

[DeletedUser9279]

All three of my chests this morning were Steel. So not only did you change - ahem DOWNGRADE - how the CL gives goods, you took away the tier 2 and 3 goods???
Wow...

 

[DeletedUser8752]

Logged in started my rounds, ran to the forums to see what was up with why I was suddenly not getting my goods from visits but getting them in the chests.

Not happy. I was doing world map rounds minimum 2x a week for the extra goods and it was helping me out with being able to help my neighbors trades and allowing to do tournies and such.

on top of that I was getting roughly equal amounts of goods across the tiers. Today I got on chest of gems, 2 chests of Marble. I need more Marble Like a need another whole in my head. Will most assuredly be putting an in game ticket in for this one.

Flip side: Woot 3 visits I'm done. no need to visit neighbors anymore.

 

[DeletedUser9773]

I was visiting EVERYONE I could, at least 5 times a week. This is a total game-changer for me. I've spent a lot of money on this game, and am only three researches away from halflings... and now I'll probably be quitting. You've basically just made exploring the world map and getting to know your neighbors worthless.

 

[DeletedUser2870]

All three of my chests this morning were Steel. So not only did you change - ahem DOWNGRADE - how the CL gives goods, you took away the tier 2 and 3 goods???
Wow...

I got 3x my tier3 boosted goods. So perhaps now it is only 1 type of your boosted goods chosen randomly each day?
Also NOT an improvement

@Markustay
A gamechanger indeed. I invested in this AW because I trade a lot. My FS is short on elixer and I'm one of the main traders who can get it outside my FS. But I trade at a 10-25% loss for elixer, which I then pass on 1:1 to my FS members. Getting the additional boosted goods from this AW was one way of (at least partly) compensating the loss.
Now that's destroyed, so I'm not sure how long I'll be able to continue doing this. This not affects just me, but the entire FS.
Several other players I know have, just like me, heavily invested in their CL, literally spending 1000s of kps on it, which now have essentially been poured down the drain.

For some reason, Inno really seems intent on driving away the longterm players who have invested a lot of time and real money in the game.

 

[Ashrem]

They aren't really lying, but it could certainly be seen as a bit misleading.

Quite a bit misleading. The only way it is a slight increase is by including people who don't actually visit more than 210 neighbors per week.

Anyone who had a lighthouse and visited more than 210 in a week will get less. Since I visited all 220 of my neighbors more than once a week, and my 24ish fellowship neighbors at least 4 times a week, (which I don't think is at all unusual of people who actually have the AW in question) I will get less every single week.

A person who only visits their 24-or-so fs members and a half dozen who reply to visits each day will get less than they did before. Even if they remember to collect all three chests every day.

 

[DeletedUser8752]

I got 3x my tier3 boosted goods. So perhaps now it is only 1 type of your boosted goods chosen randomly each day?
Also NOT an improvement

I got 1x tier 3, 2x tier 1. I also used it to balance out the trading I could do for my fellowship, AND the newer players on my map who need the extra help to grow. Now I won't be able to help the FS or the newbs as much which only hurts the game.

On a side note but related Here is the in game ticket I filed They specifically asked that we chime in here which I have, but posting for good measure:

Hello Inno,
Logged in today and found the "delightful" (please read that as sarcastically as I meant it) changes to the Crystal Lighthouse/Bellspire. I'm not really sure why you thought that change was going to make me visit more of my neighbors, when there is absolutely no enticement to do so. 3 chests per day DOES not equal the amount of goods I was able to get doing world neighbor visits. I'm keeping the lighthouse through the end of the week to see if any further changes are made that are ACTUALLY helpful. But If it doesn't change back or the amount of chest we receive per day doesn't increase it will have effectively become a wast of space in my city worthy of deletion.

Also, 3 chests: 3 tiers. Seems easy; not rocket science, and yet I got 1 tier 3 chest and 2 tier 1 chests. What happened to my tier 2 chest?

Also Rest assured. I have, in fact, voiced my displeasure in the forums as well.

Sincerely,
First time ticket opener and fan of the game.

 

[qaccy]

So if I do my first visit, get a chest and open it, I get 1575, where it used to be 248. Sounds nice.

This doesn't add up for me at all, sorry, and that's what I was questioning. How were you getting 248 per visit before and now only 1575 per chest? The numbers on my Bell Spire increased by exactly 10x, meaning 3 chests equals exactly 30 visits with the old bonus and your chests should be worth 2480 goods apiece. There isn't any way I see that adding up because you were getting about 27% more than me per visit but now you're getting 20% less per chest. How's that work?

Quite a bit misleading. The only way it is a slight increase is by including people who don't actually visit more than 210 neighbors per week.

Anyone who had a lighthouse and visited more than 210 in a week will get less. Since I visited all 220 of my neighbors more than once a week, and my 24ish fellowship neighbors at least 4 times a week, (which I don't think is at all unusual of people who actually have the AW in question) I will get less every single week.

A person who only visits their 24-or-so fs members and a half dozen who reply to visits each day will get less than they did before. Even if they remember to collect all three chests every day.

Changing the measurement to 210/week is still 30 per day really. Same as 900/month (more or less in this case), or 10,950/year. 3 chests per day, 21 chests per week, etc etc. I guess another way to look at it is that the AW has now been effectively 'capped' in a similar fashion to other AWs (for example, scouting times limit the effect of AWs like Enar's Embassy and Tome of Secrets, but it can still be levelled up to increase the power of the effect.

Anyway, since this is unlikely to be reverted no matter how much huffing and puffing is made about it, a more meaningful approach might be to offer suggestions to improve on the new version of the bonus. For example, in addition to already obtaining more goods per chest with each level, how about increasing the amount of chests one can obtain per day at certain levels as well? Like the Tome of Secrets or Enar's Embassy (interesting that these are again being used as easy examples), perhaps after every 'rune wheel level' an additional chest can be collected each day.

 

[Ashrem]

Changing the measurement to 210/week is still 30 per day really.

Only superficially.

The core difference being, that if you visit everyone in your explored area once or twice a week, it has a huge effect on your average per day. Someone who thinks thinks they are better off because they are only visiting their fellowship, except for twice a week when they have time on the weekend to visit their 150 neighbors, may not account that their visits change from an average of 30 a day to an average of 70 per day. Under the new mechanic, losing goods from those two days a week of visiting their 150 neighbors is costing them over half of their total goods from the light house. Bring that up to 200 neighbors (as most people who have a leveled lighthouse will have), and now it's a loss of 70%

 

[DeletedUser2870]

This doesn't add up for me at all, sorry, and that's what I was questioning. How were you getting 248 per visit before and now only 1575 per chest? The numbers on my Bell Spire increased by exactly 10x, meaning 3 chests equals exactly 30 visits with the old bonus and your chests should be worth 2480 goods apiece. There isn't any way I see that adding up because you were getting about 27% more than me per visit but now you're getting 20% less per chest. How's that work?

Well, YOURS may have increased by exactly 10, mine obviously didn't. I got 248 goods per visit yesterday. Now I get 1575 per chest.
So apparently the 10-fold increasement is not generic, or there is a bug.

Changing the measurement to 210/week is still 30 per day really. Same as 900/month (more or less in this case), or 10,950/year. 3 chests per day, 21 chests per week, etc etc. I guess another way to look at it is that the AW has now been effectively 'capped' in a similar fashion to other AWs (for example, scouting times limit the effect of AWs like Enar's Embassy and Tome of Secrets, but it can still be levelled up to increase the power of the effect.

Anyway, since this is unlikely to be reverted no matter how much huffing and puffing is made about it, a more meaningful approach might be to offer suggestions to improve on the new version of the bonus. For example, in addition to already obtaining more goods per chest with each level, how about increasing the amount of chests one can obtain per day at certain levels as well? Like the Tome of Secrets or Enar's Embassy (interesting that these are again being used as easy examples), perhaps after every 'rune wheel level' an additional chest can be collected each day.

Its not the same at all. once or twice a week I would do the whole map, meaning something like 180-190 visits, so the effect is that I get only about 25% of what I used to get. At best.

All your talking about capping is nice, but is faulty reasoning. The tome is an AW that once placed DOES NOT REQUIRE ANY ACTION. After 24 hours, you click on it to collect. Same for the Prosperity Towers. After 3 hours, you click on it. That's all. The CL requires one to actively spend quite a lot of time on making visits in order to get the rewards. If you don't go out and pay a lot of visits, its not much good, so its only built by players who do spend a lot of time making visits. Meaning that this castration hurts your most active playerbase, and hardly effects those who don't bother to make visits.
In this way, it encouraged players to reach out and contact neighbours, which now is of no use and so I won't. do so anymore.

Also, as I stated before, the CL became for many players a part of their strategy, in a way the tome or the towers never can be.

Also, your last sentences say PERHAPS...and IF...but for those changes it requires programming other things again.
So you suggest that one bad change should be solved by programming yet more changes, none of which would be needed if the original one wasn't made, or had been made intelligently.
IF the devs felt it was too much of a powerhouse, then first they should be able to explain why that is, since no serious explanation has been given, nor evidence provided it was actually overpowered. And then it could have been solved way easier by adjusting the amount generated per visit. That would have taken all of 10 minutes to program...if one was slow.

I don't agree it was overpowerd because of the time and effort involved getting the goods. But though I wouldn't be happy by getting a reduced amount of goods, I could shrug it of. But loosing 75-80% of what it generated over a week is not just a reduction anymore.
The only 'bright side' on this is that on both weekend days, I'll no longer be sitting down to do the complete map with 2 accounts, which pretty much means about 4-5 hours less time to spend on the game on each of those days, so 8-10 hours less per week.

(btw, I would just loooooooove to see your employer come online here sometime, and and have him read your reasoning, I'm sure he would be more than glad to follow the same kind of reasoning in handling a paycheck)

 

[DeletedUser9601]

I don't agree it was overpowerd because of the time and effort involved getting the goods.

I disagree that it took much "effort," and I suspect Inno feels the same way. It took 2 keyboard buttons (W and E, next to each other) and 2 clicks. For someone to spend less than 10 minutes to clear 200+ neighbors, and get the equivalent of an extra manufactory's worth of goods, is probably overpowered.

I feel like the very fact you (and others) arguing so strongly about how much this affects your playstyle, and how much this hurts, etc., probably does mean the wonder was at least a bit overpowered?

 

[Ashrem]

I disagree that it took much "effort," and I suspect Inno feels the same way. It took 2 keyboard buttons (W and E, next to each other) and 2 clicks. For someone to spend less than 10 minutes to clear 200+ neighbors, and get the equivalent of an extra manufactory's worth of goods, is probably overpowered.

Recognizing that to get to that point, they first had to put hundreds of KP into the AW.

I don't doubt in the least that they needed to re-balance. What they have done is handle it badly. As soon as they realized there was a balance issue, they should have posted an announcement that they were planning changes. that would have given people an opportunity to assess whether they should continue piling kp into it.

They've also turned something that previously only rewarded effort into something that rewards practically no effort. They could have cut the rewards by 30% or 50% or 80%, which would still mean that people who are visiting a lot of neighbors would see an upside to their efforts, in exchange for having leveled the AW in the first place. What they did was turn it into another no-effort wonder that provides no incentive to do more than the half dozen visits required to generate three chests.

 

[DeletedUser9601]

Recognizing that to get to that point, they first had to put hundreds of KP into the AW.

I don't doubt in the least that they needed to re-balance. What they have done is handle it badly. As soon as they realized there was a balance issue, they should have posted an announcement that they were planning changes. that would have given people an opportunity to assess whether they should continue piling kp into it.

Agree 100% on both points. I was focused on the effort to actually gather the goods. The KP issue is not something I'd refer to as 'effort,' but others might. But I also think the massive KP costs are somewhat offset by the fact that, to get the CL to levels 10/15/20, a player likely has owned the wonder for months or a year. Meaning they got the benefit of a strong (if not overpowered) AW for that duration. And I don't think people are taking that into account.
And yes, the announcement was unfairly buried (I have several FS members who had no idea the change was coming and were confused this morning, thinking there was a bug), and wrongly expressed as a change that might benefit some people. I don't doubt that some people might have benefited, but I think the vast majority devoting city space to the CL, and levelling beyond level 1, did so because they were making use of hundreds, if not thousands, of weekly visits. So it was very disingenuous to phrase it as an "improvement" to the CL.

 

[DeletedUser8752]

. What they did was turn it into another no-effort wonder that provides no incentive to do the half dozen visits required to generate three chests.

Preach.

I got a reply. The basic gist was "sorry, we put a lot of thought and listened to a lot of feedback before doing it. Wanted to make it fair for everyone who decides to build and we hope this encourages people to see how important daily visits are for bigger rewards".

 

[SaffireStar]

I think that the Crystal Lighthouse/Bell Spire change sucks. Period. I visit my neighbors even though the majority don't visit me as often as I can. I always visit the 'gold hand' neighbors. The reason for visiting the non-visiting neighbors was for the goods. Now, it won't be worth the extraordinary amount of time it takes me to visit them all. So that neighborly help is thoroughly discouraged and I doubt that Inno cares at all about the feedback. I'm not understanding why call it a 'free game' when it is becoming more and more evident that you want everyone to pay for it. Just slap it on a disc and build the server and turn it into your version of WoW or BDO or LoL or Smite. It's discouraging because I really like this game.

With these changes I will probably only visit my FS and the neighbours that visit me. This game is going backwards! Pretty pictures for goods and less fun for players

 

[Ashrem]

The KP issue is not something I'd refer to as 'effort,' but others might.

Considering the only reason I've been doing tournaments to 16 provinces instead of six is the is the extra 46+ kp, I am one of those who consider KP "effort" I also resent the supplies and goods i have spent on doing those provinces for the last few months to get that KP which is no longer of any particular value to me.

 

[DeletedUser6497]

I believe you stated your reason for changing the Crystal Lighthouse and Bell Spire was to promote visits. Wow, have you blown it big time? The reason people don't make visits is that they are not returned. Maybe you should base the help they are given on return visits, not penalize the people who are making the visits. Now in your incredible lack of thought, you have thousands of unhappy players. You have penalized those doing what you want. WHY? You've taken away the option for a 19.99 purchase of diamonds, again WHY? People are leaving not that it shows because you leave these large cities, I guess as free advertising but have you given any thought to the players that remain? After all their ranking depends on the people who are playing are those who are not but even a year later remain. Do you really think the people who visit them don't notice the city is stagnant? You have a game based on several things working together, a thought out strategy but you are not part of that team and thwart advancements at every turn. All I'm asking is for you to think about clients, encourage them. Stop fighting us!!

 

[DeletedUser1390]

Your math would be incorrect, then. By my observations, the effect was increased by 10x but now only activates when a chest is opened. This means that the 3 chests are worth visiting 30 people with the old bonus. It's pretty simple to determine, really. If you're stating anything different from that then you're simply lying or the effect is actually bugged.

This is correct, the Lighthouse 'Wonder Power' is 10x what it was before, multiplied as before by the number of explored provinces. So the three chests now equal 30 previous visits.

Dhurrin, yes, either you misremember or you have a bug, so that is really your issue.

It's funny everyone seems to have forgotten the goods bonus was only added to begin with a few months ago when the AW's were all upgraded.

 

[Ashrem]

This is correct, the Lighthouse 'Wonder Power' is 10x what it was before, multiplied as before by the number of explored provinces. So the three chests now equal 30 previous visits.

It does, however, seem to have been be using some sort of rounding-up before. I was getting 103/province, but am now getting 1022 per chest, not 1030.