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    Your Elvenar Team

Spire of Eternity feedback

Alistaire

Well-Known Member
So balance issues aside, there's a completely seperate improvement that should be made to the spire: it needs to offset the downtime from tourneys.

Some people like the essence of the spire, if not the balance, the same way they like tourney. So I don't get why you didn't take advantage of that and make it available during the time tourney isn't. Right now it's offline Friday morning to Sunday morning for me, why not make it offline Tuesday morning when tourney starts and pop back up Thursday morning?

From a business perspective it's even more strange: you're basically sitting there, with your shop up and running, but you close down your ice cream machine for maintenance during the busiest hours instead of the slowest. Let's say tourneys are your hot apple pies, you've got customers that come in for something sweet, they don't care which, and those are the only 2 sweets you offer. You really should make sure at least one of them is available at all times.
 

Ashrem

Oh Wise One
So balance issues aside, there's a completely seperate improvement that should be made to the spire: it needs to offset the downtime from tourneys.

Some people like the essence of the spire, if not the balance, the same way they like tourney. So I don't get why you didn't take advantage of that and make it available during the time tourney isn't. Right now it's offline Friday morning to Sunday morning for me, why not make it offline Tuesday morning when tourney starts and pop back up Thursday morning?

From a business perspective it's even more strange: you're basically sitting there, with your shop up and running, but you close down your ice cream machine for maintenance during the busiest hours instead of the slowest. Let's say tourneys are your hot apple pies, you've got customers that come in for something sweet, they don't care which, and those are the only 2 sweets you offer. You really should make sure at least one of them is available at all times.
They need players to want to play it. As it runs now, players can deploy martial boost buildings that cover all of either the spire or the tournament, and almost all of the other. if they were off-set, any martial boost buildings wouldn't be available for about half of one or the other. Personally, I think the overlap is good for players. Someone who's organized can plan a Tournament push and a Spire push in the same week, and do very well in both.
 

Alistaire

Well-Known Member
They need players to want to play it. As it runs now, players can deploy martial boost buildings that cover all of either the spire or the tournament, and almost all of the other. if they were off-set, any martial boost buildings wouldn't be available for about half of one or the other. Personally, I think the overlap is good for players. Someone who's organized can plan a Tournament push and a Spire push in the same week, and do very well in both.
Yeah I suppose that's true.

However, if they also boosted troop buildings from 7 days instead of 5 my suggestion would still work for that. ...then that's a judgment call on whether boosting those to 7 days would be a net gain in business, and that idk.

And they definitely didn't previously have a business reason to boost those to 7 days...but maybe now they might.
 

qaccy

Well-Known Member
@Alistaire I think they'd probably have more of a reason to add in buildings that boost light/heavy melee, as well as heavy range units. I'm not sure why only mages and light range have gotten boost buildings so far, considering they're already the two best unit types, but I can't think of why the other three didn't also get something.
 

Alistaire

Well-Known Member
@Alistaire I think they'd probably have more of a reason to add in buildings that boost light/heavy melee, as well as heavy range units. I'm not sure why only mages and light range have gotten boost buildings so far, considering they're already the two best unit types, but I can't think of why the other three didn't also get something.
Yeah, that is an issue too...though it's a separate and non-mutually exclusive one. Was actually the first thing I thought of when Spire was announced to have unique buildings. Though I think suggestions with a valid reason on their end, business-wise, might be more likely to be implemented...and I'm not sure there's a good business reason for them to make more tourneys more easy. Unless of course, they made diamond-only buildings like that.

Maybe they could do both and make new buildings like you suggest, make them hard enough to get to not lose money, add a section in buildings where you could buy versions any of these for diamonds, and spread out tourney/spire to cover my initial reasoning and get people spending $$ on them all week round.

Another thing about this is brand-new players...with tourneys offline 3 days a week and spire offline 2 of those same 3, I wonder how many of those dead starter towns are because their first impression was that there's not much going on here.

(and then that gets into how it's dumb you need to be part of a fellowship to do tourney,...easily bypassed by founding one so there's no point to the limitation, but if you could do tourneys solo people who start off this game would have quicker/easier access to have a better first impression.)
 

Enevhar Aldarion

Oh Wise One
Another thing about this is brand-new players...with tourneys offline 3 days a week and spire offline 2 of those same 3, I wonder how many of those dead starter towns are because their first impression was that there's not much going on here.

There are actually only 21 hours per week that neither the tournament nor the Spire are available, in my time zone from 4pm Eastern on Saturday, when the tournament ends, to 1pm Eastern on Sunday, when the Spire appears again. But then, since you said new players, they do not even know the Spire exists til they get to chapter 3, so they get three days a week with nothing.

Also, even before there was the tournament or Spire, there were still plenty of cities that went dead within days of being started, many on the same day, as people started playing, decided it was not for them, and never came back for a second day.

Oh, and back when I started playing three years ago, you did not have to be in a fellowship to do the tournament, as you completed provinces and got rewards by cooperating with your world map neighbors. Now that was a crap system.
 

Alistaire

Well-Known Member
@Enevhar Aldarion Right, forgot about the chapter 3 limitation, so I guess Spire just can't be used to entice new players.

And you're absolutely right about players deciding it's not for them. There's just reasons for that, and the more you can showcase to a day 1 player the more likely they come back for a day 2. Spire could be that reason if they made it available from the start (though I see there could be abuse with that).

As for the old tourney system yikes, that does sound bad. Maybe it seems like they backpedalled too far away from that? The ability to do them without an FS wouldn't mean a return to that system, and doesn't sound like the main problem with it.

I guess in the end if Spire can't be used to keep players playing from the start, it could still keep players playing more once they've gotten a bit into it.
 

DeletedUser20951

Guest
Oh, and back when I started playing three years ago, you did not have to be in a fellowship to do the tournament, as you completed provinces and got rewards by cooperating with your world map neighbors. Now that was a crap system.
Oh dear Gods, IT WAS SUCH A CRAP SYSTEM. With my main city, I had a grand total of five active neighbors, none of which shared my boosts (and going hard on unboosted tournies wasn't common due to no use for the relics). With the overall neighborhood activity issue, I definitely wondered what in the Hells Inno was thinking to set it up that way.
 

Risen Malchiah

Well-Known Member
But then, since you said new players, they do not even know the Spire exists til they get to chapter 3, so they get three days a week with nothing.
I wasn't aware of the chapter limitation either. Why is that anyway? Because many of the rewards are MA-based? I suppose that makes sense.

Still, it could be really odd for a chapter 2 player to see spire encounters in an event quest and have no idea what that means. (Or tournament encounters for solo players since tourneys aren't mentioned anywhere in-game outside of a fellowship.)
 

Alistaire

Well-Known Member
I wasn't aware of the chapter limitation either. Why is that anyway? Because many of the rewards are MA-based? I suppose that makes sense.

Still, it could be really odd for a chapter 2 player to see spire encounters in an event quest and have no idea what that means. (Or tournament encounters for solo players since tourneys aren't mentioned anywhere in-game outside of a fellowship.)
You get MA in chapter 1 so it's not that. I figured it was to prevent abuse of making an account, getting a few easy diamonds, deleting the city, rinse repeat...
 

Ashrem

Oh Wise One
You get MA in chapter 1 so it's not that. I figured it was to prevent abuse of making an account, getting a few easy diamonds, deleting the city, rinse repeat...
The only way to delete a city is to delete the account, so the free diamonds wouldn't help. Even if you were willing to wait a month for an inactive deletion, it only works if you never buy any diamonds, so it would be be both tedious (the monthly wait), and limiting (can't ever buy any diamonds).
 

Alistaire

Well-Known Member
The only way to delete a city is to delete the account, so the free diamonds wouldn't help. Even if you were willing to wait a month for an inactive deletion, it only works if you never buy any diamonds, so it would be be both tedious (the monthly wait), and limiting (can't ever buy any diamonds).
Yeah I'm aware it'd be tedious, I just don't see any other possible reason for starting at chapter 3 and not 2 which would make more sense, so trying to figure out what Inno's thinking, that's all. I'd even heard on here that it's too tough at chapter 3 but tried it out on abandoned alts and it was easy, stupid easy (though I used a lot of orc strategists so that building would be recommended) But still, I was able to negotiate too, so idk.
 

qaccy

Well-Known Member
If even normal provinces are generally too difficult for new players (based on what I've heard), I can't imagine the Spire being any better.

Also consider that, just like how some players may leave quickly if there isn't enough for them to do and they get bored, there are also players who are overwhelmed by having too much thrown at them right away because they don't know what they should be doing. Elvenar teaches you to walk before you learn how to run, and it's probably better that way even if some players want to start sprinting right away.
 

Mykan

Oh Wise One
You all make good points. New players are given some troops to play with, but that only goes so far, and they're better off expanding on the map. A new player could easily lose too many troops or goods in the Spire if they don't know what they're doing.

They suffer the same issue on the world map cause of the broken fight system in chapters 2-4ish. Unless someone tells them to save their troops and negotiate until it evens out. Spire at least appears to have fixed difficulty but the squad sizes are huge. In those chapters you can't get 12hr training queues so it is difficulty to build up a lot of troops quickly.
 
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