Streamlining helping Fellowship Members

[DeletedUser]

With my fellowship and those I have discovered on the map, I have over a hundred players to visit and give aid, which I do every day... and due to the tediousness of the rinse and repeat (along with clearing the browser when the Flash leak causes instability), it is the worst part of playing the game for me. Surely the process can be made to be enjoyable and less like pulling teeth.

 

[DeletedUser1161]

I do agree with you that the "everybody aids everybody every day" policies are burdensome. I do a rotation when I have the time and/or need a few extra coin or supplies.

I agree too. Unfortunately, the game design actively encourages it. Early in the game there are are quests that "teach" you to have a partial boost and rely on helps. If I remember correctly, there is also a tip on the game loading screen that says something about 170% boost requiring other players' help. Combined with the city space constraints that limit how many cultural buildings you can practically build, it's not surprising that a lot of players are structuring fellowships to have frequent help policies. It's a good strategy because in an active fellowship reciprocal daily visits reward supplies and culture as well as coin.

I largely ignore my map in favor of fellows; there are only two players on my map who return visits. I only run through neighbors if I'm badly in need of coin.

This posting is just to give you guys a heads up that this problem is directly impacting diamond purchases/spending for me personally.

I am buying fewer diamonds that I would otherwise too. I started a second city to play as a human. The neighborly visits are burdensome enough that I decided to keep that city out of a fellowship and not spend any money on it.

As I think about it, most of the games that are designed to require frequent visits to friends' cities have a much less burdensome UI. There is often a scrollable strip you can display at the bottom or side of the screen that has the portraits of all your friends. (In this game it would be fellows.) You click the player portrait to visit. The next click chooses a building and delivers help if it's allowed. The strip is persistent, so that most friend visits only require a couple clicks.

 

[Deleted User - 107391]

I would chose a time of day, that you know you have 10 minutes to do visits...

Just not that simple. I have tried everything I can think of to be able to do the rounds at the same time every day. Just can't do it. I *do* make sure I do my entire Fellowship at once, though.

And 10 minutes becomes forever when I'm (literally) falling asleep with the boredom.

In my Fellowship we have all chosen a time of day to do them, whether it be Mornings, Afternoons, or Evenings because not everyone plays at the same time of day. We did this to try and spread the visits to help boost Culture throughout the day.

I think this is a great idea which I will try to impose on my Fellows.

 

[Deleted User - 107391]

With my fellowship and those I have discovered on the map, I have over a hundred players ...

I seldom do map neighbors. Most of them are ghost towns and I don't need the coin.

 

[DeletedUser594]

I am buying fewer diamonds that I would otherwise too. I started a second city to play as a human. The neighborly visits are burdensome enough that I decided to keep that city out of a fellowship and not spend any money on it.

I started city on Khel and had to pull out of a great fellowship because it became too much to manage currently. I founded a fellowship for those in the same boat but I have no idea if that will fly. I'm surprised there aren't more small groups of semi actives considering the number of experienced players starting new cities on a whim. I don't want active but still like to pop on and trade/build and don't want to be "that guy" who never returns a help.

 

[DeletedUser1273]

I am totally agree with this. They have to something to make this thing easier right now its very time consuming job. Do something in this way

 

[DeletedUser61]

Right now, when you're visiting someone and you click on their rank, it pulls up a Global roster window that's focused on the visited city.

Clicking the the Shield should exhibit exactly the same behaviour for the Fellowship roster window.

While we're fixing things, I like to see an additional icon that would return to the Notification Log.

Further, I'd like to see a dynamic copy of the hands, or the trade symbol for discovered trading partners, in both the Fellowship and Notification rosters, and clicking on the dynamic icon would both take you to the indicated city AND activate the available visitation buffs.

 

[DeletedUser]

May I suggest my solution for maximizing the efficiency of neighborly visits? First of all, it is my understanding that the game developers want players to actually visit another player's city to give neighborly help, as opposed to something super-efficient, like clicking a "Polish Culture" or "Motivate Builders" icon next to a player's name in the Members tab of the Fellowship dialog. I presume this is to keep the "visit" in the picture. Fair enough. Given that requirement, then I suggest the following solution. Simply center the fellowship shield in the Player Profile and add an outward-facing arrow on either side of the shield, like this:

Fellows are presented in the Members tab in ranked order according to points. Clicking on the left arrow would take you directly to the city of the fellow in this list preceding the player whose city you are currently viewing. Clicking the right arrow would take you directly to the city of the next fellow in the list. The list would be continuous over the first and last player, so that if you were at the city of the last player in the list, then clicking on the right arrow would take you to the city of the first player in the list, and vice versa. Ideally, when the mouse is hovered over one of these arrows, it would display a text box showing the destination of the visit, like this:

The beauty of this solution is that one click takes you to the next (or previous) city in your fellowship. The developers' requirement that a visit actually takes place is satisfied, and the cries of so many players to minimize the clicks required for these visits is also satisfied.

A similar solution can be incorporated into the Bottom Menu around the World Map icon, like this:

These arrows surrounding the World Map icon would behave in a similar manner to those of the fellowship visit in that hovering the mouse over the arrows would provide a text box hint that tells who would be visited by clicking that arrow. I will leave it to the developers to identify a suitable ordering of discovered players that the arrows would traverse. It could be as simple as listing the discovered players alphabetically, or it could be based on ring distance, etc.

As I am reviewing the other posts in this thread, I am realizing that what I have presented here appears to be part of what astoon mentioned above in #17.

 

[DeletedUser61]

Yeah - I'm tarting up the various rosters in https://us.forum.elvenar.com/index....visits-rosters-foci-and-hands.1264/#post-8313 to reach the same goals in a slightly more general way, BUT there's no reason that we could not have BOTH solutions.

Make it so that your left/right arrows ALSO automatically activate the Hands, so that you can skip that extra click.

What you have NOT addressed is the Notifications List, which allows you to conveniently Respond In Kind to the folks who are buffing your city and buying your trades. Because of the mix of buffs, trades, and undiscovered cities, using scroll arrows would not be feasible.

 

[DeletedUser627]

Playing my usual devil's advocate role...

...if we ever actually have game tasks to do in Elvenar, then I'd like to see the developers allocate their time to streamlining this visitation process. Until then, what the hell else is there to do here? Less and less and less...so I really hope that this particular problem ranks low on the priority list of "Elvenar improvements".

 

[DeletedUser594]

Go start a fellowship entirely stocked with new players. Take them up through chapter 4. Don't freak on the 271% marble boosted player with two steel factories when trades are stalled and you're buying marble at the wholesaler and excess steel is piling up around your ears and that player complains that his offer of 500 steel for 450 marble doesn't move even though it's 3 stars
Ready..,set...
I think we are their fishbowl game.
We should try it as a bet when the next world, Glycisandor, opens. We'll establish several metrics in addition to score and call it at the end of Ch4. Loser has to address the winner as The Archmagician and when replying to posts that include said other must add "Thus the Archmagician has spoken"

I hate Nh but it's like flossing- it's needed for a healthy fellowship but it's hard to do it as much as I should.

met too. Amen. It's like flossing. Hate doing it but know it needs to happen

 

[Deleted User - 107391]

Go start a fellowship entirely stocked with new players... "Thus the Archmagician has spoken"

Haha! Love it!

... Given that ("visit") requirement, ... Simply center the fellowship shield in the Player Profile and add an outward-facing arrow on either side ...
The beauty of this solution is that one click takes you to the next (or previous) city in your fellowship. The developers' requirement that a visit actually takes place is satisfied, and the cries of so many players to minimize the clicks required for these visits is also satisfied....

PERFECT! Why not? I actually disagree with

...if we ever actually have game tasks to do in Elvenar, then ...so I really hope that this particular problem ranks low on the priority list of "Elvenar improvements".

- on this one. The only reason I'm staying right now is to help my fellowship, and the worst part of that is the NH. I HATE IT.

 

[DeletedUser1590]

My ancillary issue is that, when people list in their town name the order of help they'd like (e.g.: B, C, MH) I want to help them in that order. But for the people with big cities, half the time it's absolutely impossible to find their Builder's Hut (yeah, yeah, I know...look for the hands, but with so many buildings and available hands it's still a problem). It would be great for fellowship members to see what they want and what's available to help with in a single location.

I do all my assists once a day at the same time, which takes about 15 mins bc of all the clicking and then having to hunt around for the Builder's Hut. It's a pain in the ass, but I do deal with it. I don't even try to bother with people in my neighborhood because far too many are "I did the tutorial and quit" locations. So, since I only do the fellowships, it would really be nice to be able to streamline it to have the menu feature.

 

[DeletedUser1161]

My ancillary issue is that, when people list in their town name the order of help they'd like (e.g.: B, C, MH) I want to help them in that order. But for the people with big cities, half the time it's absolutely impossible to find their Builder's Hut (yeah, yeah, I know...look for the hands, but with so many buildings and available hands it's still a problem).

LOL! I almost gave up trying to find your builders hut tonight. Your city is visually very appealing and looks like a real city, but the mix of all the different buildings makes it hard for my eye to pick out the builders hut. Hopefully I can remember where it is tomorrow.

It would be really nice to have the NH do some sort of intelligent choosing.

As far as hunting for preferred buildings, cities load centered on the MH. If someone really wants their builders hut or a particular culture building boosted, they have the option to put it by their MH so it's easier to find when the city loads. As much as I like my fellows and want to follow their preferences, on the days when my hand/wrist is bothering me I have to forego scrolling around and hunting for particular buildings and just click something on-screen. That's when a more automated way of giving NH would really shine.