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    Your Elvenar Team

The "Christmas" Event is BROKEN!!!!

The Unbeliever

Well-Known Member
There are a nearly infinite number of playable city design-states in the game. They had to make some changes on-the-fly after complaints on Beta. It's not really possible to test every possible city against each event or they'd never be able to deliver them. The events have to be challenging, or there's no point having them. They could just give everyone a bunch of stuff and call it an event.

Lots of people have finished the main quest line and moved to the bonus quests, barely half way through the event. While players may or may not have a legitimate complaint about whether everyone can get the event building to max level, not one of the players who have passed the initial sequences has any right to complain about the specific quests they are getting.
"Good" events should at the very least be;
a) Completing the entire quest line + gathering all daily collections = 1 fully evolved grand prize.
(NB: 'all' daily collections in Elvenarland at least should mean gathering an average of 20 spawns per day, which is doable via logging in once every 3-4hrs for the 30sec it takes to grab them)

b) All quests should be properly scaled to the player's in-game progress.
(ie: a Ch1 city for say, 'produce T1 boosted' should be done under the premise of having 0% relic boost and only 4 Lv1 factories... so no more than say 200 goods, which is still 4x Lv1's @3hr productions 16.6 times!)

Who cares if players can finish the 'main' quest line in a week or so? Why do we have to assume that it should take the majority of the event to finish the entire main quest line?
The better way to artificially 'balance' things is simply to;
1) drastically decrease the higher end subsidiary prizes, such as they have in this event. (ie: no more piles of 8hr time instants, but give more 1hr/2hr/5hr instead, etc...)
2. add more doubling-up of non-evolutions *after* the initial set that maxes out the 1st evolving building.
(ie: you get your 9th &final evolution. Next grand prize in the rotation is a Lv1 building, but then it goes 'building' -> 'building' -> evolution -> 'building' -> building -> evolution, etc...)
OR (better yet!)
Once the initial evolving building has been maxed out, then double the grand prize currency required to win the next one!
(ie: 20 pearls/stardust/feathers now becomes 40 pearls/stardust/feathers, etc...)
Completing a 2nd fully evolved building then bumps the required currency from 40 to 60 for more grand prizes, etc, etc...

But no, instead of intelligent game design, we keep getting called a bunch of filthy cheaters and then get hosed with knee-jerk 'fixes' that simply make a giant randumb mess of our events. :(
 

Ashrem

Oh Wise One
"Good" events should at the very least be;
a) Completing the entire quest line + gathering all daily collections = 1 fully evolved grand prize.
(NB: 'all' daily collections in Elvenarland at least should mean gathering an average of 20 spawns per day, which is doable via logging in once every 3-4hrs for the 30sec it takes to grab them)

b) All quests should be properly scaled to the player's in-game progress.
(ie: a Ch1 city for say, 'produce T1 boosted' should be done under the premise of having 0% relic boost and only 4 Lv1 factories... so no more than say 200 goods, which is still 4x Lv1's @3hr productions 16.6 times!)

Who cares if players can finish the 'main' quest line in a week or so? Why do we have to assume that it should take the majority of the event to finish the entire main quest line?
The better way to artificially 'balance' things is simply to;
1) drastically decrease the higher end subsidiary prizes, such as they have in this event. (ie: no more piles of 8hr time instants, but give more 1hr/2hr/5hr instead, etc...)
2. add more doubling-up of non-evolutions *after* the initial set that maxes out the 1st evolving building.
(ie: you get your 9th &final evolution. Next grand prize in the rotation is a Lv1 building, but then it goes 'building' -> 'building' -> evolution -> 'building' -> building -> evolution, etc...)
OR (better yet!)
Once the initial evolving building has been maxed out, then double the grand prize currency required to win the next one!
(ie: 20 pearls/stardust/feathers now becomes 40 pearls/stardust/feathers, etc...)
Completing a 2nd fully evolved building then bumps the required currency from 40 to 60 for more grand prizes, etc, etc...

But no, instead of intelligent game design, we keep getting called a bunch of filthy cheaters and then get hosed with knee-jerk 'fixes' that simply make a giant randumb mess of our events. :(
Who gets to decide what is a good event? You? Me? the people who are making their living writing the app?

We don't have to assume anything about how long it should take. The developers get to decide that. If we don't like it, we have choices, we can complain or we can play a different game. Neither of those mean the developers are obliged to do it the way we want.

Your "Better" appears subjective. Just because we would like more mid-length timer instants doesn't impose an obligation on the developers to supply it. They make their money from microtransactions. Short timers are worth more than long timers, so it's not unreasonable for the developers to keep them scarce.

I don't recall seeing the words "filthy cheaters" from any staff. Did I miss a message, or is that a gross, and inflammatory, exaggeration?
 

Ashrem

Oh Wise One
all I'll say on the matter is that only 20 ribbons for the bonus quests seems overly punitive

25 (2 quests = 1 pull) makes more sense even if I disagree with the thought process behind it
Agreed. Better yet, I think they should be weighted by their difficulty, with some really easy quests that only offer 2 or 5 ribbons, moderate tasks that provide 5-20 ribbons, and difficult/long tasks that offer 25-50 ribbons.

As a good side effect, they could then have an accumulator tracking recent progress. If they track the total ribbons from your last ten tasks, then if it is over average, your next quest comes from the easy pool, and if you are under average, your next task comes from the difficult pool, so everyone should average out over time.
 

The Unbeliever

Well-Known Member
Who gets to decide what is a good event? You? Me? the people who are making their living writing the app?

We don't have to assume anything about how long it should take. The developers get to decide that. If we don't like it, we have choices, we can complain or we can play a different game. Neither of those mean the developers are obliged to do it the way we want.

Your "Better" appears subjective. Just because we would like more mid-length timer instants doesn't impose an obligation on the developers to supply it. They make their money from microtransactions. Short timers are worth more than long timers, so it's not unreasonable for the developers to keep them scarce.
The developers also have an obligation to listen to their customers and give them what they want within reason.
ATM however, the Elvenar team are basically like Disney and trying to tell SW fans what they should like - and guess how well that's working out?! ;)

At the very least the system needs to be playable and the end goal has to at least feel achievable at all levels of play.
Of course in this event especially, it seems like the smaller cities, (mainly the pre-guest race chapters), are getting hosed something fierce between ridiculous "produce" tasks and the whole VV clusterfeth...


I don't recall seeing the words "filthy cheaters" from any staff. Did I miss a message, or is that a gross, and inflammatory, exaggeration?
There was the outright attack on the beta forums, and the way the recent explanations have been worded, (ie: "we never intended players to have umpteen grand prizes" & "we never intended events to be played with cities of Lv1 buildings", etc...), have come across as accusations of exploiting/cheating and/or just 'playing the game WRONG!'

I feel like the overall massive nerfing of everything this event would have gone over much better if instead, we were given an explanation like;
"Hey everyone! Many of you guys did an amazing job in the Autumn event - some of you achieved what we thought was actually impossible as well, like winning 6 - 10 Bears!
However, we now realise that we might have made things a bit too easy, which is our fault for maybe not thinking things through quite as well as we should have. As such, we're going to try and tone things down across the board in the Winter event, as it was never our intention for things to get so crazy.
We hope you'll all give this event as much effort and hard as work as the last one, and hopefully this time we'll have achieved a better balance on our end too!
Congrats and good luck to you all!"

See - this kind of a message at least gives kudos to the player base for over achieving, and puts the initial blame for things not going according to plan on the devs... (and at the end of the day, they ARE ultimately the ones responsible for the mess.)

You don't build good will & happy customers by turning around and blaming them/insulting them. nor do you just swing the pendulum strait to the opposite end of the spectrum, as no one likes getting beaten senseless by the dreaded nerfbat after all. :p
 

Ashrem

Oh Wise One
The developers also have an obligation to listen to their customers and give them what they want within reason.
Nope. They're stupid not to, but they have no such obligation.

There was the outright attack on the beta forums, and the way the recent explanations have been worded, (ie: "we never intended players to have umpteen grand prizes" & "we never intended events to be played with cities of Lv1 buildings", etc...), have come across as accusations of exploiting/cheating and/or just 'playing the game WRONG!'
I agree that they're blaming us. they have never used the word "Filthy" or the word "Cheaters" about players. that would be stupid, and libelous, and they haven't done it.
 

WolfSinger

Well-Known Member
@Ashrem - I don't remember the exact post on Beta - but I thought the word cheating was used. I could be wrong - but I do remember it was very poorly worded by one of the mods and one of the other mods had to step in and TRY to diffuse something that should never have happened.
 

Ashrem

Oh Wise One
I think the word cheating has been used lots. Just not by employees or volunteers from Inno. One of the players says something is practically cheating, and before you know it people are flinging claims around that the devs are calling players "filthy cheaters."
 
Maybe I'm wrong, and I'm sure I'll be corrected if I am. But back in the first evolving building event, I remember reading about the secret level to get more than one building. Anyone who could get past the original quest list, entered into an unannounced set of quests, giving them the opportunity to get more. It was like a secret menu. Now, because folks learned this secret, and worked towards it, not affecting or hurting anyone else in the whole of Elvenar, all players must now be limited during events. We didn't create the secret menu, You did. We just took advantage of an opportunity and ran with it. (Well not me, LOL, I never got that far anyway! :) )
 

Ashrem

Oh Wise One
Maybe I'm wrong, and I'm sure I'll be corrected if I am. But back in the first evolving building event, I remember reading about the secret level to get more than one building.)
I don't think it was particularly a secret, they just didn't expect it to happen. Most people quit trying once they got enough artifacts to level all three buildings (or sooner) A few people kept going, including some who spent diamonds to get that far, and complained that they had more artifacts than they needed, so they added more buildings at the end.
 
Thank you, although one day I will find where I read the secret part LOL It's driving me crazy. Either way, that supports my point, they created the extra buildings, and did the same in the next event, so now we get crap because they overcompensated.
 

DeletedUser24458

Guest
I started playing my chapter 7 city back in April and my first event was the Phoenix one. I was able to grab a handful of evolves in that event as a noob! I didn't have any high expectation of getting a full evolve. Currently I have another city in chapter 2 - this event has been awful for that city. I was expecting a similar experience to the Phoenix one so no expectation of a fully evolved building. I have been trying for a few days now to make 1200 goods. I do not have enough pop/cult/room to have maxed lvl tier 1 at this point. I have been able to get 1 artifact and 2 dailies. I definitely feel punished.
 

DeletedUser2959

Guest
Random is random, which is why I always ALWAYS prefer a straight path. In any truly random distribution someone always gets shafted. Why is that even acceptable? Sure, a large percentage falls in the middle area of the bell curve and the people on the right end are really happy, but the ones stuck in the left end of the curve are screwed. At least with the three chest scenario we got to pick among risk levels. The 'scratchoff' method just feels wrong to me.
 
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