Something REALLY needs to be done about optional squad size "upgrades"

[Alistaire]

Just had a chat with an old friend in an FS they want out of, went something like this:

me: you interested? the main thing they want is to be sure you can hit around 2k tourney score
her: 2k?? I hit like 500-700 and can't do more no matter what strategy I use, it's pretty frustrating, how do you do it?
me: how many optional squad size upgrades have you filled? They're terrible for players that like to fight, because it makes tourneys so much harder. ironic since it sounds like a fighting upgrade but it means the enemy has more troops too so you lose more troops and it doesn't help your training speed at all so you can't progress as much
her: what's an optional squad size upgrade?
me: (explains)
her: oh, I have all of those.

This is nonsense. Those are so badly explained in the research tree, and so the game is so badly balanced around them. Before this chat I've known 2 people quit over this, and a 3rd completely restart their account, only to quit later on.

These are downgrades, but more specifically, they're downgrades for people who like fights, which traps so many players early on. And it's irreversible. It shouldn't be though... can you please allow players with these filled to cancel them out, like demolishing a building? I don't want the kp back, all I want for players is to be able to undo a choice that goes completely against what the choice says it helps.

Especially with RRs available now, more and more FS have heavier tourney requirements, so this is more important now than ever.

It's fine to leave the balance as is, if you start allowing players who want to the opportunity to revert those to unfilled (as long as they don't have anything after filled, and afaik that's only 1 city expansion behind one of these in ch6). For that one you can make it so that one alone becomes unretrieveable, or a nicer gesture would be to change the skill tree so those 2 things are seperate dead ends. That one for me is unchecked and it's really annoying I have to skip an expansion or face being gimped in tourneys a bit more.

I feel making them reversible is also the best solution for people that would want to keep these for non-tourney fighting, even though the overwhelming majority of the fights in this game are tourney fights.

And I really want a response from Inno staff about this issue. I haven't seen a staff member response on any suggestion/complaint threads and that feels really odd to me. Is there another place to bring this to their attention? Has anyone ever filed a ticket over this and gotten them reversed?

Everything else in this game is either great or minor annoyances; this is the one thing I'm honestly kind of mad about because of the people who unwittingly wreck their accounts just trying to get better.

 

[DeletedUser20951]

Oh Gods, YES, this is so poorly explained in the game and counter-intuitive in practice. Most of the times when I've brought it up in passing, newer (and even some longtime) players are aghast. I'm sure many like being able to modify their tournament difficulty a bit, but if nixing technologies that shoot you in the foot isn't a way Inno is willing to go, the squad research should actually help you in all battles, including the tournies.

For the most part, response from on high hasn't been great (or even really existent) here, and when we do receive feedback for our feedback, it is usually from the unpaid volunteer moderators saying that they hear us. :/

 

[Sir Squirrel]

I agree! As I had all the squad size upgrades completed up to chapter 11 or so before they tied squad size to tourney difficulty, I feel cheated. The fire phoenix helped a bit, but my tournament difficulty is still crazy hard and there isn't anything I can do to help this. I also think it is stupid to use something that is suppose to help you with fighting (it does help with provinces), but actually hurts you in tournaments. I also agree that there is no info any where in game or even in the wiki that tells players that researching squad sizes will make tourneys harder and there are not too many that can be skipped without stopping your research.
The way it is setup you need squad size upgrades early on to be able to beat the world map provinces to complete enough to advance to the next chapter and by the time you can skip some there are very few that are able to be skipped. I think they have to find a different way to scale the difficulty of tournaments (maybe tie it to chapter) or make researching the squad size upgrades reversible (at least ones that are at dead ends on the research tree) as Alistaire has stated!

 

[DeletedUser20951]

I feel cheated

Ah man, I don't blame you one bit. I, knowingly of how it would affect the tournament costs (and stupidly, in hindsight), chose to research a few of the earlier optional squad techs for... Well, I can't remember the reason but surely it was idiotic, and I regret it bitterly to this day, as I participate fairly heavily in all tournaments. It almost seems intentionally cruel, how players are not informed of the ramifications, but doubly so when you are curtailed, in a severe way, for researching what you believe is meant to help you, and it then turns in your hand to bite your loyalty and dedication to the game (I think I could probably write a thesis on the myriad changes that have been made that significantly hurt veteran players).

 

[Heymrdiedier]

i also hate this terribly, and ive been advocating to do something about it (on beta forum) for a long time.
i think they might be working on it tho, the way spire works is different (based on overal research) and im thinking they might change tournaments to work the same way.
However i get the impression the way spire works is even worse, so i stopped asking for it because i fear an even greater massacre

 

[Lelanya]

I agree 100% here folks. I too have had friends vanish, including top players, over this issue. One even asked to pay diamonds to have researches reduced, but Inno remained silent

 

[DeletedUser24012]

I have few months under my belt and I already am noticing this. At the end of chapter 5, I have started skipping squad size upgrades.
I quite like fighting and if I have time I will always definitely manual fight. Yet strategy is out of the question after a few chapters, especially now in the tourneys and I see why, now/


Two main points in my view here is that:

1. A research type, has one upside and two downsides. Or one too-big a downside.
Because it both makes negotiating AND fighting in tourneys harder by leaps. So either way, it's out of balance. There is already the matter of town and tourney distance influencing the difficulty of those two things, why the need for another factor, indeed?

2. What hasn't been told to the player has affected their game. Only way to justify that is to correct the info and have a means of undoing it for those affected.

Final opinion, I do NOT believe tourneys should become easier or anything as you progress in score and chapters, just at a more reasonable rate, maybe some number inside some formula in your design changed slightly can fix all this, but I'm not too knowledgeable in developement and coding, so it is indeed good if we can hear from main staff, thank you.

 

[Sir Squirrel]

i also hate this terribly, and ive been advocating to do something about it (on beta forum) for a long time.
i think they might be working on it tho, the way spire works is different (based on overal research) and im thinking they might change tournaments to work the same way.
However i get the impression the way spire works is even worse, so i stopped asking for it because i fear an even greater massacre

Yes Heymrdiedier, I hear you! I kind of been staying away from beta for this very reason. I found they have done this quite a few times before, where we ask them to fix something and they just make it worse. It would be nice if they realized this is a game and we would actually like to be able to play it !

 

[Deleted User - 1178646]

While I agree, I am also afraid they will fix it in the wrong way.

You can bet to be sure that it will be similar tot the spire.
The easiest fix would be, if they would simply remove the "optional" squad upgrades from the tournament formula.

This is most likely what everyone of us wants, and would solve the entire problem in about 5 minutes of development time.
But Like heymrdiedier I am quite certain they will go the spire route instead if we push this and make it all harder for everyone.

On the other hand the TS is totally correct, people actually do quit because of this ridiculous "feature". To some people i stopped explaining how stuff works because they get worked up and quit.

To be honoust, the difference ain't that big on the battling side. as your wonder progress it becomes a bigger part of your total unit production, and since it scales according to your SS it will slowly reduce the bad sideeffects that the SS research imposes on that part. It won't negate it, but it will reduce the pain.
The real trouble lies in the negotiation factor, here there are no reducing factors that solve part of the puzzle in SS diffenrences. it just grows and grows and grows.

 

[Pheryll]

Especially with RRs available now, more and more FS have heavier tourney requirements, so this is more important now than ever.

Especially with RRs now, the balance is more likely going to move toward taking all optional SS techs then towards skipping all optional SS techs.

 

[Deleted User - 1178646]

Especially with RRs now, the balance is more likely going to move toward taking all optional SS techs then towards skipping all optional SS techs.

Could you explain this?
Doensn't make any sense to me.

 

[Alistaire]

Especially with RRs now, the balance is more likely going to move toward taking all optional SS techs then towards skipping all optional SS techs.

Taking those means more work required to get RRs so yeah, this doesn't make any sense at all.

edit: do you think the troop buildings upgraded with RRs produce based on your squad size? They don't. Only wonders do.

 

[Lelanya]

I'm totally puzzled by this latest turn. How do Royal Restoration spells make tourney harder? I'm kinda missing Soggy here, tourney opposition is completely based on Squad Size, so all the numbers type players insist. Never mind that my first 2 cities have all sorts of variations in the first 6 or 7 provinces and still bear echoes of how hard they were to solve originally

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Taking those means more work required to get RRs so yeah, this doesn't make any sense at all.

edit: do you think the troop buildings upgraded with RRs produce based on your squad size? They don't. Only wonders do.

The Vallorian and Orc Strategist buildings produce based on their chapter, so upgrading those makes more free troops. But that is such a corner case, and one that can be fixed by crafting a new building, that I do not think that is what he means.

But on the subject, I never skipped any optional research and did it as I got to it. I am now done with chapter 14 and almost never have to negotiate a province in a tournament. The main reason I cannot score higher every week than I do currently is my troop production is out of whack and I have been too lazy to fix it yet. I have only a couple of the military AWs built and I only have three maxed out armories, with a fourth one sitting at level 16, waiting for another Upgrade Building quest to hit me.

 

[Alistaire]

I'm totally puzzled by this latest turn. How do Royal Restoration spells make tourney harder? I'm kinda missing Soggy here, tourney opposition is completely based on Squad Size, so all the numbers type players insist. Never mind that my first 2 cities have all sorts of variations in the first 6 or 7 provinces and still bear echoes of how hard they were to solve originally

RRs don't do anything to tourney difficulty. The only thing they do is make fellowships require higher tourney scores, because they want more than ever to hit 10 chests now. So the presence of RR makes what you want to get in tourneys higher, which is harder, in general and even more so with optional squad size upgrades.

If you're in a group where you get 10 chests, then you're fine. But if you're trying to get in a group like that and have 500-700 point scores, they may not want you, and those 500-700 point scores may be because of the misinformation the game gives about these research techs.

 

[samidodamage]

But on the subject, I never skipped any optional research and did it as I got to it. I am now done with chapter 14 and almost never have to negotiate a province in a tournament.

While I'm happy it worked out for you, I see a huge difference in the 2 cities I have. One just finished Amuni and it was my original city; the other is in Woodelves and I started it a year+ after my first one. In my first one I was somewhere around Dwarves when I figured out skipping optional SS techs. I started out in the 2nd one skipping all of them. I missed a day in the 2nd city the week of the FA; before that I was carrying a 4000+ point average for tourneys there. I do 5 rounds of 20 provinces/wk there (4200pts) and still have 1mil of each good and over 100 squads of each barracks unit at the end of the tourney (my TG and MC training times are double the barracks ones right now, so not training many of those, lol). I generally autofight 4 rounds of 20 and cater the 5th.
Those numbers may change with this week's scroll tourney (in terms of inventory/units left at the end), but I'm in fine shape there to cater more if I need to due to heavy military losses in scrolls and I recover easily there.
In my Amuni city, I still do well in tourneys, but not nearly at the level of the other city. While we push for 10 chests every 4th week there, other weeks I do a bit over 3000 there and I run out of troops easily. I bet I use time boosters for troop production more than any other single thing in that city. I have to fight as catering costs in round 5 can wipe me out (the formula for goods needed to cater in tourneys has SS size as a multiplier, too!) It's not unusual to see 20K+goods required of each good type in one encounter in round 5)This city also has more of the military AW's (just because I'm not there yet in the 2nd city, lol).
Both cities have a lvl 10 Fire Chicken that I feed (usually twice in the smaller city since I cater round 5; usually 3 times in the larger city) and I place similar expiring military boost bldgs in both cities. The biggest difference in placing the expiring bldgs is when there's a push week in my larger city: I try to place 2 UUU's that week in the larger one and may double up on one of the others depending on the province type.
I do worry about complaining about their formula, though. I can see them making all SS upgrades required and making us go back and get them (sort of like they did with the ?banshee? I think it was). That would level the playing field AND increase the cost of both troops and goods for tourneys

 

[DeletedUser16929]

Just had a chat with an old friend in an FS they want out of, went something like this:

me: you interested? the main thing they want is to be sure you can hit around 2k tourney score
her: 2k?? I hit like 500-700 and can't do more no matter what strategy I use, it's pretty frustrating, how do you do it?
me: how many optional squad size upgrades have you filled? They're terrible for players that like to fight, because it makes tourneys so much harder. ironic since it sounds like a fighting upgrade but it means the enemy has more troops too so you lose more troops and it doesn't help your training speed at all so you can't progress as much
her: what's an optional squad size upgrade?
me: (explains)
her: oh, I have all of those.

This is nonsense. Those are so badly explained in the research tree, and so the game is so badly balanced around them. Before this chat I've known 2 people quit over this, and a 3rd completely restart their account, only to quit later on.

These are downgrades, but more specifically, they're downgrades for people who like fights, which traps so many players early on. And it's irreversible. It shouldn't be though... can you please allow players with these filled to cancel them out, like demolishing a building? I don't want the kp back, all I want for players is to be able to undo a choice that goes completely against what the choice says it helps.

Especially with RRs available now, more and more FS have heavier tourney requirements, so this is more important now than ever.

It's fine to leave the balance as is, if you start allowing players who want to the opportunity to revert those to unfilled (as long as they don't have anything after filled, and afaik that's only 1 city expansion behind one of these in ch6). For that one you can make it so that one alone becomes unretrieveable, or a nicer gesture would be to change the skill tree so those 2 things are seperate dead ends. That one for me is unchecked and it's really annoying I have to skip an expansion or face being gimped in tourneys a bit more.

I feel making them reversible is also the best solution for people that would want to keep these for non-tourney fighting, even though the overwhelming majority of the fights in this game are tourney fights.

And I really want a response from Inno staff about this issue. I haven't seen a staff member response on any suggestion/complaint threads and that feels really odd to me. Is there another place to bring this to their attention? Has anyone ever filed a ticket over this and gotten them reversed?

Everything else in this game is either great or minor annoyances; this is the one thing I'm honestly kind of mad about because of the people who unwittingly wreck their accounts just trying to get better.

very well said
i think you have a very valid point here
i, in fact have switched from fighting to negotiating, because of this very, uh... what is the right word?... problem!
it is hugely ineffective to fight through as you become higher level, seems to get more difficult
it is not fair!

 

[RainbowSKYEPIXIE]

I agree 100% here folks. I too have had friends vanish, including top players, over this issue. One even asked to pay diamonds to have researches reduced, but Inno remained silent

I was about to say the exact same thing as @Lelanya. It is a "show stopper" for more & more folks. It is a penalty for reaching higher chapters. As you advance Halflings & above they force at 3 squad size upgrades in that chapter alone. in Elementals your getting close to the end anyways & since it's become too "expensive" to tourney I am seeing folks vanish after complaining about the fighting & it's not worth to them anymore. Do they go start new cities? I don't know & I don't know if I would if that is what I have to look forward to. This is a problem that needs fixed please.

 

[DeletedUser19458]

My FS is going through these pains right now. I am saying how 'easy' I find many tournies, but I have skipped every optional upgrade (now starting Halfllings) while rest of FS is having harder and harder times doing tourney's at all. Getting 6 chests is a good week.

Inno read these suggestion forums and do something about it? Ha good luck. They seem intent on just doing whatever they do and not actually trying to play the game themselves to experience and improve it.

 

[DeletedUser16929]

Inno please fix!